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\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.
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