Book review: Two excellent books

I've just finished reading two excellent books.  Both are highly recommended.

The first one happened because at the moment Mulan is writing an essay for school.  She has to choose four works that are connected by a single theme, so I was enlisted to give her reading suggestions.

With works and theme completely open, Mulan had a hard time narrowing her choices.  First up, she chose Dune as her first book (she simply likes the book).  She then needed a theme, and eventually settled on fictional works in which the author has a political intent.

Over the school holidays, while we were Covid-isolating, I scanned our home bookshelves and gave Mulan:

• Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
• Animal Farm, by George Orwell
• The Plague, by Albert Camus
• Erewhon, by Samuel Butler
• Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy
• and a little later, Sophie's World, by Jostein Gaarder

(She had already read a couple of these, and she read the others during our family lockdown.)

Why did I give Sophie's World later?  Because I wanted to read it first!  While I'd heard great things about it, I'd never got around to reading it.

What stands out for me is that it's a very cleverly written book.

First up, Gaarder attempts to explain the history of Western thought, from the pre-Socratics through to the existentialists, to teenagers!

Yeah, how many teens are going to want to read a textbook on Parmenides, Aquinas, Hegel, Sartre and so on?!

So, the first clever bit is that we meet soon-to-be-15-year-old Sophie, who starts getting mysterious letters from an unknown person.

The letter-writer turns out to be a philosophy teacher, who posts mini-lectures to Sophie, and we get interested in the dryer details of Plato, Aristotle and so on because Sophie gets interested in them.  We also have the mystery of who this teacher really is and how/why he is writing to Sophie.

But just as we're getting comfortable in Sophie's world, and getting to know the teacher, Alberto, we are introduced to another almost-15-year-old, Hilde, and her father who works for the UN in Lebanon.  But there's definitely weird, spooky stuff happening in Sophie's world.

By halfway through the book our philosophy lessons have moved through the ages and we're dealing with issues such as how-much-can-we-really-know and what-is-ultimate-reality-really-like in Descartes, Kant, Berkeley, and so on.

And then we get to the first of the two main twists in the story.  Without giving too much away, what we have in places is a book within a book, with the author teaching his readers via another author teaching his reader via another author teaching his reader.

What I especially like is how Gaarder is able to clearly explain the challenging ideas of these brilliant historical people in ways that can connect with normal life.  A big part of the story is the connection between the mini-lectures and Sophie's experiences in her world.  The ideas are made real to the reader (while at the same time challenging the reader to think about what is really real!).

If I was to be picky I might occasionally critique Gaarder's understanding of some of the ideas, what the historical writers were really saying, and which historical writers should be covered.

But at heart, this is an introductory book for complete beginners.  Of necessity it's sometimes going to be cartoon versions of the complex ideas.  But the historical names are the standard ones that all undergraduate philosophy students should be comfortably familiar with.  For any teens who like this kind of stuff the book will give them a head start before they enter university.

Most importantly though, this book is essential reading for all teens, to help them enter, and become participants in, that long conversation of human thinking.

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The second book I've just finished reading is Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True, which I borrowed from the local library.

Reminiscing alert: I distinctly remember, back when I was 12, a conversation I had with a school friend.

I'd grown up in a moderately conservative Christian family, and it was simply part of my unquestioned worldview that God created the world from nothing.  I'd never even considered any other possibility than that he'd formed the plants and animals and us at some unspecified time in the past.

But somehow, and in some way, by the time I was 12 I'd heard about evolution, that humans had evolved from other animals rather than being created.  To me at the time it was a weird and curious new idea, so I mentioned it to my friend one day.  He just looked at me like "yeah, of course."

His reaction made a lasting impression, because his apparent "of course evolution" made me reflect on my earlier "of course creation."  How is it that we can have opposite reactions when we both live in the same world and see the same things?

A sizable chunk of the next 15 years of thought for me was reconciling this and reorienting my worldview to match the best evidence.  It was about spending time listening to experts.

Coyne, as a biologist, is one of those experts.  His 2009 book is an excellent summary of the evidence.

In multiple ways, with innumerable examples, Coyne explains how the physical evidence around us perfectly fits the theory of evolution by natural selection.  In fact it fits so perfectly that for practical purposes we can call it true, and we can treat it as true to the same extent that we can treat atoms, gravity and germs as true.  Its predictive and explanatory power has been extremely successful.

He also explains why the physical evidence does not fit creationism.  A big part of this is showing how biological structures are often imperfect and non-ideal make-do add-ons and adaptations of existing structures.  In multiple ways they are not what we would expect to see if biological creatures were made fresh from nothing.  Instead, they're exactly what we'd expect to see if creatures evolved.

Coyne plausibly replies to creationist objections against evolution, showing how the objections fail to disprove evolution.

All of this is written in a very readable way for non-experts like myself.  It was an enjoyable read, with plenty of examples well-picked to fit the clear and explicitly labeled argumentative structure.

I'd picked this book to read, in part because I occasionally browse Coyne's blog, but also because P Z Myers, who is also a biologist, recently again recommended Coyne's book.  (Here's Myers' review back in 2008.)

What Coyne's book reinforced for me is that the world around us shows abundantly that the only way creationism could be true is if God was a malicious trickster-god.  Firstly, if God exists he must have intentionally set things up to try to fool us with all the evolutionary evidence, and secondly he must have intentionally set things up to cause lots of unnecessary pain and suffering in his creation.  In the very unlikely event that a personal creator-God exists, his creation shows us that he's in no way worthy of worship.

Again, I'd recommend this book for all teens and up, and especially those who are interested in science and religion but prefer to get their facts right.

Book review: Humankind

Rutger Bregman's latest book, Humankind: A hopeful history, is popular at the Auckland library right now.

I requested it months ago, have only just finished reading it in my allotted time, and I have to return it in a few minutes for the next person in the queue.

It's understandable.  Bregman's book is a great read, and I highly recommend it.

Last year I read Bregman's other well-known book, Utopia for Realists, and I reviewed it here.

Humankind continues in the same style as Utopia, as a super-easy-to-read yet thought-provoking and occasionally challenging evidence-based approach to modern political issues.

If we could sum up Bregman's thesis in two words, it would be "be kind."  He then spends 400 pages explaining why, with reasons from history and science.

But at heart, as I see it, Bregman's book is motivational and inspirational.  It's written in a style that creates an optimistic feel in the reader (or at least in me!), that doing the decent thing is okay.  Despite the occasional toxicity, despite the cynicism from naysayers, and despite the occasional loss, being kind is the most successful approach to life. 

Bregman dives into the human nature debate, coming out on the side of Rousseau et al that human nature is basically good, and that often civilisation corrupts our basic goodness.  He argues against the mainstream "cynical" view that humans are naturally selfish and individualistic, and that we need rules and order to minimise conflict.

But the issue is complicated, because human nature is complicated, and Bregman also discusses that.

Bregman argues that, contrary to the cynics, the real "realist" approach to life is to accept the solid evidence that humans are actually pretty decent and kind, for the most part.

Bregman goes through many of the psychological studies on this, such as the prison experiment, the shock machine, and the boys camp.  He also discusses William Golding's fictional story, Lord of the Flies (I discuss this here).  He points out the flaws in these studies and stories, and why they don't show that human nature is bad.  He gives a bit of evolutionary psychology and early-human anthropology.

Bregman then turns to some practical social and political implications for this positive view of human nature.

To sum it up very quickly, Bregman is a minimalist when it comes to management and political oversight.  He thinks that in many situations we would do better to have fewer controls and less managerial involvement.

He discusses the prison system, examining the evidence that shows that the "tough" approach simply doesn't work.  Stricter policing, harsher penalties, and stricter prisons result in higher economic and social costs for all concerned.

Similarly, he also discusses education, management, healthcare, etc, with plenty of case studies to show that a more hands-off management style works better and more efficiently.

Bregman, as a historian, has done his research on this, and he fills the back section of the book with plenty of references to studies and evidence.

We could quibble about some of the details, but I really don't want to.

This is because I think that the most important thing is creating the right mindset.  Bregman's book is about doing just that.  If we have a pessimistic outlook on life, and if we distrust those around us, then we create a society that reflects that.  But if we have an optimistic outlook on life, and assume the best of people, then we create a society that is better for us all.

(I have to say, one quibble I have is that Bregman assumes that Machiavelli was Machiavellian.  It's a shame that Bregman didn't read Erica Benner on this -- I reviewed Benner's book a few months ago.)

Right, time to dash off to the library and return the book!

Philanthropy

 This is a very useful article about philanthropy.

As Brian Leiter rightly points out when commenting on this article,

There should be no need for philanthropy; the state should impose an essentially confiscatory tax on all income and wealth above some appropriate threshhold ($10 million?  25 million?).  Then we could have a civilized society!

As I've said before, I like the idea of an inheritance tax acting as this essentially confiscatory tax.

Money makes money, and inter-generational wealth often grows from merely being there and not because of any special ability/effort of the children of wealthy parents.

As I see it, wealthy parents deserve, and have the right, to give a comfortable life to their children.  But excessive inter-generational wealth creates many social problems and harms.

My suggestion is that each child receives an inheritance of something like at most 100 years times the median yearly income (in New Zealand this is currently 100 x $52,000 = $5.2 million), and then any remaining assets are 100% taken as tax.

This inheritance would still be enough so that all children of super-rich parents wouldn't have to work a day in their lives, and could comfortably live off their parents' money.  For example, they could have a $2 million home, and then invest the remaining $3 million, with a simple 5% return giving them $150,000 a year to live on.  These children would still be comfortably in the rich category without working at all.

I read that Donald Trump inherited over US$413 million.  I wonder what the world would be like if he had been given just one or two percent of that and then lived his life in comfortable, lazy obscurity.

Freedom to not wear a mask?

P Z Myers posted this.  It's too good to not re-post it here.

Driverless cars

This is a fun and thought-provoking series of questions about driverless cars (I just did it together with Mama).

If you click on the link you must decide whether a driverless car, in which the brakes have failed, should smash into this or smash into that.  Whichever option you choose, someone (or at least an imaginary someone) will die.

Philosophers like to call these sorts of questions "trolley problems", and historically there have been mixed opinions about the usefulness of them.  To some people, they are too artificial to be meaningful for real life -- all the rich, relevant, real-life information has been abstracted out to the point of uselessness.  To other people, they allow us to clarify which values and principles are important -- all the distractions have been abstracted out, leaving us with the relevant hard questions.

But whatever the case about that, these days with the way driverless car technology is rapidly improving, many people see trolley problems as directly relevant to the programming of driverless cars.

If a human is at the wheel of a car that is having an unavoidable crash, we don't expect that person to have perfect reactions and thought processes regarding where they should steer the car.  People are excused as just reacting in the moment.

But when we have a driverless car, there is no such thing as reacting in the moment.  Its reactions cannot be excused.  How it reacts depends on the pre-crash programming, which was consciously encoded weeks/months/years in advance.

As a society, we have choices about what values and principles we encode into driverless cars.  In an unavoidable accident:

• should we prioritise humans over non-human animals?
• should we prioritise more lives over fewer lives?
• should we prioritise passengers or pedestrians?
• should we prioritise law-abiders over law-flouters?
• should we prioritise old people or children?

Face recognition technology may even make it possible for us to identify each person involved in the accident in progress:

• should we prioritise doctors over criminals?
• should people have a "social usefulness" ranking, which determines who gets hit in an unavoidable accident?

As a society, we also have choices about who chooses which values and principles to be encoded into driverless cars.

• should it be entirely up to each for-profit car manufacturer?
• or should there be some sort of government regulation/standardisation?
• should the general population be consulted?
• or should experts decide (who counts as an expert?)?
• should the algorithms be publicly available to everyone, or should they be hidden by corporations or ministries?

Lots of very tricky questions.

And it is important to remember that there are no value-neutral, purely objective mathematical algorithms here.  Whatever algorithms are encoded into driverless cars, they will include the values of those in charge of encoding them.

Here is an article introducing some of the results of the above-linked series of questions.

I've taught this topic a few times to critical thinking students.  I often show them bits of YouTube videos, such as from this, this, this and this.

Crash Course Philosophy

Just over a year ago I mentioned that I was using the video series Ethics Matters with a couple of my paying young-teen students (both teens separately, as one-to-one students).  We finished it a few months ago.

It is an excellent series and it was well worth the time spent on it.  There are 12 12-minute videos in the series.  It took us about 24 one-hour lessons to go through it all.  We'd stop and start the videos, discussing the content as we went.

With one of the students (who prefers to learn through videos rather than books) I have now started working through Crash Course Philosophy, which is 46 10-ish-minute videos.  After 12 lessons we are now partway through #12 in the series.

From what I see of the series so far, it is like someone has looked at the standard first-year university philosophy courses (metaphysics/epistemology, ethics, logic) and grabbed the topics covered.  Each episode then summarises in ten minutes what might have been an hour-long lecture plus readings.

Honestly, Crash Course Philosophy is not nearly as good as Ethics Matters.  In general I really like Crash Course (I've written about it before here), and while their philosophy series is not bad, it doesn't have quite the same sharpness that Ethics Matters has.  The presenter, Hank Green, is very smart and well-read, but it is clear that he has not had much philosophical training and his logical reasoning is sometimes not quite so spot on.  He misses things and blurs things every once in a while.  It really is a shame that they didn't get a trained philosopher in to head the series.

I plan to continue with Crash Course Philosophy with this student, and I recommend it as a nice introduction/advertisement for philosophy, but, yeah, Ethics Matters is still my favourite teen-level online teaching video series.

Book review: The Neverending Story

I finished reading aloud The Neverending Story (Michael Ende) to the girls last night.

It is a complicated, multi-layered, thought-provoking book, which also manages the double-task of being an un-put-down-ably exciting story.  I completely and utterly recommend it to everyone.  It definitely deserves to be on the list of the world's great novels.

If you have watched the movie, but not read the book, then don't be mislead -- the movie is less than half the book, and completely misses the heart and soul of the book.

Giving this sort of open-ended praise for the book, as above, is easy.  What is more challenging is trying to review the specifics of the book.  Saying too much will definitely spoil it for those who haven't read it.  Each idea and aspect of the book builds on previous twists, which really shouldn't be revealed until you have read it.

So, what can I say?

The story is centrally about a boy, Bastian Balthazar Bux, who has an unhappy life.  His mother died, and his father is grieving and distant.  He is fat and awkward, and gets teased by his peers.  While getting chased by bullies he stumbles into a bookshop where, after talking with the owner for a while, he steals an interesting-looking book.  He is late for school and wags class, hiding in the school attic to read the book he stole.

The book Bastian reads is The Neverending Story, an adventure story about a strong, heroic boy, around his own age, who is trying to save his world from destruction.  And thus we, as readers, start to read a book within a book.

And I had better stop there with the retelling.  Any more than that will spoil the amazing twists and turns that happen next.

Except to say that Michael Ende's father was one of Germany's first Surrealist painters.  And that is worth mentioning.  I encourage you to read up on Andre Breton, the founder of Surrealism, and Dada, one of the big influences on Surrealism.  Understanding the reasoning behind these artistic movements will give even more depth to this book.

Alongside reading this book to Mulan and Miya, I have been wanting to recognise that if Mulan were going to school she would have started intermediate school this year.  Amongst other things, I have been trying to think of ways for Mulan to start writing responses to set questions, rather than simply free writing as she typically does.

So, for this book, my first set writing task for Mulan was to get her to write a creative "what happens next" piece.  This was at a point in the book, about halfway, where it was particularly open-ended (I won't say where or what, as it would spoil things if you haven't read it).  Mulan wrote a few pages, very fluently continuing the story as she saw it (Mulan's continuation was very different from the actual story).

This morning, I explained to Mulan that I would now like her to write more of an essay-style piece, reviewing the book and perhaps comparing her story with the actual book.  Mulan looked a bit worried/shocked at the thought of doing this, so she might need some encouragement/nagging.  But I know she has lots of opinions on this, as she was often talking about it as we were reading together.  It will just be a matter of getting her to order her ideas in her head and get them onto paper.  We'll see what happens.

Introduction to ethics

The TV series Ethics Matters is a really good basic introduction to some of the key issues in Ethics.  I highly recommend it.

It  is currently a series of 12 12-minute videos, each of which introduces a different topic/issue in ethics, such as the environment, nationalism, justice, rights, religion, freedom, etc.

I've decided to start using these videos with my critical thinking / philosophy students (young teens).  We watch the videos together, stopping and starting them and discussing it along the way.  So far it is working well.

P4C: Fairness and sharing the burdens

Two days ago, I did an English-language P4C lesson with the six children (Mulan, Miya and the cousins).

Since we have been doing a lot of walking lately, I decided to do an activity that gets them thinking about what is the fairest way to share the carrying burdens.

Unschooler-style, I left six copies of the dialogue (the first page of the above-linked pdf) sitting on the floor of the children’s play area.  As I put it down, I casually said to the children that they could look through it if they want.  On one of the pages, I had written out a suggestion of who could read which lines in the dialogue.

I then left the children to continue their free play.

A little later, I heard the children reading through the dialogue out loud, with each child taking the parts that I had suggested.  Soon after, Mulan came to me and said they were ready to do it with me.  So, we all sat down together on the floor in the playroom.

I had done no other preparation for this lesson, so everything that followed was just off the top of my head.

I started with some general points of clarification, just to make sure they understood the background.  I asked if they knew where Edinburgh was, who the Duke of Edinburgh is, and what is the Duke of Edinburgh Award.

They didn’t know much about this (one thought Edinburgh is in England), so I talked about these three things for a few minutes.  I concluded by saying that the award is an international skills-based learning programme for teenagers.  They can do it in New Zealand.  The teenagers in the dialogue are doing a tramping expedition as part of the requirements of the award.

The children then read through the dialogue together.  Each of them had circled on their own paper the lines they were saying, so it went smoothly (I helped Miya say her line and Cousin Rosa helped the youngest cousin, who is still learning to read).

I asked for a volunteer to be in charge of the blackboard, and Mulan was eager, so I asked her to write out the names of all the characters, which she happily and neatly did.

Once that was done, we discussed each characters’ ideas in turn, and I summarised their main thoughts on the blackboard.  This naturally turned into a general discussion about each of those ideas, and the reasons for and against each idea of fairness.

I think the main point of this activity was to introduce to the children the possibility that different people could have different ideas about fairness.  All too often, a child will shout out, “it’s just not fair!”, and when they do this, they usually assume that it is their idea of how things should be which the fair one and what is actually happening is precisely not fair.  So I wasn’t too worried that we didn’t get into a lot of depth in our conversation.

If they could see that several different views could all potentially be seen as fair, depending on which values we prioritise, then in my eyes the lesson was a success.  Looking at the reasons for and against in more detail can wait until another lesson.

Finally, I selected out four of the views I had written on the blackboard (even though there were plenty more possible ideas):

• Aaron: everyone carries exactly the same weight
• Jeb: base it on money, so that people (the richest?) can buy their way out of contributing
• Charlie: start out the same weight then change when some start to struggle with their load
• Frank: people who can do more, do more from the beginning; those who need more help receive it from the beginning

I allocated each of the four corners of the room one of the four views.  We all then stood up and walked around the room in a circle.  When I said go, the children had to go to the corner that they most agreed with.

Well, this was a nice idea, except that some of us forgot which corner was for which view!  (I should have put a sign at each corner, but I was too lazy!!)  Only one person (Cousin Rosa) remembered, and went to her preferred corner.  So, we had to ask her which view was each corner.  Once she told us, everyone followed her into her chosen corner.

They had all preferred Frank’s idea.  (Or was it that they all preferred Cousin Rosa’s idea?)

I asked them if they had heard of Karl Marx.  No one had.  I pointed out that, similar to Frank, his view of fairness is “from each according to his ability; to each according to his need”.  They all thought this was quite sensible.

Hehe, all our children are Marxists!

In the evening, after the other adults came home, the children performed the play for us.  In the middle of their “stage”, they set up a mountain made of cushions and soft toys, and at the end of the play they all piled on top of it.

AAIP: Introduction

FYI and FWIW, AAIP is short for Alien Adventures inPhilosophy.  AAIP is a “philosophy in role” programme.

We decided that instead of doing one-off P4C lessons, we would do one activity each week of AAIP.  Mostly, this means that I don’t have to do too much work looking for, or creating, one-off lessons each week.  The pdf I linked to above should give us about three months of lessons (after that, I may write some more lessons using the same thematic template).

We also decided to only do the lesson in Chinese (my Big Sis’s children won’t join in).  This is mostly to give Mulan some Chinese time with her friends, rather than spending all her time with the cousins.

We did Activity 1 yesterday.  It didn’t have a lot of philosophical content, so I wasn’t needed much.  All I did was suggest to Mama a few activity ideas before the lesson, and then she took charge of the rest.  From what I overheard, it all went very well.

The class consisted of Mulan and three friends.  Miya was there for a bit, too, but very soon she decided that she preferred having some one-to-one quality time with me.  She and I had a snack, tidied the kitchen, and played hairdressers together.

In addition to following the lesson structure given in the pdf, we decided to expand the astronomy discussion.  Mama led a discussion on the solar system—naming and locating the planets and moons, discussing orbits and rotations and picking out interesting features of the planets.  They acted out being planets circling around a central sun.  Office chairs helped emulate planetary rotations and movements.

After that, they drew pictures of planets and aliens.  The children introduced their ideas, explaining the features of their planet and the types of aliens that lived on them.  One child had an ice planet, with ice-aliens.  Another was a fire planet.  Another was a spiky planet.  Mulan’s was a rain planet and the aliens were rainbow coloured.  Each child seemed to think it important for their aliens to have some sort of weapon.  Mulan said that her alien had long eyelashes which can shoot out and spike the enemy.  There was an arms race between the ice and fire aliens, and both creators claimed that their aliens were robust enough to withstand the opposing forces of the other.

Next Monday is a public holiday.  We will continue with Activity 2 in two weeks time.

P4C: Happiness

Today we did another P4C (philosophy for children) class.

This time, we had eight students—Mulan, Miya, two friends from last week, and my Big Sis’ four children.  The translations back and forth between the non-Chinese speakers and the non-English speakers slowed the conversation down a little, and it meant that the adult translator had a little too much power, but, despite this, it still went pretty well.

When preparing the lesson, I thought it would work best if we got the children to initially work in two separate groups, with me facilitating the English speakers and Mama facilitating the Chinese speakers.  Then at the end we could join together to discuss the findings.  So, with this in mind, I chose a small group based “In or Out” activity called What do you need to be happy?.

Each group was given 16 cards.  Each card had a picture on it of something that we possibly need to be happy, such as family, laughter, holidays, food, cars, and so on.  All 16 cards were dropped inside a circle drawn on the floor (a chalk circle on the tile floor—easy to wipe off!).

The task for each group was to decide whether each card should be inside or outside the circle.  Cards should stay inside if the group agreed that it was something we need for us to be happy.  Cards should be taken out of the circle if the group agreed that it was something that we don’t need to be happy.

Some cards were ones in which everyone agreed weren’t needed for us to be happy.  Everyone quickly agreed to throw out things like TV and cars.  And some cards were all ones in which everyone agreed were needed for us to be happy.  Everyone agreed to keep things like food and water.

But many of the other cards were debateable.  And on these debateable points, they needed to give reasons for their opinions.  This turned out to be quite hard for some, and there was often an initial tendency for them to go back and forth with “we can be happy without X” and “no, we can’t, we need X to be happy”.  So, as the facilitator, I needed to try to extract something more.  One way was to ask them to give stories about someone who doesn’t have X and then to consider whether such a person could possibly be happy.  For example, could a person who doesn’t laugh still be happy on the inside, or will a happy person always show it with laughter?  Or, is it possible for a deaf person, who can’t hear music, to be happy?

Good discussions were had, and lots of interesting points were made.

We then returned to the big group, and compared answers between the two smaller groups.  Mama had to act as translator.

It seems that everyone agreed that if we don’t have the basics for survival, such as food and water, we can’t be happy.

But one interesting finding was that the English-speaking group (my Big Sis’ four children), had far fewer cards remaining in their circle than the Chinese-speaking group (Mulan and her two friends).  Apparently, in the Chinese group, Mulan’s two friends thought that many of the “higher” goods, like school, music, laughter and thinking, were necessary for happiness.  Mulan and my Big Sis’ children often disagreed.

With some cards, such as laughter and music, neither side could convince the other.

With some cards, such as school, Mulan’s friends were convinced by the discussion that followed that they could be happy without them.  (Actually, their reasoning was more complex: they thought school led to knowledge, which led to jobs, which led to happiness.  The English-speakers disagreed with every step in this line of reasoning.)

With some cards, such as thinking, the English-speakers were convinced that this was needed to be happy.  (They decided, for example, that it was important to be able to think to decide which games to play, and how to play games.  They had already said that playing was necessary for happiness.)

One of Mulan’s friends liked the game so much that she wanted to ask her parents what they thought; she took home a set of cards with her.

P4C in Chinese

Yesterday, we had a P4C (Philosophy for Children) class in Chinese.  It went well, and we plan for this to be a regular Monday after school event.

Mama had mentioned to a few friends that the girls and I had been doing some P4C lately, and the friends liked the sound of it.  So, in addition to Mulan and Miya, we had three other children (the same age as Mulan) join us.

Earlier in the day, I prepared the lesson.  But Mama took charge of the actual class (with me sitting alongside whispering in her ear when needed).

Again, the lesson we used was inspired by The Philosophy Man.  We took his basic plan here and modified it.  Mama printed off the cards, and wrote the Chinese words for each object on them.

We all sat on the floor in the playroom, and started with introductions.  I had suggested that each child give their name and then say one thing that is not true about themselves.

Mama then briefly said what would be happening in the class.  The main point was that P4C is different from normal school lessons in the same way that storytelling is different from story reading.  In P4C, the children do the storytelling; they are not merely listening to a teacher reading the story.

The rest of the lesson was spent doing various activities with the cards.  Since this was the first lesson, the topics themselves weren’t deeply philosophical.  It was more skills preparation and development.  The main objective was to get the children used to “because-ing”.  That is, giving ideas and then giving reasons for those ideas.  A second objective was to get the children thinking about similarities, differences and categorising.  A third objective was a general one about the P4C environment—getting them used to contributing and listening to others contributions.

These were the activities I listed to do with the cards:

1.      Place all cards face down on the floor in the middle.  Children each choose three cards.  Each child then chooses from their three cards the animal they would most like to be, and in turn they tell the class why they chose it.  They keep that card and return the other cards face down.  Do two rounds of this.

2.      Children each choose three cards.  Each child then chooses from their three cards the animal they would least like to be, and in turn they tell the class why they chose it.  They keep that card and return the other cards face down.  Do two rounds of this.

After this, each child should have four cards.

3.      Noah’s Ark activity.  Someone should briefly tell the Noah’s Ark story, if some children don’t know it.  The ark is just about to depart and there is only space left on the ark for one more pair of animals.  Each child must choose one animal from the four they have.  In turn, they say why they think their animal should be saved.

Put all the cards back in the middle, face down, and mix them up.

4.      Children each choose two cards.  In turn, they give three similarities between the two animals.  Return the cards.

5.      Children each choose two cards.  In turn, they give three differences between the two animals.  Return the cards.

6.      Children each choose two cards.  In turn, they choose whether to give three similarities or differences between the two animals.  Return the cards.

7.      Children each choose two cards.  In turn, they say how their pair of animals could be related to each other (A eats B, A is a pet of B, A is cuter than B, etc). Return the cards.

8.      Turn all the cards face up in the middle.  Get the children to work together to sort them into categories (eg, size, or type, etc).  All animal cards need to be categorised.  Mix them up and re-sort them again into different categories.

9.      Turn all the cards face up on the tile floor (lots of room needed for this).  Get the children to work together to move the pictures around and draw (with chalk) relationship arrows between each of the pictures.  Write one word next to each arrow to explain the relationship.  All animals need to be connected in the web of relationships.

Our lesson lasted about one hour, and we completed up to activity 8.  The children were all active and talkative, and were all very happy to do the activities as planned.  Good answers were given by all.

The main problem was that it went on a little too long.  After about 45 minutes, they were starting to get overly excited and bouncy.  Activity 8 wasn’t done quite so well, as it required more cooperation, discussion and patience.  Their bounciness meant they weren’t able to take the time to organise themselves first.  So, some children started sorting by size while others started sorting by type.  At the end, when we went through the “fish” category, we were able to ask whether the goldfish could have equally gone in the “small” category and the whale in the “big” category.**  In future, we will aim to keep the lessons to no more than about 45 minutes.

** This reminded me of Michel Foucault in The Order of Things where he quotes Jorge Luis Borges quoting “a certain Chinese Encyclopaedia”:

[A]nimals are divided into: (a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.

Either / Or

I’ll try to keep summarising our P4C lessons for the moment.  I think it is interesting to see the ideas.  And maybe later on it will be interesting to look back on them.

Today, after our maths times tables, we did another either/or activity.  I can’t find this one online, though I did get it from the same place as the previous ones.  (Have I said that I think that The Philosophy Man is brilliant?  He has got so many lessons already prepared, and openly, encouragingly available.  It is so easy to skim through them and pick one to form the basis of my lessons.)  This is what we did:

Which are better, dogs or cats?

Both Mulan and Miya immediately said cats.  I first asked Miya why she thought cats.  Miya said that cats like to cuddle you, and are very cute.  And dogs don’t cuddle?  No.  I asked Mulan if she agreed.  She said yes.  And dogs push you over.  Are all dogs not so cute?  What about the pictures of the dogs that we have on our playroom wall (Papillion dogs)?  They are cute too.  I wouldn’t mind a Snowy dog (Snowy was the dog I had when I was a child, and looked similar to a Papillion).  Small ones are okay.  So, how do small, cute dogs compare with cats?  They are about the same.  Just not big dogs?  Yes.

Which are better, boys or girls?

Silence, for a long time.  Is it too difficult to decide?  Mmmm.  Girls are better (said more tentatively).  Why?  Because boys are too bustle-y.  And girls aren’t?  Not so much.  Are all boys bustle-y or most?  Most.  How about girls?  Are any girls bustle-y?  Some are.  So some boys are and some girls are?  Most boys are, but just some girls are.

Miya agreed.

If we put your brain in my body and my brain in your body, which would be you, where your brain is, or where your body is?

My body.  Why?  Because that is what people would see me as.  What if someone phoned you?  Your body/my brain answers.  It would sound like your squeaky voice talking, but it would be my ideas and thoughts being said.  Would people think it was you or me?  Some parts they would think were me and some they would think were you.

Is ibloggdyobdebog a real word?   If yes, what does it mean.

No.  And if yes, it doesn’t mean anything.  (At this point we were all laughing hard, and trying to pronounce it—i-blog-dee-ob-dee-bog.  Then Miya tapped me on the head with the pencil she was holding, while saying the word.)  Is that what it means, “hit Daddy on the head?”  (Lots more laughing.)  What if in our family, we all start using ibloggdyobdebog to mean hit Daddy on the head?  Would it then be a real word?  No.  How are real words created?  Was there someone at the beginning who decided what they mean?  (Thoughtful silence.)  How many people need to use the word before it becomes a real word?  Everyone.  If everyone in our apartment building used ibloggdyobdebog in that way, would it become a real word?  No.  It has to be everyone?  Yes, everyone in the world.  What about the word ni hao?  Lots of people in New Zealand don’t know what that means.  Does that mean that ni hao is not a real word?  All English speakers need to know the word before it is a real word (in English).

Is it better to be a child or a grown-up?

I asked Miya first.  She said a child.  Mulan agreed.  I asked Miya why.  She said because children play.  Mulan agreed.  But I play with you, too.  But you also need to do housework.  And you don’t?  No.  But I also get to be the boss.  Isn’t that good, too?  Or not as good as playing?  It isn’t as good as playing.

Are you the same you you were when you were two?

Yes.  Why?  Because I am still called Mulan.  When Gugu was younger, she changed her name.  We can go to the government office and fill out a form and then we get official paperwork that changes our name.  What name would you change to?  Mula.  If you changed your name to Mula, would you still be the same?  Yes.  Why?  Because I would still look the same.  (At this point Miya, who was sitting on my desk, looked like she might fall off.  So I warned Miya to be careful and not fall on her face.)  What if Miya fell off the desk and fell on her face and squashed her face flat (and we also changed her name)?  Would it still be the same Miya?  Yes.  Why?  Because her body would still look the same.  What if it was ten years later?  And Miya would be 13.  Yes, oh dear, a teenager.  And I would be 16.  Almost 17, oh dear, driving cars, and partying and boyfriends!  At 13, Miya would have grown a lot, and her body would look very different.  Would flat-faced, name-changed, different-shaped-body Miya still be the same person?  Yes.

Is the hole in a donut part of a donut?

No.  Do you know what a donut is?  Yes (of course).  Miya said she couldn’t eat a donut because it is a nut.  Mulan and I laughed and explained that it was called a donut but it wasn’t a nut.

Can anything last forever?  What about nothing?

No.  Nothing last forever.  If nothing lasts forever, then does that mean that something (the nothing) lasts forever?  Haha, no.

Is there anything everyone thinks is beautiful?

Yes.  What?  Me!  I asked Miya if Mulan is beautiful.  She said no.  So, Miya doesn’t think you are beautiful.  Do you have any other examples?  Miya!  I asked Miya if she is beautiful, and she said yes.  So, we all agree that there is something that everyone thinks is beautiful, and that something is Miya?  Yes (laughing).  (Sometimes solving deep philosophical questions is easy!)

What makes someone a good person, following the rules or making people happy?

Both.  What if there are two people, one follows the rules but doesn’t care about trying to make people happy, the other tries to make people happy but doesn’t care about following the rules.  Who is the better person?  They are both equally good.  Neither is better?  Neither is better.  Bobbie (in the book The Railway Children, which we are currently reading together) wants to make people happy.

The senses

We did about two hours of school time today.  After an hour of doing times tables, we moved on to P4C again, and did another hour of that.

We started by reading SenseStory.  It is quite similar to Dr Seuss’s story The Big Brag (which we have here at home).

I then got Mulan to write down a list of the five animals mentioned in the story (crow, dog, fly, bat, mole).

(Miya also got out a piece of paper and drew for the next hour.)

Next to each animal, I asked Mulan to write the sense that that animal is proud of about themselves (the crow could see, the dog could smell, the fly could taste, the bat could hear, and the mole could feel).  This was a bit of reading comprehension for her.

I then asked Mulan to think about each sense and decide which animal she would most like to be (thinking only about the senses, not about the cuteness, or otherwise, of the animal!).  She wasn’t sure.

So, I asked her about her least preferred.  She quickly decided that taste would be the least important.  But she thought all the others were equal.

So, I rephrased the question and asked her if she woke up one morning and couldn’t see, would that be worse or better than if she woke up and couldn’t smell.  This thought experiment gave her a structure for her to rank her preferences.

We had quite a long discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of each of the senses.  At first she thought that seeing was best, because then when she plays hide and seek she can see best where to hide.  I pointed out that a dog might be able to smell her, even if she was hiding in the closed wardrobe.  The bat might be able to hear her movements in the wardrobe, and the mole might feel her movement vibrations.  She realised that seeing wasn’t always best.

In the end, she ranked the senses in the order of hear, feel, see, smell, taste.  She wrote 1 to 5 next to each sense on her paper.  (Interesting that seeing only ranked third.)

I then asked her to think about which senses might be the best for discovering about the world.  She clarified the question, by saying that it was like she was a newborn baby who didn’t know anything about the world, and wanted to find out.  I agreed.

I asked her if this list would be the same as her first ranking list.  She said no.  Mulan decided that even though she still personally preferred to hear, hearing was not the best sense to find out about the world.

After more discussion, she ranked the senses in the order of see, feel, hear, smell, taste.  She wrote 1 to 5 next to her earlier ranked list.

I then asked her which of the following items in each pair is more real.  (She wasn’t sure at first what this meant, but after a short pause she soon made sense of it.)

The feel of an ice cube or the way it shines?  Mulan thought the feel was more real, with it being both hard and cold.

A ball dropping to the floor or the sound it makes?  Mulan thought the sound.

The weight of an apple or its colour?  Mulan thought the colour.

The flavour of an orange or its colour?  Mulan thought for a while but couldn’t decide at all.

A person in a dream or a person in a painting?  Mulan thought the person in the painting.  She said that the person in the dream is imaginary and we soon forget it.  But we can still see the person in the painting (even though it is also imaginary).

We then talked about animals that have senses that are alien to us, such as snakes than sense the difference between hot and cold, and bats that echo-locate.  I asked her if she could imagine what it might be like to be able to echo-locate, like a bat.  She said she couldn’t.  But she said that she could imagine what it would be like to be a cat (our new kitten, Mickey, was on my knee at the time).

I told her about one of my university teachers who was blind.  He said that he could echo-locate a little.  But he still couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be a bat (at the time we were discussing Thomas Nagel’s article What is it like to be a bat?).

I suggested that we stop to eat, but Mulan insisted that we still keep talking more.

We talked about the moon illusion (how the moon looks bigger when on the horizon).  Mulan didn’t think that the moon would really be bigger.  That it just seemed bigger.  But she wasn’t sure why it seemed bigger.  She thought maybe the moon is closer to us at that time.  I asked if she thought the moon would go in and out that much while circling the Earth.  She wasn’t sure.  I didn’t push this too much; it is a bit too complicated.

Mulan still wanted to keep talking.

So I asked her if she remembered Dr Seuss’s book, The Big Brag.  She did.  I asked her if the worm in the story could really see that far.  She didn’t think so; she said no one could really see that far.  I asked her why the worm might have said he could, if he really couldn’t.  She thought maybe he was just tricking the other animals, for fun.

At this point, I sort-of walked Mulan through the idea that the worm was criticising the other animals for each thinking that he was personally better than the other was.  I asked Mulan if she thought the worm was right that no one was better, just because of their particular senses.  She thought he was.

I asked her that if the worm is right, is it okay to rank the senses, like she did.  She said it was.  She said that she was just giving her own personal preference for herself.  And that is different.  Fair enough.

I then asked her that since we cannot know what it is like to be a bat, to what extent can we really rank the senses (here, I was trying to draw Mulan’s attention to the fact that when we rephrased the question from ranking animals to comparing her own senses, we were actually changing the subject).  When Mulan said that taste was the least important, she was basing it on her own experience of taste.  But we cannot know how wonderfully delightful a taste experience might be for a fly.  For all we know, a fly’s taste might be experientially far more pleasurable than a bat’s hearing.  She agreed.

Finally at midday she agreed to end our lesson and have our elevenses (morning tea).

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As you can probably tell, the final part our conversation was turning into a bit of a Socratic dialogue, with me doing most of the talking and Mulan saying “yes, Socrates” to me!  (The earlier rankings and preferences, with their reasons, were all of Mulan’s thoughts, though.)  Clearly, with just the two of us (and Miya drawing alongside us) what we do can never be a pure P4C lesson (even though it is still philosophy).  For it to be proper P4C, Mulan needs to be having these sorts of conversations with other children her own age.  The children need to be bouncing these ideas off each other, rather than me (authoritatively) putting forward suggestions.

Another would-you-rather

After doing some maths times tables for most of our school time today, we tried another would-you-rather P4C activity.  This is probably our final would-you-rather for now.  I might try a few other types of P4C activities, if I can find/think of something that will work with just us three.  Any suggestions, anyone?  (I’ve got some awesome group stuff, but I sort-of don’t want to ruin them by just doing them alone.)

Question: Would you rather be chased by a bear, slithered on by a snake, or kissed by a monkey?

Mulan said she would rather be kissed by a monkey.  Why?  Because she would be slower than a bear, and would get eaten when she got caught.  And a slithery snake would be tickly.  But a monkey kiss would be slobbery.  Yes, but still not as bad as a snake.

Miya agreed.

Question: Would you rather play snap with a crocodile, swim with a shark, or lie down with a lion?

Mulan couldn’t answer.  Why?  Because I’ll get eaten in all of them.  Is there a least-bad one?  Still can’t answer.  But she pointed out that the shark in the picture has a broken tooth.

Miya agreed.

Question: Would you prefer to be sat on by a spider, sit on a pin, or pecked by a parrot?

Mulan said she would rather be pecked by a parrot.  Why?  A pin would be painfully spiky.  And a spider might bite.  Are you sure?  Well, maybe a nice spider might be okay, like a hoppy spider.  But not others.  But parrots’ beaks are quite sharp, and they may peck a lot.  So you might get even more stabs than you would with a pin.  And most spiders don’t bite.  Hmmm, yes.  But the webs are sticky.  Okay, a spider, but only if there is no web.  And she thought the parrot in the picture was not very colourful.

Miya agreed.

Question: Would you rather be king or queen for one day, rich for your whole life, or a superhero for a week?

Mulan said rich for her whole life.  Why?  Because a day and a week are a short time.  A whole life will be a long time.

Miya liked the picture of the superhero.

Question: Would you rather hear the world’s funniest joke, the most surprising fact, or the world’s best story?

Mulan said, with a big grin on her face, she would like the story.  Why?  Because she likes stories.  Big grin.

Miya also had a big grin, and agreed.

Question: Would you rather have dinner with a witch or a frog for dinner?

Mulan said she would rather have dinner with a witch.  Why?  Because a frog would taste yuk.  And poor little frog!  But a witch might be scary.  Yes, but a frog would be worse.  Mulan also commented that she had never seen a witch like the one in the picture before.

Miya agreed.  She also liked the witch’s cat and wanted to cuddle it.

Would you rather …

Today, we took our first baby steps with our introduction to P4C (Philosophy for Children).

I think Mulan is old enough to do P4C lessons.  She is certainly argumentative enough!  But to date we haven’t done much.

The reason for this slow start is that an essential part of P4C (and, I think, philosophy in general) is doing it with a community of people.  You need to have other people around to bounce ideas off and be inspired by.

Here in China, it is not easy to pull together a group of people willing to chat deeply in English.  (My Chinese is not good enough to try P4C in that language.)  I discovered this when I enrolled in a philosophy PhD programme here.  It is equally hard to find peers for Mulan.

So, I have had to put off starting P4C until we move to New Zealand later this year.

But now with my sister and her family coming to visit us here in a few weeks (and we are all planning to continue with regular school times while they are here), I thought I should prepare Mulan for some proper P4C lessons that we will no doubt have with the four cousins.

So today, after we completed the last page of the science book we have been working on, we switched to P4C.  It was really just a warm-up that we did.  But it went quite well.

We did a “would you rather …” activity.  We looked at the pdf document on the computer.  This is what happened.

Question: Would you rather be a giant or a wizard?

Mulan said she would rather be a wizard.  Why?  Because then she would be able to do stuff.  What stuff?  Like making herself able to fly.

Miya said she would rather be a giant.  Why?  She liked the idea of being able to step over a mountain (like in the picture).

Question: If you were bigger than your parents, who would be in charge?

Mulan said she would be in charge.  Even though Mama and Daddy know lots more stuff than you?  Yup.  So, is size the most important thing for deciding who is the boss?  Hehe, yup.  (I am not sure if Mulan really believed this, but she clearly liked the idea of being the boss!)

Miya just liked the idea of being big, and she said the big girl in the picture was her.

Question: Would you rather be a bird or a plane?

Mulan said she would rather be a bird.  Why?  Because planes crash sometimes.  But they almost never crash.  Mmm.

Miya said that she would rather be in a plane.  She said that she likes it when she is in a plane and she loses her tummy (she still remembers that feeling from when we went to Europe six months ago).  Mulan pointed out that the question was what you would like to be, not what you wanted to be in.  Mulan said it didn’t make sense to be a plane.  I think in the end Miya agreed with Mulan to be a bird.

Question: Would you rather live at the top of a skyscraper or in a country cottage?

Mulan said she would rather live in a country cottage.  Why?  Because you can do whatever you want.  You don’t have to share the building with other people.  (I can’t argue with that powerful logic!)

Miya agreed.

Question: Would you rather choose no sweets or no television? (This was not so easy for us, because we have no TV at home, and we mostly don’t bother with sweets.)

Mulan said she would rather keep having sweets.  Why?  Because TV is boring.  And sweets are yummy?  Yup.

Miya agreed.

Question: Would you choose to be rich or famous?

Mulan said she would rather be rich.  Why?  Because she could then buy fun stuff.

Miya agreed.  (I doubt she knows what famous is.)

Clearly, each of these six discussions could have been extended much more.  With a bigger group of children, more reasons would have been put forward and potentially argued about.  I thought it best, though, that I don’t question Mulan too strongly about her choices.  Like it or not, I am the authority, and my “yes, but …”s can easily move from being helpful thought-provoking ideas to authoritarian shut-down criticisms.

As I say, baby steps.

Who are you?

I’ve just finished reading Edward Bellamy’s Miss Ludington’s Sister.  I highly recommend it.

I also highly recommend it as a P4C schooling book.  At about 88 pages long, it would be a quick read for any teenager.  And there is plenty in it for thought-provoking discussion starters.  (In fact, all of Bellamy’s books are excellent P4C stories.  He has that ability to tease out an interesting question and turn it into a story.)

The first, and central, theme is that of personal identity.  Identity, in general, is the question of what makes some object one and the same thing throughout time.  Suppose I look up into the sky and see a cloud.  It moves with the wind, changes shape, maybe splits in two, maybe combines with some other cloud.  In what sense can we be still talking about the very same cloud after it has completed all of these transformations?

The same thing might be asked of some human-made object.  Recently, our water heater stopped working.  After a few days without hot showers, the repairmen came and fixed it.  Basically, they needed to take out all of the innards of the box, and put in completely new parts.  Suppose next time we have a problem with it, the box needs replacing.  Then, is our water heater the very same one as the one that we bought and installed initially?  Or is it a different one?  If it is the same one, what makes it the same one?

Bellamy’s book asks this question of people.  He wonders how we can say that the child is one and the same person as the old person.  They are so different in character, and made of entirely different material.  One of his characters in the book writes in a letter:

“You know that men speak of human beings, taken singly, as individuals. It is taken for granted in the common speech that the individual is the unit of humanity, not to be subdivided. That is, indeed, what the etymology of the word means. Nevertheless, the slightest reflection will cause any one to see that this assumption is a most mistaken one. The individual is no more the unit of humanity than is the tribe or family; but, like them, is a collective noun, and stands for a number of distinct persons, related one to another in a particular way, and having certain features of resemblance. The persons composing a family are related both collaterally and by succession or descent, while the persons composing an individual are related by succession only. They are called infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, maturity, age, and dotage.

“These persons are very unlike one another. Striking physical, mental, and moral differences exist between them. Infancy and childhood are incomprehensible to manhood, and manhood not less so to them. The youth looks forward with disgust to the old age which is to follow him, and the old man has far more in common with other old men, his own contemporaries, than with the youth who preceded him. How frequently do we see the youth vicious and depraved, and the man who follows him upright and virtuous, hating iniquity! How often, on the other hand, is a pure and innocent girlhood succeeded by a dissolute and shameless womanhood! In many cases age looks back upon youth with inexpressible longing and tenderness, and quite as often with shame and remorse; but in all cases with the same consciousness of profound contrast, and of a great gulf fixed between.

“If the series of persons which constitutes an individual could by any magic be brought together and these persons confronted with one another, in how many cases would the result be mutual misunderstanding, disgust, and even animosity? Suppose, for instance, that Saul, the persecutor of the disciples of Jesus, who held the garments of them that stoned Stephen, should be confronted with his later self, Paul the apostle, would there not be reason to anticipate a stormy interview? For there is no more ground to suppose that Saul would be converted to Paul's view than the reverse. Each was fully persuaded in his own mind as to what he did.

“But for the fact that each one of the persons who together constitute an individual is well off the field before his successor comes upon it, we should not infrequently see the man collaring his own youth, handing him over to the authorities, and prefering charges against him as a rascally fellow.

“Not by any means are the successive persons of an individual always thus out of harmony with one another. In many, perhaps in a majority, of cases, the same general principles and ideals are recognized by the man which were adopted by the boy, and as much sympathy exists between them as is possible in view of the different aspects which the world necessarily presents to youth and age. In such cases, no doubt, could the series of persons constituting the individual be brought together, a scene of inexpressibly tender and intimate communion would ensue.

“But, though no magic may bring back our past selves to earth, may we not hope to meet them hereafter in some other world? Nay, must we not expect so to meet them if we believe in the immortality of human souls? For if our past selves, who were dead before we were alive, had no souls, then why suppose our present selves have any? Childhood, youth, and manhood are the sweetest, the fairest, the noblest, the strongest of the persons who together constitute an individual. Are they soulless? Do they go down in darkness to oblivion while immortality is reserved for the withered soul of age? If we must believe that there is but one soul to all the persons of an individual it would be easier to believe that it belongs to youth or manhood, and that age is soulless. For if youth, strong-winged and ardent, full of fire and power, perish, leaving nothing behind save a few traces in the memory, how shall the flickering spirit of age have strength to survive the blast of death?

“The individual, in its career of seventy years, has not one body, but many, each wholly new. It is a commonplace of physiology that there is not a particle in the body to-day that was in it a few years ago. Shall we say that none of these bodies has a soul except the last, merely because the last decays more suddenly than the others?

“Or is it maintained that, although there is such utter diversity—physical, mental, moral—between infancy and manhood, youth and age, nevertheless, there is a certain essence common to them all, and persisting unchanged through them all, and that this is the soul of the individual? But such an essence as should be the same in the babe and the man, the youth and the dotard, could be nothing more than a colourless abstraction, without distinctive qualities of any kind—a mere principle of life like the fabled jelly protoplasm. Such a fancy reduces the hope of immortality to an absurdity.

“No! no! It is not any such grotesque or fragmentary immortality that God has given us. The Creator does not administer the universe on so niggardly a plan. Either there is no immortality for us which is intelligible or satisfying, or childhood, youth, manhood, age, and all the other persons who make up an individual, live for ever, and one day will meet and be together in God's eternal present; and when the several souls of an individual are in harmony no doubt He will perfect their felicity by joining them with a tie that shall be incomparably more tender and intimate than any earthly union ever dreamed of, constituting a life one yet manifold—a harp of many strings, not struck successively as here on earth, but blending in rich accord.”

This is certainly an interesting question posed to those who believe in the existence of an immortal soul.

A second theme in the book is an ethical one.  And while it is not dealt with directly, it is certainly implied by the twist in the story.  Without giving anything away, there is a question in the story about whether it is better to be happy but deceived, or be not so happy but have the truth.

Happy reading.