#1301 Suki Finn - What's in a Doughnut Hole?: And Other Philosophical Food for Thought

00:00 Ricardo Lopes: Hello everyone. Welcome to a new episode of The Dissenter. I'm your host, as always, Ricardo Lops, and today I'm here with a return guest, Dr. Suki Finn. She's now an associate professor in social philosophy at Royal Holloway University of London. And today we're going to talk about her book What's in the Donutt Hole and Other philosophical Food for Thought in our, just to say that in our first interview, we talked about the epistemology of logic, the philosophy of love, and the metaphysics of pregnancy, and I will be leaving a link to it in the description down below. And Dr. Finn, welcome back to the show. It's always a pleasure to talk with you.

00:42 Suki Finn: Oh, thank you so much for having me back. It's really nice to see you again.

00:47 Ricardo Lopes: Yes, so I mean, before we get into the actual questions that you explore in your book, how did you come up with this idea of exploring and presenting philosophical questions through food metaphors?

01:03 Suki Finn: Yeah, so I really wanted to bring philosophy kind of down to earth and make the questions that it asks more tangible and accessible for as many people as possible. So it kind of functions like an introduction to philosophy through food. And the reason I chose food is because. Um, IT'S the closest to a commonplace experience that I could think of. Um, WE all have some interaction with food, it seems. Um, AND we all think, and so thinking about food or thinking through food, um, was a way for me to make philosophy relatable. Um, SO the food analogies that run through the book, they function a bit like a Trojan horse for philosophy, if you like, or, um, a spoonful of sugar that helps the philosophy go down. Um, BECAUSE otherwise, philosophy, it tends to operate. In the realm of the abstract and abstract ideas can be quite hard to get your head around, um, I found. And so what I do in the book is each chapter, um, I utilize a different food scenario to bring out some abstract philosophical puzzle.

02:17 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, even though I have to say that you have to be a little bit careful because this might ruin some people's meals.

02:26 Suki Finn: Yeah, if you think too much, you might, well, it might actually increase your appetite because you're working hard with all, all the thinking. So

02:36 Ricardo Lopes: yeah, but, but I mean, I'm going to eat a pizza. Is this still a pizza? Is this not a pizza anymore? What I'm eating here, you know, but for people who particularly suffer from OCD, this might become very complicated.

02:52 Suki Finn: Yeah, well, that's another like entirely different and very important um and serious topic, yeah.

03:00 Ricardo Lopes: OK, so let's start with actually uh what were you allude to in the title of your book. So what are holes and is a hole something that exists or not?

03:17 Suki Finn: Yeah, so, so that question, it, um, it's what I talk about in the very title chapter of, um, of the book, the first chapter of the book on doughnuts, using doughnuts. So, um, when we consider, say, a, a ring shaped doughnut, um, we might perceive a hole in it, um, and refer to it as a doughnut with a hole. Um, BUT when we ask questions about the nature of that hole. Um, OR as you've done, the, the very reality of, of holes in general, then we'll come to wonder what it is that we're actually perceiving and referring to, um, especially if those holes can be explained away or reduced to something else.

04:02 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, yeah, because I mean we actually talk about holes, right, but it's as if there's nothing there. I mean, I guess we could say there's air there unless it's a hole in a vacuum or something, but I mean, how do philosophers tend to conceptualize holes and do they think about The as existing things, non-existing things, and later we're going to talk a little bit more about what is, uh, what is it for something to exist and what is a non-existent thing, but how do philosophers tend to think about holes?

04:46 Suki Finn: Yeah, they're all very related topics actually um and there are many different philosophical approaches uh to holes or uh gaps or absences. So we can think of them as things in themselves um or the the word whole, for example, is just a name for where something is not. So we've applied a name to refer to something that actually is otherwise not there. So um in the case of the doughnut, say, um, the question is whether the whole is a part of the doughnut or just where there is no dough in the middle. Um, SO take uh if you're trying to make a list of all the things in reality, some sort of like book of the world as some metaphysicists would say, the question would be. With doughnuts on that list, are there, um, as well as the dough, also the holes on that list. Um, AND if we keep filling that list with all the things that exist, what happens to the gaps in between all of those things, if indeed there are. ARE any gaps once we've listed all the things because as you mentioned, the vacuum, even the vacuum, um, might not be one of those gaps because in a vacuum, it's not that there's pure emptiness, there's still a field, you know, underlying. Um, SO there isn't really one a place that we get to once we've taken absolutely everything away, um. So the question of how we conceptualize or understand um these gaps or the spaces between things is a very interesting question. Um, WE could pose it as whether we're dealing with the absence of presence, like the absence of material, or that there's a presence of absence. And these are like two kind of alternative ways of trying to to grapple with with holes.

06:48 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, even though there's also those American doughnuts that do not have holes, so perhaps this might get people thinking that when they pay for a doughnut with a hole, they're getting ripped off or something because they're getting less doughnuts.

07:07 Suki Finn: Yeah, yeah, I mean that's certainly uh a joke that I've heard uh be said a lot. You're getting like with a a moose, for example, what you're paying for so much or what you're consuming is a lot of air, um, what's not really there. So, um, but of course that plays a a role in the culinary experience um without those spaces. It becomes a very different sort of food, um, and a very, so it has this this aesthetic role, um, that for some foods I suppose is essential to its very being, um, like the bagel or the polo or the ring shaped doughnut. Um, THESE, uh, foods with holes in wouldn't be what they are without that shape.

07:58 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. Yeah. Uh, AND we're, I, I think we're going to come back to that question later, but, uh, what is then, what is it then for something uh to exist? I mean, how do philosophers tend to approach these uh uh this of course. Is a metaphysical question. Uh, WHAT is it for something to exist and um how do we determine that something exists or is non-existent? I mean, how do we approach those kinds of questions?

08:33 Suki Finn: Yeah, so you say that this is metaphysical, but in a way you could see it as meta metaphysical. Um, AND I, I love the metas. Um, I'm always adding them on. Um, SO like the, the metaphysical question is asking whether holes exist, whereas the meta metaphysical question. Um, IS, as you've just posed, what it means for holes or anything to exist. What our account of existence even is. And, um, we might think that we should take to exist all the things that play some irreducible role in causation or explanation. Um, OR all the things that we can't help but refer to in our best theories or understandings of the world. Um, BUT when it comes to holes or absences or gaps, um, why I think that those things don't meet that criteria. Um, AND why I think that those criteria are the right ones and haven't been kind of formed with a positivist kind of bias towards, um, or against certain negative entities. So it's hard to know where to start your, um, your analysis.

09:51 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, but, but I mean, even when we talk about something as being non-existent, if we approach metaphysics or meta metaphysics through a framework that is not strict. Materialistic. I mean, if just by the fact that we are talking about non-existent things, wouldn't that make those non-existent things existing things, at least on the conceptual level.

10:25 Suki Finn: Yeah, yeah, that's it's a really uh important question actually. Um, SO there are there are many examples I suppose that people go to in order to motivate that there are nonexistent things or maybe to put it more palatably, that there are some things that do not exist. um AND you might put on that side um the immaterial stuff. Um, OR past things, future things, merely possible things, impossible things, fictional things. Um, BUT the question is, as you've just said, like whether in order to be qualified as a thing at all, in order to the very process of conceptualizing it as a thing, does that mean that it has come into existence in some. Very basic sense, um, such that we can never really get to that dark side, um, because we're always bringing it into our purview of existence. So, like with holes, um, we kind of struggle when we attempt to push everything through this positive framework, um, that ends up kind of ridding of negative entities by making them exist in some positive way just by virtue of attending to them.

11:40 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. Yeah, uh, because I, I mean, uh, when it comes to, uh, metaphysics, and sometimes I think this also intersects a little bit with epistemology, uh, the, there are things like Ideas that I mean even in even lay people talk about ideas as if they are things that exist that they they are not strictly materialist things, but we tend to talk about them as if they existed,

12:15 Suki Finn: right. Yeah, so it might be that the materialist approach to reality is inadequate, given that we might be able to come up with examples like these that demonstrate that our reality is made up of far more than um the stuff of material. Um, SO yeah, pick your favorite example, whether they be ideas or numbers or some other sort of abstract immaterial object. Either you paraphrase them away into trying to reduce them into something material or you take them at face value and you adopt a metaphysics that can accommodate for these alternative ways of being.

13:00 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, I mean, I guess that from a neuroscientific perspective, you could be a reductionist and say that actually ideas is just patterns of firings in your brain or something like that, so they are actually material. It's just that we have these more so. Sort of a non-material view of it, a sort of more idealistic view of it of them if you will, because we use language to express them and we have thoughts about them and so on, which I mean don't seem to be strictly material, but you know.

13:42 Suki Finn: Yeah, yeah. And but there's also, again, that meta metaphysical question as to whether reduction is something that gets you closer to to truth. So just, um, assuming that because something reduces to something else. Um, THAT something else is the only thing that exists and the thing that was reduced does not. You know, that's, that's an assumption that can be challenged in itself. And so trying to articulate what um exists and what doesn't, what's real and what isn't. Um, JUST by virtue of what's irreducible, um, that might be the wrong approach. And again it might be an approach that's already biased, um, in favor of one sort of entity over another. So one of the great things about philosophy is that you can challenge all of these assumptions all the way. And there's nothing that really isn't up for grabs. So, um, so yeah, the questions continue.

14:45 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, no, and that's the most fascinating, fascinating aspect of philosophy, at least as far as I'm concerned. So, but let me ask you then, because this is also something that you explore in your book, what is nothing? And I guess that that this is a relevant question that also applies to, for example, discussions in physics about whether the universe came from nothing, because then we have To discuss what nothing is and what it means for something to come from nothing and if nothing is really possible, I mean if there's, if there could be nothing, I mean, it's it's these are very tricky questions, but how do philosophers tend to approach them?

15:35 Suki Finn: Yeah, um, so nothingness is, is one of my favorite, uh, examples, I suppose one of my favorite negative entities. Um, um, AND by thinking about nothing, we kind of rerun some of the questions that we've already discussed, some of the issues that we've already discussed with holes, um, being things or just where things are not. Likewise with nothing, if it's a thing or where there are no. Things, um, because by definition, it seems like its name implies that it is no thing, but us talking about nothingness brings it into being as some sort of thing that we can discuss and question and analyze and refer to and describe. Um, SO we kind of end up in contradiction with ourselves sometimes and when we make a thing out of no thing. Um, AND this gets us into some of my favorite philosophical playgrounds of, uh, like Mainonianism, which is a theory that there are non-existent things, um, and dialetheism, which is a theory that there are some true contradictions, um, and even Buddhism on emptiness, uh, which is very relevant for understandings of nothingness. Um, AND these do, as, as you say, crop up a lot in my book. Um, BECAUSE they bring out some really, uh, fascinating paradoxes, um, that cross logic, metaphysics, language, as you mentioned, physics as well, mathematics, set theory, um, I have this idea that we can. Conceptualize what we mean when we're talking about nothing as a thing, as being, um, nothing as being the empty set, where what is in the empty set are no members, no things. So we kind of give this name um to the set of nothing um or the set of no. Things we give this name Nothing with a capital N, um, as a, uh, a noun also almost, um, for this quantitative absence of no things there. So yeah, it's, it crosses all sorts of disciplines in a in a very interesting way.

17:49 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and, and another interesting thing, at least for me when it comes to discussing nothing is that if we're discussing it in the domain of physics, for example, and we're talking about the origins of the universe and whether it came from nothing or it came from something, is that, uh I mean it runs against the limits. Myths of our cognition as humans because I mean if you try to imagine nothing, I mean literally nothing, I, I think that the best we can do is imagining a space that is completely black, but that's also not exactly nothing. It's like we're imagining the color or the absence of color. As black, but that's, I mean, that's not what physicists mean by nothing. It's something that we just as humans have a cognitive limitation when it comes to conceptualizing or imagining it,

18:55 Suki Finn: right? Yeah, absolutely. It does push us to the limits of cognition, to the limits of our language, um, and um. I think like as you mentioned with physics, their their understanding of the vacuum also probably wouldn't match up with the most er nothingines of what a philosopher might mean when they talk of nothingness. Um, SO something coming from nothing, well, um, it depends. If you're nothing still has, has a field going on, um, this is, which is why I kind of like thinking about it through the notion of an empty set because even once you've got rid of all the members and you've taken away everything that you can from your set, you're still left with a set. Um, AND that's kind of as far as we can go. Like what do you get when you remove. The empty set or even with with zero, take it, um, as uh that's a very, for me, curious and fascinating number that, um, in a way functions more like a symbol, um, though that like is a very controversial thing to say, I suppose. Um, BUT in our very trying to even picture, um, zero or like. The absence of a number, we've we've kind of drawn a circle around where there is no thing there to try, we, we try so hard to pin down and talk about nothingness in all of these ways and in doing so we mark out something. That becomes something that we the the when you're mentioning about coming up against the limits of our cognition and the limits of our language, I think those limits we end up transcending or trying to transcend them um in contradictory ways by um. Turning towards something that is constantly evading us, um, and yeah, this is how we end up in contradictions and in paradoxes and maybe that tells us something very important about reality that um. That it is more complex than than we can comprehend and maybe contradiction is something that is inescapable. Um, SO yeah, nothing leads us to nothingness leads us to these really, really interesting and big questions about the nature of reality.

21:36 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, you know, I love that Philomena Kunck episode where she's asking questions to physicists and at a certain point she's just doing a monologue and she's saying, oh, when physicists discuss the origins of the universe. And they say that it's possible that it came from nothing. What you have to do is, uh, you see this orange, you have to imagine the orange and then imagining it not existing and then doing that to everything that exists and then that's nothing. It's it's hilarious.

22:15 Suki Finn: Yeah, I mean, oh my gosh, Diane Morgan is such a hero and I, I love all the Philomena Kuns so much. Um, I, I really feel actually that she's a philosopher. Yeah,

22:27 Ricardo Lopes: she's sort of she's sort of an unintentional philosopher.

22:32 Suki Finn: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

22:37 Ricardo Lopes: OK, so, uh, another, uh, I, I mean, this for me is one of the most fascinating things you explore in your book, uh, uh, that has to do with possibilities. So, uh, I mean, of course, we can imagine what we think are possible things. Possible scenarios, possible futures, and things that we deem to be impossible. But I mean, how can we know whether something is possible or impossible? How do we do that?

23:08 Suki Finn: Yeah, um, well, I suppose the the way I look at it in my book is um through the example of eggs. So that's the food example I've chosen for this. And um so when we have an egg and we crack it, there's this possibility that um it's has a double yolk as opposed to a singular yolk. So there there is that sense of chance or possibility there. Um, BUT it seems quite different to the sort of possibility that it that we crack it and there's a chick in there or a different animal entirely. Um, AND again, completely different, um, sense of possibility or impossibility to cracking it and it having a double yolk and not a double yolk. Um, SO trying to, uh, measure or understand the differences between these types of possibility, um, in compare in comparison with impossible outcomes, um, is philosophically up for grabs. There are many different, uh, ways of, of trying to do it, um, through like. Frequency or um through just uh reducing it to ignorance or through um possible we

24:26 Ricardo Lopes: we can we can also use we can also resort to probability and statistics, right.

24:30 Suki Finn: Yeah, yeah. But in the question there would be, are we putting the cart before the horse? Um, IS it that those uh probabilities and stat statistics are just reporting back on what the what the possibilities are, um, rather than the, um, so they kind of just doing the descriptive work if you like. Um, SO. Yeah, trying to understand whether there's actual possibilities in the world, um, is, um, yeah, another metaphysical open question, I suppose.

25:12 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, because going back to, going back to physics, I mean, there's this idea that, that there could be other universes if we live in a multiverse. Of course, there could be other universes with different laws of physics, but I mean, how can we know that that's even possible? I mean, that could just be impossible. I mean it's just a It's just an idea that we have, right, and it's, I mean, at least for now with the technological limitations that we have, it doesn't seem to me to even be empirically testable. So it's just, and what, what would those alternative laws of physics even be, you know, so.

26:01 Suki Finn: Yeah, I mean, I so. It is also not just me uh physical but a metaphysical question, a way of um conceptualizing possibility through um the idea of the the multiverse or through uh what uh David Lewis calls possible worlds. Um, AND so we understand possibility um via um. Them being represented um in a world where that possible thing is actual. So, um, but of course not all possibilities are made equal. Some things are uh less possible than others and some require a change in physical laws, like you say, some require a change in logical laws. Um, AND so. Uh, We can think of these possible worlds um as being nearer or further away from our one by virtue of how similar. Um, THEY might be. Um, BUT then there's this other question as to whether what we've deemed an impossible world is actually just a really, really far away world, um, in a world or rather than a world that just is never actualized. Um, SO we have another instance of struggling to grapple with negativity, um, by trying to push it through this framework of, uh, possible, um. Possible worlds. Um, BUT yeah, the question that you ask regarding its sort of verifiability, um, I suppose one way of thinking about the possible worlds analysis is just as a, a framework, a model for understanding possibility. But then there are others who really think that they are real, who are realists about these possible worlds. And say that yes, there really actually are all these different possible worlds, but they're gonna be um ultimately completely inaccessible from our current from our actual world. So of course they'll be unverifiable. Um AND then um another meta metaphysical question would be, can we really claim to know anything that is unverifiable. If by very it's very definition, um, it's not something that can be verified, how much credence can we really give to it? Um, SO it depends how helpful you think the framework is without having to go down the realist route for understanding possibility. Um, ESPECIALLY when we recognize that those alternative possible worlds are always gonna be alternative to the actual world, and we are only right here in the actual world, and that's all we have access to.

28:58 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, because I was also thinking, let's say that a scientist makes a prediction and then it comes out negative, that the prediction was wrong. So was the prediction that he made a possibility, or since it came out negative, it's just impossible? I mean, how should we approach such a question?

29:25 Suki Finn: Mhm. I suppose that sort of leads into quite deterministic or almost fatalistic territory where things either are true and actual or they're not. And there isn't really anything in between. So on that sort of framework you might think that there are no chances or possibilities of any alternatives, um. And anything that might have seemed to be possible um is just a mere measure of our ignorance as to whether it is or will be actual. Um, SO if something turns out to be false, um. Is that, does that mean that it could never ever have been well. This is again one of those big questions as to um whether we conflate um all the nonactual with the impossible or whether some non actual things can be seen as being possible um to different extents. um AND how we measure um that difference and articulate that difference in a reasoned way, it's quite hard to come up with.

30:33 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, so, uh, uh, changing topics, you also talk about objectivity and subjectivity, and I guess that since you're resorting to food analogies, this is very irrelevant in the sense that People discuss whether, for example, taste is merely subjective. So I mean, is it merely subjective or what, how should we approach such a question from a philosophical perspective?

31:05 Suki Finn: Yeah, um, so you're right that this is one of the themes or topics in the book that has a far more direct relevance to food given that taste is the prime example I think that people appeal to in order to motivate that some things are subjective. But this very um. Binary, um, or distinction between the objective and the subjective is one that I think we can challenge by looking to the, the overlap, by looking to the gaps, um, and also to notice whether really anything falls, um, only on one side or the other. Um, AND I'm not sure that there is anything or anywhere that the subject is not, um. And therefore not sure whether anything is really purely sub uh objective. Um, SO, so that that dichotomy, that binary is is one that I think is worth, um, challenging a bit or complexifying. Um, BUT when it comes to taste, yeah, I think even the the way that we speak of taste has different, um. Different connotations or different meanings to it, so, um, some say that there is a non-subjective, um, fact of the matter as to what a lemon or some other food tastes like, um. Namely that a lemon is zesty and that's like a a non-subjective matter of taste or what it tastes like. But then there's this other way of talking about taste which is whether uh what our own taste for lemon or zesty things is like and that might be a matter of preference. So what it tastes like versus um whether we like the taste or what our tastes in zesty foods are, um, they seem to be maybe different things, um, where. Um, I think people try to appeal, I suppose, to the latter being a kind of subjective form of taste and the former being more of an objective, uh, form of taste.

33:16 Ricardo Lopes: OK, so do you think that if I say chocolate ice cream is the best ice cream out there and my brother says no, it's strawberry, strawberry ice cream that we can that we can ever objectively tell which one of us is right.

33:39 Suki Finn: Oh, it's an age old question, chocolate or strawberry ice cream. Um, um, WELL, I think best for what purpose or best for who. That's, I don't know if there's any such notion of, um, these values or judgments that aren't somewhat context sensitive. And so it might be true that chocolate is best for you. And you are correct when you utter the phrase that chocolate ice cream is best, um, whereas your brother, it might be that what is best for him is strawberry, and so it's true when he says that strawberry is is best for him. So making things context sensitive is a. It is important to know um what we mean when we're talking about in

34:29 Ricardo Lopes: in in that context, both of us would be right because both er claims would be true, but only in a subjective sense, correct.

34:41 Suki Finn: Well, I suppose, er. You can also have best talking about bestness um for a different for a specific purpose and that purpose might be a non subjective purpose. um, SO yeah, I'd it's it's a it's a tricky one, that people love to, you know, riff about in order to, um. Say oh look, everything is relative or whatever, you know, it's a kind of a cliched. Thing to to spout. Um, BUT I think a way of making that that cliche of everything is relative more um. Intellectually interesting is not to always make that relativity relative to a specific subject, but to think more about the a wider context of things and um what role things are playing um because it's within, it's for a certain role that something might be best for um. So yeah, it's not always just about the subject dictating um bestness for themselves. It's it's sometimes there's far more to a context than that.

36:09 Ricardo Lopes: So, but it's one thing to talk about food preferences, but if, for example, we are talking about moral values, or at least this is something that people tend to do, I would imagine that perhaps certain some philosophers would disagree with what is common sense, let's say. But when, when people talk about moral values, they tend to think about them as being special. All kinds of values that are different from just food tastes or even sometimes aesthetic values. They, they think that there's something more to them, something more serious or objective to them, something more concrete to them. So I mean, do you think that, uh, do you think that we should approach moral values as being different from other kinds of values?

37:07 Suki Finn: Mhm. All the big questions, um. Yeah, I mean, in the book I discussed this with respect to cheese, so I still bring it back to food. Um, AND thinking of cheese, which people do have moral, um, positions on because it's a, a food product. Um, AND so they have this negative value judgment about it with respect to its ethical status. Um, AND that might interact with the aesthetic judgment of it too. Um, AND it might go like both ways. So I think there are ways that our judgments interact with each other such that we can't always sharply distinguish, um, what is only a moral matter, what is only an aesthetic matter, um, what is only a political matter. I think they, they all, um. Inter are intertwined in some way, um. But whether those values are always only in the eye of the beholder or the person doing the judging or whether they track um like you mentioned, some sort of universal standard of what is objectively good um for all people, all times, all places, that's that's another open question, but, um, as you can probably tell from my answers to some of your other questions, I don't really think that there is some like. Recipe book I suppose um of reality that fixes any of these things, um, that's beyond us, um, and that we're actually some of the creative agents, um, in, in constituting those values, whether they're moral, political, aesthetic, and so on.

38:55 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, yeah, I mean, me personally, and I've had also this conversation on the show with other philosophers, but I've also talked about it with anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, but because my background is more in science, it's easier for me to fall more on the camp of moral anti-realism because it's easier for me to understand, for example, how the values in the Particular society develop in particular ecological, economic, uh, socioeconomic, uh, political contexts, and then just to look at diversity across societies and think, oh no, there's nothing really objective about this, it's just, I mean contextual or whatever you want to call it, but there are many philosophers who even if they have that kind of more anthropological and social science knowledge, they disagree and they say that there's still something that is more objective to morality, you know. Um, INTERESTING that

40:07 Suki Finn: that's the one, that morality is the thing that pulls people towards some sense of objectivity. Um, YEAH, I'm, I'm not sure if that's, that's the way I go. I think I do end up quite, um. Nihilistic almost when I'm. Digging and digging away at at reality, trying to make sense of things, trying to, you know, I think it's comforting to be able to have something to point to like oh that that's the book of of reality and we can appeal to these rules and those values and um to, I don't know, give some fixed ground to it. But I'm not sure really that there is anything that is so fixed, that is so beyond um. Malleability and uh construction that we've played a a role in in constituting so um yeah, I'm interested also to hear how um the anthropologists, the sociologists, the scientists answer these questions differently. I find that fascinating. Um, IF there is a kind of theme that you found or convergence or lack of convergence across these disciplines,

41:18 Ricardo Lopes: I, I, I mean it depends. Some of them just, uh, say that they don't know because they don't have enough philosophical training to ask to answer the question of whether. Moral values are objective or not, so some of them just refuse to answer that question and they say it falls outside of their expertise. But then you also have philosophers like, for example, Dr. Owen Flanagan, who is very much a moral anti-realist, but because he's heavily influenced by anthropology and other fields like that, so. You know, but, but then, but then, yeah, there are also psychologists and anthropologists who claim in a straightforward way, no, there's no objectivity to moral values at all. I mean, if you just study human psychology or anthropology, if you study different societies, it's pretty obvious that uh moral values are context dependent, so. And that's, yeah, that's the answer. So, there's a variability also among scientists and among philosophers, and some philosophers are, uh, uh, are very much scientifically minded and some scientists are a little bit more philosophically minded, you know, so. There is a variability. I personally tend to be more convinced by moral anti-realism than moral realism, but that's just my position through that I got through years of talking about that topic with philosophers and scientists, so

42:56 Suki Finn: yeah, fair enough.

42:59 Ricardo Lopes: OK, so let me ask you another kind of question. So is it possible for us to know anything at all? I mean, and this is sort of the radical skeptic position. I mean the radical skeptics would say no, it's not possible for us to know anything at all, or at least to know anything at all with any degree of certainty, so. Uh, WHAT is your approach to that? Um,

43:33 Suki Finn: IT actually relates a bit to what we were just discussing on objectivity and subjectivity, because it might be that, um. Some people might think that subjectivity or context sensitivity or having values um that run all the way down through our uh through our through our knowledge formation um actually might get in the way of saying that we can know anything. um BUT I don't I don't think that has to be the case and the things that might, uh, it just actually clarifies what sort of things it is that we can know. If we require. We'll set our standards so high to require some sort of untouched or untouchable reasoning, um, in order to gain knowledge, then yeah, gonna lead you to skepticism because it might, you might find that nothing can meet those standards. Um, SO again I think that. Uh, CONTEXT is something that is helpful, um, to appeal to what it is that we want to know something for. So, like, um, I know that, uh, that this water will quench my thirst, um, but maybe I don't know radically that that I'm not dreaming or not a brain in a vat, um, but that's not gonna prevent me from drinking the water, um, so. Like there are certain contexts within different forms of knowledge or er standards for knowledge um are the ones that are salient, so right now I'm gonna drink some water. And I, I, that's quenched my thirst. So, um. That's kind of, yeah, different bits of knowledge player different roles and have different standards depending on the context, I think.

45:33 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, this, this at least to some extent gets me thinking about how, for example, Western science deals with a more traditional uh or how do you call it, indigenous forms of knowledge in the sense that uh we tend to think. That any kind of knowledge that is not a proper science is not real knowledge and for example, if in a tribe people instead of using a system of classification for biological organisms. uh, LIKE, for example, all kingdom and family and genus and species and all of that, they just classify them in terms of all the, uh, I can eat these plants. Those plants are non-edible. I can use them for medicine or something like that, that, that is not. Real, uh, science and the, and sometimes people even go all the way to say that, that, that's not, uh, true, uh, in the sense that that's not real knowledge. The only real knowledge out there is knowledge that is scientifically established. I mean, how do you approach such questions?

47:02 Suki Finn: Yeah, I mean, you've given some really good examples as to how um Western society kind of think is imposing its uh. Epistemology, I suppose, how it understands knowledge onto um other other ways of knowing um and dismissing other ways of knowing um because of its kind of colonial um way of like understanding reality. Um. And I think that, you know, that is really unjust and inaccurate and um. Not gonna lead us to the fullest pictures of reality. And so yeah, there are. Different ways of knowing. And trying to privilege one way above another. Is already to have um. Set the scale in favor of one form over another by using the conditions of what classifies as knowledge as um, assuming that that works better than another. Sorry, I've articulated that so badly, but using the example that you mentioned earlier with unverifiability, you know. If that is um if what makes something verifiable is only through some sort of Western uh style of scientific experiments, then you've already um set the scales against anything that doesn't meet that sort of standard or works in a completely different way. Um, AND so yeah, it's worth challenging. Um, THOSE, those assumptions that we're making as to what qualifies as, um. A condition for for knowledge, um, by learning that there are alternative ways of knowing, embodied ways of knowing, indigenous ways of knowing.

49:12 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, and it's interesting because I mean if you follow, if we follow the strictly the scientific script of only believing that the only true knowledge is the one that we can empirically test, then we, I mean people could even make a case for dismissing things like logic and mathematics because I mean, you can't empirically test logics, for example, right?

49:46 Suki Finn: Yeah. Yeah, I think there's there's definitely a sort of double standard thing that goes on when we dismiss certain disciplines or um epistemologies as mystical, when I don't know what's more mystical than as you described thinking about like, uh, maths or logic. These are these are quite mystical. Um, AND there's always some, I suppose, leap of faith into uh. Into a certain framework that you can't back up by virtue of something independent because that justification would already have come from within the framework that you're working with. And so there is no. External kind of uh place that we can judge things um a view from nowhere I guess um that we can judge things against each other. We're always working with what we've got in a way and um there's. Yeah, so, so yeah, I'll stop there. I know I'm, I'm babbling.

50:59 Ricardo Lopes: No, no, no worries at all. Well, I mean, let me ask you this then, and going back to a food example. Um, WHAT is the distinction between a potato and a chip? I mean, are, are these two different things? I mean, when we turn a potato into a chip, has it transformed in any sort of relevant way in the sense that we can talk about two distinct entities? Is it the same entity but just in two different forms? I mean, how should we approach this question?

51:37 Suki Finn: Yeah, so back into the playground of metaphysics, is it? Um, SO yeah, in, yeah, in the book, um, I, I use this example of the potato and the chip to articulate, um, uh, another metaphysical puzzle of, uh, co-location and constitution. Um, SO we might think that. There's a question as to whether there are two things there, where, where the chip is, the chip itself and also what it's made of, namely the potato. Um, AND it might be that we can find differences between the chip and the potato. They might have different persistence conditions, things that they can survive. Um, FOR example, we could squish the the chip, entirely, flatten it. The potato is still there, it's just in a different arrangement, but the chip is destroyed. And because of this distinction that we can make between the chip and the potato that one can survive something that the other doesn't, or we can ascribe properties to the chip that we don't, to the potato or vice versa, makes them, makes it seem like there's more than one thing there. But then that means that we've got two things co-locating, um, the chip and the potato in the same place at the same time. And um this, you know, creates quite a a strange metaphysical picture, um. But er if if they're distinct and so yeah, I think that it's another one of those um puzzles that in philosophy that aren't really resolved. There are different ways of trying to um understand um this puzzle, um, but it's not one that I put forward my own unique um uh resolution to.

53:35 Ricardo Lopes: Uh, I mean, if we change the composition of things, does that necessarily impact their identity? So for example, I mean, giving an example that is not food related. So let's say that little by little I started replacing body parts with artificial parts. With robot parts and I would become a cyborg, but then I would go on until I replaced every single body part of mine with a robot part. I mean, would there still be enough Ricardo in the robot for it to be Ricardo, or at a certain point, would it just be a robot and there would be no Ricardo

54:22 Suki Finn: there? The classic metaphysical puzzle, um, sometimes known as the the ship of Theseus because that's kind of precisely what happens with the ship is, um, that plank by plank it gets, uh, replaced. And you could even think about those planks that are taken out being rebuilt. Um, SOMEWHERE else and so then which, which ship is the ship of Theseus. Um, SO, but you know, in, in the book I do do this with food because I do, I do all of the analogies and the examples to food, um, with respect to, uh, soup, I think I do it with, so replacing bit by bit the soup, um, having like some sort of perpetual soup or perpetual stew and trying to understand identity over time and identity through change, um. Because, um, everything does change, you know, we're, you, you talk about your yourself like we're changing all the time, we're kind of shedding bits and, um, we're in eating as well, we're ingesting things and they, I

55:34 Ricardo Lopes: mean even it seems like every 7 years, every single atom in our body gets changed. It's a different atom, so you know.

55:43 Suki Finn: Yeah, so, so food um and how it integrates into our being and how we then excrete some as well and is one way of really showing how all the time we are changing. So change seems to be something that's unavoidable. And yet if our identities, as your question asks, um, rests on things being fixed, like trying to pinpoint. The planks of Theseus's ship or the atoms that constitute you, um, then, uh, nothing really would persist through time, um, or through change. And it makes us really question the very basic, uh, building blocks of reality as to whether they're even building blocks at all. um, BECAUSE blocks kind of give the impression that things are static, um. So an alternative way to make sense of this flux in reality is to kind of let go of this uh Lego like um formation of reality, things being static, static things, um, and instead embrace what is known as a a process ontology or a process metaphysics, um, where. Where we have a more kind of horizontal look of um across change um in order to capture what our identity, um, is. So yeah, I think food is one of these great. Uh, EVERYDAY examples that when we think a little bit harder about it, it can challenge our most basic assumptions about reality and about the self, about the boundaries of the self and about the building blocks or processes, um, in reality.

57:33 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, that bit about substance ontology versus process ontology is very interesting because I mean we can even apply a complex systems approach to human psychology and instead of thinking about even things as basic as identity or the self as having some sort of essence to it that I mean what happens is that there's not an essence. Or a substance there it's, it's rather a process and it's always, it's ever changing, of course, even if I change psychologically, I keep identifying as Ricardo, so, but it's not because I have a psychological essence that doesn't change. It's just that I mean I have this sort of, perhaps we could think about it more of a sort of. Cultural construct where people have given me this name Ricardo and whatever happens uh in my brain or even the rest of my body over time uh doesn't prevent me from still identifying as. Myself, but it's not because I have a psychological essence in me, even, but that's a very, I mean, the substance ontology is very prevalent in the more, in more mainstream psychology and Western science where, for example, we tend to think about. Psychological traits as being sort of as substances, as things that we have in our psychology that even if they change, there's still an unchanged core to them, you know, something along those lines, right.

59:32 Suki Finn: Yeah, I think that the the whole concept of identity and how we identify and what we identify with and what it is that keeps us persisting as the same thing over time and over change is is really fascinating. And um it may well be. That, um, processual views are better equipped to provide answers um to those questions than a than a substance ontology or a thing ontology that tries to locate, um, identity and something fixed when, you know, nothing really is is that fixed.

1:00:16 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, OK, so look, I have one final question, and of course I couldn't end the interview without asking you this because it's like even in philosophy it's the most important question ever. I mean, even Camus said that maybe the most important question is whether we should commit suicide or not, but I think this is actually the most important question. I mean, should pineapple go on pizza or not?

1:00:47 Suki Finn: Oh, that's so funny. Um, SHOULD is maybe. Uh, THE, not the words that I would use. It, it could. Um, I prefer it not to. Um, SO, oh, I don't know. If you're a purist about like what constitutes, uh, a legitimate pizza topping, then you might be anti, anti pineapple. But again, in like relevant to the previous question, things change, norms change. What becomes a legit, um, pizza topping is again, uh, something that we can um. Influence, so the more people that put it on on on as a topping. Yeah, maybe the more it becomes accepted as as a legitimate topic.

1:01:42 Ricardo Lopes: Oh, so you're you're one of those pineapple haters. Is that it? Oh,

1:01:47 Suki Finn: no, I'm just, I'm just quite despite having written a book, uh, with food as all the examples. I'm quite a basic food eater and I'm so. Um, YEAH, I'd say that it, that pineapple takes me too far out of my comfort zone for what I enjoy in a pizza.

1:02:09 Ricardo Lopes: Well, so, so you know, when there's doubt, I always tend to defer to the experts and uh I've seen evidence of Italian people eating pineapple pizza. So I think there's enough there to make a case for er er pineapple er er a case for that pineapple can go on pizza and it's still a proper pizza.

1:02:37 Suki Finn: So yeah, I mean it certainly is going on pizza. The question that you originally posed was should it? It is happening, it is happening, so we might as well get used to it. OK,

1:02:53 Ricardo Lopes: so, uh, I mean, unfortunately, we ended up not answering the most important question ever, but anyway, that's philosophy for you, I guess.

1:03:02 Suki Finn: So they get asked, but maybe they don't get answered. Yeah.

1:03:08 Ricardo Lopes: OK, so the book is again What's in the Donut Hole and Other Philosophical Food for Thought. I will of course be leaving a link to it in the description of the interview. And Dr. Finn, apart from the book, would you like to tell people where they can find you and your work on the internet?

1:03:27 Suki Finn: Oh, OK, cool, thank you. Um, SO, yeah, the book is published by Icon. It came out in May 2026, which is last month, uh, for now. Um, AND yeah, that can be found on Icon's website. Otherwise, I don't have any social media, but I do have a website myself that links to lots of my other work. Um, SO this book and also my previous book that I edited called Women of Ideas. Um, MY website is www.ski Finn.com. Um, YOU spell my name, S U K I F I N N. Um, AND yeah, so from there you can find, um, my theoretical academic work as well as my public engagement stuff as well as music. Um, SO, um, yeah, that's where you can find me.

1:04:17 Ricardo Lopes: Great, and look, I really love the book and if you're open to it, uh, I would love to do an episode with you on Philomena Kunk.

1:04:28 Suki Finn: So. 00 my God, I am absolutely open to that. Oh yeah, she's such a hero of mine. Um, IF you're, if you're listening, Diane Morgan, I, I love you. Um, SO yeah, OK, cool. So let's plan for, for a Philomena Kunk exploring the philosophy of Philomena Kunk on the dissenter. I'm well up for that.

1:04:50 Ricardo Lopes: OK, great. So thank you so much for, for doing this. It's been really fun and informative. So thank you so much.

1:04:58 Suki Finn: Oh no, it's been my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me back and for engaging with the book. I really appreciate it. It's been great having to talk to you again.

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