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diff --git a/essays/walking_through_walls.tex b/essays/walking_through_walls.tex index 04ec9d2..6c76551 100644 --- a/essays/walking_through_walls.tex +++ b/essays/walking_through_walls.tex @@ -1,6 +1,5 @@ \chapter{Philosophical Aspects of Walking Through Walls} - 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. Yet I utterly disbelieve that I will be struck by lightning if I utter a @@ -46,7 +45,7 @@ achievement concerning blasphemy to other fearful beliefs. I am told that \enquote{if you jump out of a tenth story window you really will be hurt.} Yet the analogous exhortation concerning blasphemy is not convincing or compelling at all. Why not? I suggest that the nature of the -"evidence" implied in the exhortation should be examined very closely to +\enquote{evidence} implied in the exhortation should be examined very closely to see if it does not represent an epistemological swindle. In the cases of both blasphemy and jumping out of the window, I am told that if I perform the action I will suffer injury. But do I concede that I have to blaspheme, in @@ -56,8 +55,8 @@ whatever that it would be dangerous to do so. Why should anyone suppose that because I do not believe something, I have to run out in the street, shake my fist at the sky, and curse God in order to validate may disbelief? Why should the credulous person be able to put me in in the position of -having to accept the dare that "you have to do it to prove you don't believe -it's dangerous"? Could it not be that this dare is some sort of a swindle? +having to accept the dare that \enquote{you have to do it to prove you don't believe +it's dangerous}? Could it not be that this dare is some sort of a swindle? The structure of the evidence for the supposedly unrelinquishable belief should be examined very closely to see if it is not so much legerdemain. @@ -72,14 +71,14 @@ see---would provide no reason whatever for sudden credulity. There is an immense difference between seeing a person blaspheme and get struck by lightning, and believing that if one blasphemes, one will get struck by lightning. This difference should be quite apparent to one who does not hold -the belief.\footnote{In more conventional terms, the civilization in which I tive is so +the belief.\footnote{In more conventional terms, the civilization in which I live is so profoundly secular that its secularism cannot be demolished by one -"sighting."} +\enquote{sighting.}} In general, the so-called evidence doesn't work. There is a swindle somewhere in the evidence that is supposed to make me accept the fearful belief. Upon close scrutiny, each bit of evidence misses the target. Yet the -whole conglomeration of "evidence" somehow overwhelmed medieval +whole conglomeration of \enquote{evidence} somehow overwhelmed medieval people. They had to believe something that I do not believe. I can get away with something that they could not get away with. @@ -95,8 +94,8 @@ blaspheming. I slip by the impossibility, where they could not, because I structure the entire situation, and the evidence, differently. The analysis just presented, combined with analyses of beliefs which I -have made elsewhere, assures me that the belief that "if I try to walk -through the wall I will fail and will bruise myself" is also discardable. I am +have made elsewhere, assures me that the belief that \enquote{if I try to walk +through the wall I will fail and will bruise myself} is also discardable. I am sure that I can walk through walls just as successfully as I can blaspheme. But to do so will not be trivial. As I have shown, escaping the power of a fearful belief is not a matter of head-on confrontation, but of restructuring @@ -129,11 +128,11 @@ the proof can be dismantled that I will be struck by lightning if I blaspheme. We can suggest some other approaches which may contribute to overcoming the modern cognitive orientation. The habitual correlation of the realm of sight and the realm of touch which occurs when we perceive -"objects" is a likely candidate for dismantling.\footnote{The psychological jargon for -this correlation is "the contribution of intermodal organization to the -object Gestalt."} +\enquote{objects} is a likely candidate for dismantling.\footnote{The psychological jargon for +this correlation is \enquote{the contribution of intermodal organization to the +object Gestalt.}} -From a different traditon, the critique of scientific fact and of +From a different tradition, the critique of scientific fact and of measurable time which is suggested in Luk\'{a}cs' \booktitle{Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat} might be of value if it were developed.\footnote{Luk\'{a}cs also implied that scientific truth would disappear in a communist society---that is, a society without necessary labor, in which the right to |