Happy Birthday Lady Mary Shepherd!

Today, December 31^st 2017, marks the 240^th anniversary of the birth of Lady Mary Shepherd (nee Mary Primrose). She was born into a Scottish aristocratic family who lived at Barnbougle Castle, near Edinburgh[i]. I have named my philosophy circle blog about her after the intellectual salons she hosted. So, I’ll be exploring what Shepherd’s salons may have been like.

So what would have been on the menu?

I’ve chosen a few possible dishes that might have been served at Shepherd’s salon[ii]:

First courses:

Brocoli &c

Sweet Breads Ala Royal

Sheep Rumps & Kidneys in Rice

Larded Oysters

Ducks Alamode

Florendine of Rabbits

Hare Soup

Second courses:

Pheasant

Marbl’d Veal

Pea Chick with Asparagus

Roast Woodcocks

Stew’d Mushroomd

Macaroni

Roasted Hare

Burnt Cream (maybe a creme brulée?)

Floating Island (oeuf a la neige)

It was customary to serve the food before the guests were seated and then they would informally serve themselves rather than waiting to be served. Men and women sat together and socialised with each other throughout the evening. It was commonplace to decorate the table with flowers, arranged side dishes of vegetables such as olives and to set the table much as today with beautifully arranged napkins and wineglasses[iii].

Who would have attended her salons?

Through her family and marriage shepherd enjoyed a wide range of contacts and friendships which included intellectuals from various professions such as philosophers, literary figures, politicians, economists, mathematicians, publishers and scientists. Among the likely guests were the philosophers Dugald Stewart and James Mill, the female mathematician and science writer Mary Somerville, economist David Ricardo as well as literary greats such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth[iv].

Although these are illustrious names, it was an important feature and social principle of salons during this period both in the UK and abroad that gatherings were egalitarian and not elitist. People from different classes and social backgrounds mixed together and gender roles were less demarcated and Shepherd’s salon was no exception to this. It was very common for the host of a salon to be a woman and the hostess would often run it and set the rules, tone, manners which would govern the salon’s social gatherings for both sexes! The hostess was often regarded as highly influential and many tried to stay on the right side of her! It was a highly skilled role which required a combination of a great intellect with quick thinking, a sense of humour and complex social skills. Shepherd was incredibly good at this[v]: 

“Lady Mary Shepherd was remembered, through her brother and her nephew, as a hostess of unusually sharp wit and logical ability:

I should like to hear more about the gifted Lady Mary Shepherd — and her ‘Salon,’ which my mother has often assured me was a very interesting and agreeable one. My father seems to have been often there, and Lady Mary’s humour seems to have been as well-known as her logical powers, and occasional causticity [Brandreth, 1888, p. 4].”

What was the purpose of salons?

An important feature of salons was that everyone felt free to express and debate their views, to disagree with each other and to mix with people from opposing views e.g. radicals and conservatives. Nevertheless, the tone of the conversation remained respectful and non-confrontational whilst retaining a quick-witted and candid approach. Salons developed into an effective social space for thinkers d were a hotbed for thinkers whois post. to freely exchange and develop their controversial, creative ideas, ranging from inventions to ideas for positive social change.

I’ll go into greater detail in my next post.

---

[i] Jennifer McRobert, “Mary Shepherd and the Causal Relation” February 2002, revised 2014 https://philpapers.org/archive/MCRMSA.pdf. 18

[ii] Geerte de Jong, “A Menu from the Early 19th Century,” Wordpress, The Victorian Era (blog), August 11, 2012, https://19thct.com/2012/08/11/a-menu-from-the-early-19th-century/.

This is a fascinating blog about the Victorian era and it is well worth taking a look at the full menu of ideas gathered together in this post.

[iii] Geerte de Jong, “American, Old English or a La Russe: Dinner Styles in the 19th Century,” Wordpress, The Victorian Era (blog), December 26, 2012, https://19thct.com/2012/12/26/american-old-english-or-a-la-russe-dinner-styles-in-the-19th-century/. Information and citations for this post on the blog ‘The Victorian Era’  are from “A la Russe, à la Pell-Mell, or à la Practical: Ideology and Compromise at the Late Nineteenth-Century Dinner Table” by Michael T. Lucas, which appeared in Historical Archaeology, Vol. 28, No. 4, 1994.  

[iv] McRobert, “Mary Shepherd and the Causal Relation,” 49–53.

[v] McRobert, 48–49.

Overlooked abstracts

Although abstracts can often be overlooked they are, nonetheless, an important underpinning to and description of research ideas that one is working on and should be recognized as such.

For this post, I have transferred my abstract in full from my academia page¹ where it’s been available to read for the best part of this year. Researched and written back in 2015 I focus on the religion and metaphysics of Shepherd and attempt to show that she does not fall into the trap of a circular argument. Although there is some controversy about this, nevertheless, I think there are good grounds for believing Shepherd when she states she has avoided circularity. Quite apart from the fact that she was a highly educated woman who was keen on abstract thinking and was, in my opinion, the first analytic philosopher, she also had a sister and a female friend both of whom were excellent mathematicians. This, amongst other reasons, makes it highly unlikely that she would make a logical error! I shall be exploring this further in future posts.

Title: Lady Mary Shepherd on Religion and Metaphysics

Liba Kaucky Abstract

In this paper, I shall explore the under-researched, lesser-known Early-Modern woman philosopher, Lady Mary Shepherd. Research to date has tended to focus on comparing Shepherd’s arguments with other philosophers (Atherton 1996, Bolton 2012) or her causality in relation to events and induction (Bolton 2010). However, the focus of my paper will be on her religious and metaphysical arguments in her ‘Essays on the Perception of an External Universe’. This is because I wish to put forward the thesis that many, if not all, of Shepherd’s metaphysical arguments are rooted in and derivable from her concept of God. Shepherd states that she is careful not to construct circular arguments. Hence, when she also conversely derives arguments for her concept of and belief in God from her metaphysical arguments, I suggest she is attempting to expand on and clarify her linear argument founded on God in a way that avoids circularity. I hope to show this by reconstructing and analysing the logic and methodology behind her metaphysical explanations of personal identity, mind-body and her definition of God. I would argue that in stating her logical approach, she avoids creating logically fallacious arguments which, I think, makes her an important philosopher to research.

First, I wish to focus on and unpack how and why Shepherd argues from her definition and concept of God to her metaphysics of mind, body and personal identity. For instance, from her definition of God as an intelligent, incessantly existent cause, she concludes that our continuous sense of our personal identity and existence can be best explained by deducing that only such a God could produce our continued existence. Thus, we exist irrespective of whether we are capable of perceiving our existence or not, for example, when we are asleep, we do not cease to exist simply because we are not currently perceiving our existence. Hence, this shows that God, defined as an uninterruptable original cause, sustains our life and is the cause of our unceasing memory and sense of our personal identity. I will then go on to show how her concept of God also impacts on her account of sensation, empty space, motion and matter.

Second, I wish to demonstrate and flesh out how her religious and metaphysical theories work the other way round without becoming circular. That is to say, through Shepherd’s metaphysical arguments, we can deepen our knowledge of and find further supporting premises for her concept of God. An example of this is her philosophy of mind. She seems to claim that our relations of ideas, and so our every thought, would be rendered logically inconsistent without the existence of God, that is, a being who is distinguishable from ourselves in existence and qualities but, nevertheless, is capable of gaining our sympathy. In this way, Shepherd uniquely combines metaphysics and philosophy of emotion. She both examines emotions about God as well as refutes that our sense of our continuous, unbroken personal identity relates to any change in particles. Her stance on particles influences mind-body topics, leading her to consider the possibility of bodily resurrection of a deceased person who may well be capable of moving through limitless space in a future life. Moreover, through these topics, her explanation of the immateriality of the human mind also contains her suggested concept of the essence of God who has an universal mind that, although known to us through reason, remains obscure to us because the universal mind is not a limited body and cannot be known via the senses.

To conclude. In this paper, I try to go somewhat towards appreciating and uncovering Shepherd’s unique style of methodology and argumentation as well as the scale of her overall system of thought. I have done this by looking at how her overall philosophy is rooted in her concept of God. So, I argue, in order to understand any topic within her overall system of thought, one must first take account of her concept of God.

References in abstract:

Atherton, M., (1996) ‘Lady Mary Shepherd’s case against George Berkeley’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 4 (2):347 – 366

Bolton, M., (2010) ‘Causality and Causal Induction: The Necessitarian Theory of Lady Mary Shepherd’ in Causation and Modern Philosophy, eds. Keith Allen and Tom Stoneham, (Routledge, 2010), 242-62.

Bolton, M., (cited as forthcoming 2012) ‘Lady Mary Shepherd and David Hume on Cause and Effect’ in Feminist History of Philosophy: The Recovery and Evaluation of Women’s Philosophical Thought, eds. Eileen O’Neill and Marcy Lascano, (Springer)

(Bolton bibliographic references cited in accordance with her profile available at: http://www.philosophy.rutgers.edu/faculty-174/183-publications/580-list-of-publications)

Liba Kaucky: ‘Lady Mary Shepherd on Religion and Metaphysics’ written 2015. This abstract was submitted 16th Oct. 2015 by email to Dr Emily Thomas for the conference: ‘Early Modern Women on Metaphysics, Religion and Science’ to take place 21/03/16 at the University of Groningen. This abstract was written prior to any comments and this abstract can only be cited or quoted with the author’s permission. Copyright © by Liba Kaucky

ResearcherID:P-2484-2016, URL: http://www.researcherid.com/rid/P-2484-2016

ORCID ID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1598-0833

¹ available at:

http://www.academia.edu/31312846/Lady_Mary_Shepherd_on_Religion_and_Metaphysics_abstract_2015

Celebrating World Philosophy Day at the Lady Mary Shepherd Salon!

I'm celebrating World Philosophy Day UNESCO and the reasons behind it with my Lady Mary Shepherd Salon. The principles behind philosophical debating, outlined by UNESCO below, form the values of this international salon and participation within it. 

"Background

In establishing World Philosophy Day UNESCO strives to promote an international culture of philosophical debate that respects human dignity and diversity. The Day encourages academic exchange and highlights the contribution of philosophical knowledge in addressing global issues.

Why a Philosophy Day?

Many thinkers state that “astonishment” is the root of philosophy. Indeed, philosophy stems from humans’ natural tendency to be astonished by themselves and the world in which they live. This field, which sees itself as a form of “wisdom”, teaches us to reflect on reflection itself, to continually question well-established truths, to verify hypotheses and to find conclusions. For centuries, in every culture, philosophy has given birth to concepts, ideas and analyses, and, through this, has set down the basis for critical, independent and creative thought. World Philosophy Day celebrates the importance of philosophical reflection, and encourages people all over the world to share their philosophical heritage with each other. For UNESCO, philosophy provides the conceptual bases of principles and values on which world peace depends: democracy, human rights, justice, and equality.

Philosophy helps consolidate these authentic foundations of peaceful coexistence."

UN website available at: http://www.un.org/en/events/philosophyday/background.shtml    

So, to celebrate World Philosophy Day here’s a quote which brings out how philosophy is not just for academics but for all, including children who are, perhaps, naturally philosophical:

“Thus it is really the case, that children possess a truer philosophy than that contained in the modern theories, concerning cause…..”

Essay VII. in Essays on the Perception of an External Universe and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation (first edition ed.). Piccadilly, London, London, United Kingdom: John Hatchard and Son. p319, Available at: https://archive.org/stream/essaysonpercepti00shep/essaysonpercepti00shep_djvu.txt

Can contemporary science tell us if Shepherd was right to think foetuses are capable of a consciousness of sorts?

Continuing from my previous blog, here I will explain some of what I have found out thus far in my research about the science of consciousness in general and how it applies to the possibility of foetuses having a type of consciousness.

What I find remarkable about Shepherd mentioning foetal consciousness back in the early 19^th century, is that science today still doesn’t have a good grasp of what consciousness is, and even less so when it comes to foetuses. In the New Scientist published as recently as the 13^th May 2017, Homes states that “We don’t even fully understand what consciousness is” and that the question of how it evolved and “what is it for?” has “Until recently, …. been largely ignored”¹. So I think it is all the more fascinating that Shepherd doesn’t ignore the possibility of foetal consciousness back in the 19^th century². Homes³ tells us the latest shift of focus in science of consciousness is that scientific researchers have broadened their focus now by analysing the historical evolution of consciousness, including consciousness in animals, rather than restricting the question to what it is and applying it only to humans, and thereby furthering our knowledge of the “nature of consciousness” by approaching it from a different but related research question.

Homes⁴ outlines the differing, competing theories and accounts of consciousness which take this different research angle. There is still no one agreed scientific view on it and much ignorance in this field remains⁵. The important key concepts in this article by Homes which relate to my focus in this blog post are that there are various “kinds of consciousness”⁶. This means two things. One, that there may be different types of consciousness other than the ones we are familiar with as human beings⁷. Two, that there may be different levels of consciousness, ranging from “minimal consciousness” to more complex ways of being conscious⁸. Homes wonderfully sums up this message at the end of his article when he says “consciousness is not clear cut” and that, by looking at the animal world, we appreciate what the neuroscientist Anil Seth means when he says “there is not just one single way of being conscious”⁹.      

This, I think, matches up well with Shepherd’s hypothesis that consciousness can be simple early on in life, then be more complex when we are adults before returning to a simple kind of consciousness after death. So I wonder whether what Shepherd had in mind when writing about consciousness, including “consciousnesses (simple or complex)”¹⁰, and “mental capacity” being “simple”¹¹ is something akin to what we would now term minimal consciousness.

However, there can be a fine line in determining the difference between very minimal levels of consciousness and unconsciousness and this difference is not always clearly understood. Block¹², in his entry on ‘consciousness’ in ‘A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind’ highlights that the philosopher Searle puts forward and explores “petit mal epilepsy”¹³ as described by Penfield. I shall put aside the criticisms and rebuttals of Searle’s approach to consciousness and instead try to bring out how this type of epilepsy really illustrates the difficulty of untangling different types of human conscious and how to accurately delineate between consciousness and unconsciousness. Penfield observed that his patients with petit mal epilepsy were able to do things like walk around busy streets, drive a car and play a musical instrument despite being described as “totally unconscious”.¹⁴ This raises two points. One, as Block highlights, that this may be because, while they lack some types of consciousness, such as “phenomenal consciousness”, they still possess others, such as “cognitive and functional consciousness”¹⁵. Two, Block questions the phrase “totally unconscious” in an earlier work of Searles’ and explores the idea of whether what is really going on is related to attentiveness¹⁶. On this picture, when we say sufferers are unconscious yet managing to be up and about and navigating their way through the world, it is more akin to being conscious but “on automatic pilot” rather than actually being completely unconscious¹⁷. Not only does this impact on how we want to demarcate and define the difference between consciousness and unconsciousness, but it also has implications for how we talk about different kinds of consciousness.¹⁸

The relevance of the similarities and differences between conscious states and unconscious states is that some scientists / paediatricians maintain that foetal consciousness is a type of unconsciousness and that foetuses are in a sleep-like state until birth¹⁹. This claim, I think, is of particular interest when assessing how close Shepherd’s suggested hypotheses are to contemporary scientific knowledge because in a different section in her 1827 treatise she calls sleep an unconscious state²⁰.

So how should we draw on all this when examining the concept of foetal consciousness in Shepherd? At first glance, it might seem that foetuses are not strictly speaking conscious, but rather, unconscious. However, considering that this unconsciousness is likened to a sleep-like state and that people can sleepwalk and petit mal epilepsy sufferers have sometimes been considered unconscious despite being up and about and capable of doing tasks, should we think of foetal unconsciousness as a type of very minimal consciousness, akin to sleep and certain types of so-called unconscious behaviours? Are foetuses unconscious in some ways but not others, making them seem unconscious? Would Shepherd have refined her terms of simple consciousness and unconsciousness in relation to foetuses had she known they may be in a sleep-like state? How should we accurately interpret Shepherd’s notion of foetal consciousness and how she meant it? How should we assess and compare it to the deeper knowledge we now possess in philosophy and science about levels and types of consciousness? These are some of the research questions I’m asking myself about Lady Mary Shepherd and sharing with you to enjoy thinking about too.

¹Homes, B., ‘Why Be Conscious?’ (cover story), 13^th May 2017, p29

²Shepherd, M. (1827) Essays on the Perception of an External Universe and Other Subjects Connected

with the Doctrine of Causation (first edition ed.). Piccadilly, London, London, United Kingdom: John Hatchard and Son.
Available at: https://archive.org/stream/essaysonpercepti00shep/essaysonpercepti00shep_djvu.txt

³Homes, B., ‘Why Be Conscious?’ (cover story), 13th May 2017, p29

⁴Homes, B., ‘Why Be Conscious?’ (cover story), 13th May 2017, p29-31

⁵ibid

⁶ibid p31

⁷ibid p29-31

⁸ibid p31

⁹ibid p31

¹⁰ Quote from: “What then remains as given data? Nothing but our sensations, mental consciousnesses, (simple or complex,) arbitrarily named, and their relations” in Shepherd, M. “Essay II Upon the Nature of the Five Organs of Sense, and their Manner of Action with Regard to External Perception” p221 in (1827) Essays on the Perception of an External Universe and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation (first edition ed.). Piccadilly, London, London, United Kingdom: John Hatchard and Son.
Available at: https://archive.org/stream/essaysonpercepti00shep/essaysonpercepti00shep_djvu.txt

¹¹ Quote from: “But the inquiry should be, whether when the organs which are in relation to any individual capacity, undergo the change called death, if the continuing mental capacity become simple in its aptitudes again, or, whether it remain so far in an altered state by what it has gone through in the present life, that it continues as the result of that modification?” in Shepherd, M. “Essay X, The Reason Why We Cannot Conceive of Sensation as Existing Necessarily, and Continuously by Itself” p379 in (1827) Essays on the Perception of an External Universe and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation (first edition ed.). Piccadilly, London, London, United Kingdom: John Hatchard and Son.
Available at: https://archive.org/stream/essaysonpercepti00shep/essaysonpercepti00shep_djvu.txt)

In other words, Shepherd (1827) thinks that either our mental capabilities go from being simple to more complex in adulthood before becoming simple again after death or that our mental capabilities continually change in some way throughout.    

¹² Block, N., (2004) ‘Consciousness’ entry in ‘A companion to the Philosophy of Mind’ ed, Guttenplan, S., Backwell companions to Philosophy, Blackwell Publishing pp210-219

¹³ibid p217

¹⁴ibid

¹⁵ibid

¹⁶ibid p218

¹⁷ibid

¹⁸ibid. In addition, Block (2004, p218) argues that “The main error here is to transfer by conflation an obvious function of access-consciousness to phenomenal consciousness”. For an overview and explanation of these terms see http://protoscience.wikia.com/wiki/Phenomenal_and_Access_Conciousness  

This terminology also shows that there are even different terms for various levels and types of consciousness between philosophy and science.  

¹⁹ p255 in Lagercrantz, H., and Changeux, Jean-Pierre, (2009) ‘The Emergence of Human Consciousness: From Foetal to Neonatal Life’, Pediatric research, 65 (3), p255-60

²⁰ from quote where Shepherd uses sleep as an example of an unconscious state: “when unconscious, (as in sound sleep)…” in Shepherd, M., Chapter VII “Application of the Doctrine Contained in the Preceding Essay to the Evidence of our Belief in Several Opinions.” p155 in (1827) Essays on the Perception of an External Universe and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation (first edition ed.). Piccadilly, London, London, United Kingdom: John Hatchard and Son.
Available at: https://archive.org/stream/essaysonpercepti00shep/essaysonpercepti00shep_djvu.txt

Could Shepherd have learnt about foetal minds from scientists in her era?

Continuing from my last blog post, I want to consider whether scientific knowledge is a contender for how Shepherd seemed so confident that foetal consciousness was plausible. So far in my research, I have looked into both early modern and contemporary science on foetuses. I want to discover both whether there was sufficient interest in foetuses in her era and just before her time and therefore whether she could have come across the notion in science and also to uncover what science today considers plausible. Here I shall share what I have found out so far about knowledge of foetuses that may have been accessible to Shepherd around the publication of her philosophical treatise ‘Essays on the Perception of an External Universe and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation’ in 1827.

Historical background to science about foetuses:

When I began trying to find out what academic discussions about consciousness in foetuses had taken place and what research scientists’ findings were in the early modern period, I realised that the literature on this is not abundant or readily available. For instance, overviews of embryology history do not explicitly mention consciousness and many works cited on foetal brains are early 20^th century¹. However, I eventually discovered things that particularly interested me.   

A recent study has shown that scientists were already specifically taking a keen interest in the anatomy of foetuses during the 18^th and 19^th century². Stillborn babies in particular were relatively easy to obtain and study until 1838, which is 11 years after Shepherd publishes her 1827 treatise where she mentions foetal consciousness³. This study shows that ‘bodies of foetuses and babies were a “prized source of knowledge” by British scientists of the 18th and 19th centuries, and were dissected more commonly than previously thought…’⁴. So, figuring out exactly how much knowledge Shepherd could acquire about foetuses is an open question given that we still are unsure about the extent and depth of scientific knowledge about foetuses in general during this era.

Given we are still learning about scientists’ depth of interest and knowledge about foetuses around Shepherd’s era, it is not inconceivable that Shepherd could also have more knowledge about foetuses than we expect her to have, especially given that she met and had academic discussions with eminent scientists in her day. McRobert points out that Shepherd was friends with well-known scientists throughout her life, including many who had links with the main universities in her day, including the University of London⁵. This, I think, is important because some of the very few drawings and studies of foetal brains I discovered were images from a best-selling book by Jones Quain, professor of Anatomy and Physiology at the University of London⁶. This book, entitled ‘Elements of Anatomy’ was first published in 1828, only a year after Shepherd’s mention of foetuses in her 1827 treatise. So it is possible that Shepherd knew him and his work on the foetal brain and could have discussed it with him because he may well have attended her London salon. I’m not yet sure what his views were on consciousness but this shows that knowledge in this field was developed enough for Shepherd to either learn about it from others or draw on their work to form her own views on the matter. Indeed, Quain was not the only scientist examining foetal brains. In France, Jules Germain Cloquet was producing a 5 volume anatomy atlas and included drawings of foetal brain development over time in the last volume⁷, published in 1825, only a few years prior to Shepherd’s 1827 treatise. As can been seen by the artist Jan van Rymsdyk, who worked in the UK during the 18th century producing images of foetuses, interest in producing images of foetal anatomy also stretches back to the 18th century. So, given that Shepherd was born in 1777 and van Rymsdyk worked in the UK between 1745 and 1780, it is possible that detailed pictures and knowledge of foetuses would have been accessible to Shepherd throughout her life.  

So I think it is a strong possibility that Shepherd may have learnt about foetal minds from scientists in her era and that this led her to take the notion of foetal consciousness as something she didn’t feel she needed to explain to her readers. Given that Shepherd didn’t mention how foetal consciousness crossed her mind in her 1827 treatise, and given that studies are only now, very recently grasping the extent of knowledge of and interest in foetuses in the 18^th to 19^th century, we shall never know for sure how it occurred to her. Indeed, at times, she belatedly mentions in a footnote that she learnt that, subsequent to writing her 1827 treatise, her views unknowingly coincide with other thinkers. So even if her ideas could be traced back to resembling something a scientist or philosopher expressed about foetal consciousness, this would not be sufficient evidence to suggest that she did not reach such conclusions through her own independent thought despite this. Nevertheless, given the above, I still think, as I did before⁹, that it is highly likely that Shepherd learnt about foetal minds by discussing science with eminent scientists, family friends and intellectuals who were part of her London circle, especially since science was one of her favourite subjects and informed her philosophy¹⁰. Consequently, I think her views on foetal consciousness probably sprung from these discussions and her own reading, either by learning it from them or by formulating her own thoughts on it based on knowledge available to her.

However, scientific discoveries and theories progress all the time. So, in my next blog post, I want to explore whether contemporary science can tell us if Shepherd is right in thinking foetuses are capable of a consciousness of sorts.

¹https://embryology.med.unsw.edu.au/embryology/index.php/Embryology_History#Contributions_to_the_Development_of_the_Human_Brain

²https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/infant-bodies-were-prized-by-19th-century-anatomists-study-suggests

³ibid

⁴ibid

⁵McRobert, J. (2002, revised 2014). Mary Shepherd and the Causal Relation. P48-9, Retrieved from philpapers.org: https://philpapers.org/archive/MCRMSA.pdf

⁶http://www.sciencephoto.com/media/860830/view , http://www.sciencephoto.com/media/860833/view

⁷http://www.sciencephoto.com/media/484107/view

⁸http://www.sciencephoto.com/media/538085/view

⁹Question time after my paper: see

 https://www.academia.edu/32731707/abridged_paper_presented_6th_April_2017_Lady_Mary_Shepherd_on_the_Afterlife_plus_Q_and_A.docx.pdf

¹⁰ “Many of those in Lady Mary’s social circle shared a love of mathematics, science, and abstract analysis — subjects that played an important role in the emerging philosophy and science of the nineteenth century. They were subjects in which Lady Mary had a keen philosophical interest.”  In McRobert, J. (2002, revised 2014). Mary Shepherd and the Causal Relation. P49, Retrieved from philpapers.org: https://philpapers.org/archive/MCRMSA.pdf

Shepherd, M. (1827). ‘Essays on the Perception of an External Universe and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation’ (first edition ed.). Piccadilly, London, London, United Kingdom: John Hatchard and Son. Retrieved from https://archive.org/stream/essaysonpercepti00shep/essaysonpercepti00shep_djvu.txt

How did the notion of foetal consciousness occur to Shepherd?

At question time, I was asked how it occurred to Shepherd (1827) that foetal consciousness was a phenomenon.

(You can read my answer to this question asked at the April 2017 History of Philosophy Conference Q&A session at the end of my paper on Academia:

https://www.academia.edu/32731707/abridged_paper_presented_6th_April_2017_Lady_Mary_Shepherd_on_the_Afterlife_plus_Q_and_A.docx.pdf).

This question has fascinated me ever since. Where did she get this notion from? Am I right in supposing that it may have come from scientists or could she have come across it in philosophy? Or was she merely expressing an intuition of hers? Is she right in thinking foetuses are capable of a consciousness of sorts? So I have been following up this question by researching what knowledge about foetal consciousness may have existed in the early modern period and how far knowledge has come since then. I am currently writing a paper on it but would also like to outline a few of my research findings here as food for thought for the Lady Mary Shepherd Philosophy Salon to mull over. I hope you find this topic as absorbing and perplexing as I have!

Philosophical background to foetal consciousness:

One mention I have come across about foetuses in the early modern period in philosophy is Arnauld using unborn children’s mind as a counterexample in order to refute Descartes’ claim that we are all conscious of our thoughts¹. Contra Descartes, Arnauld argues for the possibility of having thoughts we are not aware of having.  Arnauld supports this by arguing that foetuses are an exception to Descartes’ claim because they have thoughts without being conscious of having that thought. Arnauld writes:

“The author lays it down as certain that there can be nothing in him, in so far as he is a thinking thing, of which he is not aware [conscius], but it seems to me that this is false. For by ‘himself, in so far as he is a thinking thing,’ he means simply his mind, in so far as it is distinct from his body. But all of us can surely see that there may be many things in our mind of which the mind is not aware [conscius]. The mind of an infant in its mother's womb has the power of thought, but is not aware [conscius] of it. And there are countless similar examples, which I will pass over. (CSM II 150 / AT VII 214)”²

Descartes answers Arnauld by reaffirming his intuition that we are indeed aware of all our thoughts and that foetuses are not an exception to this so his claim remains in tact:

“As to the fact that there can be nothing in the mind, in so far as it is a thinking thing, of which it is not aware [conscius], this seems to me to be self-evident. For there is nothing that we can understand to be in the mind, regarded in this way, that is not a thought or dependent on a thought. If it were not a thought or dependent on a thought it would not belong to the mind qua thinking thing; and we cannot have any thought of which we are not aware [conscius] at the very moment when it is in us. In view of this I do not doubt that the mind begins to think as soon as it is implanted in the body of an infant, and that it is immediately aware [conscius] of its thoughts, even though it does not remember this afterwards because the impressions of these thoughts do not remain in the memory. (CSM II 171–172 / AT VII 246)”³

So Descartes seems to think that Arnauld’s mistake is to assume that a lack of memory of our thoughts when foetuses has misled him to conclude that they are thinking without consciousness/awareness. Nevertheless, I wonder whether this passage could be read differently. What if Arnauld was referring to our capacity to have unconscious thoughts rather than having thoughts that you are aware of at the time but you cannot remember later on? This would better refute Descartes’ claim because it would point out the possibility of thinking without being aware of thinking and thus avoid the problem of whether you remember having thought it at a later date. Whichever way you prefer to interpret Arnauld’s objection to Descartes, it is useful to remember Jorgensen’s (2014) insightful summary of Descartes’ argument as claiming that:

“consciousness, for Descartes, is an intrinsic property of all thoughts (even of the thoughts of infants) by which the subject becomes aware of the thought itself. While this involves reflection, this is not distinct from the thought itself.”⁴

However, the puzzle remains because Shepherd does not refer to Descartes or Arnauld in either of her philosophical treatises. Moreover, they seem to think about consciousness differently from Shepherd (1827) in that they have not taken different levels of consciousness into account, unless we read Arnauld as referring to unconscious thought rather than a subsequent lack of memory. Even so, Shepherd (1827) goes further by positing simple and complex levels of consciousness. So given the difference between the concepts explored in Descartes’ and Arnauld’s correspondence and Shepherd’s philosophy, it still leaves open the question of whether Shepherd could have been convinced by the possibility of foetal consciousness through philosophy. Furthermore, as far as I am aware thus far in my research, foetal consciousness doesn’t seem to feature in summaries of 18th Century philosophy of consciousness either⁵.

This leaves science as a contender for how Shepherd may have been so confident that foetal consciousness was possible that she merely states it boldly and factually in passing without feeling the need to argue for it or explain it to her readers. I shall discuss this in my next blog post.

¹Jorgensen, Larry M., "Seventeenth-Century Theories of Consciousness", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/consciousness-17th  

²ibid

³ibid

⁴ibid

⁵Broadie, Alexander, "Scottish Philosophy in the 18th Century", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/entries/scottish-18th

Lady Mary Shepherd: The First Analytic Philosopher in the History of Philosophy?

What makes Shepherd’s¹ analytic approach to philosophy so compatible with scientific thinking?

There are various different approaches to doing analytic philosophy, all of them valuable in their own way. Here², I shall narrow my focus to summing up some features of analytic philosophy I’ve found in Shepherd’s writings, without imposing my methodological preferences onto her system of thought. As already discussed elsewhere, Lamarque and Olsen list features of analytic philosophy’s methodology³:  

·         the prominent application of logic and conceptual analysis;

·         the commitment to rational methods of argument;

·         the emphasis on objectivity and truth;

·         the predilection for spare, literal prose, eschewing overly rhetorical or figurative language;

·         the felt need to define terms and offer explicit formulation of thesis;

·         the quasi-scientific dialectical method of hypothesis/counter-example/modification;

·         the tendency to tackle narrowly defined problems, often working within on-going debates

They also list optional “presuppositions” alongside this⁴:

·         the treatment of scientific progress as paradigmatic;

·         a tendency towards ontological “parsimony”, realism about science, and physicalism about mind;

·         the belief that philosophical problems are in some sense timeless or universal, at least not merely constructs of history and culture. 

I think all of the above features can be found in Shepherd’s writing, except she is not a physicalist in her concept of mind. Her arguments are in a style of analytic philosophy which are explicitly logically structured, ahistorical and are not grounded in literary, cultural or theological concepts. She makes use of a quasi-scientific dialectical methodology, although this is more varied than only relying on counter-examples as a way of adjusting a hypothesis. I think we also need to bear in mind that scientific dialectic in her era had a somewhat different style from those used these days.

In addition, she displays other features which some analytic philosophers opt for, such as keeping to a tight focus, structure and debate within each of her treatises, as well as analyzing “features which are central and characteristic”⁵ of her chosen philosophical problems. Her philosophical arguments are “slow, meticulous” and she aims to provide “strong arguments to support precise, clearly defined theses”⁶. Shepherd also furthers philosophical discussion in accordance with the “familiar analytic mode” of putting forward her stance by comparing and contrasting her views with other philosophers, criticizing where necessary, so she thereby “enters into a dialogue with other contributors”⁷. I think Shepherd’s style of analytic philosophy suits the technical metaphysics she wants to examine and makes her metaphysics stronger because she has kept scientific possibilities in mind when considering metaphysical possibility, as far as it was possible to do so in her era.

These features are remarkable for philosophical works published in the early part of the nineteenth century, given that Frege, the so-called father of analytic philosophy, wasn’t even born until 1848. This makes me wonder:

Could Shepherd’s philosophical treatises be the first texts in the history of philosophy to clearly display an analytical approach to philosophy?

I suspect that they are so I have been exploring her methodology in my research into her treatises.   

    

¹Shepherd, M. (1827). Essays on the Perception of an External Universe and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation Piccadilly, London, United Kingdom: John Hatchard and Son. Retrieved March 19, 2017, from
https://archive.org/stream/essaysonpercepti00shep/essaysonpercepti00shep_djvu.txt  

²Elsewhere I have examined analytic philosophy within other contexts:

 https://www.academia.edu/33536608/Spinoza_Paper_on_Methodology_2017_draft_

http://myspinozaresearchdiary.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/the-analytic-approach-in-philosophy.html

³Lamarque, Olsen (ed) (2004), General Introduction to “Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art: The

 Analytic Tradition: An Anthology” edited by Lamarque and Olsen, Blackwell Publishing, p2

⁴ibid

⁵ibid p5

⁶ibid

⁷ibid

Supermassive Black Holes and Shepherd’s Compass Analogy

Following on from my last blog, ‘Planet 9 and the Bug on the Leaf’, I want to share and discuss another recent scientific discovery which, I think, sheds light on Shepherd’s philosophical methodology.

I’ve been asked what insight Shepherd’s analogy of a captain, who uses a compass for navigation, gives us that the bug on a leaf analogy doesn’t¹. In my last blog, I discussed how to think about the compass analogy in light of Planet 9. Since then, I’ve read about an exciting observational discovery in astronomy which, I think, further supports Shepherd’s philosophical analytic methodology. Although it also applies to the bug on the leaf analogy, here I will focus on the compass analogy. 

Planet 9 shows how ground-breaking scientific discoveries often consist of a bold, theoretical hypothesis based on meticulous rational reasoning and explanation which can be so accurate that it can be later proved with observation. The latest example of this rationalistic approach is the discovery that supermassive black holes can orbit each other after galaxies join up together². Professor Taylor³, who was involved with the project, describes how the discovery took place and the role of theorizing:

“For a long time, we've been looking into space to try and find a pair of these supermassive black holes orbiting as a result of two galaxies merging.”

“Even though we've theorized that this should be happening, nobody had ever seen it until now."

In Shepherd’s analogy, the captain makes use of available equipment, in this case a compass, to track the orientation of the ship in relation to the location of north. This provides compass readings which we use to turn an inadequate (rough) idea of where north is into a geographical reality. Similarly, the astronomers examined radio signal readings from radio telescopes to track the “trajectory” and orbiting motions of the supermassive black holes⁴. This not only leads to more adequate (clear) ideas about how supermassive black holes orbit and why, but it could also provide us with possible knowledge of what our galaxy could be like in the future⁵. So I think Shepherd is right to see her approach to the afterlife as rigorous enough to lead to good enough ideas for now which may be somewhat substantiated in the future and lead to refined adequate ideas about the afterlife.

Perhaps it is easier to see the value of such hypotheses these days, because recent technological progress has enabled us to better test seemingly far-fetched hypotheses to check if they correlate with observable reality. Taylor⁶ admits that technology has played an important role in providing sufficiently detailed data which provided the empirical evidence. Indeed, it was as recent as 2016 that researchers could provide empirical evidence to prove Einstein’s theory of the existence of gravitational waves, one hundred years after he hypothesised it⁷. Now our picture of gravitational waves and how the universe works is coming together between these two recent discoveries. From Einstein’s theory of gravitational waves a century ago, we are now gaining an understanding of how some types of black holes crash into each other and combine which, like stones thrown into water, give rise to a ripple effect through space-time, known as gravitational waves⁸. This is perhaps what Shepherd was aiming for when she theorised possibilities about the afterlife given she hopes to “throw light upon this subject, hitherto supposed to lie beyond the reach of human discovery” and wishes that “a scientific knowledge of its principles be obtained”⁹.  

¹see question 1 under Q&A at the end of my paper, available at:
https://www.academia.edu/32731707/abridged_paper_presented_6th_April_2017_Lady_Mary_Shepherd_on_the_Afterlife_plus_Q_and_A.docx.pdf

²http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/astronomers-discover-orbiting-supermassive-black-holes-for-first-time-in-distant-galaxy/ar-BBDn589?li=AAmiR2Z&ocid=spartandhp

³ Joshua Valenzuela/UNM, 27/06/17
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-06/uonm-gdc062617.php

⁴ibid

⁵ibid

⁶ibid

⁷ibid

⁸ibid

⁹Shepherd, M. (1827). Essay VI, That sensible qualities cannot be causes-against Mr. Hume. In M. Shepherd, Essays on the Perception of an External Universe and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation (pp. 296-313). Piccadilly, London, United Kingdom: John Hatchard and Son. p308

Retrieved March 19, 2017, from
https://archive.org/stream/essaysonpercepti00shep/essaysonpercepti00shep_djvu.txt 

Planet 9 and the bug on the leaf

I wrote an abstract in preparation for a paper on life and death in Shepherd’s philosophical writings. Then I found myself having to narrow down the topic for conferences which required only a couple of thousand words or so. Thus, I ended up focusing on the afterlife and the analogies Shepherd uses to explain it. I decided not to submit this abstract and 2,000 word paper because the Call for Papers was not specifically for history of philosophy and continued to work on it and develop it. Then I submitted another version of the abstract to the British History of Philosophy annual conference at Sheffield University and it was accepted. So the paper has now expanded into two longer versions, one abridged version I presented and one extended version¹.

As a result, I have become fascinated by this question of immortality and an afterlife. Is death just another life phase? Why do we feel the need to think/believe there is a life after death? Is there a life after death? Atheists think not but all religions try to address this human concern. Shepherd (1827) was writing in the late 18^th century and possibly early nineteenth century and uses two analogies to help explain her view². She was a Christian but, nevertheless, felt everyone should be able to follow her philosophical thoughts regardless of faith. These two analogies fascinate me because they are linked to scientific method behind discoveries today.

One such example I read about recently is the Planet Nine theory which is akin to her bug on the leaf analogy. As can be seen in this video (see below³), the science researchers discovered why the sun tilts by reasoning about how Planet Nine impacts on things around it in the solar system rather than through empirical observation of the sun and Planet Nine. Indeed, scientists are yet to find the exact location of this planet but hope to do so soon⁴. So similarly, Shepherd talks about the afterlife not as something to be empirically proven initially but to be logically and rationally explored first. She gives the example of a bug’s empirical experiences being restricted to its leaf which makes it ignorant of the possibilities beyond what its senses discover. This illustrates situations in scientific discovery too. Had these scientists restricted their thinking to only directly observable phenomenon rather than working through various logical possibilities about the cosmos, they may never have hit upon the best explanation. Now they are somewhat in the position of the captain in Shepherd’s (1827) other analogy. The captain has a rough idea of where north, in reality, is and uses the compass reading to navigate there. Similarly, the scientists now have a conceptual idea of how Planet Nine is interacting with the sun and then expect to further it with empirical observation later.

I think Shepherd’s (1827) approach to metaphysics and scientific method (of rationalising through a topic as far as our minds will go before expecting any empirical evidence to confirm it, as well as the usefulness of rough ideas for initially guiding us to the truth) is also seen in the way Batygin⁵ describes the discovery process. First there was reasoning about possibilities, resulting in more than one theory. This can be seen when Batygin states “I actually had theorized this in 2012 and wrote about it and the theory was almost exactly the same, except for it wasn’t Planet Nine doing the torqueing but a companion star.”⁶ Shepherd (1827) also provides more than one possible explanation, leaving open which may be closest to the truth about the afterlife. This open-mindedness is also useful in science where hypothetical theories try to resolve tensions about a phenomena. This can be seen when Batygin describes the puzzle of the tilting sun and the latest theory: “It does help us understand planet formation because planet formation theory dictates that all things must start out co-planar, in the same plane. The fact that the Sun is tilted with respect to the rest of the solar system is almost a violation of that very fundamental principle, so understanding what’s going on there is important.”⁷

So, I think Shepherd (1827) outlines an analytic philosophical approach which suits scientific methodology and discovery. This is interesting because it would be easy to assume that an empiricist would match up with science better than a rationalist. However, as can be seen here, scientists often work from hypothesis to observation rather than invariably working the other way round. Hence, I think Shepherd’s logical and rational analysis of things that are not fully comprehended about the world and human life is not only fascinating within the history of philosophy but is a relevant approach for modern science today.     

¹ See my academia profile for the 2,000 word (2016) and abridged version (2017) of these papers, available at: https://independent.academia.edu/LibaKaucky

² Shepherd, M. (1827). Essays on the Perception of an External Universe and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation (first edition ed.). Piccadilly, London, London, United Kingdom: John Hatchard and Son. Available at (last accessed 27/05/17):  

https://archive.org/stream/essaysonpercepti00shep/essaysonpercepti00shep_djvu.txt

³ The video I refer to in this blog, of the science researchers, M. Brown, K. Batygin, E. Bailey who theorised Planet Nine’s impact on the sun, is available at (last accessed 27/05/2017):

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/video/other/the-tilt-of-the-sun-could-be-caused-by-undiscovered- planet-9/vi-AAjaZ1W?ocid=spartandhp

⁴ ibid

⁵ ibid

⁶ Batygin interviewed by Astronomy Magazine, online article, ‘Planet Nine may be responsible for tilting the Sun: How our possible rogue planet may be messing with our solar system’, By S.  Stirone, Published: Wednesday, October 19, 2016, available at (last accessed 27/05/2017):

http://www.astronomy.com/news/2016/10/planet-nine-tilting-the-sun    

⁷ ibid