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\chapter{Philosophical Reflections I}
\begin{enumerate}[label=\textbf{\Alph*.}, wide, nosep, itemsep=1em]
\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 \enquote{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 \enquote{the same object} a belief? Apparently,
but this is very ambiguous.
Is my identification of tactile and visual \enquote{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
whe\-ther 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\editornote{A classmate of Flynt's at Harvard.} claimed that his dialectical approach does not
take any evidence as being more immediate, more primary, than any other
evidence. Our \enquote{immediate experience} is mediated; it is a derived
phenomenon which only subsists in an objective reality that is outside our
subjective standpoint.
\begin{enumerate}[label=\textbf{\arabic*.}, leftmargin=2em]
\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
phe\-no\-me\-non, 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. \enquote{\emph{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 \enquote{nodes} il 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 \enquote{object perceptions,} and thus wouldn't know whether one was
walking through a wall 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
incompetence 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 \enquote{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 \enquote{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 \enquote{see} language. (That is, we do not experience an
objective relation between words and things.) The language we \enquote{see} is a
shell whose \enquote{transcendental reference} is provided by self-deception.
\item Does the theory of amcons\editornote{"Admissable contradictions", defined in \essaytitle{The Logic of Admissable Contradictions} in this volume.} 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 \enquote{\emph{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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