Glimpse of Light: New Meditations on First Philosophy 9781474279529, 9781474279482, 9781474279512, 9781474279505

Table of contents :
Cover page
Halftitle page
Title page
Copyright page
Contents
First Meditation
Second Meditation
Third Meditation
Fourth Meditation
Fifth Meditation
Sixth Meditation
Objections and Replies

Citation preview

GLIMPSE OF LIGHT

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GLIMPSE OF LIGHT New Meditations on First Philosophy

STEPHEN MUMFORD

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

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Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC 1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2017 © Stephen Mumford, 2017 Stephen Mumford has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN : HB : PB : ePDF : ePub:

978-1-4742-7952-9 978-1-4742-7948-2 978-1-4742-7950-5 978-1-4742-7949-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Cover design: Clare Turner Cover image © Stephen Mumford, 2016 Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

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Contents

First Meditation

1

Second Meditation

23

Third Meditation

47

Fourth Meditation

73

Fifth Meditation

93

Sixth Meditation

111

Objections and Replies

133

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First Meditation

Some 200 miles inside the Arctic Circle in the north of Norway sits the island city of Tromsø. On the larger neighbouring island of Kvaløya there is, after some distance and turns, a tiny settlement called Bakkan. It consists of four houses on the slope down to the fjord. The road stops before the village with the journey completed on foot. I have a friend, Petter, who built one of the houses. From his kitchen window he has an uninterrupted view across the fjord to the angular mountain-tops beyond. On the edge of the water, he also built himself a small wooden cabin in which he could sit and do his thinking. The interior is equipped in only a basic manner. It contains a raised bed, a stove and a writing desk that sits under the window. From that spot, you can look out across the herring-rich waters, cold and silent. The stove is essential in the harsh winters when temperatures rarely climb above freezing. 1

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It was to this simple cabin that I retreated one winter to confront my most pressing doubts. These were many and growing. For some years I had pursued my studies dutifully. Now I thought they might all be for nothing. I could no longer deny that I was mid-life. I needed time away, during which I could decide whether I should continue with philosophy, or give it up forever. To have a friend such as Petter, possessed of this distant refuge, isolated from all my professional obligations and societal ties, had provided the perfect opportunity for escape. So it was that I’d asked Petter to host me in Bakkan, permitting me undisturbed occupancy of his little cabin. Within, I could use my solitary confinement to meditate upon the matters that had troubled me so. A fellow philosopher, he understood that. I wished for little attention. Solitude had become the most valuable commodity these past years, in which Bakkan promised to reward me with riches. I knew Bakkan. But never before had I visited in January when the sun remained absent all day long. Nevertheless, I was guaranteed a warm welcome from Petter and his family and hoped it would outweigh any chill wind or snow flurry that came my way. As I carried my small case along the icy trail approaching their home, led by Petter, I saw the rest of them. Marie presented herself first, reaching for my gloved hand and holding it with hers. ‘Takk for sist,’ came the traditional Norwegian greeting. I wish we had something like it in English.

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It says that you remember a nice meeting previously, as in ‘thanks for last time’. The children also came out to see me. I had known them since they were infants. Solan was now nearly as tall as me and his sister Ragnhild was even taller, both with blond hair protruding from beneath their woollen hats. Snow and ice, darkness and stillness formed the backdrop to our hurried greetings, then we were quickly away up to the house, seeking its warmth. I had travelled long. Now I was in a place where at late-afternoon the only light I could see came from the moon, the stars, and a dim glow from the few houses across the water. Tea was served as we caught up on pleasantries. I liked these people from Bakkan. The neighbours, Inger and Odd, were well, I was told. The other two houses now had new occupants, an old man and a young lady, both alone. Maybe I would meet them. Ragnhild would soon be off to further her education and Solan was doing well too. She was interested in veterinary medicine. He wanted to make films. I was not here for a holiday, though; nor to waste time. I had a sense that after fulfilling my duty to chit-chat and catch up on any family news, I must set to work on my task. It was a task of the greatest magnitude. I was there to think about the biggest challenge in my career – to my academic being – and one that, I knew, threatened to render it all forlorn. Without resolving it here, I could not go on.

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I steered the conversion on to the cabin, dropping the hint that I was ready to go down there and settle in. Petter was prepared. He had made me a wholesome bread loaf which I was told to take, along with a block of cheese and an ostehøvel to slice it. I had no objection. Though always unceremonious, the hospitality was generous in north Norway and I knew that unless I had everything I needed, I would leave excuses for the family to visit and interrupt me. Indeed, I had to emphasise, not for the first time, that I wanted no visits when down there by the water, lest my concentration be broken by worldly matters. My preoccupations concerned loftier subjects from which I could not be diverted. Petter took me down the 100 yards or so to what would be my home for the next six days and nights. The small hike at times threatened to land me on my rear through a combination of steep gradient and ice underfoot. But it was negotiable with care. The cabin was as basic as I remembered and, as we entered, no warmer than the wintry weather outside. Petter lit a candle, set it on the table, and then quickly went to work on lighting the stove. He explained each step for me as he went along, putting in paper, kindling and firewood in a specific order and quantity. But I was not a good listener concerning practical matters.

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Instead, I looked around my sparse quarters. They were cold and damp, having remained empty all through the winter. There were few comforts. And that was fine. A nautical map adorned one wall. There was a small bookshelf with only a single book upon it, laid flat. I quickly flicked through it: a novel by Knut Hamsun. My Norwegian wouldn’t be good enough to read it. No matter. By the time I had found a resting place for my bag in one corner, unpacked my notebook and pencil and placed it alongside the bread and cheese, the flames were starting to take and it gave us some more light, though not yet any heat. Petter showed me the big basket that fitted under the bed. It had a few small logs in it. ‘There’s not much fire wood for you here. I’ll send someone down with more.’ I nodded approval. There was no point in protesting. Without gas or electricity here, no luxurious glazing or roof insulation, the stove had to be fed. The room would be intolerable otherwise. My comfort – even my safety – depended on the proper functioning of that simple stove. ‘So, Ben, tell me,’ questioned Petter, ‘Why have you come all this way to Bakkan, and asked to be left alone in my cabin?’ I owed at least some explanation, given the generosity of my host. ‘Problems,’ I offered, as an inadequate opening. I was coy in presenting my concerns. I wanted to make it clear that I was not

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there to talk the matter over but to think it through. Yet he remained silent and looked at me for more. ‘You see, Petter, I am starting to wonder whether I should stay a philosopher anymore.’ ‘Really? And why’s that?’ ‘I have doubts,’ I explained, getting only gradually down to the issue. ‘I’m starting to fear that . . ., well, . . . that I’ve been wrong all along. And what is a philosopher to do if he realises he is wrong?’ ‘Go and hide in a cabin?’, Petter suggested, with a mischievous grin. ‘Not quite that,’ I assured him. ‘But at least I should think very hard about whether to continue. I’m too old to come up with a new philosophy that contradicts everything I’ve already said before. No one would take me seriously after that.’ ‘And so?’ ‘So here I am. I’m giving myself these six days – possibly six final days – to find some certainty . . . some clarity . . . for what I believe in.’ ‘And if you don’t?’ ‘Then I don’t,’ I responded. ‘. . . And then there’s nothing to go on for.’ These things matter to philosophers. I didn’t have to tell him that.

FIRST MEDITATION

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After dwelling on this for a moment, Petter looked at me more seriously: ‘Do you want to tell me what your doubts are, then?’ ‘Not yet,’ I answered. ‘The first thing I need to do – hopefully tonight – is to make concrete to myself exactly what the worry is. If I can formulate the problem, it might be the first step to a solution.’ Petter nodded. Seeing that he was not really needed anymore, as I had all that I’d requested, he politely bade me farewell and left the cabin, making one last protest that I was not really as old as I thought. I was grateful for that courtesy. Cold air rushed in as he opened the door: an indirect sign that the stove had started doing its job. I went out with him to watch him make his way safely back up the icy hill in the direction of his warm, family home. At least he didn’t have to share my misery, which I was willing to isolate. *

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Finally, I was alone. I exhaled the relief of one who had travelled far, arrived, and shut the door. With many miles behind me, over land and sea, I had time at last to reflect on the true causes of my being here. Staring out over the fjord, I recalled the reasons and arguments that had produced this unexpected crisis of confidence. Did it really mean that my life’s work had been for nought?

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The fact was that I had, in many articles and books over the years, developed a philosophy of realism. This said that our interests were not the measure of all things. Indeed, I had stated that we were but one small part of the natural world. I could sum it up like this: things existed whether we thought of them or not. Knowledge of the universe was something obtainable to us, though this did not mean that we could know everything. Science was the best way to uncover many truths but I did not believe it answered every question. There was still a place for philosophy, which remains our best hope of understanding the general nature of reality, in an abstract kind of way. We were right to have a sceptical attitude but not to hold a sceptical philosophy. I firmly believed there was a world outside of our own minds, for example, and I even thought that we could know and understand a substantial portion of it. But all around me there were challenges. Many didn’t like my view. How could we be so sure there were such things existing apart from us? We only infer the reality of other existents from our own experiences, my opponents protested. Doesn’t that mean that the only thing we know about with certainty is experience? Metaphysics made the mistake, I was told, of assuming we could think and talk about the world itself, rather than just thinking about the words or concepts we must use in order to

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grasp it. After all, there are clearly different terms on which we might conceptualise the world. We could divide it up in all sorts of ways. Aren’t those divisions then arbitrary? We think of the arm and the hand as two distinct things, but why should this mental division be made at the wrist? Couldn’t it have been at another place instead, if we had different concepts for the world? I had ploughed on in my professional life and developed my own programme of work but all the time I knew I had nagging doubts. I felt I’d had to set them aside. No longer. Was my realism being built on sand? Could anything really be known other than my own mind? And did I even know that? There was just one thought or feeling and then another. How did I even know that there was a ‘self ’ having those experiences? Might even I not exist? Sceptics had annoyed me. They seemed unreasonable and stubborn. Their philosophy led nowhere. And, yet, did I have an answer? A proof? Consider money, for example. How could this be anything other than a social construction? We have these small slips of paper and metal coins that seem to mean so much to us. People will do almost anything to get them. Money has a value, we are told, which is sometimes so great. Yet this monetary value is nothing but what we as a society have chosen to give it. Perhaps we need not have created money; and I can conceive of a time

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when we decide to have it abolished so that we can live in a different way. Now money is real, of course, but it is real because we have constructed it and it would not exist but for that. And over times, social practices can give money reality even when it exists only as numbers against a bank account. I am part of the society which has conspired to create this thing we call money, which exists only because of such a conspiracy that sustains it. It seems it would be a folly on my part to challenge this reasoning. The sceptic’s challenge can go even deeper. You might say that the metal or paper from which money is made is surely real and could remain behind even if all life on Earth were to cease. Scepticism would thus go only so far, one might think. But I’ve known even this be challenged. Metal, paper, wood, plastic: these are all things that exist because we have categorised them. Without us, what is the world? A collection of particles, such as electrons and protons, buzzing around, colliding, forming partnerships. Beings much smaller than us, or much larger, would see the world in a very different way. Where we see difference, they might see sameness. Where we see sameness, they see difference. What about the objectivity I had defended in my realist philosophy? How can that be justified? Some say that virtually everything is socially constructed, even tables and chairs, cats, planets, plants, rivers and mountains.

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I met one man who said that electrons did not exist until 1897. But once they were ‘discovered’, they existed and had always existed. I pointed out the absurdity in this way of understanding. It generated a contradiction for it implies that in 1800 electrons both didn’t and did exist. How was I to make sense of what I was being told? My concern was dismissed. ‘Contradiction is an artefact of logic’, he insisted, ‘and we created logic too.’ I couldn’t argue conclusively against that. I knew there were different systems of logic, with different uses and applications. Could I really assert that there was a truth about the proper steps in reasoning? Or does anything go? I didn’t know why these problems were worrying me now in particular. I had always known them. I’d put them to one side because I wanted to make progress. I had been an ambitious young man, publishing books, developing a system, earning recognition and promotion. It had gained me a degree of academic respectability and a comfortable life. Perhaps it was just my age, then. Once I had passed fifty, there was no point pretending I was young anymore. Early in life, it’s rare you hear of one of your contemporaries dying. That had changed. You know that you will not live forever. Some old friends had already gone. How long was left? Twenty years? Ten? Five? At some point, you have to stop and face the truth. You

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cannot lie to yourself. To understand the world before you die is all that really matters. It was now the only meaning I could give to my existence: to know the truth. If the sceptic was right, I would content myself with that. It would entail that the constructive philosophy with which my name was associated was without basis. And then there would really be nothing more for philosophy to say. So be it. I would spend my remaining days making pottery or weaving baskets. Philosophy had not given me much relaxation, after all. Now I could redress that deficit. There was still the opportunity. Petter was a philosopher too. Would I tell him if I concluded it was all a waste of time? No. He should do what’s right for him. If there is no objectivity, let each man, woman and child enjoy his or her path, as I would my pottering. Still . . ., in these six days in Bakkan, there might yet be an answer. Left alone with my meditations, I might come up with a response. And if I know that my world is built on solid foundations, then I would be right to promote my views to others. I could write more books; leave a legacy to future generations. They would read of objective realism and how reason was our salvation. I might even tell them of my time here in Bakkan, when I discovered the ultimate answer to the sceptics. I would have a new lease of life, all cynicism banished. With Petter, I could discuss metaphysics, logic, ethics and aesthetics. Perhaps we might even write something together.

FIRST MEDITATION

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I quite liked that prospect. It sounded more fulfilling than basket weaving. And yet, I still couldn’t opt for it just because it would be a pleasure or it might progress my reputation. I would be lying, not least to myself, if in truth I thought there was no objective reality. I looked at my watch and realised I should eat. I took up the big knife I’d been given and cut into the dark and grainy bread. I sliced some cheese and sat it atop. Silently staring across the water, in the moonlight I could just make out the little houses on the other side of the fjord. I sat and ate. ‘This is my task,’ I thought to myself. ‘A decision must be made by the time I leave.’ *

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After a second slice, I dusted off my hands and took up my notebook, retracing my line of thought and writing it down. I was here to think, rather than write, but I knew that unless I recorded my ideas, I would often go over exactly the same path again, each time presuming it was the first I’d been there. With my notes, I could start back the next day at the point I had previously left off. I now had to recall all the steps I had just taken while they were fresh in my mind. As I was occupied in that way, I heard some footsteps crunching the snow outside. There was talking and giggling. The cabin had a second small window, which was in the door. I stood

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and looked to see that it was Ragnhild and Solan. Between them, they dragged a sled, which they brought to a rest. I waved and they saw me. Ragnhild cleared the recent snow from a natural ledge that was about waist high from where she stood. Solan reached in the sled and produced a big chunk of wood, which he passed to Ragnhild and she set it down on the ledge. He reached in again and this time produced a small axe, light enough to wield with one hand. He passed this too to Ragnhild and she immediately set about chopping the block of wood into smaller pieces. I looked down at my stove. It had a glass door on the front through which I was to feed the logs of firewood. They were making them small enough for me to fit into the stove. I put back on my coat and scarf and dragged out the basket that Petter had pointed out to me was almost empty. With it, I stepped back into the cold Arctic perpetual night. ‘We will make sure you have enough for a few days,’ Ragnhild reassured me, and Solan gathered what had been chopped so far into my basket. He set out another big log for his sister to chop in half. She lifted the sharp axe above her head and then quickly smashed it down, cleaving the wood before her. I was impressed. Despite the harsh climate, this family was the picture of physical health, strong and skilled.

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Moonlight caught the sharp edge of the axe head. My eye followed it as it rose in her hand. Then – Smash! – it came down again and the wood flew apart. The strikes increased in frequency and Ragnhild was soon going through all the wood they had brought. Solan said something in Norwegian to his big sister. He wanted a turn and she gave him the axe. Now he was showing us what he could do with it, not raising it as high as she had, nor getting as much power in the blows, but still he had enough for the blocks to be chopped up and swept into the basket I had waiting. We were all wrapped up against the cold but I could see that I was now the only one feeling it. I was merely a spectator while they took their exercise, their hot breaths being visible as they met the outside air. With a few more minutes and a couple of dozen chops, my basket was full of useable wood. It was heavy, perhaps more than I could carry, but Ragnhild took one handle and we lifted it together back into the cabin. Solan followed us in with the remaining wood. I was sure I could chop it alone, next time, but I was told that the axe was needed back home. I should let them know if I needed more to be chopped. Here I was, dependent on two minors for my survival. Ragnhild opened the front hatch of my stove and saw that there wasn’t much wood left to burn in there. She reached for some of the freshly cut logs and started bundling them in.

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She liked to display her competence and made sure I could see that she knew precisely what she was doing. Solan, meanwhile, had jumped up on the bed to sit. I had only two chairs in my temporary home. I felt like I had visitors but it was, of course, I who was the guest. This cabin had stood here since Solan was about two-years old. I wondered if he realised in what an exceptional place he had grown up. To me it seemed exotic, even magical. To them, it was normal to spend two months each year without seeing the sun. Bakkan could sometimes get extremely cold. I thought that it was still warmer than it had any right to be. It was almost the top of the world, level in latitude with northern Alaska. Were it not for the Gulf Stream, which made it even up here, the area would be virtually uninhabitable. Even now, with the fire lit in my cabin, the cold had made its way into me. I could feel the warmth from the stove on my face and hands, but the bones inside me still felt a chill. It set me to wondering whether I did right to come here for my thinking. Was the cold or heat better for the mind? Western philosophy had begun in ancient Greece, of course, where it was probably a good idea in the summer to sit and do nothing but think and talk. Would I be able to do the same in a winter climate or would my brain freeze up? I had come seeking reclusion, primarily, which I still hoped to obtain once my fire had been suitably rejuvenated.

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‘Try not to go out any more than necessary,’ Ragnhild mentioned, with a grin. ‘If you got lost in the woods, you would soon be turned to ice.’ ‘Don’t you worry,’ I reassured my young friends. ‘I fully intend staying in here as much as possible.’ ‘But make sure that you are not tempted out and off into the woods by the Huldra,’ added Solan, sounding excited. His sister smiled, and felt compelled to tease me more. ‘Yes, stay away from the Huldra while you are here. If you see her at your door, don’t let her in. And never follow her into the woods!’ ‘The Huldra?’ I finally queried. I could tell they enjoyed arousing my curiosity. ‘She’s a beautiful lady,’ Solan explained, ‘. . . and she will tempt you. But if you follow her . . ., you will never be seen again.’ ‘Oh,’ I replied, in a serious tone. ‘I will surely avoid her.’ ‘You can tell it’s her because she has a tail,’ Ragnhild now informed me with mock gravity. ‘She tries to hide it, though, so you won’t be able to know her straight away. Make sure to look for a tail.’ I chatted with them a bit longer, including hearing about the time their grandfather met the Huldra. He’d had a narrow escape. After that, they wanted to know how things were back home. The whole family had visited me a few years back so they knew of my normal way of life. The children had first learnt their English

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there. Not much had changed since their stay except that we had all grown older. They didn’t ask anything about what I was doing there in Bakkan, staying over in the cabin for the first time. Youth can be very accepting. Maybe others before me had come and done the same. It didn’t seem as unnatural to them as it did to me. Perhaps I was having a once in a lifetime experience. There were more footsteps, trudging through the snow, expertly avoiding the hazards. Marie’s face appeared in the little window in the door and there was a smile. ‘Come in,’ I called, and once she was inside I continued, ‘Were you worried where they had gotten to?’ ‘Oh no,’ said Marie. ‘I was more thinking they were being a nuisance to you.’ I believed this. The children had been free to wander around the island all they wanted since they were very little. They respected nature but I never got a sense that they feared it. Not even the Huldra, really. In contrast, I would no doubt be dead if I was out there for as little as one hour. ‘Besides,’ Marie added, ‘I brought you some hot tea for the night. Do you call it a flask?’ It was indeed a flask, in English. Norwegians get confused by that term: for them, flask means a bottle. But I was very pleased that she’d had the foresight to think of it. I didn’t want to be trouble so hadn’t asked for anything but I could see that at

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some point during the night a warm drink might be very welcome. ‘How has your thinking gone so far?’ Marie asked. I showed her my notebook and flipped through the few pages I had written up before the firewood was brought down. In truth, I had not got much done but that was to be expected. Tomorrow would be different. They all got up to leave and wished me a safe and pleasant night. Donning their hats and gloves, they were soon out but Solan paused and beckoned me. ‘Do you see that bright star?’ he said, pointing up above a mountain further down the fjord, in the direction of the open seas. ‘That is Polarstjernen – the North Star. If you get lost in the woods, always look for that and you will know which direction to walk and come back home. The star is always to your north. Then the Huldra won’t be able to fool you.’ I thanked Solan. They soon were ascending the slope up to their house in about half the time it would have taken me. The path was rough and uneven, but they all knew every step. I retreated back in and shut the door for the night. No lock was needed in a place like this, so there was none. Still I thought I would rest and sleep much easier had the door been secured. I would just have to try not to think about it. A reindeer couldn’t turn a door handle, anyway, could it?

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Before taking to my bed, I finished off writing up my notes from the earlier meditation. ‘Can we answer the sceptic?’ I wrote. ‘What mind-independent reality would be left, if any, were we to take away sapient beings from the world?’ These were my questions. With that, I decided the day had been long enough, after most of it spent journeying. But it was also very easy to feel sleepy with all the hours of darkness here. My mind, and then my body, were telling me it was bedtime. I had been warned that the stove would not last the night. I could get up every few hours to reload it with more wood and keep it going. Or I could just sleep in something warm and go right through the night. I was so tired that I opted for the latter but put in as much new firewood as I could fit before I finally turned in. It felt a bit like I was sleeping in the wild, with none of my regular home comforts of modern living. I was now situated fully in nature and considered whether there would be bugs or spiders under the covers. But I wasn’t even sure such things could live through the winter here so I put it out of my mind. Despite wondering what I would do to pass the time if sleep would not come, I was awake only for a few more minutes. But that was not quite the end of the first day. I was disturbed in the night, coming only gradually to consciousness from what had been a deep sleep. My nose

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was like ice. But that was not it. Something else had awoken me. I felt it first: an irregular vibration that seemed to shake the cabin. This wasn’t just a movement. It was a sound – a deep and pervading one: a wailing, crying, moaning. At times it seemed a heavy breathing. I had not heard the like before. Was I dreaming? No. I was sure. But then I couldn’t make sense of it either. Was I disorientated in this alien environment? But I was certain I was aware of my other surrounds clearly and distinctly. I could feel the warm bedding against my body and cold air against my face. The fire had gone out and the darkness was engulfing. But still I heard this irregular noise, which seemed to be reaching out across the whole fjord. I did wonder whether to get up and try to light the fire. But I remembered that it would mean lots of trouble with paper and kindling; and standing there, poking and venting it. If I stayed in bed, I could keep the heat trapped inside my blankets. And that was also a reason not to get up and stand at the window, looking for the source of this unexpected disturbance. Besides, Petter had told me that a whale visited every year: a humpback. The fjord was deep and full of fish and it came to feast during the winter. I’d never heard this sound before but I’d been lucky. The whale was visiting along with me. Its song was another aspect of my commune with nature. What did I expect?

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It might have continued some time more. But I don’t know. After the initial surprise, having drawn a rational conclusion from it, the world was aright again. I felt myself drifting back to sleep. I decided that, for the duration of my stay, I would regard the whale song as my lullaby.

Second Meditation

I slumbered for some time, waking and then sleeping still more. I had no sense of time in this darkness but knew that if I looked at my watch I would then stay awake no matter how early it was. Eventually realising I had all the sleep I could take I saw that it was after 8.00 and very late for me to rise. Had I wasted some of my thinking time? So far, all I had done was articulate the doubts I had suffered. I was here to find a solution, if there was one. If not, I was to accept the pointlessness of my life: wasted thus far. But then it need be a waste no more after Bakkan. Determined to set to work, and that this day would be a positive one, I jumped out of the bed into the freezing coldness that had taken over the cabin. I couldn’t work without warmth so, once a candle was lit, my first job was to get the stove going. Scrunched up paper and small chips of wood were good for a start. Once that was lit with matches, I could put in a bigger piece: one of the logs. 23

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The paper burned well but I put on the log too soon. Was there not enough oxygen, or too much? I had a little air vent I could open or close. Had I used enough kindling at the right time? It was clearly failing so I made a second attempt. More paper and kindling and time. I couldn’t really do much more than stand watching the stove, checking if the flames were taking hold. I sat a little kettle on top but it was far from warm enough to make my tea. I drank some that was left in the flask but by now it was only lukewarm. Tea was one luxury I couldn’t do without. As soon as the first log was burning, I thought I had better introduce a second and make sure it kept going. The flames lit the room through the glass window on the stove’s frontage: a warm orange glow. But not yet cosy. It took some time for the cabin to feel warm and then for my water to boil. I drank the fresh tea and put on another small log, surprised at how quickly they burnt out. But after consulting my watch once more I realised that I had been devoted to the stove’s lighting for more than an hour. I wanted to leave the cabin and visit my hosts but didn’t feel I could until I was sure the stove would burn through my absence. If it didn’t, I would need to recommence the lighting process all over again. Outside, there was fresh snow from the night: lots of it. At no point as I slept did I have a sense of it falling. Nevertheless, the tracks back up to the house, which had been there yesterday,

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were now almost entirely covered. There were only the slightest indications of where they had been. I tried my best to follow them, and thus avoid any perils off the beaten track, but it was a struggle. Sometimes I sank down to my knees. At other times I slid back. The grips on my boots weren’t really up to the job. Nor were they high enough. Barely covering my ankles, by the time my ascent was complete, my socks inside were entirely wet and cold. ‘Ho, ho!’ came the greeting when Petter first saw me through his kitchen window, struggling up to his house. He was amused at this ill-prepared foreigner’s battle against Mor Jord. Yes, I was used to a comfortable city life. For this week, at least, I had turned my back on it. My decision was sound, though. All the distractions back home would never have allowed me all this time for reflection. Inside, I shook the snow from my shoes. Marie was there too and there were smiles all round: smiles of relief, perhaps. ‘So you survived the night?’ ‘Yes’, I replied, by self-verifying utterance. ‘I actually slept really very well. I was a little unsettled at first but I was soon asleep. I think I was tired after the travel.’ The door opened again behind me and there was another ‘Hi, hi.’ It was Inger, come up from the second house in Bakkan. ‘Takk for sist!’ ‘Takk for sist.’

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‘I saw you walk past us.’ Their house was closer to the cabin than Petter’s was. ‘You fell over a few times,’ Inger noted. ‘I did.’ ‘How was your first night in the cabin?’ I had to repeat my tale. ‘Yes, it was fine. I slept well. I was just telling Petter and Marie. But today I really will get some serious work done.’ ‘Are you writing?’ she asked. ‘Well . . . yes. Thinking and writing.’ It was too complicated to explain exactly what I would be doing in the cabin. Nor did I want to burden these folks with my personal crisis. Best just to say I’m writing, I thought. ‘You really must let us know if you need anything. You can wash in our house, if you want, Ben. And you can work there as well, if it gets too cold in the cabin.’ She called me Ben and I had to remind her that I preferred Benedict. ‘That’s very kind of you, Inger,’ I professed, but I had no intention of working there. Inger and Odd were alright, but they wouldn’t understand how important these six days were to me: how my life would be changed at the end, one way or the other. I had my morning wash in Petter’s house, where I had also kept my clean clothes for changing. That way they didn’t get frozen during the night. Tea was made and I was glad to sit and

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drink it in a warm kitchen with Petter, Marie and Inger before heading back to my solitude. As I was about to leave, I remembered to say something. ‘Oh, did you hear the whale in the night?’ My question was met with blank stares. Then they glanced at each other with unrevealing faces. Petter broke the silence. ‘No.’ I felt like I’d said something stupid. ‘I heard it in the night. It woke me up.’ They listened. No one seemed to want to interrupt my tale so I felt I had to fill the silence. ‘I didn’t know what it was at first. It was a wailing sound. It was very loud. You must have heard it.’ ‘The whale was here last month,’ Inger explained. ‘January is too late in the winter for it to come.’ Inger was a marine biologist. The local economy depended on fisheries. I could muster no argument against her expertise. ‘And we’ve not known it come back once it’s left. Not until the next winter, anyway.’ ‘So none of you heard it?’ I decided that this would be my final protest. The others shook their heads. ‘I suppose you might have slept through it. But it was so loud. Have you ever slept through it before?’

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‘It’s possible,’ conceded Petter. He seemed willing to listen, though added ‘It’s hard to know what you have missed when you are sleeping. So you might be right. We are used to whale song in the night. It could have woken you because you’re not.’ That seemed a good explanation to me. And it was polite to be conciliatory. In any case, it didn’t really matter. I was just making conversation and I really shouldn’t get annoyed with my kind hosts just because they missed something that, with my sharper ears, I had heard. I was pretty sure I had. I explained that it was time I was off back down the hill to my second day of meditation and, yes, some writing, if the spirit took me. With that I was gone. It was easier going downhill and only a problem if you tried to stop. As I got nearer to the cabin, though, I started sinking in snow up to my knees again and I was slightly self-conscious at the thought that they might all be watching me from the window. I was back just in time. The stove was almost out but by feeding it some more wood and air, I was able to salvage the flame without starting all over again. Finally, I was ready to begin work. I tried to forget that half of the morning was already gone. Now I recounted all my worries from yesterday, all my sceptical doubts. I browsed over my notes. Some think that there is nothing of which we can know the objective existence. Everything, they say, could be in our minds only, and constructed by us. I had been pursuing these thoughts last night, until

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Ragnhild and Solan came to chop my firewood and tell me about the Huldra. I had found no obvious answer by that point. I stared out of the window and my thoughts began to wander. I was surprised to find that there was light this morning. The sun did not shine on Bakkan but clearly it was not far away from doing so. I could see it on the higher mountain-tops in the distance. With a bigger impact than that, it lit up the sky and the clouds above us, announcing that it would soon arrive. The colours in the clouds were astonishing, changing according to their varying textures and thickness, especially at the edges. I could see back down almost to the end of the fjord. And it was from there that the light was coming. In an isolated place – a gap between two mountains – the sky seemed bloodred. At home, my horizon was flat. Here, it was sharply up and down, delivering an impression of distant light that I could contemplate. I was lost in the experience. It seemed that if the sun did appear right now, I would be blinded. Partially obscured to me, I could appreciate the beauty of its effect without seeing it directly. My mind felt freed of all external encumbrances and in that state delivered to me some unexpected associations. I recalled a conversation I’d had with a sceptical gentleman some months ago. Perhaps it was this incident that had started my recent problems. The man was a distinguished scholar though of another field entirely, not philosophy. It seemed like he had

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read some related texts, however. We somehow got on to a discussion of causation: what it is for one thing to cause another. I started to push my regular realist line. There were facts of causation, I insisted, which were real whether anyone knew about them or not. There were statistical methods that sometimes revealed a raised incidence of some feature, such as when people who drink from a particular water pump come down with cholera more than those who drink from other sources. This indicated a real causal connection between drinking the water and a serious illness, I argued. Perhaps some cases of causation go undetected, I allowed, but they could be real and there nevertheless, irrespective of the evidence. This was the realist position. The reality of the world was not dependent on human knowledge of it. Our beliefs had to match the world rather than the world being a creation of those beliefs. The gentleman sat and listened but I could see the quizzical look on his face, even on the occasions when he nodded. Finally, having heard me out, he mounted a counter-argument. He started by saying that he simply did not believe in causation. ‘How can you not believe in causation?’ I instantly protested, and that was when he explained. ‘You see, I think it is all just a social construction. We experience many events – one thing and then another – and we make sense of our experience by putting it in a causal order. But

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we can never say that the causal ordering is something in the world itself. It’s just in our way of thinking about the world.’ I was annoyed, but I wouldn’t say astonished. I was all too familiar with this line of thought. I’d heard it before in other forms. ‘And you say it’s a social construction?’ I asked, for clarification. ‘Yes. Like everything else. It’s not an individual thing. Someone on his own did not have the power to produce this conceptualisation of experience. It’s a social phenomenon. It is the way that people in our culture categorise certain aspects of the world.’ ‘So there could be another culture that didn’t understand the world in causal terms?’ ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘That’s perfectly possible. There could be a society – and there might actually be one – in which they accept that one thing follows another, and perhaps it even does so regularly – but they don’t accept that one thing ever causes or produces another.’ So causation wasn’t real, he concluded, other than how we make it. And he rested his case, with some satisfaction, convinced that I would have no plausible argument against it. I admit that, at the time, I did not, and it irked me to be unable to respond. Was this the reason I now found myself in a cabin, in the wilderness, pondering on the matter of what we could know and what we couldn’t know? Had so simple an argument undermined the whole strength of my realist conviction?

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It was time to put another small log in the stove so I reached into the basket of firewood that Ragnhild and Solan had kindly chopped for me. It was coincidentally at that moment that a new argument struck me and I saw the details fall into place. If there was one thing that could not be a social construction, I realised, it had to be causation. And if anything at all was socially constructed, then there had to be real causation in order for it to be so. I sat back and carefully thought through the line of reasoning. If it was sound, then I had found a new fundament on which to rest my realist philosophy, and all was saved. A claim that causation was socially constructed seemed to me impossible. In the first place, the view is meant to be that causation is socially constructed. But to construct is a causal verb, which means that I cannot understand the claim as anything but that society has made the idea of causation: it has created it. And what does this mean other than that society has caused the notion to be? Now the absurdity is apparent. Society would have needed causation to exist – to be real – in order to have constructed it. So the claim of the social construction of causation seems to fall apart. Causation would have to be real in order for that to work. But if it is real, it defeats the very claim that is made. Now suppose my sceptical opponent tries to defend his position. When he says that society constructed the idea of

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causation, he doesn’t literally mean that society caused causation to be. That would be to concede defeat too quickly. Perhaps all that is meant, however, is that once the notion of causation was constructed, it applied also to the account of how it itself came to exist. So when it is said that society constructed causation, it does not mean that we literally made it but only that we have come together to agree that we did. But this seems to be hopeless for my opponent. The only sense I could make of it is the idea that we did not really construct causation at all. We only agreed to say that we did. So it is not a social construction. My opponent would thereby be giving up his own view. Rather, we have only conspired among ourselves to pretend that the concept of causation was constructed. That would be a very different theory. Even if it were true, it would impinge on the issue of the reality of causation not one bit. What does it matter to the world what we agree to say or not? But I conclude, instead, that regardless of any other sort of claim, causation itself could not have been socially constructed. Only if causation were real could it have been so; but then that contradicts the sceptic’s claim. That is bad enough. But, in the second place, the claim was that causation is socially constructed; that is, constructed by a society. Now it strikes me that this too is a significant view and deserves some scrutiny. For, by my understanding, a society is a

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plurality: a grouping of many individuals. But it is more than just a plurality. To count as a society, those individuals must form an interacting plurality. And here I can apply some similar reasoning as before. If causation is said to have been constructed by a society, then causation must exist already in order for that group of individuals to be a society. Without causation, not only is there no construction, but it seems that there is no society either. So any claim that urges specifically the social construction of anything, is committed to the reality of causation after all. I needed to think this through a little more and justify my assumptions, as this new argument could be of crucial importance. I had to know it was right. Yet it seemed clear that a group of individuals is not a society simply in virtue of being numerous. Imagine if I had ten men and women picked at random from around the world and I gathered them all together. I then placed each of them in their own soundproofed cell with thick walls but I nevertheless made sure that all their physical needs were taken care of. I allowed them air, food and sunlight but I did not allow them to see each other, talk with each other, or in any way be noticed between one another. It seems now that, even though these individuals are kept within one vicinity, they in no way constitute a society. They cannot speak with each other and each keeps thinking and ordering food and drink with their own native language. They

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cannot get together and talk with each other about, for instance, whether it is good or bad to live within these cells. They cannot rise up together to overthrow me, their captor, or perform any other kind of joint action. They cannot create any impression on each other at all. This, to me, is not a society. Societies are bound together by the fact that they interact. They converse with each other and, in virtue of that, develop a common language. They share values to an extent but can also challenge them and debate them. They get in each other’s ways and have to negotiate compromises and shared norms for living together. To be in a society is to be affected by those around you and, in turn, to affect the others. Were your society to make no difference to you at all, to have not shaped or changed you in any way, then you really are not a part of it. Interaction is thus essential to society. It cannot be a society without it. And yet to interact with something is to be caused to change by it and, in turn, to cause it to change. Without causation there is no interaction and without interaction there is no society. So I can conclude that without causation there is no social construction of anything, which confirms my earlier finding. This struck me as an argument containing such certainty and impact on the debate that I immediately started recording my chain of reasoning in my notebook. I wrote a heading: Societas ergo causalitas. If there is society, then there is causation. This defeated at least one significant form of scepticism. It told me

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that not everything could be socially constructed, for one thing, so it seemed a matter of necessity that at least something objectively real – causation – must exist independently of us and our practices. New possibilities were opening up to me. I felt a degree of optimism for the first time in a while. Even the sky seemed lighter than before. But I had a sense that this was not the end of it and I could reason to other significant conclusions from this solid starting point. *

*

*

*

*

I would have progressed immediately to other such thoughts were it not for the scrunch of approaching footsteps in the snow. It seemed that someone was coming to interrupt me already and I straight away realised that it would be greatly perturbing if I were to never regain that chain of reasoning. Something of immense significance might then be lost to me forever. I had already made sure that I had all that I needed in the cabin and was more than clear to Petter that I desired to be left alone. I stayed sitting at the desk with my notebook, my back turned to the door. There was nevertheless a knock upon it, which I could not ignore. I turned to see no one that I recognised but, instead, a perfect stranger. I opened the door and my visitor came straight in, uninvited: a young lady. ‘Hello,’ she said, ‘Biret.’ I did not know it but later

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confirmed that this was her name. She offered me her hand, which I held and then gently shook. She brought the cold in with her, about her body, but nevertheless removed her hat, gloves and coat without the slightest prompting and sat upon the chair on the far side of my desk. ‘I thought I would come and see you. Petter told me about you and I thought I should say hello.’ ‘Welcome, I’m Benedict,’ I responded, ‘and it’s very nice to meet you.’ I could not be impolite to a friend of my hosts. ‘I’m in the blue house,’ she explained, which was behind Inger and Odd’s, a little further up the hill. ‘I’ve been staying there for just a little while.’ She was young with bright, lively eyes. Her English was unsure and hesitant, though I knew it already to be far better than my own Norwegian. As I would expect in Bakkan, she wore no make-up. Her hair was straight, dark and mid-length, looking as if the winter gusts had been throwing it around. How could I take offence at her natural beauty, here, amid so much of nature? I looked down at my own clothes: rumpled and dowdy in comparison. Nor had I shaved. She asked what I was doing here. ‘Just writing,’ I said. ‘I’m a philosopher.’ But I was already tired of explaining my presence so steered the conversation on to her: how was she, what was she doing today, and so on.

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She had dark colouring and features, especially her eyebrows, and she didn’t seem to look to me like a typical Norwegian; not that I would ever want to enquire into matters as personal as appearance. Fortunately she volunteered the information that she was of Sami background. Samis tended to be darker, or so I was told. Western Europeans used the term ‘Lap’ and spoke of the area of Lapland but I had been in Norway enough times to know that these names were not the ones Samis preferred. Some names were considered insensitive and, for all I knew, derogatory; so I stayed clear of them. ‘My parents moved, for work, just after they married. I grew up south of here,’ she told me,‘but I am going to live in Kautokeino to learn the Sami language properly and to be surrounded by my culture.’ Her plans sounded to me naïve. To have such a goal in life seemed to mean very little when I had been wrestling with my grand philosophical problems. I was tormented by some of the biggest questions ever to face humanity. But could I really criticise anyone else whose life had meaning, as it seemed Biret’s did? I was here precisely because my own life may have no meaning at all, if it turns out I’ve been living in a fantasy. My earlier breakthrough had given me hope that I was not, but it was all still to be settled and I didn’t really have time to be sociable.

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‘Is it all that important to learn the language?’ I enquired. Was that rude of me? But no, she seemed to take it with good will. ‘Our culture has been oppressed. We have been marginalised,’ she told me. ‘It is my duty to learn the language so that Sami culture will survive and grow.’ I really couldn’t argue against that. Here I was, from a culture that historically had oppressed so many others. And there was she, seeking to defend a culture that could easily be lost to the world. So I nodded. Yet I also loved Norway. Was it Norwegians who had been cruel to Samis? I would have to ask Petter or Marie. But I was impressed at Biret’s spirit and sense of the political dimension of her choices. ‘What else was there to Sami culture apart from the language?’ I asked. The question was genuine. I had momentarily forgotten philosophy and was inquisitive to learn something from my temporary interruption. I doubted I had met a Sami before. ‘We feel close to nature,’ she said, although that seemed to apply to everyone in Bakkan, by my lights. ‘The climate is harsh in Kautokeino. A tradition of storytelling began in winter nights when the light had gone away. I want to study literature.’ I could understand the point about the darkness of winter. The sky had lightened and entertained me around mid-day but

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now was black again. Here we were, talking by the light of the stove and a candle. Yet this light was comforting and cosy. I could easily imagine on a night like this that someone begins telling a story that grows and develops over time, with repeated telling, becoming eventually a favourite. That would be a nice way to amuse ourselves now, with so few other pastimes, apart from the company of another human being. The flames looked to be going down. Biret jumped up and grabbed another log from the basket. She opened the door and placed it atop the embers. Then, when she closed the door, she opened the vent at the bottom to send in more air. The flames rapidly grew and took hold on the new log. Her skill with the stove was impressive and she had looked after us well – looked after me – ensuring we would remain comfortable. I put the kettle on top of the stove. ‘Would you stay for some tea? It’s been rude of me not to offer,’ I conceded. But it was too late now. ‘Thank you but, no. I have things I must do. Will you be here until Soldag?’ ‘Soldag?’ I queried. ‘The day the sun returns: February the first.’ I recalled my travel plans and replied that ‘Yes, I will be here . . . Petter has invited me to dinner that evening. It’s my last night.’ ‘I will be there too,’ she added, ‘for dinner,’ and with that she went to leave.

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I surprised myself by urging her to ‘Call again.’ Had I broken my self-imposed rule of solitude? And would I do the same for Petter or Marie or Inger? Probably not. No matter. I couldn’t dwell on questions such as those now. She was gone and that was it. But I first watched her climb back up the snowy slope in the direction of her home. As with Petter before, she ascended effortlessly. I had struggled so. She had power and speed but also the confidence of having trodden that path other times before and knowing she would succeed. I sat back at the desk, the cabin now quiet. This was what I wanted. Solitude. I could settle back to work. Where was I? Oh, yes: societas ergo causalitas. *

*

*

*

*

It was at least an hour before I was able to advance my thinking any further. I sat looking across the fjord at the glimmer from the houses over there. Below them was a line of reflected light pointing straight at me, shimmering as it bounced off the water. I looked at my candle. It didn’t need replacing. But I did have to put more wood in the stove. The pile in the basket was going down surprisingly quickly. I would need more tomorrow. So a society could not be one without causation, I had found. It was no society without interaction. It struck me that there could be a further step that continued this argument.

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Language was one of the things that held a culture together. Biret had taught me that in the case of Sami people. She wanted to learn the Sami language so that she could properly partake in the heritage of her grandparents. But use of language too requires social interaction. I had heard someone argue how one solitary individual could never create or use a language on his own. Or her own. For then, she would never know for sure whether she had used a word correctly or merely believed that she had done so, mistakenly. Only if there are other users of that language can there be any stable meaning. Other language users can correct someone who misuses a word. This provides the normative dimension of meaning. A word ought to be used this way; and ought not to be used that way. If there was only one user of the Sami language, then it would have effectively died out already. For that one user might just be misremembering how a word ought to be used – what it ought to mean – and no one could challenge her. How sad that would be. Language must be, therefore, a social phenomenon. And while causation is not a social construction, language most certainly is. I had already concluded before that if there was anything socially constructed, then causation had to be real. I could now add to that interim finding. If there was any language, there had to be a society, and if there was a society, there had to be causation. One could argue, therefore, from the existence of language to

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the real existence of causation, which depends for its being on an interacting community. I might have settled there, and declared it a good day’s work. I was hungry and knew I had more bread and cheese. However, one final step seemed within my grasp and I could not let appetite allow it to slip through my fingers. Language is crucial to thought. While some things might qualify as thought and not be linguistic, I think that most of it is. I think largely in words; and there are certain things I could not think unless I had words for them. I might feel hunger in my stomach, but could I really think that I wanted cheese unless I knew a word for cheese, in whatever language it might be? Some people say that thought is concept manipulation. That might be true. And I think it is through exposure to language that we acquire concepts. Words articulate the concepts. Perhaps both ‘cheese’ and ‘ost’, within their own contexts, pick out the same concept. I think so. But I needn’t settle that one. The conclusion I was really interested in is that without language, there would be very little thought or, you can say, cognition. My best cognitive capacities are dependent on me being a language user. Without language, perhaps I might be able to anticipate that someone is coming to visit me, such as Petter or Biret. But I couldn’t anticipate that Petter is coming tomorrow or that a pretty Sami girl is coming to dinner on Soldag. Only with a word for

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tomorrow, or some combination of words that mean the same, can I have thoughts about tomorrow. Now when I put together all the day’s thinking, I could tell that I had discovered a significant chain of new reasoning. The arguments could be lined up. If there was any social construction – indeed, if there was to be any society – then there had to be causation. And if there was to be any language, then there had to be a society. I had now added a third claim. If there was to be any thinking, then there had to be language. So it seemed that thought implied language, language implied society, and society implied causation. I opened my eyes widely, staring incredulously, my mouth also open. Had I just proved what I thought I had proved? I ran through it all again. Was every step in the chain secure? Was the chain unbreakable? Yes, it seemed so. There were supplementary premises at each stage but they seemed correct. They were defendable. I took up my pencil and at the bottom of the page, in the notebook, I wrote Cogito ergo causalitas. I underlined it twice. There is thinking, therefore there is causation. And I know there is thinking. I cannot doubt that; for even to doubt is to think. I can say with surety, therefore, that causation is real. It is. It exists. I had to spend a few moments savouring this conclusion, for it seemed to have the power to change everything; to save me

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from scepticism, to answer my critics. To salvage the world. And, that done, I had reason again to stay a philosopher. Had I, so soon, achieved the goal of my visit to Bakkan? I sat for some timeless moments, contemplating in the darkness, a feeling of satisfaction sweeping over me. Eventually, I remembered the hunger and ate. *

*

*

*

*

More footsteps approached the cabin and I stood up with a smile, ready to play the host again. This time it was only Solan. ‘Is everything alright for you tonight, Ben?’ he enquired. They had sent him down to check on me. He handed me another warm flask to see me through. ‘Do you have enough water and firewood?’ ‘Yes, I will be alright,’ I reassured him. ‘But I might need more wood tomorrow. It seems to burn too quickly. Am I using too much?’ ‘Don’t worry. Use all you need,’ he insisted. ‘You have to keep putting it in if you want it to carry on going.’ ‘Correct,’ I confirmed. ‘It’s not as if you can use less and have it cooler. If you don’t feed it wood when it needs it, the stove will just die on you.’ But I don’t know who I thought I was to tell him about looking after a stove. I’d only run it for a day. He seemed to take it in good spirit, though. He was very grown up for a teenage boy, and tolerated my misplaced attempt at patronising him.

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He checked around the cabin and all was well. He moved to leave. ‘Oh,’ I stopped him. I had remembered something. ‘Did you hear the whale last night?’ ‘A whale? No. Did you?’ said Solan. ‘I think so.’ ‘Wow, then you are lucky. It’s not usually here in this month of the year, and you got to hear it.’ ‘Yes. At least I think so. But anyway, you’d better be getting home. Take care out there.’ That was a satisfying end to the day. He ran back up the hill as if it wasn’t really there. We both knew perfectly well that he was in no danger at all. I was the only one who needed to take any care. I settled back into my snug cabin, ready for my temporary bed. Despite being tired, I didn’t drift off to sleep immediately. I lay there listening. Would the whale be back again this night? And, if it was, would everyone hear it this time? They were wrong to doubt me. I was pretty sure I was right. They were missing out by not believing me. Whether it was there or not, however, I heard nothing at all in the night. Instead I slept like a stone, solidly through, until the start of the next day.

Third Meditation

I was finally awoken by the shaking, creaking and banging that the wind outside was creating in my little hut. A gale was in progress. I needed to get up and light my stove but it was so cold that I didn’t want to emerge from under my bed covers. Again it took an hour from first lighting the stove to knowing it was established and only at that point could I make my first hot cup of tea of the day. I could feel an icy draught coming in and on close inspection of the door I saw that there was a significant gap in the top corner, where it didn’t quite match up with the frame. This was why the hut didn’t hold the warmth for long, once the stove went out. But the gap was not quite big enough for any snowflake to pass through. Then I battled my way up the hill, a strong wind carrying snow horizontally into my face. During the short climb to the house, my chin became numb. Impenetrable clouds made the day darker than yesterday, even though we were closer to first of 47

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February, which I now knew to be the day Bakkan would see the sun again. My last day here. Calling on Petter and Marie, I announced my arrival by showing off my newfound local knowledge. ‘Soldag is coming,’ I pointed out. They confirmed it, enthusiastically. I would be lucky to see the sun re-appear. It had been away for over two months, during which time they had lived through the extreme darkness and bitter cold. The steps leading up to their front door had been ice covered for the duration. Marie told me she was very happy at the thought of the sun shining on them so that she could see her doorsteps again. It was a muchanticipated day, each year. But this winter had been especially hard. I told them how cold it had been in the cabin this morning and that the wind had been shaking it. They didn’t seem overly concerned. I’m sure the cabin had withstood worse than that. They offered me hot coffee and, although I would normally be a tea drinker, this morning I did not decline. I stayed as long as I could but knew I needed to return to keep the stove burning. When I had everything I needed, I was off back down the slope, which today was even more treacherous in that direction. I had now learnt that it only became a problem downhill if you tried to stop. You had to throw yourself into it, partially sliding. The main real danger, as long as I did this, was that I would end

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up in the fjord. But soon I was sat back at my desk, still relatively dry, and ready to start work. By mid-morning, I hadn’t gotten too much done. I wanted just to sit and think about my new cogito argument but the stove needed lots of attention this day and I had to intervene several times to ensure it didn’t go out. Just as I thought it was fully established, and was ready to settle into serious work, I heard footsteps coming down to me. I jumped up hopefully and looked out of the window. It was only Odd, Inger’s husband. ‘Hi, hi!’ he greeted me. It had been a little while. ‘Takk for sist, Ben!’ ‘Takk for sist.’ I brought him in, keeping the door open for as little time as possible. ‘Quickly,’ I said. ‘I’ve just got the stove going again.’ Odd was handsome, tall and dark haired. Like everyone I had encountered here in Bakkan, he was the picture of health. One would have thought that the harsh environment would wear these people down, as I felt it was wearing me. But I had evidence that the long-term effect of Arctic living was not detrimental. Wasn’t it I who had become weak and enfeebled after all the luxuries I enjoyed at home? ‘Welcome back to Bakkan!’, he told me. ‘You’ve been here a few days, ikke sant?’

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‘Ikke sant?’ is like the French ‘n’est-ce pas?’, which can be attached to almost any statement in Norwegian. It’s a request for affirmation. ‘Yes. I’m working. But also enjoying the peace and nature. How’s your own work?’ Odd was a physicist. We had talked before of science, physics and philosophy, not always with agreement. We were both seekers after truth but with some different ideas of how to get it. ‘It is good,’ said Odd. ‘My students are bright this year.’ I always admired the education system here. It was some years behind the universities that I knew the best; but that also seemed a good thing. Academic values remained paramount still in Norway. ‘I hear you’re trying to solve all your problems here,’ said Odd. This slightly annoyed me. Petter must have told him, or at least he heard from Petter via Inger. What irked me was that Odd had sometimes in the past suggested that philosophy was mainly just about theories, none of which could ever be verified, and that philosophers couldn’t ever say that anything was true. He seemed to suggest that there could be no progress in philosophy. It agitated me even more that Petter never seemed to mind Odd saying this. I understood it, at times, as if he was saying that philosophy had no right to exist.

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He had now found me at my weakest point, full of doubts that I had openly confessed to Petter. Petter shouldn’t have told Odd. No matter. If Odd had come down to gloat then it was about to backfire. He didn’t realise that I had already discovered the answer to any major doubts, just yesterday, and it defeated the sceptic with certainty. I let him think for a little while longer that he was in the right so it would be all the more satisfying when I unveiled my new argument. Finally I confessed.‘Well, actually, I think I have made excellent progress. I’m very pleased. I may have just put philosophy on a new, sounder footing.’ Odd looked slightly startled. ‘What is that?’ he enquired, with a tone of disbelief. I proceeded to explain all my arguments from the previous day in every detail. I told him how causation, of all things, cannot be a social construction because if there is to be any society, and if there is to be any construction at all, they needed causation to be real. I told him, furthermore, that language was essentially a social phenomenon and thus it followed that the existence of language was itself a proof of the reality of causation. Finally, I explained how thought required language and that this produced my third and final argument. Given that there is thought, then I can know causation to be real.

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He let me develop all these points at my leisure, sitting in silence for some ten or fifteen minutes as I delivered my impromptu lecture until I finally rested my case. ‘Hmmm . . .’ was all I heard. He stroked his beard, pondering. ‘What do you think?’ I pushed him, expecting some form of praise, or at least concession. How could he not see the persuasiveness of this defence of realism? A beard was good to stroke, when thinking. It wasn’t just for fashion. ‘Well, I’ve listened,’ he began. ‘But I’m not convinced.’ My high spirit was instantly felled. He proceeded to tell me why. ‘When I look at physics, and learn more about it, some of the mysteries of how the world works disappear. I start to understand that nature has a mathematical structure, which we can describe using equations. And with these, we are able to answer the sorts of questions that you try tackling with your metaphysics. ‘What is really striking about this, is that in physics, we never use the word “cause”. We never say things like “this causes that”. Furthermore, your concept of causation is an inherently asymmetric one. If A causes B, then B cannot be the cause of A. But when I look at the equations of physics, I cannot see those asymmetries. An equation can be read from left to right or from right to left. Everything, in theory, is reversible, except perhaps entropy, but that is controversial.

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‘So I don’t think it is merely that we don’t use the word cause. It’s clear that we don’t have anything that looks like causation in our theories either. It’s not just that we are using causation by a different name. There’s none there. You see what I mean?’ I remained silent, perplexed. ‘This shows what I’ve been trying to tell you for some time, now, Ben. You cannot sit in your chair and discover any truths about the way the world is. Only science tells us the facts about the nature of reality. Philosophy is just conceptual analysis. You can tell me what a concept means, for example. But only I can tell you what actually exists in the world. It’s ultimately an empirical question: it depends on the observed facts of the matter. And unless you come out of this cabin and start observing the world – taking recordings and measurements – you can never tell me what exists. ‘So you might sit there and tell me you’ve thought it all through, but I don’t believe you can use reason, unaided by the senses, to conclude anything at all about what there is. That can only happen if you look at the world.’ He hadn’t finished. ‘Physics is very mathematical and theoretical these days, I concede. But all our theories have to respect the data. They have to be at least consistent with the observed facts. I cannot see anything in your philosophy that meets such a standard. So if you tell me you’ve discovered something, using reasoning alone,

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I will remain sceptical. And if it’s not something that is part of our best scientific theory, then I will outright reject it. ‘Science cannot be told by philosophy that causation is real, Ben. That is a matter for science to settle. I think we already know enough about fundamental physics to say that there is no such thing as causation; ikke sant, Ben?’ ‘Benedict,’ I corrected him. I was somewhat taken aback by his onslaught. Did he really know what he was saying? He had implied that what I was doing – what every metaphysician was doing – was completely worthless. We were wasting our time. How could he not expect me to take this as an insult? It was not as if I thought physics was valueless. I accepted its validity as a discipline. Indeed, my realist philosophy was very supportive of science. Why couldn’t science reciprocate? Did it think there was no point to philosophy at all? There was a degree of ignorance behind Odd’s attack, I thought. It seemed to me that he assaulted philosophy because he didn’t really know what it was. If metaphysics were trying to do exactly the same as physics – but doing it from the comfort of an armchair – then his point was fair enough. But he was wrong. Philosophy is not like that. It doesn’t answer the same kind of questions as science. And it doesn’t have the same kind of answers as science, either. But it frustrated me so much that people would think this way, having so little regard for what I did.

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I felt ready to say all this but Odd got up and made to leave. It seemed, to me, a bit cowardly of him, to make his point and then exit, presenting no opportunity for reply. Typical, I thought. Farewell, he said in Norwegian: ‘Ha det bra.’ I had to remain on good terms with him. He was a friend and neighbour of Petter and Marie. I couldn’t fall out with him. But his arguments felt like an accusation of idiocy on my part. That’s no way to treat a guest to the village. He is rude. Still, no matter. *

*

*

*

*

I tried getting back to work. I’d done nothing yet, this day. But it was damned hard to concentrate. I kept thinking of the conversation with Odd. The affront! . . . The insult! I sat at my desk with my notebook open and the pencil in my hand. But there was nothing to write. There were no thoughts or ideas. I just kept mulling it over. I’d thought I had solved the main problems I was here to consider. There was hope. But it was fleeting. My uninvited visitor this morning had come and dashed my optimism. Damn, damn, damn! Damn him. Needing to compose myself, I went and stood outside. The cabin had become warm, almost stifling, since Odd left. Outside the air was cold; but it was fresh. The day’s little light was already starting to fade. It lit the sky only hazily and from afar, not yet

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casting itself directly on the ground on which I stood. That would not be for a few more days: until Soldag, the Sun Day. By my cabin was a small homemade pier, stretching out into the fjord. Now, for the first time since arriving, I felt drawn to tread upon it. The steps down carried some peril but I was determined to make my way. The snow had stopped. I walked out to the end. Though it was no more than twenty yards long, I felt I was now standing in the fjord itself. I turned and looked back at the four houses of Bakkan, standing above my hut: such a beautiful sight. But then I turned again and looked out at the ocean. The wind swept sideways, threatening to take me into the ice-cold waters. But still I had no fear. I took a further step until I was at the very edge. I looked down, down into the darkness. The fjord was deep, I’d been told. It looked bottomless. No light could escape its freezing clutches. Some years ago I had visited Niagara Falls. They are high and impressive. I was able to venture right to the fall’s edge. At the side there was a plain footpath at which you can stand within one stride of the very point where the water alters from calmly gliding along the flat riverbed to plummeting violently, hundreds of feet on to the rocks below. I could see how tempting it was for the eye to follow the water as it reached the brink, or perhaps to keep fixed to a leaf that had been carried along, but then follow it over in its destructive

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plunge to the bottom. I felt as though it was calling me in, and only a small fence was in the way. Then, as I talked to others who lived locally, I heard that there were many instances of visitors jumping in. With no prior warning to their friends or family, with return tickets in their pockets, with meetings in their diaries, they had spontaneously stepped over the fence and gone in. Next time they were seen, they were mere remains. And here I was in the north of Norway, staring into a similar abyss. Was Odd right? Was my new argument ineffective? Was I in no better a position than when I had started? Odd seemed to think so. And he knew I was there to work through my crisis. Why would he want to crush my spirit that way? Oh, to be a drop in the ocean . . . *

*

*

*

*

These few minutes outside were all that I could bear for now. I was chilled right through. Although I had brought my warmest possible clothing, and buttoned it all fully up to the top, it was now clear that it was not really up to the task I had asked of it. I scurried back up to the cabin and made myself some tea, which I had with bread and cheese. I had to rally myself. Was I going to admit defeat at the first challenge from Odd? Would I let him win and throw myself into the sea? Wouldn’t he just want me to do that, and to take the whole of philosophy with me?

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I sat and thought again. I had to regain my composure: think logically through the problems. Taking this approach yesterday, I had found that my sceptical opponent had to use the very thing – causation – which he purported to deny. He had to do this in order to explain his position. He alleged the social construction of causation; but social construction is the explanation of something only if causation is real. So his approach was in no position whatsoever to deny the reality of causation. Returned to my sanctuary, belatedly I saw that exactly the same kind of move could be used against Odd. By this, I mean that it can be used against anyone who says that science makes no use of causation, or that causation doesn’t exist, or that its existence is an entirely empirical matter on which I have no right to judge. It seemed to me that, contrary to everything Odd had said, science needed causation in order to be worth pursuing. One could say that science itself was premised on the reality of causation. It was then science that had no right to judge as to the existence of causation. Science had already presupposed it. And if causation was not real, then we should have no business in performing science. I had to think this through and make sure that I really had turned the tables on Odd. I could think of at least three ways in which the reality of causation was a presupposition of science.

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First of all, science claims that it can make discoveries through the performing of experiments. There are countless instances in the history of science. I select just one. It is possible that we fire particles such as electrons or photons towards a barrier or plate in which are cut two parallel slits, where this plate stands some distance from a wall or screen behind. If we do this repeatedly, we find a pattern created on the back screen. This is known as an interference pattern and leads us to think about how the particles passed through the slits. Some have said that this experiment reveals, among other things, the dual nature of light: that sometimes it makes sense to think of it travelling as particles and at other times it makes sense to think of it travelling in a wave. Now an experiment such as this involves what we might call an intervention. We have not merely sat and passively recorded what was happening. We have stepped in and introduced a change into the natural order of things. This means that we have made something happen. We have fired particles towards a slitted barrier. A laboratory in which such an experiment occurs needs a large budget. Science is not cheap. The justification of the research grant is that, using the money, they can actually fire particles. They can make a pattern with them on the back screen. The experimenter, then, is making things happen. The intervention makes a difference. Suppose some physicist, such as Odd, said that he didn’t really believe in causation. Then why would he need research funding

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to perform his experiments? He would be admitting that nothing he did affected the world. He would have to concede that he was helpless to intervene. He was incapable of making a difference. There would then be no experimental method after all. It is hard to see how anything could count as an experiment, under these conditions, nor why we should make a financial investment in supposedly conducting one. This point seems entirely general; not just about the doubleslit experiment. Suppose I work in medical research and want to test a new drug. One way to do so is to put it to trial. I get two large groups, sorted at random, and I give one group the trial drug and the other group a sugar pill. I then record whether more people get better who have taken the drug than those who received only the placebo. Without causation, though, how would the taking of the drug, or the placebo, count as an intervention? The drug can’t be what made some of those people get better; and then it cannot be what explains the higher recovery rate in the drug group. That, presumably, is something which just happens. The scientists running the trial cannot then be said to have done anything. Without causation there is no action. Why then should we fund such a trial? So my first point is that much of science depends on the possibility of interventions in the world. This is crucial to the idea of experimentation. But intervention is a causal notion.

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Therefore, unless causation is real, there are no experiments and this part of science is entirely redundant. The second point makes the situation look still worse for my opponent as it concerns an even bigger part of science. Much of science starts with observation. This is what it means for it to be empirical. It is based on the evidence of experience. Scientific theories have to be at least consistent with the data, as Odd had said. This evidence might come directly from the senses, such as looking or listening to something, or it might come indirectly, such as when we use a measuring device or some instrument that assists observation. Among measuring devices, I can think of Geiger counters and oscilloscopes. Among things that assist observation, I can think of telescopes and microscopes. Now the point to be made is that nothing would count as an observation unless causation were real. The senses would not provide evidence of anything if they were just visions of the imagination. What we see matters because, we have to presuppose, those perceptions were caused by some state of the world, either directly or via an instrument. One scientist asks another, what is the temperature in the room now? The second scientist looks at a thermometer on the wall and pronounces ‘It’s 15 degrees.’ There is one good reason why it matters what the thermometer says, which is that some fact about the room – its warmth – caused the thermometer to

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give that reading. This is why the reading counts as an observation. This is why the thermometer delivers evidence, and provides data. Furthermore, we trust that as the temperature rises, it causes the reading on the thermometer to rise. The same argument applies in the case of direct observation. Observers recount that they have seen a dog, or a medical scientist reports a kind of skin rash they have observed on a person, this counts as evidence of something only because in turn the dog and then the rash caused the observations. If they didn’t, then the visions were only imagined or hallucinated, which means that it would not count as evidence of anything (other than a psychological dysfunction). Furthermore, unlike the cases of

imagination and

hallucination, scientific observations are supposed to be objective. This means that anyone looking at the same place is able to repeat the observation. So if a real dog causes an observation, then other people will be able to go and look at the same thing and see that it is a dog. The presence of the dog will cause a dog-like observation for anyone who cares to look, and is of sound mind. But this is not the case with an imagined or hallucinated dog. If someone else goes and looks in that place, I assume that they will not, with much likelihood, ‘see’ a dog. The charge here, then, is that without causation, nothing counts as an observation. Without causation, there is no empirical evidence for our theories to follow.

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But this is absurd. We really can observe things. This is all because the objects in the world cause us to have certain experiences which then can be used as evidence of what there is. Causation is the basis on which observation has any value. And given how much of science is dependent to an extent on the evidence of the senses, science has no place at all in doubting the reality of causation. Without it, we don’t really have any science. Very good. And then there is a third way in which science depends on causation. Science is a success, we are often told. And despite some of its failures, I can on the whole believe it. Yet, what does this success mean? It means that its discoveries have enabled us to do beneficial things. We have been able to build machines and other technologies, achieve feats of engineering, find cures for diseases, and so on. Now how would any of this be possible if it were not for the reality of causation? The findings of science matter, primarily – though not solely – because we can do things with them. If the medical trial has shown that people taking aspirin tend to get more relief from a headache than people who don’t, then it gives me the opportunity to take aspirin when I next have a headache. Why would I take it unless I believed in the reality of causation? And, more to the point, why would I do so unless I believed that science had shown us that this drug causes pain to go away?

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So, after all the observation and experiment, the question is why would science have any purpose if causation was not real? It can make the world a better place only if it can change the world. And it can change the world only if causation is real. I have these three arguments, then, and they seem to show that almost all of what science does is built upon a presupposition of the reality of causation. Causation is the foundation of science. No scientist, therefore, should ever try to undermine the claim of causal realism, for that also undermines his own position and his own practice. Any scientist who tells me that he doesn’t believe in causation is telling me that he doesn’t believe in his own discipline. No longer could Odd claim that science has any validity as a method of discovery, nor that it has any use. Odd was completely wrong this morning, I had reassured myself. If only he could hear my argument now, surely he would then have to concede my point. How foolish he would feel. Maybe it’s he that should go throw himself off the pier, not me. I thought that I really must pause my thinking now and note all of this down, before I forgot the precise line of argument and let Odd off the hook. Who knows, I might get another interruption. So I made sure I did record it all in my notebook and I felt that the day had seen me achieve another victory over scepticism.

THIRD MEDITATION

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*

That night I enjoyed my dinner. Ragnhild brought me down a basket that contained some carrots as well as a small carafe of wine. I had cracker bread with brunost, a sweet brown cheese. I savoured the flavours after a few days with a very plain diet. I was told to let them know if I needed anything more and I felt happy and cared for. With a full stomach, I might have called it a day and taken to bed. I looked at my watch and thought it might soon be time. However, the day was not done at all. I heard more footsteps and wondered whether Ragnhild was bringing me more provisions. But the face that appeared at the window in the door was Biret’s and I was happy to see her. ‘Come in, please,’ I said. ‘How nice of you come and see me tonight.’ On removing her coat, I saw she had a dark red dress on, which I found charming. The only bright colour I had seen since arriving was the sun shining into the clouds yesterday morning. ‘Did you have a good day?’ Biret enquired. ‘I saw Odd earlier and he told me things were not going well.’ ‘No,’ I protested, maintaining some level of jocularity. I made light of it: ‘The day started with some challenges but I feel I’ve overcome them. I was down but now I am back up.’

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‘How strange it must be to be a philosopher,’ she noted. To me it was normal. But then, life in the Arctic was normal to her, and to all these residents of Bakkan. It was foreign to me, but getting less so with each day I was here. ‘It’s just the way I am,’ I explained. ‘I like to think things through. I like clarity. I want to understand.’ She saw that my stove was almost out. I had thought of running it down for the night. But she crouched down and set to work on it immediately. Again I admired her skills. She knew exactly when to give the stove more air, more wood, and how the introduction of the two should relate. ‘And are you coming to understand life in Bakkan, yet, Mister Philosopher?’ She was teasing me slightly. But I didn’t mind being playful this night. I decided to give her question a serious answer. ‘I think I understand that the return of the sun is important. People seem excited about Soldag.’ ‘You are right,’ she agreed. ‘The sun is very important to us, and in Sami culture too. It gives us light, warmth and food.’ I allowed myself a romantic flight of fancy. ‘It makes you wonder . . . How must our ancient ancestors have felt up here when the sun went away and would not return for two months, or more further north? Did they fear that it might never come back?’ She listened carefully. I could tell I held her attention, so I continued.

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‘Did they pray for its return? I would understand if they did. Their science was not advanced. Now we know the exact time we will see it again, this February first. But they would not have known when it would be back, if at all. They would have known that if it did not return, they would freeze and starve. Wouldn’t it have been rational of them to worship the sun?’ ‘I think you are right,’ she said, and I found it encouraging. ‘Of course they were bound to worship the sun. They could not anger it, or it might decide not to return. And they struggled to grow food here. They had to live off fish mostly but they also had the few root vegetables they could get from the short growing season. If the darkness stayed all year, they could not remain in this place.’ I asked her: ‘Do you think they got more confident that the sun would return after each year when they saw that it did?’ ‘I suppose so. They would have had elders with them, too, who were able to recall many years when it went away but came back.’ ‘I wonder, then . . . They would have had a religious idea of the sun having a will of its own, and making a decision whether to return, for instance, if people had pleased him . . . or her . . . and then they would have had also a scientific kind of reason for expecting it to return. If it had been known to return on fifty other occasions, when it had left, weren’t they right to think it would return on this fifty-first time?’ She thought before answering.

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‘That depends,’ she said. ‘Sometimes it seems that the more times something happens, the less likely it is to happen again.’ ‘Can you give me an example?’ I was excited that she would think this way. ‘Well . . . I mean like when the more times you have taken a match out of the matchbox, then the less likely it is that there will be another for next time. People could have thought like that: there might have been only so many times that the sun was prepared to return to us. So people might have worried that each year was using up one of those times and it might not come back next year.’ I adored her example. ‘Or I can think of the boots I wear to walk in the snow,’ she continued. ‘They keep my feet warm and dry many times. But I would be wrong to think because of this that they will keep me warm and dry forever. They will wear out eventually and each time I use them wears them out a bit more. So, unless I take them for repair, each occasion I use them makes them less likely to keep me dry next time; not more likely.’ I started to feel . . . that I could listen to this girl all night. But she was not truly a girl. She was a woman: a young woman, but definitely a woman. Her face was lit only by the candle and the flame of the stove. But it allowed me to look into her eyes and I felt drawn in, just as I had felt drawn in to the fjord

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earlier. I could have abandoned everything and jumped right in there. I checked myself. I realised I was entranced. What a fool I was to be captivated by this young lady. I recomposed myself. I needed to say something. ‘So, what do we do for Soldag now, here in our enlightened times?’ I asked. ‘Oh, it will be wonderful,’ she enthused. ‘You must come. Everyone in Bakkan will meet together. They know the best place to see the new sun so they said we will all stand together. Have you never seen it before? The colours will be spectacular. Red and pink and orange. It will seem like the sky is on fire.’ ‘I will definitely come,’ I replied. I was carried away. If Biret told me it was worth seeing, then I definitely wanted to see it. ‘And then we will look like those ancient ancestors who gathered and waited for the sun, won’t we?’ I added. ‘Not much has changed in thousands of years.’ ‘No.’ she agreed. ‘Not much at all. It is still the same sun we look upon that our ancestors saw all that way back. It is still the same mountains, barely moved, over which Sol appeared. It is still the same fjord in which we live. Much has changed in Norway and the world. But it is still the same Nature and we should always respect her.’ Her words were beauty in my ears. I felt enchanted. ‘Is this Sami philosophy?’ I had to ask.

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‘I am not sure. It’s what I feel. When I go to Kautokeino I will learn if I feel this because I am Sami.’ ‘I would love to see that city.’ I added. ‘Oh, then you should come and visit me. Then you could learn about the language and culture too.’ ‘I would . . . love that.’ I felt I could have gone to Kautokeino with Biret right then. But instead she decided she was tired and it was late so she left me. My cabin felt very empty, suddenly. I had my solitude back. I thought I could still detect Biret’s fragrance, though. Certainly something reminded me of her after she had gone. Now I had nothing more to my day but bed and rest. I was ready to sleep contentedly. I had re-solved my problem, no thanks to Odd, and I’d had the most wonderful conversation with Biret. I felt that if I should worship anything, it should be the sun. I slept, with a smile on my face at first. I was getting used to my cabin bed. It was comfortable. But it was not an undisturbed sleep. At some point in the night, I was awoken. A heavy breathing, snorting noise from outside permeated my thin wooden walls. What was that? The whale, surely. It was here again. I quickly looked at my watch, which I could only just see by the light of the moon and stars that had made its way through my windows.

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3.25. Right, when they ask tomorrow, I will tell them that the whale was back at precisely 3.25. Surely they will have to believe me then. They know I am of sound mind. Then there was a relatively high-pitched wail: its song. It echoed around the steep, mountainous sides of the fjord, from the dark depths of the water. Braving the cold of my cabin, I jumped up from under the covers and looked out of the window. But I saw nothing. What would there be to see? The whale preferred it in there, swallowing the herring. The sound was all I could expect to get. So with that I climbed back into bed. Finally, the third day was concluded. I heard more song from the fjord, but at some point I was asleep once more.

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I awoke on the fourth day to see heavy snow all around the cabin, still falling. It was very hard again to get out from under the covers, knowing that I would have at least an hour of cold as I wrestled with the stove. And I saw that I was down to my last few logs. I shouldn’t let temperature and inconvenience deflect me from my chosen path, however. The new philosophy I had found could withstand more than that, couldn’t it? After my tea, and being sure the stove could continue to burn without me, I set out, up to Petter’s house. The hill was hard to climb. Fresh snow had fallen on top of ice again, so it was a scramble. Sometimes I took a step forward and then slid back down to where it began. I was glad no one was watching; . . . I hoped no one was watching. It was undignified. I eventually got to the house, out of breath. Petter was alone. The others had gone out to church. Petter took this as an opportunity to ask about my time so far. He started asking if I had enough food and whether I had met 73

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some of the others. But he steered then on to the subject of how the work was going. Was I finding the solution to the problems I had brought along with me? Without mentioning the incident with Odd, I explained how the week had progressed well so far. I had found some good reasons in favour of my realist philosophy and was starting to think I could answer the doubters. ‘It sounds like you were a doubter yourself, when you arrived.’ ‘Yes,’ I conceded. ‘I’d had my doubts. And I wanted answers that would satisfy my own troubled mind as much as anyone else’s. I suppose I am here to find the solutions so that I can tell myself not to doubt anymore.’ ‘And you think you’ve found what you were looking for?’ ‘Initially, I was looking for solitude. Thanks to you, I got it. And then I hoped it would allow me to find a good position: a firm foundation on which to rest my philosophy. I think I’ve got it, and it is again thanks to you, even if less directly so.’ Petter was pleased. He said I could now just relax and enjoy the peace and tranquillity in Bakkan. He thought I needed some rest and relaxation. I had worked so hard over a very long time and it had taken its toll. I looked frayed. The comment felt a bit blunt of him; but I couldn’t deny that in these past few years I had aged more rapidly. The grey hair and lines on my face testified to that. When I looked in the mirror, I hardly recognised the tired old man whom I saw staring back. And apart from

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looks, I felt my age when I scrambled up the hill from the cabin. I was out of breath each time. My back was stiff. Would relaxation arrest the process of decay, I considered? Or would it mean I was just wasting some of the few remaining active days? Perhaps I should just resign myself to being old. Detecting that I was becoming maudlin, Petter tried to change the subject again. He asked me to tell him about the new discoveries I had made here, and he could see that my face changed demeanour instantly. Knowing that Odd would have talked to him, I elected to tell Petter about the arguments I discovered yesterday. I explained how science was premised on observation and experiment, and these methods were justified by the success of science: its usefulness. But all of observation, experiment, and practical application depended on the reality of causation. The fact that science worked, then, seemed the very justification of the obvious assumption on which it must be based: that causation is real. ‘So you think you’ve discovered the reality of something: something that exists in the world and regardless of our views and theories about it?’ ‘Yes, exactly. And that is what I was looking for. Sceptics had encouraged me to think that nothing was real independently of our minds and the way we thought about things. Now I am sure I can answer the sceptic.’

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Petter mulled it over. I was making a bold claim. It is rare that a philosopher professes to being sure of something. What does that mean, anyway? That no possible argument could defeat it? I got the sense that Petter was thinking not just about the thesis I had presented to him, but also whether he should risk challenging it. It was as if he didn’t want to disabuse me of my beliefs. I couldn’t help questioning. ‘Do you have any doubts about my argument?’ ‘No . . ., no,’ said Petter. ‘That all sounds right.’ He hesitated some more. ‘Please tell me,’ I pushed him. ‘There is nothing to fear from a good philosophical discussion between friends.’ ‘Well . . . I think you said something about there being a real world irrespective of our theories about it.’ ‘Yes. That kind of thing.’ ‘Well, suppose I concede that causation is real. There are still lots of discussions to be had. After all, many different things are said about causation. There are countless theories of what it really is. I presume only some of the things that are said are true. Most are false. ‘So to say causation is real,’ he continued, ‘is not for you to tell us much. What exactly is the thing that you are saying is real? It seems to me, you have to tell us all about it: something substantial. You know, as a philosopher, that I cannot tell you I agree with

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you that causation is real unless you tell me exactly what it is that is real.’ This wasn’t an attack on my view, then, I judged. It seemed more that he was asking me to fill out the account with detail: explain what in the world causation is. ‘There is a view, for instance,’ he proceeded, ‘that by causation we can mean nothing more than regular succession. ‘One kind of thing happens, and then another, and if we see many cases of the first followed by the second, then we start to think of the first as the cause of the second. You water your plants and they grow. Is your belief that the watering caused the growth nothing more than knowing that growth has always followed watering? ‘Would that be causation enough for you? ‘Or what about another theory I could suggest? Perhaps there is this kind of regular succession but you also know, in addition, that sometimes you have gone away and the plants have not been watered. When you came home, they had died. Is it causation enough for you if it means that one thing happens, and then another, but you believe that if the first thing had not occurred, the second wouldn’t either? So you water your plant and it remains alive but you also believe, based on some past experience, that it wouldn’t live if you didn’t water it?’ I was starting to get the sense of Petter’s questioning. There were many things causation could be. I needed to say which it

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was. I also had to think about whether it mattered which, though. Sure, there are many different theories of causation. Did I have to narrow it down and say what kind of causation I believed in? Would it be enough to say that causation is real, of which ever type you believe in? *

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I had to go away and think this through. Petter’s questioning had made me realise that, far from being able to sit back and enjoy the rest of my stay in a relaxing manner, I did still have further work to do. ‘Oh,’ I remembered to tell him. ‘The whale was back again last night. Surely you heard it.’ ‘. . . No,’ said Petter, to my huge disappointment. ‘Really? What about Marie? Or Ragnhild? Did they hear it? Surely Solan heard it from his bedroom? He would have heard it.’ ‘I’m not sure,’ admitted Petter. ‘But no one mentioned this morning that they had heard it. Usually we would talk about it over breakfast, if we had.’ ‘But no one said that they hadn’t heard it?’ ‘No. No one said that.’ ‘Alright. I’ll ask them when I see them. I’m sure I’m right. I looked at my watch when it woke me up with its breathing and song. It was 2.25 this morning. I checked.’

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‘It sounds like you are correct then,’ he admitted. ‘You are closer to the sea than us. Maybe the whale is right beside your cabin when you hear it. That would explain why we are not hearing it.’ That didn’t sound right to me. The whale was loud enough to have been heard by everyone around the fjord. But I didn’t want to push the matter further. He seemed to be allowing that I was right. Or could be. Just leave it at that. But was he saying it just to please me? I didn’t want him to do so. They should all have heard it and should admit it to me. Were they trying to drive me mad, conspiring to pretend that I alone could hear it? I put on my outside clothes and set off back down the hill, the wind driving snow into my face. It had become heavier now and the loaded clouds were again blocking out what little morning light there had been. If it carried on like this, I would not even see the sun on Soldag. Getting down the hill was less of a struggle than going up it. I had learnt by now. But there was an added danger, in this snow today, that I might sink to my waist. For the first time since I had arrived, I couldn’t see over to the other side of the fjord. There was a mist and heavy clouds full of snow hanging over us. The covering was getting thicker on the ground as it fell. I tried to settle down in my cabin but my mind was constantly drifting away from philosophy. I watched the snowfall outside, fed the stove, made some tea. The thoughts that I hoped solitude would prompt remained shyly hidden.

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I wondered if, perhaps, I lay down to rest then some ideas would come to my mind, in a relaxed state. This I duly did and I tried thinking about philosophy, truth, enlightenment, the nature of causation, the state of reality and the world. Perhaps that would have worked but I have to confess to my shame that I fell asleep, realising this only when I awoke later in the cold and dark. I was getting my stove going again and saw I was down to my last log. But just in time Solan and Ragnhild came down the hill with a full sledge of new firewood. I pretended I had not been sleeping. A few logs were too big for my stove entrance so Ragnhild quickly chopped them in halves with the axe. I asked if they had seen Biret today. ‘She’s not here,’ Ragnhild told me. ‘She is away for the day.’ That seemed sad to me. Why didn’t she tell me that she was going away? I was hoping I would see her. ‘She will be here for Soldag, though,’ Ragnhild told me, perhaps knowingly, as a consolation. ‘She will be at our dinner party too.’ Excitement seemed to be mounting for Soldag. ‘We will get solbolle, you know. Have you had them before?’, asked Solan. ‘No,’ I explained to them. ‘This is the first time I’ve visited at this time of year. That’s a bun, isn’t it?’ ‘Yes, you must have them. They are yellow like the sun too. We only have them the week of Soldag and they are delicious.’

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I looked forward to that. ‘We will gather at ten in the morning,’ Ragnhild instructed me. ‘We have a place where we stand: a little rise on the way back to the road. It’s where you get the best view when the sun appears between the mountains. Then we eat the solbolle. Will you come, Ben?’ ‘Mamma has been working on a new song on her guitar. It will be really lovely. A song about the sun.’ Did I need to go? I wasn’t so sure. I can see the sun every single day, where I live back home. It didn’t seem urgent that I attend. What if I was on the verge of a major breakthrough? ‘Biret is coming, and everyone,’ Solan confirmed. ‘Yes, I will come,’ I finally declared. ‘I will be there at ten.’ ‘Klokka ti,’ Ragnhild confirmed, playfully teaching me Norwegian. The two adolescents made sure my stove was burning properly, fuelled by the new supply of wood. They showed me how to recognise birch, the bark of which was especially good for catching the flames. The cabin warmed up though outside was dark and windy. My abode was still shaking at times and I could see out of my window that the snow passing immediately outside was again travelling near-horizontally. *

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After they were gone, I sat down to work, determined that I would make some progress. I had only two more days after this

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so could not afford to waste any more time. And Petter had given me a new challenge. I wondered, did it really matter what we thought causation was, as long as it was something objective and real in the world? A constant regularity is real. It is there whether we know it or not. So if one thing always is followed by another, then that is an instance of causation regardless of what I know and think. That ought to satisfy my requirement of realism. Or so I thought. My mind drifted back over some of the conversations I’d had during these past few days and some of the sights I had experienced out here in nature. Biret had told me about the return of the sun, and whether its reappearance year after year was a good enough reason to expect it to return the next. She had given me a good argument why it might not be. Sometimes, the more something happens, the less likely it is to happen another time. So how do we know whether the return of the sun, or any other regularity in nature, is the sort of thing that should be repeated, or not that sort of thing? I thought again of my first night and how impressed I had been when I initially saw Ragnhild chopping wood. I was sure that her actions really did make the wood fly asunder. It was not merely that she struck it and then it fell apart. There was a connection between the two facts: a strong connection. Didn’t the force of the axe actually break the wood? And, yes, I think

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that had she not struck it a blow, then it would not have fallen apart. But this is again because the axe made it break. It caused the result. Causes make a difference, I can concur. But they make a difference because they are causes; not the other way around. This seemed to be a problem with philosophical analysis. We can discover something that is true of causation, or whatever else is the subject, and then say that the subject is nothing more than that thing. But it is an illusion. Causes are difference-makers because they are causes: that is the order of explanation. I then remembered my irritating conversation with Odd. He had tried to tell me that science could do without any causation at all. I saw that science needed causation in order to work. Now suppose it was said that the causation that science invoked, because it sought to avoid all metaphysical commitments, was restricted to the sort of causation Petter had mentioned before. Some scientists might like that view because it would mean that science could all be understood in terms of observable data. Causal claims would be entirely amenable to scientific scrutiny. To say that A causes B means nothing more than that every instance of A is followed by an instance of B, but with no other mysterious ‘connection’ or ‘real power’ between any of the instances. Then to say that this particular thing is a cause of that particular thing is just to say that the first is similar to one group

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of things, and the second is similar to another group of things, and where every instance of the first kind of thing is followed by an instance of the second kind of thing. Could I really point to any absurdity in this view? Would it not be perfectly consistent, as a theory of causation, as long as one is willing to accept its consequences? I did not like this view, but where was the argument against it? I thought again. Where would that leave science? What if a scientist said ‘all right, I admit, the whole of the science that I practice is premised on the idea of causation. But what I mean by causation is what is perfectly available to observation; for instance, that every A is followed by a B. Nothing more: . . . no metaphysical, unobservable connection between one thing and another.’ Could I refute that position? I thought that I could. Or I could at least prove that unless one accepted a stronger theory of causation, of the kind I wanted, then science was left in no better position than I found it was in yesterday: struggling to explain itself, to explain how it works, how it succeeds. I noted that causation was vital in at least three essential components of science. It was needed to explain how an experimental intervention was possible, it was needed to explain how observation was possible, and it was needed to explain how the findings of science could be put to use. None of these things seemed to work unless we allowed that causation was

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real and brought a connection between some things and not others. My opponent might at this stage say that, yes, causation is required by all these aspects of science, but what he means by causation, and what we all ought to mean by it, is that the first kind of thing is regularly followed by the second kind of thing. The reasoning was subtle here but I thought I could defeat the position. We could start with the notion of intervention again. The experimenter introduces a change into a situation and sees what changes with it. I have said that this looks like a causal claim. Now if one granted this, but then said that causation was nothing more than the occurrence of a regularity, it would not really be accepting the causal requirement of science at all. I might say that the experimenter pulls a lever and it releases a peanut to a monkey. It is the job of the experimenter to do this. But now you ask me to believe that the experimenter’s pulling of the lever didn’t really release the peanut, because you think such an idea appeals to some mysterious link between events. So you tell me that it means nothing more than that the lever goes down and a peanut is released; and that whenever the lever is down a peanut is released. This is just some regular behaviour of this part of the universe, but unconnected. I think I can say to you that this is still not enough. Unless you grant me that there is some compulsion – some production –

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in causation, then it is not enough for us to say that the experimenter pulling the lever is making the peanut fall. In that case, the experimenter is still not doing any job. He does not justify his salary or his research grant. Without any compulsion in causation, then it seems that anything could follow anything and it is only our good fortune that we live in a world where it doesn’t. But, again, my opponent tells me that we are just lucky that our world exhibits a pattern of events even though, still, anything could follow anything else. Next, to observation. Suppose that our belief was not that the object in front of the eyes caused a perception that resembled it, such as when a cat causes a cat-like perception. Instead, it merely happens by coincidence that when a cat stands in front of you, it is accompanied by a cat-like perception. You may suppose, if you wish, that this just-so-happens each time a cat wanders by. But, I ask you, would this really qualify as a perception? And would it be an adequate basis for empirical science? Let me explain. I once foolishly allowed myself to become so tired with work that my mind was beyond all reason. I recall that I hallucinated a bicycle in front of me. Now suppose, just by coincidence, that at the moment I hallucinated there actually had been a bicycle in front of me and it was one that my hallucination resembled. Wouldn’t we say that this did not qualify as an observation of a bicycle, even though I was thinking there was a bicycle in front of me exactly like that one?

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I think it would not count as a perception of the bicycle. I note, for instance, that if the real bicycle had moved off to the left, my hallucinated bicycle need not have done so at all. What this shows is that my belief that I saw a bicycle was caused by the hallucination and not the bicycle; hence, it is not a perception of the bicycle because it would not be responsive to changes in the bicycle, as we think a real observation should be. Even if one sets that matter aside, with such an account of causation I maintain that any such observation on these terms is inadequate for science. If nothing about the object observed is responsible – through producing it – for the observation, then we cannot base science upon it. There would be no reason why, if everything that is A is followed by something that is B, the next thing that is A would also be B. There would then be no reason to say that an ‘observation of a cat’ provided any evidence at all of there being a cat in front of you. The uncertainty of any such observation would surely be an inadequate basis on which to rest science. Think of it this way. Every time a cat-like observation has been made, a cat was in the vicinity. You might try to protest that the only reason I think that the cat had to cause the cat-like observation was simply that on each occasion someone had the cat-like observation, a cat was in front of him or her. But given that the cat didn’t produce the observation, and didn’t need to, how can we have any confidence that this happy coincidence will

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continue? At any such point where it ceases to do so, we are truly lost and detached from all reality. And I would like to note one final point on this issue. We of course, were we so unfortunate as to be in this position, have no means whatsoever of verifying that a cat really was in front of us when we had a cat-like observation. Given that all we have is the observation, then one cannot check on any occasion whether the observation and the world matched. If they ceased to do so, we would have no way of knowing directly. We would have to infer it from the fact that the world did not behave the way we expected it to behave, on the basis of what we had seen. Finally, I said that the success of science required that there be causation in the world. By this, I meant that we can use scientific findings to manipulate the world to our own wishes. Science has a pay-off, in inventions, technologies, new processes and medicines, that make its pursuit ultimately worth the while. Unless there was causation, then science’s only utility would be that it provided us with understanding. But I’d add that I don’t see how it could even deliver understanding other than by discovery and explanation of the various causal processes to be found in the world. The same sort of reasoning that I have already used strikes against this point too. If causation involved no actual production, but merely a regularity of one thing that happens to be followed

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by another, then it is hard to see that science would really be worth pursuing. It is one thing to say that the world has just happened to exhibit a fortunate regularity, such as the appearance of sunlight being invariably accompanied by warmth. But now we are talking about our own actions, whereby we introduce changes into the natural order. If causation was a mere coincidence of one thing followed by another, there would be no reason at all to assume that a human operation, performed upon the world, would be followed by anything in particular. Thus, science could have recorded that the eating of cabbages was followed by good health. But if there is only this accompaniment without genuine production, then I would have no basis on which to eat cabbages if I was in want of good health. I was able to conclude, and then record in my notebook, that this line of reasoning supported an account of causation as involving a notion of genuine production. It seemed to me that it could not be analysed away into other, non-causal terms, such as regularity, without such arguments resurfacing. Of course, regularity is not the only available theory of causation and so it remained to be seen whether I could follow similarly destructive chains of reasoning against all such theories. I vowed I would do that. But I thought I had already established a conclusion strong enough; namely, that any account of causation that did not contain a commitment to the production

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of an effect by its cause would not provide an adequate basis for the conduct of science. *

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The day’s work was done. I was sure of it, and I had nothing else I could do. There was no visitor. If Biret was here to call on me, it would be different. We could discuss the sun or Sami culture. I wouldn’t mind what we talked about. It was clear that no one would come as the night was so cold, wild and windy. The cabin rattled. I decided I would try to stay warm in my bed and sit and think about what else I could consider. I had two more days left, including Soldag. Would I be able to use them well? Would there be any more challenges to my newfound sense of certainty? Was it definitely now secure? I had some thoughts about topics for tomorrow, and the day after that. As had happened earlier in the afternoon, however, I started to feel drowsy. I do not think I was yet adapted to this near-constant darkness. There was light, but only for a short time, and none of it direct. My body was telling me to sleep: to hibernate almost. Like the locals, I too was now looking forward to Soldag. I wanted to feel some sun on my face. Maybe that would give me more life and optimism. I did sleep for a time but then woke at some point in the night. Perhaps it was just because I had slept so much during the day.

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But I also had a distinct feeling of oddness, like something significant was happening. I listened but could hear nothing. That was important. When I had gone to sleep, there was a howling wind and the cabin was creaking. Now there was nothing. Apparently the storm had blown itself out. I opened my eyes and noticed that it was not as dark as previous nights. Without a candle or stove to light my way, it had been little better than black. But now I could see around the cabin. There was light, though it was light that had a tinge. I got up and looked through the small window in the door. Up in the sky was a green hazy colour stretching right the way across the sky: a rough thick band of light from one side to the other. Nordlys. Northern Lights. I grabbed my boots quickly. They were cold and damp when I put my stockinged feet inside them. No matter. I had to go and see this directly. My coat went over my night clothes and I was soon out to confront this new and – I have to confess – aweinspiring sight. The snow clouds had dissipated, dropping their burden onto the village and beyond. Instead, the sky was clear and now calm. I could see every star, so bright. But there was also the strangest phenomenon of light superimposed across the night sky. It was ghostly, ethereal. I thought I could see exactly where it was and its shape. But

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when I looked back along the band, it had changed. I might say that it danced; and yet I saw no movement. All I can report is that each time I looked at it, it seemed different: constantly altered, but without conveying any sense of change. For that reason, it seemed an impossible object – a lightshow designed by an artist of incredible worlds. I had once understood what causes an aurora borealis. I no longer remembered. But that did not matter. I simply enjoyed the wonder of the effect. I stood and stared until it seemed to fade. For a time, I was not sure whether it was there or not anymore. But when I definitely could not see any more, I realised I was shivering. I had not sensed how cold I had been, when immersed in my visual experience. It was bitterly cold. My chin was numb. But it was easily worth braving the freeze for that show of light amid all this darkness.

Fifth Meditation

One day until Soldag! The anticipation was mounting for the return of the sun. Petter and Marie went off to buy food for the dinner. I saw both Marie and Inger talking that morning and neither of them admitted when I interrupted that they heard the whale a few nights ago. I had to forget that for now. It sounded like Soldag would be a day of little reclusion so I needed to make the most of today. I wondered if Biret was back in the village yet but nobody had seen her. No one was too impressed that I had seen Northern Lights. They get it many nights in the winter, as long as the sky is clear. I was starting to feel inspired. I’d already had a beautiful stay, what with the aurora borealis and hearing the whale, so I eagerly set down to work. Why shouldn’t I be ambitious, I thought. I had established the existence of one aspect of objective reality but what about other things? Would I be able to explain and justify the existence of these? Could I prove their reality too? A world 93

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containing just causation would be a strange one after all. Don’t we need something that does the causing and something that is caused? Until I had said what those are, I suspect I still hadn’t proven enough. The world is not just about causes. It contains tables and chairs, trees, atoms, plants, animals and boats. These are kinds of thing and they all have particular instances, such as the chair in my cabin, the boat that I can see out on Kaldfjord, Petter the individual man. As well as these things, or individual objects, we also know of another kind of ‘thing’: redness, roundness, squareness, hotness, tallness, heaviness. These are features or properties of the first kind of thing. Hence, a man might be tall but a boat can be tall too. Tallness could be a property that the man and the boat share. I’m tempted to say that while each particular, such as a man, can be only at one place at a time, a property such as tallness can have many instances: in a ship, a tree, a building. The world doesn’t contain just particulars, their properties, and causation between them, however. When I stand back and look at the world, I have to admit that it contains a rich array of kinds of thing. There are events, for example, such as the rising of the sun. This is a happening. And for there to be events such as this, there must be an even more general category, which is change. Clearly, we live in a world in which there are changes, for example when a stove that was cold then becomes hot. When we

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accept that there are changes and events, we should also allow that there are processes too. One might think that a process is just a very long event, such as the growth of a child into an adult. But we can be more exact than that. A process seems to mean that there is a series of events that must occur in a particular sequence and for a particular outcome. Hence, there are multiple events in a process but they cannot occur in any old order. The order of occurrence is essential. Hence, the child begins to grow and his body develops. When his skull reaches a certain size, he loses his baby teeth and they are replaced by adult teeth. Then he starts to grow hair on his face and body and his voice deepens. Similarly in women there are other changes. I can think of further processes too, such as photosynthesis or the life cycle of a butterfly. And away from the natural world, there is the passage of a bill into legislation or the proper running of an election. These are processes too. My list is not exhaustive but I wanted a sense of the richness of our world: that there are many categories of thing. And what can I say to justify their real existence, as well as the real existence of causation? I left this question hanging and decided to take a break. Thinking cannot be rushed and it cannot be forced either. There were ample chores for me to do in and around the cabin. I tidied, chopped some strips of kindling off a plank of wood with my Sami knife, put all the waste into one bag. But while doing this,

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I allowed my mind to wander freely, letting it discover its own associations. I continued thinking this way as I ate some lunch, by the end of which I thought I had some answers. *

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We know of things only because they affect us. They causally relate to us. Perhaps, then, this helps us understand what it is to be. To be is to be causally relatable. I needed to develop this thought. I know of the objects around me because they are able to affect my senses. To be real, I do not think that they must actually affect my senses. That would suggest that something was real only when it was being perceived, which would be absurd. I accept the existence of many things that are unperceived. What qualifies something as real is that it can or could be perceived, if in the right situation, such as in daylight, and if a perceiver is present. Whether it is actually perceived, therefore, depends on accident of circumstance. I see also that to perceive is merely one special case of being causally affected by something. We are sentient beings, which means that some of the effects other things have on us result in a conscious experience, as in the cases of seeing, hearing, touching, and so on. But there are other effects that things have on me, which I might not perceive. The moon exerts a small gravitational attraction on me, for example, but I am not aware of it. I can feel

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food filling my stomach but I cannot feel it giving me vitamins. And there could be one thing heating me and another cooling me in equal measure but I have no experience of either because my temperature remains the same. The grounds for something’s existence shouldn’t be restricted to the perceptual effects on us, then. If something has other kinds of effects then it ought to be taken as a sufficient basis for that thing’s being. I see, therefore, that we should not attend to only one kind of effect. And we should also not discriminate in saying that the effect in question has to be upon us: we human beings. Would it matter if an object had its effect on some other thing, including another inanimate object? Suppose that on top of a stove there was resting an iron bar. Because the stove is hot, the iron bar expands. I am happy to assume that no one is there to witness this and, as the stove dies out, the iron bar returns to its regular size. In a way, we can think of it as if the iron bar perceives the stove in that it was causally affected by it. The stove produced a change in the iron bar. There was of course no conscious experience of the stove within the iron bar, but no matter. This seems adequate grounds on which to say that the stove was real; namely that it was able to causally affect another thing. Again, it need not actually have expanded the iron bar. It was pure accident, let us suppose, that one was placed upon it. And if

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it had not been, no such effect would have occurred. I am content to grant the reality of the stove simply by virtue that it was able to affect an iron bar, or some other object that might have been found within its locale. To be real perhaps is also not solely a matter of having effects. We can just as well consider something real if it is able to be affected. A thing can be a cause but it can also be caused. The stove that expanded the iron bar was also affected when I lit it. I acted upon the stove by placing paper, and kindling and logs inside it and lighting it with a match. I caused it to light. But I could not causally act upon something that did not exist. To be affected by something else, then, is also sufficient for us to say that the thing exists. I might argue, then, that anything is real just in case it is able to affect something else, or to be affected, in however small a degree and in any way. The same account could be given for all the things that I listed above. This claim applies to particular properties, events, processes, and so on. If we take properties, we can see that to be a property is to be able to affect some other thing. Something being blue means that it is able to cause a certain sensation in an observer. That something is hot means that it is able to expand an iron bar. And that allows me, furthermore, to give an account of what it is for properties to be of the same kind. Different instances are of the same property when they are able to produce the same

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effects. Hence, anything that is spherical will tend to roll in a straight line down a slope. If something was not disposed to behave in this way, we would not call it spherical. All these things have a causal essence. Their ability to cause, in response to their own causes, is what makes them what they are. I have not proven that these things exist, then, but in establishing the real existence of causation, I have laid the groundwork for them. I have provided the reality of that which is their essence. And I have also established a reasonable criterion for the existence of something. My study of causation – its existence and nature – is not for nothing, therefore. It is now shown to be one of the most central concepts of all – possibly the most central for the existence of everything else. For without causation, it seems I cannot understand the reality of anything. *

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When one has undertaken deep thought and emerged from it with a modicum of satisfaction, one finds an inner peace and tranquillity that virtually matches the serenity of an Arctic fjord. I was thus in a state of complete relaxation as I finished my meditation and practically oblivious to my entire surroundings. I say this so that it can be understood what shock I next felt when confronted with a most ghastly and horrific sight. At the small window in my door appeared a grim and ghoulish visage: an old man staring right at me with such a pale, blank and

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unfriendly expression that I thought at first this might be a corpse propped against my cabin. A shiver ran through my body, starting at the base of my spine and travelling upwards such that when it reached my neck I gave out an involuntary and most undignified shriek. I had been taken completely off-guard and had none of the composure that I like to present to the outside world. I might have thought this was a troll, here to haunt me, but when he opened the door and I could see the full outline of his body, I saw that it was a regular human being and a man, still alive for now. He nodded his head slightly in my direction; not quite a bow. ‘I am Bård,’ he announced, ‘Bård Eriksen.’ So I reciprocated. ‘Benedict Chilwell.’ ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I heard that Bakkan had a visitor and I have seen the light in your cabin.’ ‘I see,’ I replied. ‘I live in the grey house: the furthest away.’ Now I understood. I was meeting the inhabitant of the final house in Bakkan. ‘Please come in and let us close the door,’ I urged, as I could feel the heat from my stove being sucked outside. For all I knew, it was the man himself taking it away, rather than the Nordic air, but I risked inviting him in nonetheless. ‘Sit, please. It’s so nice to meet someone else who lives in Bakkan.’

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I hoped that playing the polite host might break the stern face of this man, which seemed not even to have moved while he was speaking. But he remained emotionless as he sat down on my spare chair. ‘I hear you are a philosopher.’ ‘Yes, I am,’ I told Bård. ‘I have been to Bakkan before, though never to stay. That might be why we haven’t met.’ ‘That’s not it,’ he said, and left a pause. What surprised me about this visitation – and that is a word I have chosen carefully – is that he had not yet made any attempt to explain why he had come. What did he want from being here? He had just arrived, and sat. But that had not been the end. He resumed his reply. ‘I have lived here only two months. I am new to the village.’ ‘Ah, I see. It is a year since I have last been here so, no, we could not have met.’ I remembered that Petter and Marie had told me when I arrived that there was this new resident. As there was nothing further offered on his part but silence, I had to break it at the point it became uncomfortable. ‘That means you will not have seen the sun since you have lived here; . . . unless you have travelled away from the village.’ ‘No. I have not travelled away from the village.’ I really could believe that his skin had not been touched by the sun for two months. It looked as white as the snow. ‘Do you like living in Bakkan?’ I asked.

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‘Yes.’ Silence. I needed to ask an open question, so that he couldn’t answer in one word. ‘What do you like about it here?’ ‘The silence.’ I thought carefully about my next question; indeed, whether I should ask one at all. For all I knew, he could have happily sat there all day. But I think I needed to move him along. ‘And what did you do before you came to Bakkan?’ ‘I was prest: a vicar, a priest, at a town inland. I am retired now.’ ‘Ah, I see. That explains it.’ ‘Explains what?’ Bård said, a little sharply. Recovering, I answered ‘I mean it just explains why you have only now come to Bakkan.’ To prevent any further embarrassment, I quickly added ‘And are you here in Bakkan alone, or with family?’ ‘I am alone. All alone. My wife died three years ago. When I retired, I decided I should move away, to enjoy the sea and the nature.’ Bakkan certainly gave him sea and nature but I had yet to see any sign that he was enjoying it. I filled some of the pauses by confirming that I was a philosopher, here to do a little thinking. For the first time, he seemed to have some interest in me.

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‘I’d heard this. And did you make any new discoveries?’ ‘I think I did, yes.’ I was almost ready to tell the retired priest about my thinking during the week. There was every indication that he would sit and listen, if only because I could not imagine him ever getting up and leaving. But more footsteps approached. *

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I looked out and saw Biret. ‘Biret, please come in,’ I called. ‘How nice that you are back. I heard that you had been away.’ Biret entered and I held her hand. Not quite a handshake; a little more. She nodded towards Bård and said his name. He gave the faintest nod back but did not speak. ‘Well, I can see that you have company already,’ she said. ‘I should not stop you two from talking. You must have very important matters to discuss.’ With that, she made to leave. I wanted to call out ‘No, please stay!’ But I didn’t. I wasn’t sure that it was appropriate and she was already out of the door while I was still deliberating. I was too slow to act. Damn this Bård! I had not seen Biret all yesterday and now he had driven her away. Damn him! *

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I thought we had better get this conversation over with as soon as possible. I launched into a mini-lecture. ‘Yes. I discovered that the most fundamental thing in the universe is causation. What it is to exist is to be causally connected to other things, in the sense that everything is interrelated. Things are what they are in virtue of what they are able to cause. Furthermore, causation is the very basis of science. There could be no science without it, as it has to presuppose that our observations are caused by the world and that we are able to intervene and change things. But I found that this was all very well and not merely a presupposition because there is a proof that causation has to be real and it starts only from the premise that we are able to think. If there is thought then there is language, if there is language then there is society, and if there is society then there is causation. So the argument goes through like that, you see. I could go into the detail of that argument but it might bore you.’ I think Bård had already detected the annoyance in my tone. ‘You seem very sure of the power of your reason,’ he began. ‘But I think we can never be quite so sure. Can we ever really say that we have the capacity to grasp the wonder of this universe? ‘The sun will come back tomorrow at one minute after ten. We can depend on this. And when people tell me that this wonderful

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world all came about because of a huge explosion, a big bang, if you like, I simply cannot believe that order would have come from such chaos. There are forces at work that we cannot understand. These are supernatural forces – beyond both science and reason – that shaped the development of our universe. ‘Your rationality was given to you by your maker but do not imagine that it gives you even one billionth of the understanding that the maker hath. Your “proof ” is nothing to Him. You use only the logic that He has given you. And you must admit that there is nothing eternally true about that logic. It is based on certain assumptions that themselves cannot be demonstrated, only accepted or denied. So nothing is as certain as you philosophers would pretend to each other. Every proof you claim is built on sand.’ Once more, I had to try my best to show no anger. I did not want Petter to be in dispute with his neighbour over me. In two days I would be gone, and this silly vicar would be of no matter to me then. I composed myself. ‘I understand your thinking, perhaps more than you expect,’ I began, it being rhetorically useful to admit the reasonableness of your opponent’s position at the start of its destruction. ‘You are right that every system of logic rests upon a set of axioms that themselves have no proof, though we believe them to have an intuitive appeal.

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‘But while it is right that we should have a healthy sceptical attitude to any claim of human knowledge, I think that this should extend also to religious belief: perhaps even more so. ‘You tell me that I have a maker, but what is this being? If you say that he is supernatural, then I do not know how we could have any reason to believe in him. He is outside of space and time, so I have been told, but then that means that he cannot interact with anything we know. He cannot have effects in the natural world, so I do not think we have any reason to believe in him’. ‘Of course He has had effects in the natural world,’ Bård retorted. ‘What about His miracles? What about the act of Creation? The existence of the world is evidence of God. It is the effect of His benevolence and continuing providence’. I really could not see the point of maintaining this conversation any longer. ‘All I know is the world around me that I can see and touch and understand with my reason,’ I said, but it was a weak reply. ‘Now I really must resume my studies,’ I told him, though it was already getting late and I doubted very much that I would sit and do any more work. He got up to leave but then turned and looked back. ‘Just one final thought for you before I leave. Heed it well. You spoke then of what you can see, touch and understand. I can see that you have carnal desires in your mind, skjødets lyst.

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I urge you: be careful what you touch. Do not forget the danger of the Huldra.’ With that he was gone. It was one of the strangest visits I’d ever had in my life. If he finds people so difficult, why call on them? I shouted out: ‘If God did not exist, what difference would it make?’ But he had already gone back up the hill and my words were lost to him. *

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Each day so far had seen at least one twist of fortune. I was in despair but then found new hope, or I had started the day well only to encounter a new difficulty. Today was one that started well, and I was pleased with my findings, only to have this very strange fellow appear at my door and cause all that trouble. I could just imagine that he had been watching me all week so far, waiting until he heard news that I was happy and making good progress, and choosing that exact moment to descend on me and stifle my joy. How can he call himself a man of God and then go around spreading such misery? He seemed the sort of man who would go to a birthday party just to pop the children’s balloons. Still, no matter, I thought. Tomorrow was Soldag. The sun would be back. Biret would be here, and there would also be

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dinner with Petter and his family. I would try to make the most of this special day, my last in Bakkan. I was calmed when I looked out through the window to see the fjord by moonlight, the small glimmer from houses opposite, and the white mountains beyond. A modest fishing boat returned to its base at the end of the fjord, gliding slowly down the centre of the water. What seemed a whole minute after it passed, the disturbed water from its trail started lapping at the rugged shore, just outside my cabin. Bård had shattered my peace; now I must try slowly to regain it. I was considering undressing in readiness to take to my bed, yet I heard footsteps approaching once again. If that was Bård coming back for more argument then he was in for a fight. Or perhaps it was Odd. My tension built but was then quickly released when Biret’s face appeared at my door. ‘Please, come,’ I called, with relief. ‘I’m so glad you came back.’ ‘I didn’t want to see you while you were talking with Bård,’ she said. ‘Oh, I would much rather have spoken to you than him. He was so dull trying to tell me that philosophy was of no use. I didn’t want to hear that. Tell me, where have you been?’ Biret proceeded to tell me of what she had done the previous day. She’d been to visit a man in Tromsø who represented a Sami college in Kautokeino. After speaking with him, she thought she

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would definitely go there to study. He had been very welcoming towards her and told her how the people in the town would be very friendly. She would be moving as soon as possible. Almost everyone there spoke Sami so she hoped she would pick it up in no time. ‘So when next I come to Bakkan, you will have left,’ I pointed out. ‘Yes, so you should come see me in Kautokeino.’ That was the answer I would have wanted. ‘I brought you a night-time drink, if you would like one,’ she added, and with that produced a bottle of red wine and two glasses. I couldn’t refuse. This would help me relax and unwind after Bård’s unwelcome intrusion. ‘It was really nice of you to come back, and to bring us this bottle of wine to share.’ I hoped she understood the depth of my appreciation. We talked and we drank. There could have been no more romantic light than the one we had that night, from the moonlight, the candle and the stove. I felt lost in her eyes and I hung on to her words. It became warm. It was the longest she had stayed here with me and she took off her outside clothes revealing another colourful dress that I liked. In this climate, we were each revealing little of our bodies to the air but her dress was low enough to uncover the smooth and silky skin on her neck and collar bones . . .

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Was I an old fool to imagine that she would have any interest in me at all, beyond theories I could tell her about the sun and science and what is truth? Perhaps she saw me as a wise old bird; surely nothing more than that. Still, I would enjoy the conversation and an intimate evening in my small cabin with a beautiful young lady. Our backgrounds were worlds apart. We must have seemed equally exotic to the other. But a connection between two people can transcend national and cultural boundaries. That night, we simply were two human beings. Age, occupation and country did not divide us. I wanted to hear about her life and she about mine. We were both naturally reserved, but perhaps that makes it easier when you are both alike in such temperament. The bottle contained enough for three glasses apiece, after which there was no doubt that we were relaxed enough in each other’s presence to continue this into the early hours of Soldag.

Sixth Meditation

Soldag! After Biret left I was filled with joy and inspired to bring my thinking to completion. I still felt in need of closure. As much as I had found Bård Eriksen’s argument annoying, I accepted that something was needed to round off my position and make it immune to the kinds of outside influence of which he spoke. Philosophy would have to wait today, however. Due to the position of the mountains, the sun would appear a minute after ten o’clock and if I was to see it I had to wash, up in the house, and breakfast so as to make sure I was at the vantage-point on time. I remembered there was said to be a slight rise in the land as the path started back towards the road and which, I was told, was the best place to see the sun first show itself and shine on Bakkan soil again. The sky was clear, luckily. A few days earlier it was so heavy with snow that the sun would not have penetrated. Our last few 111

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days had seen the skies empty their contents on us. They had nothing left to give so the view was unimpeded. This also meant that the day was cold, possibly the coldest since my arrival. The snow that had been soft and slippery the day before was now crunchy underfoot, and thus easier to negotiate as I went back down to my temporary lodging. At five minutes to the hour, I set out from my cabin, less fearful of my ascent up the hill. The others were already there: Petter, Marie, Ragnhild and Solan, Inger and Odd, and Biret. Just after me, Bård also appeared, carrying the same long, stony face. Petter welcomed me. ‘Have some coffee and solbolle,’ he suggested. The coffee was dispensed from a thermos flask and we all had some to help us keep warm. ‘The sun should appear in two minutes,’ he said, after a quick glance at his watch. The solbolle were little cakes but with a touch of yellow custard showing on the top, said to look like the sun, but only at a stretch. I took the coffee and went and said good morning to Biret. She smiled but then had to go and speak to Odd and Inger. Something about firewood, maybe, but it was in Norwegian. I tried to listen but couldn’t make it out. Solan and Ragnhild came up to me. ‘Keep looking,’ said Solan. ‘It is starting to appear.’ In the distance I could see the gap, like a valley, formed between two high mountains. Above it in the sky was some faint

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and diffuse cloud, topping off the space and making it into a roughly discernible triangle. This was now filled with a bright yellow-orange, merging almost into red at the fringe where the light met the cloud. The sky was aflame: the colour of my stove. It made the cloud above it all shades of blue, purple, orange. Suddenly, it burst over the top of the horizon, with an instantly physical impact on me. I had to take two steps back. The sun, Sol, was here: a ball of flame some 93 million miles away and giver of life on earth. I was . . . blinded by its brilliance, but also its beauty, and had to look away quickly. It was so bright that no one could stare at it directly, but by averting our eyes just a few degrees to the left or right, we could all appreciate its splendour, even if to a slightly lesser extent than the truth. How the light played tricks as it shone through the clouds, producing a kaleidoscopic panorama the scale of which was impossible to quantify or comprehend. The solar system was vast and we were tiny. I looked back and around at my companions and saw that they were as transfixed as I had been. Even the miserable Bård looked in awe. I saw the sun light up his face and it moved for the first time. His lips pulled back slightly, showing his teeth. Was this a smile? Was he merely squinting in the face of bright light? Odd and Inger stood close together, one arm around the other. They both were scientists, from different fields. Was it the

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marvel of science that they beheld? Or were they captivated by an irreducibly aesthetic experience? The sun shone on Petter and his family. He had been such a good friend to me. We had met at academic conferences over a number of years. Shared philosophical interests had brought us into contact. But now it was more than a professional relationship. We enjoyed each other’s calm company: one of the purest friendships. So many others were rivals. Petter was not. He understood me as well as he understood my philosophy. He seemed accepting of both. Marie was his rock. How I would like a Marie. She was a strong and capable woman, who coped as well out in the nature around Bakkan as anyone. But I always felt that their partnership came first, both in his mind and hers, and perhaps this was why they had raised two such beautiful, trusting and confident children. Ragnhild was on the verge of full womanhood but seemingly with no fear of the big world outside this tiny settlement. Was that due only to ignorance of it? And Solan looked most delighted to see the sun again: the sun after which he was named. Everyone on this planet, whether they come from the tiniest village or the biggest city, whether they be Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist or atheist, looked upon this same sun. It told us that there was only one truth. Finally, I set my eyes upon the gaze of Biret. She had youth on her side and plans for what to do with her life. Her name marked

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her out as Sami in a land where that was no advantage, her parents having taken her away from Finnmark. Would she find answers to personal struggles by returning to her spiritual home? And what, I feared, if those answers were not the ones she wanted? How then would her dreams be fulfilled? I saw her natural beauty glow in the heavenly illumination. But would that beauty serve her well, or only bring her to the attention of hopeless men like me? ‘It starts to go,’ commented Solan, all too soon. The sun moved closer to the next mountain, with mere seconds of its direct shine left for us today. I followed its radiant light out from the centre, through the clouds and down our fjord. Its beams hit the water, though it would be many days before it warmed its icy state. And . . . was that . . .? I thought I saw something. I thought I saw it. Was it? Yes. Just below the surface of the ocean, where the new born light could reveal, I saw a silhouette against the momentarily illuminated water. The object looked distinctly whale-like. It was the huge shape of a tail in distinct outline. Briefly, it broke the surface. Did the whale detect me looking, and move to bolt? It at least left a region of disturbed water. Ripples. ‘Look!’ I called. ‘The whale is here. The sun shows it!’

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The assembled villagers looked to me, and then followed the direction in which my outstretched arm was pointing. But, in that time, the sun moved behind the landscape. There was still light, but it was no longer direct. I looked from their faces to the fjord too but it was shaded. There was no visible sign remaining that the whale had been there. The water was still. What a fool I must have seemed. Their silent expressions failed to hide their wariness; almost disapproval. Who was this curious gentleman from abroad who had come to tell them the truth about their own world? What did he know? Yet, I was convinced. I could no more doubt that I saw the whale than I could my own name. Why could they not see the world the way I did? Must our understanding always be so different? One by one, our small gathering dispersed. Perhaps my assertion did not even warrant a denial; or it would be impolite to add to my humiliation. But there was one person this possibility did not stop. Odd lingered a moment longer than his wife and silently shook his head disapprovingly as he looked at me. He had enjoyed my defeat more than the rest. I felt belittled, dismissed. Finally he left. It seemed I was all alone, my isolation complete. But, no. I felt a hand touch my arm. I turned and saw the unexpected face of Bård, my grim new companion: we two, the most recent arrivals in Bakkan.

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‘Understand, my friend Benedict, that your faith can be mightier than every science or philosophy.’ Bård’s statement required no answer. Just as well. I had none. *

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I resolved to stay in my cabin for the rest of the day and not have to face my neighbours. Instead I would meditate for one last time. Philosophy was the only friend I needed and could trust. I would not be going to dinner and I rehearsed a number of different excuses for my non-attendance. None of these would be true; I knew that people did not want the truth in any case. They heard what they wanted to hear. Even if one had a proof, most people will not be receptive to it. Let them have lies, then. Was I affected also by the fact that only Bård was there for me when I was most alone? Was that a further humiliation, to have gained his pity? Or should I construe his actions as noble? It was a time of need. Where was Biret? I thought that we had an understanding but it looked like she wanted to talk to Odd and Inger more than to me. Perhaps she was the Huldra all along. And why would Petter not defend me? I think I knew. Never since we met had he agreed with me just because I was his friend. And that meant I always knew where I stood with him. His challenges were valuable to my work. We both knew that. He

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would not allow that honesty to slip now. He was a man of integrity. No matter. I would be leaving the next day. The incident with the whale was of no consequence. What mattered was that I finally complete my meditations and resolve all the outstanding matters. I was just about to do so when footsteps came down the hill. Biret appeared at my door and opened it. ‘Yes?’, I queried. ‘May I come in?’, she said. I nodded. ‘I’m surprised you are willing to be seen visiting an old fool like me. Bård can see right the way down to my door, you know. He will know you are here.’ ‘I wanted to explain; . . . and check that you were alright.’ ‘There is nothing to explain,’ I insisted.‘You have no obligations to me. You can talk to Odd if you prefer.’ She gave me a moment to let my frustrations abate. ‘You must see that I will be here in Bakkan after you have left tomorrow. I cannot have the others judging me for how I have behaved with an older man. I am Sami and Samis are accused of loose virtue all of the time. Would I not just be a cliché in their eyes if I was seen to be intimate with the latest visitor to this cabin?’ I understood, and yet this comment also tormented me. Did it imply that the other men who had been here, sleeping in this

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bed, had also felt themselves more special to Biret than clearly they were? I knew I was not the first visitor. I was just a stranger passing through. I was the biggest fool of all to think that this meant something. How can someone of my age be so immature in his thinking? As she watched me ponder over humiliation piled on humiliation, I saw her face soften once more. Perhaps I was to receive pity again. ‘I do not disbelieve you that you saw a whale,’ she said. This surprised me. I was not ready for it, nor demanding it. ‘That is not the same as saying you believe me,’ the logician in me had to point out. ‘I believe you,’ she said. And that was all I wanted to hear. I had her trust. *

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The ice broken, we proceeded to have at least an hour or so in further conversation and things all seemed right again. She explained how she liked me and hoped we could still be in touch after I had gone. She had been making plans for Kautokeino. It wasn’t practical to move out there for another six months, during the summer, so she would have to stay in Bakkan until then. I accepted that I did not want to impugn her virtue, in word or in deed, in front of the people she would live with until that time.

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She also managed to talk me round to the idea of coming to the dinner. No one had really tried to contradict my claim of seeing the whale. Everyone could tell that the sun had disappeared just at the point they started to look. I was looking before that. I was the observer in the best position out of all of us. The matter would surely not be mentioned any more. And it was my last night in Bakkan. Everyone would want to see me off with a good meal and drink. I would regret it if I missed the dinner. Besides, I had not yet told them any of my fictitious excuses, so all embarrassment had been avoided. She was right. I was grateful to her that she had talked me out of any rash decision. It would be rude to my hosts not to attend their Soldag dinner. It was, after all, my farewell dinner too. She made it sound like the whole evening was arranged in my honour. They would all enjoy hearing about my final conclusions too, and my experiences. Biret told me she had to walk to the store and buy some wine as her contribution for tonight. Did I want also to buy some? I did. I gave her money – a generous amount – and asked if she would get me a very good one. Alcohol is a luxury but I was in no position to be mean. *

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Biret left and I was alone again. What a morning it had been. I quickly lunched and then set to work, knowing that today I

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had only the afternoon to myself and it would soon be very dark again. I needed to put the assembled pieces together to form a compelling whole, perhaps one that was scientifically, philosophically and theologically satisfying. But could this be done? There seemed a danger of antagonism all round. Some supporters of science reject both the theological and philosophical approaches. Theology sometimes overrules both science and philosophy. Now while some philosophers reject both religion and scientism, I did not think that there had to be automatically an antagonism from the philosophical direction towards the other two. Perhaps a philosopher could reach out and explain the appeal and justification of science – as I thought I could do – and also theology alike. But what place would there be for God in my world of causation? If he were not a natural object, as I am told he is not, then is he a ghostly presence, unable to affect or be affected by the physical processes of the natural world? He is then a spectre, a geist, and no part of my world-theory. Nothing here suggested a bridge on which the philosopher and theologian could meet. Creation remained a mystery. Any first natural event, by definition, had no natural cause. If we use Big Bang as the name for this first natural event, then there seem difficulties in any attempt to explain it. I can think of the following possibilities in response to this issue.

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One: there was no first natural event; no so-called Big Bang. Perhaps time and space proceeds around in one big circle, in which case the cause of the first event in our history was simply the last event in our history. As it makes sense to suppose those last and first events might even have happened one hour ago, creating a world complete with me and all my memories of yesterday, then I might even be persuaded to think that there were no true last and first events at all. The line that forms a circle has no beginning or end. One event has no more claim of being the first than another. Two: the Big Bang is uncaused. We cannot, after all, rule out the possibility of uncaused events in the natural world. There are some theories in physics which suggest that uncaused events happen in the natural world with surprising frequency, such as when a particle springs into existence or another one goes out of it. While every effect has a cause, there seems to be no necessity that every event has a cause. One could simply deny that every event is an effect of some cause. This would amount to a denial of a principle of sufficient reason, which tells us that everything that happens has a sufficient reason for doing so. If our world does turn out to be indeterministic, however, then we have grounds to reject the principle. We might then have to accept that, if there was a first event in the world’s history, that first event was uncaused. Three: the Big Bang had a cause that was outside of nature. This is the view that there was a supernatural act of Creation

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from the Deity. One of the potential problems with this view is that it rests on the possibility of a natural event having a supernatural cause. This idea can be challenged by the thesis that causation requires a movement or transference from one thing located in space and time to another. When a ball is kicked, for instance, there is an impact at a location and a transfer of momentum from the kicker to the ball. Now in the case of a natural event that has a supernatural cause, we simply do not know what such causation would look like; nor how two such very different things, one immaterial and without a spatiotemporal location, can interact with another that is material and located in space and time. Perhaps our lack of understanding is insufficient grounds, on its own, to rule out such causation. Indeed, we think of Creation as a miracle – ‘the miracle of Creation’ – so perhaps this expresses the idea that any such supernatural causation of a natural event would indeed be such a mystery that it should qualify as miraculous. I cannot think of any other than these three possible ways of understanding the presence of a universe. Perhaps there are others but I suspect that they are possibilities either too remote or too horrible to contemplate. Can the philosopher tell us which of these is true? I think it can be said of the first option that it suffers from a possible drawback that there seem no possible circumstances in which it could be disproven. Someone might think that this is an ideal position for a

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theory to find itself in, but that is far from the case. What it suggests instead is that the theory has no testable content, and possibly no content at all. As the scenario has been described, it seems that there really is no way to disprove that the world was created in its entirety one hour ago, including with the creation of all the memories in all its people. But that offers no grounds whatsoever to suspect such a theory of being true. The first option can also be accused of failing to solve, or even engage with, the mystery of existence. It merely evades the mystery. If the universe does involve one big whole of space time, with the first event being caused by the last event, we can still ask the question from where did this whole come? What made this vast circle of space time? And then we are left with the other two options in any case. Either the world was uncaused or it had a cause outside of nature. We should move on and consider the other two options, therefore. What of option three: the theological option? I remembered an experience that seemed relevant. When I was a child of six or seven, the schoolteacher permitted the class a discussion such as this. ‘What made the world?’ one child had asked. ‘God,’ another answered. A voice at the back of the room retorted ‘Who made God?’ The whole class laughed uproariously at the new questioning child. The teacher stopped them.

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‘No,’ she said. ‘All those who laughed, give me an answer then. Who did make God?’ Of course, none could say and their laughter was silenced. It was to my shame then, and a shame with which I continue to live, that mine was not the questioning voice at the back of the classroom. It could have been. But mine was one of the voices laughing: joining with the group to ridicule a question I myself did not have the wisdom to answer. I suspect that this was a key moment in the making of me as a philosopher. Never again would I think any question is too stupid to ask. Anyone who says so will almost certainly not know how to answer it. I didn’t find the identity of the child who spoke out: one of my contemporaries. What, I wonder, became of her (it was a girl’s voice)? The question had a point that is relevant to our third option. Would it really solve the riddle of existence if we just proclaimed that God made the universe? Wouldn’t the riddle merely be relocated? The question I would then want to be answered is ‘Who made God?’ and we would be no nearer an answer to that question than we were before. In this judgement, I am following exactly the same principle I apply as when I hear some supposedly naturalistic explanation of the Big Bang. Some say the Big Bang is not a mystery because we have a theory that suggests there was some sort of protomaterial cloud, which came together and caused the Big Bang. Any such theory, regardless of the details, is hopeless and

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makes no progress at all in explaining the beginning of existence. I would instead then simply want to know what caused the proto-material cloud. This is why it is useful to think of the Big Bang as synonymous with the very first natural existent. The details of exactly what it was, do not really matter to me. It could have been a bang, or a flash, or a cloud, or a whimper. But as long as it is the first thing, then we have the question of its origin of existence and are back to the three possible explanations I outlined. Hence, even with the third option – the outside, supernatural cause – we still have to explain where God came from. And to prevent having an infinite regress, where we go round and round in circles, asking the same question in a new form, we cannot accept the third possibility here. That is why people find the first two options attractive. Either, to adapt the first option, God exists eternally and there was never a time when he did not exist; or, to adapt the second, God was uncaused, and is thus the uncaused cause of everything. I think the second option is the one that we should take most seriously, and we should allow something that is itself uncaused but is the cause of everything else. Whether one calls this uncaused cause God or the Big Bang does not seem to matter, since the two claims are structurally identical. It was at this point that I experienced the most startling revelation. How could, I thought, anything be the cause of

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everything? The every thing would have to include causation itself, since it is a part of reality, as I had already established. Nothing, not even God, could bring causation into being, because He would need causation to exist already in order to do so. It follows that the very first thing to exist must be causation itself. Causation must be that first uncaused thing. It must be, then, that God is causation: they are identical, for nothing in the world would deserve the name of God more than the uncaused cause. Anything else would be inferior, and we know that God is supposed to be inferior to nothing. The philosophy I had discovered in my week in Bakkan could be summed up in the phrase ‘causation first.’ But this did not mean just that causation was conceptually the first, as in the starting point of all philosophy and science. Causation is first philosophy. But it seems that causation is also explanatorily first and, I was persuaded, temporally and metaphysically first in the story of the universe. Now you might say that option two is still less than satisfactory. Must we really settle for the idea that the first thing was uncaused? I suggest that nothing might be better than this answer. But consider this again. Any explanation of the existence of the universe would ultimately be a causal explanation. This means that all the accounts require causation to be real. No explanation gets going, therefore, unless causation is accepted as really

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existent. No matter what it is, real causation must be at the very moment that the first thing came into being. The reader should understand immediately that we cannot ask ‘What caused causation?’ Any such question can only be answered by invoking causation, and would thus be selfundermining through its circularity. Causation itself is the one thing that had originally to exist uncaused, therefore. It cannot be created unless and until it exists, therefore it cannot be created. What else can we call this, other than God? *

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The revelation was so monumental that I had to feel somewhat humbled. I felt as small compared to this truth as is my body to the size of the sun, or as a drop is to the ocean. I could only cope with my new understanding by taking a stroll outdoors. I climbed up to the path on which Inger and Odd’s house sits and I walked from there deeper into the woods. There is nothing more on Kvaløya after Bakkan, just trails and forest so I had to make sure that I did not get lost. In the history of the island, more than one visitor has been found frozen to death in the winter wilderness. I kept checking on Polaris, Polarstjernen, to make sure that I kept my bearings. It was a tiny prick of bright light in a sea of darkness. Yet its constant fixedness guided me.

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As I looked around at the beauty of nature in every direction, I had to think what a wonderful world we had. And this set in motion my final train of thought of the six meditations, which completed my whole philosophy. Causation was not there only at the start. Causation remains ongoing and all around us, all of the time. Without the sun, air and water causing the forest to grow, there would be no trees. Without the inner gene structure of the plant causing carrots to grow, there would be no food. Without gravity causing us to remain in orbit around the sun, there would be no life on this planet. I could instantly see that a conception of God as the provider, sustaining the world at all times, made sense once we understood that God was causation. And God created me too. Yes. I see that I have reason to be thankful that I live in a world where causation exists. For a sperm caused an egg to be fertilised; and then to grow into me. My parents made me, of course, but were only able to do so because causation is real in this universe. It is the one thing I have most gratitude for. The planet is warmed and food grows here. It is also predictable to an adequate-enough degree that we can survive. If anything could follow anything, then we would not know what to do and danger would be around every corner. One couldn’t eat healthily or avoid accidents, for everything would be an accident; and what would there be to stop an elephant trampling you at any time? We have already seen how the scientific notion of

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intervention would be inapplicable without causation, and this same argument would apply to any human attempted action. One would never know the consequence of it, if any, and one would thereby be disempowered: at the mercy of the world’s contingencies. Causation has not just fed our bodies, therefore. Because some things are connected to others, such as the striking of a match and it lighting, the world is comprehensible to us too. Causation thus feeds our minds as well. Without causation connecting types of event or object, we really could not know what was coming next. There would be no degree of regularity about anything, hence no basis on which to form rational beliefs about expectation or strategies for action. But once there are causal connections in the world, between some phenomena but not others, then we can start to form theories about the world, make our plans and offer explanations. The world has a structure that our beliefs can fit and our expectations and intentions can seek to exploit. Causation truly is the great provider. Is it any wonder that people gather in churches on Sundays to give thanks and praise to causation, the eternal almighty, without whom there would be nothing but desolation and the disorder of things? And in prayer, too, you can pray that the causes work out in your favour, or the favour of your loved ones? If one prays to avoid accidents on a journey, one is expressing a wish that nothing on that trip causes calamity. If one prays for good

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weather, one is praying that high pressure is caused in one’s surroundings. What other sense could one make of petitioning prayer? This interpretation of Creation and the continued existence and order of the world seemed to make sense to me. With that, I called a halt to my meditations. It was, after all, nearly the time at which I was invited for dinner with Petter and all the village folk. I retraced my footsteps: quite literally, on this occasion, as noone else had walked that path and there was no fresh snow, either, to cover my recent imprints. Back in the cabin, I quickly jotted down in my notebook, ensuring that none of my new ideas were forgotten. I then dressed as best as I could for the occasion. I had not brought much and was not expecting any need for smartness. I had to content myself with finding the trousers and sweater that had been least dirtied by the snow. Nor did I have a brush for my hair or scissors to trim my fingernails. I nevertheless found myself leaving the cabin at the appointed time, ready for one final evening in the company of friends and acquaintances, old and new.

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I made my way up the slippery slope to the house of Petter and Marie, where I could see that every room was lit. There were sounds of conversation and merriment coming from within. I was happy to reach the entrance and feel the warmth emanating outward. My arrival went unnoticed as I stood inside the door and assessed the scene. I saw Marie and Inger deep in conversation. Ragnhild and Solan were at one end of a long dinner table preparing a game of chess, while Petter, Biret and Odd were setting places at the table, chatting, bringing crockery and glasses out. I noted that Bård was seated on a chair against a wall, staring into space, talking to no one. As Solan played the first move on the chessboard, Bård looked up to note it, but then looked away again. Removing my outside coat and boots, I attracted Inger’s attention. She stopped her conversation and gradually a hush

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descended over the house as everyone looked to me. I felt selfconscious, as if they had been talking about me. Petter came forward and greeted me. ‘Oh, it’s Ben. Welcome. Now we are all complete and the Soldag feast can begin at last.’ Inger resumed her conversation with Marie and the awkwardness was defused. Without too much delay we were all invited to sit down. There was no seating plan and I watched where Biret sat, next to Odd. I was too slow and before I could reach the vacant chair on her left side, Bård was already in that position, though I had seen him make no movement. I had to walk back around the table but managed to sit opposite Biret, which was the next best thing. Petter and Marie brought out a first course of hot soup, which I think was cauliflower. Petter then sat next to me. The chess board was vacated at the far end of the table while Ragnhild and Solan each moved up a place to eat with us, but I did see that Ragnhild kept glancing back at the game, thinking through her strategy. We had a white wine with the soup. I enjoyed it. Once that was all consumed and cleared away, Marie announced that she had a special gift for us: a gift of a song that she had written for the occasion and would now play, accompanying herself on guitar. Everyone seemed excited, especially the children, who ran and sat on the floor attentively, in front of their mother. Marie started strumming an introduction and then entered vocally, singing her song, in Norwegian. I couldn’t follow it but

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heard Sol mentioned, as I would have expected. It was a sweet melody and I thought Marie had a beautiful though sorrowful voice. The wine must have affected me because I felt a warm glow inside, and that this was a natural place for me to be, with these people. It was not a long piece and when it was done, I joined everyone in giving a big round of applause. I asked Petter what it was about and he asked Marie if she could translate the lyric into English for me. She said that translation was not her strong point but it would be something like the following: The Sun lights our way It brings us joy and hope Without it, we would not know whether to turn left or right Warm us, bright Sun, Make the food grow in our gardens once more When you return, we will in return give you a warm welcome It was called Welcome the Sun. I liked it. Perhaps it was a bad translation. But the sentiment still came through. It wasn’t the sort of thing I would have written. Another glass of wine was offered. Perhaps I should have said no. But it was a special night and I had worked hard all week so I agreed, as did everyone else at the table, except Solan and Ragnhild who were already back playing their game. Petter made

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some small talk about whether I was ready for my return home, departing in the morning. I assured him I was, though I didn’t look forward to the travel. Fortunately, he was called away to help serve the main course, so I didn’t need to provide any more unnecessary details. A big pot was placed in the middle of the table in which we took turns fishing for chunks of stewed herring and we passed around the potatoes and vegetables. Foolishly, I had finished my second glass of wine while waiting and, without asking, it was filled again. We all started eating. To break the silence, Marie asked if I would now be willing finally to tell everyone about my work this week and what I had concluded. As I was in a positive frame of mind, I agreed and proceeded to lay out the main points of my final position. I explained how causation was known to be real, it being the one thing that could not be socially constructed. I explained how science rested on the reality of causation – and I’m sure Odd accidentally let out a ‘tut’ at that point – and such causation couldn’t then be reduced to a mere regular pattern of unconnected events if the worth of science was to be preserved. I finished by explaining why I thought that nothing deserved the name of God better than causation. Here there was no doubt that Bård gasped and shook his head repeatedly but I think some of the others did too, to a lesser extent. There was a lull, which Marie eventually ended by thanking me for sharing my thoughts with everyone but I was sure

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that as she did I heard Bård mutter ‘Outrageous!’ under his breath. Petter distracted everyone by walking round the table with wine, filling all our glasses again, whether they needed it or not. When he sat down he too thanked me for being so honest and open. He continued: ‘Now I’m sure we all would have things to say about Benedict’s ideas but I have to speak first and say that he is a distinguished philosopher who has clearly thought very seriously about these matters. I think that if we have concerns about his conclusions we should challenge them through reasoned argument, not jibes, and all retain our dignity. ‘Benedict will respond best to reasoning and I’m sure will be happy to answer any serious questions you have,’ added Petter. ‘Isn’t that right, Benedict?’ Of course. How could I refuse to answer questions now, given what I had just told them? And in a way I would find it a more comfortable topic of conversation than enquiries about simple travel plans. I finished the remaining food on my plate quickly and prepared to listen. ‘Now, who will go first?’ Petter questioned. ‘I will,’ said Bård, with uncharacteristic urgency. Petter, as host, had the authority to grant the request, which he did with a nod in Bård’s direction. Having gained permission, he composed himself once more and began in his own time.

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‘You have told us that God is the same thing as causation, and this is a claim I have not heard before. It sounds to me like a heresy. However, I am willing to put that aside and consider the view on its merits, as you philosophers like to. ‘All your arguments sound purely metaphysical, to me. But have you considered the moral arguments as well? ‘There is one feature of God that you overlook if you equate God and causation, so I do not think you adequately take account of it. What we know of God is that God is good. Now, from what I understand of your concept of causation, it is neither good nor bad. That is to say, good things can be caused to happen, like the growing of our food, and also bad things can be caused to happen, such as famines or earthquakes. ‘Causation seems neutral or indifferent in a way that God cannot be. So I cannot accept, as you have suggested, that God and causation are one and the same.’ I thought he was done, but as I was formulating my reply, he started up again. ‘What is lacking from your view of things is a moral dimension. God is not just some cold, objective truth in the world. He is also the provider of goodness. He has a moral aspect, which you have chosen to ignore. Perhaps you think of the world as lacking all morality, and you would like that, because it would license all sorts of depraved behaviour.’ I’m sure he glanced sideways at Biret as he said that.

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‘Without the goodness of God, I think that is what you will have, and I cannot accept it,’ he concluded. And with that he seemed finally done as he sat back in his chair, looked at me and waited. I thought this through and saw that Bård had a point. I was always told that God was good – he was omnibenevolent – so how could I really have an account of God that lacked this moral dimension? Perhaps I was describing something very important in the universe but I couldn’t be describing God as long as it was lacking in goodness. I considered whether to withdraw this part of my new philosophy. Perhaps it would not have done much harm to do so given that it was only one aspect of it, and probably the most dispensable part. However, I saw the look on Bård’s face. He was eager. I would say almost smiling. He had the look of a man pleased with himself, as if he thought he had achieved an important victory. I realised that if I gave in he would see it as a vindication of theology and its inevitable triumph over philosophy. I had to mount a defence of my position. I began speaking, not knowing quite where it would end. ‘Now I grant that there is one point that might be raised against my view. Isn’t God good, whereas causation is neither good nor bad? This is a standard way of thinking about God, certainly, at least in some traditions, but I don’t think it is the

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only way. Moreover, it is a way of thinking about God that itself creates some problems. And if you instead think of God in the manner I suggest, then those problems will disappear.’ ‘That is a bold claim, young man’ interjected Bård. ‘Then again, I know that you are not shy of controversy. But can you back it up?’ ‘I think I can,’ I responded. I could not now avoid the challenge. I decided to begin with a true story. ‘I once knew a Christian who had been taken to church every week since she was young. She was a dutiful child who wanted to please her family and so she learnt the Bible and the order of service and did all that was asked of her. She sometimes prayed, as was expected, for the health and well-being of those she cared about and for things to be alright whenever there was a problem in the world. ‘I did not meet her until she was older and after a few years she told me that she was starting to lose her faith. I was interested in this but I should make clear, Bård, that her change of mind was nothing to do with me. I had not once encouraged her to give up her religion. Naturally, I asked her to explain why she was ceasing to believe. ‘ “There was so much bad in the world,” she explained. She told me how she had heard of natural disasters, plagues and famines in which sometimes thousands of people had died. She did not believe that God would have approved of these terrible things

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occurring. And yet God was supposed to know about everything and have the power to do anything. Why, then, didn’t He intervene and prevent unnecessary deaths? And she also told me that there was a personal experience that meant a lot to her. ‘Her grandfather, with whom she had sometimes gone to church, was a very good and devout man. He truly believed in God and did everything he could to live within the Christian spirit. And yet, this man, surely the least deserving of misery, became very ill. He had a lingering, drawn out, and – she cried as she told me – very painful death. ‘She had been told all the usual explanations. God sent these things to test us; we would get our rewards in heaven; God had given us free will to make mistakes, and so on. But she eventually stopped believing these explanations. None of them, she concluded, would justify the human suffering in the world, which continues unabated in spite of God’s presence. ‘I recognised her concerns. Philosophers have considered this problem in depth and I know that the theologians have tried to explain it away. Perhaps they can, though I suspect it will need very clever arguments to do so. ‘But suppose instead, as I urge, we take a different attitude towards God. Suppose we stop thinking of God as a person. That surely is us imposing a human model on to something that is clearly not meant to be human. God does not worry or deliberate over the natural course of events, or come to decisions to

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intervene in them, like we do. What my model suggests, rather, is an impersonal account of God, where God is beyond our concerns, including those of morals. ‘Morality is a matter of the proper behaviour of people: how should we relate to each other, to other animals and the world around us? Why assume that this is of any interest to God? Furthermore, why assume that human suffering is of any interest to God, either? If a rock needs to fall from a mountain, because it is dislodged, and my head is in the way, why do we think that God would – or should – step in and give me what I want instead of the rock? The whole universe is God’s creation and I cannot see any reason why he should prioritise one part of it over any other. ‘What I am suggesting, then, is that if you put away your Bible, and the received opinion about God, the idea of him as an impersonal and amoral presence in the universe perfectly accords with our experience of the world. Some good things are caused to happen and some bad things too. Causation is not a moral matter, you are right. It is neutral: beyond good and evil. But we really have no reason to think that God has this moral dimension either, other than what we have read and chosen to believe. If instead you look at the effect of God on the world, you do not see this morality. ‘I wanted to ask you the other day, Bård, what difference it would make if there was no God. Let me now pose that question

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in a slightly different way. How would the world look if there was no benevolent God but one who was perfectly amoral and unconcerned with humans and their welfare? He was silent. ‘Well, I suggest to you, the world would look exactly as it does now. Indeed, it is only if there was an omnibenevolent God that we would expect the world to look different, absent of all its present suffering. So experience seems to favour my interpretation rather than the received one you have given us. And, in that case, I see no barrier here to equating God with causation. ‘This God-cum-causation has certainly created us and provides for us, so deserves the name of God in that respect. The one feature you say it will lack is, however, a feature that we have no sound reason to believe exists in the world. There is pain and suffering aplenty, not all of which is of our own making. You cannot tell me that there is an all-knowing, all-powerful and allgood God at work here. The best explanation I can find is that our God is not good, and why not then equate it with blind, unconcerned causation.’ To my surprise, I had managed to improvise a convincing answer. Indeed, I had even persuaded myself that this was the best way to respond to the likes of Bård. I noted that any slight indication of a smile on his face had gradually drained away as I was speaking. He was no longer on the edge of his seat,

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awaiting my capitulation. Instead, he had slowly moved further and further away, his arms were folded and his face looked as white and grim as ever. This countenance alone was enough to persuade me that my answer was successful. The guests resumed their dinners. Solan and Ragnhild had already moved back to their chess. I could see that the others were all thinking about what I had said. Biret was the next to speak up. ‘I found that very interesting, Ben. I am not a philosopher, nor theologian, nor a scientist, as you know so maybe my opinion is not worth as much as someone else’s.’ ‘No,’ I interrupted. ‘I must contest that last statement from you, and that one alone. You don’t need an academic training in order to think these things through. I very much value your opinion, Biret. If you say I am wrong then that would matter very much to me. And if you say I am right, then I would be overjoyed. Do go ahead and say what you want.’ ‘Very well,’ she responded. ‘I will take what you just said at face value and assume that you are not teasing me.’ ‘I am not,’ I assured her again. ‘What I think, then, is that you could give a different kind of answer to Bård, on this matter. But I am not as confident as you all so I will put my point in the form of a question. ‘You seemed to give way to Bård and grant that causation was neither good nor bad.’

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‘Yes: it has moral neutrality,’ I said by way of encouragement. ‘And then you said that this was all well and good because there was no sign that God was anything but morally neutral.’ ‘That’s right,’ I agreed. ‘But could you not have gone a different way with this and argued that what you call causation is overall a good thing? Wasn’t this the point of your saying that it provides for us, that there would be no world created or sustained without it, and that it made the universe comprehensible?’ Was I fooling myself to think that this young lady had shamed me with her incisive analysis? Was it not the best interpretation yet? And she was stating it in such a perfect way, which made it sound as if I had been right all along. ‘Biret,’ I said, ‘You have charmed me so much in the week that I have been here. But nothing is as charming to me as to hear your spontaneous words of wisdom. And I see that they oblige me to think again and offer a more nuanced position.’ ‘What is “nuanced”?’ piped up Solan, and I quickly explained to him, apologising that I could not translate it into Norwegian. Biret’s question raised the issue of whether existence was better than non-existence. Without causation, we would not be here. And it seemed good that we were. But would it really be bad if we had never existed in the first place? I had to consider these questions honestly. I noted that there were some signs of life in Bård again, though.

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‘How can I tackle your question, then, Biret?’ I began, again not knowing where my reasoning would end, nor how I could square it with my answer to Bård. ‘Here is what I think we must say. ‘What I argued before was right. Causation is not a moral force in the world. Causes produce their effects regardless of whether they are good or bad. The ocean cannot resist drowning a man just because that is a bad thing. The moral sphere is all dependent on our interests, by which I mean the interests of the sentient creatures of the world. But I think I can reconcile this with Biret’s point. All that is good in the world – by which I mean all that is good for us – we only have because causation is real. It matters to us that we are alive, that we can have pleasure, that we can understand the world and use science, that we can help each other when in need. The reality of causation is then a precondition of all that is good. ‘Now you might say that it is a precondition, also, of all that is bad. Fire and lightning can kill me because they are able to cause my death, for instance; hence they do so only because causation is real. But I also think that causation is not the precondition of every possible bad. ‘What I am thinking of is that if causation were to suddenly stop working in the whole universe, then that would be an undoubted bad. Anything could follow anything. The world would instantly become incomprehensible and unable to sustain

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us. We would have a rapid and miserable end, most likely, and I can see that this would be a bad thing. ‘What if causation had never existed in the first place, you might ask. Well then, I insist, we would never have existed either. Perhaps that would not matter, as there would be no creatures to have suffered harm. But I still think that overall an orderly and comprehensible universe is better than a disorderly and incomprehensible one. ‘The former is better because it at least gives us the opportunity for happiness, knowledge and free will, even though we may squander that opportunity. We even have the potential to mitigate or overcome the effects of natural disasters, one day. Without causation, we don’t even have such an opportunity. In that case, the disorderly world is bad – in the sense of being worse than an orderly world – but its badness is not due to the presence of causation. Indeed, this badness is due to the absence of causation. ‘I conclude, therefore, that Biret is right, as I would expect, and overall the world is better for having causation than being without it. In that sense one could say that causation, or God, is a good; and that badness is due to the absence of God. And if this also answers Bård’s original concern about equating God with causation, then all the better.’ Petter and Marie in particular seemed pleased with this answer. Odd and Inger still looked sceptical but produced no immediate objection. Perhaps even Bård was happy with what I

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had concluded but I couldn’t say for certain, given that there was always at least some degree of doubt over whether he was actually dead or not. Marie now spoke up. ‘I like your answer,’ she said. ‘But I still think that your account of causation leaves something out of the description of God. ‘I believe in God,’ she confessed, ‘but your notion of causation is insufficient to account for His perfection and magnificence. So I cannot yet sign up to your philosophy if you cannot reassure me.’ Of course, I had to invite Marie to say more. I also felt that we were on the same side in that clearly she wanted nothing more than to understand. No one would suspect an ulterior motive of Marie. ‘Maybe I can explain what worries me. I will try,’ she started. As she did, Petter passed the wine around again and we all filled our glasses. Because I felt the signs of intoxication, I decided I would not drink this one. ‘The fact is, as I understand it,’ she said, ‘that causation is a part of the natural world. It is how the sun warms the earth, how food feeds us and how books educate us. But God seems to me to be something more. Doesn’t He have supernatural powers that cannot be explained in a merely scientific way?’ I was sure I saw Odd shaking his head so I encouraged Marie to continue.

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‘Well, the sort of thing I mean is that there is life in the universe, for example. This seems a miracle. I cannot see that the blind and natural forces in the world – which I take causation to be – could have produced something as wonderful and as special as life. ‘And we human beings are even more miraculous: each with our free will and unique personalities. Nature unaided could not have produced all these different and beautiful living and thinking people. Surely that needed something equally special, if not more so. I’m tempted to say that it required something supernatural. So even if you are right and God needed causation in order to create all the wonder of the world, God must be more than that causation. God must have miraculous powers as well, so that tells me that you need more. It seems to me that a deliberate act of creation was at work: a creation of living thinking beings that could not have come about through accident.’ This was another good point and I realised that I was as helpless as anyone in explaining the origin of life on earth or the existence of mind and consciousness. I really didn’t know how that happened, nor if anyone else knew either. ‘Marie asks one of the greatest questions of all,’ I said, addressing all at the table. Even Ragnhild and Solan looked up from their chess to hear what I had to say about their mother. I saw that I could not contradict her by anything in my reply.

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‘And I am hindered in my response by the fact that I know insufficient biology. So my reply cannot give any detail on the facts of nature. Perhaps Inger can provide that later. But I think I can say something of use. ‘The existence of life in the universe does seem a mystery to us and this is not simply a matter of science. There appears to me also to be a conceptual problem. We find it hard to conceive of how life can emerge from lifeless parts, and also how mind can emerge from unminded parts. We think that if you take a number of components that are lifeless, then the product that they make when they are all together must also be lifeless. But I think there are cases where wholes are more than sums of parts and where they can acquire properties not possessed by the parts. ‘If we stick with human biology, for instance, we see that our bodies are made out of some fairly mundane and common elements. I believe that carbon, nitrogen, calcium, hydrogen and oxygen are among the most common elements that make up our biochemistry. These are fairly commonplace and they occur in lots of other things without constituting a living creature. ‘So how do they do so in a human body? Must it require the special powers of a supernatural God to make it happen; to give them animation? I think not. I think that when a set of elements are arranged in a certain way, it can start a very particular kind of causal process – producing change, transformation. Consider

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the very simple case where hydrogen and oxygen undergo a process of bonding. Before that, they are two gasses, and both combustible.’ (I accidentally said ‘compustible’ due to the wine but no one seemed to notice, or they were becoming equally affected so let it go.) ‘But when they bond, they undergo a transformation. The bonding involves their sharing electrons; thus, the parts are changed through partaking in the whole. And we are left with a whole that then has very different properties from the parts. They form water, which far from being compustible (I said again), actually can put out fire. ‘Of course, I have far from explained how the basic ingredients can compose a living organism, but I think this answers the philosophical and conceptual problem. It shows there is no reason in principle why lifeless parts have to make a lifeless whole. If these elements come together in the right way, then the whole that they make can have new properties, not present in the original parts before their transformation. ‘I think that plain old nature, with regular causal processes can do this. The parts need to be in a very particular and special arrangement – make no mistake about that – but it is one that can arise naturally and, as we know, once in nature, life can selfreplicate that same special arrangement.’ I felt pleased with this answer. I don’t know if Marie was happy. She didn’t look entirely convinced. But I was sure it was

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right even if she couldn’t see it. She wasn’t a philosopher after all, but I was, and in my expert opinion this was a fine response. It showed that divine supernatural powers were not needed. Nor were miracles. ‘Enough about God,’ interjected Inger. ‘That’s just one side of your equation. What about the other? What you have said about science can also be challenged.’ ‘And philosophy,’ added Petter. ‘I think some philosophers would have problems with your view too.’ ‘Very well, both of you. I am happy to address these matters. Which shall I answer first?’ ‘Go ahead,’ said Petter to Inger. ‘No,’ said Inger. ‘You are our host and I think you should have your say before me, especially as you and Ben are both philosophers.’ Back home, the host might have protested that the guest has priority but here Petter was willing to proceed. As he talked, Inger helped Marie clear away the plates and bring out a desert of stewed apple. I didn’t know whether, in doing so, they were taking the opportunity to avoid listening to philosophy. Petter began and I drank my wine as I listened. ‘My problem is simple,’ he said. ‘Don’t you start from the wrong place in your reasoning and effectively infer what is already well known from what is less well known?’ I asked for further explanation.

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‘Well, let me see now,’ continued Petter, and I allowed him to develop his point without interruption. ‘It sounds to me as if you have reasoned from the reality of the external world to the existence of the thinking mind. But don’t we all accept that nothing is better known than the contents of one’s own mind. So one shouldn’t be starting from the outside world, which is known with far less certainty, and then following what its existence implies. This is what I think you did. Rather, you should start from individual experience, which all of us have and know, and then deduce what can be known from that. With sufficient arguments, this might include the external world. But that is not the place to begin, as I think that you did.’ I could understand his point, as a fellow philosopher. ‘So I’m tempted to conclude that your philosophy is the wrong way round. We should start with what we know with certainty and then follow a chain of reasoning that allows us to confirm the existence of something originally less certain. In starting with external and real causation, you have reversed the tradition of our discipline and it makes me reluctant to follow you. What have you got to say?’ I did not rush to answer. Indeed, I reached for the wine and refilled my glass. Biret remained attentive as did Bård. And Inger was back at the table now as the guests started eating their apples, except Bård, who had refused his.

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‘Petter is right,’ I conceded, ‘that we often think of our individual experience as that which is best known. Some say it is the thing we know with the most certainty. But I believe this common view is a mistake and has been damaging to philosophy. I should add that I don’t agree with the way Petter has characterised my argument, as one way of putting it is that from the existence of my own thought, which I know I have, I can infer the existence of language and from that the existence of society, and finally, from that, I know that causation must be real as a precondition of all those earlier things. ‘However: no matter. I accept that I first started my reasoning from features in the external world: that there was causation and society, and then brought in the consideration of language and thought. In that respect, you are right, Petter. I was going from the outer to the inner, against traditional thinking in philosophy. I am not opposed to arguing against the tradition,’ I said, and I lifted my head proudly as I did. ‘I have always thought that it is a mistake to start with the mind – the individual self – and reason outwards. Many have tried this and, for example, tried to construct a defensible theory of causation just from the succession of experiences that we all have. I experience the drinking of water, for example, and then a feeling that my thirst has gone, and from this I am supposed to gain the idea of water having an effect on me. This is altogether wrong and I don’t believe it will work.’

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I started to feel more confidence now. I was answering all the questions they could throw at me. ‘Instead, it has to be accepted that without the outside, without the social situation, there is no person, no thinking thing. We are born with just the necessary raw materials to be a thinking thing – a mobile body and an adaptable brain – but what we are is made by the influences of our setting. It is as if our mind is made by its environment. ‘To make the claim more concrete, please note that I have concentrated in my arguments on the role of language. I can be a language user only because I am surrounded by others who use the same language and we keep each other on course, using our words correctly to express a shared meaning. ‘In being part of such a linguistic community, I have concepts to hand that allow me to think. Thus, I am changed by being part of this whole, much as I said that the hydrogen and oxygen atoms are by being part of a water molecule. My mind and my thinking depends on this interaction; that is, it depends on the reality of causation. Hence, I am right to take causation as the thing that is real, fundamental, and fixed. The contents of my own mind are, in that sense, secondary and thus not a safe grounding alone on which to rest my philosophy.’ Biret gave me spontaneous applause at that point, for having presented such a convincing and original argument. ‘Skål’, she suddenly called, and everyone except Bård raised their

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glasses to have another drink. I took this as an opportunity to salute Biret. When the next bottle was brought out, Biret told the table that it was the one I had bought, and there were some approving remarks. She was at that moment distracted when Marie raised a conversation with her about her plans for Kautokeino, asking her about the learning of the language and whether she thought it would truly help with her learning the ways of her grandparents. This meant Biret had to end her eye contact with me and several other breakaway conversations started around the table. I was for a time left alone with no one to talk to and as I feigned interest in the chess game, which seemed to be reaching a crucial point – Ragnhild on top – my thoughts turned to the fact that tomorrow I would be leaving Bakkan. A resumption of my normal life would, perhaps, be welcome, but all I could think of was that I would not see Biret. It was to be my final night with her; and Marie was occupying her attention. I spoke up, raising my voice above everyone else, to remind us all that Inger had a question about science that she had kindly put on hold and wasn’t it time to return to that matter? ‘Ah, yes, finally,’ said Inger. She too sounded intoxicated and I noticed a confidence and directness in her voice that I had never heard before from her. ‘I am a scientist,’ she started, ‘and I feel I must at least offer some defence of my own approach to these matters.

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‘I am not at all antagonistic to philosophy,’ she made clear, ‘but I think that all subject areas have a proper place and role to play.’ ‘I agree,’ said Odd, offering his wife approval. ‘Well,’ she continued, ‘you make it sound as if your approach can tell us all we need to know about causation. But I am sure that you need more besides. Indeed sometimes it sounds as if you do not fully know what you are talking about, with all due respect. ‘In particular, I think that you have to start from a study of the reality and seeing how causal connections really operate in the world, by which I mean the world that we investigate with our senses; not your world of Platonic Forms. ‘I’ve noted, for instance, that philosophers in the past have argued over some of the features of causation as if that matter can be settled without bothering to look.’ ‘Can you give me an example?’ I asked. My speech was slurred. ‘Yes,’ said Inger. ‘Some philosophers have said that a cause must always occur before its effect – I mean before in time. But then I hear others deny this and say that causes can be simultaneous with their effects. But what they don’t seem to acknowledge in all this speculation – I can’t see that it is anything more than that – is that they need to look at some real cases of causation to test their theories. It seems to me an empirical question whether causes come before their effects. I have heard from Odd of some experiments in physics where the effect seems to occur immediately – instantly – once the cause occurs.’

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Odd nodded. ‘Now I don’t understand all this and the details do not matter at this moment. But I think that you should grant that these questions must be settled scientifically, according to the facts, rather than in your untutored, and I might say ignorant, way.’ At that I almost exploded. I felt anger rising in me and for a few moments that I could lose control. How rude of her. Was it just the alcohol talking? She had never been so blunt with me before. I supposed that Odd had told her all about our earlier conversation, some days past, and she had decided to take his side. Well, that is very loyal, if she had, but then that just makes them both wrong. Everyone could see that I had become red in the face and their stares just made me want to turn the table over and storm out. Imagine all this happening after I had been so courteous to everyone and attended the dinner like a grateful guest. I was just about to issue a sharp rebuke to Inger when Petter stopped me. ‘Benedict,’ he said. ‘It is very warm in this room now with our stove and all these people eating and talking. Won’t you join me outside for a few moments to take some fresh air? You look hot, which is how I feel, so I think we would both enjoy a few moments to cool down: just a few before the night freezes us.’ I said that it would be a pleasure to join Petter and I got up with him, my anger distracted.

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Biret, Marie, Inger and Odd seemed to launch into an animated discussion in Norwegian, none of them taking the chance to join us. *

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I stood outside for a few moments, enjoying the cold air on my face. Petter and I both looked up and saw a spectacular aurora borealis, bright green, stretching across the night sky. ‘That is amazing,’ I commented. ‘Should I tell the others to come out?’ There was no need, Petter assured me. The lights come to Bakkan many nights. It was beautiful but they had all seen them before. Leave them to their squabbling, he suggested, so that we could enjoy the night sky in peace. ‘Beautiful,’ I said. With that, we both fell into silence, rest and calm, which I could tell Petter enjoyed just as much as I did. This lasted for a few peaceful minutes . . . But the warmth we had built up and stored was soon exhausted by the crisp air and we had to re-enter the room. *

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Cheese and crackers were now laid out on the table. As soon as I sat back down, I wanted to reply to Inger. I admit that I felt

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slightly emotional, for some reason. Was that just because of my feelings for Petter and for Biret? And leaving? ‘Inger, let me tell you how much I appreciate your question,’ I began, doing my best to sound as though I meant it, for at that time I think I did. ‘I believe that you are absolutely right that the question of which things cause which other things is entirely a matter for science to answer. Science is our best way to find what specific facts there are about the world. But you know that I think there has to be a philosophical and conceptual analysis which precedes that. Someone can only say that they have discovered a case of causation if they have a prior notion of causation which the new case satisfies. ‘And let me tell you this. During the course of this week I have been woken in the night several times by the sound of the whale that is currently visiting the fjord.’ I could see more than one person around the table smile at this – and almost laugh – but I was insistent. ‘Well, let me tell you something about this whale. ‘As I understand it, the whale is a very wise old creature. She knows that it’s best not to bother us humans up above.’ ‘It’s a He,’ interjected Inger. ‘What makes you so sure?’ I asked. ‘Didn’t you say that you heard its song?’ ‘Yes I did,’ I confirmed. ‘In the night. It sang me to sleep.’

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‘Then it’s a male,’ said Inger. ‘Only the males sing. Unless you want to contradict science with your philosophy again.’ I ignored the sarcasm. I did not want to be deflected from my point. ‘I defer to your expertise, Inger. My whale is a He. And he’s happy to stay hidden under the water so that we don’t get in each other’s way. We rarely see each other. But how do you and I know he’s there, then, you might ask. ‘Well, there are enough signs. The water is sometimes agitated, the fish stocks get depleted, and people like me can hear him breathing and singing. It is a song, yes. ‘So we cannot look directly upon the whale as a proof that it is really there. But we have evidence, from the indications that it leaves for us that it has been. You could think of these as symptoms of a whale visit. These symptoms are enough for me to infer the whale is there. But they are not the whale. The whale is not its song: it makes its song, which I can then take as a reliable indication that it’s there. ‘I think the sciences are in that position in relation to causation. Science often involves the drawing of a causal inference from what is observed. A scientist never sees causation directly but can only infer it is there, for instance, from regular patterns of events. The nature of causation itself cannot be a purely scientific matter, then, because you scientists only record the data. You are never dealing with anything more than the symptoms of causation,

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found in that data. To understand the elusive nature of causation itself, like that elusive whale, you have to come to the likes of me.’ ‘Nonsense,’ declared Odd resoundingly. ‘Oh, I’ve listened to this all night, and kept my thoughts to myself, but this is too much, ikke sant? Too much . . . ‘The whale is perfectly knowable by science. We can shoot him with a harpoon and haul him out of the water. We can even dissect him and learn everything there is to know about him. I really don’t think you philosophers can tell us about the real essence of a whale any more than you can tell us the real essence of this causation thing that you are always talking about.’ I looked to Petter for some support. Once again he frustrated me, sitting silently by and allowing his neighbour to assault me with such vicious words. ‘If you ask me, philosophy is just created to keep people in work who have nothing useful that they can do. They say they seek the truth but cannot be bothered to get off their chairs and go and look for it. Nor can they be bothered to learn the precise methods of science, because the training is too long and demanding, ikke sant? Tell us, Ben, why are you a philosopher, if I have not identified the right reason there?’ ‘I am a philosopher because I respect the truth above everything else,’ I replied defiantly, ‘and I am convinced that philosophy is the right way to find it, certainly for the sorts of question I address. How can you say that I have any other motive?

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I am passionate about the truths of philosophy: I have given my life to their pursuit. It seems to me that the problem is mainly that you don’t understand what philosophy is.’ ‘Surely there are other motives for a clever man like you, Benedict,’ Odd came back. ‘You have made yourself a comfortable living, with wealth and fame, by being a professor of philosophy. You don’t have to get your hands dirty as we do in the north of Norway. You can have everything taken care of for you. And then you publish your books and have the admiration and praise of your readers. What a comfortable life that is.’ I replied ‘I don’t think you understand the pain of philosophy and the frustrations that we philosophers go through – don’t we, Petter – when we are struggling with the truth. When we are unable to find answers, we almost feel like killing ourselves, don’t we Petter?’ I looked to Petter for a nod, but there was none. I realised that I needed to make a convincing case. So I thought. ‘Let me tell you,’ I started, ‘. . . about the myth of Gyges’ ring, except that in my version of the story, the ring has a different ability from the one that is best known.’ Petter already knew the original tale but none of the others said they did so I needed to tell it in full, and I added all the new embellishments I wanted. ‘Here is my story . . .

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‘Gyges was out walking among the rocks one day when his eye was caught by something on the ground that was shining. He went to look closer and found that it was a golden ring. It was a regular circle except for a flattened top that was decorated with a letter T. He liked the ring – perhaps it was also valuable – so he tried it on and found that it fitted his longest finger perfectly. Quite happy with his unexpected find, he walked on and went about his daily business. ‘Gyges continued to wear the ring after he returned home. But he also noticed something very strange going on around him. To his surprise and puzzlement, he realised that when he now spoke, everyone who heard seemed to believe what he said in its entirety. This was astonishing to Gyges because, like everyone else, he was used to listeners doubting what he said occasionally, or even arguing with him, over whether something was true or not. This came to light only gradually at first, when he ventured opinions that he knew were controversial, but only to find that everyone believed that opinion. He started to wonder whether people would believe anything that he said. To test this, he casually slipped into conversation some obvious untruths, such as that it was summer when he knew it was winter, and to his amazement, he found that people consented to his version of events. As he continued with these experiments, he even had one elderly man agree with him that he, Gyges, was that man’s mother. After a number of such absurd claims went unchallenged, he started to

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think that everyone would believe anything that he said, for this trick seemed to work on any person with whom he tried it. ‘But there was something else to this. One day Gyges removed his gold ring, bearing the letter T, to go and bathe and then he forgot to put it back on afterwards. He went about his business and happened to say something false, unthinkingly, only to find that the listener shook his head and said “I don’t think so”. This was a shock for Gyges as it had by now been some weeks since anyone challenged his assertions. So he ran to find someone else and talked about who should be next leader of the country. He ventured his opinion and, again, his listener disagreed. ‘The thought occurred to Gyges that his special power of being believable had worn off. But he needn’t have feared. When he returned home, he saw his ring and realised he had not been wearing it. When he put it back on, things were as they had been previously; namely, that everyone believed him again. ‘I will spare you the details of all that happened following this. Basically, he tried some time with the ring on and some time with the ring off and formed the view, based on numerous trials, that when he wore the ring people believed everything he said was true. When he didn’t wear the ring, he was just like everyone else, where people sometimes believe us and sometimes don’t. From this evidence, he thought that the ring had to be the cause. The ring possessed, he decided, a very special ability to make the wearer believed, no matter what he or she said. The only exception

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to this was Gyges himself. He was immune to the extent that he himself didn’t have to believe everything he said. He still knew when he was saying something false. This, he realised, was very useful. ‘He did wonder, though, why anyone would throw away such a ring. So it must have been lost accidentally, he concluded. ‘Now that was not quite the end of the matter. For reasons I need not go into, one day Gyges found himself wearing the ring upside down; that is, with the T-emblem facing down, instead of up and presentable to the world. Because it was now inside his hand, no one he spoke to could see the T of his ring. What happened in this case was even more astonishing to Gyges, familiar, as he was, with always being believed. What he now found was that others thought that everything he said was false, even in those instances where Gyges was pretty sure that it was true. To test this, Gyges said the most uncontroversial thing, such as asserting at night time that it was the night. But even with such an obvious truth as this, the listener disagreed. Gyges did not like this at all, and already thinking the ring to be possessed of magic powers, he quickly twisted it around so that the T was back on top.’ ‘Why are you telling us this silly story that could never be true?’ interjected Inger. ‘Please, if you just let me finish, I hope you will see the point,’ I answered. And then I resumed.

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‘Now with a few more experiments, Gyges was able to confirm that if he wore the ring the right way up, he was always believed, and if he wore it upside down, he was never believed. He concluded that the ring had these two powers: to make the wearer believed or not believed, depending on how it was worn. ‘I can now answer Inger about why it is worth telling such a fantastic tale, even though I grant that it could never be true. The point is that it allows us to ask a question. And it is the most important question you will ever hear pass from my lips. It is a question I would like you all now to consider. ‘It is this. Is it better to know the truth even if no one believes you; or to have people believe what you say even when you know it is false?’ I left the question hanging for some moments to give everyone a chance to ponder it. I noted that even Ragnhild and Solan had listened to my story and were thinking it through. Glances were exchanged around the table, each person trying to see on the face of the others what their answers would be. Marie spoke first. ‘Would you really want to be believed if you knew you were speaking falsely?’ she asked. ‘I do think so,’ I replied: ‘at least in some circumstances. After all, isn’t this the position of every successful liar? Some of our

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most famed politicians are those who knowingly tell lies that people believe. But I am asking you to consider, are they really better off than those people who believe they are speaking the truth, even though no one agrees with them?’ ‘I can see that it would be frustrating,’ pointed out Biret, ‘to know what you are saying is true and not to be believed.’ ‘Yes, it is,’ I replied, and smiled knowingly at Biret. ‘If someone has seen the Huldra, for instance, and no one believes him, this is very annoying for the man. It can be more than frustrating. If no one ever believes him, and he is sure he saw the Huldra, it would take him to the brink of madness!’ Marie spoke out and said that if she were Gyges, she would take the ring off and throw it away. It was evil. It was no good for people always to believe you, nor for people always to doubt you. What everyone needed, and should want, is that others believe them when they speak the truth and challenge them when they speak falsely. Otherwise, she said, how do we ever correct our own misapprehensions? I immediately told Marie that I agreed with that. It seems that one can only ever learn if one is willing to be told that one is wrong, when one is wrong, otherwise one would persist in believing falsely, which no one really wants. ‘So this brings us to the crux of the matter,’ I adjudicated. ‘Let us forget about the ring, now, for it was only a way of getting to the key question of truth. Would you rather believe a truth even

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though everyone else thinks it is false: and perhaps thinks you a fool for believing it? Or would you prefer for people always to agree with you, no matter what?’ Bård spoke up. ‘I think the ring, and the question, are not so far-fetched. When somebody loves you, they tend to believe everything you say. But then when they stop loving you, they tend to believe nothing you say.’ Almost everyone around the table laughed at this observation, while also realising that Bård was probably not trying to be amusing. Perhaps it was the tragedy of that life-truth that amused them. Biret now spoke out. ‘I suppose that the truth is what really matters. But you admit it can be frustrating to know a truth when no one believes you. As long as Gyges himself knows whether or not he is speaking the truth, his life would be happier when everyone believed him.’ ‘That may be true,’ I replied to Biret, ‘although we may still have to answer the sorts of worry Marie raised. There could actually be some value in having to convince people about what you believe, otherwise you might start to lose a grip on what is true and what is false. ‘So Biret has made me think of the last and final way of asking the question, and this is the formulation that forces the issue. The question is simply this. Which is better of these two cases, and I am offering you only these two. Would you rather believe a truth

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even though everyone else thinks it false, or believe a falsehood with which everyone else agrees? ‘I am not now speaking of what happens in general – about what happens every time. Here we just have two single statements. If you believe the latter, everyone will agree that you are right. But it happens to be false. If you believe the former, which is true, everyone will think you are wrong. So which is best of these two options?’ ‘And in both cases, you genuinely believe the claim that you make?’ asked Petter, for clarification. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Your belief in both cases is genuine. You believe both of these things because you think them to be true. But you were right only in the first case.’ Finally, Odd spoke out. As usual, he had been hanging back, slyly listening and planning his attack against me. ‘It is obvious how you want us to reply, Benedict. It’s like you are leading us down the garden path. ‘You want us to say that it’s always better to know the truth, even if you’re the only one that does. You want us to say that the agreement of everyone else in the whole world matters not one bit if what you believe is false. You want us to say that truth is all that counts, don’t you?’ ‘Well, isn’t that right?’ I replied. ‘What other sane response could you have to the question?’ ‘But do you really believe it, Ben? Or is this just about that stupid whale again?’

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How insulting of Odd. But it was what I had come to expect. I tried not to show any of my anger, which was rising again. ‘Yes, I believe it,’ I said assertively. ‘The truth is all that matters. And if you have it, then that is more important than whether other people believe you. Perhaps it is nice when others agree with you, or good to feel that you have shown someone the truth when they previously did not know it. But these are not the essential matters. Truth is sovereign. And that is what my question was designed to show. We all want to know the truth, first and foremost, regardless of what others think, because we would always prefer to know the true than to believe the false. And all the agreement in the world from others would not compensate for believing a falsehood.’ Odd did not give up. ‘Maybe you are right then. You have convinced me,’ he said. And for a moment I hoped that my task this evening was complete and I could go and stagger off down the hill to have my final night of sleep in the cabin. ‘But,’ he continued, ‘what I am not convinced of is that you really believe this. Isn’t this all just appearance? You tell us that you believe only in truth. You have to say this to be a credible philosopher. But is that really all you believe in?’ I was provoked. ‘Of course it’s what I believe in. How can you doubt me after all I have said?’ ‘Words are fine,’ replied Odd.‘But your actions betray a different reality. If you really believed that truth was all that mattered you

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should be happy simply to know the truth. You wouldn’t even need to tell anyone else about it. So why have you come here to Bakkan to tell us all what you think and try to persuade us that it is right? Our approval is irrelevant to you, isn’t it?’ What an insult that was. I had never once gone inflicting my views on others. I was here precisely to discover the truth. Nothing more. And I told him that each time I had related my ideas to the others it was because I had been invited to do so; and this was sometimes against my own wishes. But I was merely sharing ideas among friends in any case and it should not be regarded as a bad thing. I would never impose my ideas on other people if they didn’t want to hear them. I had been asked. Odd wouldn’t let it go. ‘That’s laughable,’ he said, and I felt my anger rise to breaking point. ‘You have written lots of papers and books, haven’t you? And in not one case was it because you had been asked to do so,’ he asserted. ‘You decided to write them because you wanted to, because it would further your career. They are an imposition, published as a self-serving vanity.’ I said ‘No, categorically not! As long as I understand the truth, it doesn’t matter to me whether anyone reads my books. I like to write because it helps me to order my own thoughts. But it is not as if I am trying to “sell” my ideas. People can take them or leave them. And it doesn’t really even matter whether my writing makes it into the public arena or not.’

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‘Very well, then.’ Odd said. ‘If you really are being truthful with us now, this minute, then you should be prepared to write up all the ideas you have had here in Bakkan – which you have told us are really very important ideas and the solutions to all your problems – and let them sit in a closed drawer rather than see the light of day. You should agree in front of all of us here tonight that you will not publish these ideas for the public within your lifetime.’ Everyone around the table looked at me. ‘How could that work?’ I asked. ‘It would be simple enough,’ said Odd. ‘Once your ideas are written down, lodge the manuscript with your solicitor with an instruction that it cannot be published until after your death. Leave the details to your executor. And that way we will all know, and believe you, that the truth is your only concern, rather than book sales or the admiration of readers.’ With Odd’s challenge, I realised that I was trapped. How could I not agree to those terms? I would seem a hypocrite if I didn’t. I looked around the room. The faces stared back, waiting on my answer. Odd and Inger seemed to have some glee on theirs. From Petter, Bård and, I think, Marie, there was a look of pity. The children were playing still, with very few pieces now left. ‘Ah, the endgame,’ I thought to myself. Only Biret seemed to look upon me in a way that granted me my dignity. Her eyes evinced sympathy and care but, I thought,

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without condescension. I supposed that, perhaps, she still believed in me. I could not let her down. She trusted me, I believed. I couldn’t admit to her that I was a fraud, insecure, a worthless attention seeker. There was no choice. I looked straight at Odd. I tried to appear defiant, unrepentant, unmoved. I tried to sound calm and measured. I held my chin up. And then I declared ‘You might not have believed me until now. What I say is right. ‘Truth is all that matters. And so I will agree to your demand in every detail. I will indeed write down all these thoughts I have had in Bakkan. And I will be content with that. I am satisfied that I have found the truth. It is the only matter. I will leave it with my solicitor. I agree that it will not see publication or any form of public release until after I am dead.’ It was the end of the argument. ‘Sjakk Matt!’ called Ragnhild. With that, I saw that Solan was defeated. *

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I carried my burden out of that house and by Northern Light made my way tentatively downhill. My thoughts turned to the question of what I had learnt on this visit to Bakkan. I had spent these days thinking about philosophy and, I now realised, the world in general. Undeniably I had been changed by my six days

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in the Arctic but in ways I did not yet fully understand. I had come exclusively for solitude and quiet meditation. I had not got that. But I had found some truths: truths which I had now promised I wouldn’t reveal. Was knowledge consolation enough? Did I believe my own story of Gyges? How unreasonable it had been of those around me to insist I keep this whole story a secret. Yet, I was struck by something else about them too. When I considered my time here, I saw that all the main breakthroughs in my thinking were not really a result of meditation. They came from my interactions with the others. I saw the light catch Ragnhild’s axe before it came down and smashed apart the firewood and this made me see the fundamentality of causation. I had been challenged by Odd to show that science could not deny the reality of causation because it rested upon it. And Bård had then come and made me explain how God could fit into this world, which I later developed in answer to Marie and Biret, just this night. And Biret . . . wasn’t she the biggest inspiration of all? She made me understand the importance of language in holding a people together and I saw that this had to involve their interaction. But I recalled also, and perhaps more importantly, that Biret made me see the sun. Might I otherwise have stayed, throughout my time, in my cabin, like some kind of prehistoric cave-dweller? Then I would have stayed forever in the winter darkness, doing my thinking by candlelight. The brightness was too much for me,

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and for all of us, when earlier in the day the sun finally appeared over the mountains. We had to look away. But I now realised that this was often the way. Just like the light, truth is hard to accept at first, especially after emerging from the darkness of falsehood. The only option is to turn away, and that is what Odd, Inger and Bård did. At least I could recognise the truth as the truth. Almost at the bottom of the hill, and my cold, dark cabin, I saw a stirring in the fjord. The surface was broken by a big tail fin, which smacked down on the water, creating a huge splash. Then it went back below and was gone, all quiet again. I waited and watched. For how long? I wasn’t sure. But I know that I started to shiver. Could I really have imagined the whale song those nights? Did I not see the tail fin, twice today? I would have to be completely deluded to have conjured up these experiences for myself. I was about to give up and started considering whether it was worth lighting a fire at this late hour. I made to move and so to complete the last few steps of my night. Suddenly, I was awestruck by the sight and sound – which I’d never before witnessed – of the humpback breaching out of the water. It leapt up, a huge and wonderful creature, head first, almost straight vertically, but then turning. When it reached a horizontal position, I swear its entire body was out of the water. Overcome by a sense of wonder, I stopped breathing, open mouthed. And it was then with a magnificent, deep, booming, echoing impact that the whale

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landed back down in the water, the splash seemingly disturbing the whole fjord. The spectacle seemed unmissable and unmistakable. I turned and looked back towards the house. I could just make out the light from a window at which I saw the silhouette of someone looking. Looking down. On me. I stared back. But there was no movement. I went into my cabin and got straight into the bed and slept. *

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The next morning I rose early and didn’t bother to light the stove. I dressed quickly and, under cover of darkness, left my hut for the final time. I had brought everything of mine down from the house last night so that I needn’t disturb Petter and his family as I made my departure. I could not resist walking to the end of the pier for one last look, staring out into the black water of the fjord. I took a few moments for one final meditation. Others had trod this earth before me and many more would do so afterwards. We were all seekers after truth and yet, in our short lives, none of us could catch more than a glimpse of it. To be a drop in that vast ocean was perhaps as much as we could ever hope. I picked up my baggage, ascended the slippery slope, and vanished down the path out of Bakkan.

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