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author | p <grr@lo2.org> | 2024-11-23 01:54:49 -0500 |
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committer | p <grr@lo2.org> | 2024-11-23 01:54:49 -0500 |
commit | d467901be55b07885bd6b1b5baaddf0481832249 (patch) | |
tree | 572efef02773d5bff273b617b1dc38d606ac7a90 | |
parent | 3eaa10ea811f20bd613b58eb210d3afb0dd88ea1 (diff) | |
download | blueprint-d467901be55b07885bd6b1b5baaddf0481832249.tar.gz |
bunch of work on next 3
-rw-r--r-- | aux.otx | 4 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | blueprint.otx | 6 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | essays/flyntian_modality.otx | 28 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | essays/flyntian_modality.tex | 24 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | essays/philosophy_proper.otx | 220 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | essays/philosophy_proper.tex | 194 | ||||
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@@ -91,6 +91,10 @@ \_firstnoindent}} % --- +\def\afternote#1{{\narrower\it #1}} +\def\inlineaside#1{{\it (#1)}} + +% --- \fontfam[Pagella] \typosize[10/13] diff --git a/blueprint.otx b/blueprint.otx index fcb99b6..2176c5b 100644 --- a/blueprint.otx +++ b/blueprint.otx @@ -94,9 +94,9 @@ colophon goes here \input essays/flaws_underlying_beliefs.otx \input essays/walking_through_walls.otx \input essays/philosophical_reflections.otx -%\input{essays/flyntian_modality.tex} -%\input{essays/some_objections.tex} -%\input{essays/philosophy_proper.tex} +\input essays/flyntian_modality.otx +\input essays/some_objections.otx +\input essays/philosophy_proper.otx } % \part{Esthetics} diff --git a/essays/flyntian_modality.otx b/essays/flyntian_modality.otx new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c1dc7b4 --- /dev/null +++ b/essays/flyntian_modality.otx @@ -0,0 +1,28 @@ +\blankstyle + +\chap Instructions for the Flyntian Modality + +\vfill + +\begitems\style n +* Stop all \dq{gross believing,} such as belief in other minds, causality, and the phantom entities of science (atoms, electrons, etc). + +* Stop thinking in propositional language. + +* Stop all scientific hypothesizing. Do not consider your \dq{sightings} of the empire state building as confirmations that it is there when you are not looking at it---or for that matter, as confirmations that it is there when you \e{are} looking at it. + +* Stop organizing visual experiences and tactile experiences into object-gestalts. Stop organizing so-called \dq{different spatial orientations or different touched surfaces of objects} into object-gestalts. That is, stop having perceptions of objects. + +* Stop believing in past and future time. That is, live out of time. Stop feeling longing, dread, or regret. + +* Stop believing that you can move your body. + +* Stop believing that these instructions have any objective meaning. + +* You are now free to walk through walls (if you can find them). +\enditems + +\vfill + +\break +\mainstyle
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/essays/flyntian_modality.tex b/essays/flyntian_modality.tex deleted file mode 100644 index 097648e..0000000 --- a/essays/flyntian_modality.tex +++ /dev/null @@ -1,24 +0,0 @@ -\chapter{Instructions for the Flyntian Modality} - -{\sloppy - -\begin{enumerate}[label=\arabic*., nosep, itemsep=0.5em] - -\item \textsc{Stop all \enquote{gross believing,} such as belief in other minds, causality, and the phantom entities of science (atoms, electrons, \etc).} - -\item \textsc{Stop thinking in propositional language.} - -\item \textsc{Stop all scientific hypothesizing. Do not consider your "sightings" of the empire state building as confirmations that it is there when you are not looking at it --- or for that matter, as confirmations that it is there when you \emph{are} looking at it.} - -\item \textsc{Stop organizing visual experiences and tactile experiences into object-gestalts. Stop organizing so-called "different spatial orientations or different touched surfaces of objects" into object-gestalts. That is, stop having perceptions of objects.} - -\item \textsc{Stop believing in past and future time. That is, live out of time. Stop feeling longing, dread, or regret.} - -\item \textsc{Stop believing that you can move your body.} - -\item \textsc{Stop believing that these instructions have any objective meaning.} - -\item \textsc{You are now free to walk through walls (if you can find them).} -\end{enumerate} - -}
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/essays/philosophy_proper.otx b/essays/philosophy_proper.otx new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9a20767 --- /dev/null +++ b/essays/philosophy_proper.otx @@ -0,0 +1,220 @@ +\chap Philosophy Proper (\dq{Version 3,} 1961) + +% \renewcommand{\thesubsection}{\arabic{subsection}} +\_def\_thesecnum{\uppercase\_ea{\_athe\_secnum}} +\_def\_theseccnum{\_the\_seccnum} + +%\_def\_seccfont{\_scalemain\_typoscale[\_magstep1/\_magstep1]\_boldify} +%\_def\_printsecc#1{\_par +% \_abovetitle{\_penalty-101}{\_medskip\_smallskip} +% {\_seccfont \_noindent \_raggedright \_printrefnum[@\_quad]#1\_nbpar}% +% \_nobreak \_belowtitle{\_medskip}% +% \_firstnoindent +%} + +% \fancyhead{} \fancyfoot{} \fancyfoot[LE,RO]{\thepage} +% \fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{Philosophy Proper (Version 3)}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{1. Introduction}} + +% \setcounter{subsection}{0} +\secc Introduction (Revised, 1973) + +This monograph defines philosophy as such---philosophy proper---to be an inquiry as to which beliefs are \dq{true,} or right. The right beliefs are tentatively defined to be \stress{the beliefs one does not deceive oneself by holding.}Although beliefs will be regarded as mental acts, they will be identified by their propositional formulations. Provisionally, beliefs may be taken as corresponding to \stress{non-tautologous propositions.} + +Philosophy proper is an ultimate activity in the sense that no belief or supposed knowledge is conceded to be above philosophical examination. It is also an unavoidable activity in the sense that the notion of a belief, and the notion of judging the truth of a belief, are intrinsic to common sense and the natural language. Philosophers may not have achieved convincing results in philosophy proper; but the question of which beliefs are right is continuously posed for us even if we do not respect the way in which philosophers have dealt with it. + +All of the obstacles to philosophy proper arise because beliefs are normally held in order to satisfy non-cognitive needs. It will be helpful to examine this situation at some length. However, nothing can be done here beyond examining the situation. It is already clear that the interest of this monograph in beliefs is cognitive. It would be inappropriate to try to gain approval for philosophy proper by appealing to the values of those who hold beliefs in order to satisfy non-cognitive needs. + +It is implicit in beliefs that they correspond to cognitive claims, that they are subject to being judged true or false, and that their value rests on their truth. Nevertheless, beliefs can and do satisfy non-cognitive needs, quite apart from whether they are true. In order for a belief to satisfy some non-cognitive need, it is not necessary for the belief to be true; it merely has to be held. Concern with the ultimate philosophical validity of beliefs is rare. Concern with beliefs is normally concern with their ability to satisfy non-cognitive needs. + +To be specific, the literature of credulity contains remarks such as \dq{\e{I could not stand to live if I did not believe so-and-so,}} or \dq{\e{Even if so-and-so is true I don't want to know it.}} These remarks manifest the needs with which we are concerned. To take note of these remarks is already to uncover a level of self-deception. It is important to realize that this self-deception is explicit and self-admitted. To recognize it has nothing to do with imputing subconscious motives to behavior, as is done in psychoanalysis. Further, to recognize it is by no means to advance a theory of the ultimate origin of beliefs, a theory which would presuppose a judgment as to the philosophical validity of the beliefs. To theorize that the ultimate origin of beliefs lies in the denial of frustrating experiences, or in primal anxieties which are alleviated by mythological inventions, would be inappropriate when we have not even begun our properly philosophical inquiry. The only self-deceptions being considered here are admitted self-deceptions. + +A partial classification of the circumstances in which beliefs are held for non-cognitive reasons follows. +\vskip 0.5em +\begitems\style n +* Beliefs may be directly tied to one's morale. \dq{\e{I couldn't stand to live if I didn't believe in God.}} \dq{\e{If President Nixon is guilty I don't want to know it.}} + +* One may believe for reasons of conformity. The conversion of Jews to Catholicism in late medieval Spain was an extreme example. + +* The American philosopher Santayana said that he believed in Catholicism for esthetic reasons. + +* Moral doctrines are sometimes justified on the grounds of their efficacy in maintaining public order, rather than their philosophical validity. + +* A more complicated and more interesting situation arises when one who claims to be engaged in a cognitive inquiry somehow circumscribes the inquiry so as to ensure in advance that it will yield certain preferred results. Such a circumscribed inquiry will be called \term{theologizing,} in recognition of the archetypal activity in this category. +\enditems +\vskip 0.5em + +When we raise the question of whether the natural sciences are instances of theologizing, it becomes apparent that the issue of non-cognitive motives for beliefs is no light matter. According to writers on the scientific method such as A. d'Abro, the scientist is compelled to operate as if he believed in the \dq{\e{real existence of a real absolute objective universe---a common objective world, one existing independently of the observer who discovers it bit by bit.}} The scientist holds this belief, even though it is a commonplace of college philosophy courses that it is unprovable, because he must do so in order to get on to the sort of results he considers desirable. The scientist claims to be engaged in a cognitive inquiry; yet the inquiry begins with an act of faith which it is impermissible to scrutinize. It follows that science is an instance of \term{theologizing.} If scientists cannot welcome a demonstration that their \dq{metaphysical} presuppositions are invalid, then their interest in science cannot be cognitive. + +The scientist's non-cognitive motive for believing differs from the non-cognitive motives described earlier in one notable respect. Each of the non-cognitive needs described earlier required a given belief, and could not be satisfied by that belief's negation. But inside a science's circumscribed area of inquiry, the scientist can welcome the establishment of either of two contradictory propositions; in other words, his non-cognitive need can be satisfied by either proposition. It is in this sense that he can impartially test or decide between two propositions, or make new discoveries. On the other hand, with regard to the metaphysical presuppositions of science, only a single alternative is welcome. + +\vskip 0.5em +\begitems\style n\itemnum=5 +* Academicians will readily acknowledge that they are not interested in scholarly work by unknown persons with no academic credentials. To academic mathematicians and biologists, whether Galois and Mendel had made valid discoveries was irrelevant. Thus, academicians as academicians circumscribe their purported interest in the cognitive in two ways---once as scientists; and once for reasons of personal gain and prestige. + +* The strangest instance of a non-cognitive need for a belief is provided by the person who holds a fearful belief which is widely considered to be superstitious, such as belief in Hell. As always, the test of whether the motive for the belief is cognitive is the question of whether the person would welcome a demonstration that the belief is invalid. There is reason to suspect that persons who cling to fearful beliefs would not welcome such a demonstration, perverse as their attitude may seem. After all, they take no comfort in the widespread rejection of the belief as superstitious. Thus, it seems that a masochistic need for fearful beliefs must be recognized. +\enditems + +\vskip 0.5em + +This examination of non-cognitive motives for beliefs is, to repeat, limited to circumstances in which there is explicit self-deception, or self-deception that can be demonstrated directly from internal evidence. The examination cannot be carried further unless we become able to judge whether the beliefs referred to are, after all, valid. Thus, we will now turn to our properly philosophical inquiry, which will occupy the remainder of this monograph. + +\vfill + +\afternote{(Note: Chapters 2--7 were written in 1961, at a time when I used unconventional syntax and punctuation. They are printed here without change.)} + +\vfill + +\break +\sec The Linguistic Solution of Properly Philosophical Problems +\secc Preliminary Concepts +%\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{A. The Linguistic Solution}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{1. Preliminary Concepts}} + +In this part of the book I will be concerned to solve the problem of philosophy proper, the problem of which beliefs are right, by discussing language, certain linguistic expressions. To motivate what follows I might tentatively say that I will consider beliefs as represented by statements, formulations of them (for example, \dq{Other persons have minds} as representing the belief that other persons have minds), so that the problem will be which statements are true. Actually, to solve this problem we will be driven far beyond answers to the effect that given statements are true (or false). + +To make this book as engaging as possible, I would like to start right into the solution of the problem, to begin with the material in the next chapter. However, it effects, I think, a considerable clarification and simplification of the presentation of the solution if I first introduce certain concepts in an extended discussion. Then, when they enter into the solution they won't have to be just suggested in a condensed explanation which has to be repeated over and over. Thus, this chapter will be a properly philosophically neutral introduction of the concepts, an introduction which doesn't in itself say anything about the rightness of given beliefs (or the truth of given statements). The chapter is as a result not so interesting as the others, but I hope the reader will bear with me through it. + +The first concept is a new one, that of \e{explication}. Explication of a familiar linguistic expression is what might traditionally be said to be finding a definition of the expression; it amounts partly to determining what it is wanted that the expression \dq{mean}. To explain: I will be discussing philosophically important expressions, familiar to the reader, such that their \dq{meaning} needs clarifying, such that it is not clear to him how he wants to use them. I will be concerned with the suggestion of expressions, of which the \dq{meanings}, uses, are clear, which will be acceptable to the reader as replacements for the expressions of which the uses are obscure; that is, which have the uses that, it will turn out, the expressions of which the uses are obscure are supposed to have. Since the expressions which are to be replacements can be equivalent as expressions (sounds, bodies of marks) to the expressions they are to replace, it can also be said that I will be concerned with the suggestion of clear \stress{uses}, of the expressions of which the uses are obscure, which are, it will turn out, the uses the reader wants the expressions to have. To be more specific about the conditions of acceptability of such replacements, if the familiar expressions (expressions of which the uses were obscure) were supposed to be names, have referents (and non-referents), then the new expressions must clearly have referents. Further, the new expressions must deserve (by having appropriate referents in the case of names) the principal connotations of the familiar expressions, especially the distinctive, honorific connotations of the familiar expressions. (I will not say here just how I use \dq{connotation}. What the connotations of an expression are will be suggested by giving sentences about, in the case of a supposed name for example, what the referents of the expression are supposed to be like.) \dq{Finding}, or constructing, an expression (with its use) supposed to be acceptable to oneself as a replacement, of the kind described, for an expression familiar to oneself, will be said to be \term{explicating} the expression familiar to oneself. The expression to be replaced will be said to be the \term{explicandum}, and the suggested replacement, the \term{explication}. Incidentally, if clarification shows that the desired use of the explicandum is inconsistent, then it can't have an explication at all acceptable, or what is the same thing, any explication will be as good as any other. + +I should mention that my use of \term{explication} is different from that of Rudolph Carnap, from whom I have taken the word rather than use the very problematic \term{definition}. For him, explication is a scientist's, or philosopher of science's, devising a new precise concept, useful in natural science, suggested by a vague, unclear common concept (for example, that of \dq{work}); whereas for me it is in effect constructing (if possible) that precise, clear concept which is the nearest equivalent to an unclear common concept. + +Here is an example in the acceptability of explications. Suppose that an expression is suggested, as an explication for \dq{thing having a mind} (if supposed to be a name, have referents), which has as referents precisely the things which have certain facial expressions, or talk, or have certain other \dq{overt} behavior, or even certain brain electricity. Then I expect that this expression will not be acceptable to the reader as an explication for \dq{thing having a mind}, since \dq{thing having a mind} presumably has the connotations for the reader \dq{\stress{that having a mind is not the same as, is very different from, higher than, having certain facial expressions, talking, certain other overt behaving, or having certain brain electricity---the mind is observable only by the thing having it}}, and the explication doesn't deserve these connotations: the connotations of the explicandum are exclusive of the referents of the proposed explication. It doesn't make any difference if there's a causal connection between having a mind and the other things, because the expression \dq{thing having a mind} itself, and not the supposed effects of having a mind, is what is under discussion. + +As the reader can tell from the example, I will, in evaluating expressions, have to speak of what I assume the connotations of words are for the reader. If any of my assumptions are incorrect, the book will be slightly less relevant to the reader's philosophical problems than it would be otherwise. Even so, the reader should get from this part the method of finding good explications, and its use in solving properly philosophical problems. + +Especially important in deciding whether an explication for a supposed name is good is the check of the referents of the explication against the connotations of the explicandum. Traditional philosophers, in the rare cases when they have suggested explications for expressions in dealing with philosophical problems, have suggested absurdly bad ones, which can quickly be shown up by such a check. Examples which are typically horrible are the explications for \dq{thing having a mind} mentioned above. + +The second concept I will discuss is that of true statement. As I will be discussing the \dq{truth} of formulations of beliefs, statements, in the next two chapters, and as the concept of true statement is quite obscure (making it a good example of one needing explication), it will be helpful for me to clarify the concept beforehand, to give a partial explication for \dq{true statement}. (Partial because the explication, although much clearer than the explicandum, will itself have an unclear word in it.) + +Well, what is a \term{statement}? How do what are usually said to be \term{statements} state? Take a book and look through it, a book in a language you don't read, so you won't assume that it's obvious what it means. What does the book, the object, do? How does it work? Note that talking just about the marks in the book, or what seem (!) to be the rules of their arrangement, or the like, won't answer these questions. In fact, I expect that when the reader really thinks about them, the questions won't seem easy ones to answer. Now to begin answering them, one of the most important connotations of \term{true statement}, and, more generally, of \e{statement}, as traditionally and commonly used, is that a \term{statement} is an \dq{assertion which has truth value} (is true or false) (or \dq{has content}, as it is sometimes said, rather misleadingly). That is, the \dq{verbal} part of a statement is supposed to be related in a certain way to something \dq{non-verbal}, or at least not in the language the verbal part of the statement is in. Further, a statement is supposed to be \dq{true} or not because of something having to do with the non-verbal thing to which the verbal part of the statement is related. (The exceptions are the \dq{statements} of formalist logic and mathematics, which are not supposed to be assertions; they are thus irrelevant to statements of the kind ordinary persons and philosophers are interested in.) Thus, if \dq{\term{true statement}} is to be explicated, \dq{assertion having truth value} and \dq{is true} (and \dq{has content} in a misleading use) have to be explicated, as they are obscure, and as it must be clear that the explication for \dq{\term{true statement}} deserves the connotations which were suggested with \dq{assertion having truth value} and \dq{is true}. One important conclusion from these observations is that although \dq{sentences} (the bodies of sound or bodes of marks such as \dq{The man talks}) are often said to be \dq{statements}, would not be sufficient (to say the least) to explicate \dq{\term{statement}} by simply identifying it with \dq{sentence} (in my sense); something must be said about such matters as that of being an assertion having truth value. For the same reason, it is not sufficient (to say the least) to simply identify \dq{\term{statement}}with \dq{sentence}, the latter being explicated in terms of the (\dq{formal}) rules for the formation of (grammatical) sentences, as these rules have no reference to such matters as that of being an assertion having truth value. + +In explicating \dq{\term{true statement}} I will use the most elegant approach, one relevant to the interest in such matters as that of being an assertion having truth value. This is to begin by describing a simple, if not the simplest, way to make an assertion. As an example, I will describe the simplest way to make the assertion that a thing is a table. The way is to \dq{apply} \ul{table} to the thing. It is supposed that \ul{table} has been \dq{interpreted}, that is, that it is \dq{\e{determinate}} to which, of all things, applications of \ul{table} are (to be said to be) \dq{true}. (It is good to realize that it is also supposed that it is \dq{determinate} which, of all things (events), are \dq{occurrences of the word \dq{table}}, are expressions \dq{equivalent to} \ul{table}.) The word \dq{\e{determinate}} is the intentionally ambiguous one in this explication; I don't want to commit myself yet on how an expression becomes interpreted. As for \dq{apply}, one can \dq{apply} the word to the thing by pointing out \dq{first} the word and \dq{then} the thing. \dq{point out} is restricted to refer to \term{ostension}, pointing out things in one's presence, things one is perceiving, and not to \dq{directing attention to things not in one's presence} as well. The assertion is \dq{true}, of course, if and only if the thing to which \ul{table} is applied is one of the things to which it is determinate that the application of \ul{table} is (to be said to be) \dq{true}, otherwise \dq{false}. It should be clear that such a pointing out of a \dq{first} thing and a \dq{second}, the first being an interpreted expression, is an assertion of a simple kind, does have truth value and so forth. Let me further suggest \dq{\term{interpreted expression}} as an explication for \dq{name}; with respect to this explication, the things to which equivalent names (\dq{occurrences of a name}) may be truthfully applied are the referents of the equivalent names, other things being non-referents. (Incidentally, I could have started with the concept of a name and its referents, and then said how to make a simple assertion using a name.) Then what I have intentionally left ambiguous is \e{how a name has referents}; I have not said, for example, whether the relation between name and referents is an \dq{objective, metaphysical entity}, which would be getting into philosophy proper. + +The point of describing this simple way of making an assertion is that what one wants to say are \term{statements}, namely sentences used in the context of certain conventions, can be regarded as assertions of the \dq{simple} kind; thus an explication for \dq{\term{true statement}} can be found. To do so, first let us say that the \term{complex name} gotten by replacing a sentence's \dq{main verb} with the corresponding participle is the \term{associated name} of the sentence. For example, the associated name of \dq{Boston is in Massachusetts} is \dq{Boston being in Massachusetts}. In the case of a sentence with coordinate clauses there may be a choice with respect to what is to be taken as the main verb, but this presents no significant difficulty. + +\vskip 1em + +{\parindent=0pt\parskip=0.3em\leftskip=0.25in\rightskip=0.25in + +Example: +{\bf sentence:} \dq{The table in the room will have been black only if it had been pushed by one man while the other man talked}; + +{\bf main verb:} \dq{will have been} or \dq{had been pushed}.\par} + +\vskip 0.5em + +Also, English may not have a participle to correspond to every verb, but this is in theory no difficulty; the lacking participle could obviously be invented. Now what we would like to say one does, in using a sentence to make a statement, is to so to speak \dq{assert} its associated name; this \dq{asserted name} being \dq{true} if and only if it has a referent. However, one doesn't \e{assert} names; names just have referents---it is statements that one makes, \dq{asserts}, and that are \dq{true} or \dq{false}. How, then, do we explicate this \dq{\term{asserting}} of a name? By construing it as that assertion, of the simple kind, which is the application of \ul{having a referent} to the name. In other words, from our theoretical point of view, to use a sentence to make a statement, one begins with a name (the sentence's associated name), and puts it into the sentence form, an act equivalent by convention to applying \ul{having a referent} to it. For example, the sentence \dq{Boston is in Massachusetts} should be regarded as the simple assertion which is the application of \ul{having a referent} to \dq{Boston being in Massachusetts}. + +Now this approach may seem \dq{unnatural} or incomplete to the reader for several reasons. First there is the syntactical oddity: the sentence is replaced by a statement \dq{about} it (or to be precise its associated name). Well, all I can say is that this oddity is the inevitable result of trying to describe explicitly all that happens when one uses a sentence to make a statement; I can assure the reader that the alternate approaches are even more unnatural. Secondly, it may seem natural enough to speak of interpreting \dq{simple names} (Fries' \term{Class 1 words}), but not so natural to speak of interpreting complex names (what could their referents be?). Of course, this is because complex names are to be regarded as formed from simpler names by specified methods; that is, their interpretations (and thus referents) are in specified relations to those of the simple names from which they are formed. The relations are indicated by the words, in the complex names, which are not names, and by the order of the words in the complex names. An example worth a comment is associated names containing such words as \dq{the}; in making statements, these names have to be in the context of additional conventions, understandings, to have significance. It will be clear that what these relations (and referents) are, the explication of these relations, is not important for my purposes. Thirdly, I have not said anything about what the \dq{meaning} (intension), as opposed to the referents (and non-referents), of a name is. (I might say that a thing can't have an intension unless it has referents or non-referents.) This matter is also not important for my purposes (and gets into philosophy proper). Finally, my approach tells the reader no more than he already knew about whether a given statement is true. Quite so, and I said that the discussion would be properly philosophically neutral. In fact, it is so precisely because of the ambiguous word \dq{determinate}, because I haven't said anything about how names get referents. Even so, we have come a long way from blank wonder about how one (sounds, marks) could ever state anything, a long way towards explicating how asserting works. (And to the philosopher of language with formalist prejudices, the discussion has been a needed reminder that if language is to be assertional, say something, then names and referring in some form must have the central role in it.) + +\term{Statements}, then, can be regarded as assertions of the \dq{simple} kind which are made in the special, conventional way, involving sentences, I have described. I could thus explicate \dq{\e{true statement}} as referring to those true \dq{simple} assertions made in the special way, and it should be clear that this would be a good explication. However, as the connotations of \dq{true statement} having to do with the method of applying the first member to the second are, I expect, of secondary importance compared to those having to do with such matters as being an assertion having truth value, it ts more elegant to explicate \dq{true statement} as referring to all true assertions of the \dq{simple} kind. For the purposes of this book it is not important which of the two explications the reader prefers. + +So much for the preliminaries. + +\secc \dq{Experience} + +%\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{A. The Linguistic Solution}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{2. \dq{Experience}}} + +I will introduce in this chapter some basic terminology, as the main step in taking the reader from ordinary English and traditional philosophical language to a language with which my philosophy can be exposited. This terminology is important because one of the main difficulties in expositing my philosophy (or any new philosophy) is that current language is based on precisely some of the assumptions, beliefs, I intend to question. It will, I think, be immediately clear to the reader at all familiar with modern philosophy that the problems of terminology I am going to discuss are relevant to the problem of which beliefs are right. + +First, consider the term \dq{\term{non-experience}}. Although the concept of a non-experience is intrinsically far more \dq{difficult} than the concept of \dq{\term{experience}} which I will be discussing presently, it is, I suppose, presupposed in all \dq{natural languages} and throughout philosophy, is so taken for granted that it is rarely discussed in itself. Thus, the reader should have no difficulty understanding it. Examples of \term{non-experiences} are perceivable objects---for example, a table (as opposed to one's perceptions of it), existing external to oneself, persisting when one is not perceiving it; the future (future events); the past; space (or better, the distantness of objects from oneself); minds other than one's own; causal relationships as ordinarily understood; referential relationships (the relationships between names and their referents as ordinarily understood; what I avoided discussing in the second chapter); unperceivable \dq{things} (microscopic objects (of course, viewing them through microscopes does not count as perceiving them), essences, Being); in short, most of the things one is normally concerned with, normally thinks about, as well as the objects of uncommon knowledge.\fnote{To simplify the explanation of the concept, make it easier on the reader, I am speaking as if I believed that there are non-experiences, that is, introducing the concept in the context of the beliefs usually associated with it.}Non-experiences are precisely what one has beliefs about. One believes that there are microscopic living organisms, or that there are none (or that one can not know whether there are any---this is \stress{not} a \term{non-belief} but a complex belief about the relation of the realm where non-experiences could be to the mind). Incidentally, that other minds, for example, are non-experiences is presumably a connotation of \dq{other minds} for the reader, as explained in the second chapter. + +In the history of philosophy, the concept of \term{non-experience} comes first. Then philosophers begin to develop theories of how one knows about non-experiences (epistemological theories). The concept of a \term{perception}, or \term{experience} of something, is introduced into philosophy. The theory is that one knows about \term{non-experiences} by perceiving, having experiences of, some of them. For example, one knows that there is a table before one's eyes (assuming that there is) by having a visual perception or experience of it, by having a \dq{visual-table-experience}. The theory goes on to say that these perceptions are in the mind. Then, if one has a visual-table-experience in one's mind when there is no table, one is hallucinated. And so forth. Now there are two sources of confusion in all this for the naive reader. First, saying that perceptions of objects are in one's mind is not saying that they are, for example, visualizations, imaginings, such as one's visualization of a table with one's eyes closed. Perceptions of objects do not seem \dq{mental}. The theory that they are in the mind is a {\bf belief}. This point leads directly to the second source of confusion. Does the English word \dq{table}, as ordinarily used to refer to a table when one is looking at it, refer to the table, an entity external to one's perceptions which persists when not perceived, or to one's perception of it, to the visual-table-experience? If distinguishing between the two, and the notion that the table-experience is in his mind, seem silly to the reader, then he probably uses \dq{table}, \dq{perceived table}, and \dq{table-experience} as equivalent some of the time. The distinction, however, is not just silly; anyone who believes that there are tables when he is not perceiving them must accept it to be consistent. At any rate there is this confusion, that it is not always clear whether English object-names are being used to refer to perceived non-experiences or to experiences, the perceptions. + +Now let us ignore for a moment the connotations that experiences are experiences, perceptions, of non-experiences, and are in the mind. The term \dq{\term{experience}} is important here because with it philosophers finally made a start at inventing a term for the things one knows directly, unquestionably knows, or, better, which one just has, or are just there (whether they are experiences, perceptions, of non-experiences or not). A traditional philosopher would say that if one is having a table-experience, one may not know whether it's a true perception of a table, whether there's an objective table there; or whether it's an hallucination; but one unquestionably knows, has, the table-experience. And of course, with respect to one's experiences not supposed to be perceptions of anything, such as visualizations, one unquestionably knows, has them too. A better way of putting it is that \stress{there is no question as to whether one has one's experiences or what they are like.}One doesn't believe (that one has) one's experiences; to try to do so would be rather like trying to polish air. In fact, \dq{thinking} that one doesn't have one's experiences, if this is possible, is a belief, a wrong one (as will be shown, although it should already be obvious if the reader has the slightest idea of what I am talking about), and in fact a perfectly insane one. Now the reader must not think that because I say experiences are unquestionably known I am talking about tautologies, or about beliefs which some philosophers say can be known by intuition even though unprovable, or say cannot really be doubted without losing one's sanity.\fnote{For example, some philosophers say this about the belief that other persons have minds.} In speaking of experiences I am not trying to trick the reader into accepting a lot of beliefs I am not prepared to justify, as many philosophers do by appealing to intuition or sanity or what not, a reprehensible hypocrisy which shows that they are not the least interested in philosophy proper. One does not have other-persons'-having-minds-experiences (nor are the objective tables one supposedly perceives table-experiences); one believes that other persons have minds (or that there is an objective table corresponding to one's table-experience), and this belief could very well be wrong (in fact, it is, as will be shown). + +I have explained the current use of the term \dq{\term{experience}}. Now I want to propose a new use for the term, which, except where otherwise noted, will be that of the rest of this book. (Thus whereas in discussing \dq{\term{non-experience}} I was merely explaining and accepting the current use of the term, in the case of \dq{\term{experience}} I am going to suggest a new use for the term.) As I explained, the concept of \term{non-experience} preceded that of \term{experience}, and the latter was developed to explain how one knows the former. What I am interested in, however, is not \dq{experience} as it implies. \dq{perceptions, of non-experiences, and in the mind}, but as it refers to \stress{that which one unquestionably knows, is immediate, is just there, is not something one believes exists}. I am going to use \dq{\term{experience}} to refer, as it already does, to that immediate \dq{world}, but \stress{without the implication that \term{experience} is perception of \term{non-experience}, and in the mind: the same referents but without the old connotations}. In other words, in my use \dq{\term{experience}} is completely neutral with respect to relationships to non-experiences, is not an antonym for \dq{\term{non-experience}} as conventionally used, does not presuppose a metaphysic. The reader is being asked to take a leap of understanding here, because there is all the difference in philosophy between \dq{experience} as implying, connoting, relatedness to non-experiences or in particular the realm where they could be, and \dq{\term{experience}} without these connotations. + +Viewing this discussion of terminology in retrospect, it should be obvious that although my term \dq{\term{experience}} was introduced last, it is intrinsically, logically, the simplest, most immediate, most inevitable of the terms, and should be the easiest to understand. In contrast, the notions I discussed in reaching it may seem a little arbitrary. As a matter of fact, I have used the perspective of the Western philosophical tradition to explain my term, but this doesn't mean that it is relevant only to that tradition or, especially, the theory of knowing about \term{non-experiences}. Even if the reader's conceptual background does not involve the concept of \term{non-experience,} and especially the modern Western theory of knowing about \term{non-experiences,} he ought to be able to understand, and realize the \dq{primacy} of, my term \dq{\term{experience}}. The term should be supra-cultural. + +I have gone to some length to explain my use of the term \dq{experience}. As I have said, it is \dq{intrinsically} the simplest term, but I can not define it by just equating it to some English expression because all English, including the traditional term \dq{experience}, the antonym of \dq{\term{non-experience}}, is based on metaphysical assumptions, does have implications about non-experience, in short, is formulations of beliefs. These implications are different for different philosophers according as their metaphysics\fnote{Or, as is sometimes (incorrectly) said, \dq{ontologies}.} differ. Even such a sentence as \dq{The table is black} implies the formulation \dq{\ul{Material objects are real}} (to the materialist), or \dq{\ul{So-called objects are ideas in the mind}} (to the idealist), or \dq{\ul{Substances and attributes are real}}, and so forth, traditionally. As a result, in order to explain the new term I have had to use English in a very special way, ultimately turning it against itself, so as to enable the reader to guess how I use the term. That is, although there is nothing problematic about my use of \term{experience}, about its referents, there is about my English, for example when I say that the connotation of relatedness to \term{non-experience} is to be dropped from \term{experience}. There can be this new term, the philosopher is not irrevocably tied to English or other natural language and its implied philosophy, as some philosophers claim; because a term is able to be a name, to be used to make assertions, not by being a part of conventional English or other natural language, but by having referents. + +As I suggested at the beginning of this chapter, I need to introduce my \term{experience} because without it I cannot question all beliefs, everything about \term{non-experiences}, since in English there is always the implication that there could be \term{non-experiences}. The term is a radical innovation; one of the most important in this book. The fact that although it is the \dq{simplest} and least questionable term, it is a radical innovation and is difficult to explain using English, shows how philosophically inadequate English and the philosophies it implies are. Now if the reader has not understood my \term{experience} he is likely to precisely mis-understand the rest of the book as an attempt to show that there are no non-experiences.\fnote{It's good that this isn't what I'm trying to show, because it is self-contradictory: for there to be no non-experiences there would have to be a realm empty of them, and this realm would have to be a non-experience.} If he is lucky he will just find the book incomprehensible, or possibly even come to understand the term from the rest of what I say, using it. But if he does understand the term, then he is past the greatest difficulty in understanding the book; in fact, he may already realize what I'm going to say. + +\secc The Linguistic Solution + +%\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{A. The Linguistic Solution}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{3. The Linguistic Solution}} + +Now that I have explained the key terminology for this part of the book, I can give the solution to properly philosophical problems, the problems of which beliefs are right, in the form of conclusions about the language in which the beliefs are formulated. My concern here is to present the solution as soon as possible, so as to make it clear to the reader that my work contains important results, is an important contribution to philosophy, and not just admirable sentiments or the formulation of an attitude or a philosophically neutral analysis of concepts or the like. For this reason I will not be too concerned to make the solution seem natural, or intuitive, or to explore all its implications; that will come later. + +However, in the hope that it will make the main \dq{argument} of this chapter easier to understand, I will precede it with a short, non-rigorous version of it, which should give the \dq{intuitive insight} behind the main argument. Consider the question of whether one can know if a given belief is true. Now a given belief is cognitively arbitrary in that it cannot be justified from the standpoint of having no beliefs, cannot be justified without appealing to other beliefs. Thus the answer must be skepticism: one cannot know if a given belief is true. However, this skepticism is a belief---a contradiction. The ultimate conclusion is that to escape inconsistency, to be right, one must, at the linguistic level, reject all talk of beliefs, of knowing if they are true, reject all formulations of beliefs. The \dq{necessity}, but inconsistency, of skepticism \dq{shows} my conclusion in an intuitively understandable way. + +To get on to the definitive version of my \dq{argument}. I will say that one name \dq{\term{depends}} on another if and only if it has the logical relation to that other that \ul{black table} has to \ul{table}: a referent of the former is necessarily a referent of the latter (one of the relations between names mentioned in the second chapter). Now the associated name of any statement, or formulation, of a belief of necessity \term{depends} on \term{non-experience}, since non-experiences are what beliefs are about. For example, \dq{Other persons having minds}, the associated name of the formulation \dq{Other persons have minds}, certainly \term{depends} on \term{non-experience}. Thus, anything true of \term{non-ex\-per\-ience} will be true of the associated name of any formulation of a belief. + +In the last chapter I introduced, explained the concepts of non-ex\-per\-ience and experience (in the traditional sense, as the antonym of \term{non-experience}), showed the connotations of the expressions \term{non-experience} and experience (traditional). What I did not go on to show, left for this chapter, is that if one continues to analyze these concepts, one comes on crucial implications which result in contradictions. What follows is perhaps the most concentrated passage in this book, so that the reader must be willing to read it slowly and thoughtfully. Consider one's \term{experience} (used in my, \dq{neutral}, sense unless I say otherwise). Could there be something in one's experience, a part of one's experience, which was awareness of whether it's experience (traditional), of whether it's related to non-experience, of whether there is non-experience, awareness of non-experience? No, as should be obvious from the connotations shown in the last chapter.\fnote{Compare this with the point that one cannot (cognitively) justify a belief from the standpoint of having no beliefs, cannot justify it without appealing to other beliefs.} If there could be, if such awareness were just an experience, the distinctness of \term{experience} from experience (traditional) and so forth would disappear. The concepts of experience (traditional) and so forth would be superfluous, in fact, one couldn't have them: experience (traditional) and so forth would just be absorbed into \term{experience}. One concludes that there cannot be anything in one's experience which is awareness of whether it's experience (traditional), of whether there is non-experience. But then this awareness, which is in part about experience (traditional) and non-experience and thus involves awareness of them, is in one's \term{experience}---a contradiction. In fact, the same holds for the awareness which is \dq{understanding the concepts} of non-experience and the rest as they are supposed to be understood. And for \dq{understanding}\term{non-experience} (and the rest) as it is supposed to be, being aware of its referents (and non-referents); since to name non-experience, it must be an experience (traditional). And even for being aware of the referents (and non-referents) of \dq{\term{non-experience}}, which to name an experience (traditional) must be one. One mustn't assume that one understands \term{non-experience}---and \dq{\term{non-experience}}---and \dq{\dq{\term{non-experience}}}; but here one is, using \dq{\term{non-experience}} and \dq{\dq{\term{non-experience}}} to say so (which certainly implies that one assumes one understands them). It is impossible for there to be non-experiences. When one begins to examine closely the concept of \term{non-experience}, it collapses. + +(A final point for the expert. This tangle of contradictions is intrinsic in the concept of non-experience; it does not result because I have introduced a violation of the law that names cannot name themselves. This should be absolutely clear from the two sentences about names, which show contradictions---that one must not assume that one understands certain expressions, but that one uses the expressions to say so (does assume it)---with explicit stratification.) + +My exposition has broken down in a tangle of contradictions. Now what is important is that it has done so precisely because I have talked about experience (traditional), \term{non-experience}, and the rest, because I have spoken as if there could be non-experiences, because I have used \dq{experience} (traditional), \dq{non-experience}, and the rest. Thus, even though what I have said is a tangle of contradictions, it is not by any means valueless. Since it is a tangle of contradictions precisely because it involves \dq{experience} (traditional), \dq{\term{non-experience}}, and the rest, it shows that one who \dq{accepts} the expressions, supposes that they are valid language, has inconsistent desires with respect to how they are to be used. The expressions can have no explications at all acceptable to him. He cannot consistently use the expressions (the way they're supposed to be). The expressions, and, remembering the paragraph before last, any formulation of a belief, are completely discredited. (What is not discredited is language referring to \term{experiences} (my use). If it happens that an expression I have said is a formulation of a belief does have a good \term{explication} for the reader, then it is not a formulation of a belief for him but refers to \term{experiences}.) Now there is an important point about method which should be brought out. If all \dq{non-experiential language}, \dq{belief language}, is inconsistent, how can I show this and yet avoid falling into contradiction when I say it? The answer is that I don't have to avoid falling into contradiction; that I fall into contradiction precisely because I use formulations of beliefs shows what I want to show. This, then, is the linguistic solution; as I said we would, we have been driven far beyond any such conclusion as \dq{all formulations of beliefs are false}. + +Now what do these conclusions about formulations of beliefs, about belief language, say about beliefs themselves, about whether a given belief is right? Well, to the extent that a belief is tied up with its formulation, since the formulation is discredited, the belief is, must be wrong. After all, if a belief were right, its formulation would necessarily have an acceptable \term{explication} which was true; in short, the belief would have a true formulation (to see this, note that the contrary assertion is itself a formulation of a belief---leading to a contradiction). Incidentally, this point answers those who would say, that the inconsistency of their statements of belief taken literally does not discredit their beliefs, as the statements are not to be taken literally, are metaphorical or symbolic truths. To continue, one who because of having a belief took its formulation seriously, expected that it could have an acceptable \term{explication} for him, could not turn out to be an expression he could not properly use, must be deceiving himself in some way. Now there is another important point about \dq{method} to be made. The question will probably continually recur to the critical reader how one can \dq{know}, be aware that any given belief is wrong, without having beliefs. The answer is that one way one can be aware of it is simply to be aware of the inconsistency of belief language, which awareness is not a belief. (Whether belief language is inconsistent is not a matter of belief but of the way one wants expressions used; being aware of the inconsistency is like being aware with respect to a table, \dq{that in my language, this is to be said to be a \dq{table}}.) Incidentally, to wrap things up, the common belief as to how a name has referents is that there is a relation between the name and its referents which is an objective, metaphysical entity, a non-experience; this belief is wrong. How, in what sense a name can have referents will not be discussed here. + +The unsophisticated reader may react to all of this with a lot of \dq{Yes, but\ld} thoughts. If he doesn't more or less identify beliefs with their formulations, and doesn't have an intuitive appreciation of the force of linguistic arguments, he my tend to regard my result as a mere (if embarrassing) curiosity.\fnote{Of course, it isn't, but I am concerned with how well the reader understands that.} And there does remain a lot to be said about beliefs themselves (as mental acts), and where the self-deception is in them; it is not even clear yet just what the relation of a belief to its formulation is. Then the reader might ask whether there aren't beliefs whose rejection as wrong would conflict with \term{experience}, or which it would be impossible or dangerous not to have. I now turn to the discussion of these matters. + +\break +\sec Completion of the Treatment of Properly Philosophical Problems +\secc Beliefs as Mental Acts + +%\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{B. Completion of Treatment}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{4. Beliefs as Mental Acts}} + +In this chapter I will solve the problems of philosophy proper by discussing believing itself, as a (\dq{conscious}) mental act. Although I will be talking about mental acts and \term{experience}, it must be clear that this part of the book, like the fast part, is not epistemology or phenomenology. I will not try to talk about \dq{perception} or the like, in a mere attempt to justify \dq{common-sense} beliefs or what not. Of course, both parts are incidentally relevant to epistemology and phenomenology, since in discussing beliefs I discuss the beliefs which constitute those subjects. + +I should say immediately that \dq{belief}, in its traditional use as supposed to refer to \dq{\term{mental acts, often unconscious, connected with the realm of non-experience}}, has no explication at all satisfactory, has been discredited. This point is important, as it means that one does not want to say that one does or does not \dq{have beliefs}, in the sense important to those having beliefs, that beliefs (in my sense) will not do as referents for \dq{belief} in the use important to those having beliefs; helping to fill out the conclusion of the last part. Now when I speak of a \dq{belief} I will be speaking of an \term{experience}, what might be said to be \dq{\e{an act of consciously believing, of consciously having a belief}}, of what is \dq{in one's head} when one says that one \dq{believes a certain thing}. Further, I will, for convenience in distinguishing beliefs, speak of belief \dq{that others have minds}, for example, or in general of belief \dq{that there are non-experiences} (with quotation marks), but I must not be taken as implying that beliefs manage to be \dq{about non-experiences}. (Thus, what I say about beliefs will be entirely about \term{experiences}; I will not be trying to talk \dq{about the realm of non-experience, or the relation of beliefs to it}.) I expect that it is already fairly clear to the reader what his acts of consciously believing are (if he has any); I will be more concerned with pointing out to him some features of his \dq{beliefs} (believing) than with the explication of \dq{\e{act of consciously believing}}, although I will need to make a few comments about that too. What I am trying to do is to get the reader to accept a useful, possibly new, use of a word (\dq{\term{belief}}) salvaged from the unexplicatible use of the word, rather than rejecting the word altogether. + +There is a further point about terminology. The reader should remember from the third chapter that quite apart from the theory \dq{that perceptions are in the mind}, one can make a distinction between mental and non-mental \term{experiences}, between, for example, visualizing a table with one's eyes closed, and a \dq{seen} table, a visual-table-experience. Now I am going to say that visualizations and the like are \dq{\term{imagined-experiences}}. For example, a visualization of a table will be said to be an \dq{\term{imagined-visual-table-experience}}. The reader should not suppose that by \dq{imagined} I mean that the experiences are \dq{hallucinations}, are \dq{unreal}. I use \dq{imagined} because saying \dq{mental-table-experience} is too much like saying \dq{table in the mind} and because just using \dq{visualization} leaves no way of speaking of mental \term{experiences} which are not visualizations. Speaking of an \dq{\term{imagined-table-experience}} seems to be the best way of saying that it is a mental \term{experience}, and then distinguishing it from other mental \term{experiences} by the conventional method of saying that it is an imagining \dq{of a (non-mental) table-experience} (better thought of as meaning an imagining like a (non-mental) table-experience). In other words, an \term{imagined-\x-experience} (to generalize) is a \dq{valid} experience, all right, but it is not a non-mental \x-experience; it is a mental experience which is like a (non-mental) \x-experience in a certain way. Incidentally, an \dq{imagined-imagined-experience} is impossible by definition; or is no different from an imagined-experience, whichever way you want to look at it. If this terminology is a little confusing, it is not my fault but that of the conventional method of distinguishing different mental \term{experiences} by saying that they are imaginings \dq{of one or another non-mental \term{experiences}}. + +I can at last ask what one does when one believes \dq{\e{that there is a table, not perceived by oneself, behind one now}}, or anything else. Well, in the first place, one takes note of, gives one's attention to, an imagined-experience, such as an imagined-table-experience or a visualization of oneself with one's back to a table; or to a linguistic expression, a supposed statement, such as \dq{\e{There is a table behind me}}. This is not all one does, however; if it were, what one does would not in the least deserve to be said to be a \dq{belief} (a point about the explication of my \dq{\term{belief}}). The additional, \dq{essential} component of a belief is a self-deceiving \dq{attitude} toward the \term{experience}. What this attitude is will be described below. Observe that one does not want to say that the additional component is a belief about the \term{experience} because of the logical absurdity of doing so, or, in other words, because it suggests that there is an infinite regress of mental action. Now the claim that the attitude is \dq{self-deceiving} is not, could not be, at all like the claim \dq{\e{that a belief as a whole, or its formulation, fails to correspond in a certain way to non-experience, to reality, or is false}}. The question of \dq{\e{what is going on in the realm of non-experience}} does not arise here. Rather, my claim is entirely about an \term{experience}; it is that the attitude, the \term{experience} not itself a belief but part of the \term{experience} of believing, is \dq{consciously, deliberately} self-deceiving, is a \dq{self-deception \term{experience}}. I don't have to \dq{\e{prove that the attitude is self-deceiving by reference to what is going on in the realm of non-experience}}; when I have described the attitude and the reader is aware of it, he will presumably find it a good explication, unhesitatingly want, to say that it is \dq{self-deceiving}. + +I will now say, as well as can be, what the attitude is. In believing, one is attentive primarily to the imagined-experience or linguistic expression as mentioned above. The attitude is \dq{peripheral}, is a matter of the way one is attentive. Saying that the attitude is \dq{conscious, deliberate}, is a little strong if it seems to imply that it is cynical self-brainwashing; what I am trying to say is that it is not an \dq{objective} or \dq{subconscious} self-deception such as traditional philosophers speak of, one impossible to be aware of. This is about as much as I can say about the attitude directly, because of the inadequacy of the English descriptive vocabulary for mental \term{experiences}; with respect to English the attitude is a \dq{vague, elusive} thing, very difficult to describe. I will be able to say more about what it is only by suggestion, by saying that it is the attitude \dq{that such and such} (the reader must not think I mean the belief \dq{that such and such}). If the \term{experience} to which the attention is primarily given in believing is an imagined-\x-experience, then the self-deceiving attitude is the attitude \dq{\stress{that the imagined-\x-experience is a (non-mental) \x-experience}}. As an example, consider the belief \dq{\stress{that there is a table behind one}}. If one's attention in believing is not on a linguistic expression, it will be on an \term{imagined-experience} such as an imagined-table-experience or a visualization of a person representing oneself (to be accurate) with his back to a table, and one will have the self-deceiving attitude \dq{\stress{that the \term{imagined-experience} is a table or oneself with one's back to a table}}. Of course, if one is asked whether one's imagined-\x-experience is a (non-mental) \x-experience, one will say that it is not, that it is admittedly an \term{imagined-experience} but \dq{corresponds to a non-experience}. This is not inconsistent with what I have said: first, I don't say that one believes \dq{\stress{that one's imagined-\x-experience is an \x-experience}}; secondly, when one is asked the question, one stops believing \dq{\stress{that there is a table behind one}} and starts believing \dq{\stress{that one's \term{imagined-experience} corresponds in a certain way to a non-experience}}, a different matter (different belief). + +lf one's attention in believing is primarily on a linguistic expression (which if a sentence, will be pretty much regarded as its associated name), the self-deceiving attitude is the attitude \dq{\stress{that the expression has a referent}}. With respect to the belief \dq{\stress{that there is a table behind one}}, one's attention in believing would be primarily on the expression \dq{\stress{There is a table behind me}}, pretty much regarded as \dq{\stress{There being a table behind me}}, and one would have the self-deceiving attitude \dq{\stress{that this name has a referent}}. Unexplicatible expressions, then, function as principal components of beliefs. + +\vskip 0.3em + +\inlineaside{This paragraph is complicated and inessential; if it begins to confuse the reader it can be skipped.} I will now describe the relation between the version, of a belief, involving language and the version not involving language. In the version not involving language, the attention is on an imagined-\x-experience which is \dq{regarded} as an \x-experience, whereas in the version involving language, the attention is on something which is \dq{regarded} as having as referent \dq{something} (the attitude is vague here). For the latter version, the idea is \dq{\stress{that the reality is at one remove}}, and correspondingly, one whose \dq{language} consists of formulations of beliefs doesn't desire to have as \term{experiences}, or perceive, or even be able to imagine, referents of expressions---which, for the more critical person, may make believing easier. Thus, just as one takes note of the imagined-\x-experience in the version of the belief not involving language, has something which functions as the thing the belief is about, so in the version involving language one has the attitude that the expression has a referent. Further, just as one has the attitude that the imagined-\x-experience is an \x-experience in the version not involving language, does not recognize that what functions as the thing believed in is a mere \term{imagined-experience}, so in the version involving \dq{language} one takes note of an \dq{expression} not having a referent, since a referent could only be a (mere) \term{experience}. One who expects an expression, which is the principal component of a belief, to have a good explication does so on the basis of the self-deceiving attitude one has towards it in having the belief. In trying to explicate the expression, one finds inconsistent desires with respect to what its referents must be. These desires correspond to the way the expression functions in the belief: the desire that it be possible for awareness of the referent to be part of one's \term{experience} corresponds to the attitude, in believing, that the expression has a referent; and the desire that it not be possible for awareness of the referent to be (merely) part of one's \term{experience} corresponds to the expression's not having a referent in believing. Pointing out that the expression is unexplicable discredits the belief of which it is the principal component, just as pointing out that a belief not involving language consists of being attentive to an \term{imagined-experience} and having the attitude that it is not an \term{imagined-experience}, discredits that belief. + +\vskip 0.3em + +Such, then, is what one does when one believes. If the reader is rather unconvinced by my description, especially because of my speaking of \dq{attitudes}, then let him consider the following summary: there must be something more to a mental act than just taking note of an \term{experience} for it to be a \dq{belief}; this something is \dq{peripheral and elusive}, so that I am calling the something an \dq{attitude}, the most appropriate way in English to speak of it; the attitude, an \term{experience} not itself a belief but part of the \term{experience} which \stress{is} the belief, is thus isolated; the attitude is \dq{self-deceiving}, is a \dq{(conscious) self-deception experience}, because when aware of it the reader will presumably want to say that it is. The attitude just about has to be a (\dq{conscious}) self-deception experience to transform mere taking note of an \term{experience} into something remotely deserving to be said to be a \dq{belief}. The decision as to whether the attitude is to be said to be \dq{self-deceiving} is to be made without trying to think \dq{about the relation of the belief as a whole to the realm of non-experience}, to do which would be to slip into having beliefs, other than the one under consideration, which would be irrelevant to our concern here. Ultimately, the important thing is to observe what one does in believing, and particularly the attitude, more than to say that the attitude is \dq{self-deceiving}. + +In order for my description of believing to be complete, I must mention some things often associated with believing but not \dq{essential} to it. First, one may take note of non-mental and imagined-experiences other than the one to which attention is primarily given. If one has a table-experience and believes \dq{that it is a table-perception corresponding to an objectively existing table', one may give much of his attention to the table-experience in so believing, associate the table-experience strongly with the belief. One may in believing give attention to non-mental experiences supposed to be "evidence for, confirmation of, one's belief} (more will be said about confirmation shortly). If one's attention in believing is primarily on the linguistic expression \dq{\x}, one may give attention to a referent of \dq{imagined-\x(-experience)}, an \dq{imagined-referent} of \dq{\x}; or to imagined-\y-experiences such that \y-experiences are supposed, said, to be \dq{analogous to the referent of \dq{\x}}. In the latter case the \y-experiences will be mutually exclusive, and less importance will be given to them than would be to imagined-referents. An example of imagined-referents in believing is visualizing oneself with one's back to a table, as the imagined-referent of \dq{There being a table behind one}. An example of imagined-\y-experiences (such that \y-experiences are mutually exclusive) which are said to be \dq{analogous to referents}, in believing, is the visualizations associated with beliefs \dq{\stress{about entities wholly other than, transcending, \term{experience}, such as Being}}. + +Secondly, there are associated with beliefs logical \dq{justifications}, \dq{arguments}, for them, \dq{defenses} of them. I will not bother to explicate the different kinds of justifications because it is so easy to say what is wrong with all of them. There are two points to be made. First, explication would show that the matter of justifications for beliefs is just a matter of language and beliefs of the kind already discussed. Secondly, as I have suggested before, whether a statement or belief is right is not dependent on what the justifications, arguments for it are. (If this seems to fail for inductive justification, the kind involving the citing of \term{experience} supposed to be evidence for, confirmation of, the belief, it is because the metaphysical assumptions on which induction is based are rarely stated. Without them inductive justifications are just non sequiturs. An example: this table has four legs; therefore (\dq{it is more probable that}) any other table has four legs.) Justification of a statement or belief does nothing but conjoin to it superfluous statements or beliefs, if anything. The claim that a justification, argument can show that a belief is not arbitrary, gratuitous, in that it can show that to be consistent, one must have the belief if one has a lesser, weaker belief, is simply self-contradictory. If a justification induces one to believe what one apparently did not believe before hearing the justification, then one already had the belief \dq{implicitly} (it was a conjunct of a belief one already had), or one has accepted superfluous beliefs conjoined with it. + +I will conclude this chapter first with a list of philosophical positions my position is not. Although I have already suggested some of this material, I repeat it because it is so important that the reader not misconstrue my position as some position which is no more like mine than its negation is, and which I show to be wrong. My position is not disbelief. (Incidentally, it is ironic that "disbeliever", without qualification, has been used by believers as a term of abuse, since, as disbelief is belief which is the negation of some belief, any belief is disbelief.) In particular, I am not concerned to deny \dq{the existence of non-experience}, to \dq{cause non-experiences to vanish}, so to speak, to change or cause to vanish some of the reader's non-mental \term{experiences}, \dq{perceived objects}. My position is not skepticism of any kind, is not, for example, the belief \dq{that there is a realm where there could either be or not be certain entities not \term{experiences}, but our means of knowing are inadequate for finding which is the case.} My position is not a mere \dq{decision to ignore non-experiences, or beliefs}. The philosopher who denies \dq{the existence of non-experiences}, or denies any belief, or who is skeptical of any belief, or who merely \dq{decides to ignore non-experiences, or beliefs}, has some of the very beliefs I am concerned to discredit. + +What I have been concerned to do is to discredit formulations of beliefs, and beliefs as mental acts, by pointing out some features of them. In the first part of the book I showed the inconsistency of linguistic expressions dependent on "\term{non-experience}", and pointed out that those who expect them to have explications at all acceptable are deceiving themselves; discrediting the beliefs of which the expressions are formulations. In this chapter, I have described the mental act of believing, calling the reader's attention to the self-deception experience involved in it, and thus showing that it is wrong. To conclude, in discrediting beliefs I have shown what the right philosophical position is: it is not having beliefs (and realizing, for any belief one happens to think of, that it is wrong (which doesn't involve having beliefs)). + +\secc Discussion of Some Basic Beliefs +%\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{B. Completion of Treatment}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{5. Discussion of Some Basic Beliefs}} + +In the preceding chapters I have been concerned, in discrediting any given belief, to show what the right philosophical position is. In this chapter I will turn to particular beliefs, supposed knowledge, to make it clear just what, specifically, have been discredited. Now if the reader will consider the entire \dq{history of world thought}, the fantastic proliferation of activities at least partly \dq{systems of knowledge} which constitute it, Platonism, psychoanalysis, Tibetian mysticism, physics, Bantu witchcraft, phenomenology, mathematical logic, Konko Kyo, Marxism, alchemy, comparative linguistics, Orgonomy, Thomism, and so on indefinitely, each with its own kind of conclusions, method of justifying them, applications, associated valuations, and the like, he will quickly realize that I could not hope to analyze even a fraction of them to show just how \dq{non-experiential language}, and beliefs, are involved in them. And I should say that it is not always obvious whether the concepts of non-experiential language, and belief, are relevant to them. Zen is an obvious example (although as a matter of fact is unquestionably does involve beliefs, is not for example an anticipation of my position). Further, many quasi-systems-of-knowledge are difficult to discuss because the expositions of them which are what one has to work with, are badly written, in particular, fail to state the insights behind what is presented, the real reasons why it can be taken seriously, and are incomplete and confused. + +What I will do, then, to specifically illustrate my results, is to discuss a few particular beliefs which are found in almost all systems of \dq{knowledge}; have been given especial attention in modern Western philosophy and are thus especially relevant to the immediate audience for this book; and are so \dq{basic} (accounting for their ubiquity) that they are either just assumed, as too trivially factual to be worthy the attention of a profound thinker, or if they are explicit are said to be so basic that persons cannot do without them. The discussion will make it specifically clear that it is not necessary to have these beliefs, that not having them is not \dq{inconsistent} with one's \term{experience}; and is thus important for the reader who is astonished at the idea of rejecting any given belief, the idea of any given belief's being wrong and of not having it. + +Consider beliefs to the effect \dq{that the world is ordered}, beliefs formulated in \dq{natural laws}, beliefs \dq{about substance}, and the like. Rejection of them may seem to lead to a problem. After all, one's \dq{perceived world} is not \dq{chaotic}, is it? The reader should observe that in rejecting beliefs \dq{that the world is ordered} I do not say that his \dq{perceived world} is (\dq{subjectively}) chaotic (that is, extremely unfamiliar, strange). The non-strange character of one's \dq{perceived world} is associated with beliefs \dq{about substance} and beliefs formulated in natural laws, but it is not \dq{the world being ordered}; and taking note of the non-strange character of one's \dq{perceived world} is not part of what is \dq{essential} in these beliefs. + +Rejection of \dq{spatio-temporal} beliefs may seem to lead to a problem. After all, cannot one watch oneself wave one's hand towards and away from oneself? Of course one can \dq{watch oneself wave one's hand} (in a non-strict sense---and if the reader uses the expression in this sense it will not be a formulation of a belief for him). However, that one can \dq{watch oneself wave one's hand} (in the non-strict sense) does not imply \dq{that there are spatially distant, and past and future events}; and although \term{experiences} such as a visual---\dq{moving}---hand \term{experience} are associated with spatio-temporal beliefs, taking note of them is not part of what is essential in those beliefs. + +Rejection of beliefs \dq{about the objectivity of linguistic referring} may seem to lead to a problem. After all, when one says that a table is a \dq{table}, doesn't one do so unhesitatingly, with a feeling of satisfaction, a feeling that things are less mysterious, strange, when one has done so, and without the slightest intention of saying that it is a \dq{non-table}? The reader should observe that I do not deny this. These \term{experiences} are associated with beliefs \dq{about the objectivity of referring}, but they are not \dq{objective referring}; and taking note of them is not part of what is essential in those beliefs. + +Rejection of the belief \dq{that other humans (better, things) than oneself have minds} my seem to lead to a problem. After all, \dq{perceived other humans} talk and so forth, do they not? The reader should observe that in rejecting the belief \dq{that others have minds} I do not deny that \dq{perceived other humans} talk and so forth. Other humans' talking and so forth is associated with the belief \dq{that others have minds}, but it is not \dq{other humans having minds}; and taking note of others talking and so forth is not part of what is essential in believing \dq{that others have minds}, points I anticipated in the second chapter. + +Finally, many philosophers will violently object to rejection of temporal beliefs of a certain kind, namely beliefs of the form \dq{If \x, then \y\ will follow in the future}, especially if \y\ is something one wants, and \x\ is something one can do. (After all, doesn't it happen that one throws the switch, and the light goes on?) They object so strongly because they fear \dq{that one cannot live unless one has and uses such knowledge}. They say, for example, \dq{that one had better know that one must drink water to live, and drink water, or one won't live}. Now \dq{one's throwing the switch and the light's coming on} (in a non-strict sense) is like the \term{experiences} associated with other temporal beliefs; that one can do it (in the non-strict sense) does not imply \dq{that there are past or future events}, and taking note of it is not part of what is essential in the belief \dq{that if one throws the switch, then the light will come on}. As for what the philosophers say, fear, believe \dq{about the necessity of such knowledge for survival}, it is just more beliefs of the same kind, so that rejection of it is similarly unproblematic. If this abrupt dismissal of the fears as wrong is terrifying to the reader, then it just shows how badly he is in need of being straightened out philosophically. Incidentally, all this should make it clear that it is futile to try to \dq{save} beliefs (render them justifiable) by construing them as predictions. + +By now the reader has probably observed that the beliefs, and their formulations, which I have been discussing, the ones he is presumably most suspicious of rejecting, are all strongly (but not essentially) associated with non-mental experiences of his. The reader may no longer seriously have the beliefs, but have problems in connection with them, get involved in defending them, and be suspicious of rejecting them, merely because he continues to use the formulations of the beliefs, but to refer to the \term{experiences} associated with them (as there's no other way in English to do so), and confusedly supposes that to reject the beliefs and formulations is to deny that he has the \term{experiences}. Now I am not denying that he has the \term{experiences}. As I said in the last chapter, I am not trying to convince the reader that he doesn't have \term{experiences} he has, but to point out to him the self-deception experiences involved in his beliefs. The reader should be wary of thinking, however, on reading this, that maybe he doesn't have any beliefs after all, just uses the belief language he does to refer to \term{experiences}. It sometimes happens that people who have beliefs and as a result use belief language excuse themselves on the basis that they are just using the language to refer to \term{experiences}, an hypocrisy. If one uses belief formulations, it's usually because one has beliefs. + +The point that the language which one may use to describe \term{experiences}is formulations of beliefs, is true generally. As I said in the third chapter, all English sentences are, traditionally anyway, formulations of beliefs. As a result, those who want to talk about \term{experiences} (my use) and still use English are forced to use formulations of beliefs to refer to strongly associated \term{experiences}, and this seems to be happening more and more; often among quasi-empiricists who naively suppose that the formulations have always been used that way, except by a few \dq{metaphysicians}. I have had to so use belief language throughout this book, the most notable example being the introduction of my use of \dq{\term{experience}} in the third chapter. Thus, some of what I say may imply belief formulations for the reader when it doesn't for me, and be philosophically problematic for him; he must understand the book to some extent in spite of the language, as I suggested in the third chapter. I have tried to make this relatively easy by choosing, to refer to \term{experiences}, language with which they are very strongly associated and which is only weakly associated with beliefs, and, the important thing, by announcing when the language is used for that purpose. + +It is time, though, that I admit, so as not to be guilty of the hypocrisy I was exposing earlier, that most of the sentences in this book will be understood as formulations of beliefs, that, in other words, I have presented my philosophy to the reader by getting him to have a series of beliefs. This does not invalidate my position, because the beliefs are not part of it. They are for the heuristic purpose of getting the reader to appreciate my position, which is not having beliefs (and realizing, for any belief one happens to think of, that it is wrong (which doesn't involve believing)); and they may well not be held when they have accomplished that purpose. I hope I will eventually get around to writing a version of this book which presents my position by suggesting to the reader a series of imaginings (and no more), rather than beliefs; developing a new language to do so. The reason I stick with English in this book is of course (!) that readers are too \dq{unmotivated} (lazy!) to learn a language of an entirely new kind to read a book, having unconventional conclusions, in philosophy proper. + +\secc Summary +%\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{Philosophy Proper (Version 3)}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{6. Summary}} + +The most important step in understanding my work is to realize that I am trying neither to get one to adopt a system of beliefs, nor to just ignore beliefs or the matter of whether they are right. Once the reader does so, he will find that my position is quite simple. The reader has probably tended to construe the body of the book, the second through the sixth chapters, as a formulation of a system of beliefs; or as a proposal that he ignore beliefs or the matter of whether they are right. Even if he has, a careful reading of them will, I hope, have prepared him for a statement of my position which is supposed to make it clear that the position is simple and right. This statement is a summary, and thus cannot be understood except in connection with the second through the sixth chapters. First, I reiterate that my position is not a system of beliefs, supported by a long, plausible argument. This means, incidentally, that it is absurd to \dq{remain unconvinced} of the rightness of my position, or to \dq{doubt, question} it, or to take a long time to decide whether it is right: one can \dq{question} (not believe) disbelief, but not unbelief. (Not to mention that it is a wrong belief to be \dq{skeptical} of my position in the sense of believing \dq{that although the position may subjectively seem right, there is always the possibility that it is objectively wrong}.) I am trying, not to get one to adopt new beliefs but to reject those one already has, not to make one more credulous but less credulous. If one \dq{questions my position} then one is misconstruing it as a belief for which I try to give a long, plausible argument, and is trying to decide which is more plausible, my argument that all beliefs are false, say, or the arguments that beliefs are true. It may well take one a long time to understand my position, but if one is taking a long time to decide whether it is right then one is wasting one's time thinking about a position I show to be wrong. Secondly, my position is not a proposal that one ignore beliefs or the matter of whether they are right. Thus, it is absurd to conclude that my position is irrefutable but trivial, that one who has beliefs can also be right. + +Now for the statement of the position. Imagine yourself without beliefs. One certainly is without beliefs when one is not thinking, for example (although not only then). This being without beliefs is my position. Now this position can't be wrong inasmuch as you aren't doing anything to be \dq{true or false}, to be self-deceiving. Now imagine that someone asks you to believe something, for example, to believe \dq{that there is a table behind you}. Then if you are going to do what he asks, and believe (as opposed to continuing not to think; or only imagining---for example, \dq{visualizing yourself with your back to a table}), you are going to have to have the attitude that you are in effect perceiving what you don't perceive, that is, deceive yourself. (What else could he be asking you to do?) You are going to have to be wrong. That's all there is to it. + +As for my language here, it is primarily intended to be suggestive, intended, at best, to suggest imaginings to you which will enable you to realize what the right philosophical position is (as in the last paragraph). The important thing is not whether the sentences in this book correspond to true statements in your language (although I expect the key ones will, the expressions in them being construed as referring to the \term{experiences}associated with them); it is for you to realize, observe what you do when you don't have beliefs and when you do. You are not so much to study my language as to begin to ask what one who asks you to believe wants you to do, anyway. The language isn't sufficiently flawless to absolutely force the complete realization of what the right position is on you (it doesn't have to be flawless to unquestionably discredit \dq{non-experiential language}); if you don't want to realize where the self-deception is in believing you can just ignore the book, and \dq{justify} your doing so on the basis of what I have said about language such as I have used. The point is that the book is not therefore valueless. + +So much for what the right philosophical position is. From having beliefs to not having them is not a trivial step; it is a complete transformation of one's cognitive orientation. Yet astonishing as the latter position is when first encountered, does it not become, in retrospect, \dq{obvious}? What other position could be the resolution of the fantastic proliferation of conflicting beliefs, and of the \dq{profound} philosophical problems (for example, \dq{Could an omnipotent god do the literally impossible?}, \dq{Are statements about what I did in the past while alone capable of intersubjective verification?}) arising from them? And again, one begins to ask, when one is asked to believe something, what it is that one is wanted to do, anyway; and one's reaction to the request comes to be \dq{Why bother? Cognitively, what is the value of doing so? I'd just be deceiving myself}. Also, how much simpler my position is than that of the believer. And although in a way the believer's position is the more natural, since one \dq{naturally} tends to deceive oneself if there's any advantage in doing so (that is, being right tends not to be valued), in another way my position is, since it is simple, and since the non-believer isn't worried by the doubts which arise for one who tries to keep himself deceived. + diff --git a/essays/philosophy_proper.tex b/essays/philosophy_proper.tex deleted file mode 100644 index 65ce47b..0000000 --- a/essays/philosophy_proper.tex +++ /dev/null @@ -1,194 +0,0 @@ -\chapter{Philosophy Proper (\enquote{Version 3,} 1961)} -\renewcommand{\thesubsection}{\arabic{subsection}} - -\fancyhead{} \fancyfoot{} \fancyfoot[LE,RO]{\thepage} -\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{Philosophy Proper (Version 3)}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{1. Introduction}} - -\setcounter{subsection}{0} -\subsection{Introduction (Revised, 1973)} - -This monograph defines philosophy as such---philosophy proper---to be an inquiry as to which beliefs are \enquote{true,} or right. The right beliefs are tentatively defined to be \stress{the beliefs one does not deceive oneself by holding.}Although beliefs will be regarded as mental acts, they will be identified by their propositional formulations. Provisionally, beliefs may be taken as corresponding to \stress{non-tautologous propositions.} - -Philosophy proper is an ultimate activity in the sense that no belief or supposed knowledge is conceded to be above philosophical examination. It is also an unavoidable activity in the sense that the notion of a belief, and the notion of judging the truth of a belief, are intrinsic to common sense and the natural language. Philosophers may not have achieved convincing results in philosophy proper; but the question of which beliefs are right is continuously posed for us even if we do not respect the way in which philosophers have dealt with it. - -All of the obstacles to philosophy proper arise because beliefs are normally held in order to satisfy non-cognitive needs. It will be helpful to examine this situation at some length. However, nothing can be done here beyond examining the situation. It is already clear that the interest of this monograph in beliefs is cognitive. It would be inappropriate to try to gain approval for philosophy proper by appealing to the values of those who hold beliefs in order to satisfy non-cognitive needs. - -It is implicit in beliefs that they correspond to cognitive claims, that they are subject to being judged true or false, and that their value rests on their truth. Nevertheless, beliefs can and do satisfy non-cognitive needs, quite apart from whether they are true. In order for a belief to satisfy some non-cognitive need, it is not necessary for the belief to be true; it merely has to be held. Concern with the ultimate philosophical validity of beliefs is rare. Concern with beliefs is normally concern with their ability to satisfy non-cognitive needs. - -To be specific, the literature of credulity contains remarks such as \enquote{\emph{I could not stand to live if I did not believe so-and-so,}} or \enquote{\emph{Even if so-and-so is true I don't want to know it.}} These remarks manifest the needs with which we are concerned. To take note of these remarks is already to uncover a level of self-deception. It is important to realize that this self-deception is explicit and self-admitted. To recognize it has nothing to do with imputing subconscious motives to behavior, as is done in psychoanalysis. Further, to recognize it is by no means to advance a theory of the ultimate origin of beliefs, a theory which would presuppose a judgment as to the philosophical validity of the beliefs. To theorize that the ultimate origin of beliefs lies in the denial of frustrating experiences, or in primal anxieties which are alleviated by mythological inventions, would be inappropriate when we have not even begun our properly philosophical inquiry. The only self-deceptions being considered here are admitted self-deceptions. - -A partial classification of the circumstances in which beliefs are held for non-cognitive reasons follows. -\vskip 0.5em -\begin{enumerate}[nosep, itemsep=0.5em]\item Beliefs may be directly tied to one's morale. \enquote{\emph{I couldn't stand to live if I didn't believe in God.}} \enquote{\emph{If President Nixon is guilty I don't want to know it.}} - -\item One may believe for reasons of conformity. The conversion of Jews to Catholicism in late medieval Spain was an extreme example. - -\slop{\item The American philosopher Santayana said that he believed in Catholicism for esthetic reasons.} - -\item Moral doctrines are sometimes justified on the grounds of their efficacy in maintaining public order, rather than their philosophical validity. - -\item A more complicated and more interesting situation arises when one who claims to be engaged in a cognitive inquiry somehow circumscribes the inquiry so as to ensure in advance that it will yield certain preferred results. Such a circumscribed inquiry will be called \term{theologizing,} in recognition of the archetypal activity in this category. \end{enumerate} -\vskip 0.5em - -When we raise the question of whether the natural sciences are instances of theologizing, it becomes apparent that the issue of non-cognitive motives for beliefs is no light matter. According to writers on the scientific method such as A. d'Abro, the scientist is compelled to operate as if he believed in the \enquote{\emph{real existence of a real absolute objective universe---a common objective world, one existing independently of the observer who discovers it bit by bit.}} The scientist holds this belief, even though it is a commonplace of college philosophy courses that it is unprovable, because he must do so in order to get on to the sort of results he considers desirable. The scientist claims to be engaged in a cognitive inquiry; yet the inquiry begins with an act of faith which it is impermissible to scrutinize. It follows that science is an instance of \term{theologizing.} If scientists cannot welcome a demonstration that their \enquote{metaphysical} presuppositions are invalid, then their interest in science cannot be cognitive. - -The scientist's non-cognitive motive for believing differs from the non-cognitive motives described earlier in one notable respect. Each of the non-cognitive needs described earlier required a given belief, and could not be satisfied by that belief's negation. But inside a science's circumscribed area of inquiry, the scientist can welcome the establishment of either of two contradictory propositions; in other words, his non-cognitive need can be satisfied by either proposition. It is in this sense that he can impartially test or decide between two propositions, or make new discoveries. On the other hand, with regard to the metaphysical presuppositions of science, only a single alternative is welcome. - -\vskip 0.5em\begin{enumerate}[resume, nosep, itemsep=0.5em]\item Academicians will readily acknowledge that they are not interested in scholarly work by unknown persons with no academic credentials. To academic mathematicians and biologists, whether Galois and Mendel had made valid discoveries was irrelevant. Thus, academicians as academicians circumscribe their purported interest in the cognitive in two ways---once as scientists; and once for reasons of personal gain and prestige. - -\item The strangest instance of a non-cognitive need for a belief is provided by the person who holds a fearful belief which is widely considered to be superstitious, such as belief in Hell. As always, the test of whether the motive for the belief is cognitive is the question of whether the person would welcome a demonstration that the belief is invalid. There is reason to suspect that persons who cling to fearful beliefs would not welcome such a demonstration, perverse as their attitude may seem. After all, they take no comfort in the widespread rejection of the belief as superstitious. Thus, it seems that a masochistic need for fearful beliefs must be recognized. \end{enumerate} - -\slop{\vskip 0.5em This examination of non-cognitive motives for beliefs is, to repeat, limited to circumstances in which there is explicit self-deception, or self-deception that can be demonstrated directly from internal evidence. The examination cannot be carried further unless we become able to judge whether the beliefs referred to are, after all, valid. Thus, we will now turn to our properly philosophical inquiry, which will occupy the remainder of this monograph.} -\nopagebreak\vfill -\signoffnote{(Note: Chapters 2--7 were written in 1961, at a time when I used unconventional syntax and punctuation. They are printed here without change.)} -\vfill - -\clearpage -\section{The Linguistic Solution of Properly Philosophical Problems} -\subsection{Preliminary Concepts} -\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{A. The Linguistic Solution}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{1. Preliminary Concepts}} - -In this part of the book I will be concerned to solve the problem of philosophy proper, the problem of which beliefs are right, by discussing language, certain linguistic expressions. To motivate what follows I might tentatively say that I will consider beliefs as represented by statements, formulations of them (for example, \enquote{Other persons have minds} as representing the belief that other persons have minds), so that the problem will be which statements are true. Actually, to solve this problem we will be driven far beyond answers to the effect that given statements are true (or false). - -To make this book as engaging as possible, I would like to start right into the solution of the problem, to begin with the material in the next chapter. However, it effects, I think, a considerable clarification and simplification of the presentation of the solution if I first introduce certain concepts in an extended discussion. Then, when they enter into the solution they won't have to be just suggested in a condensed explanation which has to be repeated over and over. Thus, this chapter will be a properly philosophically neutral introduction of the concepts, an introduction which doesn't in itself say anything about the rightness of given beliefs (or the truth of given statements). The chapter is as a result not so interesting as the others, but I hope the reader will bear with me through it. - -The first concept is a new one, that of \emph{explication}. Explication of a familiar linguistic expression is what might traditionally be said to be finding a definition of the expression; it amounts partly to determining what it is wanted that the expression \enquote{mean}. To explain: I will be discussing philosophically important expressions, familiar to the reader, such that their \enquote{meaning} needs clarifying, such that it is not clear to him how he wants to use them. I will be concerned with the suggestion of expressions, of which the \enquote{meanings}, uses, are clear, which will be acceptable to the reader as replacements for the expressions of which the uses are obscure; that is, which have the uses that, it will turn out, the expressions of which the uses are obscure are supposed to have. Since the expressions which are to be replacements can be equivalent as expressions (sounds, bodies of marks) to the expressions they are to replace, it can also be said that I will be concerned with the suggestion of clear \stress{uses}, of the expressions of which the uses are obscure, which are, it will turn out, the uses the reader wants the expressions to have. To be more specific about the conditions of acceptability of such replacements, if the familiar expressions (expressions of which the uses were obscure) were supposed to be names, have referents (and non-referents), then the new expressions must clearly have referents. Further, the new expressions must deserve (by having appropriate referents in the case of names) the principal connotations of the familiar expressions, especially the distinctive, honorific connotations of the familiar expressions. (I will not say here just how I use \enquote{connotation}. What the connotations of an expression are will be suggested by giving sentences about, in the case of a supposed name for example, what the referents of the expression are supposed to be like.) \enquote{Finding}, or constructing, an expression (with its use) supposed to be acceptable to oneself as a replacement, of the kind described, for an expression familiar to oneself, will be said to be \term{explicating} the expression familiar to oneself. The expression to be replaced will be said to be the \term{explicandum}, and the suggested replacement, the \term{explication}. Incidentally, if clarification shows that the desired use of the explicandum is inconsistent, then it can't have an explication at all acceptable, or what is the same thing, any explication will be as good as any other. - -I should mention that my use of \term{explication} is different from that of Rudolph Carnap, from whom I have taken the word rather than use the very problematic \term{definition}. For him, explication is a scientist's, or philosopher of science's, devising a new precise concept, useful in natural science, suggested by a vague, unclear common concept (for example, that of \enquote{work}); whereas for me it is in effect constructing (if possible) that precise, clear concept which is the nearest equivalent to an unclear common concept. - -Here is an example in the acceptability of explications. Suppose that an expression is suggested, as an explication for \enquote{thing having a mind} (if supposed to be a name, have referents), which has as referents precisely the things which have certain facial expressions, or talk, or have certain other \enquote{overt} behavior, or even certain brain electricity. Then I expect that this expression will not be acceptable to the reader as an explication for \enquote{thing having a mind}, since \enquote{thing having a mind} presumably has the connotations for the reader \enquote{\stress{that having a mind is not the same as, is very different from, higher than, having certain facial expressions, talking, certain other overt behaving, or having certain brain electricity---the mind is observable only by the thing having it}}, and the explication doesn't deserve these connotations: the connotations of the explicandum are exclusive of the referents of the proposed explication. It doesn't make any difference if there's a causal connection between having a mind and the other things, because the expression \enquote{thing having a mind} itself, and not the supposed effects of having a mind, is what is under discussion. - -As the reader can tell from the example, I will, in evaluating expressions, have to speak of what I assume the connotations of words are for the reader. If any of my assumptions are incorrect, the book will be slightly less relevant to the reader's philosophical problems than it would be otherwise. Even so, the reader should get from this part the method of finding good explications, and its use in solving properly philosophical problems. - -\slop{Especially important in deciding whether an explication for a supposed name is good is the check of the referents of the explication against the connotations of the explicandum. Traditional philosophers, in the rare cases when they have suggested explications for expressions in dealing with philosophical problems, have suggested absurdly bad ones, which can quickly be shown up by such a check. Examples which are typically horrible are the explications for \enquote{thing having a mind} mentioned above.} - -The second concept I will discuss is that of true statement. As I will be discussing the \enquote{truth} of formulations of beliefs, statements, in the next two chapters, and as the concept of true statement is quite obscure (making it a good example of one needing explication), it will be helpful for me to clarify the concept beforehand, to give a partial explication for \enquote{true statement}. (Partial because the explication, although much clearer than the explicandum, will itself have an unclear word in it.) - -Well, what is a \term{statement}? How do what are usually said to be \term{statements} state? Take a book and look through it, a book in a language you don't read, so you won't assume that it's obvious what it means. What does the book, the object, do? How does it work? Note that talking just about the marks in the book, or what seem (!) to be the rules of their arrangement, or the like, won't answer these questions. In fact, I expect that when the reader really thinks about them, the questions won't seem easy ones to answer. Now to begin answering them, one of the most important connotations of \term{true statement}, and, more generally, of \emph{statement}, as traditionally and commonly used, is that a \term{statement} is an \enquote{assertion which has truth value} (is true or false) (or \enquote{has content}, as it is sometimes said, rather misleadingly). That is, the \enquote{verbal} part of a statement is supposed to be related in a certain way to something \enquote{non-verbal}, or at least not in the language the verbal part of the statement is in. Further, a statement is supposed to be \enquote{true} or not because of something having to do with the non-verbal thing to which the verbal part of the statement is related. (The exceptions are the \enquote{statements} of formalist logic and mathematics, which are not supposed to be assertions; they are thus irrelevant to statements of the kind ordinary persons and philosophers are interested in.) Thus, if \enquote{\term{true statement}} is to be explicated, \enquote{assertion having truth value} and \enquote{is true} (and \enquote{has content} in a misleading use) have to be explicated, as they are obscure, and as it must be clear that the explication for \enquote{\term{true statement}} deserves the connotations which were suggested with \enquote{assertion having truth value} and \enquote{is true}. One important conclusion from these observations is that although \enquote{sentences} (the bodies of sound or bodes of marks such as \enquote{The man talks}) are often said to be \enquote{statements}, would not be sufficient (to say the least) to explicate \enquote{\term{statement}} by simply identifying it with \enquote{sentence} (in my sense); something must be said about such matters as that of being an assertion having truth value. For the same reason, it is not sufficient (to say the least) to simply identify \enquote{\term{statement}}with \enquote{sentence}, the latter being explicated in terms of the (\enquote{formal}) rules for the formation of (grammatical) sentences, as these rules have no reference to such matters as that of being an assertion having truth value. - -In explicating \enquote{\term{true statement}} I will use the most elegant approach, one relevant to the interest in such matters as that of being an assertion having truth value. This is to begin by describing a simple, if not the simplest, way to make an assertion. As an example, I will describe the simplest way to make the assertion that a thing is a table. The way is to \enquote{apply} \uline{table} to the thing. It is supposed that \uline{table} has been \enquote{interpreted}, that is, that it is \enquote{\emph{determinate}} to which, of all things, applications of \uline{table} are (to be said to be) \enquote{true}. (It is good to realize that it is also supposed that it is \enquote{determinate} which, of all things (events), are \enquote{occurrences of the word \enquote{table}}, are expressions \enquote{equivalent to} \uline{table}.) The word \enquote{\emph{determinate}} is the intentionally ambiguous one in this explication; I don't want to commit myself yet on how an expression becomes interpreted. As for \enquote{apply}, one can \enquote{apply} the word to the thing by pointing out \enquote{first} the word and \enquote{then} the thing. \enquote{point out} is restricted to refer to \term{ostension}, pointing out things in one's presence, things one is perceiving, and not to \enquote{directing attention to things not in one's presence} as well. The assertion is \enquote{true}, of course, if and only if the thing to which \uline{table} is applied is one of the things to which it is determinate that the application of \uline{table} is (to be said to be) \enquote{true}, otherwise \enquote{false}. It should be clear that such a pointing out of a \enquote{first} thing and a \enquote{second}, the first being an interpreted expression, is an assertion of a simple kind, does have truth value and so forth. Let me further suggest \enquote{\term{interpreted expression}} as an explication for \enquote{name}; with respect to this explication, the things to which equivalent names (\enquote{occurrences of a name}) may be truthfully applied are the referents of the equivalent names, other things being non-referents. (Incidentally, I could have started with the concept of a name and its referents, and then said how to make a simple assertion using a name.) Then what I have intentionally left ambiguous is \emph{how a name has referents}; I have not said, for example, whether the relation between name and referents is an \enquote{objective, metaphysical entity}, which would be getting into philosophy proper. - -The point of describing this simple way of making an assertion is that what one wants to say are \term{statements}, namely sentences used in the context of certain conventions, can be regarded as assertions of the \enquote{simple} kind; thus an explication for \enquote{\term{true statement}} can be found. To do so, first let us say that the \term{complex name} gotten by replacing a sentence's \enquote{main verb} with the corresponding participle is the \term{associated name} of the sentence. For example, the associated name of \enquote{Boston is in Massachusetts} is \enquote{Boston being in Massachusetts}. In the case of a sentence with coordinate clauses there may be a choice with respect to what is to be taken as the main verb, but this presents no significant difficulty. - -\vskip 1em - -\begin{leftbar} -Example: \\\textbf{sentence:} \enquote{The table in the room will have been black only if it had been pushed by one man while the other man talked}; \\\textbf{main verb:} \enquote{will have been} or \enquote{had been pushed}. -\end{leftbar} - -\vskip 0.5em - -Also, English may not have a participle to correspond to every verb, but this is in theory no difficulty; the lacking participle could obviously be invented. Now what we would like to say one does, in using a sentence to make a statement, is to so to speak \enquote{assert} its associated name; this \enquote{asserted name} being \enquote{true} if and only if it has a referent. However, one doesn't \emph{assert} names; names just have referents---it is statements that one makes, \enquote{asserts}, and that are \enquote{true} or \enquote{false}. How, then, do we explicate this \enquote{\term{asserting}} of a name? By construing it as that assertion, of the simple kind, which is the application of \uline{having a referent} to the name. In other words, from our theoretical point of view, to use a sentence to make a statement, one begins with a name (the sentence's associated name), and puts it into the sentence form, an act equivalent by convention to applying \uline{having a referent} to it. For example, the sentence \enquote{Boston is in Massachusetts} should be regarded as the simple assertion which is the application of \uline{having a referent} to \enquote{Boston being in Massachusetts}. - -Now this approach may seem \enquote{unnatural} or incomplete to the reader for several reasons. First there is the syntactical oddity: the sentence is replaced by a statement \enquote{about} it (or to be precise its associated name). Well, all I can say is that this oddity is the inevitable result of trying to describe explicitly all that happens when one uses a sentence to make a statement; I can assure the reader that the alternate approaches are even more unnatural. Secondly, it may seem natural enough to speak of interpreting \enquote{simple names} (Fries' \term{Class 1 words}), but not so natural to speak of interpreting complex names (what could their referents be?). Of course, this is because complex names are to be regarded as formed from simpler names by specified methods; that is, their interpretations (and thus referents) are in specified relations to those of the simple names from which they are formed. The relations are indicated by the words, in the complex names, which are not names, and by the order of the words in the complex names. An example worth a comment is associated names containing such words as \enquote{the}; in making statements, these names have to be in the context of additional conventions, understandings, to have significance. It will be clear that what these relations (and referents) are, the explication of these relations, is not important for my purposes. Thirdly, I have not said anything about what the \enquote{meaning} (intension), as opposed to the referents (and non-referents), of a name is. (I might say that a thing can't have an intension unless it has referents or non-referents.) This matter is also not important for my purposes (and gets into philosophy proper). Finally, my approach tells the reader no more than he already knew about whether a given statement is true. Quite so, and I said that the discussion would be properly philosophically neutral. In fact, it is so precisely because of the ambiguous word \enquote{determinate}, because I haven't said anything about how names get referents. Even so, we have come a long way from blank wonder about how one (sounds, marks) could ever state anything, a long way towards explicating how asserting works. (And to the philosopher of language with formalist prejudices, the discussion has been a needed reminder that if language is to be assertional, say something, then names and referring in some form must have the central role in it.) - -\slop{\term{Statements}, then, can be regarded as assertions of the \enquote{simple} kind which are made in the special, conventional way, involving sentences, I have described. I could thus explicate \enquote{\emph{true statement}} as referring to those true \enquote{simple} assertions made in the special way, and it should be clear that this would be a good explication. However, as the connotations of \enquote{true statement} having to do with the method of applying the first member to the second are, I expect, of secondary importance compared to those having to do with such matters as being an assertion having truth value, it ts more elegant to explicate \enquote{true statement} as referring to all true assertions of the \enquote{simple} kind. For the purposes of this book it is not important which of the two explications the reader prefers.} - -So much for the preliminaries. - -\subsection{\enquote{Experience}} - -\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{A. The Linguistic Solution}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{2. \enquote{Experience}}} - -I will introduce in this chapter some basic terminology, as the main step in taking the reader from ordinary English and traditional philosophical language to a language with which my philosophy can be exposited. This terminology is important because one of the main difficulties in expositing my philosophy (or any new philosophy) is that current language is based on precisely some of the assumptions, beliefs, I intend to question. It will, I think, be immediately clear to the reader at all familiar with modern philosophy that the problems of terminology I am going to discuss are relevant to the problem of which beliefs are right. - -First, consider the term \enquote{\term{non-experience}}. Although the concept of a non-experience is intrinsically far more \enquote{difficult} than the concept of \enquote{\term{experience}} which I will be discussing presently, it is, I suppose, presupposed in all \enquote{natural languages} and throughout philosophy, is so taken for granted that it is rarely discussed in itself. Thus, the reader should have no difficulty understanding it. Examples of \term{non-experiences} are perceivable objects---for example, a table (as opposed to one's perceptions of it), existing external to oneself, persisting when one is not perceiving it; the future (future events); the past; space (or better, the distantness of objects from oneself); minds other than one's own; causal relationships as ordinarily understood; referential relationships (the relationships between names and their referents as ordinarily understood; what I avoided discussing in the second chapter); unperceivable \enquote{things} (microscopic objects (of course, viewing them through microscopes does not count as perceiving them), essences, Being); in short, most of the things one is normally concerned with, normally thinks about, as well as the objects of uncommon knowledge.\footnote{To simplify the explanation of the concept, make it easier on the reader, I am speaking as if I believed that there are non-experiences, that is, introducing the concept in the context of the beliefs usually associated with it.}Non-experiences are precisely what one has beliefs about. One believes that there are microscopic living organisms, or that there are none (or that one can not know whether there are any---this is \stress{not} a \term{non-belief} but a complex belief about the relation of the realm where non-experiences could be to the mind). Incidentally, that other minds, for example, are non-experiences is presumably a connotation of \enquote{other minds} for the reader, as explained in the second chapter. - -In the history of philosophy, the concept of \term{non-experience} comes first. Then philosophers begin to develop theories of how one knows about non-experiences (epistemological theories). The concept of a \term{perception}, or \term{experience} of something, is introduced into philosophy. The theory is that one knows about \term{non-experiences} by perceiving, having experiences of, some of them. For example, one knows that there is a table before one's eyes (assuming that there is) by having a visual perception or experience of it, by having a \enquote{visual-table-experience}. The theory goes on to say that these perceptions are in the mind. Then, if one has a visual-table-experience in one's mind when there is no table, one is hallucinated. And so forth. Now there are two sources of confusion in all this for the naive reader. First, saying that perceptions of objects are in one's mind is not saying that they are, for example, visualizations, imaginings, such as one's visualization of a table with one's eyes closed. Perceptions of objects do not seem \enquote{mental}. The theory that they are in the mind is a \textbf{belief}. This point leads directly to the second source of confusion. Does the English word \enquote{table}, as ordinarily used to refer to a table when one is looking at it, refer to the table, an entity external to one's perceptions which persists when not perceived, or to one's perception of it, to the visual-table-experience? If distinguishing between the two, and the notion that the table-experience is in his mind, seem silly to the reader, then he probably uses \enquote{table}, \enquote{perceived table}, and \enquote{table-experience} as equivalent some of the time. The distinction, however, is not just silly; anyone who believes that there are tables when he is not perceiving them must accept it to be consistent. At any rate there is this confusion, that it is not always clear whether English object-names are being used to refer to perceived non-experiences or to experiences, the perceptions. - -Now let us ignore for a moment the connotations that experiences are experiences, perceptions, of non-experiences, and are in the mind. The term \enquote{\term{experience}} is important here because with it philosophers finally made a start at inventing a term for the things one knows directly, unquestionably knows, or, better, which one just has, or are just there (whether they are experiences, perceptions, of non-experiences or not). A traditional philosopher would say that if one is having a table-experience, one may not know whether it's a true perception of a table, whether there's an objective table there; or whether it's an hallucination; but one unquestionably knows, has, the table-experience. And of course, with respect to one's experiences not supposed to be perceptions of anything, such as visualizations, one unquestionably knows, has them too. A better way of putting it is that \stress{there is no question as to whether one has one's experiences or what they are like.}One doesn't believe (that one has) one's experiences; to try to do so would be rather like trying to polish air. In fact, \enquote{thinking} that one doesn't have one's experiences, if this is possible, is a belief, a wrong one (as will be shown, although it should already be obvious if the reader has the slightest idea of what I am talking about), and in fact a perfectly insane one. Now the reader must not think that because I say experiences are unquestionably known I am talking about tautologies, or about beliefs which some philosophers say can be known by intuition even though unprovable, or say cannot really be doubted without losing one's sanity.\footnote{For example, some philosophers say this about the belief that other persons have minds.} In speaking of experiences I am not trying to trick the reader into accepting a lot of beliefs I am not prepared to justify, as many philosophers do by appealing to intuition or sanity or what not, a reprehensible hypocrisy which shows that they are not the least interested in philosophy proper. One does not have other-persons'-having-minds-experiences (nor are the objective tables one supposedly perceives table-experiences); one believes that other persons have minds (or that there is an objective table corresponding to one's table-experience), and this belief could very well be wrong (in fact, it is, as will be shown). - -I have explained the current use of the term \enquote{\term{experience}}. Now I want to propose a new use for the term, which, except where otherwise noted, will be that of the rest of this book. (Thus whereas in discussing \enquote{\term{non-experience}} I was merely explaining and accepting the current use of the term, in the case of \enquote{\term{experience}} I am going to suggest a new use for the term.) As I explained, the concept of \term{non-experience} preceded that of \term{experience}, and the latter was developed to explain how one knows the former. What I am interested in, however, is not \enquote{experience} as it implies. \enquote{perceptions, of non-experiences, and in the mind}, but as it refers to \stress{that which one unquestionably knows, is immediate, is just there, is not something one believes exists}. I am going to use \enquote{\term{experience}} to refer, as it already does, to that immediate \enquote{world}, but \stress{without the implication that \term{experience} is perception of \term{non-experience}, and in the mind: the same referents but without the old connotations}. In other words, in my use \enquote{\term{experience}} is completely neutral with respect to relationships to non-experiences, is not an antonym for \enquote{\term{non-experience}} as conventionally used, does not presuppose a metaphysic. The reader is being asked to take a leap of understanding here, because there is all the difference in philosophy between \enquote{experience} as implying, connoting, relatedness to non-experiences or in particular the realm where they could be, and \enquote{\term{experience}} without these connotations. - -Viewing this discussion of terminology in retrospect, it should be obvious that although my term \enquote{\term{experience}} was introduced last, it is intrinsically, logically, the simplest, most immediate, most inevitable of the terms, and should be the easiest to understand. In contrast, the notions I discussed in reaching it may seem a little arbitrary. As a matter of fact, I have used the perspective of the Western philosophical tradition to explain my term, but this doesn't mean that it is relevant only to that tradition or, especially, the theory of knowing about \term{non-experiences}. Even if the reader's conceptual background does not involve the concept of \term{non-experience,} and especially the modern Western theory of knowing about \term{non-experiences,} he ought to be able to understand, and realize the \enquote{primacy} of, my term \enquote{\term{experience}}. The term should be supra-cultural. - -I have gone to some length to explain my use of the term \enquote{experience}. As I have said, it is \enquote{intrinsically} the simplest term, but I can not define it by just equating it to some English expression because all English, including the traditional term \enquote{experience}, the antonym of \enquote{\term{non-experience}}, is based on metaphysical assumptions, does have implications about non-experience, in short, is formulations of beliefs. These implications are different for different philosophers according as their metaphysics\footnote{Or, as is sometimes (incorrectly) said, \enquote{ontologies}.} differ. Even such a sentence as \enquote{The table is black} implies the formulation \enquote{\uline{Material objects are real}} (to the materialist), or \enquote{\uline{So-called objects are ideas in the mind}} (to the idealist), or \enquote{\uline{Substances and attributes are real}}, and so forth, traditionally. As a result, in order to explain the new term I have had to use English in a very special way, ultimately turning it against itself, so as to enable the reader to guess how I use the term. That is, although there is nothing problematic about my use of \term{experience}, about its referents, there is about my English, for example when I say that the connotation of relatedness to \term{non-experience} is to be dropped from \term{experience}. There can be this new term, the philosopher is not irrevocably tied to English or other natural language and its implied philosophy, as some philosophers claim; because a term is able to be a name, to be used to make assertions, not by being a part of conventional English or other natural language, but by having referents. - -As I suggested at the beginning of this chapter, I need to introduce my \term{experience} because without it I cannot question all beliefs, everything about \term{non-experiences}, since in English there is always the implication that there could be \term{non-experiences}. The term is a radical innovation; one of the most important in this book. The fact that although it is the \enquote{simplest} and least questionable term, it is a radical innovation and is difficult to explain using English, shows how philosophically inadequate English and the philosophies it implies are. Now if the reader has not understood my \term{experience} he is likely to precisely mis-understand the rest of the book as an attempt to show that there are no non-experiences.\footnote{It's good that this isn't what I'm trying to show, because it is self-contradictory: for there to be no non-experiences there would have to be a realm empty of them, and this realm would have to be a non-experience.} If he is lucky he will just find the book incomprehensible, or possibly even come to understand the term from the rest of what I say, using it. But if he does understand the term, then he is past the greatest difficulty in understanding the book; in fact, he may already realize what I'm going to say. - -\subsection{The Linguistic Solution} - -\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{A. The Linguistic Solution}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{3. The Linguistic Solution}} - -Now that I have explained the key terminology for this part of the book, I can give the solution to properly philosophical problems, the problems of which beliefs are right, in the form of conclusions about the language in which the beliefs are formulated. My concern here is to present the solution as soon as possible, so as to make it clear to the reader that my work contains important results, is an important contribution to philosophy, and not just admirable sentiments or the formulation of an attitude or a philosophically neutral analysis of concepts or the like. For this reason I will not be too concerned to make the solution seem natural, or intuitive, or to explore all its implications; that will come later. - -However, in the hope that it will make the main \enquote{argument} of this chapter easier to understand, I will precede it with a short, non-rigorous version of it, which should give the \enquote{intuitive insight} behind the main argument. Consider the question of whether one can know if a given belief is true. Now a given belief is cognitively arbitrary in that it cannot be justified from the standpoint of having no beliefs, cannot be justified without appealing to other beliefs. Thus the answer must be skepticism: one cannot know if a given belief is true. However, this skepticism is a belief---a contradiction. The ultimate conclusion is that to escape inconsistency, to be right, one must, at the linguistic level, reject all talk of beliefs, of knowing if they are true, reject all formulations of beliefs. The \enquote{necessity}, but inconsistency, of skepticism \enquote{shows} my conclusion in an intuitively understandable way. - -To get on to the definitive version of my \enquote{argument}. I will say that one name \enquote{\term{depends}} on another if and only if it has the logical relation to that other that \uline{black table} has to \uline{table}: a referent of the former is necessarily a referent of the latter (one of the relations between names mentioned in the second chapter). Now the associated name of any statement, or formulation, of a belief of necessity \term{depends} on \term{non-experience}, since non-experiences are what beliefs are about. For example, \enquote{Other persons having minds}, the associated name of the formulation \enquote{Other persons have minds}, certainly \term{depends} on \term{non-experience}. Thus, anything true of \term{non-ex\-per\-ience} will be true of the associated name of any formulation of a belief. - -In the last chapter I introduced, explained the concepts of non-ex\-per\-ience and experience (in the traditional sense, as the antonym of \term{non-experience}), showed the connotations of the expressions \term{non-experience} and experience (traditional). What I did not go on to show, left for this chapter, is that if one continues to analyze these concepts, one comes on crucial implications which result in contradictions. What follows is perhaps the most concentrated passage in this book, so that the reader must be willing to read it slowly and thoughtfully. Consider one's \term{experience} (used in my, \enquote{neutral}, sense unless I say otherwise). Could there be something in one's experience, a part of one's experience, which was awareness of whether it's experience (traditional), of whether it's related to non-experience, of whether there is non-experience, awareness of non-experience? No, as should be obvious from the connotations shown in the last chapter.\footnote{Compare this with the point that one cannot (cognitively) justify a belief from the standpoint of having no beliefs, cannot justify it without appealing to other beliefs.} If there could be, if such awareness were just an experience, the distinctness of \term{experience} from experience (traditional) and so forth would disappear. The concepts of experience (traditional) and so forth would be superfluous, in fact, one couldn't have them: experience (traditional) and so forth would just be absorbed into \term{experience}. One concludes that there cannot be anything in one's experience which is awareness of whether it's experience (traditional), of whether there is non-experience. But then this awareness, which is in part about experience (traditional) and non-experience and thus involves awareness of them, is in one's \term{experience}---a contradiction. In fact, the same holds for the awareness which is \enquote{understanding the concepts} of non-experience and the rest as they are supposed to be understood. And for \enquote{understanding}\term{non-experience} (and the rest) as it is supposed to be, being aware of its referents (and non-referents); since to name non-experience, it must be an experience (traditional). And even for being aware of the referents (and non-referents) of \enquote{\term{non-experience}}, which to name an experience (traditional) must be one. One mustn't assume that one understands \term{non-experience}---and \enquote{\term{non-experience}}---and \enquote{\enquote{\term{non-experience}}}; but here one is, using \enquote{\term{non-experience}} and \enquote{\enquote{\term{non-experience}}} to say so (which certainly implies that one assumes one understands them). It is impossible for there to be non-experiences. When one begins to examine closely the concept of \term{non-experience}, it collapses. - -(A final point for the expert. This tangle of contradictions is intrinsic in the concept of non-experience; it does not result because I have introduced a violation of the law that names cannot name themselves. This should be absolutely clear from the two sentences about names, which show contradictions---that one must not assume that one understands certain expressions, but that one uses the expressions to say so (does assume it)---with explicit stratification.) - -My exposition has broken down in a tangle of contradictions. Now what is important is that it has done so precisely because I have talked about experience (traditional), \term{non-experience}, and the rest, because I have spoken as if there could be non-experiences, because I have used \enquote{experience} (traditional), \enquote{non-experience}, and the rest. Thus, even though what I have said is a tangle of contradictions, it is not by any means valueless. Since it is a tangle of contradictions precisely because it involves \enquote{experience} (traditional), \enquote{\term{non-experience}}, and the rest, it shows that one who \enquote{accepts} the expressions, supposes that they are valid language, has inconsistent desires with respect to how they are to be used. The expressions can have no explications at all acceptable to him. He cannot consistently use the expressions (the way they're supposed to be). The expressions, and, remembering the paragraph before last, any formulation of a belief, are completely discredited. (What is not discredited is language referring to \term{experiences} (my use). If it happens that an expression I have said is a formulation of a belief does have a good \term{explication} for the reader, then it is not a formulation of a belief for him but refers to \term{experiences}.) Now there is an important point about method which should be brought out. If all \enquote{non-experiential language}, \enquote{belief language}, is inconsistent, how can I show this and yet avoid falling into contradiction when I say it? The answer is that I don't have to avoid falling into contradiction; that I fall into contradiction precisely because I use formulations of beliefs shows what I want to show. This, then, is the linguistic solution; as I said we would, we have been driven far beyond any such conclusion as \enquote{all formulations of beliefs are false}. - -Now what do these conclusions about formulations of beliefs, about belief language, say about beliefs themselves, about whether a given belief is right? Well, to the extent that a belief is tied up with its formulation, since the formulation is discredited, the belief is, must be wrong. After all, if a belief were right, its formulation would necessarily have an acceptable \term{explication} which was true; in short, the belief would have a true formulation (to see this, note that the contrary assertion is itself a formulation of a belief---leading to a contradiction). Incidentally, this point answers those who would say, that the inconsistency of their statements of belief taken literally does not discredit their beliefs, as the statements are not to be taken literally, are metaphorical or symbolic truths. To continue, one who because of having a belief took its formulation seriously, expected that it could have an acceptable \term{explication} for him, could not turn out to be an expression he could not properly use, must be deceiving himself in some way. Now there is another important point about \enquote{method} to be made. The question will probably continually recur to the critical reader how one can \enquote{know}, be aware that any given belief is wrong, without having beliefs. The answer is that one way one can be aware of it is simply to be aware of the inconsistency of belief language, which awareness is not a belief. (Whether belief language is inconsistent is not a matter of belief but of the way one wants expressions used; being aware of the inconsistency is like being aware with respect to a table, \enquote{that in my language, this is to be said to be a \enquote{table}}.) Incidentally, to wrap things up, the common belief as to how a name has referents is that there is a relation between the name and its referents which is an objective, metaphysical entity, a non-experience; this belief is wrong. How, in what sense a name can have referents will not be discussed here. - -The unsophisticated reader may react to all of this with a lot of \enquote{Yes, but\ldots} thoughts. If he doesn't more or less identify beliefs with their formulations, and doesn't have an intuitive appreciation of the force of linguistic arguments, he my tend to regard my result as a mere (if embarrassing) curiosity.\footnote{Of course, it isn't, but I am concerned with how well the reader understands that.} And there does remain a lot to be said about beliefs themselves (as mental acts), and where the self-deception is in them; it is not even clear yet just what the relation of a belief to its formulation is. Then the reader might ask whether there aren't beliefs whose rejection as wrong would conflict with \term{experience}, or which it would be impossible or dangerous not to have. I now turn to the discussion of these matters. - -\clearpage -\section{Completion of the Treatment of Properly Philosophical Problems} -\subsection{Beliefs as Mental Acts} - -\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{B. Completion of Treatment}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{4. Beliefs as Mental Acts}} - -In this chapter I will solve the problems of philosophy proper by discussing believing itself, as a (\enquote{conscious}) mental act. Although I will be talking about mental acts and \term{experience}, it must be clear that this part of the book, like the fast part, is not epistemology or phenomenology. I will not try to talk about \enquote{perception} or the like, in a mere attempt to justify \enquote{common-sense} beliefs or what not. Of course, both parts are incidentally relevant to epistemology and phenomenology, since in discussing beliefs I discuss the beliefs which constitute those subjects. - -I should say immediately that \enquote{belief}, in its traditional use as supposed to refer to \enquote{\term{mental acts, often unconscious, connected with the realm of non-experience}}, has no explication at all satisfactory, has been discredited. This point is important, as it means that one does not want to say that one does or does not \enquote{have beliefs}, in the sense important to those having beliefs, that beliefs (in my sense) will not do as referents for \enquote{belief} in the use important to those having beliefs; helping to fill out the conclusion of the last part. Now when I speak of a \enquote{belief} I will be speaking of an \term{experience}, what might be said to be \enquote{\emph{an act of consciously believing, of consciously having a belief}}, of what is \enquote{in one's head} when one says that one \enquote{believes a certain thing}. Further, I will, for convenience in distinguishing beliefs, speak of belief \enquote{that others have minds}, for example, or in general of belief \enquote{that there are non-experiences} (with quotation marks), but I must not be taken as implying that beliefs manage to be \enquote{about non-experiences}. (Thus, what I say about beliefs will be entirely about \term{experiences}; I will not be trying to talk \enquote{about the realm of non-experience, or the relation of beliefs to it}.) I expect that it is already fairly clear to the reader what his acts of consciously believing are (if he has any); I will be more concerned with pointing out to him some features of his \enquote{beliefs} (believing) than with the explication of \enquote{\emph{act of consciously believing}}, although I will need to make a few comments about that too. What I am trying to do is to get the reader to accept a useful, possibly new, use of a word (\enquote{\term{belief}}) salvaged from the unexplicatible use of the word, rather than rejecting the word altogether. - -There is a further point about terminology. The reader should remember from the third chapter that quite apart from the theory \enquote{that perceptions are in the mind}, one can make a distinction between mental and non-mental \term{experiences}, between, for example, visualizing a table with one's eyes closed, and a \enquote{seen} table, a visual-table-experience. Now I am going to say that visualizations and the like are \enquote{\term{imagined-experiences}}. For example, a visualization of a table will be said to be an \enquote{\term{imagined-visual-table-experience}}. The reader should not suppose that by \enquote{imagined} I mean that the experiences are \enquote{hallucinations}, are \enquote{unreal}. I use \enquote{imagined} because saying \enquote{mental-table-experience} is too much like saying \enquote{table in the mind} and because just using \enquote{visualization} leaves no way of speaking of mental \term{experiences} which are not visualizations. Speaking of an \enquote{\term{imagined-table-experience}} seems to be the best way of saying that it is a mental \term{experience}, and then distinguishing it from other mental \term{experiences} by the conventional method of saying that it is an imagining \enquote{of a (non-mental) table-experience} (better thought of as meaning an imagining like a (non-mental) table-experience). In other words, an \term{imagined-\x-experience} (to generalize) is a \enquote{valid} experience, all right, but it is not a non-mental \x-experience; it is a mental experience which is like a (non-mental) \x-experience in a certain way. Incidentally, an \enquote{imagined-imagined-experience} is impossible by definition; or is no different from an imagined-experience, whichever way you want to look at it. If this terminology is a little confusing, it is not my fault but that of the conventional method of distinguishing different mental \term{experiences} by saying that they are imaginings \enquote{of one or another non-mental \term{experiences}}. - -I can at last ask what one does when one believes \enquote{\emph{that there is a table, not perceived by oneself, behind one now}}, or anything else. Well, in the first place, one takes note of, gives one's attention to, an imagined-experience, such as an imagined-table-experience or a visualization of oneself with one's back to a table; or to a linguistic expression, a supposed statement, such as \enquote{\emph{There is a table behind me}}. This is not all one does, however; if it were, what one does would not in the least deserve to be said to be a \enquote{belief} (a point about the explication of my \enquote{\term{belief}}). The additional, \enquote{essential} component of a belief is a self-deceiving \enquote{attitude} toward the \term{experience}. What this attitude is will be described below. Observe that one does not want to say that the additional component is a belief about the \term{experience} because of the logical absurdity of doing so, or, in other words, because it suggests that there is an infinite regress of mental action. Now the claim that the attitude is \enquote{self-deceiving} is not, could not be, at all like the claim \enquote{\emph{that a belief as a whole, or its formulation, fails to correspond in a certain way to non-experience, to reality, or is false}}. The question of \enquote{\emph{what is going on in the realm of non-experience}} does not arise here. Rather, my claim is entirely about an \term{experience}; it is that the attitude, the \term{experience} not itself a belief but part of the \term{experience} of believing, is \enquote{consciously, deliberately} self-deceiving, is a \enquote{self-deception \term{experience}}. I don't have to \enquote{\emph{prove that the attitude is self-deceiving by reference to what is going on in the realm of non-experience}}; when I have described the attitude and the reader is aware of it, he will presumably find it a good explication, unhesitatingly want, to say that it is \enquote{self-deceiving}. - -I will now say, as well as can be, what the attitude is. In believing, one is attentive primarily to the imagined-experience or linguistic expression as mentioned above. The attitude is \enquote{peripheral}, is a matter of the way one is attentive. Saying that the attitude is \enquote{conscious, deliberate}, is a little strong if it seems to imply that it is cynical self-brainwashing; what I am trying to say is that it is not an \enquote{objective} or \enquote{subconscious} self-deception such as traditional philosophers speak of, one impossible to be aware of. This is about as much as I can say about the attitude directly, because of the inadequacy of the English descriptive vocabulary for mental \term{experiences}; with respect to English the attitude is a \enquote{vague, elusive} thing, very difficult to describe. I will be able to say more about what it is only by suggestion, by saying that it is the attitude \enquote{that such and such} (the reader must not think I mean the belief \enquote{that such and such}). If the \term{experience} to which the attention is primarily given in believing is an imagined-\x-experience, then the self-deceiving attitude is the attitude \enquote{\stress{that the imagined-\x-experience is a (non-mental) \x-experience}}. As an example, consider the belief \enquote{\stress{that there is a table behind one}}. If one's attention in believing is not on a linguistic expression, it will be on an \term{imagined-experience} such as an imagined-table-experience or a visualization of a person representing oneself (to be accurate) with his back to a table, and one will have the self-deceiving attitude \enquote{\stress{that the \term{imagined-experience} is a table or oneself with one's back to a table}}. Of course, if one is asked whether one's imagined-\x-experience is a (non-mental) \x-experience, one will say that it is not, that it is admittedly an \term{imagined-experience} but \enquote{corresponds to a non-experience}. This is not inconsistent with what I have said: first, I don't say that one believes \enquote{\stress{that one's imagined-\x-experience is an \x-experience}}; secondly, when one is asked the question, one stops believing \enquote{\stress{that there is a table behind one}} and starts believing \enquote{\stress{that one's \term{imagined-experience} corresponds in a certain way to a non-experience}}, a different matter (different belief). - -lf one's attention in believing is primarily on a linguistic expression (which if a sentence, will be pretty much regarded as its associated name), the self-deceiving attitude is the attitude \enquote{\stress{that the expression has a referent}}. With respect to the belief \enquote{\stress{that there is a table behind one}}, one's attention in believing would be primarily on the expression \enquote{\stress{There is a table behind me}}, pretty much regarded as \enquote{\stress{There being a table behind me}}, and one would have the self-deceiving attitude \enquote{\stress{that this name has a referent}}. Unexplicatible expressions, then, function as principal components of beliefs. - -\vskip 0.3em -\slop{\inlineaside{This paragraph is complicated and inessential; if it begins to confuse the reader it can be skipped.} I will now describe the relation between the version, of a belief, involving language and the version not involving language. In the version not involving language, the attention is on an imagined-\x-experience which is \enquote{regarded} as an \x-experience, whereas in the version involving language, the attention is on something which is \enquote{regarded} as having as referent \enquote{something} (the attitude is vague here). For the latter version, the idea is \enquote{\stress{that the reality is at one remove}}, and correspondingly, one whose \enquote{language} consists of formulations of beliefs doesn't desire to have as \term{experiences}, or perceive, or even be able to imagine, referents of expressions---which, for the more critical person, may make believing easier. Thus, just as one takes note of the imagined-\x-experience in the version of the belief not involving language, has something which functions as the thing the belief is about, so in the version involving language one has the attitude that the expression has a referent. Further, just as one has the attitude that the imagined-\x-experience is an \x-experience in the version not involving language, does not recognize that what functions as the thing believed in is a mere \term{imagined-experience}, so in the version involving \enquote{language} one takes note of an \enquote{expression} not having a referent, since a referent could only be a (mere) \term{experience}. One who expects an expression, which is the principal component of a belief, to have a good explication does so on the basis of the self-deceiving attitude one has towards it in having the belief. In trying to explicate the expression, one finds inconsistent desires with respect to what its referents must be. These desires correspond to the way the expression functions in the belief: the desire that it be possible for awareness of the referent to be part of one's \term{experience} corresponds to the attitude, in believing, that the expression has a referent; and the desire that it not be possible for awareness of the referent to be (merely) part of one's \term{experience} corresponds to the expression's not having a referent in believing. Pointing out that the expression is unexplicable discredits the belief of which it is the principal component, just as pointing out that a belief not involving language consists of being attentive to an \term{imagined-experience} and having the attitude that it is not an \term{imagined-experience}, discredits that belief.} -\vskip 0.3em - -Such, then, is what one does when one believes. If the reader is rather unconvinced by my description, especially because of my speaking of \enquote{attitudes}, then let him consider the following summary: there must be something more to a mental act than just taking note of an \term{experience} for it to be a \enquote{belief}; this something is \enquote{peripheral and elusive}, so that I am calling the something an \enquote{attitude}, the most appropriate way in English to speak of it; the attitude, an \term{experience} not itself a belief but part of the \term{experience} which \stress{is} the belief, is thus isolated; the attitude is \enquote{self-deceiving}, is a \enquote{(conscious) self-deception experience}, because when aware of it the reader will presumably want to say that it is. The attitude just about has to be a (\enquote{conscious}) self-deception experience to transform mere taking note of an \term{experience} into something remotely deserving to be said to be a \enquote{belief}. The decision as to whether the attitude is to be said to be \enquote{self-deceiving} is to be made without trying to think \enquote{about the relation of the belief as a whole to the realm of non-experience}, to do which would be to slip into having beliefs, other than the one under consideration, which would be irrelevant to our concern here. Ultimately, the important thing is to observe what one does in believing, and particularly the attitude, more than to say that the attitude is \enquote{self-deceiving}. - -In order for my description of believing to be complete, I must mention some things often associated with believing but not \enquote{essential} to it. First, one may take note of non-mental and imagined-experiences other than the one to which attention is primarily given. If one has a table-experience and believes \enquote{that it is a table-perception corresponding to an objectively existing table', one may give much of his attention to the table-experience in so believing, associate the table-experience strongly with the belief. One may in believing give attention to non-mental experiences supposed to be "evidence for, confirmation of, one's belief} (more will be said about confirmation shortly). If one's attention in believing is primarily on the linguistic expression \enquote{\x}, one may give attention to a referent of \enquote{imagined-\x(-experience)}, an \enquote{imagined-referent} of \enquote{\x}; or to imagined-\y-experiences such that \y-experiences are supposed, said, to be \enquote{analogous to the referent of \enquote{\x}}. In the latter case the \y-experiences will be mutually exclusive, and less importance will be given to them than would be to imagined-referents. An example of imagined-referents in believing is visualizing oneself with one's back to a table, as the imagined-referent of \enquote{There being a table behind one}. An example of imagined-\y-experiences (such that \y-experiences are mutually exclusive) which are said to be \enquote{analogous to referents}, in believing, is the visualizations associated with beliefs \enquote{\stress{about entities wholly other than, transcending, \term{experience}, such as Being}}. - -Secondly, there are associated with beliefs logical \enquote{justifications}, \enquote{arguments}, for them, \enquote{defenses} of them. I will not bother to explicate the different kinds of justifications because it is so easy to say what is wrong with all of them. There are two points to be made. First, explication would show that the matter of justifications for beliefs is just a matter of language and beliefs of the kind already discussed. Secondly, as I have suggested before, whether a statement or belief is right is not dependent on what the justifications, arguments for it are. (If this seems to fail for inductive justification, the kind involving the citing of \term{experience} supposed to be evidence for, confirmation of, the belief, it is because the metaphysical assumptions on which induction is based are rarely stated. Without them inductive justifications are just non sequiturs. An example: this table has four legs; therefore (\enquote{it is more probable that}) any other table has four legs.) Justification of a statement or belief does nothing but conjoin to it superfluous statements or beliefs, if anything. The claim that a justification, argument can show that a belief is not arbitrary, gratuitous, in that it can show that to be consistent, one must have the belief if one has a lesser, weaker belief, is simply self-contradictory. If a justification induces one to believe what one apparently did not believe before hearing the justification, then one already had the belief \enquote{implicitly} (it was a conjunct of a belief one already had), or one has accepted superfluous beliefs conjoined with it. - -I will conclude this chapter first with a list of philosophical positions my position is not. Although I have already suggested some of this material, I repeat it because it is so important that the reader not misconstrue my position as some position which is no more like mine than its negation is, and which I show to be wrong. My position is not disbelief. (Incidentally, it is ironic that "disbeliever", without qualification, has been used by believers as a term of abuse, since, as disbelief is belief which is the negation of some belief, any belief is disbelief.) In particular, I am not concerned to deny \enquote{the existence of non-experience}, to \enquote{cause non-experiences to vanish}, so to speak, to change or cause to vanish some of the reader's non-mental \term{experiences}, \enquote{perceived objects}. My position is not skepticism of any kind, is not, for example, the belief \enquote{that there is a realm where there could either be or not be certain entities not \term{experiences}, but our means of knowing are inadequate for finding which is the case.} My position is not a mere \enquote{decision to ignore non-experiences, or beliefs}. The philosopher who denies \enquote{the existence of non-experiences}, or denies any belief, or who is skeptical of any belief, or who merely \enquote{decides to ignore non-experiences, or beliefs}, has some of the very beliefs I am concerned to discredit. - -What I have been concerned to do is to discredit formulations of beliefs, and beliefs as mental acts, by pointing out some features of them. In the first part of the book I showed the inconsistency of linguistic expressions dependent on "\term{non-experience}", and pointed out that those who expect them to have explications at all acceptable are deceiving themselves; discrediting the beliefs of which the expressions are formulations. In this chapter, I have described the mental act of believing, calling the reader's attention to the self-deception experience involved in it, and thus showing that it is wrong. To conclude, in discrediting beliefs I have shown what the right philosophical position is: it is not having beliefs (and realizing, for any belief one happens to think of, that it is wrong (which doesn't involve having beliefs)). - -\subsection{Discussion of Some Basic Beliefs} -\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{B. Completion of Treatment}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{5. Discussion of Some Basic Beliefs}} - -In the preceding chapters I have been concerned, in discrediting any given belief, to show what the right philosophical position is. In this chapter I will turn to particular beliefs, supposed knowledge, to make it clear just what, specifically, have been discredited. Now if the reader will consider the entire \enquote{history of world thought}, the fantastic proliferation of activities at least partly \enquote{systems of knowledge} which constitute it, Platonism, psychoanalysis, Tibetian mysticism, physics, Bantu witchcraft, phenomenology, mathematical logic, Konko Kyo, Marxism, alchemy, comparative linguistics, Orgonomy, Thomism, and so on indefinitely, each with its own kind of conclusions, method of justifying them, applications, associated valuations, and the like, he will quickly realize that I could not hope to analyze even a fraction of them to show just how \enquote{non-experiential language}, and beliefs, are involved in them. And I should say that it is not always obvious whether the concepts of non-experiential language, and belief, are relevant to them. Zen is an obvious example (although as a matter of fact is unquestionably does involve beliefs, is not for example an anticipation of my position). Further, many quasi-systems-of-knowledge are difficult to discuss because the expositions of them which are what one has to work with, are badly written, in particular, fail to state the insights behind what is presented, the real reasons why it can be taken seriously, and are incomplete and confused. - -What I will do, then, to specifically illustrate my results, is to discuss a few particular beliefs which are found in almost all systems of \enquote{knowledge}; have been given especial attention in modern Western philosophy and are thus especially relevant to the immediate audience for this book; and are so \enquote{basic} (accounting for their ubiquity) that they are either just assumed, as too trivially factual to be worthy the attention of a profound thinker, or if they are explicit are said to be so basic that persons cannot do without them. The discussion will make it specifically clear that it is not necessary to have these beliefs, that not having them is not \enquote{inconsistent} with one's \term{experience}; and is thus important for the reader who is astonished at the idea of rejecting any given belief, the idea of any given belief's being wrong and of not having it. - -Consider beliefs to the effect \enquote{that the world is ordered}, beliefs formulated in \enquote{natural laws}, beliefs \enquote{about substance}, and the like. Rejection of them may seem to lead to a problem. After all, one's \enquote{perceived world} is not \enquote{chaotic}, is it? The reader should observe that in rejecting beliefs \enquote{that the world is ordered} I do not say that his \enquote{perceived world} is (\enquote{subjectively}) chaotic (that is, extremely unfamiliar, strange). The non-strange character of one's \enquote{perceived world} is associated with beliefs \enquote{about substance} and beliefs formulated in natural laws, but it is not \enquote{the world being ordered}; and taking note of the non-strange character of one's \enquote{perceived world} is not part of what is \enquote{essential} in these beliefs. - -Rejection of \enquote{spatio-temporal} beliefs may seem to lead to a problem. After all, cannot one watch oneself wave one's hand towards and away from oneself? Of course one can \enquote{watch oneself wave one's hand} (in a non-strict sense---and if the reader uses the expression in this sense it will not be a formulation of a belief for him). However, that one can \enquote{watch oneself wave one's hand} (in the non-strict sense) does not imply \enquote{that there are spatially distant, and past and future events}; and although \term{experiences} such as a visual---\enquote{moving}---hand \term{experience} are associated with spatio-temporal beliefs, taking note of them is not part of what is essential in those beliefs. - -Rejection of beliefs \enquote{about the objectivity of linguistic referring} may seem to lead to a problem. After all, when one says that a table is a \enquote{table}, doesn't one do so unhesitatingly, with a feeling of satisfaction, a feeling that things are less mysterious, strange, when one has done so, and without the slightest intention of saying that it is a \enquote{non-table}? The reader should observe that I do not deny this. These \term{experiences} are associated with beliefs \enquote{about the objectivity of referring}, but they are not \enquote{objective referring}; and taking note of them is not part of what is essential in those beliefs. - -Rejection of the belief \enquote{that other humans (better, things) than oneself have minds} my seem to lead to a problem. After all, \enquote{perceived other humans} talk and so forth, do they not? The reader should observe that in rejecting the belief \enquote{that others have minds} I do not deny that \enquote{perceived other humans} talk and so forth. Other humans' talking and so forth is associated with the belief \enquote{that others have minds}, but it is not \enquote{other humans having minds}; and taking note of others talking and so forth is not part of what is essential in believing \enquote{that others have minds}, points I anticipated in the second chapter. - -Finally, many philosophers will violently object to rejection of temporal beliefs of a certain kind, namely beliefs of the form \enquote{If \x, then \y\ will follow in the future}, especially if \y\ is something one wants, and \x\ is something one can do. (After all, doesn't it happen that one throws the switch, and the light goes on?) They object so strongly because they fear \enquote{that one cannot live unless one has and uses such knowledge}. They say, for example, \enquote{that one had better know that one must drink water to live, and drink water, or one won't live}. Now \enquote{one's throwing the switch and the light's coming on} (in a non-strict sense) is like the \term{experiences} associated with other temporal beliefs; that one can do it (in the non-strict sense) does not imply \enquote{that there are past or future events}, and taking note of it is not part of what is essential in the belief \enquote{that if one throws the switch, then the light will come on}. As for what the philosophers say, fear, believe \enquote{about the necessity of such knowledge for survival}, it is just more beliefs of the same kind, so that rejection of it is similarly unproblematic. If this abrupt dismissal of the fears as wrong is terrifying to the reader, then it just shows how badly he is in need of being straightened out philosophically. Incidentally, all this should make it clear that it is futile to try to \enquote{save} beliefs (render them justifiable) by construing them as predictions. - -By now the reader has probably observed that the beliefs, and their formulations, which I have been discussing, the ones he is presumably most suspicious of rejecting, are all strongly (but not essentially) associated with non-mental experiences of his. The reader may no longer seriously have the beliefs, but have problems in connection with them, get involved in defending them, and be suspicious of rejecting them, merely because he continues to use the formulations of the beliefs, but to refer to the \term{experiences} associated with them (as there's no other way in English to do so), and confusedly supposes that to reject the beliefs and formulations is to deny that he has the \term{experiences}. Now I am not denying that he has the \term{experiences}. As I said in the last chapter, I am not trying to convince the reader that he doesn't have \term{experiences} he has, but to point out to him the self-deception experiences involved in his beliefs. The reader should be wary of thinking, however, on reading this, that maybe he doesn't have any beliefs after all, just uses the belief language he does to refer to \term{experiences}. It sometimes happens that people who have beliefs and as a result use belief language excuse themselves on the basis that they are just using the language to refer to \term{experiences}, an hypocrisy. If one uses belief formulations, it's usually because one has beliefs. - -The point that the language which one may use to describe \term{experiences}is formulations of beliefs, is true generally. As I said in the third chapter, all English sentences are, traditionally anyway, formulations of beliefs. As a result, those who want to talk about \term{experiences} (my use) and still use English are forced to use formulations of beliefs to refer to strongly associated \term{experiences}, and this seems to be happening more and more; often among quasi-empiricists who naively suppose that the formulations have always been used that way, except by a few \enquote{metaphysicians}. I have had to so use belief language throughout this book, the most notable example being the introduction of my use of \enquote{\term{experience}} in the third chapter. Thus, some of what I say may imply belief formulations for the reader when it doesn't for me, and be philosophically problematic for him; he must understand the book to some extent in spite of the language, as I suggested in the third chapter. I have tried to make this relatively easy by choosing, to refer to \term{experiences}, language with which they are very strongly associated and which is only weakly associated with beliefs, and, the important thing, by announcing when the language is used for that purpose. - -It is time, though, that I admit, so as not to be guilty of the hypocrisy I was exposing earlier, that most of the sentences in this book will be understood as formulations of beliefs, that, in other words, I have presented my philosophy to the reader by getting him to have a series of beliefs. This does not invalidate my position, because the beliefs are not part of it. They are for the heuristic purpose of getting the reader to appreciate my position, which is not having beliefs (and realizing, for any belief one happens to think of, that it is wrong (which doesn't involve believing)); and they may well not be held when they have accomplished that purpose. I hope I will eventually get around to writing a version of this book which presents my position by suggesting to the reader a series of imaginings (and no more), rather than beliefs; developing a new language to do so. The reason I stick with English in this book is of course (!) that readers are too \enquote{unmotivated} (lazy!) to learn a language of an entirely new kind to read a book, having unconventional conclusions, in philosophy proper. - -\subsection{Summary} -\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{Philosophy Proper (Version 3)}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{6. Summary}} - -The most important step in understanding my work is to realize that I am trying neither to get one to adopt a system of beliefs, nor to just ignore beliefs or the matter of whether they are right. Once the reader does so, he will find that my position is quite simple. The reader has probably tended to construe the body of the book, the second through the sixth chapters, as a formulation of a system of beliefs; or as a proposal that he ignore beliefs or the matter of whether they are right. Even if he has, a careful reading of them will, I hope, have prepared him for a statement of my position which is supposed to make it clear that the position is simple and right. This statement is a summary, and thus cannot be understood except in connection with the second through the sixth chapters. First, I reiterate that my position is not a system of beliefs, supported by a long, plausible argument. This means, incidentally, that it is absurd to \enquote{remain unconvinced} of the rightness of my position, or to \enquote{doubt, question} it, or to take a long time to decide whether it is right: one can \enquote{question} (not believe) disbelief, but not unbelief. (Not to mention that it is a wrong belief to be \enquote{skeptical} of my position in the sense of believing \enquote{that although the position may subjectively seem right, there is always the possibility that it is objectively wrong}.) I am trying, not to get one to adopt new beliefs but to reject those one already has, not to make one more credulous but less credulous. If one \enquote{questions my position} then one is misconstruing it as a belief for which I try to give a long, plausible argument, and is trying to decide which is more plausible, my argument that all beliefs are false, say, or the arguments that beliefs are true. It may well take one a long time to understand my position, but if one is taking a long time to decide whether it is right then one is wasting one's time thinking about a position I show to be wrong. Secondly, my position is not a proposal that one ignore beliefs or the matter of whether they are right. Thus, it is absurd to conclude that my position is irrefutable but trivial, that one who has beliefs can also be right. - -Now for the statement of the position. Imagine yourself without beliefs. One certainly is without beliefs when one is not thinking, for example (although not only then). This being without beliefs is my position. Now this position can't be wrong inasmuch as you aren't doing anything to be \enquote{true or false}, to be self-deceiving. Now imagine that someone asks you to believe something, for example, to believe \enquote{that there is a table behind you}. Then if you are going to do what he asks, and believe (as opposed to continuing not to think; or only imagining---for example, \enquote{visualizing yourself with your back to a table}), you are going to have to have the attitude that you are in effect perceiving what you don't perceive, that is, deceive yourself. (What else could he be asking you to do?) You are going to have to be wrong. That's all there is to it. - -As for my language here, it is primarily intended to be suggestive, intended, at best, to suggest imaginings to you which will enable you to realize what the right philosophical position is (as in the last paragraph). The important thing is not whether the sentences in this book correspond to true statements in your language (although I expect the key ones will, the expressions in them being construed as referring to the \term{experiences}associated with them); it is for you to realize, observe what you do when you don't have beliefs and when you do. You are not so much to study my language as to begin to ask what one who asks you to believe wants you to do, anyway. The language isn't sufficiently flawless to absolutely force the complete realization of what the right position is on you (it doesn't have to be flawless to unquestionably discredit \enquote{non-experiential language}); if you don't want to realize where the self-deception is in believing you can just ignore the book, and \enquote{justify} your doing so on the basis of what I have said about language such as I have used. The point is that the book is not therefore valueless. - -So much for what the right philosophical position is. From having beliefs to not having them is not a trivial step; it is a complete transformation of one's cognitive orientation. Yet astonishing as the latter position is when first encountered, does it not become, in retrospect, \enquote{obvious}? What other position could be the resolution of the fantastic proliferation of conflicting beliefs, and of the \enquote{profound} philosophical problems (for example, \enquote{Could an omnipotent god do the literally impossible?}, \enquote{Are statements about what I did in the past while alone capable of intersubjective verification?}) arising from them? And again, one begins to ask, when one is asked to believe something, what it is that one is wanted to do, anyway; and one's reaction to the request comes to be \enquote{Why bother? Cognitively, what is the value of doing so? I'd just be deceiving myself}. Also, how much simpler my position is than that of the believer. And although in a way the believer's position is the more natural, since one \enquote{naturally} tends to deceive oneself if there's any advantage in doing so (that is, being right tends not to be valued), in another way my position is, since it is simple, and since the non-believer isn't worried by the doubts which arise for one who tries to keep himself deceived. - diff --git a/essays/some_objections.otx b/essays/some_objections.otx new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9a34fd3 --- /dev/null +++ b/essays/some_objections.otx @@ -0,0 +1,32 @@ +\chap Some Objections to my Philosophy + +% \fancyhead{} \fancyfoot{} \fancyfoot[LE,RO]{\thepage} +% \fancyhead[LE]{{\caps Philosophy}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{Some Objections to my Philosophy}} + +% TODO make "wide"? we probably want counters +\begitems\style A +* The predominant attitude toward philosophical questions in educated circles today derives from the later Wittgenstein. Consider the philosopher's question of whether other people have minds. The Wittgensteinian attitude is that in ordinary usage, statements which imply that other people have minds are not problematic. Everybody knows that other people have minds. To doubt that other people have minds, as a philosopher might do, is simply to misuse ordinary language.\fnote{See \booktitle{Philosophical Investigations}, \S 420.} Statements which imply that other people have minds works perfectly well in the context for which they were intended. When philosophers find these statements problematic, it is because they subject the statements to criticism by logical standards which are irrelevant and extraneous to ordinary usage.\fnote{\S \S 402, 412, 119, 116.} + +For Wittgenstein, the existence of God, immortal souls, other minds, and the Empire State Building (when I am not looking at it) are all things which everybody knows; things which it is impossible to doubt \dq{in a real case.}\fnote{\S 303, Iliv. For Wittgenstein's theism, see Norman Malcolm's memoir.} The proper use of language admits of no alternative to belief in God; atheism is just a mistake in the use of language. + +In arguing against Wittgenstein, I will concentrate on the real reason why I oppose him, rather than on less fundamental technical issues. We read that in the Middle Ages, people found it impossible not to believe that they would be struck by lightning if they uttered a blasphemy; just as Wittgenstein finds the existence of God impossible to doubt \dq{in a real case.} Yet even Wittgenstein does not defend the former belief; while the Soviet Union has shown that a government can function which has repudiated the latter belief. There is a tremendous discovery here: that beliefs which were as inescapable---as impossible to doubt in a real case---as any belief we may have today, were subsequently discarded. How was this possible? My essay \essaytitle{The Flaws Underlying Beliefs} shows how. Further, it shows that the belief that the Empire State Building exists when I am not looking at it, or the belief that I would be killed if I jumped out of a tenth story window, are no different in principle from beliefs which we have already discarded. It is perfectly possible to project a metaphysical outlook on experience which is totally different from the beliefs Wittgenstein inherited, and it is also possible not to project a metaphysical outlook on experience at all. Let us be absolutely clear: the point is not that we do not know with one hundred per cent certainty that the Empire State Building exists; the point is that we need not believe in the Empire State Building at all. \essaytitle{The Flaws Underlying Beliefs} shows that factual propositions, and the propositions of the natural sciences, involve outright self-deception. + +These discoveries have consequences far more important than the technical issues involved. It is by no means trivial that I do not have to pray, or to fast, or to accept the moral dictates of the clergy, or to give money to the Church. Because the Church prohibited the dissection of human cadavers, it took an atheist to originate the modern subject of anatomy. In analogy with this example, the rest of my writings are devoted to exploring the consequences of rejecting beliefs that Wittgenstein says are impossible to doubt in a real case, as in my essay \essaytitle{Philosophical Aspects of Walking Through Walls.} I oppose Wittgenstein because he descended to extremes of intellectual dishonesty in order to prevent us from discovering these consequences. + +A reply to the Wittgensteinian attitude which is technically adequate can be provided in short order, for when Wittgenstein's central philosophical maneuver is identified, its dishonesty becomes transparent. It is not necessary to enumerate the fallacies in the Wittgensteinian claim that logical connections and logical standards are extrinsic to the natural language, or in the aphorism that \dq{the meaning is the use} (as an explication of the natural language). In other words, there is no reason why I should bandy descriptive linguistics with Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein was wrong at a level more basic than the level on which his philosophical discussions were conducted. + +Wittgenstein held that philosophical or metaphysical controversies literally would not arise if it were not for bad philosophers. They would not arise because there is nothing problematic about sentences, expressing Wittgenstein's inherited beliefs, in ordinary usage. This rhetorical maneuver is the inverse of what it seems to be. Wittgenstein doesn't prove that the paradoxes uncovered by \dq{bad} philosophers result from a misuse of ordinary language; he defines the philosophers' discussions as a misuse of ordinary language because they uncover paradoxes in ordinary language propositions. Wittgenstein waits to see whether a philosopher uncovers problems in ordinary language propositions; and if the philosopher does so, then Wittgenstein defines his discussion as improper usage. Wittgenstein waits to see whether evidence is against his side, and if it is, he defines it as inadmissible. + +Consider the philosopher's question of how I know whether the Empire State Building continues to exist when I am not looking at it. The Wittgensteinian position on this question would be that it is problematic because it is a misuse of ordinary language; and because there is no behavioral context which constitutes a use for the question. According to this position, we would not encounter such problems if we would use ordinary language properly. But what does this position amount to? The philosopher's question has not been proved improper; it has been defined as improper because it leads to problems. The reason why \dq{the proper use of ordinary language never leads to paradoxes} is that Wittgenstein has defined proper use as use in which no paradoxes are visible. Wittgenstein has not resolved or eliminated any problems; he has just refused to notice them. Wittgenstein attempts to pass off, as a discovery about philosophy and language, a gratuitous definition to the effect that certain portions of the natural language which embarrass him are inadmissible, a gratuitous ban on certain portions of the natural language which embarrass him. His purpose is to make criticism of his inherited beliefs impossible, to give them a spurious inescapability. Wittgenstein's maneuver is the last word in modish intellectual dishonesty. + +* In philosophy, arguments which start from an immediate which cannot be doubted and attempt to prove the existence of an objective reality are called transcendental arguments. Typically, such an argument says that if there is experience, there must be subject and object in experience; if there are subject and object, subject and object must be objectively real; and thus there must be objectively real mind and matter. Clearly, the belief which leaps the gap from the immediate to the objectively real is smuggled into the middle of the argument by a play on the words \dq{subject} and \dq{object.} + +When the sophistry is cleared away, it becomes apparent that the attempt to attain the trans-experiential or extra-experiential within experience faces a dilemma of overkill. If the attempt could succeed, it would have only collapsed objective reality to my subjectivity. If it could be \dq{proved} that I know the distant past, other minds, God, angels, archangels, etc. from immediate experience, then all these phenomena would be trivialized. If other minds were given in my experience, they would only be my mind. The interest of the notion of objective reality is precisely its otherness and unreachability. If it could be reached from the immediate, it would be trivial. We ask how I know that the {\caps Empire State Building} exists when I am not looking at it. If the answer is that I know through immediate experience, then objective reality has been collapsed to my subjectivity. The dilemma for transcendental arguments is that they propose to overcome the gap between the appearance of a thing and the thing itself, yet they do not want to conclude that appearances exhaust reality. + +There are two special assumptions which are smuggled into supposedly assumptionless transcendental arguments. First, there is the belief that there is an objective relationship between descriptive words and the things they describe, an objective criterion of the use of descriptive words. Secondly, there is the belief that correlations between the senses have an objective basis. (It is claimed that this belief cannot be doubted, but the claim is controverted by intersensory illusions such as the touching of a pencil with crossed fingers.) + +Transcendental arguments are secular theology, because they are addressed to a reader who wants only philosophical analyses that have conventional conclusions. A transcendental argument will contain a step such as the following, for example. We can have \dq{real knowledge} of particular things only if there is an objective relationship between descriptive words and the things they describe; thus there must be such a relationship. This argument is plausible only if the reader can be trusted to overlook the alternative that we don't have this \dq{real knowledge.} + +In the way of supplementary remarks, we may mention that transcendental arguments typically commit the ontological fallacy: inferring the existence of a thing from the idea or name of the thing. Finally, transcendental arguments share a confusion which originates in the empiricism they are directed against: the confusion between doing fundamental philosophy and doing the psychology of perception. Many transcendental arguments are similar to current doctrines in scientific psychology. But they fail as philosophy, because scientific psychology takes as presuppositions, and cannot prove, the very beliefs which transcendental arguments are supposed to prove. + +\enditems
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/essays/some_objections.tex b/essays/some_objections.tex deleted file mode 100644 index 6a7c227..0000000 --- a/essays/some_objections.tex +++ /dev/null @@ -1,31 +0,0 @@ -\chapter{Some Objections to my Philosophy} - -\fancyhead{} \fancyfoot{} \fancyfoot[LE,RO]{\thepage} -\fancyhead[LE]{\textsc{Philosophy}} \fancyhead[RO]{\textit{Some Objections to my Philosophy}} - -\begin{enumerate}[label=\textbf{\Alph*.}, wide, nosep, itemindent=0em, itemsep=2em] -\slop{\item The predominant attitude toward philosophical questions in educated circles today derives from the later Wittgenstein. Consider the philosopher's question of whether other people have minds. The Wittgensteinian attitude is that in ordinary usage, statements which imply that other people have minds are not problematic. Everybody knows that other people have minds. To doubt that other people have minds, as a philosopher might do, is simply to misuse ordinary language.\footnote{See \booktitle{Philosophical Investigations}, \S 420.} Statements which imply that other people have minds works perfectly well in the context for which they were intended. When philosophers find these statements problematic, it is because they subject the statements to criticism by logical standards which are irrelevant and extraneous to ordinary usage.\footnote{\S \S 402, 412, 119, 116.}} - -For Wittgenstein, the existence of God, immortal souls, other minds, and the Empire State Building (when I am not looking at it) are all things which everybody knows; things which it is impossible to doubt \enquote{in a real case.}\footnote{\S 303, Iliv. For Wittgenstein's theism, see Norman Malcolm's memoir.} The proper use of language admits of no alternative to belief in God; atheism is just a mistake in the use of language. - -In arguing against Wittgenstein, I will concentrate on the real reason why I oppose him, rather than on less fundamental technical issues. We read that in the Middle Ages, people found it impossible not to believe that they would be struck by lightning if they uttered a blasphemy; just as Wittgenstein finds the existence of God impossible to doubt \enquote{in a real case.} Yet even Wittgenstein does not defend the former belief; while the Soviet Union has shown that a government can function which has repudiated the latter belief. There is a tremendous discovery here: that beliefs which were as inescapable---as impossible to doubt in a real case---as any belief we may have today, were subsequently discarded. How was this possible? My essay \essaytitle{The Flaws Underlying Beliefs} shows how. Further, it shows that the belief that the Empire State Building exists when I am not looking at it, or the belief that I would be killed if I jumped out of a tenth story window, are no different in principle from beliefs which we have already discarded. It is perfectly possible to project a metaphysical outlook on experience which is totally different from the beliefs Wittgenstein inherited, and it is also possible not to project a metaphysical outlook on experience at all. Let us be absolutely clear: the point is not that we do not know with one hundred per cent certainty that the Empire State Building exists; the point is that we need not believe in the Empire State Building at all. \essaytitle{The Flaws Underlying Beliefs} shows that factual propositions, and the propositions of the natural sciences, involve outright self-deception. - -These discoveries have consequences far more important than the technical issues involved. It is by no means trivial that I do not have to pray, or to fast, or to accept the moral dictates of the clergy, or to give money to the Church. Because the Church prohibited the dissection of human cadavers, it took an atheist to originate the modern subject of anatomy. In analogy with this example, the rest of my writings are devoted to exploring the consequences of rejecting beliefs that Wittgenstein says are impossible to doubt in a real case, as in my essay \essaytitle{Philosophical Aspects of Walking Through Walls.} I oppose Wittgenstein because he descended to extremes of intellectual dishonesty in order to prevent us from discovering these consequences. - -A reply to the Wittgensteinian attitude which is technically adequate can be provided in short order, for when Wittgenstein's central philosophical maneuver is identified, its dishonesty becomes transparent. It is not necessary to enumerate the fallacies in the Wittgensteinian claim that logical connections and logical standards are extrinsic to the natural language, or in the aphorism that \enquote{the meaning is the use} (as an explication of the natural language). In other words, there is no reason why I should bandy descriptive linguistics with Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein was wrong at a level more basic than the level on which his philosophical discussions were conducted. - -Wittgenstein held that philosophical or metaphysical controversies literally would not arise if it were not for bad philosophers. They would not arise because there is nothing problematic about sentences, expressing Wittgenstein's inherited beliefs, in ordinary usage. This rhetorical maneuver is the inverse of what it seems to be. Wittgenstein doesn't prove that the paradoxes uncovered by \enquote{bad} philosophers result from a misuse of ordinary language; he defines the philosophers' discussions as a misuse of ordinary language because they uncover paradoxes in ordinary language propositions. Wittgenstein waits to see whether a philosopher uncovers problems in ordinary language propositions; and if the philosopher does so, then Wittgenstein defines his discussion as improper usage. Wittgenstein waits to see whether evidence is against his side, and if it is, he defines it as inadmissible. - -Consider the philosopher's question of how I know whether the Empire State Building continues to exist when I am not looking at it. The Wittgensteinian position on this question would be that it is problematic because it is a misuse of ordinary language; and because there is no behavioral context which constitutes a use for the question. According to this position, we would not encounter such problems if we would use ordinary language properly. But what does this position amount to? The philosopher's question has not been proved improper; it has been defined as improper because it leads to problems. The reason why \enquote{the proper use of ordinary language never leads to paradoxes} is that Wittgenstein has defined proper use as use in which no paradoxes are visible. Wittgenstein has not resolved or eliminated any problems; he has just refused to notice them. Wittgenstein attempts to pass off, as a discovery about philosophy and language, a gratuitous definition to the effect that certain portions of the natural language which embarrass him are inadmissible, a gratuitous ban on certain portions of the natural language which embarrass him. His purpose is to make criticism of his inherited beliefs impossible, to give them a spurious inescapability. Wittgenstein's maneuver is the last word in modish intellectual dishonesty. - -\item In philosophy, arguments which start from an immediate which cannot be doubted and attempt to prove the existence of an objective reality are called transcendental arguments. Typically, such an argument says that if there is experience, there must be subject and object in experience; if there are subject and object, subject and object must be objectively real; and thus there must be objectively real mind and matter. Clearly, the belief which leaps the gap from the immediate to the objectively real is smuggled into the middle of the argument by a play on the words \enquote{subject} and \enquote{object.} - -When the sophistry is cleared away, it becomes apparent that the attempt to attain the trans-experiential or extra-experiential within experience faces a dilemma of overkill. If the attempt could succeed, it would have only collapsed objective reality to my subjectivity. If it could be \enquote{proved} that I know the distant past, other minds, God, angels, archangels, etc. from immediate experience, then all these phenomena would be trivialized. If other minds were given in my experience, they would only be my mind. The interest of the notion of objective reality is precisely its otherness and unreachability. If it could be reached from the immediate, it would be trivial. We ask how I know that the \textsc{Empire State Building} exists when I am not looking at it. If the answer is that I know through immediate experience, then objective reality has been collapsed to my subjectivity. The dilemma for transcendental arguments is that they propose to overcome the gap between the appearance of a thing and the thing itself, yet they do not want to conclude that appearances exhaust reality. - -There are two special assumptions which are smuggled into supposedly assumptionless transcendental arguments. First, there is the belief that there is an objective relationship between descriptive words and the things they describe, an objective criterion of the use of descriptive words. Secondly, there is the belief that correlations between the senses have an objective basis. (It is claimed that this belief cannot be doubted, but the claim is controverted by intersensory illusions such as the touching of a pencil with crossed fingers.) - -Transcendental arguments are secular theology, because they are addressed to a reader who wants only philosophical analyses that have conventional conclusions. A transcendental argument will contain a step such as the following, for example. We can have \enquote{real knowledge} of particular things only if there is an objective relationship between descriptive words and the things they describe; thus there must be such a relationship. This argument is plausible only if the reader can be trusted to overlook the alternative that we don't have this \enquote{real knowledge.} - -In the way of supplementary remarks, we may mention that transcendental arguments typically commit the ontological fallacy: inferring the existence of a thing from the idea or name of the thing. Finally, transcendental arguments share a confusion which originates in the empiricism they are directed against: the confusion between doing fundamental philosophy and doing the psychology of perception. Many transcendental arguments are similar to current doctrines in scientific psychology. But they fail as philosophy, because scientific psychology takes as presuppositions, and cannot prove, the very beliefs which transcendental arguments are supposed to prove. - -\end{enumerate} |