Blindsight & The Ability Hypothesis: Issues for a Science of Consciousness

What can blindsight tell us about the nature of consciousness?

Unless you are a Zombie, you are probably familiar with the concept of Qualia, although perhaps not the word. Qualia is a abstract noun given to things like the ‘redness of red’, the smell of freshly baked bread, the feelings of sunshine on our back, etc. Qualia is plural for the different ‘quales’ that are generally considered to be the mark of consciousness. Such ‘phenomenal feels’ are distinct from the physical correlates. In the case of the colour red, the redness of red is distinct from light at a red wavelength, in the case of baked bread, the chemical composition of the odour given off is distinct from the smell and in the case of the sun on our backs, our skin being heated by radiation is distinct from the feeling of warmth. The distinction between such phenomenal feels and the machinery of our brain, and the physical correlates of what these ‘qualia’ pick out have long been the source of problems for any theory which attempts to understand consciousness in terms of the physical processes in the human brain.

The ability hypothesis is one answer to help in explaining how it is conceivable that such phenomenal feels or qualia could be reduced to a physical explanation of processes in the human brain. The ability hypothesis is the hypothesis that phenomenal feels are what give us the ability to distinguish the concepts of heat, red, and other natural classes. This would suggest then that concepts such as ‘heat’ are just more abstract and general versions of ‘the feelings of sunshine on the back’. The ability hypothesis is the hypothesis that all that conscious qualia are, is the ability to distinguish certain properties in nature. So the qualia “redness of red” is according to the ability hypothesis just the same as the ability to pick out red from say a brown or a green.

This hypothesis is quite influential. It is easy to see why. The ability hypothesis explains consciousness without the need to elicit a ‘soul’ or stuff that have plagued philosophers since Descartes in attempting to explain the mind-body problem. The ability hypothesis fits neatly with a contemporary naturalistic view of the world as completely constituted by physical stuff.

I contend that the phenomenon of blindsight rules out the ability hypothesis as a way of explaining phenomenal feels or qualia. Blindsight is a case that points against the possibility of explaining consciousness as mere ability, and suggests that if we are to look for a physical explanation of consciousness there is something more to it than explaining it as an ability.

In these notes, I will take you through some long standing arguments for consciousness being in principle unexplainable in physical terms, and then show how the ability hypothesis answers such arguments in order to get a better view of the requirements of a physical explanation of consciousness. I will then show how the ability hypothesis falls short as a possible conceptual starting point for a science of consciousness.

The Knowledge Argument and The Ability Hypothesis

The Knowledge Argument originally put by Frank Jackson in his 1982 paper “Epiphenomenal Qualia” is one of the longest lasting objections to Physicalism (as defined by Supervenience, see Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for the definition). The Knowledge argument freed advocates of the thesis of non-physical subjective information from a lot of messy philosophical work having to define the class of physical properties in order to first register their objections. Jackson’s Knowledge Argument assumes any theory of class of physical objects as a premise to the situation in the Knowledge Argument he creates with Mary.


(Jackson, 1982)

In premise form:

P1: Mary has complete knowledge about the physical world.

P2: When seeing colour for the first time she learns a new fact about the world: “The Redness of Red”

Therefore, there are non-physical facts about the world. Physicalism is false.

We can either accept or reject the intuition that Mary gains new knowledge. People such as Dennett (Dennett, 1991) have argued given that so many of the results in the physical sciences have been counter intuitive, we should reject this intuition. I don’t find this convincing. Given a lack of explanation surrounding consciousness we have to work with what we have got. We should grant the intuition as an easily describable problem of consciousness. Rather than explaining away we should accept what we have and attempt to explain this intuition within current knowledge of physical nature. I see the knowledge argument as a benchmark to meet for acceptance of a physical theory of the mind and consciousness.

Looking at responses to the knowledge argument we see several types of replies in an attempt to motivate a physical theory of the mind. One range of replies denies that Mary gains any new knowledge on seeing red for the first time and postulates that if she knew all physical facts, she could come to know what red is like (Churchland, 1985) (Hardin, 1988). The problem with this reply is it maintains in principle that this is possible without giving any good examples of how we can come to, on the basis of physical knowledge alone, get new qualia.

Another response “The Acquaintance Hypothesis” also denies the intuition of mary recieving new knowledge by stating that Mary comes to know old facts in a new way (Tye, 1986) (Chuchland, 2004). This explanation fall short, because it seems to me in a perfectly intuitive and sensible use of the word “knowledge”, Mary does come to ‘know’ something new.

On the basis that we should accept the intuition of Mary gaining new knowledge, the only serious response in favor of a naturalistic physical explanation in the literature is the ability hypothesis outlined in (Nemirow 1990, Lewis 1983, Lewis 1988, Petit 2004).

For physicalists to refute the Knowledge Argument they must either a) provide some justification for why the sort of knowledge we gain from experience is exclusively propositional in relation to world or b) deny the intuition of new knowledge. It must claim that this is the only sort of information about the world is physical fact. If there is an element of information that is gained about a subjective, super-physical type, physicalism must necessarily be false. (Since no amount of physical information will lead us to give an account for these facts)

The Ability Hypothesis denies that Mary makes any new discovery of information about our world. Mary, before leaving the black and white room, knows all there is to know about the physical world. She has all the “facts”. Upon leaving the room, Mary changes in some way but she gains no additional information about the world. “The Ability Hypothesis says that knowing what an experience is like just is the possession of these abilities to remember, imagine, and recognise. It isn’t the possession of any information ordinary or peculiar. It isn’t knowing that certain properties arn’t actualized. It isn’t Knowing-That. It’s Knowing-How.” (Lewis 1988)

David Lewis contrasts the Ability Hypothesis with the hypothesis of Jackson (pre-1998), what Lewis calls “The Hypothesis of Phenomenal Information”. Under this latter hypothesis, seeing red for the first time as Mary does, constitutes a new fact about the world, one that inevitably has to come from the internal workings of mind, since no amount of physical explanation can get to “what it is like” for Mary to see red. The Hypothesis of Phenomenal Information postulates that there is a phenomenal type of information gained only through experience and separate to the physical world. Lewis concludes we cannot accept the ability hypothesis and the hypothesis of phenomenal information.

According another advocate of the Ability Hypothesis, (Nemirow, 1990) Jackson (pre-1998) makes 3 mistakes “to confound distinct types of knowledge by treating ability as propositional knowledge… to confuse grammar and logic by assuming that a grammatical singular term must function as a referring term… (and) to mischaracterise imagining, by equating the act of imaging the experience of a quality with the act of intellectually apprehending the quality itself.” I accept Nemirow’s Analysis of the ability hypothesis, it appeals only to good philosophical practice without having to invoke intuitions of the kind (Jackson, 1982) does in order to make the knowledge argument. Indeed, Jackson post-1998 agrees with the above analysis (Jackson, 2004). However, I will argue that the ability hypothesis leaves something out.

What is Ability Hypothesis is committed to? For the Ability Hypothesis to hold, it must prevent or block any future “Knowledge Arguments” analogous to the one drawn in (Jackson, 1982) about Mary the genius Neuroscientist. The Ability Hypothesis must be able to explain that there is no knowledge-like experience that escapes the terms of the Ability Hypothesis. This is only usual, for as the Ability Hypothesis to be complete and true we must be able to find phenomena for which it purports to explain falling within its conclusions and the axioms of the Hypothesis. In the following section I will demonstrate a case where it seems all the minimal conditions imposed by the Ability Hypothesis apply but we would be inclined to say that the account of the Ability Hypothesis has missed something out

The Objection From Blindsight: “Blindsighted Frank”

I will now turn to what I call the objection to the Ability Hypothesis from Blindsight. Blindsight is the clinically discovered phenomenon of patients reporting to be blind in all or some of their visual field, but still being able to respond to stimulus when being compelled to make a choice or decision about the stimulus in front of them. (Weiskrantz, 1990) Anecdotally, a particularly brilliant patient being asked what object was in their blind field could respond with large amounts of accuracy whether it was a pen, orange or any one of a large pool other everyday household objects. Statistically, the patients’ ability to “guess” what was in their blind field was significant enough to conclude that they were “seeing” the objects but without any of the phenomenal vision usually associated with sight in normal healthy patients. Yet all of this behaviour goes on without a conscious visual analogue of the scene occurring directly infront of them. A type of visual analogue is created of the scene in front of them, through extrastirate areas, rather than the striate cortex or “V1″ (the usual site of visual processing). The damage to V1 curiously leads to a lack of conscious visual recognition, but evidence suggests vision analogues are created in the areas around V1. But this is not a conscious visual analogue.

Recall the Ability Hypothesis. In the following example I will argue it is possible for a blindsight patient to have all of the aspects required to satisfy The Ability Hypothesis, yet something in the account of the ability hypothesis is missing. Blindsight is best thought of as the sort of visual analogue a complex pattern recognising computer, or fruitfly would create when responding to visual stimulus infront of them. In Blindsight patients, we have the curious result a vision analogue is created by a complicated network of neurons, and has its own logic, but fails to feed into the parts of the brain responsible for conscious recognition. Now for an example:

Imagine Frank a blindsight patient whose unconscious vision analogue is as behaviourally sound as a person with a fully functional V1. Perhaps Franks blindsight has been caused by precise neurosurgery to V1 that disconnects all conscious analogues of vision from V1. Frank can call whatever he is seeing in front of him by being forced to make intuitions about the scene. More than that, he can give quite complete descriptions of the scene before him, they don’t have to be Proustian, but perhaps, he could draw the scene like a child could from intuition about where the lines should go. It is quite clear to us that Frank has an ability to respond to his environment quite similar to any normal person. He can talk about what is infront of him, paint it, reflex to objects coming at him, can cross the road etc. All faculties of his brain can access the incoming visual information except the one that produces the “what it is like” aspect. It seems, his ability is astounding, and if it weren’t for Franks own verbal reporting no one but his Neurosurgeon would be able to tell he was blindsighted.

Franks case is both logically and physically conceivable. It seems Frank has the ability of a person with sight, yet lacks Qualia. If a case amazing as Franks’ were to occur, the only way for us to know apart from a brain scan, would be by them to report that they had no conscious experience. By isolating all possible modes of detecting this lack of ability, the information would have to come from one place. Frank, in other words, would have to invoke the thesis of Phenomenal Information in order to convince sceptical doctors to give him a brainscan to convince them that he had anything than fully normal ability. Therefore the Ability Hypothesis is incomplete.

By the argument above if we accept David Lewis argument about the mutual exclusiveness of the Phenomenal Information Hypothesis and the Ability Hypothesis, then the Ability Hypothesis is not just incomplete, but false.

“A Way To Miss The Point”

Let me air one obvious objection from the Ability Hypothesis. Frank is simply reporting the lack of this ability of conscious ability to process the representation information not a lack of phenomenal information! It is true that the mere fact they are reporting internally present information does not in itself refute blind sight, indeed there are cases which are only determined by the reporting of the patient that they literally “see nothing” (Weiskrantz, 1990). The conclusion of the ability hypothesis holds.

The problem arises however, that if the patient can lack conscious ability, what is the aspect of this ability they are lacking? It is not representation, since representation can be abstract as a pattern making machine. Let me quote (Lewis, 1983) on this point

“Imagine a smart data bank. It can be told things, it can store the information it is given, it can reason with it, it can answer questions on the basis of its stored information. Now imagine a pattern-recognizing device that works as follows. When exposed to a pattern it makes a sort of template, which it then applied to patterns presented to it in future. Now imagine one device with both faculties, rather like a clock radio. There is no reason to think that any such device must have a third faculty: a faculty of making templates for patterns it has never been exposed to, using its stored information about these patterns. If it has a full description about a pattern, but no template for it, it lacks an ability but it doesn’t lack information. (Rather, it lacks information in usable form.) When it is show the pattern it makes a template and gains abilities, but it gains no information. We might be rather like that.”

What does this mean for Frank? What is left out by the ability hypothesis is an explanation of why Conscious representation must necessarily be ability to recognize and process information. It is entirely possible that the sort of template creation and making in unconscious parts of the brain that enable blindsight, fits exactly the sort of ability outlined above by Lewis and satisfies what we could call Consciousness (A computer-like structure of neurons in the brain perhaps) as an external observer but fails to have conscious information. Whilst I believe the thesis of property dualism or “Phenomenal Information” must be false, David Lewis and other Ability Hypothesists do not offer an explanation that satisfies an account of lacking conscious ability, and allows future knowledge arguments to be waged analogous to the Mary one. It seems the only way out is to invoke the piece of information, the lack of “something that it is like” that enables Frank to report that they experience nothing.

The Identity Hypothesis

David Lewis’ Argument for ability hypothesis as only alternative to hypothesis of “Phenomenal Information” is not convincing and doesn’t rid it of an objection that Phenomenal Information could determine ability. We are left with two options if we are to grant the intuition of Mary gaining new knowledge and accept the Ability Hypothesis as an explanation of it. We must either accept what Lewis calls the Hypothesis of Phenomenal Information in addition to the minimal requirements of the Ability Hypothesis, or else accept a thesis that experience and “what it is like” is nothing but subjective physical facts. My response favours the latter.

We know that Frank has blindsight because we are told by him “what it is like” for him to see, despite his abilities. It is only through this information that Neuroscientists could form a theory of the neural co-relates of this experience if a case as amazing as Franks were to ever exist. An explanation along the lines of “Neuron X fires to Neuron B” would become a physical theory of this experience, that explains the phenomenon without invoking “spooky qualia” in the same way the observation that the Sun rises every morning is explained by a primitive scientific picture of the solar system, rather than having to invoke a “Sun God”. Phenomenal Facts are Physical Facts about Frank, not the world. For those phenomenal experiences that do relate to the world can be explained by the Ability Hypothesis.

What then does this mean for Mary?

The Ability Hypothesis response holds, but only if we grant that there are physical subjective facts by the Identity Hypothesis. As (Van Gulick, 2004) suggests, concluding that there are physical subjective facts denies the first premise of the knowledge argument, “Mary knows all there is to know about the physical world” (Jackson,. 1982). What the knowledge argument excludes is that within physicalism there might be physical reasons a mind cannot comprehend itself, and thus Mary didn’t know all there is to know about the physical world. This seems only possible if we are to grant physicalism as true.


Chalmers, D. (1996), The Conscious Mind, New York: Oxford University Press. (see pp 144-146 for discussion of the ability hypothesis)

Chuchland, P. M. (2004). Knowing Qualia: A Reply to Jackson (with Postscript: 1997). In N. S. Ludlow, There’s Something About Mary (pp. 163-178). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Churchland, P. (1985). Reduction, Qualia, and the direct introspection of brain states. Journal of Philosophy 82 , 2-28.

Cowey, A. a. (1995). Blindsight in monkeys. Nature 373 , 247 – 249.

Dennett, D. (1991). Consciousness Explained. Boston: Little Brown and Company.

Hardin, C. (1988). Color for Philosophers. Indianpolis: Hackett.

Hofstadter, D. R. (1979). Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Penguin Group.

Jackson, F. (1982), “Epiphenomenal Qualia” Philosophical Quarterly 32, Rpt. in Ludlow, P., Nagasawa, Y., Stoljar, D., ed., (2004) There’s Something About Mary, MIT University Press.

Jackson, F. (2004) & (1998), “Postscript on Qualia” Mind, Method, and Conditionals (London: Routledge) Rpt. in Ludlow, P., Nagasawa, Y., Stoljar, D., ed., (2004) There’s Something About Mary, MIT University Press.

Lewis, D. (1983). “Postscript to Mad Pain and Martian Pain”. In Philosophical Papers Vol.1 (pp. 131-132). New York: Oxford University Press.

Lewis, D. (1988), “What Experience Teaches” In Proceedings of the Russellian Society. Sydney: University of Sydney. Rpt. in Ludlow, P., Nagasawa, Y., Stoljar, D., ed., (2004) There’s Something About Mary, MIT University Press.

Nemirow, L. (1990), “Physicalism and the Cognitive Role of Aquaintance” in Mind and Cognition, Lycan, W., ed., Oxford:Blackwell

Petit, P. (2004). “Motion Blindness and the Knowledge Argument”. In N. S. Ludlow, There’s Something About Mary (pp. 106-142). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Ramachandran (2003) – Ramachandran, V.S. and Edward M. Hubbard. “More Common Questions about Synesthesia”. Scientific American online. ( April 14, 2003. URL accessed 26-04-2008

Tye, M. (1986). “The Subjective Qualities of Experience.” Mind 95 , 1-17.

Van Gulick, R., (2004), “So Many Ways of Saying No to Mary” in Ludlow, P.,

Tye, M., (2000), “Knowing What It Is Like: The Ability Hypothesis and the Knowledge Argument,” in Consciousness, Color and Content. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. Rpt. in Ludlow, P., Nagasawa, Y., Stoljar, D., ed., (2004) There’s Something About Mary, MIT University Press.

Nagasawa, Y., Stoljar, D., ed.,There’s Something About Mary, MIT University Press.

Weiskrantz, L. (1990). Blindsight: A Case Study and Its Implications. USA: Oxford University Press.

Bibliography (Stuff I am aware exists but I can’t get access to).

(Articles in this area I am aware talk about the issues discussed in this essay, but for some reason or another cannot access to, if you have a copy, please send me one :-)

Blindsight and The Ability Hypothesis

Bigelow, J. and Pargetter, R. (1990), “Acquaintance with Qualia”, Theoria 61

Seager, W. (1991), Metaphysics of Consciousness. New York: Routledge.

A Defence of the Ability Hypothesis to the Blind Sight Objection

Raymont, P. (1999), “The Know-How Response to Jackson’s Knowledge Argument”, Journal of Philosophical Research 24

The entries on blindsight above were pointed out to me by Torin Alter’s Bibliography on the Knowledge Argument at accessed 27/4/2008

On the political expediency of the notion of ‘stability’.

Right now in Australia, the governing Labor party is embroiled in a leadership contest that ‘is shaking the nation’. Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd face off for the Prime Minister of Australia tomorrow, Monday, by internal caucus vote. The media commentary is homogenous: Australians are tired, of all things, endless infighting in the Labor party. We are tired of ‘faceless men’ who decide party leadership. All ‘we’ want is ‘stable government’.

Let us consider for a moment, what is meant by this stability. By stable government, the media and politicians mean an orthodoxy, a government in power, delivering legislation ‘on behalf of the Australian people’, a government with a mandate, free to carry out an agenda, without contests in the media, in the open. What they mean by a stable government is what government in Australia has looked like for 20 years or so.

The line in voxpops on the evening news and opinion in the media is consistent: This ‘leadership battle’ has ‘us’ the Australian people as it’s ‘casualties’. Us poor middle-class Australians.

Perhaps if we are strong Labor supporters, or slightly left of centre, we might despise this contest for what it is doing to opposition leader Tony Abbott, making him seem like a stable pair of hands, when he is likely to deliver a government to the right of even former Prime Minister Howard.

The ability of the media to provide an analysis that gives us what we think that we think is insidious. It’s at the point where any reasonably intelligent person can read a major paper provided by Fairfax or News Limited and we have a list of ready stocked political positions that will be aired at middle class dinner tables across Australia. Is that really what you think or did you read it in the Herald?

What I am about to say will be obvious to many non-Australian readers familiar with the diplomatic cables, but if you are Australian, it might sound normative and politically opinionated: The idea of stability in Australian politics is nothing but a view held by business and spread by the media to the enfranchised middle class. The middle class hold this opinion because they have little experience of instability, they take the notion of ‘stability’ as descriptive of ‘Australian life’. Business holds the view stability is better as a norm, because political contest means speculative capital is subject to uncertainty. What is a contingent value to the business community, becomes a descriptive reality to the middle class. Herein is one way political discourse functions.

Consider the last 20 years of Chinese government ‘stability’. Stability in China has meant almost 10% growth year on year, the creation of jobs, the raising of standards of living, all with a strong consensus and widespread support from the Chinese middle classes for the Government. This support has come because the factions in the ruling Communist Party has provided government that provides jobs, cars, houses, economic development and education for a new middle-class. But from the outside looking in, the problems in China are obvious, thanks to the media reporting these issues. The repression of Tibetan cultural life, the increasing poverty of peasant farmers still living under the communist system, the repression of Falun Dafa, the violence against demonstrators in Turkestan, efforts to undermine independent labour unions, lack of free speech imprisoning writers, etc. The differing notions of stability is obvious. Stability to the Chinese middle class is instability to many.

To Australians, I’d like you to consider that for each of us invested in the notion of our parliamentary democracy being stable and continuing to offer a large amount of people the chance at a house, a car, a job and continued economic growth, there is also a person in China wishing every bit as passionately for the future stability of their government as we do with ours. Of course, the chi are by and large unaware or do not empathise with the victims of Chinese repression. This isn’t to pass judgement on whether the oppression in China is better or worse than the oppression the Australian government is responsible for, merely to consider the world from a different point of view.

From the outside, looking in, the last 20 years of Australian governance has meant nothing other than the grossest and most inhuman instability to the rest of the world, and our poorest citizens.

Let’s go 20 years back and start in 1990, ‘stability’ has meant: the first Gulf War, support for sanctions on Iraq that by the Unicef’s statistics killed 500,000 children under the age of five and between 1 jan 1997 and start of 1999 saw 200,000 combat sorties flown over Iraq, the invasion of Afghanistan that has no end in sight and has lasted over 10 years and the war in Iraq, a domestic military intervention in the Northern Territory that saw the military deployed against our own citizens, the suspension of the racial discrimination act and the resulting queues for ‘basics card’ holder and ‘normal welfare’ recipients, that amounts to a queue for blacks and a queue for whites in welfare offices all over the regions of the intervention in the Northern Territory. In the future, what does stability mean? Support for a US invasion of Iran, sanctions.

Are we suffering under a leadership contest, or perhaps, do we suffer more under what is called ‘stability’? What this leadership contest means in parliament is nothing but political contest, something we need more of, not less. It’s the similarities that are never talked about in Australia, much like political differences are never talked about in China. Political contest to business means uncertainty about what policies there will be thus less chance to speculate or invest in the policies that are handed to them.

Seen this way, stability, an apparently neutral and universal value, is really only in the interests of what a certain segment of society. In the context of geopolitics, it’s as neutral as the word ‘security’. When we talk of ‘us’, and ‘our’ need for stable government, this sort of stability is nothing but a politically expedient notion which we believe in order to maintain the status quo. This ‘leadership battle’ and it’s ‘casualties’, isn’t a real battle and the casualties don’t exist. Stability means real war, real casualties. We don’t want stability, we want contest, we want change.

When the vote for Labor leader and Prime Minister takes place in Canberra on Monday, Australia will receive another ‘stable pair of hands’, that will enfranchise a dominant voice, restore business confidence and continue business as usual. The opposition leader will say otherwise, but it’s the similarities, not the differences that are not talked about in Australian politics.

On ‘Economic Inequality’

What is it that we demand when we demand ‘economic equality’? A charge often leveled at those who demand ‘economic equality’ is that this demand rests on the false premise that there is a finite amount of wealth in the world. The idea being that there is a finite amount of money, and that when someone else has more money, it is at the cost of others having less. I agree with right-wing detractors that consider this idea to be false. It is in fact that the world can be ‘richer’, if I create a new computer program spending some hours creating it, and this allows people to exchange information in a manner that was previously impossible, the world is richer one extra program, whereas, had I gone to the beach, the world would not have this additional wealth for its benefit.

However, it is completely mistaken to believe that demands for ‘economic equality’ arise from a belief that there is a finite amount of wealth to go around. For those that make the false assumption that there is a finite amount of wealth, it is often because they equate wealth with money, and at any given time, there is a finite amount of money in the world. But much of the ‘wealth’ that we have is created by people and has no monetary exchange value. Consider the time spent by a social worker with a client. This has no monetary exchange taking place, but they add to the wealth of the world by creating a happier human being, that themselves can then go on to spend time on creative activity. Or consider the operating system Linux, it’s code is completely free for anybody to use, read and edit and was created by people in their spare time, and is given away freely. It powers 80% of web-servers. It contributes enormously to the net wealth in the world. A world without Linux is a poorer world. Yet it has no monetary value, there is no finite amount of it, the code may be endlessly duplicated as long as someone needs to use it.

Far from relying on the belief that there is a ‘finite’ amount of wealth in the world, the demand for economic equality acknowledges the power of human creativity to create wealth, and laments that not all humans are so empowered to be able to use their full creative capacity. When a large portion of ones day is spent trying to access food or find a place to sleep when such things could be easily provided, the world looses wealth by not empowering such individuals to exercise their creative capacity.

A WTO and neo-liberal endorsed response to this issue talks about ‘job-creation’, the idea being that such people need to be given a job in which to exercise their creative capacity. The problem with this is that it commits the mistake of equating wealth with money. In an area that industrializes, such as in rural China, people may go from a state of strong family relations, guaranteed land, a reliable schooling and food supply, and free time, things which were previously accessed without money, into a city where these things are no longer guaranteed the only way to access these things becomes through monetary means. On the books these people are ‘richer’ because they earn more money, but in fact their net wealth may have declined, and they then become absolutely tied to work.

When the left demands ‘Economic Equality’, they are not demanding a redistribution of money, or a so called ‘trickle-down’, they are demanding that people be given a state of living in which they may be free to exercise their natural creative capacities, and not compelled to in order to survive.

So when the left talks about wealth redistribution, they are really talking about redistributing the power to create wealth evenly, so that every human being may have the chance to act upon the world, and do what they think is right and most valuable. Ultimately, this leads to a wealthier world, and a more efficient system.

The websites of major Syrian cities have been pwnd by Anonymous

As I write this the websites of most of the major cities in Syria have been defaced by Anonymous in support of the movement against Assad’s government.



Some of these websites included a link to a pdf with information about how to stay secure online if you are a Syrian dissident.

I was originally alerted by

How to find pleasurable things to do.

John Stuart Mill suggest the following test (paraphrased from memory):

Look at those people that have experienced the things that you find pleasurable and things that you have not experienced. Find the subset of those people that consider the things you have not tried more pleasurable than the things that you have tried. Emulate the habits of those people.

Viewing the utilitarian imperative, to maximize pleasure, this way seems to erase the idea that utilitarianism is simply about seeking base pleasures. For instance, find people that have both engaged in watching television as often as reading for pleasure, those who read report it being more pleasurable, those who engage in work rather than ease report it being more satisfying, those who run with regularity report there being a ‘runners high’ that approaches sex in enjoyment.

‘Limit 12 per customer’

Why does the grocery store have an express checkout with the sign that says ‘limit 12 per customer’.

One hypothesis is that it is in order to make sure the line remains fast, and people could quickly leave the store. But, if you notice, the express line is always the same speed as the other lines. There are more people at the line because it is ‘express’ and each individual coming to line up attempts to optimize for time anyway so the lines are roughly take the same line to get to the front.

Limit 12. So, what, 14 and they don’t take you? 8 and they do? Should you get 14 and go to the other line or get 8 and go to the express line?

As soon as you are thinking this the sign has worked. 8 items! But before you were probably just coming to get milk and bread. You have been primed.

The true purpose of the sign reveals itself.

This is just an example of how suggesting that you make a decision can lead you do doing things that you would not usually do and is an excellent example of how ‘choice’ is different in kind from freedom.