Conference Report: British Personalist Forum International Conference 2015; Episode 1a

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We bring you now the next instalment of our new 42 part series dedicated to The 2015 British Personalist Forum International Conference. In this episode, our intrepid reporter describes the daily life of conference-goers, with details of both feeding and mating rituals. Readers are warned that the following report may contain distressing scenes.

Episode 1a: Sing “Macmurray!” every day, that’s what my Grandma used to say

     Deep within the labyrinthine bowels of Oriel college stood we.  Shadows clung cobweb-like about our shoulders; a strange sepulchral chill had settled upon the room.  It was the first day, the first hour, the first moment of the conference.  Who knew what horrors were to come, what appalling rites would be conducted, to what Stygian depths a human soul might sink, and what ancient nightmares would be released up when it did?

     Suddenly, before a very old joke could be plagiarised in toto, Richard Allen and Alan Ford welcomed us all and opened the conference.

     The scene was set.  On with the presentations.

     You may recall from Part 1 that the philosophy of John Macmurray was well represented.  In this regard, David Treanor and James Beauregard did a fine job.

     David flew in from Tasmania for the event; just he had last year, in fact.  His arms were recovering from the ordeal and he was enjoying being the right way up for a change; so much so that he was not, I am sure, remotely put out by the chairman of his session being ten minutes late.

     Yes, of course it was me.   I managed to get lost between Lecture Room II in the aforementioned sepulchral bowels, where Richard and Alan opened the conference, and the Basil Mitchell Room about a hundred yards away.  A dedicated Ariadne, armed with her ball of yarn, would, no doubt, have made short work of it, but I was lost.  The block in which we were housed -- behind the Provost’s rooms, I think -- has two distinct alleyways, if you can imagine such a thing.  I picked the wrong one; of course I did.

     Luckily, after what seemed like hours in this benighted wilderness, I was found, tired, cold, and hungry, by a couple of other lost souls.  Pooling our mighty intellectual powers, we decided that the other alleyway was worth a try.  And it was.  Everyone was waiting for us.  David, at last, could begin.

     Consider two things: first, this was a personalist conference, organised by the British Personalist Forum; second, John Macmurray is generally acknowledged to be a -- if not the -- central figure in British personalist thought.   He is, in David’s words, ‘an aberration to a homogeneous philosophical pedagogy.’  And jolly good too.   (Not only an important figure in his own right, Macmurray was also Farrer’s tutor at Balliol, making him a contributory factor in the development of one of the most important thinkers of the 20th Century.)  Given these two things, it might seem a little peculiar that David should wonder whether Macmurray was, in fact, a personalist after all.   He’s lucky he wasn’t lynched.  

     The question, it seems, arises from the practical or pragmatic emphasis of Macmurray’s philosophy: the substitution, as David put it, of doing for thinking.  This same emphasis on (as I would say) intelligent action over sheer or mere speculation, Farrer would go on to develop both metaphysically and epistemologically.

     Pragmatic personalism: excellent stuff.  What struck me as interesting was the way in which David applied, as is his wont, Macmurray’s thought to matters of crucial social import; in this case, education, health-care, and social services.  This speaks of a social consciousness, sadly lacking from much modern philosophy, but which David always does supremely well.

     This aspect of David’s paper soon gave rise to an interesting conversation about the experience of educational, health, and social-care professionals.  In his recent book, The Common Good (to which a issue of Appraisal will soon be dedicated) Jonas Mortenson cited research suggesting that health-care professionals, in particular, are frequently rather unhappy people.  This is something I can corroborate from my own experience.  Being married to one, I have long associated with such folks and they are as odd a bunch of people as you or I are ever likely to meet.  But if Macmurray et al. are right about the proper route to a fulfilling life, a fully human life, being through our thoughtful and caring participation on one another’s lives -- as I am sure they are -- then the question is, ‘why are health-care professionals so miserable, not to mention, peculiar?’  No great conclusions were reached that day, although it was mooted that much may result from the depersonalising systems within which they are forced to work; but I do not think that is all.

     This is, I suspect, a topic to which we shall have to return at some later date.

     Following David’s fine application of Macmurray’s principle ideas, James Beauregard also sought to draw some of the lessons of Macmurray’s thought.  James’ concern was twofold: one the one hand, the neuroscience’s; on the other, signalling some of the vital connections between Macmurray’s thought -- and personalism in general -- and the insights of modern psychology and psychotherapy. Such connections are not, of course, particularly surprising; but they are very exciting.  James focused primarily on Object Relations Theory, which was developed during the early part of the 20th Century (whence I have now returned).  The key players in this development, we were told, included Melanie Klein (sister of Calvin) and the famous Hollywood Swashbuckler, Ronald Fairbairn Jnr., whose seminal work, Object Relations Theory in the Clinical Setting, was, I believe, written while Fairbairn was playing Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood.

     It is curious that Object Relations Theory isn’t better known among personalists given the parallels with the central insights of our tradition, especially in the area of interpersonal relations.   Perhaps Shakespeare was simply wrong: a rose by any other name has a distinctly fishy pong about it.  Badly named as it is, ORT , as James ably demonstrated, offers valuable psychological support to the philosophical personalist and as a contribution to the proceedings was very welcome indeed.

     And that, children, is why the ICP should be a compulsory element of all psychology courses too. And, now I think about it, neuroscience courses.

     Taking the first, neuroscientific, hand, James’ presentation concerned the inevitable limitations of any conception of persons undertaken in such terms alone.  The attempt to eliminate deep metaphysical questions about personal consciousness, freewill, morality, and so on is not, of course, remotely scientific.   It is, as one commentator has observed, merely witchcraft with clipboards.

     Otherwise put, there is an irreducible logical gap between the MRI scans or what have you which supposedly show us the mind at work and the claim that the neurological activity depicted by the scan really is the mind and nothing else can be.  David Hume is usually blamed -- not altogether fairly -- for this kind ersatz empiricism, although I can’t help wondering what he would have made of that inferential leap.

     Fortunately, we were saved such abstract speculations as James, with Macmurray’s help, set to filling out the picture of persons.

     Then suddenly, I heard the unmistakable twang of elastic....

     This concludes Part 1a of our new 56 part series: The 2015 British Personalist Forum International Conference, A Report.  Unfortunately, we are, once again, unable to bring you the remainder of this episode.   It has emerged that the detailed descriptions of feeding and mating rituals among conference-goers, which we hoped to bring you, are libellous; mere fabrications of our correspondents fevered, and frankly degenerate, imagination.   We hope that readers are not too disappointed and will continue to join us for the remainder of this 69 part series.