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 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 
+blasphemy. Beliefs such as the one at issue here will be called fearful beliefs. 
+Elsewhere, I have argued that all beliefs are self-deceiving. I have also 
+observed that there are often non-cognitive motives for holding beliefs, so 
+that a technical, analytical demonstration that a belief is self-deceiving will 
+not necessarily provide a sufficient motive for renouncing it. The question 
+then arises as to why people would hold fearful beliefs. It would seem that 
+people would readily repudiate beliefs such as the one about blasphemy as 
+soon as there was any reason to doubt them, even if the reason was abstract 
+and technical. Yet fearful beliefs are held more tenaciously than any others. 
+Further, when philosophers seek examples of beliefs which one cannot 
+afford to give up, beliefs which are not mere social conventions, beliefs 
+which are truly objective, they invariably choose fearful beliefs. 
+
+Fearful beliefs raise some subtle questions about the character of beliefs 
+as mental acts. If I contemplate blasphemy, experience a strong fear, and 
+decide not to blaspheme, do I stand convicted of believing that I will be 
+punished if I blaspheme, or may I claim that I was following an emotional 
+preference which did not involve any belief? Is there a distinction between 
+fearful avoidance and fearful belief? Can the emotion of fear be 
+self-deceiving in and of itself? Must a belief have a verbal, propositional 
+formulation, or is it possible to have a belief with no linguistic representation 
+whatever? 
+
+It is apparent that fearful beliefs suggest many topics for speculation. 
+This essay, however, will concentrate exclusively on one topic, which is by 
+far the most important. Given that people once held the belief about 
+blasphemy, and that I do not, then I have succeeded in dispensing with a 
+fearful belief. Two beliefs which are exactly analogous to the one about 
+blasphemy are the belief that if I jump out of a tenth story window I will be 
+hurt, and the belief that if I attempt to walk through a wall I will bruise 
+myself. Given that I am able to dispense with the belief about blasphemy, it 
+follows that, in effect, I am able to walk through walls relative to medieval 
+people. That is, my ability to blaspheme without being struck by lightning 
+would be as unimaginable to them as the ability to walk through walls is 
+today. The topic of this essay is whether it is possible to transfer my 
+achievement concerning blasphemy to other fearful beliefs. 
+
+\visbreak
+
+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 
+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 
+order to prove that I can get away with it? Actually, I do not blaspheme; I 
+simply do not perform the action at all. Yet I do not have any belief 
+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? 
+The structure of the evidence for the supposedly unrelinquishable belief 
+should be examined very closely to see if it is not so much legerdemain. 
+
+The exhortation continues to the effect that if I did utter blasphemy I 
+really would be struck by lightning. I still do not find this compelling. But 
+suppose that I do see someone utter a blasphemy and get struck by lightning. 
+Surely this must convert me. But with due apologies to the faithful, I must 
+report that it does not. There is no reason why it should make me believe. I 
+do not believe that blaspheming will cause me to be struck by lightning, and 
+the evocation of frightful images---or for that matter, something that I 
+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 
+profoundly secular that its secularism cannot be demolished by one 
+"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 
+people. They had to believe something that I do not believe. I can get away 
+with something that they could not get away with. 
+
+It is not that I stand up in a society of the faithful and suddenly 
+blaspheme. It is rather that the whole medieval cognitive orientation had 
+been completely reoriented by the time it was transmitted to me. Or in other 
+words, the medieval cognitive orientation was restructured throughout 
+during the modern era. In the process, the compelling conglomeration of 
+evidence was disintegrated. Isolated from their niches in the old orientation, 
+the bits of evidence no longer worked. Each bit missed the target. I do not 
+have a head-on confrontation with the medieval impossibility of 
+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 
+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 
+the entire situation, of restructuring evidence, so that the conglomeration of 
+evidence is disintegrated into isolated bits which are separately powerless. 
+Only then can one slip by the impossibility. I cannot exercise my freedom to 
+walk through walls until the whole cognitive orientation of the modern era is 
+restructured throughout. 
+
+The project of restructuring the modern cognitive orientation is a vast 
+one. The natural sciences must certainly be dismantled. In this connection it 
+is appropriate to make a criticism about the logic of science as Carnap 
+rationalized it. Carnap considered a proposition meaningful if it had any 
+empirically verifiable proposition as an implication. But consider an 
+appropriate ensemble of scientific propositions in good standing, and 
+conceive of it as a conjunction of an infinite number of propositions about 
+single events (what Carnap called protocol-sentences). Only a very small 
+number of the latter propositions are indeed subject to verification. If we 
+sever them from the entire conjunction, what remains is as effectively 
+blocked from verification as the propositions which Carnap rejected as 
+meaningless. This criticism of science is not a mere technical exercise. A 
+scientific proposition is a fabrication which amalgamates a few trivially 
+testable meanings with an infinite number of untestable meanings and 
+inveigles us to accept the whole conglomeration at once. It is apparent at the 
+very beginning of \booktitle{Philosophy and Logical Syntax} that Carnap recognized this 
+quite clearly; but it did not occur to him to do anything about it. For us, 
+however, it is essential to be assured that science can be dismantled just as 
+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."}
+
+From a different traditon, 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{Lulkacs also implied that scientific truth would disappear in a communist 
+society---that is, a society without necessary labor, in which the right to 
+subsistence was unconditional. He implied that scientific quantification and 
+facticity are closely connected with the work discipline required by the 
+capitalist mode of production; and that like the price system, they constitute 
+a false objectivity which we accept because the social economic institutions 
+deprive us of subsistence if we fail to submit to them. Quite aside from the 
+historical unlikelihood of a communist society, this suggestion might be 
+pursued as a thought experiment to obtain a more detailed characterization 
+of the hypothetical post-scientific outlook.}
+
+Finally, I may mention that most of my own writings are offered as 
+fragmentary beginnings in the project of dismantling the modern cognitive 
+orientation. 
+
+Someday we will realize that we were always free to walk through 
+walls. But we could not exercise this freedom because we structured the 
+whole situation, and the evidence, in an enslaving way. 
+
-- 
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