Category: Musings (Page 1 of 18)

One of the most timeless TV crime series is probably Columbo. Peter Falk plays an inquisitive police lieutenant who sometimes seems so far beyond ordinary time reckoning that he can make Los Angeles resemble ancient Athens, where an equally inquisitive philosopher cared just as little about his appearance.

I hope you have seen a few Columbo episodes. I also take the liberty of opening this post by revealing why I want to write about him. Because he not only exposes the murderers but at the same time frees them from living entangled in their own brilliant plans. You might remember the unusual disposition of the episodes, that we immediately learn who the perpetrator is. The murderers in the series are distinguished not only by their high social and economic status, but also by their high intelligence (and their overconfidence in it). Before the murder takes place, we get to follow how ingeniously the killer plans the deed. The purpose is to give the appearance of having a watertight alibi, to avoid leaving unintended clues at the murder scene, and to leave those clues that clearly point to someone else. Everything is perfectly thought out: BANG! In the next act, Columbo enters the scene of the murder in his worn coat and with a cigar that has usually gone out. In one episode he arrives with a boiled egg in his pocket which he cracks against the murder weapon when he has not had time to eat breakfast.

The murder was just the prelude. Now the episode begins for real, the interaction between the absent-minded Columbo and the shrewd murderer who planned everything in detail and now feels invincible. Especially considering that the police lieutenant leading the investigation is clearly just a confused poor thing constantly fumbling for his notepad and pencil and asking irrelevant questions. I have soon dealt with this fellow, the killer thinks.

Columbo often immediately knows who the murderer is. He can reveal this in a final conversation with the murderer where both can unexpectedly find each other and speak openly, almost like old friends. Soon even the murderer begins to understand that Columbo knows, even though the lieutenant’s absent-minded demeanor at first made this unlikely. Usually, however, the murderer’s confidence is not shaken by knowing that Columbo knows, for everything is perfectly thought out: Columbo “knows” without being able to prove anything! Columbo spends many sleepless nights wondering about the murderer’s alibi and motive, or about seemingly irrelevant details at the murder scene: the “loose ends” that Columbo often talks about, without the murderer understanding why. They seem too trivial to touch the ingenious plan! The murderer almost seems to enjoy watching Columbo rack his brain with immaterial details that cannot possibly prove what both already “know.” Little does the killer know that Columbo’s uncertainty will soon bear fruit.

Finally, Columbo manages to tie up the loose ends that the murderer did not see the point of (they looked so plain compared to the elegant plan). When Columbo reveals how the alibi was only apparent, how the all-too-obvious clues were deliberately placed at the murder scene, and the murderer’s cheap selfish motive, the murderer expects to be arrested by Columbo. “No, others will come and arrest you later,” says Columbo, who suddenly seems uninterested in the whole matter. Columbo seems to have only wanted to expose the illusory reality the killer created to mislead everyone. The murderer is the one who walks into the trap first. To make everything look real, the murderer must live strictly according to the insidious plan from the very first act. Maybe that is why the murderer often seems to breathe a sigh of relief in the final act. Columbo not only exposes the criminal, but also frees the criminal mind from constantly living trapped in its own calculations.

In the conversation at the end, the otherwise active killer seems numbed by Columbo, calm and without a winning smile. Even the murderer is for the first time happily absent-minded.

How does Columbo manage to uncover the insidious plan? We like to think that Columbo succeeds in exposing the murderer because Columbo is even smarter. If Columbo switched sides and planned crimes, no one could expose him! He would be a super-intelligence that could satisfy every wish, like the genie in the lamp. Sometimes even the murderer seems to think along these lines and offers Columbo employment and a brilliant career. With Columbo as accomplice, the murderer would be invincible. But Columbo does not seem to care more about his future than about his appearance: “No, never, I couldn’t do that.” He loves his work, he explains, but hardly gives the impression of being a police lieutenant, but is sometimes mistaken for a vagrant who is kindly asked to remove himself from the scene of the murder. Nuns can offer him food and clothes. Is Columbo the one actually creating the false appearance? Is he the one with the most cunning plan? Is his absent-mindedness just a form of ironic pretense to lure the murderer into the trap?

Columbo probably benefits from his disarming simplicity and absent-minded demeanor. But although we sometimes see him setting traps for the killer, we never see him disguise himself as a vagrant. When his wife has given him a nicer coat, he seems genuinely bothered by it, as if he were dressed up. Is Columbo’s confusion sincere after all? Is it the confusion he loves about his work? Is it perhaps the confusion that eventually reveals the murderer’s watertight plan?

Columbo’s colleagues are not confused. They follow the rules of the game and soon have exactly the conviction the murderer planned for them according to the manual: the murderer has no motive, has a watertight alibi, and cannot be tied to the scene of the murder. Technical evidence, on the contrary, clearly points in a different direction. If the colleagues were leading the investigation, the murderer would have already been removed from the list of suspects. This is how a colleague complains when he feels that Columbo is slowing down the investigation by not following the plan of the criminal mastermind:

Sergeant Hoffman: Now what do you think Lieutenant, do you really think that Deschler didn’t shoot Galesko in the leg?

Columbo: I’ll tell you something, Sergeant, I don’t know what to think.

The injured Galesko is in fact the murderer. He shot himself in the leg after killing Deschler, to make the killing look like self-defense against “his wife’s kidnapper.” Galseko has already murdered his wife, having staged the kidnapping and planted the clues that point to Deschler. Why did Galesko murder his wife? Because he felt she was obscuring his bright future. The murderers in the TV series not only plan their deeds, but also their lives. Without ideas of bright futures, they would lack motive to plan murder.

Neither the killer nor the colleague suffers from uncertainty, they both sleep well. Only Columbo is awake: “I don’t know what to think.” Therefore, he tries to tie up loose ends. Like the philosopher Socrates in ancient Athens, Columbo knows that he does not know. Therefore, he torments the murderer (and the colleagues) with vexing questions that do not belong to the game, but rather revolve around it. Now you probably want to direct Columbo’s most famous line at me: “Oh, just one more thing!” For did I not say that Columbo immediately knows who the murderer is? Yes, I did. Columbo already “knows” who the murderer is. How? Does he know it through his superior intelligence that reveals the whole case in a flash? No, but because the murderer does not react like someone who does not know. When informed of the murder, the killer reacts strangely: like someone who already knows. Lack of confusion is the hallmark of the murderer.

When Columbo reveals the tangle of thoughts that already in the first act ensnared the murderer, the perpetrator goes to prison without complaint. Handcuffs are redundant when the self-made ones are finally unlocked. Columbo has calmed the criminal mind. The culprit is free from the murder plan that would secure the future plan. Suddenly everything is real, just real.

Just one more thing: Merry Christmas and do not plan too much!

Written by…

Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

The dialogue between Hoffman and Columbo is from the episode Negative Reaction (1974). Columbo’s response to the career offer is from The Bye-Bye Sky-High I.Q. Murder Case (1977).

The image is AI-generated in Microsoft Designer by Ashkan Atry.

This post in Swedish

Thinking about thinking

Philosophy is an unusual activity, partly because it can be conducted to such a large extent while sitting still. Philosophers do not need research vessels, laboratories or archives to work on their questions. Just a chair to sit on. Why is it like that?

The answer is that philosophers examine our ways of thinking, and we are never anywhere but where we are. A chair takes us exactly as far as we need: to ourselves. Philosophizing on a chair can of course look self-absorbed. How can we learn anything significant from “thinkers” who neither seem to move nor look around the world? If we happen to see them sitting still in their chairs and thinking, they can undeniably appear to be cut off from the complex world in which the rest of us must live and navigate. Through its focus on human thought, philosophy can seem to ignore our human world and not be of any use to the rest of us.

What we overlook with such an objection to philosophy is that our complex human world already reflects to a large extent our human ways of thinking. To the extent that these ways of thinking are confused, limited, one-sided and unjust, our world will also be confused, limited, one-sided and unjust. When we live and move in this human world, which reflects our ways of thinking, can it not be said that we live somewhat inwardly, without noticing it? We act in a world that reflects ourselves, including the shortcomings in our ways of thinking.

If so, maybe it is not so introverted to sit down and examine these ways of thinking? On the contrary, this seems to enable us to free ourselves and the world from human thought patterns that sometimes limit and distort our perspectives without us realizing it. Of course, research vessels, laboratories and archives also broaden our perspectives on the world. But we already knew that. I just wanted to open our eyes to a more unexpected possibility: that even a chair can take us far, if we practice philosophy on it.

Written by…

Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

This post in Swedish

We challenge habits of thought

Philosophy begins with doubt, this has been emphasized by many philosophers. But what does it mean to doubt? To harbor suspicions? To criticize accepted beliefs? In that case, doubt is based on thinking we know better. We believe that we have good reason to doubt.

Is that doubting? Thinking that you know? It sounds paradoxical, but it is probably the most common form of doubt. We doubt, and think we can easily explain why. But this is hardly the doubt of philosophy. For in that case philosophy would not begin with doubt, but with belief or knowledge. If a philosopher doubts, and easily motivates the doubt, the philosopher will soon doubt her own motive for doubting. To doubt, as a philosopher doubts, is to doubt one’s own thought. It is to admit: I don’t know.

Perhaps I have already quoted Socrates’ famous self-description too many times, but there is a treasure buried in these simple words:

“when I don’t know things, I don’t think that I do either.”

The oracle at Delphi had said of Socrates that he was the wisest of all. Since Socrates did not consider himself more knowledgeable than others, he found the statement puzzling. What could the oracle mean? The self-description above was Socrates’ solution to the riddle. If I am wiser than others, he thought, then my wisdom cannot consist in knowing more than others, because I do not. But I have a peculiar trait, and that is that when I do not know, I do not think I know either. Everyone I question here in Athens, on the other hand, seems to have the default attitude that they know, even when I can demonstrate that they do not. Whatever I ask them, they think they know the answer! I am not like that. If I do not know, I do not react as if I knew either. Perhaps this was what the oracle meant by my superior wisdom?

So, what did Socrates’ wisdom consist in? In beginning with doubt. But must he not have had reason to doubt? Surely, he must have known something, some intuition at least, which gave him reason to doubt! Curiously, Socrates seems to have doubted without good reason. He said that he heard an inner voice urging him to stop and be silent, just as he was about to speak verbosely as if he knew something: Socrates’ demon. But how could an “inner voice” make Socrates wise? Is that not rather a sure sign of madness?

I do not think we should make too much of the fact that Socrates chose to describe the situation in terms of an inner voice. The important thing is that he does not react, when he does not know. Imagine someone who has become clearly aware of her own reflex to get angry. The moment she notices that she is about to get angry, she becomes completely calm instead. The drama is over before it begins. Likewise, Socrates became completely calm the moment he noted his own reflex to start talking as if he knew something. He was clearly aware of his own knowledge reflex.

What is the knowledge reflex? We have already felt its activity in the post. It struck us when we thought we knew that a wise person cannot doubt without reason. It almost drove us mad! If Socrates doubted, he must have had good reason! If an “inner voice” inspired doubt, it would not be wisdom, but a sure sign of madness! This is the knowledge reflex. To suddenly not be able to stop talking, as if we had particularly good reason to assert ourselves. Socrates never reacted that way. In those situations, he noted the knowledge reflex and immediately became perfectly calm.

The value of becoming completely calm just when the knowledge reflex wants to set us in motion is that it makes us free to examine ourselves. If we let the knowledge reflex drive our doubts – “this is highly dubious, because…” – we would not question ourselves, but assert ourselves. We would doubt the way we humans generally doubt, because we think we have reason to doubt. Of course, Socrates does not doubt arbitrarily, like a madman, but the source of his doubt becomes apparent only in retrospect. Philosophy is love for the clarity we lack when philosophizing begins. Without this loving attitude towards what we do not know, our collective human knowledge risks becoming a colossus on clay feet – is it already wobbly?

When the knowledge reflex no longer controls us, but is numbed by philosophical self-doubt, we are free to think independently and clearly. Therefore, philosophy begins with doubt and not with belief or knowledge.

Written by…

Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.

Plato. “The Apology of Socrates.” In The Last Days of Socrates, translated by Christopher Rowe, 32-62. Penguin Books, 2010.

This post in Swedish

Thinking about thinking