From 0f35a25aeda5c8d0d740ccc0badc557cc9dcfc0a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: grr <grr@lo2.org>
Date: Thu, 2 May 2024 16:45:24 -0400
Subject: break out chapters for philosophy section

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+\chapter{Philosophical Reflections I}
+
+\begin{enumerate} % TODO letters, sub numbers
+\item If language is nonsense, why do we seem to have it? How do these 
+intricate pseudo-significant structures arise? If beliefs are self-deceiving, why 
+are they there? Why are we so skilled in the self-deceptive reflex that I find 
+in language and belief? Why are we so fluent in thinking in self-vitiating 
+concepts? Granting that language and belief are mistakes, are mistakes of 
+this degree of complexity made for nothing? Is not the very ability to 
+concoct an apparently significant, self-vitiating and self-deceiving structure a 
+transcendent ability, one that points to something non-immediate? Do not 
+these conceptual gymnastics, even if self-vitiating, make us superior to the 
+mindless animals? 
+
+Such questions tempt one to engage in a sort of philosophical 
+anthropology, using in part the method of introspection. Beliefs could be 
+explained as arising in an attempt to deal with experienced frustrations by 
+denying them in thought. The origin of Christian Science and magic would 
+thereby be explained. Further, we could postulate a primal anxiety-reaction 
+to raw experience. This anxiety would be lessened by mythologies and 
+explanatory beliefs. The frustration and the anxiety-reaction would be 
+primal non-cognitive needs for beliefs. 
+
+Going even farther, we could suppose that a being which could 
+apprehend the whole universe through direct experience would have no need 
+of beliefs. Beliefs would be a rickety method of coping with the limited 
+range of our perception, a method by which our imperfect brains cope with 
+the world. There would be an analogy with the physicist's use of phantom 
+models to make experimental observations easier to comprehend. 
+
+However, there are two overwhelming objections to this philosophical 
+anthropology. First, it purports to study the human mind as a derivative 
+phenomenon, to study it from a God-like perspective. The philosophical 
+anthropology thus consists of beliefs which are subject to the same 
+objections as any other beliefs. It is on a par with any other beliefs; it has no 
+privileged position. Specifically, it is in competition not only with my 
+philosophy but with other accounts of the mind-reality relation, such as 
+behaviorism, Platonism, and Thomism. And my philosophy provides me with 
+no basis to defend my philosophical anthropology against their philosophical 
+anthropologies. My philosophy doesn't even provide me with a basis to 
+defend my philosophical anthropology against its own negation. 
+
+In short, the paradoxes which my philosophy uncovers must remain 
+unexplained and unresolved. 
+
+The other objection to my philosophical anthropology is that its 
+implications are unnecessarily conservative. An explanation of why people 
+do something wrong can become an assertion that it is necessary to do wrong 
+and finally a justification for doing wrong. But just because I tend, for 
+example, to construe my perceptions as confirmations of propositions about 
+phenomena beyond my experience does not mean that I must think in this 
+way. To explain the modern cognitive orientation by philosophical 
+anthropology tends to absolutize it and to conceal its dispensability. 
+
+\item There are more legitimate tasks for the introspective "anthropology" 
+of beliefs than trying to find primal non-cognitive needs for beliefs. 
+Presupposing the analysis of beliefs as mental acts and self-deception which I 
+have made elsewhere, we need to examine closely the boundary line between 
+beliefs and non-credulous mental activity. 
+
+Is my fear of jumping out of the window a belief? Strictly speaking, 
+no. In psychological terms, a conditioned reflex does not require 
+propositional thought. 
+
+Is my identification of an object in different spatial orientations 
+(relative to my field of vision) as "the same object" a belief? Apparently, 
+but this is very ambiguous. 
+
+Is my identification of tactile and visual "pencil-perceptions" as aspects 
+of a single object (identity of the object as it is experienced through 
+different senses) a belief? Yes. 
+
+It is possible to subjectively classify bodily movements according to 
+whether they are intentional, because drunken awkwardness, adolescent 
+awkwardness, and movements under ESB are clearly unintentional. Then 
+does intentional movement of my hand require a belief that I can move my 
+hand? Definitely not, although in rare cases some belief will accompany or 
+precede the movement of my hand. But believing itself will not get the hand 
+moved! 
+
+Is there any belief involved in identifying my leg, but not the leg of the 
+table at which I am sitting, as part of my body? Maybe---another ambiguous 
+case.
+
+Are my emotions of longing and dread beliefs in future time? Is my 
+emotion of regret belief in past time? Philosophical anthropology: these 
+temporal feelings precede and give rise to temporal beliefs. (?) 
+
+How can I introspectively analyze my dread as dread of future injury if 
+my belief in the existence of the future is invalid to begin with? Easily---the 
+object of the fear is a belief or has a belief associated with it. 
+
+\gap
+
+\item At one point Alten claimed that his dialectical approach does not 
+take any evidence as being more immediate, more primary, than any other 
+evidence. Our "immediate experience" is mediated; it is a derived 
+phenomenon which only subsists in an objective reality that is outside our 
+subjective standpoint. 
+
+\begin{enumerate}
+
+\item But Alten does not seriously defend the claim that he does not 
+distinguish between immediate and non-immediate. The claim that there is 
+no distinction would be regarded as demented in every human culture. Every 
+culture supposes that I may be tricked or cheated: there is a realm, the 
+non-immediate or non-experienced, which provides an arena for surreptitious 
+hostility to me. Every culture supposes that it is easier for me to tell what I 
+am thinking than what you are thinking. Every culture supposes that I will 
+hear things which I should not accept before I go and see for myself. Alten is 
+simply not iconoclastic enough to reject these commonplaces. What he 
+apparently does is, like the perceptual psychologist, to accept the distinction 
+between immediate and non-immediate, and to accept the former as the only 
+way of confirming a model, but to construct a model of the relation between 
+the two in which the former is analyzed as a derivative phenomenon. 
+
+\item Alten proposes to analyze his own awareness as a derivative 
+phenomenon, to take a stance outside all human awareness. But this is the 
+pretense of the God-like perspective. He postulates both his own limitedness 
+and his ability to step outside it! This is an overt contradiction. Indeed, it is
+the archetype of the overt self-deception in beliefs which my philosophy 
+exposes. "I can tell the Empire State Building exists now even though I 
+cannot now perceive it." 
+\end{enumerate}
+
+\item In my technical philosophical writings, I call attention to certain 
+self-vitiating "nodes" in the logic of common sense. These nodes include the 
+concept of non-experience and the assertion that there is language. I often 
+find that others dismiss these examples as jokes that can be isolated from 
+cognition or the logic of common sense, rather than acknowledging that they 
+are self-vitiating nodes in the logic of common sense. As a result, I have 
+concluded that it is probably futile to debate the abstract validity of my 
+analysis of these nodes. It does indeed appear as if I am debating over an 
+abstract joke, and it is not apparent why I would attribute such great 
+importance to a joke. 
+
+\essaytitle{Philosophical Aspects of Walking Through Walls} represents my 
+present approach. The advantage of this approach is that it makes 
+unmistakable the reason why I attribute so much importance to these 
+philosophical studies. I am not merely debating the abstract validity of a few 
+isolated linguistic jokes; I seek to overthrow the life-world. The only 
+significance of my technical philosophical writings is to offer an explanation 
+of why the life---world is subject to being undermined. 
+
+When I speak of walking through walls, the mistake is often made of 
+trying to understand this reference within the framework of present-day 
+scientific common sense. Walking through walls is understood as it would be 
+pictured in a comic-book episode. But such an understanding is quite beside 
+the point. What I am advocating---to skip over the intermediate details and go 
+directly to the end result---is a restructuring of the whole modern cognitive 
+orientation such that one doesn't even engage in scientific hypothesizing or 
+have "object perceptions," and thus wouldn't know whether one was 
+walking through a wail or not. 
+
+At first this suggestion may seem like another joke, a triviality. But my 
+genius consists in recognizing that it is not, that there is a residue of 
+non-vacuity and non-triviality in this proposal. There may be only a 
+hair's-breadth of difference between the state I propose and mental 
+incompetance or death---but still, there is all of a hair's-breadth. I magnify 
+this hair's-breadth many times, and use it as a lever to overturn civilization. 
+
+\item I am often asked in philosophical discussion how it is that we are 
+now talking if language is vitiated. Let me comment that merely pointing 
+over and over to one of the two circumstances which create a paradox does 
+not resolve the paradox. Indeed, a paradox arises when there are two 
+circumstances in conflict. The "fact" that we are talking is one of the two 
+circumstances which conjoin in the paradox of language; the other 
+circumstance being the self-vitiating "nodes" I have mentioned. To repeat 
+over and over that we are now talking does not resolve any paradoxes. 
+
+Contrary to what the question of how it is that we are now talking 
+suggests, we do not "see" language. (That is, we do not experience an 
+objective relation between words and things.) The language we "see" is a 
+shell whose "transcendental reference" is provided by self-deception. 
+
+\item Does the theory of amcons show that the contradiction exposed in 
+\essaytitle{The Flaws Underlying Beliefs} is admissible and thus loses its philosophical 
+force? No. An amcon is between two things that you see, e.g. stationary 
+motion. It is between two sensed qualities, the simultaneous experiencing of 
+contradictory qualities. (But "He left an hour ago" begins to be a borderline 
+case. Here the point is the ease with which we swallow an expression which 
+violates logical rules. Also expansion of an arc: a case even more difficult to 
+classify.) The contradiction in \essaytitle{The Flaws Underlying Beliefs} has to do first 
+with the logic of common sense, with the logical rules of language. It has to 
+do, secondly, with the circumstance that you don't see something, yet act as 
+if you do. Amcons should not be used to justify self-deception in the latter 
+sense, to rescue every cheap superstition. 
+\end{enumerate}
-- 
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