Before Chimps and Chips — Mogens Chrom Jacobsen

A philosopher and a translator: Tell us briefly about yourself and your work.

Philosopher and translator. I do not have much to say about the translator, of late. Philosophers, instead, pursue questions, and if they get stuck in philosophy it is because of curiosity getting to know the answer, or because it matters, or probably both. I started out in moral philosophy with Kant, but ended up believing that Kant himself was somewhat dissatisfied with the result, indicating that we should change focus as to how norms are created. I saw the dilemma between an individualistic morality, potentially leading to anarchy, and collective decision-making, potentially thwarting the other as a manifestation of this malaise, and traced a clearer manifestation of it to Jean Bodin. The notions of right and human rights, important constituents of the dilemma, were still unclear, and I ventured into the history of human rights and political philosophy. My conception of human rights led me further into moral philosophy, endeavouring to describe how I believe morality is really functioning, and thus returning to the idea that we should change focus. This has in turn led to an interest in neuroscience and neural computation, in order to find out how our brain supports morality. That is where I am today.

What is your understanding of "humour" proper; or, at least, of those features thereof to which you have paid the keenest attention? And how does your work merge with, or is influenced by, your quotidian encounters with a potentially ubiquitous and ambiguous phenomenon such as humour? 

Some people have the gift of making other people laugh. What makes people laugh is extremely various. It is, of course, a precious gift, which, when it is benevolent, diffuses well-being in its surroundings. I have been only sparsely gifted in that respect, but humour is not only about making other people laugh. We laugh of many different things, but often we laugh of other people. Humour is also about being at the receiving end. To have humour is also about being able to «take» a joke; being able to laugh at yourselves. This implies not taking yourselves too seriously. There are, of course, limits to what one should «take» and joking can degenerate into harassment if one person is repeatedly and maliciously the target of «joking». Here we leave humour to enter the territory of immorality.

Humour, in this sense, seems to live on something universal; universal human frailties. When we laugh of some human frailty in others, we are in some way laughing of ourselves. Nobody is perfect. When we are joking we might pinpoint some «fault» (ridiculousness, awkwardness, or something else), but at the same time we are indicating tolerance, knowing that it could have been us. This tolerance is important, since it allows for cutting corners, getting along without too much friction, being easygoing, etc. Pinpointing every fault would create endless conflicts. A humorous trait marks the point without blaming, and we can all laugh about it.

It also works the other way around. An excessive quest for coherence would somehow show a lack of humour. The archetype is some fanatic wanting to subsume everything and everyone under some principle or ideology. In a less serious case, we have the moral philosopher endeavouring to be coherent according to some moral principle. Your discourse as a moral philosopher has to conform to your acts. In some sense an admirable endeavour, but we agree with Alexis de Tocqueville that it often creates more difficulties than good: " ... if it is sometimes necessary to deviate from the rules of logic when you act, you could not do the same thing in discourse, and men run into nearly as many difficulties because of incoherence of discourse, as they ordinarily run into when acting coherently." (Alexis de Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique, Paris: Gallimard 1986: Vol I, p. 54, Introduction (penultimate paragraph). My translation.)

In my view, the main problem stems from an inadequate conception of morality. A top-down conception of morality that attempts to decide moral questions by rules, of whatever kind they are, will inevitably pose the question in this way: We have to be coherent with the principle and any small incoherence is readily pinpointed in order to blame or to show that the rule is not good. Trying to be coherent with a principle which cannot in its simple terms subsume the sprawling variety of life will definitely run into endless difficulties. Of course, incoherence can become hypocrisy or injustice in serious cases, but too punctilious an observation of coherence creates numerous troubles. We should rather see morality as management of expectations. I do this in my latest book and I have followed up with some posts on LinkedIn.

In sum, humour is, of course, a multifarious phenomenon, and we have only touched on a small part of it. We propose as one side of humour that humour is a benevolent action which allows us to laugh at ourselves as imperfect beings, smoothing human coexistence, while at the same time laying bare our frailties. Joking is not only joking, it also has a serious side. I think Piet Hein nailed the point in his grook: "Taking fun as simply fun and earnestness in earnest shows how thoroughly thou none of the two discernest."

Thinkers as different as Nietzsche, Judith Shklar, and Derrida have argued that cruelty is baffling because, even if we want to eliminate it from human life, it always finds a way to re-emerge therein, almost as if it were part and parcel of the same human life. Has cruelty ever played a significant role in your work's purview, and/or your understanding of social and cultural phenomena? 

My short and very disappointing answer would be, no. I have spent more time pondering why people are moral, rather than why they are immoral. I would say, though, that part of the reason for cruelty is dehumanization of the other. This dehumanization is actually as old as humanity. As chimpanzees have no scruples about molesting a chimpanzee from another group if it ventures into their territory, the first humans probably did the same thing, not considering other humans as part of their own group. In these times there was no humanity in a moral sense. Humanity had to be constructed laboriously through war, trade, empire building and cooperation. Other humans emerge as «human», when we become sensible to their preoccupations, but in some cases this simply did not work out properly; and in particular serious cases of psychopathy, they do not seem to consider anyone «human» apart from themselves.

Are there two or three works that, when it comes to addressing any of the themes fuelling my own philosophical and literary production, you would describe as true "classics" and, therefore, advise the reader of this blog to familiarise themselves with — the way, say, Plato's Republic or Machiavelli's Prince can be said to be "classics" in politics? And are there any works from the past ten years that you would equally recommend? 

Piaget, Jean (2013 [1932]). Le jugement moral chez l’enfant. Paris: PUF.

Løgstrup, Knud Ejler (1991 [1956]). Den etiske udfordring. Copenhagen, Gyldendal (The Ethical Demand, OUP 2020).

Even though I do not agree with Piaget’s excessive emphasis on rules, and I cannot follow Løgstrup into the theological domain, they were both onto something very important. Piaget’s notion of autonomic morality contains some profound intuitions, and Løgstrup touches with his notion of the ethical demand a key feature of morality.

Bennet, Max S. (2023). A Brief History of Intelligence. London: William Collins.

Bennet’s book is a vivid and well-written introduction to the subject which relates neuroscience to machine learning.