Four philosophical questions to make your brain hurt

Gauloise. Check. Expansive hand gestures. Check. Get that philosopher look

It's World Philosophy Day - an opportunity to contemplate one's very existence and whether computer monitors really exist, says David Bain.

People expect different things of philosophers. Some expect us to be sages. When these people meet me, my heart sinks, since I know theirs is about to. Others expect us to have a steady supply of aphorisms up our sleeves, such as that love is never having to say you're sorry (something no partner of mine has ever been persuaded of).

They too are disappointed when they meet me, especially when I say that the glass so beloved by optimists and pessimists is both half full and half empty.

Others expect of us not sagacity, but madness, or at least outlandish beliefs. And here, it must be said, some philosophers really have delivered. Thales believed that everything is made of water, for example, while Pythagoras avoided eating beans because he believed they have souls.

Students at the Sorbonne

As Princeton philosopher David Lewis once said: "When philosophers follow where argument leads, too often they are led to doctrines indistinguishable from sheer lunacy."

But beware. this is the same David Lewis who believed that, for each of the ways things might have been but are not, there is a world at which they are that way, eg a world at which your counterpart is spending today with the world's greatest sex god or goddess.

And, reassuring though it can be to think that at least that counterpart is having fun, even those impressed with Lewis's towering intellect have often found these other worlds of his hard to swallow.

Not all philosophers pin such striking colours to the mast, but there is a good reason why people associate the subject with surprising views. Philosophy involves standing back and thinking - intensely and rigorously - about aspects of our lives that are at once ordinary and fundamental.

And when the surface is scratched, what you find below is extraordinary - or, rather, extraordinarily difficult to make good, clear sense of. Lying in wait are arguments that lead to, if not sheer lunacy, then bullets we're loathe to bite.

So, with World Philosophy Day upon us, here are some pesky arguments to apply your minds to:

1. SHOULD WE KILL HEALTHY PEOPLE FOR THEIR ORGANS?

Suppose Bill is a healthy man without family or loved ones. Would it be ok painlessly to kill him if his organs would save five people, one of whom needs a heart, another a kidney, and so on? If not, why not?

Consider another case: you and six others are kidnapped, and the kidnapper somehow persuades you that if you shoot dead one of the other hostages, he will set the remaining five free, whereas if you do not, he will shoot all six. (Either way, he'll release you.)

If in this case you should kill one to save five, why not in the previous, organs case? If in this case too you have qualms, consider yet another: you're in the cab of a runaway tram and see five people tied to the track ahead. You have the option of sending the tram on to the track forking off to the left, on which only one person is tied. Surely you should send the tram left, killing one to save five.

But then why not kill Bill?

2. YOU ARE NOT THE PERSON WHO STARTED READING THIS ARTICLE

Consider a photo of someone you think is you eight years ago. What makes that person you? You might say he she was composed of the same cells as you now. But most of your cells are replaced every seven years. You might instead say you're an organism, a particular human being, and that organisms can survive cell replacement - this oak being the same tree as the sapling I planted last year.

But are you really an entire human being? If surgeons swapped George Bush's brain for yours, surely the Bush look-alike, recovering from the operation in the White House, would be you. Hence it is tempting to say that you are a human brain, not a human being.

But why the brain and not the spleen? Presumably because the brain supports your mental states, eg your hopes, fears, beliefs, values, and memories. But then it looks like it's actually those mental states that count, not the brain supporting them. So the view is that even if the surgeons didn't implant your brain in Bush's skull, but merely scanned it, wiped it, and then imprinted its states on to Bush's pre-wiped brain, the Bush look-alike recovering in the White House would again be you.

But the view faces a problem: what if surgeons imprinted your mental states on two pre-wiped brains: George Bush's and Gordon Brown's? Would you be in the White House or in Downing Street? There's nothing on which to base a sensible choice. Yet one person cannot be in two places at once.

In the end, then, no attempt to make sense of your continued existence over time works. You are not the person who started reading this article.

3. IS THAT REALLY A COMPUTER SCREEN IN FRONT OF YOU?

What reason do you have to believe there's a computer screen in front of you? Presumably that you see it, or seem to. But our senses occasionally mislead us. A straight stick half-submerged in water sometimes look bent; two equally long lines sometimes look different lengths.

Are things always as they seem? The Muller-Lyer illusion indicates not

But this, you might reply, doesn't show that the senses cannot provide good reasons for beliefs about the world. By analogy, even an imperfect barometer can give you good reason to believe it's about to rain.

Before relying on the barometer, after all, you might independently check it by going outside to see whether it tends to rain when the barometer indicates that it will. You establish that the barometer is right 99% of the time. After that, surely, it's readings can be good reasons to believe it will rain.

Perhaps so, but the analogy fails. For you cannot independently check your senses. You cannot jump outside of the experiences they provide to check they're generally reliable. So your senses give you no reason at all to believe that there is a computer screen in front of you."

4. YOU DID NOT FREELY AND RESPONSIBLY CHOOSE TO READ THIS ARTICLE

Suppose that Fred existed shortly after the Big Bang. He had unlimited intelligence and memory, and knew all the scientific laws governing the universe and all the properties of every particle that then existed. Thus equipped, billions of years ago, he could have worked out that, eventually, planet Earth would come to exist, that you would too, and that right now you would be reading this article.

After all, even back then he could have worked out all the facts about the location and state of every particle that now exists.

And once those facts are fixed, so is the fact that you are now reading this article. No one's denying you chose to read this. But your choice had causes (certain events in your brain, for example), which in turn had causes, and so on right back to the Big Bang. So your reading this was predictable by Fred long before you existed. Once you came along, it was already far too late for you to do anything about it.

Now, of course, Fred didn't really exist, so he didn't really predict your every move. But the point is: he could have. You might object that modern physics tells us that there is a certain amount of fundamental randomness in the universe, and that this would have upset Fred's predictions. But is this reassuring? Notice that, in ordinary life, it is precisely when people act unpredictably that we sometimes question whether they have acted freely and responsibly. So freewill begins to look incompatible both with causal determination and with randomness. None of us, then, ever do anything freely and responsibly."

IN CONCLUSION

Let me be clear: the point is absolutely not that you or I must bite these bullets. Some philosophers have a taste for bullets; but few would accept all the conclusions above and many would accept none. But the point, when you reject a conclusion, is to diagnose where the argument for it goes wrong.

Doing this in philosophy goes hand-in-hand with the constructive side of our subject, with providing sane, rigorous, and illuminating accounts of central aspects of our existence: freewill, morality, justice, beauty, consciousness, knowledge, truth, meaning, and so on.

Rarely does this allow us to put everything back where we found it. There are some surprises, some bullets that have to be bitten; sometimes it's a matter simply of deciding which. But even when our commonsense conceptions survive more or less intact, understanding is deepened. As TS Eliot once wrote:

"…the end of our exploring,

Will be to arrive where we started,

And know the place for the first time."

David Bain is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Glasgow



www.bbc.co.uk

Unforgettable migration of the heart

Though I always try to lie to myself

Those far away like the Himalayas

I would stand

Like those birds that migrate,

My heart did not just before spring came

And not just winter left

This winter had left me cold, pale, and blue

But here in this place

Buds bloomed into flowers and Plants grew into trees

Here summers left me

And even winters

And then I belonged to this place

This migration I will never forget

For such decisions, sometimes in life

Set birds like others and me free…









Stolen from Ponkieeeeee's Orkut profile

More Stupid Students

 

The following are actual excerpts from real student essays: The nineteenth century was a time of many great inventions and thoughts. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of a hundred men. Samuel Morse invented a code of telepathy. Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the Species. Madman Curie discovered radium. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx brothers. The First World War, caused by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by a surf, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history. The inhabitants of ancient Egypt were called mummies. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cultivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube. The Pyramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain. The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, once asked, "Am I my brother's son?" God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Isaac, stole his brother's birth mark. Jacob was a patriarch who brought up his twelve sons to be patriarchs, but they did not take to it. One of Jacob's sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites. Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw. Moses led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the Ten Commandments. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fought with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in Biblical times. Solomon, one of David's sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines. Without the Greeks we wouldn't have history. The Greeks invented three kinds of columns - Corinthian, Doric, and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a female moth. One myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the River Stynx until he became intollerable. Achilles appears in The Iliad, by Homer. Homer also wrote The Oddity, in which Penelope was the last hardship that Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name. Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. In the Olympic Games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, and threw the java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. The government of Athens was democratic because people took the law into their own hands. There were no wars in Greece, as the mountains were so high that they couldn't climb over to see what their neighbors were doing. When they fought with the Persians, the Greeks were outnumbered because the Persians had more men. Eventually, the Ramons conquered the Geeks. History calls people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long. At Roman banquets, the guests wore garlics in their hair. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king. Nero was a cruel tyranny who would torture his poor subjects by playing the fiddle to them. Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames. King Arthur lived in the Age of Shivery. King Harold mustarded his troops before the Battle of Hastings. Joan of Arc was cannonized by Bernard Shaw, and victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. Finally the Magna Carta provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same offense. In midevil times most of the people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the time was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verses and also wrote literature. Another tale tells of William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son's head. The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of their human being. Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenberg for selling papal indulgences. He died a horrible death, being excommunicated by a bull. It was the painter Donatello's interest in the female nude that made him the father of the Renaissance. It was an age of great invention and discoveries. Gutenberg invented the Bible. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100 foot clipper. The government of England was a limited mockery. Henry VIII found walking difficult because he had an abbess on his knee. Queen Elizabeth was the "Virgin Queen." As a queen she was a success. When Elizabeth exposed herself before her troops, they all shouted, "hurrah." Then her navy went out and defeated the Spanish Armadillo. The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespear. Shakespear never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He lived at Windsor with his merry wives, writing tragedies, comedies, and errors. In one of Shakespear's famous plays, Hamlet rations out his situation by relieving himself in a long soliloquy. In another, Lady Macbeth tries to convince Macbeth to kill the King by attacking his manhood. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet. Writing at the same time as Shakespear was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.

Stupid Students

The following are actual excerpts from real student essays: During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe. Later the Pilgrims crossed the Ocean, and this was known as Pilgrims Progress. When they landed at Plymouth Rock, they were greeted by the Indians, who came down the hill rolling their war hoops before them. The Indian squabs carried porpoises on their backs. Many of the Indian heroes were killed, along with their cabooses, which proved very fatal to them. The winter of 1680 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this. One of the causes of the Revolutionary War was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their parcels through the post without stamps. During the War, the Red Coats and Paul Revere was throwing balls over stone walls. The dogs were barking and the peacocks crowing. Finally, the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis. Delegates from the original thirteen states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin had gone to Boston carrying all his clothes in his pocket and a loaf of bread under each arm. He invented electricity by rubbing cats backwards and declared, "A horse divided against itself cannot stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead. George Washington married Martha Curtis and in due time became the Father of Our Country. Then the Constitution the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the Constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms. Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. When Lincoln was President, he wore only a tall silk hat. He said, "In onion there is strength." Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope. Fourteenth Amendment gave ex-Negroes citizenship. But the Clue Clux Clan would torcher and lynch the ex-Negroes and other innocent victims. It claimed it represented law and odor. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposingly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career. Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare invented electricity and also wrote a book called Candy. Gravity was invented by Isaac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn, when the apples are falling off the trees. Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was very large. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this. France was in a very serious state. The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened. The Marseillaise was the theme song of the French Revolution, and it catapulted into Napoleon. During the Napolenonic Wars, the crowned heads of Europe were tremoling in their shoes. Then the Spanish gorillas came down from the hills and nipped at Napoleon's flanks. Napoleon became ill with bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained. He wanted an heir to inherit his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn't bear children. The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. Her reclining years and finally the end of her life were exemplatory of a great personality. Her death was the final event which ended her reign.

Jesus Smoked Pot

 

Jesus was almost certainly a cannabis user and an early proponent of the medicinal properties of the drug, according to a study of scriptural texts published this month. The study suggests that Jesus and his disciples used the drug to carry out miraculous healings. The anointing oil used by Jesus and his disciples contained an ingredient called kaneh-bosem which has since been identified as cannabis extract, according to an article by Chris Bennett in the drugs magazine, High Times, entitled Was Jesus a Stoner? The incense used by Jesus in ceremonies also contained a cannabis extract, suggests Mr Bennett, who quotes scholars to back his claims. "There can be little doubt about a role for cannabis in Judaic religion," Carl Ruck, professor of classical mythology at Boston University said. Referring to the existence of cannabis in anointing oils used in ceremonies, he added: "Obviously the easy availability and long-established tradition of cannabis in early Judaism... would inevitably have included it in the [Christian] mixtures." Mr Bennett suggests those anointed with the oils used by Jesus were "literally drenched in this potent mixture... Although most modern people choose to smoke or eat pot, when its active ingredients are transferred into an oil-based carrier, it can also be absorbed through the skin". Quoting the New Testament, Mr Bennett argues that Jesus anointed his disciples with the oil and encouraged them to do the same with other followers. This could have been responsible for healing eye and skin diseases referred to in the Gospels. "If cannabis was one of the main ingredients of the ancient anointing oil... and receiving this oil is what made Jesus the Christ and his followers Christians, then persecuting those who use cannabis could be considered anti-Christ," Mr Bennett concludes. http://www.thetimesoftheworld.com/?tab=om#breaking news

Seventh Report of the National Police Commission, May, 1981

The North-East has been in a state of turmoil for some years now. Some of the recent incidents of violence, in Tripura, where the number of persons killed was one of the highest in any riot in recent years. Manipur, Meghalaya, Assam, Mizoram and on Assam-Nagaland border, show how inflammable the situation is. They are posing a serious threat to the security and stability not only of this region but of the entire country. The police set-up, which has been expanded in most of these States only recently, and that too in an ad hoc manner, has miserably failed to cope up with the situation. The problems of policing in the North-East are far too complex and varied. They require a highly professional, well organised and trained police force, which is at the same time aware and responsive to the needs of the tribals, to deal with them. An ad hoc approach in dealing with this highly complicated and explosive situation will not do. The whole country is already paying very high price for this situation and if not effectively dealt with, many have to pay a much higher price, even endangering the stability and security of the country.

The region comprises of 7 States, popularly known as the 7 sisters: Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Tripura, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh. It has a population of over 20 million and cover an area of about 2.55 lakhs square kilometres -- almost 8% of the total area of the country. Mostly hilly, it is one of the most picturesque parts of the country. Railways have hardly penetrated the region, and even though many new roads have been constructed, the communications are still very spare and difficult. The remote areas in the interior are still completely isolated; one sometimes wonders whether the march of history has passed them by. The region is situated on the very sensitive borders of our country. The long international borders stretch along China, Tibet, Bhutan, Burma and Bangladesh. It is connected with the rest of the country by a narrow strip of land -- 17 miles broad -- near the 'Doars' in West Bengal. The traumatic experience of the 1962 war with China has left its imprint on the minds of the people. There is a climate of insecurity. The realisation dawned on them of the first time, how tenuous these geographical links were with the rest of the country.

Historical perspective

From the beginning of the British rule, the North-East was treated as a non-regulated area. Any legal enactments made for the rest of the country could not automatically be enforced in these areas, except when they were specifically adopted for them. The administrative system as it developed in this region was quite different from that in the rest of the country. Most of the administration was left by the British to the tribal chiefs. A number of armed outposts were later set up, not with the intention of administering the tribals, but only to keep a watch over them. There was no regular policing. The British had a great deal of difficulty in dealing with the tribals residing in the hilly areas of the North-East and they deliberately kept certain areas as "excluded areas" from the rest of the country with two fold objectives:

1. to keep the area as a buffer region between India and the neighbouring countries; and

2. to protect them from exploitation by the plainsmen.

The influence of the missionaries in the late 19th and the early 20th century has given the traditional tribal culture a veneer of Western culture. The tribals, particularly the educated sections, have increasingly taken to the west dress, music and dancing. Moreover, the script of the tribal language is mostly English and a large section of the tribal population is Christian.

The Lushai Hills, now known as Mizoram, Naga Hills, Khasi, Jaintia and Garo Hills were partially administered, while NEFA, now known as Arunachal Pradesh was totally "excluded". NEFA was administered through a political officer on the basis of a single line administration. It was only in 1950 that the whole region was integrated into the State of Assam. After 1950 the tribal district of Assam were entitled to a differential administration in accordance with the provisions of the Article 244(2) read with the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. Autonomous district councils were set up to administer the tribal areas. Nagaland State was constituted in 1962. The States of Manipur, Tripura, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh were constituted under the North-Eastern Areas Act in 1972, it was hoped that by giving a political identity to the different people in this region it would be easier to tackle the area's problems. However, even the grant of Statehood have not led to easing of tensions in the region. On the other, few tensions in the shape of inter-State border disputes, friction between the tribals and the non-tribals, intra-tribal rivalries, linguistic clashes etc. have emerged and have been creating serious problems of law and order. Because of the prolonged isolation of this area from the rest of the country, a feeling of separation has grown. Living in isolation they have got used to living freely with minimum or no government control. They trend to resent any kind of discipline from any authority. Local grievances and aspirations have further encouraged separatist tendencies. As neglected people the fear of being exploited by the migrants from the plains and absorbed into the neighbouring States haunts them. This fear has led to eruption of violence quite frequently. There are extremist elements among the tribals in these areas, who will not be satisfied with anything short of complete separation from India. These extremist elements, it is suspected, are receiving support from some foreign countries, who are interested for their own reasons in destabilising this strategic region. There are reports that the Mizo National Front has its headquarters in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh and has been receiving arms and ammunition and training facilities from various countries, particularly China. Some of the Naga rebel leaders are living in England; while quite a few are marking time in the neighbouring areas of north Burma for an opportunity to resume terrorist activities. Meiteis in Manipur are known to have developed pro-China links. Meiteis are Vaishnavs and have strong cultural links with Hinduism, but are now openly hostile to India, even to Hinduism. The younger elements are claiming that they are culturally and ethnically closer to China and not to India. The possibility of a linkup between the extremist elements in the North-East can no longer be ruled out. Investigation of some of the incidents by Mizo hostiles in Tripura and the bordering areas of Mizoram have pointed to such a link.

The fact that the tribals have suddenly emerged from an era of isolation and extreme economic backwardness of the region are two of the major causes of this hostility. The Central Government has been spending huge funds to force the pace of development in this region, but the benefits of the economic activity have unfortunately gone only to a small section of the people. The contractors, the bureaucrats and the politicians have cornered most of the development benefits. The problems of the tribals in the interior areas have not been solved and they continue to suffer, even though the per capita public expenditure in this region is the highest in India. The backlog of neglect of centuries has to be wiped out and this huge task cannot be accomplished in a short time. The spread of education has not been an unmixed blessing. There is a danger that the increase in the educated unemployed will outstrip the economic growth. The educated unemployed are easy prey to the propaganda of the extremist elements. The corruption and inefficiency of the administrative machinery has further created a sense of abhorrance of the outsiders in the minds of the people. The hated foreigner is known as Vai in Mizoram, Mayang in Manipur, Teppremyic in Nagaland and Dakhar in Meghalaya. There is no doubt that the solution to the problem of backwardness of the area lies in its development and not in isolation, but the hatred of the "foreigner" has become an emotional obsession with the people and any influx, even of engineers, administrators etc., who are so very necessary for the development work is looked upon with suspicion. The economic backwardness of the region, poor communications and remoteness of the area are responsible for this isolation which has become emotional as well as physical. Unfortunately, pursuit of unimaginative policies, instead of integrating them with the rest of the country have only succeeded in further alienating them. There is complete separation between the tribals and the non-tribals living in these areas. In there anxiety to integrate these areas with the rest of the country, the policy makers did not quite appreciate the historical background and the tribal social structure, before deciding to introduce the central law and system of administration in this region. The demand of separation has taken the shape of insurgency in Nagaland and Mizoram. The situation in Manipur is also causing anxiety. It is very sensitive region from the international point of view. The Super Powers and major powers like China have a direct interest in this region. It is easy to exploit the anti-Indian sentiments in this region. India is vulnerable here and can be hit at a very low cost.

The fear of infiltration of foreigners has become a very major problem. Because of the tremendous pressure of population in Bangladesh a large number of people have been migrating to the nighbouring tribal areas for the last few years. The situation in Tripura, where the local tribal population have become a minority in their own land has created fears, which are now altogether baseless, in the minds of the tribals that unless something radical is done they will also be overwhelmed by the migrants. The pressure of population from the plain areas to the hills in this region itself has added another dimension to the problem.

The tribals have become aware of their rights and are not prepared to be mute spectators of the exploitation of their resources and their own exploitation by others. Literacy among some tribes, particularly in Mizoram is very high. As mentioned earlier the tremendous increase in the educated unemployed makes their areas a fertile ground for hostile propaganda. The local economy is still very backward and cannot bear the administrative superstructure, which is almost entirely financed by the funds provided by the Central Government. Widespread corruption in the administrative machinery, a problem we have dealt with separately later in this chapter, has eroded the credibility of the Administration. There is still no industry and agriculture is still by and large based on the practice of "jhooming", a system of shifting cultivation. Economic development of this region both in the field of industry and agriculture will have to take place in a big way.

They are a proud people and conscious of their own sense of identity. The tribal culture has its own social value system and nothing should be done to upset it. They do not suffer from a sense of personal insecurity because the tribe takes the responsibility for maintaining all its members. It may sound strange but even after many years a tribal, when he comes back to his own village, can walk into any house and expect to be given shelter and food, even if the householders are total strangers to him. They are not servile and the tribal society does not suffer from elitism. The driver of a Chief Minister can still sit in the drawing room on the same sofa with the Chief Minister and have tea with him. They are not greedy and acquisitive and have a very healthy attitude towards life. The figures of the tribal population are given below:

State/UT	Total population (in lakhs)	Scheduled Tribe population(in lakhs)	Percentage of tribal total population of the State
Assam	146.25	16.07	10.98
Manipur	10.73	3.34	31.13
Meghalaya	10.12	8.14	80.43
Nagaland	5.16	4.58	88.76
Tripura	15.56	4.51	28.98
Arunachal Pradesh	4.68	3.69	78.85
Mizoram	3.32	3.13	94.28

Source: INDIA, 1980.

The tribals used to consider themselves as free people during the British rule, but short-sighted policies allowed an unfortunate impression to grow, no doubt aided and abetted by mischievous propaganda, that they have been subjugated to after the exploitation and departure of the British. The policy makers in Delhi rightly decided that the solution of the border problem lay in bringing the area into the mainstream of the country's life by properly administering it, and extending to it the benefits of development economy, but unfortunately they did not quite appreciate the historical perspective and the tribal social structure and temper their effort to these vital factors. The tribal was not used to too much government control and it was a mistake to force our administrative system on them. The situation was further aggravated by the fact that the senior and middle level bureaucrats and the police officers who were sent to these areas were total misfits. These being remote and inaccessible areas there was a natural reluctance on the part of good officers to be posted to these areas with the result that the bulk of the officers sent to these areas were rejects and misfits. They were the people who were primarily responsible for the image of the "ugly Indian". We have separately discussed the problems of personnel and given some suggestions.

In Meghalaya, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh the tribal village is for all practical purposes an autonomous unit and the authority of the village Council has been recognised and maintained. The Council performs the duties of the police. Inter-tribal rivalries, spread of education, and political pressures have, to some extent eroded the credibility of the village Councils, but they still wield considerable influence. The tribal system is still the most suitable system in the area of policing and for satisfying the tribals' social needs. No effort should be made to interfere with this system on the plea that the modern system of policing as in the rest of the country is necessary. In the interior tribal areas the customary tribals institutions should be allowed and encouraged to continue to administer the area. Police interference should be minimum and should depend on the gravity of the offence. In the urbanised areas, which are connected by roads or railway a more formal police structure will require to be established, so that it can deal with the problems of crime and criminals more effectively. While laying broad principles for policing in this region, it would be convenient to divide the area into three divisions:-

1. border areas,

2. urbanised centres which are connected by roads or railways, and

3. interior tribal areas, where the communications are very difficult and life is still very insulated.

Police presence should be concentrated in the border areas and other important areas from the law and order point of view. In Assam and the plains areas of Tripura the modern pattern of policing as prevailing in the rest of the country can be extended. In the urbanised areas like Aizawl and Kohima and other areas which have been linked with railway or roads should have the infrastructure of modern policing to cope with the increasing number of crimes and criminals, but it should take seriously into account the tribal laws, customs and institutions. Thus policing in these areas will have to be a judicious mixture of the tribal system and the modern system. The interior tribal areas should be left to be policed entirely by the traditional tribal institutions. As regards policing of the border areas we have discussed the subject separately in the later part of this Chapter. The underlying principle for the North-East should be minimum policing; no interference in the tribal laws, customs and institutions; policing on the basis of the gravity of offence and the sensitivity of areas i.e. border areas and areas having mixed population of different tribes and non-tribals.

The tribal criminal justice system of prelitigation settlement is more responsive to social needs and no attempt should be made to change it under the garb of introducing the modern police system. Our criminal justice system in the rest of the country is becoming more and more ritualistic and the poor are finding it increasingly difficult to get any justice from it. The victim has hardly got any place in the scheme of things. Why should such an outdated criminal justice system be extended to the tribal areas, where their own system is much more effective, sophisticated, cheap and speedy? Under Article 13(3) (a) of the Constitution the definition of 'law' includes customs or usage having the force of law. The Regional Councils and the District Council constituted under para 2 of the Sixth Scheduled have been vested with powers to make laws under the provisions of the Sixth Schedule. Various rules have been framed for the administration of criminal justice. The provisions of the Cr. P.C. have not been automatically extended to these areas. The State Government has been empowered to extend any of the provisions of the Cr. P.C. to such areas or parts thereof as may be notified by the State Government. There is no separation between the executive and the judiciary and it is our considered opinion that this arrangement should continue, till socio-economic changes justify any modification. There is need for effectively and speedily dealing with the extremist elements.

The tribal Councils should continue to deal with the types of criminal offences they are dealing with at present. Whilst efforts should be made to remove some of the anomalies in the functioning of the tribal councils, in our opinion it is not necessary to codify the traditional laws. In Nagaland such efforts have only created confusion. We appreciate that the tribal criminal justice system will come under pressure with the increased tempo of the economic and political activities. Moreover, political interference in the impartial functioning of the tribal Councils is already affecting their credibility. No doubt certain modifications of the system will have to be introduced with the passage of time, but it needs to be emphasised that these tribal Councils are discharging a very valuable and important function and any reform made in the law and the police administration should try to strengthen this machinery and not weaken it. We have recommended in our report a system of Gram Nyaya layas. In the urbanised areas penetrated by railway and roads a similar system can be introduced. This model could also be followed in those areas where the traditional tribal and village Councils are finding it difficult to deal effectively with the increasing number of disputes between the tribals and non-tribals. The object is to provide cheap justice to the people with simple procedures on the principles of natural justice without any exploitation by the lawyers.

The problem of crime in the tribal areas is still not very serious. These areas are so far relatively free from crime, though with the increased contacts with the outside world the number of crimes and criminals is bound to go up. In dealing with crime and criminals in the area the main problem of the police is that it is spread thinly over a very large area. The police officers have to travel for days on foot before they can even reach a scene of crime. Even serious cases like murder are hardly investigated. Because of the distance involved the reporting of the cases is delayed and the subsequent response of the police is also poor. Even though there is no sustained investigation crime does not pose a serious problem. In the tribal areas it is not very difficult to identify the accused even without the help of the police. Moreover, once an accused is caught it does not require much pressure or persuasion to made his confess his crime. They are much more truthful and hence readily confess their guilt. The absence of lawyers of course, is one of the most important factors for this state of affairs. In places like Imphal and Kohima the number of lawyers has considerably increased and the situation is undergoing a change, but still in most of the tribal areas ordinary crime is, at present, not posing a very serious problem. In the interior places where it may not be necessary to open new police stations, it would suffice if a police party visits these areas periodically. The police in the headquarters should maintain close touch with the village Councils. Because of very difficult communications the information system is not very efficient and the feedback is relatively poor. This is incidentally one more reason in our opinion, for being very careful before introducing any changes in these areas.

Police Stations

We cannot fix any criteria for the establishment of a new police station. The factors such as population, areas, crime will have to be taken into consideration but the approach will have to be flexible. In areas where mixed population given rise to disputes between tribals and non-tribals and between different tribals, new police stations/ police posts should be opened to inculcate a sense of security. The condition of the buildings of the police stations in this region is uniformly very poor and this needs to be attended to urgently. Proper buildings are also necessary from the security point of view, because of the activities of hostile elements. There should be proper security arrangements for the protection of the police stations. The system of maintenance of records in the police stations should be simplified, taking into consideration the capacity of an average tribal police officer. Only the essential records with simple procedures should be maintained. Similarly, the investigation procedures should be simplified. There is no point in extending the already out of date Assam Police Manual to these areas. A new Police Manual taking into consideration the special requirements of the region should be drafted expeditiously so that the force can start functioning on the right lines.

Insurgency

Insurgency is the most serious problem in Mizoram, Nagaland, bordering areas of Tripura and Manipur. In recent years the problem has also spread to plains of Manipur. In Manipur the activities of extremists among the Meiteis have introduced a new dimension of urban terrorism to the problem. The security forces, including the army and the paramilitary forces, are present in large numbers to deal with the activities of the insurgents. The problem in the long run, however, has to be tackled by the police. The main difficulty in dealing with the activities of the insurgents is their identification. The methods sometimes followed, which may be effective temporarily, have led to avoidable bitterness. The practice of surrounding village lining up all the male members, then searching the village has caused a lot of harassment to innocent people. While it is true that no insurgency activity can flourish without the support of the people, it must also be appreciated that any action which further alienates the local population will only help the insurgents. Ultimately the problem will have to be tackled by isolating the extremist elements and winning over the local population. The lesson learnt both in Mizoram and Nagaland tell us that effective police action can be very successful. The capacity of the police to absorb casualties is relatively low but it can play important complementary role to the army and para-military forces in tackling the situation. The army should, however, as far as possible, not be passed for day-to-day policing. Such a role is not the function of the armed forces and by using them for such purposes we can only succeed in belittling these forces, our ultimate forces in the eye of the people. This is not fair to our gallant armed forces. The present situation in Manipur, particularly in the valley where the army has almost taken over fully the subordinate role of the police in dealing with the activities of the Meitei extremists, is largely due to the failure of the police itself. This is due in no small measure because of its own weaknesses, particularly because of the wrong personnel policies, and the political and bureaucratic interference in its day-to-day functioning. The police must be organised on proper lines and it must be allowed to play its legitimate role. In addition we recommend the following measures to deal more effectively with the problem of insurgency :-

1. The police should concentrate more on the border area and those areas which are known for providing shelter to the extremists. There is no point in spreading the police too thin over a large area. Best use should be made of the available resources.

2. The police should be given modern arms and ammunition, instead of the antiquated .303 rifles. The insurgents are armed with modern automatic weapons.

3. Identity cards should be issued to all male members of the population over 16 years of age. The identity cards should carry an attested photograph of the person concerned. These should be renewed at regular intervals.

4. There should be strict control on the sale and stock of explosive material. The places where explosives are stocked should be provided with adequate security.

5. There should be very stringent control on the possession of arms and ammunition. There are large number of unlicensed arms in the area and every effort should be made to capture them.

6. One important aspect which is not given the importance it deserves, is public relations. This is a big mistake. The insurgents depend for their survival on the support they receive from the local population. The extremist elements through false propaganda try to create a feeling of hostility against the security forces. The police and the security forces operating in the area should have a separate public relations department. It should be the responsibility of this department to counter any propaganda bringing the police and the security forces into disrepute by readily and truthfully giving to the media the correct facts of incidents and situation. Positive steps should be taken to win over the confidence of the people.

7. Murder of any government official or looting of any public property should be severely and promptly dealt with. Misplaced sympathy or any delay in taking firm action can do a lot of damage in lowering the morale of the public, police and the security forces.

Intelligence set up

The success or failure of operations against the insurgents will depend largely on how successfully the extremist elements can be identified. This in turn will depend on how promptly and correctly the intelligence agencies are able to collect information about them. At present this responsibility is being shared by many intelligence agencies. The Intelligence Bureau, the Army Intelligence, the Border Security Force, the RAW, the SSB, in addition to the local intelligence set up have all been operating in this region. It has been brought to our notice that due to lack of coordination, at times these agencies have been functioning at cross purpose, instead of working towards a common objective i.e. identification and capture of the hostile elements. Rivalries among junior functionaries of these agencies, have been hampering the operations against the insurgents. There are reports that at times even the sources of one agency are exposed and threatened by the other. We were informed that in one insurgency torn Union Territory the source of one of the agencies escorted by their intelligence officers was forcibly kidnapped along with the officers by the officers of another agency. This situation is exploited by the hostile elements. There have also been cases where clever sources have taken more than one agency for a ride. It is absolutely essential that the work of all these agencies and its members should be constituted at the level of the Lt. Governor in the Union Territories and at the level of Governor in the States. A coordination committee with the representatives of all the agencies as its members should be constituted by the Governor or Lt. Governor. This Committee should meet as frequently as possible and at least once a month to take stock of the current situation, compare notes and plan new strategy. All information should be conveyed directly to the Lt. Governor or the Governor for appropriate action or instructions instead of routing it through their own headquarters as is the practice at present. Any delay in passing an information renders it sometimes absolutely useless, because by the time the information filters down to the operational level, the extremists have already managed to slip away or move away from that area.

Personnel Policy

Wrong choice of personnel posted to these areas is one single most important cause of the administration into disgrace. The posts in the North-East are considered as punishment posts and officers with bad record, who have to be got rid of are usually sent there.

There officers, from the day they join their place of posting in the North-East, are disgruntled and take little or no interest in their work. Some of them have taken to heavy drinking and other bad habits unbecoming of an officer. How can such officers be expected to instill confidence in the mind of the people? Quite a few of them have no knowledge either of their area or of the people. The fact that more discretion has to be allowed to the officers at the operational level in these areas and because of the importance of the police problems it is imperative that only the best officers of the highest calibre are posted to this region. To attract the best available talent it is no use appealing to their patriotism alone. The posts will have to be made much more attractive so that suitable and talented officers with vision and enthusiasm volunteer for them. The present additional allowances and other facilities provided to them are most inadequate. These will have to be improved. Posting in these areas should be a plus point in an officer's career. In some recent cases the government has not cared to look after the officers on return from a successful tenure in the North-East. Some of them on return found themselves without any job for months together and had to cool their heels till they could be adjusted into some insignificant post. This has proved as a great deterrent to officers posted to these areas and has also denigrated the prestige of the posts in the North-East. Consequently it has become a problem to find suitable willing officers for these posts. Those posted to these areas make all types of excuses and pull every possible string to get out of these postings. Some of the posts remain unfilled for months and years because one after the other the officers posted manage to get their posting orders cancelled. A more imaginative personnel policy is the basis of a sound administrative system. Even in countries like the Soviet Union officers posted to Siberia and other difficult regions are paid much higher allowances and perks as compared to similar posts in the Moscow-Leningrad-Kiev region, which is the most developed area in USSR. We strongly recommend that the following steps should be taken to make these posts attractive:

1. Generous additional allowances should be sanctioned for all posts in the North-East. This should be at least 50% of the basic pay available to the officer in his own cadre.

2. One free passage for the officers and their families should be given once a year for travelling to their home State and back.

3. If in spite of general allowances/perks senior officers in the same grade show unwillingness to go, comparatively junior officers can be sent on rank promotion. To avoid any malpractices the refusal of senior officers must be in writing.

4. A scale of suitable allowances should be fixed for hostel subsidy up to a maximum of 2 children.

We further recommend that similarly the tribal officers from the region should be encouraged for posting outside the region. The present rules are such that tribal officers when posted outside the tribal area suffer loss in their emoluments and other facilities. They not only have to pay income tax when posted in the plain areas, but also loss some allowances which they are entitled to when posted in the tribal areas. This is an anomaly and a disincentive which should be removed. The tribal officers should, when posted outside the tribal areas, continue to enjoy the same emoluments and facilities as they are entitled to when posted to the tribal region.

Recruitment

In recent years there has been a big increase in the strength of the police, but the recruitment at various levels of the police force has been done in a very haphazard manner. This has not helped in improving the efficiency of the police. There are complaints of nepotism and corruption. Because of the small population the evil of nepotism is much more widespread in these areas. Rules should be framed for recruitment at all levels and there should be no departure from the norms laid down in the rules. To make it a homogenous force, as far as possible, persons from all tribes and sections in the area should be recruited. We have separately dealt with the subject of armed police later in this chapter.

Because of the rapid expansion little or no thought has been given to the promotional policy. While in some cases the promotions have been very rapid, in other cases after the first few years there is complete blockade, with the result that considerable frustration has been caused. Executive and political interference in the internal administration of the police department, which is on a much larger scale in these areas than in the rest of the country, has further affected its moral and efficiency. In Manipur the interference in the police administration has gone to such an extent that the Inspector General cannot promote even an Assistance Sub-Inspector without the consent of the State Government. The State Government is interfering in a big way in the postings and transfers of the officers at the lower and middle ranks. It is, therefore, not surprising that the morale of the police in Manipur is one of the lowest in the whole of the country. The job of policing recently had to be handed over to the army and this has its own chain of undesirable consequences as discussed earlier. Things have come to such a pas that even in Imphal the army had to be called in to deal with the law and order situation.

Lack of supervision at various levels is another cause for inefficiency and indiscipline in the police force of this region. Poor means of communications no doubt make touring of the interior areas somewhat difficult but it should be possible for officers to do much more touring than they have been doing with the available means of communication. At present helicopters are being used exclusively for the VIPs and by the army. There should be closer cooperation between the police administration and the army and the air force, so that full use is made of the available helicopters which frequently go empty. The police should be allowed to share this facility without adversely affecting the needs of the army. The present instructions restricting the use of the empty seats only to the army officers should be revised to include the police officers as well.

Training

Another important cause of the police failures is poor training of its personnel. The training facilities are most inadequate. In most of the States and the Union Territories after the initial training, which is mostly done outside the region, hardly any other training is given. Recently, the North-East Council has started a police training school at Barapani near Shilling. In our view it would be desirable to increase the training facilities at Barapani and it should be possible for this centre to cater to the needs of all the Union Territories and the States in this region except Assam, which can have its own training institution. In addition, all the State and the Union Territories should have their own training institutions to run pre-promotional and refresher courses. Anti-insurgency measures should form an important part of the training syllabus.

Armed Police

In addition to the local armed police, the army and the paramilitary forces are deployed in large numbers in these areas. The para-military forces, though under the operational control of the local police chiefs are not under their disciplinary control, with the result that they have no commitment to the task and are not result oriented. On the other hand the local police tries to pass the buck on to the para-military force and they, specially the Central Reserve Police Force, have become very unpopular in this region. Unless these forces can be motivated to show initiative and drive in dealing with the hostile elements it would not be possible to deal with the insurgents and other complicated problems of law and order. The Border Security Force, the Central Reserve Police Force and the Assam Rifles have tremendous potential. There was a time when the Assam Rifles were the backbone of the law and order machinery in this area. This momentum due to lack of coordination and commitment has been lost over the years. Most of the para-military battalions, it is complained only prepare for the visits of their own senior officers, who live hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles away and come to visit their battalions once a year and that too during fair weather. They have absolutely no interest in the performance and the results achieved by these battalions. Most of the para-military forces outposts have literally become static outposts; they are not running patrols or collecting intelligence to capture the insurgents, arms and ammunition. The local police chief, in our opinion, must have operational and disciplinary control over these forces. There should be close coordination between them, the local police, the army and the intelligence agencies.

To ensure that local pressures do not adversely affect the efficiency, moral and discipline of these forces, we recommend that Article 371A(i)(b) which enables the Governor of Nagaland to have special responsibility for the maintenance of law and order should be extended to any other State when the problem of insurgency raises its head. It should be possible for the Governor or the Lt. Gevernor to use this personal judgement in discharging this responsibility. He should no doubt, consult the Council of Ministers before making his decision, but the Council of Ministers should not be able to question his judgement.

At present quite a few battalions of para-military forces have been deployed in this region more or less on a permanent basis for the last many years. For obvious reasons this is not a very satisfactory arrangement. This task will have to be taken over in due course as the situation improves by the regional armed police. We recommend that instead of recruiting the armed battalions for each State or Union Territory a North-Eastern Rifles or Armed Police should be constituted for the entire region on the Central Reserve Police Force pattern. Recruitment to these armed battalions should be done from all the 7 States and Union Territories. This should be a composite force for the entire region they should be rotated under orders of the Governor of the North-East, or the Ministry of Home Affairs if it is later decided to have more than one Governor in the North-East, every three years. These battalions when posted in a State should be completely under the operational and disciplinary control of the local Inspector General. The present battalions of the Assam Rifles and the State Armed Police will have to be reorganised to convert them into the North-Eastern Rifles or the Armed Police, whichever nomenclature is preferred. Border areas and infiltration Policing the local stretch of borders along the international boundary is a major problem in this region. There are reports that some of the neighbouring countries, not very friendly to us, are supporting the extremists. The explosion of population in Bangladesh is spilling over into the neighbouring States of Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya and Mizoram. In Tripura the tribals have become a minority in their own land. This fear is haunting the Assamese and people of other States in the region. Mischievous elements, with direct or indirect support of some foreign powers are exploiting this fear to create conditions of destabilisation by fanning separatist demands.

At present the borders are being policed by the Border Security Force, the Army and the Assam Rifles. In the interest of more effective policing and better coordination, we recommend that the entire border should be policed by the Border Security Force. The army will, of course, have to continue its supportive role. The distance between the existing border outposts is far too long and needs to be reduced to improve their effectiveness. Many more border outposts will have to be set up within reasonable distance of each other depending on the terrain and other factors, such as road links etc. The difficult terrain makes it very difficult to check the movement of the insurgents. The border police has to play an important role in fighting insurgency. All the forces deployed at the border should be trained in the anti-insurgency measures. Policing in the North-East cannot be done in water tight compartments. We would emphasise once again the need for very close coordination between all the agencies operating in the area. In the task of dealing with the infiltrators coordination between the Border Security Force, the police and the civil administration assumes special importance. The problem of infiltration has to be dealt with firmly and with all the resources at our command. The problem of Chakma infiltrators from Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh into Mizoram needs to be dealt with immediately before it gets out of hand. This problem is further complicated by the fact that the Chakmas are fighting their own battle as "Shanti Bahini": against the Bangladesh Government.

Smuggling is another problem which has already assumed serious proportions in Manipur. There are complaints of connivance by the police and at the political level. A vested interest has developed among the police, the politician and the extremist elements. In some border areas the insurgents are reported to be organising smuggling to finance their underground activities. The border police has an important role to play in tackling the evil which is adversely affecting the morale and functioning of the police and the civil administration. But it will not be possible to tackle this problem without close cooperation between all concerned including the border police.

Anti-corruption

One of the main reasons for the widespread corruption is that the administration intra-structure is too weak to control effectively the huge expenditure being incurred on the developmental activities and in running the security operations. In the absence of social sanction against corrupt methods, which are helping the hostile elements, there is no other alternative except to strengthen the anti-corruption machinery. There is need for reorganising and strengthening both the State anti-corruption branches and the zonal office of the Central Bureau of Investigation. The anti-corruption branch should not be used for dumping the unwanted, corrupt and the inefficient police officers. Only experienced investigating officers with unimpeachable reputation of integrity should be posted to the anti-corruption branch. Special judges to try these cases expeditiously should be appointed within the State, instead of sending them for trial outside the State, as is the practice in some of the States. The audit machinery should also be strengthened. Accountant General's office is located at Guwahati. This arrangement has not been functioning very effectively. Without proper supervision their teams of officials which go on tours to these States and Union Territories from Guwahati are very perfunctory in work and there is hardly any follow up of the defects found during the audit. In the absence of the audit reports investigation of the anti-corruption cases are sometimes held up for years.

Jails

The conditions of the jails in the North-East are uniformaly deplorable. They are mostly housed in makeshift temporary buildings without proper security arrangements. There have been a number of attempts, quite a few of them successful, at jail breaking. All the hard work that goes into the arrest of an extremist comes to naught, when the insurgents are so crowded that all types of prisoners are put together in these temporary structures. The dangerous criminals are getting mixed up with the ordinary criminals. The security arrangements need to be tightened. Some of the jails are being used to propagate the extremist philosophy and have become sources of recruitment for the insurgents. Proper jail buildings should be constructed without any further delay.

The problem of policing in the North-East is very complex. The police which is still a young force in this region should be organised on the right lines. It need not blindly imitate the police set up as it exists in the rest of the country. The social, cutlural, economic and political structure in which the police has to function is so very different in this region. While tackling the many sensitive law and order problems, the administration should not interfere unduly with the traditional tribal customs, laws and institutions. The tribal sense of identity should not be threatened under the garb of introducing a modern system of policing. On the other hand efforts should be made to strengthen some of the tribal institutions like : Gaon Burras: and village Councils, so that they can play a more useful role even in the future.

At the same time such an infrastructure should be built in the police which would be able to cope with the problems of crime and criminals in the area as they increase more and more with the increased tempo of the economic and political activities. A comprehensive new police manual taking into consideration the special features of those areas should be drafted for the North-East. There is no point in extended an already out of date Police system here.



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Insight: 'Bretton Woods Two'?

A deep-seated global crisis is often a chance to redraw the map, reflecting shifts in the balance of power in different ways.

First, the crisis can confirm or nudge ahead trends which seem to be happening anyway - like the shift of power from Western to emerging Eastern players.

Second, it can put flesh on reforms already in the air - like plans to overhaul the international financial architecture to be discussed at this weekend's summit being hosted by President Bush in Washington.

China is the latest large economy to announce an economic stimulus plan

And third, there are the instinctive emergency reactions, supposedly temporary, but which can end up reshaping the global chessboard for years to come - the hurried nationalisation of some Western banks, for instance, or possibly Iceland's desperate bailout appeal to Russia - a Nato member putting financial survival ahead of any security provisos.

Of course to draw firm conclusions at this point, with the economic crisis far from over, is a risky venture. But some patterns merit closer examination.

First, is the balance of power in the world really shifting eastwards? It is a question that has been the subject of much debate recently on the discussion programme The Forum which I host for the BBC World Service.

My guests' general conclusion seems to be that, yes, Asia is on the rise, and the economic woes of the US and Europe have exposed the fragility of Western banking and the vulnerability of Western economies.

China and India have been less affected. And, even if demand for Chinese goods slows, its mammoth economy can still be a powerful engine of growth and a much needed source of liquidity.

Russian nerves

And yet, in a world so interdependent economically, can any part be immune? Especially given the symbiotic relationship between China and the United States - "Chimerica" as the Harvard historian Niall Ferguson calls it: not two financial systems, but one.

In these terms, surely if the American and other Western economies have succumbed to a chronic bout of sneezing, flu for China and rest of world is inescapable?

Moreover, perhaps we should not overstate the resilience of emerging economies.

Economists including JM Keynes negotiate the Bretton Woods Agreements

Look no further than Moscow, where the stock market panic and flight of capital abroad have been dramatic, and the fall in world oil prices has added to the economy's battering.

Despite Russia's legendary energy wealth, there is a new nervous uncertainty among local businessmen who - one suspects - know more than most about the way the domestic economy remains weakened by corruption and a labyrinthine smoke-and-mirrors way of doing business.

A second question worth pondering - just how likely is it that this weekend's top-level meeting really will generate reform of the world's leading financial institutions?

There is grand talk of a 'Bretton Woods Two', a vision for a new financial system pushed for some time by, among others, Britain's Gordon Brown. True, there is broad agreement on an agenda to seek ways to forestall a global recession, devise an early warning system and consider more international regulation.

But the leaders from 20 of the world's largest economies bring to the table a variety of conflicting interests, some motivated by practical need, others by ideological considerations, some looking for short term fixes - the move from private to state control of banks for instance - which others view as a desirable long term objective.

The United States has been famously reluctant to accept any authority but its own. Why should this be any different?

Top table reform

So is major reform feasible? Is the current economic crisis cataclysmic enough yet to be truly transformational?

The Europeans say they are united in a call for global financial governance and greater transparency.

But a rift has opened up between those like the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, who seek permanent global oversight of financial transactions, and wary Anglo-Saxon governments - including above all the US administration - which fear that too much control could hamper the workings of the free market.

And even if that hurdle is surmounted, could any US president, even one enjoying such goodwill as President-elect Barack Obama, win Congressional backing for a toothy regulatory body that would have real oversight of US institutions?

Whether the issue is international crimes against humanity or attempts to regulate carbon emissions, the United States has been famously reluctant to accept any authority but its own. Why should this be any different?

Meanwhile, the powerhouse nations of the so-called BRIC group - Brazil, Russia, India and China - and the petro-states of the Gulf (armed with the bargaining chip of sovereign wealth funds) have made it clear that what they want is recognition that the old elite clubs dominated by Western nations no longer reflect reality.

Russian President Medvedev blames American policies for the current crisis

Logic would suggest this means reform of the top tables not just at the IMF and the World Bank, but an enlargement of the G8 (Group of Eight most industrialised countries), and the United Nations Security Council.

Fine in theory. But in practice…

Reforming the G8 is probably easiest. Already the annual summit opens its doors to other players. And the 2009 host, Italy's Silvio Berlusconi, has made it known he intends to invite the G20 countries to his G8 Sardinia party.

But the weary process of reform at the UN has left many jaundiced. It is hard to imagine the mechanism which would require current global powers to agree to anything but a symbolic change.

Likewise at the World Bank and the IMF, the hard bargaining will revolve not just around which new countries get seats on the board, but whether they will be allowed to upset the current balance of power when it comes to decision-making. Note that already there are voices warning that too many players will make any new arrangement dysfunctional.

There are other complications. Russia continues to agitate for any adjustment that will lessen US influence, whether in financial or European security matters.

No doubt President Medvedev will want to repeat his and Mr Putin's belief that the root cause of the current financial crisis lies in American unilateralism following the end of the Cold War and the 9/11 terrorist attacks - an ideological argument that may irritate rather than persuade and make consensus even harder to achieve.

Safety in numbers

And a third area of examination - what do the emergency reactions to the financial crisis so far tell us about the way the world may be heading?

Reactions seem to boil down to a choice of two - whether to conclude that in times of trouble safety lies in numbers and it is better to be part of a bigger bloc, or whether when the going gets hard, it is better to look after your own - the protectionist, nationalist instinct.

Certainly some people seem to be concluding that size is the best security against future risk.

In beleaguered Iceland, where six months ago opinion suggested a majority were against EU membership, those in favour of throwing their lot in with the EU has crept above 50%.

A similar trend in Scandinavia is leading the governments in Denmark and possibly Sweden to wonder if they should think again about offering a referendum on joining the Euro.

And in global terms, perhaps the biggest worry of all must be what will a financial downturn mean for the world's have-nots?

And in Scotland, too, recent polls have suggested support for the Scottish Nationalist Party's vision of independence has lost ground. Going it alone, it seems, no longer looks so attractive in the wake of a financial crisis.

But at the same time, EU cohesiveness has taken a knocking. Despite early declarations of EU economic solidarity, it didn't take long for Ireland to break ranks and offer a unilateral guarantee to depositors to forestall a run on its banks, or for Germany to hint it would take similar action.

And disorderly EU bickering ahead of the Washington summit has rather belied claims of European unity.

And in global terms, perhaps the biggest worry of all must be what will a financial downturn mean for the world's have-nots?

Fears for poor

For all the high hopes of turning this crisis to advantage, to push through reforms that otherwise would never have been contemplated, there is a danger it could pivot in the opposite direction. And if this crisis ushers in greater protectionism, it could mean an end to an era of generosity and less concern for the welfare of others.

For the last decade it has been the very poor who have dominated the agenda of the World Bank and the IMF. Not any more. In the last two months, it has been Iceland, Hungary, Ukraine and Pakistan knocking at the IMF door.

Already the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, has sounded the alarm that his ambitious UN Millennium goals to slash poverty, illiteracy and disease run the risk of being neglected. This could 'threaten to undermine all our achievements' he said recently.

Just this week the World Food Programme warned it was having to cut food aid to impoverished Zimbabweans due to a lack of international donations. A harbinger of things to come, perhaps.

And there is a broader implication - that it may become increasingly difficult to persuade nations to sign up for large-scale interventions to help the desperate and the victimised. If a global recession cannot be avoided, the United Nations' much vaunted "responsibility to protect", only recently enacted, may end up already becoming an outdated aspiration.

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Hendrix's drummer Mitchell dies

The band was one of the most influential of the 1960s

Mitch Mitchell, the British drummer in the seminal 1960s band the Jimi Hendrix Experience, has been found dead in his US hotel room, authorities say.

The 61-year-old was discovered in the Benson Hotel in Portland, Oregon, in the early hours of Wednesday.

A medical examiner told Associated Press news agency the death appeared to be from natural causes but that there would be an autopsy.

Hendrix died in 1970 and the band's bassist Noel Redding died in 2003.

Mitchell, from Ealing in west London, had been touring with the Experience Hendrix Tour.

'Rock 'n' roll hero'

Janie Hendrix, chief executive of the tour and step-sister of Jimi Hendrix, paid tribute to Mitchell.

"He was a wonderful man, a brilliant musician and a true friend," she said.

Mitchell drummed for Hendrix at his legendary Woodstock performance

He performed on Hendrix classics such as Are You Experienced? Electric Ladyland and Axis: Bold As Love.

The top session drummer also played with the likes of Eric Clapton, John Lennon, Keith Richards and Muddy Waters.

A musical pioneer, he is credited with helping to develop a "fusion" drumming style that combined rock with jazz.

He joined the Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1966 and backed the rocker for his legendary performance at Woodstock three years later.

Bob Merlis, a spokesman for the tour, said his death was "devastating".

He had seen Mitchell perform two weeks ago in Los Angeles and the drummer appeared healthy and upbeat, he said.

Blues-rock guitarist Kenny Wayne Shepherd, who is part of the tour, said Mitchell was to drums what Hendrix was to guitar.

"Today many of us have lost a dear friend, and the world has lost a rock 'n' roll hero," he said.

£280,000 for burnt Hendrix guitar

The first guitar torched on stage by Jimi Hendrix has been sold for £280,000 a London auction of rock memorabilia.

The Fender Stratocaster, burnt at the end of a show in north London in 1967, was bought by collector Daniel Boucher from Boston, Massachusetts.

"It was something I wanted to have," he told the BBC after the sale. "I decided I would go the distance to get it."

The instrument was only recovered from a garage last year and still bears the scorch marks of Hendrix's performance.

"It's one of a kind from one of a kind," said Mr Boucher, who described Hendrix as a "unique person" who "changed the game".

Fingerprints

The Fame Bureau's It's More Than Rock and Roll memorabilia auction also included the Beatles' first management contract.

Signed in 1962 by the four members of the group and their manager Brian Epstein, the four-page document fetched £240,000.

The musicians put their signatures to the agreement in January 1962

Other items sold on Thursday include a notebook of lyrics and poetry that once belonged to Doors singer Jim Morrison, which went for £58,000.

A guitar once owned by Elvis Presley fetched £26,000, though a concealed gun permit featuring what are claimed to be his only remaining fingerprints failed to meet its reserve price.

Neither did the audio archive of legendary music producer Joe Meek, a set of almost 2,000 master tapes that had been expected to fetch up to £300,000.

"The auction has the largest array of star lots we've seen for 15 years," said Ted Owen, The Fame Bureau's managing director.

Page last updated at 02:36 GMT, Thursday, 13 November 2008

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Addressing Conflicts in India's North East

National Seminar on
"Addressing Conflicts in India's North East"
June 25-27, 2001 – New Delhi

The seminar was held with the objectives of exploring new perspectives on the multiplicity of conflicts in India's Northeast, and to assess the efficacy of conventional wisdom and past policies that have been applied to the resolution of various problems in the region. It brought together serious students of the subject who wrote on hitherto unexplored themes and provide fresh insights to the known nuances of terrorist movements in the region, backed by hard documentary evidence. The participants were primarily proffessionals based in the North east while two other participants from other regions of India lent their expertise to the proceedings of the seminar.

The participating discussants included serving and retired government officials from concerned departments, academic professionals, students, non governmental organisation activists and journalists. Besides, representatives from the Armed Forces, public sector units such as the Oil and Natural Gas Commission and corporate sector such as Tata Tea also offered their perspectives on issues identified in the various presentations. The Resident Commissioners of North east States and representatives from the US and Canadian missions too attended the seminar.

Working Paper

The primary objective of this seminar is to explore new perspectives on the multiplicity of conflicts in India's Northeast, and to assess the efficacy of conventional wisdom and past policies that have been applied to the resolution of various problems in the region. The intent is to identify alternative and practicable options and actors that can facilitate local as well as generic processes and programmes of resolution. The seminar seeks to bring together serious students of the subject who would write on hitherto unexplored themes and provide fresh insights to the known nuances of terrorist movements in the region, backed by hard documentary evidence.

Contemporary insurgencies in India's Northeast seek their justification in a wide range of factors, including perceived injuries by a distant Centre, grievances based on apparent economic deprivation or the neglect of ethnic aspirations, and the destabilisation of existing demographic equations. Some of these insurgent movements have remained localised affairs, while others have established parallel structures of governance in some areas, extracting 'taxes' and administering 'justice'. Why have some of these movements succeeded in effectively replacing institutions of the state? Is it a 'withdrawal of the state' or 'appropriation by private interests'? What measures does are available to restore peace? Within this context, what are the concrete steps that the civil society can undertake to contain the violence and to remind the state of its obligations?

The presence of a multiplicity of militant groups in the field, with divergent and often conflicting aspirations, makes the issue of conflict resolution a seemingly never-ending task. As a result, peace initiatives with some of the groups often fail to restore order as other formations escalate violence.

The more successful of the insurgencies also serve as examples for other movements that are still in their infancy. Growing inter-group and trans-national linkages between various insurgent movements, have added a new and disturbing dimension to the conflict. Foreign assistance, in terms of finance, arms, training and safe havens, has made many of the terrorist groups mere instrumentalities in a proxy war waged against India by sponsoring states. Within this context developments such as the decimation of a particular group, or a negotiated settlement with another, are less likely to produce a durable peace. Experience suggests that, more often than not, truce with the insurgent groups has been tenuous and a great degree of sagacity is required to transform it into durable peace.

A complex web of collusion between terrorist groupings and over-ground entities, legitimate businesses and political parties and actors has also been established over the years, creating multiple obstacles and contributing to a high level of unpredictability in processes of conflict resolution.

By and large, the entire range of conflicts, and successes or failures in the war against terrorism, have now come to be measured by the numbers of casualties in various categories, orchestrated mass surrenders, numbers of incidents, and other indices linked to the unceasing bloodletting in the region. While these elements are inescapable, they cannot exhaust the complexity of variables that influence the ongoing violence, and the possibilities of resolution.

There have been repeated efforts, and some research and writings, to deepen the debate on the cycles of violence in the Northeast, and these have sought to focus on the possibilities of economic interventions, developmental programmes and social action to stem the tide. By and large, however, the discourse has followed a predictable pattern, imposing extraneous models and preconceptions, enormously distanced from the ground situation. On the other hand, there has been some literature produced from the region itself. This latter stream holds promise, but has tended to lack the rigour and objectivity that can help take the discourse forward into productive areas of documentation, thought and resolution.

The main objective of the seminar is to explore entirely new themes - or explore a radical perspective on existing themes. A chronological record of known events, arguments and perspectives that are already well established, and policy options are now part of the established discourse are to be avoided, or subjected to a critical scrutiny from a unique perspective. Some possible themes that may be treated are listed below, but participants would be welcome to identify their own subjects as well.

   1. Ethnicity & Identity: Is Autonomy a Solution, or Part of the Problem* – Increased autonomy for ethnically defined areas and groups has frequently been proposed as a solution to problems of insurgency, and this is a policy that has actually been implemented in several case. The experience is ambivalent, and, in each such 'solution' a multiplicity of other sub-groups discover new oppressions and new reasons for their own demands for the creation of further autonomous sub-divisions. The spiral of violence, consequently, remains intact, even as administrative practices and conditions within existing autonomous areas fail to show any dramatic improvements. It is now time to make an objective reassessment of specific experiments in autonomy, and of the ideological and political soundness of this 'solution' within the context of past experiences.

   2. Exploring Political and Criminal Terror in India's Northeast (or in specific States in the region)* – Almost all insurgent or terrorist groups engage in criminal activities that lie outside the scope of the 'revolutionary' actions that their political objectives mandate. Increasingly, as the size of these groups and the scale of their organisation and activities grows, they are involved in a range of criminal, illegal or quasi-legal activities that have no connection with their ideological objectives. The most obvious example is the 'kidnap industry' that flourishes in Tripura, but all insurgent groups in the region engage in a wide range of such activities. The documentation and analysis of the dynamics of the underground economy of terrorism is a critical precondition for effective policies for the restoration of peace and developmental activities.

   3. The Crisis of Command: The Collapse of Institutions in Terror:* The breakdown of normal administrative structures, as well as of the range of non-governmental, civil society and socio-economic institutions under the onslaught of terrorism is a characteristic feature of all theatres of conflict in the country. The restoration of the institutions of civil governance, consequently, is a major challenge. Conventionally, this has been attempted only on a limited scale in conditions of widespread disorder, and the general orientation has been to wait for the restoration of order through police or military action before the mechanisms of civil society and governance are revived. This is an error that contributes to the persistence of political violence, and methods, agents and programmes that can help restore the civil administration and socio-economic institutions need urgent attention.

   4. Multi-Force Operations in Counter-terrorism:* Most theatres of low intensity conflict in India witness the induction and operation of more than one force in counter-insurgency operations. A variety of models – including the 'Unified Command' – have been applied, with no more than limited success. Effective and efficient structures of cooperative command can create enormous force multipliers in these circumstances, even as inter-Force friction can undermine and defeat the common purpose of counter-insurgency Operations. There is a need to assess the efficacy of existing Multi-Force Command systems and explore alternatives.

   5. Negotiating with Terror: Settlements and Principled Settlements* – The state is, today, entering into a wide range of negotiations with terrorist and insurgent groups, and many of these lie outside the scope of Constitutional governance and of the rule of law. What is the impact of the ethic of expedience and the opportunistic settlements that are reached with individual terrorist groups on the larger conflict, and on the potential for terrorism by other agents and in other areas? Do such negotiations 'reward' successful terrorist leaders, and does this create a demonstration effect among potential imitators? And if opportunistic settlements lie outside the scope of a moral and stable political order, what are the contours of principled negotiations and settlements with extremist groupings?

   6. Justice in Terror: The Performance of the Judiciary in Situations of Terror – The breakdown of justice system, and the near complete absence of prosecutions and convictions in terrorism related cases is a characteristic feature of all theatres of terrorism in India. What are the dynamics and magnitude of this breakdown? And how can the psychological link between (terrorist) crime and punishment be restored?

   7. Implications of changed demographic equations as shown by Census 2001* – A common thread that runs between many of the insurgencies in the Noretheast has been the 'foreigner' issue. Most arguments in this context have drawn sustenance from Census statistics in the past. What are the implications of the provisional figures of the Census 2001?

   8. Organisational cross-linkages within the region's insurgent and terrorist groups – The nexus between terrorist organisations, both within the region, and across international borders, results in an enormous advantage and the augmentation of the capabilities of individual groups. The documentation and analysis of the character and pattern of existing and potential linkages between ideologically similar or divergent groups needs attention and analysis.

   9. Collusive Overground and Underground Movements* – Paul Wilkinson has recently written of the "huge dangers posed where terrorists cleverly combine politics and the threat or use of force." There is enormous need to document, to the extent possible, the many examples of such a combination of legal, quasi-legal and terrorist campaigns, and to define the unique problems that confront a democratic state that tries to deal with co-ordinated movements of terrorist violence and 'legitimate' political protest within the ambit of the law.

  10. Revolutionaries or Warlords: Profiles of Terrorist Leadership* – The activities in which the leadership of various terrorist/insurgent groups participates, or that it sanctions, are often at great variance with the political and ideological postures that they seek to project. Indeed, recent patterns of alliance between ideologically incompatible militant organisations in the Northeast, and the execution of a number of terrorist operations that conflict with the basic premises of these movements, have raised crucial questions regarding the basic character of such leadership. Are these really revolutionaries, fighting for a coherent ideology and on behalf of a specified and identifiable segment of the population, or are they warlords, defending their 'turf' by all means necessary?



Press Release
June 25, 2001

New Delhi, June 25, 2001: Lt. Gen. (Retd.) S.K. Sinha, Governor of Assam, commenting on the cease-fire extension with the Naga militants, said, "Initially I thought it was a mistake." He went on to add, that the NSCN (IM)'s threats to pull out of the cease fire in case it was not extended to other areas were "more brinkmanship, than anything else."

Gen. Sinha was speaking at a seminar on "Addressing Conflicts in India's Northeast" organised by the Institute for Conflict Management. The Institute is headed by Mr. K.P.S. Gill, former DGP, Punjab, and constitutes a major forum for research, data and analysis on terrorism and low intensity warfare in South Asia. The Seminar was convened at the India International Centre.

Presenting a paper at same forum, a senior journalist from Manipur, Pradip Phanjoubam, Editor of the Imphal Free Press, said, the reasons for the current violence in his State have more to do with the 'official arrogance', and the 'gap' that the arrogance has left between an official vision and the ground reality.

General Sinha also stated emphatically, "Assam is a mother-Sate" as opposed to the conventional notion of it being merely a one of the "Seven Sisters" of the Northeast; it was the core State and, "If there is insurgency in Assam, it affects the whole of the Northeast". He described the militants' projection that Assam was historically not a part of India and that it was only under British rule that it became so as as "a canard". The Governor opined that it was such distortions that contributed to the initial popularity of militant outfits.

Gen. Sinha observed that consistent years of neglect of Assam led to the twin phases of the student movement and the insurgency, which he likened to a "stepchild in a family feeling neglected for a period of time and wanting to break away".

Speaking on the ceasefire with the NSCN (IM), Mr. Phanjoubam observed further that "As everybody now knows, the issue is not cease-fire, but territory." While emphasising on the failure to understand the temperament of the Manipuirs, he reiterated that "a good section of the Central leadership still does not seem to have got the message as they still insist on acting tough, instead of being concerned that such an orientation can only harden the people's attitude."

In the context of the complexities regarding the cease-fire, he opined "Altering boundaries of States within India may be as easy as getting the ratification of a simple majority of the Parliament, but what we are witnessing here has nothing to do with what the statute book says, but what is in the hearts and soul of the people."

Speaking at the same forum, Lt. Gen (Retd.) S.K. Pillai, former Deputy Chief of Army Staff and DG Infantry, stated that when the state becomes "a willing on unwilling collusive partner with terrorist and secessionist groups, it begets a stable anarchy." It is this condition of "stable anarchy" that currently prevails in many areas of India's Northeast.

Gen. Pillai also noted that "Autonomy is all too often considered a panacea for ethnic conflict, particularly by a "soft state". Nothing different patterns of autonomy in the other countries, he observed that "autonomy is not necessarily a solution. It may be part of the problem. "The emphasised moreover, that if autonomy is viewed mainly in ethnic terms, this shifts are focus of attention from the "real issues of isolation and socio-economic producers". General Pillai also noted that grants of "autonomy" in the past have often hurried because of political pressures. A function of governance, he noted is to provide the intelligence flow and a holistic picture so that the political decision is not mistimed. The recent events in Manipur, he noted, were a case of the failure of this aspect of governance.

RD Pradhan, the then Home Secretary has given a remarkable account of how the Assam Accord was signed in a hurry because it had to be announced on 15 August 1985. Both the parties (AASU & GOI) knew that parts of the Accord were not implementable yet it was signed because the aim of the AASU was to get political power. An amusing footnote to this was that when Rajiv Gandhi did not approve of the phrasing of a draft clause, the Home Secretary's response was "Sir, I have worked enough in the UN to know that bad English always makes for good negotiations. So please leave the English alone."

Gen. Pillai also underlined the destabilising impact of migrations from neighbouring States and countries, and pointed out that ethnic demands are consequences of such demographic destabilisation. General Pillai also noted the need for instutionalized arrangement for the psychological integration of the Northeast with the national mainstream. The development of human and economic infrastructure, he reiterated, was essential for such future integration and the resolution of issues.

Quoting Yash Ghai, Gen. Pillai, concluded "Autonomy should be chosen not because of some notion of preserving sovereignty but in order to enable different groups to have together to define a common public space".

Noted columnist, author and filmmaker, Sanjoy Hazarika, drew attention to the crisis of migration in the region. He cautioned against the rising rhetoric on this issue, however, with the words, "Most of us are the children of migrants, or migrants ourselves…. The problem arises when we speak of boundaries and homelands. He noted that, since the formation of Bangladesh in 1971, more than six million Hindus had migrated out of that country and into India, according to Bangladeshi sources. At least the same number of Muslims will also have migrated into India. This has resulted in enormous demographic destabilization. "The issue of migration," he said, "is extremely sensitive, indeed explosive, in the Northeast… There is almost no problem in the region that, in its cosmic aspects, can be alienated from land and from the movement of populations. He identified the 'religious factor' as the crucial element in the assessment of the movement of populations in the Northeast. "The faultlines are not over the immigrants themsleves," he noted, "but over the dispossession of land…. This is the chorus across the Northeast: the fear of dispossession dominates the entire discourse. Mati (land) is identity for the people of the Northeast."

Mr. S.K. Agnihothri, Secretary, National Foundation for Communal Harmony, Ministry of Home Affairs, noted that the problems in the Northeast, and especially Assam, were based on a failure or "withering away" of the state. He said there was too much emphasis on issues such as work permits, "but work permits are essentially for a floating population of workers who do not constitute a threat to the region. It is migrants who acquire and are attached to the land, and who intermarry with the locals, who are the real problem."

Mr. K.P.S. Gill, President, Institute for Conflict Management, noted, "Decision making in Delhi has more often than not been wrong with regard to this region, and has led time and again to enormous problems there. These processes will have to change, and to take into consideration the ground realities and opinions of the people from the Northeast, if the problems of this troubled region are to be resolved."

Press Release
June 26, 2001

NEW DELHI, 26 June, 2001: Mr. H.N. Das, former Chief Secretary of Assam, spoke of rampant corruption of politicians, bureaucrats and other agencies manning the 'delivery system' for public goods, that had resulted in an artificial boom in Guwahati. He drew a graphic picture of more than 604 multi-storied buildings that had come up in Guwahati in the period 1995-2000, mainly as a result of money that had been siphoned out of the government's coffers, and largely under the aegis of the Surrendered ULFA (SULFA). These constructions involved an investment of over 1,200 crores. "Along the riverfront, you will see dozens of palatial bungalows. Most of them belong to the SULFA." He also noted that "there has been an enormous increase in investments and conspicuous consumption in Guwahati as a result of funds siphoned off from Government schemes." Mr. Das said, "The poor people get very little, sometimes nothing."

Mr. Das was speaking on the second day of the three-day Seminar on "Addressing Conflicts in India's Northeast" organized by Mr. K.P.S. Gill's Institute for Conflict Management.

Speaking at the same forum, Mr. Prakash Singh, who served as Director General of Police in Assam, said, "If it is said that the Government of India is the greatest financier of insurgency in the Northeast, it would not be off the mark." He added, "According to a study, if the total money invested in Nagaland on development had been given directly to the people, each Naga would have Rs. 25 lakh. Mere allocation of funds," he reiterated, " will not lead us anywhere. The law and order angle has to be factored in. Development can only follow after insurgency has been contained to some extent."

Mr. Das reaffirmed this perception, stating that "a lack of economic development is not the 'sole' reason, but just one among others, for fuelling insurgency in the Northeast …. It would be simplistic to believe that development by itself can end insurgency…"

Mr. Das also said, "Each of the insurgent outfits in the region was initially raised from among people who harboured feelings of neglect and 'colonial exploitation' or who strongly resented certain perceived wrongs to the particular community or sub-region they belonged to. The outfits then gained strength through clandestine support of politicians and overground frontal organizations and with funds procured mainly by extortion."

Speaking on the impact of the conflict in Assam on the women of the State, Anuradha Dutta, Professor of Political Science at the Guwahati University, stated that "Women are simply seen as the property of the enemy. Their lack of social and economic security compounds their vulnerability to violence." She emphasized the link between militarism and violence against women, and also elaborated on the various roles women play in insurgency related conflicts, including their role as victims of sexual and physical abuse; their role as peace negotiators; and their direct involvement in terrorism. Prof. Dutta said that "The growing number of incidence of rape has eroded the idea of the 'harmonious' and 'effective' family life…The psychological trauma associated with sexual violation and with the loss and disappearance of family members last long, even after peace returns."

 

Karan Sawhney, Director, International Centre for Peace Initiatives, speaking at the same forum said "I regret to say, our history has been a history of disrespect for people. Unless people are empowered to deal with their own problems, New Delhi will keep on recruiting battalions and sending them to deal with problems in all parts of the country".

According to an accomplished journalist and security analyst from Guwahati, Mr. Jaideep Saikia's calculations, the ULFA's budget for the current fiscal year is a whooping Rs 31 crore plus. This money would be raised through extortion from the tea industry, business houses, industrialists, politicians and government officials. His reading of the state's view of the ULFA is, that it is an ' armed criminal gang masquerading as motivated political activists', bereft of any ideology. Saikia attributes the relative successes, which the outfit had scored, to the Indian security forces being essentially stimulus responsive and not proactive in dealing with the ULFA's campaign of violence. The liberal assessment of ULFA would be that it poses itself as an anti thesis to the Indian state. It must also be understood that the ULFA, notwithstanding its present day character, has also come to be a result of the anger against New Delhi for what has been variously termed as exploitation, condescension and a step motherly treatment. Indeed, New Delhi has begun to take Assam more seriously as a result of the ULFA. Jaideep Saikia said that the ULFA today "possesses the character of a true warlord", and without mincing words he added, the ULFA "in its quest for swadhin Asom… acts out an agenda which is in complete variance with the weighty nuances which gave it birth."

Regarding the extension of the cease-fire with the NSCN (IM), Dr. Samir Das, Reader in Political Science at the University of Calcutta, questioned the lack of efforts towards revitalising the civil society in the past three years.

Speaking on the role of civil society in areas of conflict, Dr. Das observed that the state should play the role of moderate facilitator as the strategy of playing an all-important role has backfired. According to him, there is a tendency to look on the state as a saviour of all things, and this tempts the state to 'jump in everywhere'. He was of the opinion that not all conflicts are non-resolvable in the initial stages. The state, in his view, cannot gain by intervening prematurely in zero-sum conflicts. Dr. Das also underscored the importance of the distinction and polarisation between the internal and external Non-Governmental Organisations in the North East. He asserted that the latter cannot play a significant role and they can only act as facilitators with the former. In this context, he mentioned the case of the slain social activist Sanjoy Ghose in whose case the main accusation was that he belonged to an external NGO, AVARD-NE. He also wanted the reforms of local communities to emerge from within, as this would send the right signals.

On the final day of the seminar tomorrow, Mr. G. M. Srivastava, ADG (Training), Assam Police, will speak on "Negotiating with Terror: Settlements and Principled Settlements". Journalist Wasbir Hussain would make a presentation on Multi-force Operations in Counter-Terrorism: A view from the Assam Theatre". Prof. Imdad Hussain, Department of History, NEHU, Shillong, will speak on Army or Police: Ethnic Considerations in Conflict Management in Tribal North East India".

Press Release
June 27, 2001

NEW DELHI, 27 June, 2001: Mr. G. M. Srivastava, ADG (Training & Armed Police), Assam Police, said that with the strength of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) having decreased, there is considerable pressure on Paresh Baruah, 'commander-in-chief' of the outfit, to come to a negotiated settlement. He indicated that the main obstacle in a negotiated settlement is the personality of Paresh Baruah and his perceptions of himself. Mr. Srivastava added however, that " over a period of time, his peer group and those whose opinion matter have started exercising pressure on him to move towards a negotiated solution".

Mr. Srivastava was speaking at the penultimate session of the three-day Seminar on "Addressing Conflicts in India's Northeast" organised by Mr. K PS Gill's Institute for Conflict Management.

Mr. Srivastava emphasised the need to work for a principled settlement rather than any settlement that can address transient and immediate problems, but which leaves the bases of conflict intact or, indeed, even worsens the situation for the future. He pointed out that every negotiation is aimed at a settlement, but such a settlement is often secured at a cost that is not acceptable. Citing past examples, he opined that the Assam and Punjab Accords, although very impressive on paper, had certain clauses, which were unimplementable, and hence only deferred the problem.

In his view, the success or failure of negotiations in the ultimate analysis is absolutely dependent on the public posture of the government of the day and the political climate. He cited the case of the Rubaiya Saeed abduction in J&K, and the concessions to terrorists, as a result of which the bargaining power of the terrorists was seen to have increased dramatically. Furthermore, in the Kandahar case, the situation was so mismanaged that the government lost sight of the possibilities that could have produced a better solution.

Mr. Srivastava while emphasising the importance of the location of negotiations observed that Paresh Baruah does not want to come to India or even Bhutan, where the ULFA camps are reportedly located, for talks, and insists on negotiating through a mediator in another country. Commenting on the role of the media in conflict situations, Mr. Srivastava said that the press personnel must come out of the 'scoop' mind-set and exercise a fair measure of restraint.

Speaking at the same forum, Mr. Wasbir Hussain, a Guwahati-based Consulting Editor of the India Today Group, while providing a view from the Assam theatre on the positive and negative aspects of Multi-Force Operations in Counter Terrorism, said that the terms insurgency and counter-insurgency have been imprinted prominently in the popular lexicon of Assam today. Mr. Hussain was of the opinion that Assam, like the other six states in the region, is caught in a vicious cycle - lack of opportunity breeding insurgency, and insurgency impeding economic growth.

In his perspective, counter-insurgency operations launched in 1997 by the then AGP regime of Prafulla Kumar Mahanta, under the Unified Headquarters, viewed statistically, has achieved dramatic results. But, Mr. Hussain also observed that, the reality is a more complex case. Allowing the Army to head all counter-insurgency operations under a Unified Headquarters has led the separatists to steel their resolve to keep fighting the Indian state. This is primarily because, the Army is seen as the ultimate might of the government. Consequently, Mr. Hussain pointed out, this helps the rebels to garner support from sections in the normal civilian population and to carry out a propaganda offensive, citing instances of real or exaggerated excesses by the troops in course of their operations. Therefore, he opined that "whenever the Army has been deployed in Assam for internal security duties to take control of an emergent law and order situation, the government ends up fighting an equally blistering propaganda war."

Commenting on the disadvantages of utilising the Army to intervene in insurgency-hit areas, he said that the police, and not the Army, know the areas and the people where they are deployed. The Army, therefore, is considered as 'outsiders' out to dominate the people. He also added that the Army's style of operation, in sharp contrast to that of the police is to use maximum force and look at its adversaries as 'enemies'. As a consequence, it makes things highly complex, especially when they are fighting a band of elusive guerrillas who are otherwise men and women drawn from the very people in the area of intervention. The Army, in his view, is not meant for routine policing or counter-insurgency duties among civilian population and in his observations on the current situation, Mr.Hussain indicated that the Army has lost its psychological edge due to its prolonged use in internal security duties, because the people see the troops everywhere, in the towns and cities, guarding bridges on the national highways, patrolling rivers, checking vehicles and so on.

Another factor that is of immense importance in the context of the insurgency in Assam pointed out by Mr. Hussain was the fact that the 50,000 strong Assam Police force was demoralised as soon as the operational command of the Unified Headquarters was vested with the Army.

While suggesting that the Army should not be totally pulled out of counter-insurgency operations, he also added that a re-assessment of its role is called for. Under the present circumstances, the political weapon is also very much a force, through a proper application of which, insurgency or terrorism can be countered.

Imdad Hussain, Professor of History at the North Eastern Hill University, Shillong made a strong case against employing the Army in counter-insurgency operations in the Northeast. This has, among other things, "made the insurgents operationally more sophisticated" as exemplified by the types of weapons they are acquiring, and went to add that "there is always a tendency to upgrade insurgent army".

He contended that there was hardly any attempt to understand the specificity of the problem in the Northeast, and said it is "important to ensure that the means adopted to achieve the ends must relate to the factors that give rise to insurgency and take into consideration the social and political conditions underpinning tribal society."

He brought into sharp focus the various intra and inter-tribal schisms in the region, which had, on occasion, resulted in violence. He opined there is a need, much as there is the demand, to revive traditional institutions, which he believes would help in conflict management in the region.

In the concluding address, Mr. K P S Gill said, "What you need is an appropriate indigenous response. The response has to be developed by trial and error. Not by reading Colonel Templar or even K P S Gill, but by officers who work in the field, and learn from their own successes and failures. The kind of standardised responses that are being applied equally in Kashmir and the Northeast are at the heart of the problem. Field officers realize that the responses that are appropriate to Dibrugarh are not appropriate to Naogaon; responses that are appropriate to Ludhiana will not work in Amritsar. We are, at this point of history, a nation that is to the greatest degree afflicted by conflicts that are supported by enemy and neighbouring countries. Mr. Gill also pointed out that "In all human situations there is no cut and dried solution or methodology. You must address human problems with certain tentativeness. All three parties in the dispute over the extension of the cease-fire with the NSCN (IM) are, in some sense, correct." He said that as an outcome, there was police firing and arson in Imphal. In his view "That is partly the problem of the northeast. The issues are complex, and the problem is with the political and bureaucratic leadership of the region."

On the issues of development and corruption, Mr. Gill said, "Assam has had some very outstanding Chief Ministers and Chief Secretaries. Until the 1980s, there was not a single CM against whom there were allegations of corruption. There was no Chief Secretary against whom there have been such allegations. Yet, a relatively more honest administration has failed to secure the desired impact and the pace of development has been poor. It is the basic inefficiency of the system that is a problem. And the problem is not the flow of funds. It is with the system of utilization. If you give Rs. 10,000 crores for development of the NE, do you have the mechanism for its utilization and implementation of projects in place? The wrong models of development are being transferred from other parts of the country and applied without alteration to this immensely different reason."

Commenting on the importance of the local levels, Mr. Gill said, "It is because of the increasing neglect of the village in the North East that there are conflict situations." He also added that the developmental work initiated earlier has been suspended consequent to the violence and instability in the region. Mr. Gill in pointing out the role of planning said, "We are living from mirage to mirage. When the first Five-Year Plan was announced, there was a sense of hope. By the Fifth Plan, it was projected at that time, that the funding of the Plans would be generated by viable Public Sector projects. But the Public Sector has become the greatest drain on resources".

Indicating to a politics vs. development scenario in the Northeast, Mr. Gill said, "Good men are lost in the political maze. By giving transitory issues so much importance the long term issues are lost sight of." Furthermore, the money that reaches the Northeast is spent in a manner that leaves the state as it is, though a few private pockets are lined. On the responsibility for such failures he said, "Who is to blame? Everyone says the Centre has not done what is needed, but what have local governments done? What have the Chief Ministers and Ministers in successive regimes done? Not even the basic functions of government or the basic development activities are being carried out."


Courtesy:
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/icm/Seminars/natJun25.htm

Arthur Schopenhauer

Among 19^th century philosophers, Arthur Schopenhauer was among the first to contend that at its core, the universe is not a rational place. Inspired by Plato and Kant, both of whom regarded the world as being more amenable to reason, Schopenhauer developed their philosophies into an instinct-recognizing and ultimately ascetic outlook, emphasizing that in the face of a world filled with endless strife, we ought to minimize our natural desires to achieve a more tranquil frame of mind and a disposition towards universal beneficence. Often considered to be a thoroughgoing pessimist, Schopenhauer in fact advocated ways — via artistic, moral and ascetic forms of awareness — to overcome a frustration-filled and fundamentally painful human condition. Since his death in 1860, his philosophy has had a special attraction for those who wonder about life's meaning, along with those engaged in music, literature, and the visual arts.

• 1. Life: 1788-1860
• 2. The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason
• 3. Schopenhauer's Critique of Kant
• 4. The World as Will
• 5. Transcending the Human Conditions of Conflict
  • 5.1 Aesthetic Perception as a Mode of Transcendence
  • 5.2 Moral Awareness as a Mode of Transcendence
  • 5.3 Asceticism and the Denial of the "Will-to-Live"
• 6. Schopenhauer's Later Works
• 7. Critical Reflections
• 8. Schopenhauer's Influence
• Bibliography
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

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1. Life: 1788-1860

Exactly a month younger than the English Romantic poet, Lord Byron (1788-1824), who was born on January 22, 1788, Arthur Schopenhauer was born on February 22, 1788 in Danzig [Gdansk, Poland] — a city that had a long history in international trade as a member of the Hanseatic League. The Schopenhauer family was of Dutch heritage, and the philosopher's father, Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer (1747-1805), was a successful merchant who groomed his son to assume control of the family's business. A future in the international business trade was envisioned from the day Arthur was born, as reflected in how Schopenhauer's father carefully chose his son's first name on account of its identical spelling in German, French and English. In March 1793, when Schopenhauer was five years old, his family moved to Hamburg after the formerly free city of Danzig was annexed by Prussia.

Schopenhauer toured through Europe several times with his family as a youngster and young teenager, and lived in France (1797-99) and briefly in England (1803), where he learned how to speak the languages of those countries. As he later reported, his experiences in France were among the happiest of his life. The professional occupations of a merchant or banker, however, were not sufficiently consistent with Schopenhauer's scholarly disposition, and although for two years after his father's death (in Hamburg, April 20, 1805; possibly by suicide) Schopenhauer continued to respect the commercial aspirations his father had had for him, he finally left his Hamburg business apprenticeship at age 19 to prepare for university studies. In the meantime, his mother, Johanna Henriette Troisiener Schopenhauer (1766-1838), who was the daughter of a city senator, along with Schopenhauer's sister, Luise Adelaide [Adele] Lavinia Schopenhauer (1797-1849), left their Hamburg home at Neuer Wandrahm 92 and moved to Weimar after Heinrich Floris's death, where Johanna established a friendship with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). In Weimar, Goethe frequently visited Johanna's intellectual salon, and Johanna Schopenhauer became a well-known writer of the period, producing a voluminous assortment of essays, travelogues, novels (e.g., Gabriele [1819], Die Tante [1823], Sidonia [1827], Richard Wood [1837]), and biographies, such as her accounts of the German art critic, archaeologist, and close friend, Carl Ludwig Fernow (1763-1808), and of the Dutch painter, Jan van Eyck (c.1390-1441), published in 1810 and 1822 respectively.

In 1809, Schopenhauer began studies at the University of Göttingen, where he remained for two years, first studying medicine, and then, philosophy. In Göttingen, he absorbed the views of the skeptical philosopher, Gottlob Ernst Schulze (1761-1833), who introduced him to Plato and Kant. Schopenhauer next enrolled at the University of Berlin (1811-13), where his lecturers included Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) and Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834). His university studies in Göttingen and Berlin included courses in physics, psychology, astronomy, zoology, archaeology, physiology, history, literature and poetry. At age 25, and ready to write his doctoral dissertation, he moved in 1813 to Rudolstadt, a small town located a short distance southwest of Jena, where he lodged for the duration in an inn named Zum Ritter. Entitling his work The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, it formed the centerpiece of his later philosophy, articulating arguments he would use to criticize as charlatans, the prevailing German Idealistic philosophers of the time, namely, his former lecturer, J. G. Fichte, along with F. W. J. Schelling (1775-1854) and G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831). In that same year, Schopenhauer submitted his dissertation to the nearby University of Jena and was awarded a doctorate in philosophy in absentia.

From 1814-1818, Schopenhauer lived in Dresden, developing ideas from The Fourfold Root into his most famous book, The World as Will and Representation, which was completed in March of 1818 and published in December of that same year (with the date, 1819). In sympathy with Goethe's theory of color, he also wrote during this time, On Vision and Colors (1816). In Dresden, Schopenhauer became acquainted with the philosopher and freemason, Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (1781-1832), whose panentheistic views appear to have been influential. Panentheism (i.e., all-in-God), as opposed to pantheism (i.e., all-is-God), is the view that what we can comprehend and imagine to be the universe, is an aspect of God, but that the being of God is in excess of this projection, and is neither identical with, nor exhausted by, the universe we can imagine and comprehend. As we will see below, Schopenhauer sometimes characterized the thing-in-itself in a way reminiscent of panentheism.

After a year's vacation in Italy and with his book in hand, Schopenhauer applied for the opportunity to lecture at the University of Berlin, the institution at which he had formerly studied, and where two years earlier (1818), Hegel had arrived to assume Fichte's prestigious philosophical chair. His experiences upon returning to Berlin were less than professionally fruitful, however, for in March of 1820, Schopenhauer daringly scheduled his class at a time that was simultaneous with Hegel's popular lectures, and few students chose to hear Schopenhauer. Two years later, in 1822, he left his Berlin apartment near the University and traveled to Italy for a second time, returning to Munich a year later. He then lived in Mannheim and Dresden in 1824 before tracing his way back to Berlin in 1825. A second attempt to lecture at the University of Berlin was unsuccessful, and this disappointment was complicated by Schopenhauer's loss of a lawsuit that had begun several years earlier in August, 1821. The dispute issued from an angry shoving-match between Schopenhauer and a seamstress, Caroline Luise Marguet, which occurred in the rooming house where they had both been living.

Leaving Berlin in 1831 in light of a cholera epidemic that was entering Germany from Russia, Schopenhauer moved south, first briefly to Frankfurt-am-Main, and then to Mannheim. Shortly thereafter, in June of 1833, he settled permanently in Frankfurt, where he remained for the next twenty-seven years, residing in an apartment along the river Main's waterfront from 1843 to 1859 at Schöne Aussicht 17. His daily life, living alone with a succession of pet French poodles (named Atma and Butz), was defined by a deliberate routine: Schopenhauer would awake, wash, read and study during the morning hours, play his flute, lunch at the Englisher Hof — an inn at the city center near the Hauptwache — rest afterwards, read, take an afternoon walk, check the world events as reported in The London Times, sometimes attend concerts in the evenings, and frequently read inspirational texts such as the Upanishads before going to sleep.

During this later phase of his life, Schopenhauer wrote a short work in 1836, Über den Willen in der Natur (On the Will in Nature), that aimed to confirm and reiterate his metaphysical views in light of scientific evidence. Featured in this work are chapters on animal magnetism and magic, along with Sinology (Chinese studies). The former reveals Schopenhauer's interest in parapsychology and the latter is valuable for its references to the preeminent Neo-Confucian scholar, Zhu Xi (1130-1200) and to influential writers on Asian thought during the period such as Robert Spence Hardy (1803-1868) and Issac Jacob Schmidt (1779-1847).

Shortly thereafter, Schopenhauer completed an essay of which he was immensely proud, "On the Freedom of Human Will" ("Über die Freiheit des menschlichen Willens") in 1839, which was awarded first prize from the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters in Drontheim. A year later, he complemented this with a second essay, "On the Foundations of Morality" ("Über die Grundlage der Moral") which, although it was the sole submission, was not honored with an award by The Royal Danish Society of the Sciences in Copenhagen. In 1841, he published both essays together as Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics (Die Beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik). There soon followed an accompanying volume to The World as Will and Representation, which was published in 1844 along with the first volume in a combined second edition.

In 1851, Schopenhauer published a set of assorted philosophical reflections, entitled Parerga and Paralipomena, and within a couple of years, he began to receive the philosophical recognition for which he had long hoped. This recognition was stimulated by a favorable review of his philosophy published in 1853 without signature in the Westminster Review ("Iconoclasm in German Philosophy," by John Oxenford), which, acknowledging the centrality of the "Will" within Schopenhauer's outlook, drew insightful parallels between Schopenhauer's and Fichte's more well-known thought. A year after the third edition of The World as Will and Representation appeared in 1859, Schopenhauer died peacefully on September 21, 1860, in his apartment in Frankfurt at Schöne Aussicht 16. He was 72. After his death, Julius Frauenstädt (1813-1879) published new editions of most of Schopenhauer's works, with the first complete edition (six volumes) appearing in 1873. In the 20th century, the editorial work on Schopenhauer's manuscripts was carried forth in depth by Arthur Hübscher (1897-1985).

Schopenhauer donated his estate to help disabled Prussian soldiers and the families of those soldiers killed, who had participated in the suppression of the 1848 revolution. An assortment of photographs of Schopenhauer was taken during his final years, and although they reveal to us an old man, we should be appreciate that Schopenhauer completed The World as Will and Representation by the time he had reached the age of thirty.

2. The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason

Schopenhauer's PhD dissertation of 1813, The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, examined what many philosophers have recognized as an innate tendency to assume that in principle, the universe is a thoroughly understandable place. His dissertation, in effect, critically examined the disposition to assume that what is real is what is rational. A century earlier, G.W. Leibniz (1646-1716) famously defined the principle of this assumption — the principle of sufficient reason — in his Monadology (1714) as that which requires us to acknowledge that there is no fact or truth which lacks a sufficient reason why it should be so, and not otherwise.

The principle of sufficient reason might seem to be self-evident, but it yields surprising and curious results. For example, we can appeal to this principle to argue that there can be no two individuals exactly alike, because there would otherwise be no sufficient reason why one of the individuals was in one place, while the other individual was in another. Moreover, if the principle of sufficient reason's scope of applicability is assumed to be limitless, then there is a definite answer to the question, "Why is there something, rather than nothing?" Schopenhauer was keen to question the universal extension of the principle of sufficient reason, mainly owing to his advocacy of Kant's view that human rationality lacks the power to answer metaphysical questions, since our knowledge is limited by our specific and narrowly-circumscribed capacities for organizing our field of sensation.

Schopenhauer observed as an elementary condition, that to employ the principle of sufficient reason, we must think about something in particular that stands in need of explanation. This indicated to him that at the root of our epistemological situation, we must assume the presence of a subject that thinks about some object to be explained. From this, he concluded that the general root of the principle of sufficient reason is the distinction between subject and object that we must presuppose as a condition for the very enterprise of looking for explanations (The Fourfold Root, Section 16) and as a condition for knowledge in general.

Schopenhauer's claim that the subject-object distinction is the most general condition for human knowledge has its theoretical source in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, for Kant similarly grounded his own theory of knowledge upon a highly-abstracted, formalized, and universalized subject-object distinction. Kant characterized the subjective pole of the distinction as the contentless transcendental unity of self-consciousness and the objective pole as the contentless transcendental object that corresponds to the concept of an object in general (CPR, A 109). The general root of the principle of sufficient reason, as Schopenhauer characterizes it, is at the root of Kant's epistemology as well.

Following the demanding conceptions of knowledge typical of his time that had been inspired by René Descartes's (1596-1650) quest for certainty (see Descartes's "method of doubt" and his famous "cogito"), Schopenhauer maintained that if any explanation is to be genuine, then whatever is explained cannot be thought to have arisen by accident, but must be regarded as having been necessary. Schopenhauer's investigation into the principle of sufficient reason can thus be alternatively characterized as an inquiry into the nature of the various kinds of necessary connection that can arise between different kinds of objects.

Inspired by Aristotle's doctrine of the four basic kinds of explanatory reason or four [be]causes (Physics, Book II, Chapter 3), Schopenhauer defined four kinds of necessary connection that arise within the context of seeking explanations, and he correspondingly identified four independent kinds of objects in reference to which explanations can be given:

1. Material things
2. Abstract concepts
3. Mathematical and Geometrical constructions
4. Psychologically-Motivating forces

Corresponding in parallel to these four kinds of objects, Schopenhauer respectively linked four different kinds of reasoning. Within his terminology, he associated material things with reasoning in terms of cause and effect; abstract concepts with reasoning in terms of logic; mathematical and geometrical constructions with reasoning in reference to numbers and spaces; and motivating forces with reasoning in reference to intentions, or what he called moral reasoning. In sum, he identified the general root of the principle of sufficient reason as the subject-object distinction, and the fourfold root of the principle of sufficient reason as the specification of four different kinds of objects for which we can seek explanations, in association with the four independent intellectual paths along which such explanations can be given, depending upon the different kinds of objects involved.

One of Schopenhauer's most significant assertions is that the four different modes of explanation only run in parallel with each other, and cannot coherently be intermixed. If we begin by choosing a certain style of explanation, then we immediately choose the kinds of object to which we can refer. Conversely, if we begin by choosing a certain kind of object to explain, we are obliged to use the style of reasoning associated with that kind of object. It thus violates the rationality of explanation to confuse one kind of explanation with another kind of object. We cannot begin with a style of explanation that involves material objects and their associated cause-and-effect relationships, for example, and then argue to a conclusion that involves a different kind of object, such as an abstract concept. Likewise, we cannot begin with abstract conceptual definitions and accordingly employ logical reasoning for the purposes of concluding our argumentation with assertions about things that exist.

With this set of regulations about what counts as a legitimate way to conduct explanations, Schopenhauer ruled out the often-cited and (especially during his time) philosophically often-relied-upon cosmological and ontological arguments for God's existence, and along with them, all philosophies that ground themselves upon such arguments. He believed emphatically that the German Idealist outlooks of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel rested upon explanatory errors of this kind, and he regarded them — often bitingly — as fundamentally wrongheaded styles of thought, because he saw their philosophies as being specifically grounded upon versions of the ontological argument for God's existence. His condemnation of German Idealism was advanced in light of what he considered to be sound philosophical reasons, despite his frequent rhetoric and personal attacks on Fichte, Schelling and Hegel.

3. Schopenhauer's Critique of Kant

Schopenhauer can be called a Kantian, but he did not always agree with the details of Kant's arguments. As noted above, Schopenhauer's teacher in Göttingen was G. E. Schulze, who authored in 1792, a text entitled Aenesidemus, which contains a criticism of the Kantian philosopher, Karl Leonhard Reinhold (1757-1823). Reinhold was a defender of Kant, and was known for his Philosophy of the Elements (Elementarphilosophie) which was expressed, along with some earlier writings, in Reinhold's 1791 work, The Foundation of Philosophical Knowledge (Fundament des philosophischen Wissens).

Schulze's critique of Kant is essentially the following: it is incoherent to posit as a matter of philosophical knowledge — as Kant seems to have done — a mind-independent object that is beyond all human experience, and which serves as the primary cause of our sensory experience. Schulze argues that this position illegitimately uses the concept of causality to conclude as a matter of strong epistemological requirement, and not merely as a matter of rational speculation, that there is some object — namely, the thing-in-itself — outside of all possible human experience, which is nonetheless the cause of our sensations.

Schopenhauer concurs that hypothesizing a thing-in-itself as the cause of our sensations amounts to a constitutive application and projection of the concept of causality beyond its legitimate scope, for according to Kant himself, the concept of causality only supplies knowledge when it is applied within the field of possible experience, and not outside of it. Schopenhauer therefore denies that our sensations have an external cause in the sense that we can know there is some epistemologically inaccessible object — the thing-in-itself — that exists independently of our sensations and is the cause of them.

These internal problems with Kant's argument suggest to Schopenhauer that Kant's reference to the thing-in-itself as a mind-independent object (or as an object of any kind) is misleading. Instead, Schopenhauer maintains that if we are to refer to the thing-in-itself, then we must come to an awareness of it, not by invoking the relationship of causality — a relationship where the cause and the effect are logically understood to designate different objects or events (since self-causation is a contradiction in terms) — but through another means altogether. As we will see in the next section, and as we can see immediately in the title of his main work — The World as Will and Representation — Schopenhauer believes that the world has a double-aspect, namely, as "Will" (Wille) and as representation (Vorstellung).

Schopenhauer does not believe, then, that the Will causes our representations. His position is that Will and representations are one and the same reality, regarded from different perspectives. They stand in relationship to each other, in a way that compares to the relationship between a force and its manifestation (e.g., as exemplified in the relationship between electricity and a spark). This is opposed to saying that the thing-in-itself causes our sensations, as if we were referring to one domino striking another. Schopenhauer's view is that the relationship between the thing-in-itself and our sensations is more like that between two sides of a coin, neither of which causes the other, and both of which are of the same coin and coinage.

Among his other criticisms of Kant (see the appendix to the first volume of The World as Will and Representation, entitled, "Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy"), Schopenhauer maintains that Kant's twelve categories of the human understanding — the various categories through which we logically organize our field of sensations into comprehensible individual objects — are reducible to the single category of causality, and that this category, along with the forms of space and time, is sufficient to explain the basic format of all human experience, viz., individual objects dispersed throughout space and time, causally related to one another.

Schopenhauer further comprehends these three (and for him, interdependent) principles as expressions of a single principle, namely, the principle of sufficient reason, whose fourfold root he had examined in his doctoral dissertation. In The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer often refers to the principle of sufficient reason as the principle of individuation, thereby linking the idea of individuation with space and time, mainly, but also with rationality, necessity, systematicity and determinism. He uses the principle of sufficient reason and the principle of individuation as shorthand expressions for what Kant had more complexly referred to as space, time and the twelve categories of the understanding (viz., unity, plurality, totality, reality, negation, limitation, substance, causality, reciprocity, possibility, actuality [Dasein], and necessity).

4. The World as Will

It is a perennial philosophical reflection that if one looks deeply into oneself, one will discover not only one's own essence, but also the essence of the universe. For as one is a part of the universe like everything else, the basic energies of the universe flow through oneself, as they flow through everything else. So it is thought that one can come into contact with the nature of the universe, if one comes into contact with one's own nature.

Among the most frequently-identified principles that is introspectively brought forth — and one that was the standard for German Idealist philosophers such as Fichte, Schelling and Hegel who were philosophizing within the Cartesian tradition — is the principle of self-consciousness. With the belief that acts of self-consciousness exemplify a self-creative process akin to divine creation, and developing a logic that reflects the structure of self-consciousness, namely, the dialectical logic of position, opposition and reconciliation (sometimes described as the logic of thesis, antithesis and synthesis), the German Idealists maintained that dialectical logic mirrors the structure not only of human productions, both individual and social, but the structure of reality as a whole, conceived of as a thinking substance.

As much as he opposes the traditional German Idealists in their metaphysical elevation of self-consciousness (which he regarded as too intellectualistic), Schopenhauer stands within the spirit of this tradition, for he believes that the ultimate principle of the universe is likewise apprehensible through introspection, and that we can philosophically understand the world as various manifestations of this general principle. For Schopenhauer, however, this is not the principle of self-consciousness and rationally-infused will, but is rather what he calls simply "Will" — a mindless, aimless, non-rational urge at the foundation of our instinctual drives, and at the foundational being of everything. Schopenhauer's originality does not reside in his characterization of the world as Will, or as act — for we encounter this position in Fichte's philosophy — but in the conception of the Will as being devoid of rationality or intellect.

Having rejected the Kantian position that our sensations are caused by an unknowable object that exists independently of us, Schopenhauer notes importantly that our body — which is just one among the many objects in the world — is given to us in two different ways: we perceive our body as a physical object among other physical objects, subject to the natural laws that govern the movements of all physical objects, and we are aware of our body through our immediate awareness, as we each consciously inhabit our body, intentionally move it, and feel directly our pleasures, pains, and emotional states. We can objectively perceive our hand as an external object, as a surgeon might perceive it during a medical operation, and we can also be subjectively aware of our hand as something we inhabit, as something we willfully move, and of which we can feel its inner muscular workings.

From this observation, Schopenhauer asserts that our body is given in two entirely different ways, namely, as representation (i.e., objectively; externally) and as Will (i.e., subjectively; internally). One of his intriguing conclusions is that when we move our hand, this is not to be comprehended as a motivational act that first happens, and then causes the movement of our hand as an effect. He maintains that the movement of our hand is but a single act — again, like the two sides of a coin — that has a subjective feeling of willing as one of its aspects, and the movement of the hand as the other. More generally, he adds that the action of the body is nothing but the act of Will objectified, that is, translated into perception.

At this point in his argumentation, Schopenhauer has established only that among his many ideas, or representations, only one of them (viz., the [complex] representation of his body) has this special double-aspected quality. When he perceives the moon or a mountain, he does not under ordinary circumstances have any direct access to the metaphysical inside of such objects; they remain as representations that reveal to him only their objective side. Schopenhauer asks, though, how he might understand the world as an integrated whole, or how he might render his entire field of perception more comprehensible, for as things stand, he can directly experience the inside of one of his representations, but of no others. To answer this question, he takes a philosophical leap, and uses the double-knowledge of his own body as the key to the inner being of every other natural phenomenon. He consequently regards every object in the world as being metaphysically double-aspected, and as having an inside or inner aspect of its own, just as his consciousness is the inner aspect of his own body. For such reasons, he rejects Descartes's causal interactionism, where thinking substance is said to cause changes in an independent material substance and vice-versa.

This precipitates a position that characterizes the inner aspect of things, as far as we can describe it, as Will. Hence, Schopenhauer regards the world as a whole as having two sides: the world is Will and the world is representation. The world as Will ("for us", as he sometimes qualifies it) is the world as it is in itself, and the world as representation is the world of appearances, of our ideas, or of objects. An alternative title for Schopenhauer's main book, The World as Will and Representation, might well have been, The World as Reality and Appearance. Similarly, his book might have been entitled, The Inner and Outer Nature of the World.

An inspiration for Schopenhauer's view that ideas are like inert objects is George Berkeley (1685-1753), who describes ideas in this despiritualized way in his A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) [Section 25]. A primary inspiration for Schopenhauer's double-aspect view of the universe is Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), who developed a similarly-structured metaphysics, and who Schopenhauer had studied in his early years before writing his dissertation. A subsequent, but often highlighted inspiration is from the classical Upanishadic writings of India (c. 900-600 BCE) which also express the view that the universe is double-aspected, having objective and subjective dimensions that are referred to respectively as Brahman and Atman.

After completing his dissertation, Schopenhauer was exposed to Upanishadic thought in 1813 by the orientalist Friedrich Majer (1771-1818), who visited Johanna Schopenhauer's salon in Weimar. This appreciation for Upanishadic thought was augmented in Dresden during the writing of The World as Will and Representation by Karl Friedrich Christian Krause, Schopenhauer's 1815-1817 neighbor. Krause was not only a metaphysical panentheist (see biographic segment above); he was also an enthusiast of South Asian thought. Familiar with the Sanskrit language, he introduced Schopenhauer to publications on India in the Asiatisches Magazin, and these enhanced Schopenhauer's studies of the first European-language translation of the Upanishads: in 1804, a Persian version of the Upanishads (the Oupnekhat) was rendered into Latin by the French Orientalist, Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron (1731-1805) — a scholar who also introduced translations of Zoroastrian texts into Europe in 1771.

Despite its general precedents within the philosophical family of double-aspect theories, Schopenhauer's particular characterization of the world as Will, is nonetheless novel and daring. It is also frightening and pandemonic: he maintains that the world as it is in itself (again, sometimes adding "for us") is an endless striving and blind impulse with no end in view, devoid of knowledge, lawless, absolutely free, entirely self-determining and almighty. Within Schopenhauer's vision of the world as Will, there is no God to be comprehended, and the world is conceived of as being meaningless. When anthropomorphically considered, the world is represented as being in a condition of eternal frustration, as it endlessly strives for nothing in particular, and as it goes essentially nowhere. It is a world beyond any ascriptions of good and evil.

Schopenhauer's denial of meaning to the world differs radically from the views of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, all of whom fostered a distinct hope that everything is moving towards a harmonious and just end. Like these German Idealists, however, Schopenhauer also tries to explain how the world that we experience daily, is the result of the activity of the central principle of things. As the German Idealists tried to account for the great chain of being — the rocks, trees, animals, and human beings — as the increasingly complicated and detailed expressions of self-consciousness, Schopenhauer attempts to do the same by explaining the world as gradations of the Will's manifestation.

For Schopenhauer, the world that we experience is constituted by objectifications of the Will that correspond first, to the general root of the principle of sufficient reason, and second, to the more specific fourfold root of the principle of sufficient reason. This generates initially, a basic two-tiered outlook (viz., Will [= reality] vs. objects-in-general [= appearance]), that articulates into a three-tiered outlook (viz., Will [= reality] vs. universal, non-spatio-temporal objects vs. individual, spatio-temporal objects), by further distinguishing between universalistic and individualistic levels within the sphere of objects.

The general philosophical pattern of a single world-essence that initially manifests itself as a multiplicity of abstract essences, which, in turn, manifest themselves as a multiplicity of physical individuals is found throughout the world. For instance, it is characteristic of Neoplatonism (c. third century, C.E., as represented by Plotinus [204-270]), and it also characteristic of the Buddhist Three Body Doctrine [trikaya] of the Buddha's manifestation which is developed in the Yogacara school of Mahayana Buddhism as represented by Maitreya (270-350), Asanga (375-430) and Vasubandu (400-480).

According to Schopenhauer, corresponding to the level of the universal subject-object distinction, the Will is immediately objectified into a set of universal objects or Platonic Ideas. These constitute the timeless patterns for each of the individual things that we experience in space and time. There are different Platonic Ideas, and although this multiplicity of Ideas implies that some measure of individuation is present within this realm, each Idea nonetheless contains no plurality within itself and is said to be "one." The Platonic Ideas are in neither space nor time, and they therefore lack the qualities of individuation that would follow from the introduction of spatial and temporal qualifications. In these respects, the Platonic Ideas are independent of the specific fourfold root of the principle of sufficient reason, even though it would be misleading to say that there is no individuation whatsoever at this universal level, because there are many different Platonic Ideas, and these are individuated from one another. Schopenhauer refers to the Platonic Ideas as the direct objectifications of the Will, and as the immediate objectivity of the Will.

The Will's indirect objectifications appear when our minds continue to apply the principle of sufficient reason beyond its general root such as to introduce the forms of time, space and causality, not to mention logic, mathematics, geometry and moral reasoning. When the Will is objectified at this level of determination, we have emerge as a result, the world of everyday life, whose objects are, in effect, kaleidoscopically multiplied manifestations of the Platonic forms, endlessly dispersed through space and time.

Since the principle of sufficient reason is — given Schopenhauer's inspiration from Kant — the epistemological form of the human mind itself, the spatio-temporal world is the world of our own reflection. To that extent, as Schopenhauer says, life is like a dream. As a condition of our knowledge, Schopenhauer believes that the laws of nature, along with the sets of objects that we experience, we ourselves create in way that is not unlike the way the constitution of our tongues invokes the taste of sugar. As Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) states in "The Assayer" (1623), if ears tongues and noses were removed from the world, then odors tastes and sounds would be removed as well.

At this point, what Schopenhauer has developed philosophically is surely interesting, but we have not yet mentioned its more remarkable and memorable aspect. If we combine his claim that the world is Will with his Kantian view that we are responsible for the individuated world of appearances, we arrive at a novel outlook — an outlook that depends heavily upon Schopenhauer's characterization of the thing-in-itself as Will, understood to be an aimless, blind striving.

Before the human being comes onto the scene with its principle of sufficient reason (or principle of individuation) there are no individuals. It is the human being that, in its very effort to know anything, objectifies an appearance for itself that involves the fragmentation of the Will and its breakup into a comprehensible set of individuals. The result of this fragmentation, given the nature of the Will, is terrible: it is a world of constant struggle, where each individual thing strives against every other individual thing; the result is a permanent "war of all against all" akin to what Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) characterized as the state of nature.

Kant concludes in the Critique of Pure Reason that we create the laws of nature (CPR, A125). Adding to this, Schopenhauer concludes in The World as Will and Representation that we create the violent state of nature, for he maintains that the individuation that we impose upon things, is imposed upon a blind striving energy that, once it becomes individuated and objectified, turns against itself, consumes itself, and does violence to itself. His paradigm image is of the bulldog-ant of Australia, which when cut in half, struggles in a battle to the death between its head and tail. Our very quest for scientific and practical knowledge creates a world that feasts upon itself.

This marks the origin of Schopenhauer's renowned pessimism: he claims that as individuals, we are the unfortunate products of our own epistemological making, and that within the world of appearances that we structure, we are fated to fight with other individuals, and to want more than we can ever have. On Schopenhauer's view, the world of daily life is essentially violent and frustrating; it is a world that, as long as our consciousness remains at that level where the principle of sufficient reason applies in its fourfold root, will never resolve itself into a condition of greater tranquillity. As he explicitly states, daily life "is suffering" (WWR, Section 56) and to express this, he employs images of frustration taken from classical Greek mythology, such as those of Tantalus and the Danaids, along with the suffering of Ixion on the ever-spinning wheel of fire.

5. Transcending the Human Conditions of Conflict

5.1 Aesthetic Perception as a Mode of Transcendence

Schopenhauer's violence-filled vision of the daily world sends him on a quest for tranquillity, and he pursues this by retracing the path through which the Will objectifies itself. He discovers more peaceful states of mind by directing his everyday, practically-oriented consciousness towards more extraordinary, universal and less-individuated states of mind, since he believes that the violence that a person experiences, is proportional to the degree to which that person's consciousness is individuated and objectifying. His view is that with less individuation and objectification, there is less conflict, less pain and more peace.

One way to achieve a more tranquil state of consciousness, according to Schopenhauer, is through aesthetic perception. This is a special state of perceptual consciousness where we apprehend some spatio-temporal object and discern through this object, the Platonic Idea that corresponds to the type of object in question. In this form of perception, we lose ourselves in the object, forget about our individuality, and become the clear mirror of the object. For example, during the aesthetic perception of an individual apple tree, we would perceive shining through the tree, the archetype of all apple trees (i.e., the Ur-phenomenon, as Goethe would describe it) in an appreciation of every apple tree that was, is, or will be.

Since Schopenhauer assumes that the quality of the subject of experience must correspond to the quality of the object of experience, he infers that in the state of aesthetic perception, where the objects are universal, the subject of experience must likewise become universal (WWR, Section 33). Aesthetic perception thus raises a person into a pure will-less, painless, and timeless subject of knowledge (WWR, Section 34).

Few people supposedly have the capacity to remain in such an aesthetic state of mind for very long, and most are denied the transcendent tranquillity of aesthetic perception. For Schopenhauer, only the artistically-minded genius has the capacity to remain in the state of pure perception, and it is to these individuals that we must turn — as we appreciate their works of art — to obtain a more concentrated and knowledgeable glimpse of the Platonic Ideas. The artistic genius contemplates these Ideas, creates a work of art that portrays them in a manner more clear and accessible than is usual, and thereby communicates the universalistic vision to those who lack the idealizing power to see through, and to rise above, the ordinary world of spatio-temporal objects.

Schopenhauer states that the highest purpose of art is to communicate Platonic Ideas (WWR, Section 50). As constituting art, he has in mind the traditional five fine arts minus music, namely, architecture, sculpture, painting, and poetry. These four arts he comprehends in relation to the Platonic Ideas — those universal objects of aesthetic awareness that are located at the objective pole of the universal subject-object distinction that is general root of the principle of sufficient reason. Schopenhauer's account of the visual and literary arts corresponds to the world as representation in its immediate objectification, namely, the field of Platonic Ideas as opposed to the field of spatio-temporal objects.

As a counterpart to his interpretation of the visual and literary arts, Schopenhauer develops an account of music that coordinates it with the subjective pole of the universal subject-object distinction. Separate from the other traditional arts, Schopenhauer maintains that music is the most metaphysical art and is on a subjective, feeling-centered level with the Platonic Ideas themselves. Just as the Platonic Ideas contain the patterns for the types of objects in the daily world, music formally duplicates the basic structure of the world as a whole: the bass notes are analogous to inorganic nature, the harmonies are analogous to the animal world, and the melodies are analogous to the human world. The sounding of the bass note produces more subtle sonic structures in its overtones; similarly, inanimate nature produces animate life.

In short, Schopenhauer discerns in the structure of music, a series of analogies to the structure of the physical world that allow him to claim that music is a copy of the Will itself. His view might seem extravagant upon first hearing, but underlying it is the thought that if one is to discern the truth of the world, it might be advantageous to apprehend the world, not exclusively in scientific, mechanical and causal terms, but rather in aesthetic, analogical, expressive and metaphorical terms that require a sense of taste for their discernment. If the form of the world is best reflected in the form of music, then the most philosophical sensibility will be a musical sensibility. This partially explains the positive attraction of Schopenhauer's theory of music to thinkers such as Richard Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche, both of whom combined musical and philosophical interests in their work.

With respect to the theme of achieving more peaceful and transcendent states of mind, Schopenhauer believes that music achieves this by embodying the abstract forms of feelings, or feelings abstracted from their particular everyday circumstances. This allows us to perceive the quintessence of emotional life — "sadness itself," "joy itself," etc. — without the contingent contents that would typically cause suffering. By expressing emotion in this detached or disinterested way, music allows us to apprehend the nature of the world without the frustration involved in daily life, and hence, in a mode of aesthetic awareness that is akin to the tranquil philosophical contemplation of the world.

5.2 Moral Awareness as a Mode of Transcendence

As many medieval Christians once assumed, Schopenhauer believed that we should minimize our fleshly desires, since moral awareness arises through an attitude that transcends our bodily individuality. Indeed, he states explicitly that his views on morality are entirely in the spirit of Christianity, not to mention that of the doctrines and ethical precepts of the sacred books of India (WWR, Section 68). Among the precepts he respects are those prescribing that one treat others as kindly as one treats oneself, that one refrain from violence and take measures to reduce suffering in the world, that one avoid egoism and thoughts directed towards revenge, and that one cultivate a strong sense of compassion. Such precepts are not unique to Christianity; Schopenhauer believes that they constitute most religiously-grounded moral views. Far from being immoralistic, his moral theory is written in the same vein as those of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), which advocate principles that are in general accord with Christian precepts.

Schopenhauer's conception of moral awareness is consistent with his project of seeking more tranquil, transcendent states of mind. Within the moral realm specifically, this quest for transcendence leads him to maintain that once we recognize each human as being merely an instance and aspect of the single act of Will that is humanity itself, we will appreciate that the difference between the tormentor and the tormented is illusory, and that in fact, the very same eye of humanity looks out from each and every person. For Schopenhauer, according to the true nature of things, each person has all the sufferings of the world as his or her own, for the same inner human nature ultimately bears all of the pain and all of the guilt. Thus, with the consciousness of humanity in mind, a moral consciousness would realize that it has upon and within itself, the sins of the whole world (WWR, Sections 63 and 64).

So not only does the specific application of the principle of sufficient reason fragment the world into a set of individuals dispersed through space and time for the purposes of attaining scientific knowledge, this rationalistic principle generates the illusion that when one person does wrong to another, that these two people are essentially separate and private individuals. Just as the fragmentation of the world into individuals is necessary to apply the relationship of causality, where A causes B and where A and B are conceived to be two independent objects, this same fragmentation leads us to conceive of the relationships between people on a model where some person P acts upon person Q, where P and Q are conceived as two independent individuals. The conditions for scientific knowledge have a negative moral impact, because they lead us to regard each other as individuals separate and alien to one another.

By compassionately recognizing at a more universal level that the inner nature of another person is of the same substance as oneself, one arrives at a moral outlook. This compassionate way of apprehending another person is not merely understanding abstractly the proposition that "each person is a human being," or understanding abstractly (as would Kant) that, in principle, the same regulations of rationality operate equally in each of us and oblige us accordingly. It is to feel directly the concrete life of another person in a magical way; it is to enter into the life of humanity imaginatively, such as to coincide with all others as much as one possibly can. It is to imagine equally, and in full force, what it is like to be both a cruel tormentor and a tormented victim, and to locate both opposing experiences and characters within a single, universal consciousness that is the consciousness of humanity itself. With the development of moral consciousness, one expands one's consciousness towards the mixed-up, tension-ridden, bittersweet, tragicomic, multi-aspected and distinctively sublime consciousness of humanity itself.

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) characterized the sublime as a feeling of tranquillity tinged with terror, and Schopenhauer's moral consciousness fits this description. Just as music embodies the emotional tensions within the world in an abstracted and distanced manner, and thus affords a measure of tranquillity by presenting a softened, sonic image of the daily world of universal conflict, a measure of tranquillity also attends moral consciousness. When attaining the universal consciousness of humanity that transcends spatial and temporal determinations, the desires that derive their significance from one's personal condition as a spatio-temporal individual are seen for what they are, as being grounded upon the illusion of fragmentation, and they thereby lose much their compelling force. In this respect, moral consciousness becomes the "quieter" of the will, despite its first-person recognition of human torment. Works of art that portray this kind of sublime consciousness would include the Laocoön (c. 25 B.C.E.) and Hieronymous Bosch's painting, Christ Carrying the Cross (c. 1515).

Negatively considered, moral consciousness delivers us from the unquenchable thirst that is individuated human life, along with its incessant oscillation between pain and boredom. Positively considered, moral consciousness generates a measure of wisdom, as one's outlook becomes akin to a universal novel that contains the templates for all of the human stories which have been repeating themselves generation after generation — stories comic and tragic, pathetic and triumphant, and trivial and monumental. One becomes like the steadfast tree, whose generations of leaves fall away with each passing season, as does generation after generation of people (Homer, Iliad, Book VI).

In a similar connection, Schopenhauer maintains in his "Essay on the Freedom of the Will" (1839) that everything that happens, happens necessarily. Having accepted Kant's view that cause and effect relationships extend throughout the world of experience, he believes that every individual act is determined by prior causes or motives. This fatalistic realization is a source of comfort and tranquillity for Schopenhauer, for upon becoming aware that nothing can be done to alter the course of events, he finds that the struggle to change the world quickly loses its force (see also WWR, Section 56).

Schopenhauer denies the common conception that being free entails that, for any situation in which we acted, we could always have acted differently. He augments this denial, however, with the claim that each of us is free in a more generic sense. Noting that we have "an unshakeable certainty that we are the doers of our deeds" ("Essay on the Freedom of the Will", Conclusion), he maintains that our sense of responsibility reveals an innate character that is self-determining and independent of experience. Just as individual trees and individual flowers are the multifarious expressions of the Platonic Ideas of tree and flower, each and every one of our individual actions is the spatio-temporal manifestation of our respective innate or intelligible character.

A person's intelligible character is a timeless act of Will that the person essentially is, and it can be conceived of as the subjective aspect of the Platonic Idea that would objectively define the person's inner essence (WWR, Section 28), as a portrait artist might perceive it. This concept of the intelligible character is Kantian (Critique of Pure Reason, A539/B567), and in conjunction with Kant's correlated concept of an empirical character (i.e., the intelligible character as it is experientially expressed) Schopenhauer regards it as a means to resolve the problem of freedom and determinism, and to be one of the most profound ideas in Kant's philosophy.

From the standpoint of later philosophical influence, Schopenhauer's discussion of the intelligible character resonates with Friedrich Nietzsche's famous injunction to "become what one is" (Ecce Homo, "Why I am so Clever", Section 9). Schopenhauer believes that as we learn more about ourselves, we can manifest our intelligible character more effectively, and can thereby play our designated role "artistically and methodically, with firmness and grace." With self-knowledge, we can transform our lives into works of art, as Nietzsche prescribed.

Character development thus involves expanding the knowledge of our innate individuality, and a primary effect of this knowledge and self-realization is greater peace of mind (WWR, Section 55). Moreover, since our intelligible character is both subjective and universal, its status coordinates with that of music, the highest art. This association with music — as Nietzsche probably observed — reveals a systematic link between Schopenhauer's aesthetics and moral theory, and it can account for Schopenhauer's reference to the emergence of pleasing aesthetic and artistic, if not musical, qualities in connection with the expression of our acquired character.

5.3 Asceticism and the Denial of the "Will-to-Live"

According to Schopenhauer, aesthetic perception offers only a short-lived transcendence from the daily world. Neither is moral awareness, despite its comparative tranquillity in contrast to the daily world of violence, the ultimate state of mind. Schopenhauer believes that a person who experiences the truth of human nature from a moral perspective — who appreciates how spatial and temporal forms of knowledge generate a constant passing away, continual suffering, vain striving and inner tension — will be so repulsed by the human condition, that he or she will lose the desire to affirm the objectified human situation in any of its manifestations. The result is an attitude of the denial of our will-to-live, which Schopenhauer identifies with an ascetic attitude of renunciation, resignation, and willessness, but also with composure and tranquillity. In a manner reminiscent of traditional Buddhism, he recognizes that life is filled with unavoidable frustration, and acknowledges that the suffering caused by this frustration can itself be reduced by minimizing one's desires. Moral consciousness and virtue thus give way to the voluntary poverty and chastity of the ascetic. St. Francis of Assisi (WWR, Section 68) and Jesus (WWR, Section 70) emerge, accordingly, as Schopenhauer's prototypes for the most enlightened lifestyle, as do the ascetics from every religious tradition.

This emphasis upon the ascetic consciousness and its associated detachment and tranquillity introduces some paradox into Schopenhauer's outlook, for he admits that the denial of our will-to-live entails a terrible struggle with instinctual energies, as we avoid the temptations of bodily pleasures and resist the mere animal force to endure and flourish. Before we can enter the transcendent consciousness of heavenly tranquillity, we must pass through the fires of hell and experience a dark night of the soul, as our universal self fights against our individuated and physical self, as pure knowledge struggles against animalistic will, and as freedom struggles against nature.

One can superficially maintain that no contradiction is involved in the act of struggling (i.e., willing) to deny the will-to-live, because one is not saying that the Will is somehow destroying itself, but only saying that a more universal manifestation of the Will is overpowering a less universal manifestation, namely, the natural, individuated, physically-embodied aspect. But it remains that within this opposition, the Will as a whole is set against itself according to the very the model that Schopenhauer is trying to transcend, namely, the model wherein one manifestation of the Will fights against another manifestation, like the divided bulldog ant. This in itself is not a problem, but the location of the tormented and self-crucifying ascetic consciousness at the penultimate level of enlightenment is paradoxical, owing to its high degree of inner ferocity. Even though this ferocity occurs at a reflective and introspective level, we have before us a spiritualized life-and-death struggle within the ascetic consciousness.

This peculiarity notwithstanding, the ascetic's struggle is none other than a supreme struggle against human nature. It is a struggle against the close-to-unavoidable tendency to apply the principle of sufficient reason for the purpose of attaining practical knowledge — an application which has for Schopenhauer, the repulsive side-effect of creating the illusion of a world permeated with endless conflict. From a related angle, the ascetic's struggle is a struggle against the forces of violence and evil, which, owing to Schopenhauer's acceptance and interpretation of Kant's epistemology, locates these forces significantly within human nature itself. When the ascetic transcends human nature, the ascetic resolves the problem of evil: by removing the individuated and individuating human consciousness from the scene, one removes the entire spatio-temporal situation within which daily violence occurs.

In a way, then, the ascetic consciousness can be said symbolically to return Adam and Eve to Paradise, for it is the very quest for knowledge (i.e., the will to apply the principle of individuation to experience) that the ascetic overcomes. This amounts to a self-overcoming at the universal level, where not only physical desires are overcome, but where humanly-inherent epistemological dispositions are overcome as well.

6. Schopenhauer's Later Works

At the end of the first volume of The World as Will and Representation (1818), Schopenhauer intimates that the ascetic experiences a mystical state of consciousness whose character is inscrutable — and looks like nothing at all — from the standpoint of ordinary, day-to-day, individuated and objectifying consciousness. He adds, conversely, that from the standpoint of an ascetic, mystical consciousness where only knowledge remains and where "the will [to live] has vanished," that the physical world, with all of its suns and galaxies "is — nothing." He also states that this mystical consciousness has an ocean-like calmness, tranquillity, confidence and serenity (WWR, Section 71), adding that if one were to ask for a positive characterization of the mystical state, we could refer loosely to words and phrases such as "ecstasy," "rapture," "illumination" and "union with God." Schopenhauer recognizes a positive content to the ascetic's mystical experience, although he regards the experience as ineffable.

This advocacy of mystical experience presents us with a puzzle: if everything is Will without qualification, then it is unclear where to locate the will-less mystical state of mind. According to Schopenhauer's three-tiered philosophical schema, it must be located either at the level of the Will as it is in itself, or at the level of Platonic Ideas, or at the level of individual things in space and time. It cannot be the latter, because individuated consciousness is the everyday consciousness of desire, frustration and suffering. Neither can it be located at the level of the Will as it is in itself, because the Will is a blind striving, without knowledge, and without satisfaction.

The ascetic consciousness might be most plausibly located at the level of the universal subject-object distinction, akin to the music-filled consciousness, but Schopenhauer states that the mystical consciousness abolishes not only time and space, but also the fundamental forms of subject and object: "no will: no representation, no world" (WWR, Section 71). So in terms of its degree of generality, the mystical state of mind seems to be located at a level of universality comparable to that of the Will as thing-in-itself. Since he characterizes it as not being a manifestation of the Will, however, it appears to be keyed into another dimension altogether, in total disconnection from the Will as thing-in-itself. This is to say that if the thing-in-itself is exactly congruent with Will, then it is difficult to accept Schopenhauer's mystical characterizations of the ascetic consciousness, and at the same time identify a consistent place for it within Schopenhauer's three-tiered philosophical schema of reality.

Schopenhauer's position on whether the thing-in-itself is Will consequently presents some interpretive difficulties. In On the Will in Nature (1836/1854), he almost always speaks as if the two are identical. In the second volume of The World as Will and Representation (1844), however, he addresses the above complication, and qualifies his claim that the thing-in-itself is Will. He states in the 1844 work, that it is only "to us" that the thing-in-itself appears as Will and that it remains possible that the thing-in-itself has other modes of being that are incomprehensible in ordinary terms, but which might be accessible to mystical consciousness (WWR, II, Chapter XVIII, "On the Possibility of Knowing the Thing-in-Itself"). He concludes that mystical experience is only a relative nothingness, namely, when it is considered from the standpoint of the daily world, but that it is not an absolute nothingness, as would be the case if the thing-in-itself were Will in an unconditional sense, and not merely Will to us.

In light of this, Schopenhauer sometimes expresses the view that the thing-in-itself is multidimensional, and although the thing-in-itself is not wholly identical to the world as Will, it nonetheless includes as its manifestations, the world as Will and the world as representation. This lends a panentheistic structure to Schopenhauer's view (noted earlier in the views of K.C.F. Krause). From a scholarly standpoint, it implies that interpretations of Schopenhauer that portray him as a Kantian who believes that knowledge of the thing-in-itself is impossible, do not fit with what Schopenhauer himself believed. It also implies that interpretations which portray him as a traditional metaphysician who claims that the thing-in-itself is straightforwardly, wholly and unconditionally Will, also stand in need of qualification.

7. Critical Reflections

Schopenhauer's intermittently-encountered claim that the Will is thing-in-itself only to us, provides philosophical space for him to assert consistently that mystical experience provides a positive insight. It also relativizes to the human condition, Schopenhauer's famous position that the world is Will. This entails that his outlook on daily life as a cruel and violence-filled world — a world generated by the application of the principle of sufficient reason, is based on a human-conditioned intuition, namely, the direct, double-knowledge of one's body as both subject and object. So along these lines, Schopenhauer's pessimistic vision of the world can itself be seen to be grounded upon the subject-object distinction, i.e., the general root of the principle of sufficient reason. As mentioned above, we can see this fundamental reliance upon the subject-object distinction reflected in the very title of his book, The World as Will and Representation, which can be read as, in effect, The World as Subjectively and Objectively Apprehended.

This observation does not render (within the parameters of his outlook) Schopenhauer's ruthlessly competitive world-scenario typically any less avoidable, but it does lead one to understand Schopenhauer's pessimistic vision of the world-as-Will, as less of an outlook derived from an absolute standpoint that transcends human nature — although he frequently speaks in this absolutistic way — and as more of an outlook expressive of human nature in its effort to achieve philosophical understanding. Owing to its fundamental reliance upon the subject-object distinction, Schopenhauer's classical account of the daily world as the objectification of the Will, is understandable not only as a traditional metaphysical theory that purports to describe the unconditional truth. It can be understood alternatively as an expression of the human perspective on the world, which, as an embodied individual, we typically cannot avoid. This tempered approach does, however, leave us with the decisive question of why the world would appear to be so violent, if the universe's core is not thoroughly "Will," but is also something mysterious beyond this. For if Will is only one of an untold number of the universe's dimensions, there would be no reason to expect that the individuating effects of the principle of sufficient reason would generate a world that feasts on itself in the manner that Schopenhauer describes.

8. Schopenhauer's Influence

Schopenhauer's philosophy has been widely influential, partly because his outlook acknowledges traditional moral values without the need to postulate the existence of God. His view also allows for the possibility of absolute knowledge by means of mystical experience. Schopenhauer also implicitly challenges the hegemony of science and other literalistic modes of expression, substituting in their place, more musical and literary styles of understanding. His recognition — at least with respect to a perspective that we typically cannot avoid — that the universe appears to be a fundamentally irrational place, was also appealing to 20^th century thinkers who understood instinctual forces as irrational, and yet guiding, forces underlying human behavior.

Schopenhauer's influence has been strong among literary figures, which include poets, playwrights, essayists, novelists and historians such as Charles Baudelaire, Samuel Beckett, Thomas Bernhard, Jorge Luis Borges, Jacob Burckhardt, Joseph Conrad, André Gide, George Gissing, Franz Grillparzer, Thomas Hardy, Gerhardt Hauptmann, Friedrich Hebbel, Hugo von Hoffmansthal, Joris Karl Huysmans, Ernst Jünger, Karl Kraus, Stephane Mallarmé, Thomas Mann, Guy de Maupassant, Robert Musil, Edgar Allan Poe, Marcel Proust, Arno Schmidt, August Strindberg, Italo Svevo, Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, Frank Wedekind, W. B. Yeats, and Emile Zola. In general, these authors were inspired by Schopenhauer's sense of the world's absurdity, either regarded in a more nihilistic and gloomy manner, or regarded in a more lighthearted, absurdist and comic manner.

Among philosophers, one can cite Henri Bergson, Eduard von Hartmann, Suzanne Langer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Hans Vaihinger, who tended to focus on selected aspects of Schopenhauer's philosophy, such as his views on the meaning of life, his theory of the non-rational will, his theory of music, or his Kantianism.

Schopenhauer's theory of music, along with his emphasis upon artistic genius and the world-as-suffering, was also influential among composers such as Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvorák, Gustav Mahler, Hans Pfitzner, Sergei Prokofiev, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakoff, Arnold Schönberg, and Richard Wagner.

Schopenhauer's 19^th century historical profile is frequently obscured by the shadows of Kant, Hegel, Marx, Mill, Darwin and Nietzsche, but more than is usually recognized, in his rejection of rationalistic conceptions of the world as early as 1818, he perceived the shape of things to come. The hollow, nihilistic laughter expressed by the Dada movement at the turn of the century in the midst of WWI, reiterates feelings that Schopenhauer's philosophy had embodied almost a century earlier. Schopenhauer's ideas about the importance of instinctual urges at the core of daily life also reappeared in Freud's surrealism-inspiring psychoanalytic thought, and his conviction that human history is going nowhere, became keynotes within 20^th century French philosophy, after two World Wars put a damper on the 19^th century anticipations of continual progress that had captured the hearts of thinkers such as Hegel and Marx.

Bibliography

A. Works by Schopenhauer

• 1813, Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde (On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason)
• 1816, Über das Sehn und die Farben (On Vision and Colors)
• 1819 [1818], Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (The World as Will and Representation) [first edition, one volume]
• 1836, Über den Willen in der Natur (On the Will in Nature)
• 1839, "Über die Freiheit des menschlichen Willens" ("On Freedom of the Human Will")
• 1840, "Über die Grundlage der Moral" ("On the Basis of Morality")
• 1841 [1840], Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik (The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics) [joint publication of the 1839 and 1840 essays in book form]
• 1844, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (The World as Will and Representation) [second edition, two volumes]
• 1847, Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde (On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason) [second edition, revised]
• 1851, Parerga und Paralipomena
• 1859, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (The World as Will and Representation) [third edition, two volumes]

B. Works About Schopenhauer

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• Gardiner, P., 1967, Schopenhauer, Middlesex: Penguin Books
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• Hübscher, A., 1989, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer in its Intellectual Context: Thinker Against the Tide, trans. Joachim T. Baer and David E. Humphrey, Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press
• Jacquette, D. (ed.),1996, Schopenhauer, Philosophy and the Arts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Jacquette, D., 2005, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, Chesham, UK: Acumen
• Janaway, C., 1994, Schopenhauer, Oxford: Oxford University Press
• –––, 1989, Self and World in Schopenhauer's Philosophy, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• Janaway, C. (ed.), 1998, Willing and Nothingness: Schopenhauer as Nietzsche's Educator, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• –––, 1999, The Cambridge Companion to Schopenhauer, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Lauxtermann, P.F.H., 2000, Schopenhauer's Broken World View: Colours and Ethics Between Kant and Goethe, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers
• Magee, B., 1983, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• Neeley, S.G., 2004, Schopenhauer: A Consistent Reading, Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press
• Marcin, R.B., 2006, In Search of Schopenhauer's Cat: Arthur Schopenhauer's Quantum-mystical Theory of Justice, Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press
• Simmel, G., 1986 [1907], Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, trans. Helmut Loiskandl, Deena Weinstein, and Michael Weinstein, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press
• Tsanoff, R.A., 1911, Schopenhauer's Criticism of Kant's Theory of Experience, New York: Longmans, Green
• von der Luft, E. (ed.), 1988, Schopenhauer: New Essays in Honor of His 200th Birthday, Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press
• White, F.C., 1992, On Schopenhauer's Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, Leiden: E.J. Brill
• White, F.C. (ed.), 1997, Schopenhauer's Early Fourfold Root: Translation and Commentary, Aldershot: Avebury, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
• Young, J., 1987, Willing and Unwilling: A Study in the Philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhof
• –––, 2005, Schopenhauer, London & New York: Routledge

C. Biographies of Schopenhauer

• Safranski, R., 1989, Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy, trans. Ewald Osers, London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson
• Wallace, W., 1890, Life of Arthur Schopenhauer, London: Walter Scott
• Zimmern, H., 1876, Arthur Schopenhauer: His Life and Philosophy, London: Longmans Green & Co.

Other Internet Resources

• Schopenhauer Gesellschaft
• Schopenhauer Archives
• Schopenhauer Forschungsstelle (Johannes Gutenberg Universität-Mainz, Germany)
• Centro interdipartimentale di ricerca su Arthur Schopenhauer e la sua scuola (University of Salento, Italy)
• Arthur Schopenhauer Web (in Spanish)
• Schopenhauer Electronic Texts

Related Entries

aesthetics: German, in the 18th century | Fichte, Johann Gottlieb | Nietzsche, Friedrich | Spinoza, Baruch

To be or not to be...

 

Reasoning is the cognitive process of looking for reasons for beliefs, conclusions, actions or feelings.^[1] Humans have the ability to engage in reasoning about their own reasoning using introspection. Different forms of such reflection on reasoning occur in different fields. Although reasoning was once thought to be a uniquely human capability, other animals also engage in reasoning.

In philosophy, the study of reasoning typically focuses on what makes reasoning efficient or inefficient, appropriate or inappropriate, good or bad. Philosophers do this by either examining the form or structure of the reasoning within arguments, or by considering the broader methods used to reach particular goals of reasoning. Psychologists and cognitive scientists, in contrast, tend to study how people reason, which cognitive and neural processes are engaged, how cultural factors affect the inferences people draw. The properties of logics which may be used to reason are studied in mathematical logic. The field of automated reasoning studies how reasoning may be modelled computationally. Lawyers also study reasoning.

1 History of reasoning 1.1 Babylonian reasoning 1.2 Greek reasoning 1.3 Indian reasoning 1.4 Chinese reasoning 1.5 Islamic reasoning 2 Reasoning methods and argumentation 2.1 Deductive reasoning 2.2 Inductive reasoning 2.2.1 Abductive reasoning 2.2.2 Argument from analogy 2.3 Fallacious reasoning 2.3.1 Formal fallacies 2.3.2 Informal fallacies 3 Psychology 4 Cognitive science and artificial intelligence 5 Legal reasoning 6 Footnotes 7 References

History of reasoning

It is likely that humans have used reasoning to work out what they should believe or do for a very long time indeed. However, some researchers have tried to determine when, in the history of human development, humans moved from using myths to describe the world to attempting to reason about the world, and when humans first began to reason about their own reasoning.

Babylonian reasoning

In Mesopotamia, Esagil-kin-apli's medical Diagnostic Handbook written in the 11th century BC was based on a logical set of axioms and assumptions, including the modern view that through the examination and inspection of the symptoms of a patient, it is possible to determine the patient's disease, its aetiology and future development, and the chances of the patient's recovery.^[2]

During the 8th and 7th centuries BC, Babylonian astronomers began employing an internal logic within their predictive planetary systems, which was an important contribution to logic and the philosophy of science.^[3] Babylonian thought had a considerable influence on early Greek thought.^[4]

Greek reasoning

The works of Homer, written in the eighth century BC, contain mythic stories that use gods to explain the formation of the world. However, only two centuries later, late in the sixth century BC, Xenophanes of Colophon began to question the Homeric accounts of the creation of nature and the gods. He wrote:

• "Homer and Hesiod attribute all things to the gods that among men are shame and a disgrace" (frag. 11).
• "God is one, greatest among gods and among men, in no way like men in form and thought" (frag. 23).
• "If oxen and horses and lions had hands or could paint and make things with their hands like men, then they would paint the forms of gods and make their bodies each according to their own shapes, horses like horses, oxen like oxen" (frag. 15).

According to David Furley, "the basis of [Xenophanes'] criticism appears to have been that he saw an inconsistency between the concept of god as something different from man, and the stories told about the gods, which made them behave as men do."^[5] In the same period, other Greek thinkers began to develop theories about the nature of the world that suggest that they believed that there were regularities in nature and that humans could use reasoning to develop a consistent story about the nature of the world. Thales of Miletus, c. 624 BC � c. 546 BC, proposed that all is water. Anaximenes of Miletus, c. 585 BC � c. 525 BC, claimed that air is the source of everything.^[6]

Aristotle is, so far as we know, the first writer to give an extended, systematic treatment of the methods of human reasoning. He identified two major methods of reasoning, analysis and synthesis. In the first, we try to understand an object by looking at its component parts. In the second, we try to understand a class of objects by looking at the common properties of each object in that class.

Aristotle developed what is known as syllogistic logic, which makes it possible to analyse reasoning in a way that ignores the content of the argument and focuses on the form or structure of the argument.^[7] In the Prior Analytics, Aristotle begins by pointing out that:

"[If] no pleasure is a good, neither will any good be a pleasure."^[8]

He then argues that this argument is an example of a rule of reasoning of the following form:

Premise: "Aristotle is Greek" and "All Greeks are human"

Conclusion: "Aristotle is Human"

Aristotle points out that by understanding the reasoning involved in this type of argument, we can know that whatever the As and Bs are, we can reach the same conclusion about the relationship between them. This is a simple and straightforward argument, but it is a sign of an amazing leap in understanding and research into reason and was the beginning of the development of formal logic.

Indian reasoning

Main article: Indian logic

Two of the six Indian schools of thought deal with logic: Nyaya and Vaisheshika. The Nyaya Sutras of Aksapada Gautama constitute the core texts of the Nyaya school, one of the six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy. This realist school developed a rigid five-member schema of inference involving an initial premise, a reason, an example, an application and a conclusion. The idealist Buddhist philosophy became the chief opponent to the Naiyayikas. Nagarjuna, the founder of the Madhyamika "Middle Way" developed an analysis known as the "catuskoti" or tetralemma. This four-cornered argumentation systematically examined and rejected the affirmation of a proposition, its denial, the joint affirmation and denial, and finally, the rejection of its affirmation and denial. But it was with Dignaga and his successor Dharmakirti that Buddhist logic reached its height. Their analysis centered on the definition of necessary logical entailment, "vyapti", also known as invariable concomitance or pervasion. To this end a doctrine known as "apoha" or differentiation was developed. This involved what might be called inclusion and exclusion of defining properties. The difficulties involved in this enterprise, in part, stimulated the neo-scholastic school of Navya-Nyāya, which developed a formal analysis of inference in the 16th century.

Chinese reasoning

Main article: Logic in China

In China, a contemporary of Confucius, Mozi, "Master Mo", is credited with founding the Mohist school, whose canons dealt with issues relating to valid inference and the conditions of correct conclusions. In particular, one of the schools that grew out of Mohism, the Logicians, are credited by some scholars for their early investigation of formal logic. Unfortunately, due to the harsh rule of Legalism in the subsequent Qin Dynasty, this line of investigation disappeared in China until the introduction of Indian philosophy by Buddhists.

Islamic reasoning

Main article: Logic in Islamic philosophy

For a time after Muhammad's death, Islamic law placed importance on formulating standards of argument, which gave rise to a novel approach to logic in Kalam, but this approach was later influenced by ideas from Greek philosophy and Hellenistic philosophy with the rise of the Mu'tazili philosophers, who highly valued Aristotle's Organon. The works of Hellenistic-influenced Islamic philosophers were crucial in the reception of Aristotelian logic in medieval Europe, along with the commentaries on the Organon by Averroes. The works of al-Farabi, Avicenna, al-Ghazali and other Muslim logicians who often criticized and corrected Aristotelian logic and introduced their own forms of logic, also played a central role in the subsequent development of medieval European logic.

Islamic logic not only included the study of formal patterns of inference and their validity but also elements of the philosophy of language and elements of epistemology and metaphysics. Due to disputes with Arabic grammarians, Islamic philosophers were very interested in working out the relationship between logic and language, and they devoted much discussion to the question of the subject matter and aims of logic in relation to reasoning and speech. In the area of formal logical analysis, they elaborated upon the theory of terms, propositions and syllogisms. They considered the syllogism to be the form to which all rational argumentation could be reduced, and they regarded syllogistic theory as the focal point of logic. Even poetics was considered as a syllogistic art in some fashion by many major Islamic logicians.

Important developments made by Muslim logicians included the development of "Avicennian logic" as a replacement of Aristotelian logic. Avicenna's system of logic was responsible for the introduction of hypothetical syllogism,^[9] temporal modal logic,^[10][11] and inductive logic.^[12][13] Other important developments in Islamic philosophy include the development of a strict science of citation, the isnad or "backing", and the development of a scientific method of open inquiry to disprove claims, the ijtihad, which could be generally applied to many types of questions.

Reasoning methods and argumentation

One approach to the study of reasoning is to identify various forms of reasoning that may be used to support or justify conclusions. The main division between forms of reasoning that is made in philosophy is between deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning. Formal logic has been described as 'the science of deduction'.^[14] The study of inductive reasoning is generally carried out within the field known as informal logic or critical thinking.

Deductive reasoning

Main article: Deductive reasoning

Deductive arguments are intended to have reasoning that is valid. Reasoning in an argument is valid if the argument's conclusion must be true when the premises (the reasons given to support that conclusion) are true. One classic example of deductive reasoning is that found in syllogisms like the following:

Premise 1: All humans are mortal.

Premise 2: Socrates is a human.

Conclusion: Socrates is mortal.

The reasoning in this argument is valid, because there is no way in which the premises, 1 and 2, could be true and the conclusion, 3, be false.

Validity is a property of the reasoning in the argument, not a property of the premises in the argument or the argument as a whole. In fact, the truth or falsity of the premises and the conclusion is irrelevant to the validity of the reasoning in the argument. The following argument, with a false premise and a false conclusion, is also valid, (it has the form of reasoning known as modus ponens).

Premise 1: If green is a colour, then grass poisons cows.

Premise 2: Grass is green.

Conclusion: Grass poisons cows.

Again, if the premises in this argument were true, the reasoning is such that the conclusion would also have to be true.

In a deductive argument with valid reasoning the conclusion contains no more information than is contained in the premises. Therefore, deductive reasoning does not increase one's knowledge base, and so is said to be non-ampliative.

Within the field of formal logic, a variety of different forms of deductive reasoning have been developed. These involve abstract reasoning using symbols, logical operators and a set of rules that specify what processes may be followed to arrive at a conclusion. These forms of reasoning include Aristotelian logic, also known as syllogistic logic, propositional logic, predicate logic, and modal logic.

Inductive reasoning

Main article: Inductive reasoning

Inductive reasoning contrasts strongly with deductive reasoning. Even in the best, or strongest, cases of inductive reasoning, the truth of the premises does not guarantee the truth of the conclusion. Instead, the conclusion of an inductive argument follows with some degree of probability. Relatedly, the conclusion of an inductive argument contains more information than is already contained in the premises. Thus, this method of reasoning is ampliative.

A classical example of inductive reasoning comes from the empiricist David Hume:

Premise: The sun has risen in the east every morning up until now.

Conclusion: The sun will also rise in the east tomorrow.

[edit] Abductive reasoning

Main article: abductive reasoning

Abductive reasoning, or argument to the best explanation, often involves both inductive and deductive arguments. However, as the conclusion in an abductive argument does not follow with certainty from its premises it is best thought of as a form of inductive reasoning. What separates abduction from the other forms of reasoning is an attempt to favor one conclusion above others, by attempting to falsify alternative explanations or by demonstrating the likelihood of the favored conclusion, given a set of more or less disputable assumptions.

Argument from analogy

Argument from analogy is usually also a form of inductive reasoning. An argument from analogy has the following form:

A has characteristics x,y, and z

B has characteristics x and y

So, B has (or probably has) characteristic z

Reasoning by analogy goes from one particular thing, or category, to another particular thing, or category. As with other forms of inductive argument, even the best reasoning in an argument from analogy can only make the conclusion probable given the truth of the premises, not certain.

Analogical reasoning is very frequent in common sense, science, philosophy and the humanities, but sometimes it is accepted only as an auxiliary method. A refined approach is case-based reasoning. For more information on inferences by analogy, see Juthe, 2005.

Fallacious reasoning

Main article: Logical fallacy

Flawed reasoning in arguments is known as fallacious reasoning. Reasoning within arguments can be bad because it commits either a formal fallacy or an informal fallacy.

Formal fallacies

Main article: Formal fallacy

Formal fallacies occur when there is a problem with the form, or structure, of the argument. The word 'formal' refers to this link to the form of the argument. An argument that contains a formal fallacy will always be invalid. Consider, for example, the following argument:

1. If a drink is made with boiling water, it will be hot.
2. This drink was not made with boiling water.
3. This drink is not hot.

The reasoning in this argument is bad, because the antecedent (first part) of the conditional (the 'if..., then...' statement) can be false without the consequent (second half) of the conditional being true. In this example, the drink could have been made with boiling milk, or heated in the microwave, and so be hot in spite of the truth of statement 2. This particular formal fallacy is known as denying the antecedent.

Informal fallacies

An informal fallacy is an error in reasoning that occurs due to a problem with the content, rather than mere structure, of the argument. Reasoning that commits an informal fallacy often occurs in an argument that is invalid, that is, contains a formal fallacy. One example of such reasoning is a red herring argument.

An argument can be valid, that is, contain no formal reasoning fallacies, and yet still contain an informal fallacy. The clearest examples of this occur when an argument contains circular reasoning, also known as begging the question.

Psychology

Scientific research into reasoning is carried out within the fields of psychology and cognitive science. Psychological research into reasoning falls into two general areas of research. First, the biological functioning of the brain is studied by neurophysiologists and neuropsychologists. Research in this area includes research into the structure and function of normally functioning brains, and of damaged or otherwise unusual brains. Second, psychologists carry out research on reasoning behaviour. Such research may focus, for example, on how people perform on tests of reasoning, such as intelligence or I.Q. tests, or on how well people's reasoning matches ideals set by logic (see, for example, the Wason test).^[15] In addition to carrying out research into reasoning, some psychologists, for example, clinical psychologists and psychotherapists work to alter people's reasoning habits when they are unhelpful.

Cognitive science and artificial intelligence

Cognitive science sees reasoning by the analogy to a data processing, where relations between observed properties of reasoning are used in numerous models leading to evident logically correct conclusions in different circumstances.^{[citation needed]} The complexity and efficacy of reasoning is considered the critical indicator of cognitive intelligence.^{[citation needed]} Therefore it is the inevitable component of cognitive decision-making.

In artificial intelligence, philosophers and scientists study reasoning and machines, and consider such questions as whether a machine can properly be considered to reason or think, and, relatedly, what would count as a test for reasoning. (See, for example, the Turing test.)^[16]

Legal reasoning

Legal reasoning is used when reflecting on the nature of existing laws or when reaching decisions about the relationship between laws and particular court cases.

Thorne McCarty did pioneering early work in the mechanization of legal reasoning for taxation using Micro Planner.^[17] More recent work on the formalization and mechanization of legal reasoning can be found in the proceedings of the International Conferences on Artificial Intelligence and Law ( most recently at Stanford in June 2007

Informal logic

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Informal logic (or, occasionally, non-formal logic) is the study of arguments as presented in ordinary language, as contrasted with the presentations of arguments in an artificial, formal, or technical language (see formal logic). Informal logic emerged in North America in the early 1970s as an alternative approach to the teaching of introductory logic courses to undergraduate students. It quickly became affiliated with the Thinking Skills Movement^[1] and especially with critical thinking (see below). Later still it became affiliated with the interdisciplinary inquiry known as Argumentation theory.

The precise nature and definition of informal logic are matters of some dispute. Ralph H. Johnson and J. Anthony Blair define informal logic as "a branch of logic whose task is to develop non-formal standards, criteria, procedures for the analysis, interpretation, evaluation, criticism and construction of argumentation in everyday discourse."^[2] This definition reflects what had been implicit their practice and what others^[3][4][5] were doing in their informal logic texts.

1 Origins and theory 2 Relation to formal logic 3 Relation to critical thinking 4 Relation to argumentation theory

Origins and theory

To appreciate this switch in focus from formal to informal logic, one must set aside stock examples such as: "All men are mortal, Socrates is man, therefore Socrates is mortal." This is not the sort of matter people choose to argue about in their everyday lives; there is nothing to argue about, since the conclusion necessarily follows from the premises. (It is a paradigm of a certain kind of reasoning, called a syllogism). In the wider world, people argue about which party should form the government, how to deal with global warming, the morality of capital punishment, or the effects of television, subjects that do not lead to answers that have only a single "truth", or "falseness", as do statements within formal logic. In informal logic, argument is distinguished from implication and entailment, argument being construed as activity or discourse in which reasons are given to persuade rationally.

The following is an example of such an argument.

"

Senator Paul Martin was well known for extolling the virtues of his hometown of Windsor, Ontario (Canada). On this occasion, Senator Martin rose to defend Windsor against a slur contained in Arthur Hailey's novel about the auto industry, Wheels. Hailey wrote of "grimy Windsor" across the border from Detroit, "matching in ugliness the worst of its U.S. senior partner." According to press reports, Martin responded: "When I read this I was incensed ... Those of us who live there know that (Windsor) is not a grimy city. It is a city that has one of the best flower parks in Canada. It is a city of fine schools, hard working and tolerant people."

"

Martin is defending the claim that Windsor is not grimy by offering his reasons. But the conclusion has to be extricated from the text; and Martin makes no claim about the strength of his argument, which is typical. His argument makes use of assumptions that need to be unearthed―as is also typical of arguments as they occur in daily life. And there are problems of interpretation, i.e. what he meant by "grimy." This example is typical of the sorts of argument dealt with by informal logic and presents a contrast with the Socrates example. In (2000), Johnson and Blair modified their definition, and broadened the focus now to include the sorts of argument that occurs not just in everyday discourse but also disciplined inquiry―what Weinstein (1990) calls "stylized discourse." The following is Anselm's ontological argument―an attempt to persuade the receiver of the truth of the proposition that God exists.

"

We have the concept of a being than which no greater can be conceived. Such a being must exist, for if such a being fails to exist, then a greater being ― namely, a being than which no greater can be conceived, and which exists ― can be conceived. But this would be absurd: nothing can be greater than a being than which no greater can be conceived. So a being than which no greater can be conceived ― i.e., God ― exists.[6]

"

To understand this definition above, one must understand "informal" which takes its meaning in contrast to its counterpart "formal." (This point was not made for a very long time, hence the nature of informal logic remained opaque, even to those involved in it, for a period of time.) Here it is helpful to have recourse to Barth and Krabbe (1982:14f) where they distinguish three senses of the term "form." By "form¹," Barth and Krabbe mean the sense of the term which derives from the Platonic idea of form―the ultimate metaphysical unit. Barth and Krabbe claim that most traditional logic is formal in this sense. That is, syllogistic logic is a logic of terms where the terms could naturally be understood as place-holders for Platonic (or Aristotelian) forms. In this first sense of "form," almost all logic is informal (not-formal). Understanding informal logic this way would be much too broad to be useful.

By "form²," Barth and Krabbe mean the form of sentences and statements as these are understood in modern systems of logic. Here validity is the focus: if the premises are true, the conclusion must then also be true also. Now validity has to do with the logical form of the statement that makes up the argument. In this sense of "formal," most modern and contemporary logic is "formal." That is, such logics canonize the notion of logical form, and the notion of validity plays the central normative role. In this second sense of form, informal logic is not-formal, because it abandons the notion of logical form as the key to understanding the structure of arguments, and likewise retires validity as normative for the purposes of the evaluation of argument. It seems to many that validity is too stringent a requirement, that there are good arguments in which the conclusion is supported by the premises even though it does not follow necessarily from them (as validity requires). An argument in which the conclusion is thought to be "beyond reasonable doubt, given the premises" is sufficient in law to cause a person to be sentenced to death, even though it does not meet the standard of logical validity.

By "form³," Barth and Krabbe mean to refer to "procedures which are somehow regulated or regimented, which take place according to some set of rules." Barth and Krabbe say that "we do not defend formality³ of all kinds and under all circumstances." Rather "we defend the thesis that verbal dialectics must have a certain form (i.e., must proceed according to certain rules) in order that one can speak of the discussion as being won or lost" (19). In this third sense of "form", informal logic can be formal, for there is nothing in the informal logic enterprise that stands opposed to the idea that argumentative discourse should be subject to norms, i.e., subject to rules, criteria, standards or procedures. Informal logic does present standards for the evaluation of argument, procedures for detecting missing premises etc.

Some dissent from the view that informal logic is not a branch or subdiscipline of logic.^[7][8][9] Massey criticizes the study on the grounds that it has no theory underpinning it. Informal logic, he says, requires detailed classification schemes to organize it, whereas in other disciplines the underlying theory would provides this structure. He maintains that there is no method of establishing the invalidity of an argument aside from the formal method, and that the study of fallacies may be of more interest to other disciplines, like psychology, than to philosophy and logic.^[10]

Relation to formal logic

Logic is the normative study of reasoning (q.v.). Wherever there is reasoning, there is a logic that seeks to articulate the norms for that type of reasoning. Informal logic differs from formal logic not only in its methodology but also by its focal point. That is, the social, communicative practice of argumentation can and should be distinguished from implication (or entailment)―a relationship between propositions―which is the proper subject of formal deductive logic; and from inference―a mental activity typically thought of as the drawing of a conclusion from premises. Informal logic may thus be said to be a logic of argument/ation, as distinguished from implication/inference.^[11]

Relation to critical thinking

See also: Critical thinking

Since the 1980s, informal logic has been partnered, in the minds of many, with critical thinking and indeed some seem to equate the two. Still, it is clear that they are different, though related. Critical thinking is, in the first instance, a kind of activity, or mental practice, whereas informal logic is a kind of inquiry or theory. Critical thinking also designates an educational ideal that emerged with great force in the 80s in North America as part of an ongoing critique of education as regards the thinking skills not being taught. The precise definition of "critical thinking" is a subject of much dispute^[12] but there is agreement that in order to think critically one must be able to process arguments. That is where informal logic comes into play. Critical thinking, according to Johnson, is the evaluation of an intellectual product (an argument, an explanation, a theory) in terms of its strengths and weaknesses.^[13] While much of critical thinking will focus on arguments (because one has to grapple with reasons for and reasons against) and hence require skills of argumentation, critical thinking requires additional abilities not supplied by informal logic: the ability to obtain and assess information, to clarify meaning. Also many believe that critical thinking requires certain dispositions.^[14] Many succumb to the temptation to conflate critical thinking with problem solving. Johnson takes these issues to be part of the Network Problem^[15] and to require, for their proper settlement, a theory of reasoning.

Relation to argumentation theory

See also: Argumentation theory

"Argument" is not the same as "argumentation" but scholars do not agree on just how these terms should be used. In the approach taken here, argumentation refers to a social and cultural practice whose chief components are the process of arguing and the product―the argument―which may emerge from that process. But, Pragma-dialecticians, for example, use "argumentation" where many would use "argument".^[16] Argumentation theory (or the theory of argumentation) has come to be the term that designates the theoretical study of argumentation. This study is interdisciplinary in the sense that no one discipline will be able to provide a complete account understanding. A full appreciation of argumentation requires insights from logic (both formal and informal), rhetoric, communication theory, linguistics, psychology, and, increasingly, computer science. Since 1970s, there has been significant agreement that there are three basic approaches to argumentation theory: the logical, the rhetorical and the dialectical. According to Wenzel,^[17] the logical approach deals with the product, the dialectical with the process, and the rhetorical with the procedure. Thus, informal logic is one contributor to this inquiry, being most especially concerned with the norms of argument.

Fallacy

A fallacy is a component of an argument which, being demonstrably flawed in its logic or form, renders the whole argument invalid.

1 Types of fallacies 2 Material fallacies 2.1 Example 3 Verbal fallacies 3.1 Example 1 3.2 Example 2 4 Deductive fallacy 5 Other systems of classification 6 Fallacies in the media and politics

Types of fallacies

In logical arguments, fallacies are either formal or informal. Because the validity of a deductive argument depends on its form, a formal fallacy is a deductive argument that has an invalid form, whereas an informal fallacy is any other invalid mode of reasoning whose flaw is not in the form of the argument.

Beginning with Aristotle, informal fallacies have generally been placed in one of several categories, depending on the source of the fallacy. There are fallacies of relevance, fallacies involving causal reasoning, and fallacies resulting from ambiguities (or equivocations).

Recognizing fallacies in actual arguments may be difficult since arguments are often structured using rhetorical patterns that obscure the logical connections between assertions. Fallacies may also exploit the emotional or intellectual weaknesses of the interlocutor. Having the capability of recognizing logical fallacies in arguments reduces the likelihood of such an occurrence.

A different approach to understanding and classifying fallacies is provided by argumentation theory; see for instance the van Eemeren, Grootendorst reference below. In this approach, an argument is regarded as an interactive protocol between individuals which attempts to resolve a disagreement. The protocol is regulated by certain rules of interaction, and violations of these rules are fallacies. Many of the fallacies in the list below are best understood as being fallacies in this sense.

Fallacious arguments involve not only formal logic but also causality. Others may involve psychological ploys such as use of power relationships between proposer and interlocutor to establish necessary intermediate (explicit or implicit) premises for an argument. Fallacies often have unstated assumptions or implied premises in arguments that are not always obvious at first glance.

Note that providing a critique of an argument has no relation to the truth of the conclusion. The conclusion could very well be true, while the argument as to why the conclusion is true is not valid. See argument from fallacy.

Material fallacies

The classification of material fallacies widely adopted by modern logicians and based on that of Aristotle, Organon (Sophistici elenchi), is as follows:

• Fallacy of Accident (also called destroying the exception or a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid)--makes a generalization that disregards exceptions (e.g., Cutting people is a crime. Surgeons cut people. Therefore, surgeons are criminals.)

• Converse Fallacy of Accident (also called reverse accident, destroying the exception, or a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter)--argues from a special case to a general rule (e.g., Every swan I have seen is white, so it must be true that all swans are white.)

• Irrelevant Conclusion (also called Ignoratio Elenchi)--diverts attention away from a fact in dispute rather than address it directly. This is sometimes referred to as a "red herring". Subsets include:
  • purely personal considerations (argumentum ad hominem),
  • popular sentiment (argumentum ad populum--appeal to the majority),
  • fear (argumentum ad baculum),
  • conventional propriety (argumentum ad verecundiam--appeal to authority)

• Affirming the Consequent--draws a conclusion from premises that do not support that conclusion by assuming Q implies P on the basis that P implies Q (e.g., If a person runs barefoot, then his feet hurt. Socrates' feet hurt. Therefore, Socrates ran barefoot. Other things, such as tight sandals, can result in sore feet.)

• Denying the antecedent--draws a conclusion from premises that do not support that conclusion by assuming Not P implies Not Q on the basis that P implies Q (e.g., If I have the flu, then I have a sore throat. I do not have the flu. Therefore, I do not have a sore throat. Other illnesses may cause sore throat.)

• Begging the question (also called Petitio Principii, Circulus in Probando--arguing in a circle, or assuming the answer)--demonstrates a conclusion by means of premises that assume that conclusion (e.g., Paul must be telling the truth, because I have heard him say the same thing many times before. Paul may be consistent in what he says, but he may have been lying the whole time.)

• Fallacy of False Cause or Non Sequitur (Latin for "it does not follow")--incorrectly assumes one thing is the cause of another (e.g., Our nation will prevail because God is great.)
  • A special case of this fallacy also goes by the Latin term post hoc ergo propter hoc--the fallacy of believing that temporal succession implies a causal relation.
  • Another special case is given by the Latin term cum hoc ergo propter hoc -- the fallacy of believing that happenstance implies causal relation (aka as fallacy of causation versus correlation: assumes that correlation implies causation).

• Fallacy of Many Questions (Plurium Interrogationum)--groups more than one question in the form of a single question (e.g., Is it true that you no longer beat your wife? A yes or no answer will still be an admission of guilt to wife-beating.)

Example

The following argument is posited:

1. Cake is food.
2. Food is delicious.
3. Therefore, cake is delicious.

This argument claims to prove that cake is delicious. This particular argument has the form of a categorical syllogism. Any argument must have premises as well as a conclusion. In this case we need to ask what the premises are―that is, the set of assumptions the proposer of the argument can expect the interlocutor to grant. The first assumption is almost true by definition: cake is a foodstuff edible by humans. The second assumption is less clear as to its meaning. Since the assertion has no quantifiers of any kind, it could mean any one of the following:

• All food is delicious.
• One particular type of food is delicious.
• Most food is delicious.
• To me, all food is delicious.
• Some food is delicious.

In all but the first interpretation, the above syllogism would then fail to have validated its second premise. The person may try to assume that his interlocutor believes that all food is delicious; if the interlocutor grants this then the argument is valid. In this case, the interlocutor is essentially conceding the point to that person. However, the interlocutor is more likely to believe that some food is disgusting, and in this case the person is not much better off than he was before he formulated the argument, since he now has to prove the assertion that cake is a unique type of universally delicious food, which is a disguised form of the original thesis. From the point of view of the interlocutor, the person commits the logical fallacy of begging the question.

Verbal fallacies

Verbal fallacies are those in which a conclusion is obtained by improper or ambiguous use of words. They are generally classified as follows.

• Equivocation consists in employing the same word in two or more senses, e.g. in a syllogism, the middle term being used in one sense in the major and another in the minor premise, so that in fact there are four not three terms ("All heavy things have a great mass; This is heavy fog; therefore this fog has a great mass").
• Connotation fallacies occur when a dysphemistic word is substituted for the speaker's actual quote and used to discredit the argument. It is a form of attribution fallacy.
• Amphibology is the result of ambiguity of grammatical structure, e.g. of the position of the adverb "only" in careless writers ("He only said that," in which sentence, the adverb has been intended to qualify any one of the other three words).
• Fallacy of Composition "From Each to All". Arguing from some property of constituent parts, to the conclusion that the composite item has that property e.g. "all the band members (constituent parts) are highly skilled, therefore the band (composite item) is highly skilled". This can be acceptable with certain arguments such as spatial arguments e.g. "all the parts of the car are in the garage, therefore the car is in the garage"
• Division, the converse of the preceding, arguing from a property of the whole, to each constituent part e.g. "the university (the whole) is 700 years old, therefore, all the staff (each part) are 700 years old".
• Proof by verbosity, sometimes colloquially referred to as argumentum verbosium - a rhetorical technique that tries to persuade by overwhelming those considering an argument with such a volume of material that the argument sounds plausible, superficially appears to be well-researched, and it is so laborious to untangle and check supporting facts that the argument might be allowed to slide by unchallenged.
• Accent, which occurs only in speaking and consists of emphasizing the wrong word in a sentence. e.g., "He is a fairly good pianist," according to the emphasis on the words, may imply praise of a beginner's progress, or an expert's deprecation of a popular hero, or it may imply that the person in question is a deplorable pianist.^{[citation needed]}
• Figure of Speech, the confusion between the metaphorical and ordinary uses of a word or phrase.
• Fallacy of Misplaced Concretion, identified by Whitehead in his discussion of metaphysics, this refers to the reification of concepts which exist only in discourse.

Example 1

Tom argues:

1. Joe is a good tennis player.
2. Therefore, Joe is 'good', that is to say a morally good person.

Here the problem is that the word good has different meanings, which is to say that it is an ambiguous word. In the premise, Tom says that Joe is good at some particular activity, in this case tennis. In the conclusion, Tom states that Joe is a morally good person. These are clearly two different senses of the word "good". The premise might be true but the conclusion can still be false: Joe might be the best tennis player in the world but a rotten person morally. However, it is not legitimate to infer he is a bad person on the ground there has been a fallacious argument on the part of Tom. Nothing concerning Joe's moral qualities is to be inferred from the premise. Appropriately, since it plays on an ambiguity, this sort of fallacy is called the fallacy of equivocation, that is, equating two incompatible terms or claims.

Example 2

One posits the argument:

1. Nothing is better than eternal happiness.
2. Eating a hamburger is better than nothing.
3. Therefore, eating a hamburger is better than eternal happiness.

This argument has the appearance of an inference that applies transitivity of the two-placed relation is better than, which in this critique we grant is a valid property. The argument is an example of syntactic ambiguity. In fact, the first premise semantically does not predicate an attribute of the subject, as would for instance the assertion

A potato is better than eternal happiness.

In fact it is semantically equivalent to the following universal quantification:

Everything fails to be better than eternal happiness.

So instantiating this fact with eating a hamburger, it logically follows that

Eating a hamburger fails to be better than eternal happiness.

Note that the premise A hamburger is better than nothing does not provide anything to this argument. This fact really means something such as

Eating a hamburger is better than eating nothing at all.

Thus this is a fallacy of composition.

These sort of fallacies are firmly tied to English language and how the words are used in ambiguous ways in several expressions. The phrase "nothing is better than X" actually means "Such a thing that would be better than X does not exist". If the arguments mentioned in this article were to be translated to other languages, they would suddenly make no sense at all since the word "nothing" would be translated differently in different sentences.

Deductive fallacy

Main article: Deductive fallacy

In philosophy, the term logical fallacy properly refers to a formal fallacy : a flaw in the structure of a deductive argument which renders the argument invalid.

However, it is often used more generally in informal discourse to mean an argument which is problematic for any reason, and thus encompasses informal fallacies as well as formal fallacies. � valid but unsound claims or bad nondeductive argumentation � .

The presence of a formal fallacy in a deductive argument does not imply anything about the argument's premises or its conclusion (see fallacy fallacy). Both may actually be true, or even more probable as a result of the argument (e.g. appeal to authority), but the deductive argument is still invalid because the conclusion does not follow from the premises in the manner described. By extension, an argument can contain a formal fallacy even if the argument is not a deductive one; for instance an inductive argument that incorrectly applies principles of probability or causality can be said to commit a formal fallacy.

Other systems of classification

Of other classifications of fallacies in general the most famous are those of Francis Bacon and J. S. Mill. Bacon (Novum Organum, Aph. 33, 38 sqq.) divided fallacies into four Idola (Idols, i.e. False Appearances), which summarize the various kinds of mistakes to which the human intellect is prone. With these should be compared the Offendicula of Roger Bacon, contained in the Opus maius, pt. i. J. S. Mill discussed the subject in book v. of his Logic, and Jeremy Bentham's Book of Fallacies (1824) contains valuable remarks. See Rd. Whateley's Logic, bk. v.; A. de Morgan, Formal Logic (1847) ; A. Sidgwick, Fallacies (1883) and other textbooks.

Fallacies in the media and politics

"Either you're for me, or against me" unknown but common fallacy (False dilemma).

Fallacies are used frequently by pundits in the media and politics. When one politician says to another, "You don't have the moral authority to say X", this could be an example of the argumentum ad hominem or personal attack fallacy; that is, attempting to disprove X, not by addressing validity of X but by attacking the person who asserted X. Arguably, the politician is not even attempting to make an argument against X, but is instead offering a moral rebuke against the interlocutor. For instance, if X is the assertion:

The military uniform is a symbol of national strength and honor.

Then ostensibly, the politician is not trying to prove the contrary assertion. If this is the case, then there is no logically fallacious argument, but merely a personal opinion about moral worth. Thus identifying logical fallacies may be difficult and dependent upon context.

In the opposite direction is the fallacy of argument from authority. A classic example is the ipse dixit―"He himself said it" argument―used throughout the Middle Ages in reference to Aristotle. A modern instance is "celebrity spokespersons" in advertisements: a product is good and you should buy/use/support it because your favorite celebrity endorses it.

An appeal to authority is always a logical fallacy, though it can be an appropriate form of rational argument if, for example, it is an appeal to expert testimony^{[citation needed]} . In this case, the expert witness must be recognized as such and all parties must agree that the testimony is appropriate to the circumstances. This form of argument is common in legal situations.

By definition, arguments with logical fallacies are invalid, but they can often be (re)written in such a way that they fit a valid argument form. The challenge to the interlocutor is, of course, to discover the false premise, i.e. the premise that makes the argument unsound.

Philosophical logic

Philosophical logic is the study of the more specifically philosophical aspects of logic. The term contrasts with mathematical logic, and since the development of mathematical logic in the late nineteenth century, it has come to include most of those topics traditionally treated by logic in general.^{[citation needed]} It is concerned with characterising notions like inference, rational thought, truth, and contents of thoughts, in the most fundamental ways possible, and trying to model them using modern formal logic.^{[citation needed]}

The notions in question include reference, predication, identity, truth, negation, quantification, existence, necessity, definition and entailment.^{[citation needed]}

Philosophical logic is not concerned with the psychological processes connected with thought, or with emotions, images and the like. It is concerned only with those entities ― thoughts, sentences, or propositions ― that are capable of being true and false. To this extent, though, it does intersect with philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. Gottlob Frege is regarded by many as the founder of modern philosophical logic.^{[citation needed]}

Not all philosophical logic, however, applies formal logical techniques. A good amount of it (including Grayling's and Colin McGinn's books cited below) is written in natural language. One definition, popular in Britain, is that philosophical logic is the attempt to solve general philosophical problems that arise when we use or think about formal logic^{[citation needed]}: problems about existence, necessity, analyticity, a prioricity, propositions, identity, predication, truth. Philosophy of logic, on the other hand, would tackle metaphysical and epistemological problems about entailment, validity, and proof. So it could be said that philosophy of logic is a branch of philosophy but philosophical logic belongs to the domain of logic.

Contemporary Manipur IV

Rights Activism Maligned
10/24/2008

Even at the risk of appearing to defend the indefensible, we are compelled to stick our necks out again. In the wake of the outrageous bomb blast at Pandon two days ago, there has been an expected barrage of snide remarks from self righteous commentators against what is indeed a deafening silence of various human rights organisations operating in the state. The distaste is understandable for it obviously results out of certain expectations from anybody concerned with "rights" on any pitiable human condition. While we do empathise with this, we must still acknowledge a gap in understanding in what actually are "human rights" and the history behind it. In short, there is a distinction between "rectitude" or "rightness of things" and the notion of "human rights" as defined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations. As is well known, the document is not titled Declaration of "Universal Human Rights" but "Universal Declaration" of Human Rights. The choice of words is not random. The decision to name it "Universal Declaration" rather than "Universal Human Rights" was at the same time an acknowledgement of the limitation of the project, as well as the impossibility of pinning down what should constitute "Universal Human Rights". Remember one man's food can be another man's poison, just as one man's terrorist can be another man's freedom fighter.

Human rights then are what are listed as human rights in the UN resolution 217A(III) of December 10, 1948. The mandate of human rights activists, as professionals, is also to respond to the violations of the articles and clauses of this UN declaration. Of course, as human beings they are also individually morally bound to respond to any human situations, such as the Pandon blast, but then this obligation is not just on them, but on all of us. It would be wrong, grossly unfair and a show of utter ignorance to presume that this moral obligation is any more on these professional "rights" workers than on any one of us. It would be like putting a moral obligation on lawyers to always prosecute and never defend people accused for crimes, or be angry that anti-meira paibi debaters were allowed to win the recent school debating competition on meira paibi institution organised by the Manipur Police. Maybe the horizon of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights needs to be widened but this is not a job for ground level activists alone. And indeed, in the present times, the movement for indigenous peoples' rights is actually succeeding in doing this to a great extent, bringing in numerous reforms to the declaration and making it recognize previously unimagined rights. If there is a fault with rights activists, it is in not acknowledging this professional limitation, and behaving like saviours of the human race.

The background of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should also throw valuable light. It was born immediately after the World War II, the most telling evidence of the violence the "State" is capable of. The emergence of the "Modern State", replacing the "Feudal State" was hailed and at the same time viewed with apprehension for a long time before this cataclysmic chapter in human history. This is nowhere better illustrated than in the difference in vantage of Oliver Cromwell leading the English Civil War against the feudal state and his contemporary and renown thinker Thomas Hobbes identifying a crisis in the possibility of the "State" disintegrating in the face of the same revolution. It made Hobbes conclude that the "State", regardless of whoever is in charge, must have to be the repository of all powers if social order is to prevail. But the "State" can be extremely brutal. World War II was the last straw. A "State" decree exterminated six million Jews, another translated into two atom bombs on Japan etc. The human rights movement was conceived at such a juncture of history, and it was a way of individual humans as a collective saying the "State" too must have limits. In a society of foxes and chickens, what the foxes say is law, becomes law. The human rights movement is like the chickens telling the foxes that they too must keep within limits. Human rights movement then is an instrument for checking "State" excesses, and you cannot fault human rights activists for keeping by this brief. The movement till the entry of the indigenous peoples' movement was somewhat Capitalist Europe centric. Like the fear of the "State", implicit in the document is also a fear of big bad profit-oriented corporations. Consider Article 23(4) of the charter "...right to form or join trade union..." Who needs a trade union in an agrarian society so how is it a right for the agrarian farmer or the tribal hunter? In this way the document anticipates an inevitable future for even the agrarian societies, and thousands of Jet Airways employees who were so unceremoniously sacked recently would agree.

Subdued Festivities
10/28/2008

This year, the festival of light is being celebrated amidst an atmosphere of gloom, thanks to the global stock market crash which is beginning to take a painful toll in India and other developing countries on the one hand, and the threats of violence on the other. The middle class salary earners are reluctant to spend for despite what the Prime Minister and the finance minister said about there being no need to panic, they have suddenly been made vulnerable and insecure about their future. At the moment, their life's savings, much of which would have been invested in mutual funds and other stock market bonds in keeping with the current vogue introduced by the globalised money market, stand the horrifying chance of disappearing or at best shrinking. They are also insecure about joining the revelry as they could become senseless targets of terror attacks. True there are heavy security measures taken everywhere, but even if the security precautions were foolproof, the mood would still not be right. Public festivities are not meant to be enjoyed with the security establishment glaring at you. Freedom from fear and insecurity are vital ingredients for any celebration to be meaningful, and this atmosphere is what is missing this time. We hope and pray the gloom lifts soon.

Violence has been a part of life of Manipur and the rest of India for quite some time now and the ordinary people have evolved ways to cope with it quite heroically. But it is the new threat from the market which not many are prepared for. Manipur is much better off in this, as its economy is insulated from the harsh realities of the market. It is an economy well cocooned by government provided buffers, and until the government itself crashes, there would be no big enough cause for alarm that it would lose is staid security of being a mediocre society. No risks no gains, but no dangers as well. On a relative scale, this is also the comfort of many of the developing countries when it comes to the global canvas. India, and to a lesser extent, China have still not dropped all guards in integrating with the global economy so although they also would not have reaped its full benefits, the full impact of the global crisis would also not have reach them. But the bit of it hitting their shores is causing big scares. Even if the money markets in these countries are relatively insulated, there are other reasons why these newly rising economies need to worry. China, more than India should be feeling this heat. When the consumers in the West and the rest of the world are reluctant to spend, Chinese makers of these consumer products should naturally have a lot to worry. Not many of us would have failed to notice that practically every consumer product in practically any market in the world is dominated by those made in China. Buy branded products like a Sony laptop, Nikon camera, Altec Lansing music system or their accessories, from India or America, and the overwhelming odds are they are all made in China. Buy unbranded imitations of these products at a fraction of their cost, and the odds are even more that they too are from China.

But the global financial market crisis has once again brought to the fore the vulnerability of an important aspect of modern Capitalism. It should be clear now that although the free market has the capability of bringing out the best in everybody through competition, it is also far from being fair or honest always. But the current crisis is less about dishonesty than about an institutionalised market mechanism of creating illusions in which people are nudged to put their money with the promise that the illusion can multiply their money fast. It does too as long as it lasts. The illusory worth of companies can in this way be inflated as much as 30 times their actual worth. No wonder companies invest billions in advertisements so as to create the public faith essential to bloat their worth up and overflow with investments. Every now and then the illusory bubbles burst or are exploded by money sharks who stand to gain hugely from such crises. Investors discover to their dismay that the bonds they bought are worth not much more than the paper on which they are printed. This is much like promissory notes (currency notes) which are supposed to be worth a certain weight in gold that the banks keep in reserve. When the gold guarantee vanishes the paper notes are worth nothing.





Fate or Folly
10/27/2008

The culture of disruptive protest so prevalent in Manipur today, and the manner in which these are addressed by the established order and those at its helm, definitely seem to follow a certain pattern with unnerving regularity. So familiar has the state become of these events, having witnessed them unfold so many times over the years, that anybody can generalise fairly accurately the locus of these painful social dramas. First there would be the stimulus given by an event that seemingly hurt the interest or sentiment of a section of the society. We say a section, as there is never anything as a singular and absolutely consensual interest or aspiration, not just in Manipur but anywhere else. The hurt section would go on a warpath challenging and defying the government. The government initially would put up the semblance of a stern stance. The protestors then would raise the temperature of their agitation and resort to more severe forms of disruptive activities, first bandhs and blockades, and then even arson and street violence. The government would begin extending appeasement gestures, including offers of a magisterial or judicial inquiry, monetary compensation, government jobs etc. When all these fail, it would without ceremony revert its original stance and agree to concede to all the demands of the protestors. Not only this, it would even agree to release all who had been booked for cognizable public offences, including arson, intimidations and violence to others.

There are two matters of concern here. One is obvious. It has to do with the atrocious inability (or unconcern as the case may be), of the government in assessing the virtues of a demand or the potential resistance not meeting it would evoke in the first place. Had it been otherwise, not only would a lot of the destructive agitations have been avoided, but a lot of public and private properties been saved as well. The number of trucks destroyed, the number of work hours lost, the number of government infrastructures, including incidentally the state Assembly building and the state library, would have been saved. The law also gets belittled in the very act of offenders booked under tough acts getting pardoned and released as if these pieces of legislations were mere political tools. Why can't the government take more trouble in assessing the justness of public demands and accordingly decide on non-fickle stances from which it does not have to waver back and forth? It would save a lot of public morale.

The second concern is a little esoteric but none the less interesting, and indeed may be an important factor in present problem solving efforts. It will be recalled that the first time the implosive "stimulus-response" pattern of exchanges between agitators and government was played out in a major way was during Manipur's demand for full statehood after its merger with Indian in 1949. In 1950 was the first concession towards self governance came by way of an appointed Advisor Council of local elite to the chief commissioner. When this was not enough, in 1956 a Territorial Council was introduced, soon followed by an elected Territorial Assembly. Finally, when this did not stop the agitators, it was full statehood in 1972. Why couldn't the 1972 decision have come in 1949? In the persistence of this pattern of protest and appeasement even in the modern times in Manipur, it is tempting to identify what in the Freudian sense is an unconscious re-enactment of traumatic experiences from the past. We quote Cathy Caruth, professor of comparative literature, John Hopkins University, in the opening chapter of her book: "Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History" in which she invokes Freud's interpretation of such recurrent behaviours. "In the third chapter of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud describes a pattern of suffering that is inexplicably persistent in the lives of certain individuals. ...Freud wonders at the peculiar and sometimes uncanny way in which catastrophic events seem to repeat themselves for those who have passed through them. In some cases, Freud points out these repetitions are particularly striking because they seem not to be initiated by the individual's own acts but rather appear as the possession of some people by a sort of fate, a series of painful events to which they are subjected, and which seem to be entirely outside their wish or control...

Crimes Despite SoO
10/29/2008

Manipur will be witness to yet another general strike tomorrow protesting the manner in which a militant group, currently in a suspension of operation agreement with the state and Central governments, locked up a passenger bus from Imphal bound for Guwahati from outside and then set it on fire with the passengers still inside just a little away from Dimapur in Nagaland in the Karbi Anglong district of Assam. While most managed to escape with burn injuries, two unfortunate passengers, a mother and son, failed to make it to safety and were charred inside. The crime is unspeakable notwithstanding the clarification of the militant organisation that victimising the passengers was a mistake. Some events cannot be reversed, and no matter how sorry anybody is, the dead cannot come alive again. On the same issue, passenger buses from the state on interstate service have been staying off the roads putting those who have to travel on this highway by the demands of their businesses and other personal reasons, including health related matters, into immense inconveniences. The issue is unlikely to settle immediately, for the same militant group has again detained more freight trucks, claiming they too have not paid up their monetary demands, just as the unfortunate passenger bus that ended up singed.

The question would have been a straightforward law and order matter had it not been for the truce that the Central government has brought the militant group into. It may be recalled that it was the Army which initiated this move of suspending operations against Kuki militants. The initiative began on a controversial note as the state government was not taken into confidence. However, a year ago, the state government too was brought on board, and as of today, these militant groups are on a tripartite truce which includes a suspension of operation against them by both the state as well as the Central governments. This being the case, the responsibility of ensuring that the militant groups covered by the truce do not harangue ordinary people, must rest squarely on the shoulders of the state as well as the Central governments. The condemnation of the bus burning incident for instance must not be directed just against the militant group concerned, but equally against the state and Central governments. The gravity of the crime cannot be compared to similar atrocities committed by other militant groups who are still at war with the law, and against whom police and military operations have still not been called off.

Since the militant groups which have entered into a truce with the government have not been disbanded, they obviously would still need a budget to sustain their organisations. It would be unreasonable to expect militant groups to starve and disintegrate every time they enter into a truce with the government. Hence, they would continue to want to raise their "organisational funds", and since they have no other means than "taxing" the public, they would continue to do just this. This has been the experience with other militant groups too. The reason behind the bus burning incident, as well as the hijack of freight trucks on the highway are inevitable fallouts of this need. A caveat is essential here to clarify our position. We are only trying to understand the underlying motivation behind the crime and not at all condoning the crime, much less the method of execution of the crime.

What must the government do then? Since it has taken on the responsibility, we are of the opinion that it has two chief tasks. First, it must ensure that it takes care of the motivation we referred to, instead of throwing the load on to the shoulders of the ordinary public. Since these militant groups during the negotiations must sustain themselves, until a final settlement is reached, the government must sponsor a realistic annual budget for them on the condition that extortion from the public would be punished. Obviously, this government sponsored budget cannot include money for acquisition of arms etc. Second, since the government has chosen to suspend operations against these groups and de-outlaw them, any subversive acts by them must come under the strict purview of the law. Otherwise, there would be more and more convinced that this entire peace game is part of a large and dirty game-plan designed to destabilise the region, not settle its endemic problems.

Matter of Faith
10/30/2008

It is interesting to note how the deadly conflicts we are witness to are also accompanied by other varieties of conflicts at another very different and abstract level. In particular, it is between those forwarding interpretations of the causes as well as possible solutions to these conflicts. Theories by their very definition are meant to be abstract, but the veracity of a theory hinges on its proof in the empirical world. In the empirical sciences the problem is much better resolved as this postulate that empirical proofs must predicate all theories is internalised deeply and undisputed. Not so in the social sciences. This is also because in the empirical sciences, lateral experiments to validate theories are possible, whereas in the social sciences, the experiments will necessarily have to be longitudinal and in real time. This could amount to an experiment lasting a lifetime or more, and that is a long time indeed, capable of accommodating numerous disputing views with no final verdict on which of the view is closer to the truth until the truth happens. All would have noticed this in practical any socio-cultural and socio-economic questions. Are big dams an instrument of development? Is globalisation good? Or for that matter, is global warming going to doom life on earth? The difficulty is also in the inability to separate the subjects of these experiments from their objects. In other words, there is a certain unavoidability about the experimenter also becoming a part of the experiment. The tragedy or triumph of big dams, or whether globalisation ends up showering dividends on everybody or else victimises them all, or whether life is able to cope and overcome the challenges of global warming, will only be known after we all have either reaped their benefits or else perished from them. The gravity of this stake also make theories on these social issues all the more contested. It is also an essential contest, and there is no other way than to take it in strides, and in the meanwhile look for a meeting point.

The thought comes to mind, as mentioned earlier on, in contemplating the seemingly irreconcilable stances of those forwarding a military solution to insurgency and those who advocate a socio-cultural approach as the only way to a lasting solution. The duels (rather than debates as neither side is ready to accept the other's viewpoint) get so abstract that there is little or nothing empirical to establish the substance of either irrefutably, so much so that after a certain point, it becomes a matter of faith which side somebody chooses to stand on. Those who believe military solution is the only way will continue in their belief and those who see the alternative approach of rapprochement and accommodation of the rebels' causes too would continue to believe in this only and little else. The abstraction can be pushed to the extent of absurdity, or become Kafkaesque, if these battles of theories are being fought by people who do not live the actual experiences of these conflicts. Unfortunately this is also the case in more cases than not.

This abstract duel happens everywhere, beginning from the campaigns for the American Presidential elections due to kick off a week from now, or in the debates over the suitability and legality of the Arms Forces Special Powers Act, AFSPA 1958. It has simply and obviously become a matter of faith. But in the case of peripheral conflict regions such as northeast India, there is a distasteful twist to this duel. There is a strong tendency to attribute motives to those who take stances other than the general "mainstream" vision. Typically, this is about a suspicion of disloyalty to the nation, or even allegiance with alien interests subversive to those of the country. The sense of the stabbing glare of these scrutinising eyes, many times probably imaginary, can be harsh. But even if this uneasy consciousness of the scrutinising eyes is imaginary, the imagination happens because of a predominant atmosphere which makes it an obligation on the northeast man to prove loyalty. Perhaps this is also why the "Jai Hind" chants of northeast politicians in public functions are always louder. Somewhere, the debates have to be allowed to go beyond the confines of these simplistic rectilinear outlooks for them to become meaningful and problem solving.

Rule of Anarchy
11/3/2008

The newspaper report on Friday that the Deputy Speaker of the Manipur Assembly, Th. Shyamkumar, whipped out a gun and in the most atrocious manner humiliated a traffic policeman publicly by bullying him at gunpoint for evicting women vendors at Uripok Cheirap under the flyover, is to say the least shameful. We wish the MLA had acted in a more dignified manner becoming of the stature given to him by his office, even if he did not agree to what the policeman was doing. He should have realised there is something as rule of law, and the unfortunate policeman, even if he was acting beyond his brief, ought to have been hauled up and penalised as per this same rule of law. We doubt if the man was indeed acting beyond his brief, for the decision to evict street vendors from the busy Imphal Bazar area, however heartless it may appear to many, was a decision of the state Cabinet and not that of the poor constable. We hope the Deputy Speaker is aware that at the head of the Cabinet is the chief minister, and by defying a Cabinet decision in the uncouth manner he did, he was actually defying the chief minister. A lot of us in the media criticise the chief minister too, but these criticisms are directed at the person of the chief minister or his policies, and never the institution of chief minister. In similar manner now, we criticise the boorishness of the man who is Deputy Speaker, but not the institution of this venerated office. There can be no doubt about it, MLA Th. Shyamkumar by his single act on Thursday (report appeared on Friday) abused his office. Such things can happen in the Wild West, or perhaps in Bihar. Now it is happening in Manipur, thanks to our leaders.

This is not a question of supporting chief minister, Okram Ibobi's vendor eviction policy or the traffic constable executing this policy. This is only a representation of the mortification of law abiding citizens at witnessing the manner in which a legislator took the law into his own hands. It is also to be expected that the matter would be allowed to pass as just another interesting side show in the annals of semi-feudal, semi-tribal, and so called democratic Manipur, with dramatis personae who specialise in dividing up the land into private fiefs where the law has been so deliberately prevented from becoming an independent all encompassing institution, rising above all and treating all as equals. This being the case, it would be unrealistic to expect Deputy Speaker Syamkumar's pathetic disregard of law would ever be made answerable to the law. Everybody who is somebody would probably pretend there never was an infringement of law and treat the case as another laughing matter, dismissing it trivially as just one of those idiosyncratic freedoms that members of the ruling classes are privileged with. While some of us in the media feel the shameful impact of the affront and attempt to make an issue of what is deservingly an infringement of democracy, it is quite likely even public servants whose tribe the assaulted and humiliated policeman belong to, would keep mum. In a land where fake encounters and summary executions are silently accepted as norms of conflict, anything else is kids' stuff.

Having said this, although we do not agree with the manner in which the MLA behaved, we see no difficulty in identifying what may have provoked him into his puerile response. Petty, corrupt policemen on the streets, extorting petty amounts from rickshaw drivers and vendors, are a disgusting reality too in Manipur. But this Aegean stable is for the government to clean through its legitimate, institutional mechanisms, and not for gun totting MLAs to play Robin Hood. But all said and done, what's done cannot be undone, and since the law is unlikely to be invoked in interpreting the issue, or an enquiry ordered into the incident, considering the land's well known street-fighting agitators are not out on the streets, at least the Deputy Speaker must in a calmer frame of mind reflect on the silly thing that he has done. Since he has so illegally and unfairly humiliated a public servant so publicly, he too must exercise his sense of propriety, muster up the courage of humility, and issue a public apology on the matter. As for the policeman, if it is established by the due process of law (and not by the accusation of any MLA or minister) that he did commit a cognizable offence, he must be hauled up and penalised under the same law. Let our gun totting leaders note, penalty for a public servant, however petty, does not include holding a gun to his temple.

Scribes in Line of Fire
11/10/2008

The incident on Thursday in which reporters who had gone to cover an encounter killing of two PULF(U) suspects by the police were detained by the public of Kongpal Sabal Leikai in the suspicion that the reporters had actually collaborated with the police in the killings was unfortunate and condemnable. The suspicion, as was explained by the mob which detained the reporters, arose because the reporters arrived at the scene of "encounter" too quickly and this could not have been possible if they did not have prior knowledge of what they claimed was murder perpetrated by the police in "fake encounter". Targeting the reporters was clearly a case of shooting the messenger for bringing bad news. However, it would be wrong to let the matter pass without any introspection on the part of the media and the larger society as such. While it was preposterous, and still would be preposterous, to presume the reporters had anything to do with the deaths of the two, be they militant cadres or innocent civilians, the intriguing question remains as to how the reporters manage to be at the spot of the killing so quickly within the lapse of a time span the locals believed was impossible if there was no prior knowledge.

We have a hypothesis, and one which we are sure other media organisations in the state would vouch for, for this hypothesis is informed by day to day experience in the news rooms. The hypothesis also clearly indicates blatant and systematic fake encounter killings by the police in the past few months. Reporters rush to a spot only after they hear of an encounter or else of the discovery of dead bodies. This first information normally comes from policemen in the field with whom individual reporters generally try to keep a good rapport so that channels for first information of suddenly developing news events remain open and without glitches. If not for the mad rush of assignments, work pressures, adrenalin overflows and perennial deadline chasings which keep newsmen from sitting back and reflecting on the nature of this information flow, the scenario would actually have been frightening for them. Indeed, it is not a matter of joke, but the desensitisation has been such that it has become one, and reporters with a touch of black humour often just for the laugh, predict where the next encounter deaths could be depending on information they receive of where some suspects had been picked up and which direction they had been taken. Uncannily, on many occasions these predictions turn out not too far from the truth if not hit bull's eye. On at least one occasion, one such disturbing account told as usual in light though cynical vein is that some reporters received information of an encounter death and they rush to the spot. But because of some miscommunication within the police, when the reporters arrived at the spot, no encounter had happened yet. The suspect who the reporters presume was the man to die in the encounter was also still alive and in police custody. If this was actually the case, unlike many other encounter victims, this particular suspect had everything to thank the early arrival of reporters for his new leash of life. This cannot be a joke by any standard, but the callousness that has come to be associated with human lives in Manipur's killing field is such that even these frightening scenarios have become matters of hearty newsroom laughs.

Fake encounters are a frightening reality in Manipur today, and everybody knows it too. Yet, the civil society here seems to have lost the energy or inclination to raise the banner of protest indicating a total fatigue as well as a growing disenchantment with the mindless violence perpetrated by badly splintered insurrection. Moreover, unlike in the past when the army was at the helm of counter insurgency operations, the police which now is in the forefront in the Imphal area, have a much sharper local intelligence, and those that it puts to death, however illegally, probably are known to keep some link with the underground movement in some way or the other, and so the lack of any sustained, explosive public protests. Not that the people would be wishing the deaths of insurgents or government security personnel for that matter, but the implication of deaths of combatants is a lot different from mindless collateral deaths of civilian non-combatants.

Damned Highways
11/11/2008

This is just a matter of echoing the sentiment expressed by so many in the last few days. Much as we hate a highway blockade or a state bandh, we are inclined to agree with those who feel the current agitation over the condition of NH-39, is justified even if in a desperate way. It has been at least a decade since the media acquired a sore throat shouting how this lifeline of the state is in a pitiable state of decay. Yet the government has done precious little to improve its lot. Today, the Manipur stretch of this highway is virtually a dirt road fit only for four wheel drive vehicles meant precisely for dirt roads. Does it also need any reminder that the decayed condition of the Manipur sector of the highway is a such a shocking contrast to the Nagaland sector of it. A few kilometres from Mao Gate, and as you approach the neighbouring Vishwema village in Nagaland, the road transform radically. Literally, the surface becomes as smooth as a tabletop. What exactly is it that is making the difference? Even if those at the helm do not care, let it be reminded once again that even as ordinary but concerned citizens of this state, the matter is one of extreme embarrassment apart from the inconvenience. Maybe it is not altogether about corruption and has to do a lot with the existing law and order situation, but even if this is the case, and the government admits it is helpless, should not it be thinking about handing over the responsibility to an institution or agency which can deliver regardless of what the odds are? This is considering it too agrees that the highways, both the state and national, are vital for a landlocked state like Manipur.

If this is the reason why the whole state should be angry at the condition of the highways, then there are even more reason why those who live along these highways to be furious. For them it is not just a question of being deprived of an important means of communication, but also of being subject to extreme health hazards. While the rainy seasons lasted, it was mud and slush that they had to worry about, but even this is better than what the dry winter seasons hold for them. For the next few months, it will be a perennial overcast of dust that they and their children have to be breathing and living in. Understandably, it will be no consolation that many of the roads in the heart of the capital city of Imphal would be in similar condition, and several lakh more here would be exposed to similar health hazards as them. After all, a fellowship in damnation is nothing to celebrate, or draw consolation from. Those who do it must have to be people who have given up on fighting for a dignified living altogether, and those who expect this would have to be self-centred patronising bigots.

It is late, but as they say, better late than never. The government must wake up and find out why the roads and highways in the state are in the states they are. It must begin with NH-39, not only because it is beyond argument the most important lifeline of the state, but also because the population along it are feeling the extreme pinch because of this unforgivable governmental neglect. If the state government is not up to the job, maybe it should think of handing over the responsibility to the Central government, after all it is a national highway and not a state one. The state's financial crunch should not be too much of a factor here as the financial burden of repairing and maintaining it would be borne by the Central exchequer. Whatever the state government decides to do, let it urgently and earnestly address this problem, adequately and satisfactorily too. All the homilies that it has been so wont to paying to development and prosperity of the state would continue to be exposed as empty words if it does not have the will to set things right on this issue. The NH-39 is the most prominent case but it is by no means the only one. Many other highways in the state are in very bad shape too. It too must begin noticing them. We would even suggest the government to draw up a list of action priorities, and at each of its annual budget session, dedicate the following year to one of these. Just as the national government as also so many supra-national organisations such as the United Nations do, it could for instance have a year for "Road Communication", another for "Primary Education", "Safe Drinking Water", "Primary Health", "Sports" etc. Singling out issues meriting special official and public focus is a strategy proven to yield results so why should not the Manipur government at least experiment it.







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