Grief

 

A robot cannot grieve. Stoics want to limit our dispositions to grieve. In this posting I want to examine grief. This examination was prompted by John Danaher’s examination of coping with grief , my examination not a direct response to that of Danaher. The purpose of my examination is threefold. First is grief a useful emotion? Secondly how grief is related to love and does this point to the emotions being connected. Lastly I will consider how much grief is appropriate. I will conclude that to be fully human someone must be prepared to accept vulnerability and with vulnerability comes grief. Prior to my examination we must define grief. Roughly speaking grief is distress caused by someone’s death. Grief has a focus, the death of a loved one and as such is a genuine emotion as opposed to depression and sadness which have no real focus and are perhaps better described as moods.

In the past if someone ventured into the forest at night her fear might have kept her safe provided of course it wasn’t over excessive. Other emotions such as guilt, shame and perhaps even anger can be useful emotions. Can grief also be a useful emotion? I would argue it can’t. For someone venturing into the forest at night her fear focusses her attention on danger and this focus benefits her by helping keep her safe. In a similar way someone’s anger is focussed on some perceived injustice and this focus might help her right this perceived injustice. The focus of someone’s grief is the death of another and it is hard to see how this focus can be useful her. It might be objected that grief is not just an emotion but a social construct and that an appropriate display of grief is useful in demonstrating that someone is part of that social order. Someone who celebrated the death of her spouse would become a social outcast. However displaying grief is not the same as experiencing grief and in this posting I am only concerned with the latter. Consider Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday on their desert island. Let us accept Crusoe loves Friday, not in an erotic way, but cares about him. Let us assume Friday dies and Crusoe grieves for him, does his grief serve any useful purpose? Clearly Crusoe’s grief serves no useful purpose by displaying that he is part of the social order. I would also argue that Crusoe’s grief because of Friday’s death doesn’t benefit Crusoe in any way. Indeed his grief might harm him by lessening his focus on important needs such as obtaining food and maintaining his shelter. It would appear that in answer to my first question is that grief is not a useful emotion.

Guilt and shame are negative emotions but might help focus our attention on doing something useful. Grief doesn’t focus our attention on anything useful. In the light of the above it might be concluded that because grief is a negative emotion serving no useful purpose that we should seek to eliminate it. I am reluctant to accept such a conclusion. I have argued that grief has a specific focus and that considered in isolation grief isn’t a useful emotion. Let us accept if we grieve about someone that we must have cared about or loved the person we grieve about. Wantons and psychopaths can’t grieve because they don’t care. Grief is not the same as sorrow. I may be sorry I’ve broken the cup by dropping it but I don’t grieve about it because even if it was my favourite cup I didn’t care enough about it, I didn’t love it. Grief and love are connected and grief cannot be considered in isolation. The reason why we grieve is love. Some animals appear to grieve, see Jessica Pierce . Grieving animals seem to support the above conclusion. For why should animals grieve for it would seem grief serves no evolutionary purpose? Any mother’s love serves an evolutionary purpose if grief and love are connected and this connection might help explain why animals grieve. If grief and love are connected then other emotions might be connected. Can someone said to be brave if he recklessly defends something he doesn’t care about? Some virtue ethicists believe the virtues are connected by practical wisdom (1). Perhaps the emotions are connected by loving as defined by caring about. I will not pursue this suggestion further here.

Let us consider my last question, how much grief appropriate. Perhaps because grief serves no useful purpose we should seek to eliminate or reduce our grief as much as possible. Let us accept that loving is part of leading a flourishing life. I have argued above that grief are love are connected. The question we must now try to answer is this, would seeking to eliminate or limit our grief damage our capacity to love? Psychopaths don’t feel grief and don’t care about others and it might suggested that this means if we can’t grieve that we can’t love. However this is only a suggestion and it might be pointed out psychopaths don’t seem to feel most emotions. In order to answer the above question I want to consider one aspect of love. Can anyone love something without making himself vulnerable to the fate of what he loves? A stoic might argue someone can I would suggest he can’t. If someone is indifferent when bad things happen to something he loves then he cannot be said to love that thing. What does it mean to be vulnerable to something’s fate? It means if the something is harmed the vulnerable person is also harmed. This harm isn’t physical, it involves a negative mental affect. I would further suggest that if someone suffers negative mental affect focussed on the loss of his beloved that he is grieving. If we accept the above definition of grief then it is perfectly possible to grieve for something which isn’t a person. It seems to me to make sense to say that someone can grieve over the death of much loved dog. It follows from the above that grief is inextricably linked to our capacity to love and that any attempt to limit our grief will also mean limiting our capacity to love. In response to the above it might be objected that when the object of our love dies our love should cease and that love gives us no reason not to try to limit our grief. In response to the above I would firstly suggest that love cannot just be simply switched off and on. Perhaps in special circumstance, such as a child on learning his father has murdered his mother, love might be abruptly terminated but not in normal ones. Secondly I would suggest that when we become vulnerable due to love that we don’t simply become vulnerable to the beloved, whatever that might mean, but specifically to harm befalling the beloved or the loss of beloved. When someone dies this loss is ongoing. It would appear that the answer to my second question is that accepting some grief is the price we pay for loving

Let us accept we should be prepared to accept some grief. However how grief is appropriate? Let us also accept that even if we can’t abruptly stop loving love can fade. If love fades over time then we have no reason based on our former love to continue grieving as our vulnerability decreases. As our love fades so should our grief. Accepting the above then might explain why even if the reasons for our grief don’t expire over time our grief diminishes nor because the reasons change but because we change. Human have a continuing need to love and be loved and what we love helps define us. In the light of the above it might be argued even if someone’s beloved has deceased the lover can satisfy his need for love by loving her memory. Derek Parfit seems to support this objection with his example of a Russian nobleman asking his wife to be true to his former self if he changes. (1) In response to this objection I would suggest that loving the memory of someone is an incomplete form of love. Loving isn’t purely passive the lover seeks ways to benefit his beloved over time, love is a bit like gardening. It follows if someone’s grief is based on the memory of a deceased beloved that his love is incomplete in some way because he cannot actively try to benefit his beloved. Let us accept that a more complete form of love is preferable to an incomplete form. It follows that if obsessive grief damages our ability to love our friends who remain in a more complete way that we should seeks ways to diminish and over time eliminate this grief.

 

1. Julia Annas, Intelligent Virtue, Oxford University Press, 2011, page 94
2. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984, page 327

Work, Automation and Happiness

In a posting in philosophical disquisitions John Danaher wonders whether work makes us happy. Happiness matters to us so this is an important question. Moreover, as Danaher points out increasing automation might mean that there will be less work in the future which adds further importance to the question. In this posting I will argue work can make us happier but that this depends on what we mean by work.

Hannah Arendt makes a distinction between labour and work. According to Arendt we labour to meet our basic biological needs. In this posting I won’t be concerned this this basic idea of labour but the broader concept of work. Perhaps we might try to define work simply as making an effort for some economic reward or hope of such a reward. Perhaps some people are lucky and enjoy such work but for many people work so defined is simply a chore which takes up time they could use to enjoy themselves in other ways. Work for many people is simply a job. They work for money to enable them to do the things they really want to, work is instrumental in allowing them to do these things. However, we don’t have to define work in this way. A stay at home mum works. Someone else might work in his garden simply because doing so brings him pleasure. Work, so defined, has intrinsic value. It would seem all work involves effort. However, we might make an effort for something and in this case work has instrumental value or we might make an effort at doing something and work has intrinsic value. It follows that work can be defined in two ways, either as making an effort for something, working for, or making an effort at doing something, working at.

Let us now consider the first definition of work, work defined as making an effort for something. Let us assume that the goods we seek by work could be delivered by automation. Let us further assume that these goods could be shared reasonably equitably. Perhaps in the future the state might introduce a basic income guarantee UBI which would be large enough to allow people to obtain the goods which previously their income from work provided for. A guaranteed UBI might only work provided the goods people seek are not subject to over inflation. If people want ever bigger cars, houses and even more exotic holidays a guaranteed UBI might prove to be insufficient to deliver the goods they seek, it should be noted that in such a context work also might provide insufficient funds to provide these goods. Such a guaranteed UBI is highly speculative but for the sake of argument let us assume such a guarantee is both affordable by some future state and can deliver the goods people seek from work. In this situation it might be suggested, that because the things people value can be delivered without work and ‘work for something’ has no intrinsic value that working would not contribute to people’s happiness.

In his posting Danaher considers one argument as to why we should reject the above suggestion. The argument he considers was made initially by Nicholas Carr (1). This argument depends on three premises. Firstly it is assumed that the ‘flow’ state is an important part of human well-being. The idea of flow has been made popular by Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi.  When someone is in a flow state she is performing an activity in which she is fully immersed, losing any feeling of reflective self-consciousness and she has an energised focus. This state leads to positive emotions making someone happy whilst in the state. Secondly it is assumed that people are bad judges of what will get them into such ‘flow’ states. Thirdly it is assumed that working for something sometimes gives people a flow state. It appears to follow that work for something is desirable not only because it delivers the means to achieve the goods we seek but also sometimes gives people a flow state which increases their happiness. It appears to further follow that vastly increased automation, leading to large scale unemployment, would be a bad thing because it would lead to a decrease in many people’s happiness even if they still obtained the goods they had previously obtained by working because they would experience a decrease in flow states. Other arguments could be made as to why work might contribute to someone’s happiness, for instance the workplace might be conducive to friendship. However, in what follows I will only consider Danaher’s argument.

I now want to argue the above appearance are false. I am prepared to accept the first two premises of the above argument. Flow is an important element of human wellbeing and that people generally aren’t very good at judging what gets them into a flow state. I am also prepared to accept that some work can sometimes deliver a flow state. When I’m writing I occasionally enter into a flow state and perhaps someone who is fully engaged playing some sport might do likewise. In these circumstances someone is working at something which she believes has intrinsic value. Can someone enter into a flow state if she is working for something in a purely instrumental way in a low skilled job? Let us assume someone works at a job she finds completely uninteresting solely to support her family. In these circumstances achieving flow is not part of her goal. Nonetheless it might be suggested that even in this scenario such a person might sometimes enter into a flow state meaning her work has some intrinsic value even she isn’t consciously aware of this value. It appears conceivable that in these circumstances working for something has both instrumental and intrinsic value.

Let it be assumed that in some circumstances when the goods we seek are available without working for them the instrumental value of work vanishes. Nonetheless in the light of the above it might be suggested that even in these circumstances work retains some intrinsic value. Let us accept that work only has some intrinsic value when we work at something we care about. In addition, if we work at something we care about it seems highly probable that this work will provide some flow. However, I now want to argue that the above suggestion that, if work has no instrumental value and we work at something we don’t care about or even dislike that nonetheless such work might retain some intrinsic value, is unsound. Purposeless work is unlikely to provide us with any flow.

Let us accept that if we work in a completely aimless fashion at something we don’t care about that such work will not result in a flow state. Let us also accept that if work is to provide flow that this work must be goal orientated and that this goal must be something we care about. For instance, someone might work to provide for her children she cares about. Let us now assume that the state provides a basic income so she doesn’t have to work to support her children and satisfy her other needs. Let us further assume she continues to work and that her sole goal is to obtain a flow state in order to increase her happiness. All the things she cares about can be provided by automation and that she finds the work she undertakes to be dreary. Nonetheless she persists in working with the goal of achieving flow in order to increase her happiness. I will now argue by analogy that such work would not result in a flow state. I would suggest just as we cannot choose to be in love, love is constrained, so we cannot just choose to be in a flow state. Love just comes to us and similarly a flow state only comes to us when we work at what we love or care about. Accepting this suggestion means that if automation removes the need to work for the goods we care about that continuing to work solely to obtain some flow is impossible.

However even if the above is accepted it might be argued that working still retains some value. Some people might find, if they have no work, they have an unbearable sense of simply being, simply existing. It seems probable such a state would make them unhappy. Work doesn’t simply have value because any resultant flow state makes people happy, work also has value because it helps to stop people becoming unhappy. It appears to follow that if automation removes the need for work that it should be resisted. However, if we accept the above argument it seems we must also accept that someone might work at a boring repetitive job in order not to be bored. Such an implication seems nonsensical. Nonetheless it remains true that if automation removes the need to work for something that it can also lead to boredom and a resultant decrease in happiness. Such a scenario is both possible and important. In response I would argue that automation requires a broader focus in education. Automation might mean education should focus less on educating people to work for something and more on educating them so they are enabled to work at something they love or care about. Increasing automation might lead to an increased importance of the humanities. Universities and schools might need to give greater emphasis to the humanities and life-long learning.. However caution is needed when considering changes in education we mustn’t be over elitist, music, crafts and sport all matter.

Let us assume the advance of automation can provide the goods people seek without the need for work. Such circumstances I suggested above are highly speculative but for the sake of argument let us assume such circumstances are possible. Let us accept that because a lack of work would leave some people with an unbearable sense of simply existing that we should resist the advance of automation. I now want to argue that in these circumstances the above argument does not give us reason to resist automation Of course if automation removes the need for work and the goods people obtain by working become unobtainable we should resist increasing automation. However, let us accept that automation provides the goods people desire and that the resulting increased leisure will give them time to pursue the things they want to do. Unfortunately, in these circumstances some people might adopt a purely hedonistic lifestyle. Such a lifestyle might cause these people to suffer from the unbearable lightness of simply being mentioned above. Let us recall we have accepted that people in general are not always the best of judges of what will make them happy. Fortunately, increased leisure will not only give people the opportunity to pursue the things they want, it will also give them the opportunity to pursue the things they care about or love. What does it mean for someone to pursue the things she loves? Clearly if she loves something she cannot be indifferent towards it, it must be important to her. If something is important to someone then it is natural for her to work at it. In the light of the above it might be concluded that some sort of work makes us happy. It might be further concluded even if automation leads a loss of people working for something it ought not to be resisted provided people can still work at something. I would suggest that automation should not be harmful provided people continue to work in the second way defined above. People continue to work at what they care about, they love

1.     Nicholas Carr, 2014, The Glass Cage, Norton & Company