Ideas - Christmas Philosophy 101

Episode Date: December 24, 2024

Christmas is a minefield of deep philosophical quandaries, like — is it ethically correct to lie to children? Who does a gift really benefit the giver, or receiver? How do we really know Santa exists, or doesn't? Join us on a dramatic journey through the philosophy of Christmas. *This episode originally aired on December 23, 2020.

Hey there, I'm David Common. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This Is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you gotta know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighbourhood, or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This Is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Virginia, your little friends are wrong.

They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. I'm Nala Ayed. Welcome to Ideas on CBC Radio 1 and PRX. They do not believe except they see. They think nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. That is the voice of Virginia O'Hanlon. In 1897, as a small child, she wrote a letter to the New York Sun newspaper. She asked about a rumor she'd heard from her friends that Santa Claus didn't exist.

The response from the paper is now a famous piece of Christmas folklore. All men's minds, Virginia, are little, as measured by an intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. When writing her original letter, young Virginia was engaged in one of the oldest

academic disciplines in the world, philosophy. Philosophy is trying to find out what there is to know, exploring what it is even to know. Christmas is a wonderful circumstance in which you can do this. Christmas is a time for big questions. Like, what's the difference between naughty and nice? And how does Santa know? So if we set aside the issue about whether it's ethical for Santa to be doing this, and we just focus on how Santa or anyone really would determine whether what a child is doing is morally good or morally bad, there are a few ethical schools of thought. Luckily, philosophers have been wrestling with these same questions for millennia, and those ruminations come to life

in the form of Christmas stories. Scrooge sees himself as he's aware that he can't deny that he really is a choosing being and that he is aware of the character and the nature of the choices he's making, whether it affects Bob Cratchit's family or whoever it affects. Today, we'll dig deep into those big questions. So put on the hot cocoa, light the fire, and snuggle in for a Christmas philosophy special. Joining me now is Ideas Contributing producer Matthew Lazen-Ryder, who's been making merry with philosophers. Hi, Matthew. Hello, Nala, and Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas to you, too. Tell me more about the connection between Christmas and philosophy.

Nala, you began with a story about a child's question about Santa Claus. question about Santa Claus. And I remember in my childhood life, long before Christmas became about, you know, worrying about how expensive Christmas can be and trying to remember where you left the scotch tape and all that stuff, that Christmas was about wonder and awe and beauty and imagination. And something happens to us as we grow up. That part of our brain kind of fades away a bit. But as children, we have this capacity and drive to think and wonder about big crazy things. I'll introduce you to Joseph Beale. He's the director of the Gotham Philosophical Society. That's a group of academic philosophers in New York with a goal to make philosophy a little less stuffy and a bit more relatable to everyday life.

Young people are natural-born philosophers. They ask big questions. They want to know why things are the way they are. They want to know who they are. They're learning about themselves and the world that they're in. They want to know what's possible and what's not. So they're full of wonder and finding kind of joy in uncertainty. And Joseph thinks just like lots of us lose our capacity for imagination and wonder as we grow up, we kind of shut down the philosophical parts too. And we learn to stop asking big questions. Teachers and parents, adults, not answering the questions or not really giving them the time to explore the questions because there are other more important things that we think we need to

be focusing on or learning. Children, as they grow older, learn to ask those questions less and less. They realize that they're not going to have the opportunity to think them through. I think that's what happens when we eventually get to college. If we encounter a philosophy class, there will of course be some students who are thrilled at the opportunity to explore these big ideas and we'll say, wow, where has this been all my life? But for many other students, a course in philosophy can be an annoyance. It can be a distraction from the things that they just, they want to know. What do they need to know in order to get that job? What do they need to know in order to pass the course? Just tell me what I need to know. And that is quite the opposite of philosophy. Philosophy is trying to find out what there is to know in order to pass the course. Just tell me what I need to know. And that is quite the

opposite of philosophy. Philosophy is trying to find out what there is to know, exploring what it is even to know. I do think that we lose it if we don't use it. And Christmas is a wonderful circumstance in which you can do this. We'll hear more from Joseph a little later on. So what we're going to do, Nala, is indulge in a little philosophy through the power of Christmas. There's going to be a lot of Santa Claus because Santa Claus is kind of the most mysterious part of our modern Christmas. But we'll touch on other Christmassy elements, too. And maybe by the end, we'll learn not just how to rejuvenate our little philosophical minds, but perhaps restore a little bit of our sense of childhood wonder. Okay, where do we start? With this.

He's making a list. He's checking it twice. He's going to find out who's naughty or nice. Santa Claus is coming to town. He sees you when you're sleeping, and he knows when you're awake. He knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake. you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake. So, according to the lore of Santa Claus, he knows who's been naughty or nice. So, there's a huge philosophical problem there, and that is what counts as naughty and what counts as nice? And the field of philosophy that deals with that question is called ethics. I had a

conversation with one philosophical ethicist here in Vancouver about what Santa Claus's moral framework might be. My name is Jill Fellows. I'm a philosophy instructor at Douglas College here in British Columbia, and I'm really obsessed with ethics and all that fun philosophy stuff. So if we're looking at how Santa would determine whether or not a child was naughty or nice, I mean, whether or not that determination and surveillance itself is an ethical thing. And we just focus on how Santa or anyone really would determine whether what a child is doing is morally good or morally bad. There are a few kind of general ethical schools of thought that we could start with as an entry point. And what ethics

basically tries to do is ask, what should we do? Or who should we be? Or what should the world be like? How should we remake the world? So you can know a lot about the way the world is, and that's a lot of what sciences and social sciences tell us. Then we take that information and we try and decide, what should we do with this knowledge? And how can we use this knowledge to make the world a better place? One possible advantage of Santa is that you might think Santa gives you kind of a guideline for how to behave. Well, be nice and don't be naughty. But then of course you have to ask yourself, well, okay, but what does it mean to be nice or be naughty? I mean, it's a huge question, you could spend your entire career on that if you wanted to. And even once you'd finished your

entire career or your whole life, right, studying it, we'd still have a lot more questions than we have answers. I mean, philosophers have been looking at this for over 4000 years in the Western tradition alone, so it's massive. So tell me about some of the established ways of thinking about ethics. When Santa is thinking about naughty and nice, morality, good and bad, what are the ways he could be thinking about that? So the first one that's in some ways a little bit easy to get an initial grasp on, and then we'll complicate the matter. The first one is probably consequentialism. So as it sounds, consequentialism is about looking at the consequences of your

action. What I want to say here is that judging morality based on consequences has some intuitive appeal. Like if you as a kid are constantly doing things that cause harm to other people and cause them to be in pain, that seems bad. And we might intuitively understand why Santa would judge you as naughty in that case, right? We get this theory from a few different sources, but probably the most famous is Jeremy Bentham. Jeremy Bentham was a 19th century English philosopher known for hedonism, utilitarianism, and consequentialism. Fun fact, his preserved head is on display at University College London. display at University College London. And Bentham kind of took that moral intuition, as we might call it, and tried to systematize it to make it easier for people to think through

their moral actions. And he tried to give us kind of a guide for our moral reasoning. And he gives us what's called the hedonistic calculus. the hedonistic calculus. So what you want to do is try and maximize the pleasure for the most people involved and minimize the pain. And the calculus has a number of different points. For example, you're supposed to think about the intensity of the pain or the pleasure that your action might cause. So how much pleasure are you going to bring to people or how much pain are you going to cause? The duration, how long is this going to go along? The certainty, how likely is pleasure to come of your action or pain? And another one that I'll mention, this isn't all of them, but it's enough, is the extent, like how many people are you going to affect? So if you can

bring a little bit of pleasure to a huge number of people, that would count very highly on Bentham's calculus, right? Because the extent would be really, really big. So Bentham said, all you have to do is go through this seven point calculus and assign a numerical value to the pleasure and assign a numerical value to the pain. And then it's just like really simple math. really simple math. You add up all the pleasure and you add up all the pain and you take the pain away from the pleasure. And if your action results in more pleasure overall for more people, this is a moral thing and you were nice, not naughty. I can think of a couple of problems with thinking about it in that way. Like if I were a kid and one summer I'm out in a swimming hole and I find a frog and I think, you know what? I'm going to take this frog home and torture it for the rest of the year

and keep it in a jar and poke it with sticks. But then close to Christmas, I give all of my friends I know a candy, right? Right. So I've increased pleasure a tiny bit for a lot of people and made one little frog life particularly miserable. According to Bentham, I might be a real nice kid. Yeah, you might be pretty moral overall. So that's one problem is that we seem to license pain as long as the pain is localized. So we could have intense pain, but not for very many people, but mild pleasure for a ton of people, or in your case, intense pain for a frog and mild pleasure, perhaps for a bunch of

other people or other sentient beings of some kind. Another problem, which you sort of highlighted, is that a kid might bring a frog home, not because they intend to torture it, but because they think they're doing something good, right? You want to bring the frog home as a pet and form this relationship with it. And unbeknownst to you, this causes a bunch of pain to the frog. Or if I might borrow from my own childhood, you might want to, maybe you have a family cat. I had a family cat growing up. And the cat is sleeping in a sunbeam. And I want to make the cat all cozy.

I think I was about three. And I decided I would wrap the cat in blankets to make the cat warm and cozy. Well, the cat did not enjoy this as this three-year-old is like accosting the cat and burying it under blankets. The cat was not happy. So I intended to cause the cat pleasure. The cat instead suffered pain in the form of mild annoyance. And then subsequently, as you can guess, I suffered pain in the form of mild annoyance. And then subsequently,

as you can guess, I suffered pain because the cat lashed out, as cats do. So it was pain all around and no pleasure. And yet it seems like we don't want to say a three-year-old in this case is being immoral. They don't necessarily have the lived experience to know that the consequence of their action is going to do harm, and they are trying to do good. In other words, what Bentham kind of misses is the intention aspect. A lot of people think, quite rightly, that intuitively intention matters as well. It's not just the consequences of my action, but also why did I do what I did? What was I trying to do? And so even though my intention in this case backfired and I ended up with a scratch on my arm and crying and the cat ended

up sulking in the corner, we would still say, it's not like I was morally bad to do that. Yes, I need to learn from this mistake and move forward, but it doesn't seem that I've done something naughty in that kind of blameworthy sense. So if Santa were a Benthamite consequentialist, that would have counted against you in his big book. Exactly. Okay. If Santa judges us by the consequences of our actions, sounds like a lot of us might be on the naughty list. What ethical theories better include our intentions, what we were trying to do. So the other big school of ethical thought that we often talk about,

especially when we're kind of doing an introduction to ethics, is what might be called deontology. So deontology derives from the root word duty, and it's about focusing on what is your duty, and are you conforming your will or choosing your behavior based on what your duty is. So the big figure here is Immanuel Kant. Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher in the late 18th, early 19th centuries. He had a pretty strict view on lying. Famously, he claimed that if someone wanted to kill your friend and came to your house to ask if your friend was there, to kill your friend and came to your house to ask if your friend was there, morally you had to say yes. And Kant said that you must always try and follow your duty and your moral duty is to follow what Kant called the categorical imperative. Kant gave us a few different versions of the

categorical imperative, but the version that's usually easiest if you're kind of just first getting introduced to this stuff is what's called the practical imperative. And so what Kant said you had to do, according to the practical imperative, is act in such a way where you treat all of humanity as an end in themselves and never simply as a means. So that's a little philosophical jargony. But what we mean is you can't just use people as a means to your own end. So I have my goal, and maybe I need other people to achieve my goal. I can't use other people, manipulate them, force them, coerce them into helping me achieve my goal. Instead, what I have to do is always

respect other people as what Kant called an end in themselves, which means respecting the rational autonomy or the rational freedom of other people. In other themselves, which means respecting the rational autonomy or the rational freedom of other people. In other words, allowing other people the freedom to make their own choices. And maybe they choose to help me achieve my goal, and that's great. But I also have to respect if they choose not to help me. So what would a Kantian Santa Claus be looking for? So if we're thinking about this with Santa, whereas we thought of Santa with Bentham as being like Santa the mathematician, Santa for Kant would be maybe Santa the stickler, because Kant says you have to follow this rule. So if we have a kid, for example, who wants ice

cream, and the only way to get ice cream is to eat a well-balanced dinner, perhaps by eating their veggies. And the kid decides to slip the veggies under the table to a dog or put them in the garbage or something like that, hide them in their napkin when the parents aren't looking. And then the parent says, oh, your plate is clean. Did you eat all your veggies? And the kid says, yeah, I totally ate my Brussels sprouts. Now give me the ice cream. This would not be respecting the rational autonomy of other people. So if the kid lies to their parent and says, I ate all the veggies, then they're manipulating their parent into trying to get the ice cream. So they're not telling all the truth and they're not giving the parent a free choice.

So this seems to get around the problem that Bentham had with only focusing on the consequence. Now we have to look at your intention. Why did you do what you did? And were you trying to override the will or the freedom of anybody else in doing this? Or were you allowing the freedom of other people? So if the child said to the parent, oh, my plate is clean because I gave the Brussels sprouts to the dog, that's a good kid. Yeah. So for Kant, that would be respecting the rational autonomy of the parents. Yeah. It seems like there are some problems with that ethical approach as well, because there are things like white lies, right? Like there are times where you want to disrespect someone's autonomy for their own good. And let's say the younger sibling did something like just finished their first finger painting. And the younger sibling is so proud of their finger painting and steps back to show it off to everybody. And this older child says that he thinks the painting is bad or terrible or not very good.

And it seems like we want to say that's not kind. It's truthful, perhaps. Maybe the painting isn't very good. Most people's first paintings are not very good. Even prodigies have to learn, right? So it's truthful. And so we might say it's respecting the rational autonomy of the younger brother or younger sister to tell the truth and say, yeah, your painting's really, really bad. Oh, you think that's a dog? That doesn't look like a dog at all. So it might be very truthful, and it might be respecting the rational autonomy of the younger sibling, but it doesn't seem very

kind or compassionate. And so we might think that there are times when a white lie is justified, or when not telling the whole truth is justified, or when overriding somebody else's will is justified to protect them, for example. Perhaps we can't always respect the rational autonomy of everybody around us. Sometimes we think we might have to override somebody's rational autonomy in order to protect them. So an older sibling might have to manipulate or coerce a younger sibling in order to actually protect them. That could happen as well. So for Kant, you follow the categorical imperative, not because you want something, but because you just intellectually recognize it is right. In fact, if you follow it because you want something, then Kant thinks you're not truly

making a free decision. Because of course, if Santa changed his mind and decided that nice kids no longer got presents, nice kids got coal and naughty kids got presents now. Santa changed his mind. Suddenly, you would start acting in a completely different way, right? Which means that as a child, or anybody really, your actions are not governed by what you have determined is right. Your actions are being governed by forces outside of your control. They're being governed by, in this case, the whims and judgments of Santa Claus. So a Kantian Santa, one thing we know about if there was a Kantian Santa is that if you fail to uphold the categorical imperative, you would automatically be naughty. But the other problem is, if you are only following the categorical imperative,

because you want the treats and you don't want the coal, then you aren't doing it properly either. You've already failed. In fact, you need to take Santa out of the equation and not worry about his approval at all. Be good just because it's the right thing to do, not because Santa knows. Okay, so a consequentialist Santa doesn't care about your thoughts or feelings or intentions or principles, only the end result. A Kantian Santa cares about whether you respect the rational autonomy of everyone else, even if it means telling them the cold hard truth. Is there a moral framework where Santa just, you know, looks into your soul to see if you're trying to be good? Yeah, and that's what I might call, as you just said, Santa looking into the soul or Santa the observer. So here I want to introduce us to virtue ethics.

And virtue ethics is a very, very old theory. It goes back to Aristotle, at least. Aristotle was a Greek philosopher in the fourth century BCE, not only a foundational figure of Western philosophy, but his influence on the natural sciences lasted well into the Middle Ages and beyond. Virtue Ethics asks us, what is the right kind of person to be? So rather than focusing on this specific situation, and what should I do in this specific situation, virtue ethics asks, overall, over the course of my lifetime, what kind of person should I try to be? And it focuses on trying to build a moral character. So okay, how do we do that?

Or in other words, how would Santa know if we had done that? The theory has a lot to do with moderation and practicing moderation. And so Aristotle identifies virtues, he says, land at what he calls the golden mean, which is a midpoint between a vice of what he calls deficiency, that is, there isn't enough of something, and a vice of excess, where you go overboard and there's too much. So one big example that comes up quite early in Aristotle's writing is that courage is a virtue at the golden mean between the vice of deficiency, which is cowardice, where you don't have enough bravery or courage, and the vice of excess, which is foolhardiness, where you have kind of an overabundance of bravery and you fling yourself into very dangerous situations.

So if we go back to this example about what to say to your brother or sister who's just drawn this finger painting of a dog, truthfulness is at the golden mean. It is at a midpoint. But it's a midpoint between deception, that is lying, which is a vice of deficiency, and what Aristotle calls kind of a boastfulness or a hard truth. So there are two different ways of going to a vice of excess, right? You might be overly boastful and telling everybody who will listen about how awesome you are. And maybe you have accomplished a lot, but you're kind of going on about it a lot. Or you might tell hard truths, truths that hurt people. And yes, it's true, you're being truthful. But this is an excessive use of truthfulness. It's not a moderate use of truthfulness. So part of achieving the golden mean of truthfulness would be learning when to tell the

truth, how to tell the truth, and when it might be best to keep silent. So that's the first thing we have to do. But the second thing we have to do is practice aiming for the golden mean. And we're going to make mistakes, said Aristotle. So the real point of virtue ethics is that morality is a skill that you have to practice until it becomes second nature. And when it becomes second nature, you actually remake yourself into a moral person. You reshape your soul or remake your character. So in some ways, I like virtue ethics because it is a very positive theory. No matter how naughty or how bad you are, you can work to make things better, to make yourself better. If Santa is an Aristotelian, what's he looking out for?

So if we think of Santa under an Aristotelian model, an Aristotelian Santa or Santa the Observer would watch over the course of a year. What kind of person were you at the start of the year? So at the end of Christmas 2019, I suppose. And then what kind of habits did you seek to acquire over the course of the year? How did you try and practice morality? So morality is a skill just like any other skill. And just like any other skill, you're going to suck at it at the first, right? So the first time I tried to learn a musical instrument, I was very, very bad. I'm sorry to my parents who had to listen to me. But I got better

over time, thankfully. And so the point isn't to penalize you for any failure. An Aristotelian Santa Claus would look at the overall trend of the last year. And what kind of progress did you make? What kind of efforts did you put in to find the golden mean and to practice finding the golden mean over and over and over? Really, crucially, for Aristotle, we never really get to say somebody is a fully good person or has achieved the main goal of virtue ethics until the end of their lifetime, until we look back on it. So the idea is that you look back at the end of your life and you feel satisfied about the kind of person you were, the kind of actions you took, the kind of virtues you cultivated, and you feel good about who you have become and about the kind of efforts you've put in to become that person. For Aristotle, the real value of virtue ethics and the real value of practicing virtue is not

that you're going to necessarily get a reward from Santa or anybody else. The reward is that you will actually be a happier, better, more well-rounded person, and that you will have less regrets at the end of your days. So you will kind of give yourself the present. You won't need Santa. That is Jill Fellows, philosophy instructor at Douglas College in New Westminster, British Columbia. Okay, Nala, you see how complicated a little thing like naughty or nice can be? Philosophers have been thinking about this for thousands of years, and Jill didn't even give us a comprehensive list of ethical frames. Santa could believe in divine command theory. He could be a Rawlsian justice theorist.

He could be a moral skeptic or a nihilist. We just don't know. Far more complicated than I ever imagined. I can't wait to hear about the moral framework of Scrooge. Right? Imagine trying to suss that guy out. I will say, though, for the benefit of all the children out there, and this is an important point, your parents might try to tell you that nice means obeying your parents. And hoo boy, is there a rich history of debating whether or not we have a moral duty to obey authority or the law. We don't have time to go into the multi-millennia story of that, Nala.

But I will just say to all the kids out there, there is no guarantee that Santa's moral framework is one where you have to obey your parents no matter what. So tell them that. Matthew, I'm really sure that parents will be very pleased you said that. I hope they are. You're listening to Ideas on CBC Radio 1 in Canada and PRX in the United States. You can hear us across North America on Sirius XM, in Australia on ABC Radio National, and around the world at cbc.ca slash ideas.

You can also hear Ideas on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayed. Hey there, I'm Kathleen Goltar, and I have a confession to make. I am a true crime fanatic. I devour books and films and, most of all, true crime podcasts. But sometimes, I just want to know more. I want to go deeper. And that's where my podcast, Crime Story, comes in.

Every week, I go behind the scenes with's where my podcast Crime Story comes in. Every week, I go behind the scenes with the creators of the best in true crime. I chat with the host of Scamanda, Teacher's Pet, Bone Valley, the list goes on. For the insider scoop, find Crime Story in your podcast app. On this episode of Ideas, we're digging deep into the philosophical side of Christmas. For millennia, philosophers have been asking the important questions like, how do I know what I know? What is the nature of reality? And if you've been following along, how do I get on Santa's nice list?

Ideas producer Matthew Lazenrider has been speaking with philosophical types for their takes on the important questions at Christmas. Matthew joins me here once again. Hi. Hello, Nala. So what are we going to tackle this half hour? important questions at Christmas. Matthew joins me here once again. Hi. Hello, Nala. So what are we going to tackle this half hour? We're going to pack in two big Christmastime questions. We're going to finally answer the question we heard at the start of the show, and that is, does Santa exist? But we're going to

start off with a little Scrooge. Oh, there goes Mr. Humbug. There goes Mr. Grimm. If they gave a prize for me and me, the winner would be him. Old Scrooge, he loves his money because he thinks it gives him power. If he became a flavor, you can bet he would be sour. That is from the opening of A Muppet Christmas Carol starring Michael Caine as one of the best Scrooges of all time, in my opinion. So as you know, A Christmas Carol is about a miserable rich guy named Scrooge who hates Christmas and children and abuses his staff until a bunch of ghosts show up and show him his past and present and future. And throughout the story, you learn a lot about Scrooge's history. His father was

neglectful. His beloved sister, Fan, died in childbirth. His fiancee left him and so on. And it's suggested that all of this is what turned him into such a bad guy. So it raises this long debated philosophical problem. And that is if all of this stuff was kind of forced upon Scrooge, is it really his fault if he's such a jerk? Is he morally culpable for all that stuff that's beyond his control? I spoke with Paul Russell. He's a philosophy professor at the University of British Columbia and the University of Lund in Sweden. He's well known for his work on free will. And we spoke about the issues of fate and control and free will brought up in A Christmas Carol. Well, this is a major theme in philosophy that goes all the way back and it

takes different forms. And the traditional form that it's presented in is actually the religious form, which is that we see ourselves as part of a world that's created by God, an all-powerful, all-knowing being. And there's a great puzzle there about if we're the products of a world created by this all-powerful, all-knowing being, and he knows everything that we're going to do, he has foreknowledge of that, and he predetermines that world, he chooses that world knowing how it's going to be, how can we be free? How can we be responsible? And in particular, how can we be responsible to that God when he

made us the way we are? So there's a kind of traditional puzzle there. And a lot of the early free will discussion and debate was working around that theological aspect of it. But it can easily just morph and it has morphed in the modern period into a variation of that, which is even if you remove God from the picture, there's still this worry that, and it sort of relates to this Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, that eventually, if you look at each and every one of us, there's still this worry that, and it sort of relates to this Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, that eventually if you look at each and every one of us, there's a background story about why we are the way we are and how we've become the person, morally speaking, that we are. And that in some sense, it seems like our, if I can put it this way, our ethical trajectory, the choices, decisions we make in life is kind of determined and shaped by factors we never even had control over.

That's sort of the Scrooge theme. And the question in the free will debate, especially as it's shaped now, is about if we understand ourselves as part of the world and part of nature and all these factors that shape us, our society, our parents, our genetic makeup, our biological makeup. What room is there left for us to really be free choosing beings? And that's a puzzle. Personally, I feel like I'm in control of my actions and character at any given time. And I'd guess that most people feel like they are the masters of their destiny. What am I missing about that way of thinking about free will? Well, I think that's right. not just parts of nature conditioned by our circumstances in our past, but that we have, if you want, real active power to choose and have options in front of us,

and that we have the ability and power to take one option rather than another. And we feel very confident we've got that. But then if we start looking at ourselves and other people, as you said, just to take the Scrooge example, you look at these characters and you ask yourself, how did they end up being the sort of way they are and making the choices they did? And you start to be able to explain that there are these circumstances, and that might even include ourselves, why we are the way we are. That's what happens to Scrooge. He starts to understand himself and the things that happened to him that he didn't control,

but that shaped him. And then the question is, once you have those powers to reflect on yourself, to think about yourself, to become self-conscious about how you are, what you are, and why you are the way you are, how much freedom is really left of real, that really gives you choice and possibilities to take one route rather than another. And in a way, that's where Scrooge, looking forward, starts to ask himself, do I really have, can I make a difference? Can I make it different? And am I really responsible for the way things are going to work out looking forward?

And there is that scene in the graveyard at the end, right? When Scrooge asks whether his future is set in stone and whether he can change it. Actually, let's hear the Michael Caine version. There's something else Michael Caine version. Who was the wretched man whose death brought so much glee and happiness to others? Answer me one more question. Are these the shadows of things that will be, or are they the shadows of things that may be only? Hear me, I'm not the man I was. Why would you show me this if I was past all hope?

why would you show me this if I was past all hope? So what do philosophers have to say, Paul, about that answer? Do we and Michael Caine have the power to change our destinies? Well, I'll tell you, I think there are, just in the way that Christmas sort of operates on a set of dualisms, like being happy or being melancholy and miserable, or being good or being bad, and so on and so forth. There's kind of a counterpart to that in the free will issue, which is there's a kind of strong optimistic story that we have these great godlike powers. We're not just like other things in nature.

We're really different. We can choose who we are. We can shape who we are. And that's why, as you say, it's possible to say that people are really culpable because at the end of the day, even if you have a Scrooge-like back history, even if you have a misfortune about this or that aspect that's shaped your character, you always have this kind of capacity to make free choices. And that's a big part of Western culture. It goes way back, a belief in some kind of active power agency connected with rationality itself. On the other wing, as it were, the polar opposite side of that is the kind of skeptical view, which is, yeah, but when we really look and consider ourselves,

whether from a theological point of view or a scientific naturalistic point of view, we start to see that there's a kind of illusion to this notion that we're really in control and we really shape our own character and conduct and we have final say or ultimate control over that. And then you get a kind of extreme skepticism, which is that freedom and responsibility is kind of an illusion. Nobody really has it. We're better getting off, getting rid of all that talk about culpability and guilt and people deserving punishment and just seeing people as in various ways shaped by their social and biological conditions and factors and getting rid of

this idea, these illusory, distorting ideas about freedom or responsibility. My own view for what it's worth is sort of in between that. I think the truth often happens with these situations is that there's a kind of both sides have an aspect of truth, but it's important to see that it's really in the middle, which is that Scrooge sees himself as he's aware that he can't deny that he really is a choosing being and that he is aware of the character and the nature of the choices he's making, whether it affects Bob Cratchit's family or whoever it affects. So he can't deny his freedom and responsibility, no matter how much he understands his own history and the things

that shaped him the way he is. But at the same time, knowing why he is the way he is and understanding himself that way starts to be a kind of necessary basis for really reshaping his own character and his own dispositions, because he starts to understand that these are the things that have made him and maybe distorted or corrupted him in various ways. So the right view, as I see it, is that, as it were, we really cannot deny our freedom and responsibility, but at the same time, any truthful account of our human situation, whether you're Scrooge or anybody else,

is that there's an awful lot that shapes the way we are ethically that we have no control over, and that includes a lot of people who we don't consider very good people. Christmas and New Year's is a time people tend to make resolutions, how to improve next year. I don't know how prescriptive you like to get about these things, Paul, but do you have any expert philosophical advice on how to take control and exercise that free will to make a difference? I would say from the starting point, and maybe this happens with Scrooge himself, it's interesting, is I think that one of the really good things about Christmas and the holiday period is it gives us a sense of what's important in human

life. And so it amplifies the importance of friends, family, and community. And even in that Scrooge moment, if you want to kind of self-reflection and redemption, in the case of Scrooge, he sees the importance to himself of his own family, as for example, with his sister who died. And that becomes a way of sort of reaching himself and seeing that other people's families, like the Cratchit family, that they matter and they're significant and they can matter to him. So if you want a resolution, whatever it be, like I drink too much or smoke too much or I don't get enough exercise

or I'm not concerned enough with some things that I should be, that's really in a way what the resolution does to say, I am an agent, I am someone, I'm not just a thing in the world that's manipulated by fate. I have the capacity to look at myself and have some control over the world. And that begins with understanding what really matters to me and how I can influence and shape it and protect it. And what matters to me isn't just what matters to me and myself.

It might be that what matters to me are other people. Hopefully for most people, what matters to me are other people and other things that relate to my friends, my family, and my community. Thank you, Paul, and Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas to you, too, and a Happy New Year. I hope it's a much happier one than we had in 2020. Speaking of fate. Me, too.

I think we could all use a better year. Cheers, Matthew. Anybody can change Scrooge and so can you When you're ready to start There's room in your heart for love, love, love, love Anybody can grow Scrooge and you can too When you're doing your part There's room in your heart for love

When you're ready to start There's room in your heart for love. When you're ready to start, there's one in your heart for love. Nala, that's your whirlwind tour of philosophy around free will, care of Paul Russell at the University of British Columbia and the University of Lund. And care of the Muppets. Yeah, them too. Very helpful. Now, that got pretty heavy, Matthew. Can we lighten things up a little bit before the end of the show?

Absolutely. Let's go to a different Christmas movie. There's a scene in the 2003 film Elf that I love, mostly because of Bob Newhart's deadpan delivery. This is where Buddy the Elf, played by Will Ferrell, is introduced to the mechanics of Santa's sleigh by head elf Bob Newhart. Here's a bit of that. Santa's Sleigh by head elf Bob Newhart. sounds, a lot of people down south don't believe in Santa Claus. What? Who do they think puts all their toys under the tree? Well, there's a rumor floating around that the parents do it.

That's ridiculous. I mean, parents couldn't do that all in one night. What about Santa's cookies? I suppose parents eat them too? Yeah, I know. I know. And every year, less and less people believe in Santa Claus. I mean, we have a real energy crisis on our hands. Oh. I mean, just see how low the plasometer is. That's shocking. So it's a pretty common Christmas movie and TV trope, right? Santa's very existence relies on belief.

He gets his abilities, the flying, the being everywhere, relies on belief. He gets his abilities, the flying, the being everywhere, the ability to squeeze down chimneys from the sheer power of all the people believing in him. Is there some philosophical reason that might actually be true? Almost. So there's a way you could think of a lot of things that are true only because we believe in them. Joseph Beale is the philosopher we heard from earlier, the director of the Gotham Philosophical Society. And for a few years, he's noticed that every Christmas, philosophers who focus on ethics, that branch we discussed earlier, turn their attention to the matter of parents telling their children about Santa Claus. The question being, is it ethical to tell children

that this supernatural man exists? So remember, under a few of the ethical frames we discussed earlier, sometimes there's an absolute ban on lying. And I spoke with Joseph about this and what I thought was an ethical question, but very soon it became a question about what it means for something to exist. I began by asking Joseph what the standard ethical argument against telling children about the existence of Santa. Well, the standard argument would be that it's a lie because you're telling the child that something exists when, in fact, it does not exist. And you refer to these people as Grinches. Yes, I do. To me, this is trying to take the joy out.

So is your feeling that it's okay to lie to children about Santa Claus because it's a nice story or that Santa in some way exists? A bit of both because there's something about what I think is true and what would make something like the claim Santa exists true that points to the fact that we're not engaged in a lie. the claim Santa exists true, that points to the fact that we're not engaged in a lie. I think that there's a way that some might suggest it's okay to tell children that Santa exists or to encourage the belief for as long as the belief lasts, because it's a permissible lie. It's a little fib, a bit of make-believe, no harm. It's a lie because you're not telling the truth, but it's permissible. I actually reject that.

I think that there's something much more interesting going on in the case of Santa, something that points to something very profound in the nature of human beings and the world that we create for ourselves, a world of meaning and significance, which is really more about belief making. We create this meaning, we create this value, we create this importance. And Santa Claus is an example of this. And so we are making true when we create Santa Claus. So we're not lying. We're doing something else. But if something is true, then I can point to it and say, look, there it is. If a cat exists, I can see it and pet it and hear it. You can't do that with Santa. What am I missing about the way we think about what exists and what doesn't? Well, that is one category of things that exist. These material things made of matter. They're sensible.

So they're accessible by our senses, our five senses. And we can talk about what exists and what's not. And we can try to marshal evidence by use of the senses. There are other things, though. And I used the word before, matter as in mattering, emotions, our loves, the principles by which we live, our relationships, the significance of the relationships. It's not just the two individual people, but this thing that binds them and it's evolving and it's there, but it is not accessible to the senses. It's something that we comprehend. It is something that it is not a matter of believing only if it's

really there, but it is our belief in these things that brings them into existence. And it's our continued belief that sustains them. So what's something that requires a collective belief to be real? One example, I think, is rights. And this is a very important part of our political discussion and our ethical discussion. This idea that we have certain entitlements or a claim to do or use something, and if anyone were to interfere with it, they would be wrong. They would be in the wrong, morally speaking, if they try to prevent us from exercising our right to something or to engage in some sort of activity, speech, for instance. Now, we believe we have these rights, but we have rights only to the

extent that we actually believe in them, that we have fostered this collective agreement that we have such things. And the point of talking about rights and insisting that we have them is to encourage people to respect them. But there is no tangible thing that you can identify as a right. So obviously, you're not saying that if enough people believe in Santa Claus, he physically materializes in the North Pole. No. There is much more in this world of ours, in our lives, than the things that we have sensory access to, to the physical things, the material things that surround us. And in fact, I think the most important things go beyond that. These are the things that really matter to us. Believing in rights has made the

world a better place. Santa Claus, kind of analogously, is bringing more joy. I see no harm in bringing more joy. If there's something I would caution about Santa Claus, I've been that we are creating expectations when we insist that there are rights. We are creating the expectation that these rights that we insist on will be respected, that they'll be acknowledged. We insist on or encourage the belief in Santa Claus. We are creating expectations of Santa-like behavior and things that will happen, expectations about what're going to talk about rights, then we need to act in ways which respect them. We need to take it seriously. Likewise, with Santa, we need to take efforts that the expectations are met. And where I think that this is most significant is in those who are in much greater need. We should be writing letters from Santa. The United States Postal Service has a letter writing campaign. They look for volunteers to write letters. We should be contributing to toy drives if we can. We should be Santa's helpers.

believe in Santa Claus. It's a collective thing. You can't turn on the TV or go to the mall without being told that he exists. And for many children, because of economic inequalities, he doesn't exist. So we've spread the story, but don't live up to it because we haven't created a world where a family that wants to celebrate Christmas can necessarily have a merry one. That's exactly right. And I think that that's an important dimension of it. There is an ethics here, but it is on the other end of making sure that the values and the meaning that we bring into the world is acknowledged and lived up to. If we are going to bring Santa into the world, If we are going to bring Santa into the world, he needs help. That was Joseph Beale, director of the Gotham Philosophical Society.

And Nala Ayyad, that brings an end to our quick sleigh ride through the philosophy of Christmas. What a journey, Matthew. Thank you so much. Thank you and Merry Christmas, Nala. Merry Christmas. You were listening to Ideas on CBC Radio 1 in Canada and PRX in the United States. You can hear us across North America on Sirius XM, in Australia on ABC Radio National, and around the world at cbc.ca slash ideas. You can also hear ideas on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. If you'd like to comment on anything you've heard in this episode or in any other,

you can do that on Facebook or Twitter or on our website, cbc.ca slash ideas, where, of course, you can always get our podcast. Lisa Ayuso is the web producer of Ideas. Technical production, Danielle Duval. Senior producer, Nikola Lukšić. The executive producer of Ideas is Greg Kelly, and I'm Nala Ayyad. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.