Philosophy Now

Brief Lives

Iris Murdoch (1919-1999)

Gary Browning tells us why Iris Murdoch stands out as a twentieth century thinker.

Iris Murdoch matters for many reasons. She was an out- sury, and in 1944 joined the UNRRA (United Nations Relief and
standing intellectual figure of the twentieth century, whose Rehabilitation Administration), for whom she worked in Belgium
work makes sense of modernity and the history of her and Austria, where she witnessed at first hand the disruption
times. She set out an original philosophy which offered a caused by WWII and the desperate plight of refugees; fleeing
new perspective on morals and metaphysics. She also wrote appalling conditions and political oppression. She remained sen-
imaginative, interesting and fun novels. What makes her com- sitive to the human costs of political repression throughout her
pelling is that her fiction and philosophy do not stand apart as work, in both her philosophy and her fiction. Her novels often
discrete achievements: her novels deal imaginatively with themes highlight the lives of refugees: survivors are shown as living under
and issues that characterise her philosophy, and her philosophy the shadow of the Holocaust, and powerful portraits of migrants
explains how art is to be understood. lend colour and variety to her cast of characters.

Both her novels and her philosophy drew upon her own lived From her university days onwards she maintains a journal and
experience and reflect back upon it. Murdoch was a woman of writes a stream of letters. These provide a remarkable ongoing
diverse interests and skills, but she put them together to engage record of her varied relationships and her politics. Her journals
with the major questions and issues of her age. She was acutely also show her interest in a wide variety of forms of philosophy,
aware of the processes of secularisation that were taking place in the including phenomenology, Hegel, analytic philosophy, and con-
second half of the twentieth century. The old dogmas of religion, a temporary existentialism.
priori reasoning in metaphysics, and absolutist moral principles and
political ideologies, were receding. Humanity was turning towards From 1947-1948 she studied Philosophy in Cambridge, ini-
relying upon natural science and its technological applications, and tially under the guidance of the broadcaster C.E.M. Joad, but
emphasising the freedom of individuals. Murdoch recognised that subsequently under John Wisdom. Ludwig Wittgenstein was
the freedom and scientific tenor of the modern age could not be neither teaching nor an actual presence in Cambridge, but his
abandoned, but against the current of her age, she aimed to revive influence was marked on those whom Murdoch befriended. She
the metaphysical spirit of Platonism and Plato’s call for reaching became a Fellow at St. Anne’s College, Oxford, in Philosophy in
and acting in the light of a transcendent notion of the Good. 1948, and over the next fifteen years developed her thinking
there. She reached out beyond Oxford and the Anglo-American
Early Years analytic scene by publishing on continental philosophy and set-
Iris Murdoch was born in North Dublin in 1919. Her family moved ting out a form of moral philosophy that appealed to a wider
to London soon after her birth, though she remained conscious of audience than did most philosophers of the time.
her family’s Irish roots. She was a much loved only child, who
attended Frobel School in London before going on to a private In her letters and journals she attested to an awareness of her
school, Badminton, in Bristol, which embraced progressive politics. own moral frailty. Before marrying John Bayley, an Oxford liter-
Murdoch flourished at the school before herself progressing to ary academic, in 1956, she had a number of torrid affairs: notably
Somerville College in Oxford in 1938, where she studied Mods and with Michael Oakeshott, the conservative political philosopher;
Greats, which combined Classics, Ancient History, and Philosophy. Franz Steiner, the anthropologist and poet; and Elias Canetti,
the provocative novelist and social theorist. But marriage pro-
As an undergraduate Murdoch formed many deep long-lasting vided her with security and stability.
friendships, including with fellow students of Philosophy Mary
Midgley, Philippa Foot, and Elizabeth Anscombe. There were Sartre, Existentialism and the Novel
many romantic attachments too; notably a relationship with the Murdoch’s book on the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, Sartre:
brother of the historian E. P. Thompson, the poetic and heroic Romantic Rationalist (1953), was the first study of Sartre’s philos-
Frank Thompson, who was to die tragically in a misguided Spe- ophy in English, and a landmark publication. It remains a valu-
cial Operations Executive mission in Bulgaria during the Second able resource.
World War. Her teachers also left their mark, notably the charis-
matic integrity and moral seriousness of the philosopher Donald She is at once sympathetic to and critical of Sartre. She had
Mackinnon and the intensity of the classicist Eduard Frankel. been reading his work closely over preceding years, and discusses
Messy, exciting, and multiple relations with friends and lovers are him at length in her journals and letters, notably in her corre-
a feature of her novels, and they inform her moral thought. In her spondence with the French experimental novelist Raymond
moral philosophy she looks to cultivate loving relations with Queneau. On the one hand she is attracted to Sartre. Unlike
others, against the tide of conventional philosophical trends, those dreaming along the spires of Oxford, he does philosophy
which were towards the dry analysis of concepts. with a kick to it. She observes how Sartre stays close to lived expe-
rience, and in doing so shows a novelist’s sensibility. She’s
While at Oxford she also joined the Communist Party; and, impressed by his revealing review of states of consciousness in
imagining a fairer, socialist post-war world, took an active part in Being and Nothingness (1943), but is critical of his narrow focus on
student politics. After graduating in 1942, she worked at the Trea- the self and his tendency to ignore the impact of philosophy on
the social and political world. In essays of the 1950s, Murdoch is

August/September 2020 Philosophy Now 51

Brief Lives

Iris Murdoch by
Darren McAndrew

2020

also critical of existentialist novels, which are not very open to lescence of social and religious intellectual commitment, she
the interplay of characters and follow too closely the trajectory of urged that socialism still be promoted by a review of possible
a single guiding mind. She herself published her first novel, utopian futures. In ‘The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited’
Under the Net, in 1954, and would publish a further twenty five (1959) she reframed Kant’s idea of the sublime to capture how
novels at regular intervals over the ensuing forty five years. The the intricacies of characters interacting with one another can
main protagonist in Under the Net, Jake Donoghue, bears a yield a sublime expression of lived experience. Her most famous
resemblance to an existentialist hero, but his egoistic flaws high- essay on literature is ‘Against Dryness’ (1961), in which she cri-
light the shortcomings of an existentialist perspective. tiqued novels that either provide journalistic accounts of con-
ventions or are merely fictional representations of their authors’
In essays throughout the 1950s and 60s, Murdoch reflected viewpoints. She reimagined the novel as allowing for the devel-
upon the roles of art, morals, and politics in the wider economy opment of free characters. (These essays are all available in Exis-
of experience. In ‘A House of Theory’ (1958), she observed the tentialists and Mystics, edited by Murdoch, 1997.)
post-war decline in ideology, and, given the more general obso-

52 Philosophy Now August/September 2020

Brief Lives

The Sovereignty of Good Murdoch elaborated upon her reading of Plato, counterposing
In the 1950s and 1960s Murdoch also continued working on her own sense of the truthfulness of art to Plato’s hostility to the
moral philosophy, alongside publishing essays on thought, lan- arts [see Issue 138, Ed]. Yet she rereads Plato as being an artist
guage, and the self. Her horizon was broadened by lecturing at himself, by drawing attention to his use of imagery.
the Royal College of Art in London from 1963-1967.
In 1982 Murdoch delivered the Gifford Lectures, then devel-
In 1970 The Sovereignty of Good brought together three of her oped them into her last major philosophical work, Metaphysics as
essays on moral philosophy, ‘The Idea of Perfection’; ‘On “God” a Guide to Morals (1993). Here she elaborates on the processes of
and “Good”’; and ‘The Sovereignty of Good over other Con- demythologisation or disenchantment that characterise the
cepts’. The book sets her work apart from that of other contem- modern world, while defending a form of metaphysics that is
porary Continental and Anglo-American thinkers. She opposes compatible with science and empirical observation. While
what she takes to be shallow behaviourist accounts of the self, noting the messiness of experience, she looks to aspects of expe-
while also opposing theories of ethics from Kant to Sartre which rience that point to underlying forms of order and unity which
privilege the role of choice exercised by autonomous individuals, can underpin morals. In so doing, she draws upon many authors
but do not take care to integrate or even examine social situations from differing ethical traditions, such as Wittgenstein, Schopen-
and the perspectives of others. hauer, Plato, Buber and Weil. In her later years she also prepared
a ‘Manuscript on Heidegger’, which reads Martin Heidegger in
Rather than assuming a neutral state of affairs to which moral- the light of Wittgenstein, as providing a paradigm of meta-
ity is to be added, Murdoch reminds us of the myriad of ways in physics in a post-metaphysical age. She decided against this
which we perceive and value our experiences, and hence derive manuscript’s publication, but it is thoughtful and scholarly. It is
our morality. Morality depends upon the values that lie, perhaps due to be published in the next few years.
hidden, in our detailed understanding of things, rather than in
theories and values we simply develop in our heads and bring to Life & Philosophy in Retrospect
what’s going on in our lives. Murdoch gave up her Fellowship at St Anne’s College in 1963
and retired from teaching at the RCA in 1967. But she remained
For Murdoch most of the significant work in each person’s highly active, writing novels, plays, poetry, and significant philo-
moral thinking is done by the way we imagine and describe the sophical works until the mid-1990s. In her last novel, Jackson’s
lives in which we are involved. In the essay ‘The Idea of Perfec- Dilemma (1995) the main protagonist, Benet, is struggling to
tion’ she gives the famous example of a mother who takes against read Heidegger, just as Murdoch herself had worked hard on
her daughter-in-law. The girl appears brusque and without Heidegger before giving up on publishing her study of his work.
refinement, and hence unsuitable for her beloved son. But
instead of fixing upon this judgment, Murdoch imagines the Murdoch was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1997,
mother lovingly revisiting her conception of her daughter-in- and John Bayley’s memoir, Iris, is devoted to conveying how she
law in an effort to see her more justly. Instead of taking the and he contended with the disease before her death in 1999. The
daughter-in- law to be vulgar, she sees her as refreshingly simple; film Iris, which was directed by Richard Eyre in 1997, provides a
not undignified, but spontaneous. So Murdoch imagines the moving portrait of her final years, while, for the most part, not
mother as capable of understanding her daughter-in-law differ- engaging with her literary and philosophical work.
ently from her immediate impression. This capacity to rethink
and to move away from our prejudices is central in Murdoch’s Murdoch is a thinker who resists classification, working within
consideration of the moral significance of paying attention to and beyond the analytic tradition. Her determination to cross
other people and situations. boundaries and to draw upon multiple interests and forms of
expertise marks out her originality. Her philosophy relates to her
Most notably within her essay ‘On “God” and “Good”’, Murdoch skills as a novelist in that she develops and relates her philosoph-
maintains that morality might be seen in terms of realising the Good – ical perspective to lived experience in ways familiar to the novel-
a transcendent standard of perfection in the style of Plato. Murdoch ist. Her imaginative example of the mother who shows moral
believes that in the modern world old ideas connected with a per- development by reflecting upon her prejudices is expressly recog-
sonal and supernatural God can no longer be sustained; but she nised by Murdoch herself as drawing upon a literary sensibility.
imagines that a notion of the Good could still provide a paradigm of Moreover, her novels show (if only through a glass darkly) her
morality that might encourage people to look away from mere moral identification of the moral failings of inattentiveness and egoistic
subjectivism to the possibility of objective goodness. self-absorption.

Later Writing Iris Murdoch explored many philosophical traditions, engag-
Murdoch continued to develop her philosophical thinking fol- ing critically with contemporary analytic and continental philos-
lowing The Sovereignty of Good, while publishing a series of novels ophy, while drawing upon historic philosophers who were being
that tend to show the difficulties of attending to others and ignored or misperceived in her time. She also strikes an individ-
acting morally. Perhaps her most celebrated novel is The Sea, The ual note in aiming to make her philosophy relevant to how one
Sea (1978), which is presented as a journal of a renowned but might live one’s life.
egotistic theatre director, Charles Arrowby, who manifestly fails
in his professed aim of becoming good. His focus upon his own © PROF. GARY BROWNING 2020
assumed virtue obscures the pressing needs of others. It is an
object lesson in the vice of inattentiveness. Gary Browning is Professor of Political Thought at Oxford Brookes
University, and the author of books on Murdoch, Collingwood,
In The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists (1977) Hegel, Lyotard, the history of political thought, critical political
economy, global theory, and Bob Dylan.

August/September 2020 Philosophy Now 53

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54 Philosophy Now August/September 2020

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August/September 2020 Philosophy Now 55

Philosophy in the

WoTndaeilnlrisland Time of Plague, Pt. 2

Raymond Tallis ruminates on the reckoning
and the reconstruction required.

The sixty or so days of lockdown lenge presented by the virus. Those who not an economic necessity but an ideological
since I wrote the last column have been watching what has been happen- choice. Martin Wolf, a senior columnist for
seem an age when measured by ing in the UK over the last decade do not the Financial Times (not known to be a Marx-
the progress of Spring from leaf- share that surprise. ist publication), argued in ‘Crash Landing’,
less trees to Philip Larkin’s ‘unresting 2018, that “Transforming a financial crisis
castles’ that ‘thresh/In full grown thickness’. Readers with long memories may recall into a fiscal crisis confused cause with effect.
And yet the days seem to have followed each my cri de coeur in 2014 (‘Emergency Reflec- Yet this political prestidigitation proved a
other at an accelerating pace. I am reminded tions on Political Philosophy’, Issue 105), brilliant coup. It diverted attention from the
of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, when the when I reported from a protest march to failure of the free-market finance they
time traveller’s world speeds up until the defend Britain’s National Health Service believed in to the cost of welfare states they
sequence of day and night looks like a stro- (NHS) against the quadruple assault of disliked.” In short, austerity was an oppor-
boscopic flickering. Either way, there has defunding, demoralizing, dismantling, and tunistic attack on the ideal of a society in
been plenty of time for philosophical, and denationalization. The most important which we mitigate the cruel lottery of life by
rather less philosophical, brooding on the weapon in this assault (and most costly of time sharing risks.
unfolding catastrophe that goes under the and money) was the 2012 Health and Social
name of Covid-19. We have witnessed hero- Care Act, whose purpose was privatization of Just before the Covid-19 outbreak, debate
ism and kindness, altruism and patient, health provision. The Act made inevitable the on the damage to the health and welfare of
attentive care. Neighbours have discovered failure of preparedness for the pandemic – as the most vulnerable citizens in the UK was
neighbourliness, citizens have embraced signalled in Exercise Cygnus, a simulation of drowned out by Brexit – itself an act of mean-
civic values; individuals facing unemploy- a pandemic to test the resilience of health and spirited, Little Englander self-harm, made
ment, even destitution, have taken it upon other public services, whose 2017 report was possible by the degradation of the national
themselves to worry about the needs of buried. Lack of personal protective equip- conversation and political discourse. The
vulnerable strangers. But the pandemic has ment for health care staff and others in various success of the Brexit campaign represented a
also cast light on something far less attrac- front-lines; an abysmal and continuing failure triumph of simple lies – such as that Britons
tive – in particular on our political class and to develop a capacity to track, trace, and are dictated to by unelected bureaucrats in
the social order over which it governs. There isolate cases; and the tens of thousands of Brussels, so ‘we need to take back control’ –
are similar stories elsewhere, most notably in Covid-related deaths in care homes, are trib- over the complex truths of the national and
our erstwhile partner across the Atlantic, so utes to the thoroughness with which health international, economic, political, and
I hope Philosophy Now’s international reader- services have been trashed. cultural benefits of membership of the Euro-
ship will forgive me for focusing on the small pean Union.
(and getting smaller) island called Britain. The assault on the NHS has been only the
most audacious element of a decade-long The most striking symptom of the sick-
The Covid story in the UK has been dire. dismantling of the welfare state, with unem- ness in the body politic of the UK, has been
Due to the dithering and incompetence of the ployment and disability benefits, social care, the ascent of the most prominent champion
government in the run-up to the lockdown, education and other key services also being of Brexit to the highest office in the land.
the mortality rate per capita in the UK is at conspicuous casualties. A report published in Boris Johnson, Britain’s own little Trum-
the time of writing the highest in the world February 2020, just before the pandemic got pette, has proved to be a catastrophically
(though it may yet lose this unwelcome title into its stride, Health Equity in England: The incompetent leader. As Max Hastings, his old
to the United States or Brazil). According to Marmot Review 10 Years On, described the toll boss at the Daily Telegraph warned, Johnson’s
the Organisation of Economic Cooperation of austerity on equity and health, and esti- “elevation will signal Britain’s abandonment
and Development, the economic hit to the mated 120,000 excess deaths. Soaring levels of of any claim to be a serious country… [he is]
UK is also likely to be world-beating. And this poverty, stress, depression, malnourishment, an experiment in celebrity government.”
despite Britain’s good fortune in being rela- illness, dependence on charity, wage insecu-
tively late to experience the pandemic, and rity, and degrading conditions of labour, The pandemic has exacerbated pre-exist-
therefore having been given time to prepare marked the lives of a growing ‘precariat’, even ing inequalities and iniquities. Now, if ever,
and to learn from experience elsewhere. before the arrival of Covid-19. is the time for radical reflection on how we
got to the terrible state we’re in; and, indeed,
Some may be surprised that a nation with The pretext for austerity was that, after to look beyond our parish boundaries to a
a reputation for competence, good gover- the financial crash of 2008, cuts in public global world order that at present seems to
nance, and other such virtues, should have services were essential to avoid unsustain- be designed to further enrich the rich and
failed so disastrously to deal with the chal- able levels of public indebtedness. In fact (as impoverish the poor, and think of post-
has often been pointed out), austerity was pandemic reconstruction. As Benjamin

56 Philosophy Now August/September 2020

Tallis and Neil Renic argue in ‘Building a requires a transformation of the conversa- WoTndaeilnlrisland
Post-Coronial World: Lessons from tion citizens have with each other. This
Germany’ (Open Democracy, April 22nd must mean something profoundly different significantly advanced nor catastrophic
2020), we should not aim for a return to from the disconnected, reactive, narrow- blood baths retarded by philosophers.
‘business as usual’, “instead we should learn minded, mean-spirited, ill-informed and Neither analytic philosophy in the Anglo-
from social transformations ushered in by lie-strewn discourse orchestrated by media phone world, nor Continental philosophy in
past pandemics and man-made disasters. and platforms owned by and shaped accord- mainland Europe, had a significant role in
The provision of public health, socialized ing to the interests of billionaires. And so shaping the course of events. (An important
medicine, the New Deal, the welfare state, (not before time you might think) I come to exception is Simone de Beauvoir, whose
and the Marshall Plan, were all radical philosophy. What could philosophy bring 1949 book The Second Sex, became an inspi-
responses to radically changing circum- to the conversation we must have if our ration for embattled feminism.) The tenu-
stances. Today, the unprecedented chal- post-pandemic world is to be better than the ous connection between philosophy and
lenge of Covid-19 offers a similar opportu- world that was ambushed by Covid-19? political thought in the twentieth century is
nity to remake our world for the better.” dramatically illustrated by the two leading
Some branches of philosophy would exponents of existential phenomenology:
What changes are needed? An obvious seem to have little to offer. Ontology, meta- Martin Heidegger was a Nazi; and Jean-Paul
target is what Sheila Smith has called physics, and epistemology are unlikely to Sartre was first a Marxist and then a Maoist.
‘termite capitalism’. The ‘termites’ are a sub- bring much to the table – apart from (alas,
group of the wealth extractors, posing as well-hidden) examples of rigour and trans- The most obvious philosophical source of
wealth creators, who make money out of parency in argument. These jewels in contributions to the much-needed conver-
moving money around. Their activities have philosophy’s crown have to be content with sation is political philosophy, but the recent
resulted in the global phenomenon of their status as ends in themselves, bringing story is not encouraging. John Rawls’ A
private equity destroying businesses that pleasure and illumination to those who are Theory of Justice (1971) – an impassioned,
once provided real services and manufac- lucky enough to have the time and freedom intellectually rigorous call for a more equi-
tured real goods. There are also the modern from want, and the inclination, to engage in table world – was at the height of its
slave-owners who build nine figure fortunes philosophical reflection. academic fame in the decades when neolib-
eralism, its ideological polar opposite, was
while exploiting their employees. Hiding A Covid Look at Planet Earth shaping the politics that have since been
their ill-gotten gains from the taxman, Farshaad Razmjouie, 2020 destroying the life chances of billions and
they’re free riders on the civilization built threatening the very future of the ecosphere.
and maintained by others. And in a glob- Things have not always been thus. The
alised economy, the inequity within nations role of philosophy in shaping the course of How, then, shall we respond to the quote
is replicated in the inequity between nations. history is undeniable. The empiricism and inscribed on Marx’s grave: “Philosophers
political theory of John Locke; the ency- have only interpreted the world in various
It is clear that fundamental change is clopaedic writings of the French philosophes ways. The point, however, is to change it” –
needed. Such change, secured through radi- whom he influenced; the English Utilitari- given that philosophy no longer looks like an
cal fiscal policies – such as a commitment to ans Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill agent of change? Your columnist deals with
a Universal Basic Income, or a Green New had a huge influence on the birth of secular, his unease at writing about free will (see next
Deal that addresses not only economic liberal democracy in Europe and the USA. column) while his fellow citizens are dying
inequality but also climate change – will Marx’s famous ‘turning Hegel on his head’ on ventilators, or queueing in food banks,
require a different kind of politician from – replacing mind with matter as the and politicians are getting away with
the shallow (Johnson), imbecilic and corrupt substrate of the process that is the putative murder, by reluctantly accepting the divi-
(Trump), or blood-boltered (Putin, Xi unfolding of history – has had global conse- sion between activity in the kingdom of
Jinping) leaders we have at present. For quences that are (alas) still unfolding. means (as in politics) and the pursuit of ulti-
politicians who have a moral compass, mate ends (as in philosophy).
vision, and competence to ascend to power, Unfortunately, it looks as though the
leaders of the collective conversation have Today, self-isolation in the study; tomor-
now moved elsewhere. In the twentieth row, back to the streets shouting slogans?
century, progressive social changes were not Though each seems to question the other,
there is serious work to be done in both places.

© PROF. RAYMOND TALLIS 2020

Raymond Tallis’s latest book, Seeing
Ourselves: Reclaiming Humanity from
God & Science is out now.

August/September 2020 Philosophy Now 57

Fiction

What Colour Are Numbers?

Keith McVeigh contacts an advanced alien with a strange (non-)question.

Ijust love my little Galaxy 500 Interstellar Transceiver. The physical – questions it is possible to ask. The reason our philoso-
first time I got an answer back – from the heart of the phers were so much more successful than the philosophers of
Milky Way’s galactic bulge – I was gobsmacked. Unfor- other civilisations at sweeping up the mysteries, was that we have
tunately, the Galaxy 500 is just a toy in comparison with a particular neurological characteristic which has meant that from
the precision and powerful signals of professional quality an early stage in our evolution, we have been unable to form any
transceivers, and because of the instabilities inherent in our ‘bil- ‘nonsensical’ statements in our minds, including any non-ques-
lion times faster than light’ sub-space network, any contact we tions. Paradoxically, that’s why the mystery of the colour of num-
amateurs make will be a one-off exchange, and we often get cut bers survived. As well as being the last of our mysteries, it was
off with only a few seconds’ warning. I still love it, though. also the oldest. That very question was discovered in fragments
of prehistoric writing going all the way back to the time when
Anyway, I wanted to tell you about last night’s efforts. I’ll we were still able to think nonsensically – the time, that is, before
let the transcript speak for itself: our neurological filter had evolved. No one thought to question
if it was a real question, because no one could really very easily
Send: Hello. Is there anyone out there? This is Ida from Earth. imagine how one might formulate a non-question. Thus the fact
Receive: Hello, good to hear from you, Ida. My name is Lude, that we could repeat it, having seen it in the fragment, was itself
and my planet is called Logipos. Is Earth’s civilisation advanced? taken as evidence that it was a real question.
Send: Yes, pretty advanced, I guess. You know: science, art, Send: I think I see what you’re saying, and I’m glad to have been
philosophy, all that. of service. But tell me, are you seriously saying that your philos-
Receive: Great. Without further ado then, will you answer a ophy is complete, and that you have answered all its questions?
question for me? Receive: Yes.
Send: Yes, if I can. Go ahead. Send: Perhaps then, Lude, you can return the favour.
Receive: What colour are numbers? Receive: Yes, of course, Ida. I would be delighted. It’s the least
Send: I beg your pardon? I can do.
Receive: What does ‘I beg your pardon?’ mean? Send: We humans are still struggling with our philosophy.
Send: I’m sorry, I was simply expressing my surprise and Perhaps you could clear something up for me.
puzzlement at your question.
Receive: Are numbers blue? >> SYSTEM MESSAGE: INSTABILITY IN SUPER-SPACE
Send: No. Numbers aren’t blue. That doesn’t make any sense. NETWORK. DISCONNECTION IMMINENT.
Receive: Are they yellow?
Send: No, no, no. When I say that it doesn’t make any sense Send: We’re about to be cut off. Can we keep this short?
to say that numbers are blue, it’s not because they’re some other Receive: By all means. Go ahead.
colour, it’s because they aren’t any colour at all. To say that Send: What’s the meaning of life?
numbers are blue is like saying that triangles are unscrupulous Receive: I beg your pardon?
or that politicians are equilateral. It’s wrong to say that trian-
gles are unscrupulous, but not because some of them are prin- >> SYSTEM MESSAGE: CONNECTION TERMINATED.
cipled. Likewise it is wrong to say that politicians are equilat-
eral, but not because some politicians are right-angled. Trian- © DR KEITH MCVEIGH 2020
gles are no more principled than they are unscrupulous. Politi-
cians are no more right-angled than they are equilateral. It is Keith McVeigh has a PhD in Philosophy of Mind and teaches part-
not so much even that all these statements are false. They’re time at Queen’s University Belfast.
not really true or false at all: they are all meaningless, or as we
say, nonsense. They break some kind of logical or syntactical © NASA/HUBBLE
rule necessary for meaning, you see.
Receive: I get you. That’s amazing. Do you mean then that the
question ‘What colour are numbers?’ has no proper answer?
Send: That’s right.
Receive: My question then is really a non-question?
Send: Yes, it is.
Receive: Well, well… Thank you very much Ida. You have
solved – or maybe I should say you have dissolved – the last mys-
tery. My people are very advanced. Our golden age of philoso-
phy and science was many millennia ago. During that era we
answered all the purely philosophical – by which I mean meta-

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