Achilles, the Tortoise, and the Raven

Achilles jogs up behind the Tortoise.

Achilles: Hello, old friend!

Tortoise: And to you, old friend.

Achilles: It’s a beautiful day for a run, don’t you think?

Tortoise: The day is indeed beautiful.

Achilles: Out for your morning constitutional, are you?

Tortoise: The walk from my knoll to the nearby meadow occupies much of my day. My walk back shall be my evening constitutional. As is my habit, I repeat this with some frequency.

Achilles: You must have a lot of time on your hands!

Tortoise: If I had hands, I suppose that might be true. But this is not my idleness: I spend this time in contemplation of my studies, and by my lights it is time well spent.

Achilles: You have such a rich life of the mind, Mr. T! But I do wish you would someday make time for the foot race I challenged you to.

Tortoise: Ah, but my mind is already racing along such magnificent terrains and great distances that I can scarcely justify taking my physical steps any faster. Besides, one misses so much when running to and fro all the time.

Achilles: Is that so? For example?

Tortoise: Did you notice the raven in that tree over there?

Achilles: I hadn’t… it’s just a raven. Why should I bother noticing such a thing?

Tortoise: It has been following us. Flying from tree to tree as we walk.

Achilles: Really? No! That’s silly.

Tortoise: Perhaps.

Achilles: Let’s keep walking and I shall look out for it. So, what have you been studying?

Tortoise: I have been re-reading “Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid” by the incomparable Douglas Hofstadter.

Achilles: Oh, that old thing? I agree that it’s a classic, even engaging by some measures. Personally I find the dialogues quite entertaining. But the parts concerning mathematics leave me nonplussed.

Tortoise: My experience has been the reverse: most of the book is quite clear, even transparent. I have some innate talent for understanding strange loops and self-referentiality, if I do say so myself. However, I find the dialogues the author interleaves with the substantive chapters to be rather impenetrable. Even repeated re-readings had not helped my understanding. But I’m truly excited to tell you first: I have discovered that by reading them backwards, at least some of the dialogues make more sense than when read in the conventional manner.

Achilles: Ah, that accounts for the unusual lightness in your step today!

Tortoise: Does it? Another mystery solved then. Any more of that and I shall positively float away.

Achilles: There! In the tree ahead! It’s that raven again. You were right Mr. T, it appears to be accompanying us.

Tortoise: Just so.

Raven: Reprobates!

Achilles: I beg your pardon?

Raven: Reprobates all!

Achilles: Sir that is not language to be taken lightly, especially when addressed to a warrior and a scholar. Come down here and explain yourself!

The raven flaps down and settles in a closer tree.

Raven: Reprobates.

Tortoise: Who, sir?

Raven: Your parents.

Achilles: This is outrageous! Had I known to bring my spear on this walk—

Raven: Your parents. And their parents. And theirs before them. Reprobates all.

Achilles: You know nothing of my parents!

Raven: Oh, I know!

Tortoise: What do you know?

Raven: Isn’t it obvious? They begat you. Both of you.

Achilles: By the gods! You heap insult upon insult!

Raven: And they begat me as well.

Achilles: Mr. T, this raven is clearly mad: he says we share the same parents.

Tortoise: I believe he means we share ancestors. Raven, what sin have our parents and all our ancestors committed?

Raven: They selfishly and irresponsibly brought more suffering and death into the world. All living beings suffer and die. You will suffer and die. I will suffer and die. This is an unmitigated evil perpetrated upon us by our parents. They may have thought they were doing right, but all around us we see suffering and death. These are inevitable, and in many cases we do our utmost to multiply the suffering and hasten the death! We console ourselves by thinking that more offspring somehow ameliorate this, but it only perpetuates the cycle. Selfishness! Reprobates!

Achilles: Why tell us your dark thoughts, Raven?

Raven: I have been following you, and listening. I think you may be intelligent enough to understand: to understand the way out of the misery of suffering and the insult of death.

Achilles: You know how to conquer death, Raven? That is a warrior’s dream come true!

Raven: Indeed, if you heed my words then no warrior will ever die again.

Achilles: Tell us this magic, Raven!

Raven: Pain begets pain. Misery begets misery. Death begets death. You must break the cycle of pain, misery and death!

Tortoise: Are you saying, never have offspring?

Raven: Just so! Take your walks and ruminate on your writings! Run your races and fight your wars! Sing and dance for all I care! It’s already too late for you. Live your life! Come to the end of it in whatever way it must happen, because all of us are thus cursed. But do not yourselves pass on that damned curse, or you shall become like your parents: thoughtless, ignorant, selfish! Reprobates!

Achilles: But surely there are good reasons to live, and to have children? Life is not only suffering and death. Life can be full of beauty and meaning, joy and fulfillment!

Raven: Nothing good in life is inevitable. But pain, suffering and death are all inevitable indeed. A few get to taste pleasure, taste joy, taste fulfillment. But even those blessed ones are cursed, for they too suffer and die.

Tortoise: And you believe that inevitable suffering and death are worse than contingent joy and fulfillment?

Raven: Of course! Isn’t it obvious?

Achilles: This is a cold, heartless calculation! Good Raven, have you no compassion?

Raven: You know nothing of compassion! It is out of my compassion for the world that I speak the end of suffering. That is compassion!

Tortoise: I think we can agree that nobody wishes more suffering in the world, at least not for its own sake. But you think the end of all life, and hence all suffering, is the ultimate expression of compassion?

Raven: You make it sound like a bad thing when you put it that way. But yes, fewer lives means less suffering, and no lives means no suffering: it is inescapable logic.

Tortoise: And the end of all life would then be the ultimate good?

Raven: Yes that must follow, if you want to be petty about it.

Tortoise: What meaning can “good” or “evil” have in a world with nobody in it to experience either? Joy and suffering are defined by those able to experience them. The dead experience neither, as far as we know.

Raven: Yes! So you see! And neither do the never-born ever have to experience suffering or death.

Achilles: Nor will they experience joy!

Tortoise: One moment, dear Achilles. Raven, are you saying that what you are calling the “never-born” are in some way metaphysical objects, that can be acted upon by “bringing” them into existence through the act of procreation?

Raven: Of course not: that is a primitive and superstitious idea. We neither see evidence of a Great Beyond nor a Great Before.

Tortoise: Then let’s lightly hold that belief together. Now, do you agree that things pass in and out of this Great Existence? At times things come to be, and later those things come to be not?

Raven: Of course.

Tortoise: Do you believe a triangle with four corners can come to be?

Raven: You are being inane: by definition a triangle has three corners. Therefore a triangle with four corners is a contradiction, a logical impossibility.

Tortoise: So we can speak things that not only do not refer to anything in reality, but cannot refer to anything in reality.

Raven: That is so.

Tortoise: Do you think it is important to distinguish between concepts that are metaphysical realities, and concepts that are merely linguistic constructs? That conflating the two can lead to untenable positions?

Raven: Yes, but I am speaking of the real lives of beings that suffer and die, and you are discussing the importance of impossible concepts!

Tortoise: Do potential lives exist? Can they be weighed? Counted in a census? Compared in their moral worth to those of us standing right here who do exist? Can they be judged by the gods?

Raven: No, of course not. I am referring to the overall reduction of suffering in the world. Each potential life not created is a portion of suffering prevented. It is an abstraction: a simple calculus that shows that the prevention of life is the prevention of suffering!

Tortoise: So not only can “potential lives” not suffer, it is actually nonsensical to talk about the moral weight of such concepts. It is like talking about the fourth corner of a triangle.

Raven: But you agree that potential lives cannot suffer!

Tortoise: They cannot suffer, nor not suffer.

Raven: But you just used the word “they!” To what then are you referring? It must be something meaningful for you to refer to it.

Tortoise: I am not speaking of metaphysical entities, I am using metalanguage to reject your attempt to compare abstract concepts to metaphysical realities and potentialities.

Achilles: Let me see whether I understand, Mr. T: you are saying he is wrong to compare concepts that can only be spoken of, to things that can or do exist?

Tortoise: Worse than that, my friend. His conceptualizations are logically incoherent: not even wrong.

Raven: But you can choose to procreate! You can also choose not to procreate!

Tortoise: Indeed. Living beings have aims and plan for the future. We decide whether to beget the next generation.

Raven: You beget them without their consent! You doom them to suffering and death!

Tortoise: Another meaningless utterance, Raven: conceptual beings not only cannot consent— which is where your reasoning ends— it is incoherent to even speak of consent. It is like asking whether the fictional characters in the dialogues of Douglas Hofstadter’s “Gödel, Escher, Bach”—

Raven: Oh, that old thing? I never read it: it has far too many words. Although I quite liked some of the illustrations.

Tortoise: Very well, it would be like asking whether those characters depicted in an illustration would prefer to never have been drawn: you can string together those concepts, but any attempt to assign them metaphysical weight is incoherent.

Achilles: But Mr. T, surely Raven has a point about how our actions today impact future generations. We must consider the lives we bring into this world and their likelihood for greater or lesser suffering.

Tortoise: Of course, Achilles. It is our responsibility to consider the world we bequeath to our descendants. But that is different from claiming that non-existence is comparable to anything of moral value, or that procreation harms the rights or interests of potential lives. Furthermore, unlike you and I, Raven has no actual moral commitment to future generations. Without such a commitment, one can hardly argue for the welfare of the future. In fact, Raven is morally committed to bringing about no future generations.

Raven: I can see I was wrong about you. You are heartless jugglers of words. It’s all very well: you were but practice for me. I am actually on my way to speak before a conclave of great leaders in Mycenae, including great Agamemnon himself.

Achilles: And of what will you speak to them?

Raven: I will speak to them of eliminating poverty, sickness, lack, and ultimately all evil in the world.

Achilles: By bringing about the end of all living beings, forever?

Raven: Not at first! Do you think me mad?

Achilles: The thought had crossed my mind; I said so, didn’t I Mr. T?

Tortoise: You did, Achilles.

Raven: The powerful are wise, and in the best position to bring about a better world. They will hear my boundless compassion. It must be done gradually, at least at first. In any case, I have no further use for you two. Reprobates!

Raven flies off

Tortoise: We are in Phthia. For a typical man Mycenae is a week’s trek. Raven flies much faster than that. I recall you saying you wanted a race?

Achilles: I would welcome it; and I am no typical man.

Tortoise: It is said that a lie runs to the antipodes while the truth is still lacing its shoes.

Achilles: Then it is well that my shoes are already laced! Farewell, my friend!

Tortoise: Gods speed, Achilles.