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

---
 essays/some_objections.tex | 159 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 159 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 essays/some_objections.tex

(limited to 'essays/some_objections.tex')

diff --git a/essays/some_objections.tex b/essays/some_objections.tex
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1954d9e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/essays/some_objections.tex
@@ -0,0 +1,159 @@
+\chapter{Some Objections to My Philosophy}
+
+
+\textbf{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. (See 
+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. (\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 "in a real 
+case." (\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 "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 "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 "bad" philosophers result from a misuse of ordinary 
+language; he defines the philosophers' discussions as a misuse of ordinary 
+language because they uncover paradoxes is 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 \textsc{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 "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. 
+
+\gap
+
+\textbf{B.} 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 
+"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 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 "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 "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. 
+
-- 
cgit v1.2.3

