\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, itemsep=1em]
\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 \textsc{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 \textsc{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 \textsc{Empire State Building} exists; the point is that we need not believe in the \textsc{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 \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 \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}
