Some Comments on Neurophilosophy

I was just re-reading some sections of Neurophilosohy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain by Patricia Smith Churchland, in which she advocates eliminative materialism. This is the view that our common ways of thinking about or conceptualizing our cognitive processes -- including "beliefs", "reasoning," and even "thinking" and "conceptualizing" -- are radically mistaken and so must be entirely replaced with neurophysiological processes and terms. The old wine, which they call "folk psychology" to put it on a par with folk religion, cannot fit in the new wineskins of neurological science, and so should be discarded. I encountered some interesting statements at the end of chapter 9 of Neurophilosophy, and so reproduce it here in red font with my comments interspersed. It's kind of like a fisking from days of yore, except I don't intend any disrespect for my subject.

The prospect of transforming folk psychology as we know and love it has prompted objections, some of which I have already covered, but others of which I must consider separately here. One popular objection is that eliminative materialism is self-refuting. In order to state his position, the argument goes, the eliminativist must believe what he says, but what he says is "There really are no such states as beliefs." However, if there are no beliefs, then the eliminativist cannot believe what he says. Or if he believes what he says, then there really are beliefs. The eliminativist can expect to be taken seriously only if his claim cannot, and he thereby refutes himself.

This argument has had multiple expression through the years. C. S. Lewis's Argument from Reason; J. R. Lucas's Gödelian Argument against strong AI; Alvin Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism; etc.

What the eliminativist is fumbling to say is that folk psychology is seriously inadequate as a theory.

As we'll see shortly, claiming that folk psychology is a theory is the linchpin to the eliminativist project; you remove that and the whole structure collapses. For now I'll just point out that it's highly contentious to suggest that folk psychology constitutes a theory. Theories explain data. What the eliminativist calls folk psychology is the data itself: beliefs, concepts, chains of reasoning, etc. We directly experience these things, they are simply given. Any theory, therefore, must explain them. A theory which denied their existence, as eliminativism does, would be completely inadequate. Worse than that, it couldn't even get off the ground, since the data it would purport to explain would be much less secure as data than what the eliminativist denies. In fact, the data it seeks to explain could very well be derived from what the eliminativist denies.

Now within the confines of that very theoretical framework we are bound to describe the eliminativist as believing there are no beliefs; however, this is not because folk psychology is bound to be true, but only because we are confined within the framework the eliminativist wishes to criticize and no alternative framework is available. If the eliminativist is correct in his criticisms,

But how could he be correct in his criticisms if they are expressed in a system that is entirely corrupt? If folk psychology falls, then the specific elements of folk psychology that were used in the formulation of eliminative materialism will fall with it. Isn't this obvious?

and if the old framework is revised and replaced, then by using the new vocabulary the eliminativist's criticisms could be restated with greater sophistication and with no danger of pragmatic contradiction. (For example, the new eliminativist might declare, "I gronkify beliefs," where gronkification is a neuropsychological state defined within the mature new theory.)

This is pretty speculative on her part, but leaving that aside, translation from one system to another can only be done if both are coherent. If one of them is not, then translation would be impossible, there being either nothing to translate from or nothing to translate to. Since the eliminativist's claim is that the old system is entirely corrupt, to talk about translating it into another superior system is simply incoherent.

Churchland suggests we can have a placeholder ("gronkify") to stand for what we usually term "belief." This, allegedly, avoids the problem of saying she believes there are no beliefs without having to go through all the rigamarole of showing exactly what is happening when we say "belief." But "placeholder" is a concept within the system she's denying. I can only make sense of what she's saying if I presuppose the basic validity of folk psychology. This is true regardless of what you think the fundamental unit is: the word, the phrase, the sentence, the concept, whatever. I only know that any unit is valid if the underlying system is valid; and the eliminativist uses these units -- thus presupposes their validity -- in order to deny their validity. This is self-defeating.

The eliminativist may argue that while they're denying that there are beliefs, thoughts, chains of reasoning, etc., they're not denying that something is happening; only that the way we conceive or perceive what's happening is completely invalid. This reminds me of Cratylus who eventually became so convinced that language could not communicate information that he renounced it entirely and stopped speaking. However, when people got in his face and screamed at him, he would wiggle his finger, as if to say, "Something's happening." Yet the eliminative materialist is even less rational than this, since they want to communicate their claim to others, after denying the possibility of communication. It's as if Cratylus wrote books to communicate why he rejected the possibility of communicating.

In response, an eliminativist might provide a parallel, such as how what used to be thought was demonic possession is now recognized as mental illness. The description "demonic possession" was wholly incorrect, but it did pick out an actual feature of the world. Ignoring everything else about this (if it picks out an actual feature, how can it be wholly incorrect?), the problem is that it treats "belief" as if it were an interpretation of what is actually going on. This assumes, again, that folk psychology is a theory. But belief is part of the data; it is not an interpretation of something else, it's the ground level.

At any rate, the eliminativist's claim is not one of translation but of elimination; hence the name. If someone were an eliminativist about language and argued that all languages are completely invalid and must be rejected in favor of a potential future language that we might produce someday, how could he tell this to anyone? Any attempt to describe it could only be done in the very languages he said were wholly corrupt and invalid. Again: if the languages are completely invalid, then those parts of the languages used to express his claims are invalid. In other words, by making this claim about language, the person makes it impossible to tell someone who uses those languages about his theories.

Even so, I think we can just barely comprehend the claim that our language is untrustworthy and a future language will replace it because a) we know there are other languages, and so have a context in which we can put this claim; and b) while any expression of this language-eliminativism would be self-defeating, since it would be in language, it's not immediately evident that we can't think about it. Language and thought have a close and complex relationship, but there are plenty of philosophers who argue that language does not completely circumscribe our thought; we can think beyond the box of whatever language we speak (supposedly). But with the eliminative materialist this option is not available: he can't even think about, contemplate, or get any idea of what eliminative materialism means because he can only do so within the old framework that he pretends to reject.

It would be foolish to suppose folk psychology must be true because at this stage of science to criticize it implies using it. All this shows is that folk psychology is the only theory available now.

If the only available language were completely corrupt, and if people could only think in language, then they could never formulate a new and better language, because they would have no way of doing so. Any attempt could only get underway by presupposing the validity of the language in which they think and speak.

By way of analogy, consider a biologist in the early nineteenth century who wishes to criticize vitalist theory as misconceived. He suggests that there is no such thing as vital spirit and that other accounts must be found to distinguish living things from nonliving things. Consider the following fanciful defense of vitalism:

The anti-vitalist says that there is no such thing as vital spirit. This claim is self-refuting; the speaker can be expected to be taken seriously only if his claim cannot. For if the claim is true, then the speaker does not have vital spirit and must be dead. His claim is meaningful only if it is false. (Patricia S. Churchland 1981d)

The vitalist makes exactly the same mistake here as is made in the foray against the eliminativist.

The reference is to Churchland's short article "Is Determinism Self-Refuting?" in Mind 90 (new series, 1981), a response to Karl Popper's version of the argument that determinism is self-defeating (Popper responded in a short article of his own with the same title in Mind 92, 1983). Churchland's counter-argument that such arguments beg the question has been repeated many times in the literature. Basically, the claim is that the vitalist implicitly presupposes that vitalism is a necessary condition of asserting anything, and then applies this presupposition of vitalism to the anti-vitalist position, discovering unsurprisingly that it renders it self-defeating. Thus he begs the question: he presupposes the truth of his position in order to argue against a contrary position. Essentially, the vitalist ignores the very claim that the anti-vitalist is making, and applies a standard that the anti-vitalist would obviously reject. All the anti-vitalist has to do is deny the implicit presupposition that vitalism is a necessary condition of assertion.

There are several things one could say in response to this, but I'll just focus on three: first, the anti-eliminativist argument and the anti-vitalist argument do not seem parallel. The vitalist is not claiming to directly perceive vital spirits, he perceives that he is alive and posits a vital spirit as an explanation of this datum. The anti-vitalist does not deny the datum, only the interpretation. The eliminativist, however, is claiming that beliefs, concepts, ideas, thoughts, chains of reasoning, etc., are all bogus. Since we directly perceive beliefs, ideas, thoughts, et al., he is therefore not challenging an interpretation but denying the given data. The parallel would be (as Lynne Rudder Baker argued in Saving Belief: A Critique of Physicalism) an anti-vitalist who denied that he is alive. So, contrary to Churchland's claim here, these arguments do not commit "exactly the same mistake."

Now I think the eliminativist would respond by pointing to Quine and arguing that the distinction between data and theory has been shown to be artificial. I would respond that while the border country may be difficult to define clearly, to suggest that there simply is no raw data -- ever -- is absurd. We do directly experience some things, and if your worldview cannot account for that, your worldview is deficient. The point of worldviews, after all, is to account for varying facts. If the only way you can make your worldview work is to deny the most basic and universal facts, it doesn't merely fail: it's unworthy of being taken seriously by anyone.

Eliminativists see folk psychology as being on a par with geocentrism, and their radical-new-conception-that-consists-almost-entirely-of-placeholders as on a par with heliocentrism. But their position is much more extreme than this. A sidereal-eliminativist would deny that the stars exist; more basically, would deny that there are lights in the sky. If people pointed up to the night sky and said, "But I see lights right there," our sidereal-eliminativist would respond, "No, you don't. Once we complete a full stellar theory, we will see that these lights do not exist. It seems strange, but trust me: I'm a philosopher."

Second, question-begging is only a fallacy within the framework of the folk psychology that the eliminativist is claiming to reject. If the whole framework is bogus, why would this particular element be valid? In order for this objection to take hold, the eliminativist has to grant to his opponent the validity of folk psychology; but this obviates his entire claim, that folk psychology is not valid.

Third, it seems to me that Churchland's counter-argument would apply to any claim that something is self-defeating. For example, suppose I scream at the top of my lungs, "I ALWAYS SPEAK SOFTLY!" Someone tells me that my claim is self-defeating, since I did not say it softly. I then respond, "That begs the question. My whole claim, after all, is that I always speak softly. You're ignoring what I'm actually saying and applying a standard to my statement that I reject, namely, the standard that I don't always speak softly. I simply reject that claim, as my statement should make clear." Isn't it obvious that such a response doesn't work? Isn't it obvious that my claim is self-defeating? The person who tells me my claim is self-defeating is not assuming that my asserted claim is false, he's taking it as an actual statement, applying what it says to itself, and then pointing out that it undercuts its own presentation. That's how any claim that something is self-defeating works.

What this shows is that the anti-eliminativist's argument that eliminativism is self-defeating is logically prior to the eliminativist's counter-argument that the anti-eliminativist is begging the question. In order to say that the eliminativist's claim is self-defeating, he has to take what the eliminativist says, apply it to the eliminativist's claim itself, and then show that, if we assume the eliminativist's claims are true or valid or whatever, then the eliminativist's claims are not true or valid or whatever. The counter-response (that he is assuming the eliminativist's claim is false by applying standards to it that it denies) ignores the fact the eliminativist is presupposing the standards he claims to reject. That's the point: his position could only be valid if he hasn't really rejected the framework he says he has rejected. It's built upon the foundation of what he's dismissed as bogus.

He misidentifies the unique availability of a theory with the truth of the theory. I suspect that any grand-scale criticism of a deeply entrenched, broadly encompassing theory will seem to have a self-refuting flavor so long as no replacement theory is available.

Even if there were an available replacement theory, the grand-scale criticism could never be stated within the theory being criticized, since it would necessarily presuppose the categories of the theory being rejected as fallacious.

The reason is this: the available theory specifies not only what counts as an explanation but also the explananda themselves. That is, the phenomena that need explaining are specified in the vocabulary of the available theory (for example, the turning of the crystal spheres, the possession by demons, the transfer of caloric, the nature of consciousness).

Again, we are told that the explananda are not given but are "in the vocabulary of the available theory." That is, they are interpretations, part of an overarching theory which can therefore be dismissed. But if they're actually raw data, the ground level, that needs to be explained, eliminative materialism falls to the ground, since it doesn't explain them; it explains them away.

To tender sweeping criticisms of the entire old theory while still within its framework will therefore typically sound odd. But odd or not, such criticism nonetheless serves an essential role in steering a theory into readiness for revision.

Look, odd claims can be true. Reality is odd. But my conception of what it means to be "odd" is a part of the folk psychology framework that Churchland says she rejects. Outside of that, I can't make any sense of what she's saying; and that's the crux of the issue. If I'm in the throes of a false universal system, I can never get out of it to a better system, because any reason or ground for getting out of it would form a part of the system that I want to reject. Any chain of argument away from it would only be valid within that system; and once that system is rejected, the argument no longer holds, and I no longer have a reason for leaving the system. Moreover, this applies to everyone, including Patricia Churchland. How could evidence, reason, and argument have persuaded her to abandon folk psychology if evidence, reason, and argument are only valid within the confines of folk psychology? She's borrowing folk psychology's tools and mortar in order to construct an edifice that denies the existence of its own foundation and materiel.

Finally, it may be objected that the sentential paradigm will survive, whatever the theoretical revolutions and however thorough our understanding of the brain, because it is useful and natural and forms the nexus of our moral conceptions concerning responsibility, praise, and blame. By way of reply, it should first be mentioned that the issue now concerns a prediction about what will in fact be the social outcome of a theoretical revolution, and my inclination is to back off from making predictions about such matters.

I read this, and then my wife called from the other room, "What's so funny?" because, yes, I was laughing out loud. Churchland doesn't make predictions about such matters? Seriously? I don't mean any disrespect to her, but her whole position is a radical, gratuitous prediction of what science might discover someday, given a very particular (and implausible) set of preconditions. Eliminative materialism assumes a naïve scientific realism and extends into the future (i.e. predicts) what it might lead to. The fact that it would lead us to reject any kind of scientific realism is a small price to pay for ... what exactly? Truth? Logical consistency? Reason? These are all a part of the system she says she rejects.

Nevertheless, it may be useful to consider that objections cut from the same cloth were made on behalf of the geocentric theory of the universe and the creationist theory of man's origins. These theories were defended on grounds that they were useful and natural and were crucial elements in Christian doctrine. If the geocentric theory was wrong, if the creationist story was wrong, then crucial sections of the Bible could not be literally true and man's conception of himself and his place in the universe would be changed.

There's a partial truth here, but as usual, it's being distorted. The geocentric theory of the universe was a crucial element in Aristotelian and Ptolemaic astronomy -- that is, the science of the day -- and Christians looked for passages in the Bible to accommodate it, such as "The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved" (1 Chronicles 16:30; Psalm 93:1; 96:10; cf. Psalm 104:5). But, I'm sorry, these aren't "crucial sections of the Bible"; no doctrine is dependent on them, no theology is called into question by recognizing that their perspective is the surface of the earth rather than somewhere out in space looking down at the earth. As for the geocentric model in general, the center of the universe was considered the least prestigious, the least honorable, location therein; this is why hell was thought to be at the center of the earth, and Satan at the center of hell. Anyone who has studied ancient and medieval cosmology knows this. I wrote about this recently here, and you can read an excellent essay on it by Dennis Danielson, a literary historian, here.

The doctrine of creation, however, is crucial, and modern scientific discoveries have ruled out certain interpretations of Genesis 1 and 2. However, Churchland has erred if she thinks those interpretations exhaust traditional Christian thought on the issue. Historically, Christians have often understood the creation narratives metaphorically. Origen, one of the most important Church Fathers from the second and third centuries, went so far as to ridicule people who thought they referred to actual events (De Principiis 4:1:16). The point being that Christian doctrine has always left plenty of room for such interpretations, and modern scientific discoveries don't touch them. Regarding evolution in particular, I would just point out that many Church Fathers and medieval theologians (such as Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, Bonaventure, etc.) held the doctrine of rationes seminales according to which God created everything in "seed" form which then developed accordingly. Since such views were widely accepted within Christianity a millennium and a half before Darwin, I just don't see much difficulty here.

At any rate, I think Churchland's reference to these issues reveals something more about her presuppositions and motivations, and those of eliminative materialists in general. She's not just assuming a naïve scientific realism, she's presupposing the conflict thesis, the view that science and religion (or at least science and Christianity) are at war, and science is winning. She's extending into the future (predicting) what the end result of this war will be. The biggest problem with this is that the conflict thesis is almost completely rejected by historians of science. It is a wildly inaccurate view of how science and Christianity have interacted in history. So not only is her position self-defeating, not only is it implausible in the extreme, it's actually based on a discarded theory about the historical interaction between science and Christianity.

The new physics and the new biology each did, in some degree, undermine the power of the Christian church and naturalize man's understanding of himself and the universe.

Well, again, I think there's a partial truth here. The rejection of geocentrism did certainly undermine the power of the Catholic church to some extent. I would reiterate, though, that it failed to undermine any serious doctrinal issue. Traditionally, Christians had accommodated Ptolemy's geocentric model into their hamartiology or doctrine of sin: what was sinful was heavy and fell towards the center; what was light was holy and moved up into the heavens. This is also why they thought the earth didn't move and the heavens did: what was heavy/sinful didn't move and what was light/holy did. When the heliocentric system was presented it was seen as upgrading the earth to the status of a heavenly object and as downgrading the sun (in many ways the source of life, so it could have been perceived as an affront) to the center. Now if this link between geocentrism and the Christian doctrine of sin was thought to be an inextricable link, even mistakenly so, rather than borne out of an attempt to accommodate the science of the day, heliocentrism could have been perceived as contradicting something important to man's self-conception. But as far as I can tell this was not the case. I could certainly be wrong, but what I've read about this focused on the idea that heliocentrism challenged the Catholic church's authority by questioning something it had made a pronouncement on; not to mention the fact that the staunch defenses of geocentrism were made by the scientists on scientific grounds rather than theologians on theological grounds.

But perhaps that was not a bad thing. At a minimum it is worth considering whether transformations in our moral conceptions to adhere more closely to the discovered facts of brain function might be no bad thing as well. Whether this is so will be a complex matter about which I feel ignorant, but it is certainly not a closed matter. It is at least conceivable that our moral and legal institutions will be seen by future generations to be as backward, superstitious, and primitive as we now see the Christian church's doctrine of past centuries concerning the moral significance of disease and the moral property of anesthesia, immunization, and contraception (White 1896).

Yes, she's actually referencing Andrew Dickson White's A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, a work so thoroughly rejected by historians of science that anyone should be embarassed to base any argument on it at all. It has repeatedly been shown to be nothing more than a work of propaganda. "The moral property of anesthesia" refers to the claim that using anesthesia to relieve the pains of childbirth nullified the curse of Eve which was God's punishment on humanity because of the Fall, and therefore set man up against God. Except no such objection was raised; Andrew Dickson White just made it up. Similarly, the moral significance of disease and immunization refers to the claim that Pope Leo XII condemned vaccinations because disease was a righteous punishment from God. Of course, Leo never said or wrote any such thing, nor has any other pope, it's a complete fabrication.

The only claim Churchland refers to that has any validity is contraception, since some Christians reject birth control. However, only the Catholic church does this; Protestant and Orthodox churches generally do not. And the Catholic church's stance is not some knee-jerk reaction, it is a well thought-out position, as exemplified by the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae. This doesn't mean we have to agree with it, but we should at least be thoughtful about it.

Once again we see that the eliminative materialist program is motivated by a demonstrably false theory of the historical relationship between science and Christianity. That Churchland would be so uncritical about Andrew Dickson White, that she would have such blind faith in a discarded theory about the history of science, while simultaneously being hyper-critical of the most basic and obvious things about ourselves and the world, shows that she and her fellow eliminativists are not applying the same standards to their own position that they apply to those they dislike. And how could they? The standards they apply to other positions are basically to completely reject them, turn away, and never look back. It doesn't really matter what the truth is, they'll try to make reality conform to their theory rather than the other way around. Except "truth," "reality," "theory," and everything else are just parts of the washed-up theory of folk psychology. They only have to accept them when they want to.

The Central Issue; or Location Isn't Everything

July 13, 2013: I have temporarily removed the content of this post because it has some similarities with an article I wrote that is being published in an academic journal. Even though a blogpost probably doesn't count as having previously published the material, I'm taking the content of this post offline in order to avoid the appearance of impropriety. I'll put it back online in a year or so.

Islamic Mysticism

I have always been baffled by Islamic mysticism, known as Sūfism. My reason for this (if one can have reasons for being confused) is that there are two Islamic doctrines that seem to contradict it. First, Muhammad is believed to be the last prophet. That means that there is no further revelation from God until the end of the world, according to Islam. But if God is not revealing anything further, it's difficult to see how there can be any room for mystical experience.

Second, according to Islam God is completely transcendent. He has absolutely no direct contact with human beings. Even Muhammad didn't receive the Qur'an from God, but from an angel who had, in turn, received it from God. But mysticism means experience of the absolute. So how in the world can there be any experience of God? Basic Islamic doctrine seems to rule it out. "Islamic mysticism" seems to me to be an oxymoron.

The reason I'm interested in this is because people tend to be confident in their religious beliefs because of religious experiences they have had which affirm them. The reason why many Christians believe that Jesus rose from the dead, for example, is not because they have done an in-depth analysis of historical Jesus research, but because they have personally experienced Jesus as a living reality. Giving such people an abstract argument to the contrary is not a strong enough impetus to counter their experience. But with Islam, such experiences are largely ruled out of court. So why are some people who claim to be Muslims willing to commit horrendous crimes such as suicide bombings? How can they be so confident that their worldview is correct if that worldview entails that they do not and cannot experience God, and as such, can receive no personal sanction of their beliefs by him? It seems to me that such confidence is closer to political extremism than religious devotion.

At any rate, I recently read A History of Islamic Philosophy by Majid Fakhry, and he discusses this at one point. At first, he makes several points against Sūfism, including my second one.

Mysticism, defined as the attempt to reach out to the infinite and to be identified with it either through some kind of connaturality, as in Christianity, or through the total destruction of personal identity and the reversion to the primordial condition of undifferentiated unity, as in Hinduism and Buddhism, is discouraged by many teachings of the Islamic religion. First, the concept of the absolute transcendence of God "unto Him nothing is like," as the Koran express it [42:11], militates against the spirit of close or intimate relationship with God. Second, the ritual basis of the cult, with its rigid stipulations and forms, excludes the possibility of the unfettered reaching out to a reality beyond without conditions or restrictions. Third, the Islamic concept of the unity or continuity of man's life in this world and the next makes the "divorce" between finite and infinite existence in the form of withdrawal from the world much more difficult. The Muslim believer is called upon to accept this world of transient existence (dār fanā’) and cling to it, almost as much as he is called upon to seek the everlasting kingdom (dār baqā’) beyond and cling to it.

Fakhry goes on, though, to suggest that there are some other Islamic doctrines which allow some form of mysticism.

However, the Koran and the Traditions present another picture of the God-man relationship and the life-to-come which is very different from the one just outlined. Thus God is represented in this perspective as closer to the believer than "his jugular vein" (Koran 50, 15), and is so omnipresent and omniscient as to witness man's every deed and read his every thought. The ephemeral goods of this life are said to be utterly worthless in comparison with the everlasting goods of the life-to-come.

Moreover the spectacle of God's final judgment is drawn in such graphic and awe-inspiring terms, particularly in the early Meccan Sūrahs, that the reader is overwhelmed with the sense of the futility and wretchedness of man's estate in this life. Fear (al-khauf) not unnaturally became the chief expression of piety (wara‘, taqwā) and the token of a genuine religious vocation in the early centuries of Islam.

I'm just not sure, though, that these considerations overrule the problems mentioned above. Someone can be very close to you in a sense, but this doesn't necessarily entail the possibility of direct communication. By way of contrast, Judaism and Christianity both affirm that God is as close to the individual person as she is to herself, and that there is further no barrier preventing direct contact. So both of these two other religions allow for mystical experience, while Islam does not.

To conclude: I have always been baffled by Islamic mysticism.

Causality and the Big Bang

Since Big Bang cosmology is the claim that matter, energy, space, and time all sprang into existence, it strikes many people as similar to the theistic doctrine of creation ex nihilo (and by "similar" I mean "identical"). So some philosophers and some cosmologists have tried to find ways of avoiding the theistic implications.

One of the most common is to claim that causality is a physical phenomenon; it describes what takes place within the universe. You can't apply it to the beginning of the physical universe. The idea here is that causality is a posteriori like the laws of physics or chemistry, not a priori like the laws of logic. As such, it only describes the conditions inside the universe and can't be applied to the beginning of the universe itself. This is the tack taken by some illustrious philosophers, such as Adolf Grünbaum and Quentin Smith

It's certainly true that causality is not a priori in the same way the laws of logic are. We simply can't imagine the law of non-contradiction failing to hold, but we can imagine causality failing to hold -- that is, we can imagine (form a mental picture of) something popping into existence without a cause. But it's incorrect to say that we discover causality the same way we discover the laws of physics, i.e. through observation. Causality is derived from our basic intuition that something does not come from nothing (ex nihilo nihil fit: out of nothing, nothing comes). To limit this intuition to physical processes would be a case of special pleading; there's no reason why it wouldn't apply to the beginning of the universe. Causality is not a physical principle, it's a metaphysical principle.

Perhaps one could suggest that once we have the principle of causality via intuition, we can then establish it via observation and continue to believe it based on the latter. But it's not clear to me how causality could be falsified, or what would count as observation of causality not holding. At best you could say that you didn't observe a cause of an effect, but everyone would infer that the effect does in fact have a cause and we just didn't observe it. It's not like you could set up a scientific experiment to observe the absence of causality, since if the conditions you set up are sufficient to bring about the effect, then obviously the former caused the latter. As such, I think William Lane Craig's argument that causality has never been falsified is an empty claim. There are plenty of times where we observe an effect without a cause, but no amount of such experiences will ever convince a sane person that the effects didn't have a cause, merely that the causes weren't observed.

Or, perhaps one could simply deny the intuition. There are problems with this though: for one thing, science presupposes causality. If causality goes out the window, science goes with it. This is not only absurd and unacceptable, it's a conclusion I doubt nontheists would be willing to accept, since they (mistakenly) think science is on their side. For another thing, while causality is not a priori in the same way that the laws of logic are, it is still a precondition of thought. If causality did not hold, then there would not be an appropriate connection between our beliefs and their objects, such that we could never know if any of them are true. So it's not merely scientific knowledge that would be endangered; if we deny causality, then the possibility of any knowledge becomes impossible. So it's not like this intuition is just some random assertion.

But doesn't quantum physics posit virtual particles coming into existence without causes? This is a misunderstanding. As Craig writes,

... virtual particles do not literally come into existence spontaneously out of nothing. Rather the energy locked up in a vacuum fluctuates spontaneously in such a way as to convert into evanescent particles that return almost immediately to the vacuum. ... The microstructure of the quantum vacuum is a sea of continually forming and dissolving particles which borrow energy from the vacuum for their brief existence. A quantum vacuum is thus far from nothing, and vacuum fluctuations do not constitute an exception to the principle that whatever begins to exist has a cause.

Another suggestion might be that Hume denied causality. But ignoring the fact that Hume was not inerrant, this is another misunderstanding. Hume argued that just because we've observed a particular cause producing a particular effect in the past, we cannot know that the cause will produce the same effect. In other words, he argued that we can't infer an effect from a cause. Those who deny causality applies to the creation of the universe are claiming that we can't infer a cause from an effect -- that just because we observe that an effect has taken place, we can't claim that it was caused. This is radically different from what Hume was claiming, and Hume explicitly repudiates such an idea as absurd.

A final claim might be to suggest that applying causality to the Big Bang is just as problematic for the traditional theistic doctrine of creation. The doctrine, after all, is called creation ex nihilo (out of nothing) and the intuition is that ex nihilo nihil fit (out of nothing, nothing comes). But again, this is a misunderstanding. Creation ex nihilo is the claim that the universe didn't have a material cause -- that it wasn't constructed out of some pre-existent "stuff". This is certainly a radical claim and we should recognize it as such. But it doesn't deny that the universe has an efficient cause -- some entity or agent that brings about the effect -- since the claim is that God is the efficient cause of the universe. Those who deny that causality would apply to the beginning of the universe, however, are claiming that the universe had neither a material cause nor an efficient cause. So I simply put it to you, which of these two explanations is more plausible: that the universe's beginning has an efficient cause but no material cause, or that it has neither?

Now it's all well and good to say that applying causality to the beginning of the universe creates some philosophical issues, but the alternative is that it just popped into existence without any cause whatsoever. That people who portray themselves as skeptics would be willing to accept this shows that their skepticism is absurdly selective. If this is the the only way to avoid believing in God then there's just no contest.

Mind and Physicalism

I think Jaegwon Kim is the clearest contemporary expositor of philosophy of mind, not to mention one of its most important contributors. If you're interested in this subject at all, I highly recommend his books. For one thing, he really exposes the difficulties in accounting for the properties of the mind in physicalistic terms.

For example, in Philosophy of Mind and Physicalism, or Something Near Enough he discusses the problem of qualia. These are basically the first person experience of things, the "what it is like" to have a particular experience or be a particular entity (a bat, say). So when you experience pain, the qualia is not the firing of C-fibers, it's not the nerve endings, it's not your response to move away from whatever is causing it. The qualia is the pain, the "this hurts" experience. The difficulty in explaining qualia as physical properties is notorious, so much so that some philosophers feel it necessary to deny their existence (I guess the thinking is, if your philosophy conflicts with reality, the problem must be in the latter). The problem of qualia really opens the floodgates to the problems of explaining consciousness in general in terms of physical phenomena and processes.

Another example is where Kim discusses the difficulties in reconciling the causal closure of the physical with mental causation. Mental causation is simply the idea that the mind can cause a physical event (for example, that I can decide to pick up a pencil). But if the physical realm is causally closed, we are led to the problem of causal exclusion. In Mind in a Physical World: An Essay on the Mind-Body Problem and Mental Causation, he writes,

To acknowledge mental event m (occurring at t) as a cause of physical event p but deny that p has a physical cause at t would be a clear violation of the causal closure of the physical domain, a relapse into Cartesian interactionist dualism which mixes physical and nonphysical events in a single causal chain. But to acknowledge that p has also a physical cause, p*, at t is to invite the question: Given that p has a physical cause p*, what causal work is left for m to contribute? The physical cause therefore threatens to exclude, and preempt, the mental cause. This is the problem of causal exclusion. The antireductive physicalist who wants to remain a mental realist, therefore, must give an account of how the mental cause and the physical cause of one and the same event are related to each other. ... Thus the problem of causal exclusion is to answer this question: Given that every physical event that has a cause has a physical cause, how is a mental cause also possible?

Yet another example comes from a passage in Philosophy of Mind where Kim gives some detail about Donald Davidson's anomalous monism, as can be found in his collection, Essays on Actions and Events (which is on my to-read list). The point is that rational processes must follow different rules than (mere) physical processes, and so the former cannot be reduced to the latter.

A crucial premise of Davidson's argument is the thesis that the ascription of intentional states, like beliefs and desires, is regulated by certain principles of rationality, principles to ensure that the total set of such states ascribed to a subject will be as rational and coherent as possible. This is why, for example, we refrain from attributing to a person flatly and obviously contradictory beliefs -- even when the sentences uttered have the surface logical form of a contradiction. When someone replies, "Well, I do and don't" when asked, "Do you like Ross Perot?" we do not take her to be expressing a literally contradictory belief, the belief that she both likes and does not like Perot; rather, we take her to be saying something like "I like some aspects of Perot (say, his economic agenda), but I don't like certain other aspects (say, his international policy)." If she were to insist: "No, I don't mean that; I really both do and don't like Perot, period," we wouldn't know what to make of her utterance; perhaps her "and" doesn't mean what the English "and" means. We cast about for some consistent interpretation of her meaning because an interpreter of a person's speech and mental states is under the mandate that an acceptable interpretation must make her come out with a consistent and reasonably coherent set of beliefs -- as coherent and rational as evidence permits. When we fail to come up with a consistent interpretation, we are likely to blame our unsuccessful interpretive efforts rather than accuse our subject of harboring explicitly inconsistent beliefs. We also attribute to a subject beliefs that are obvious logical consequences of beliefs already attributed to him. For example, if we have ascribed to a person the belief that Boston is less than 50 miles from Providence, we would, and should, ascribe to him the belief that Boston is less than 60 miles from Providence, the belief that Boston is less than 70 miles from Providence, and countless others. We do not need independent evidence for these further belief attributions; if we are not prepared to attribute any one of these further beliefs, we should be prepared to withdraw the original belief attribution as well. Our concept of belief does not allow us to say that someone believes that Boston is within 50 miles of Providence but doesn't believe that it is within 70 miles of Providence -- unless we are able to give an intelligible explanation of how this could happen in the particular case involved. This principle, which requires that the set of beliefs be "closed" under obvious logical entailment, goes beyond the simple requirement of consistency in a person's belief system; it requires the belief system to be coherent as a whole -- it must in some sense hang together, without unexplained gaps. In any case, Davidson's thesis is that the requirement of rationality and coherence is of the essence of the mental -- that is, it is constitutive of the mental in the sense that it is exactly what makes the mental mental.

But it is clear that the physical domain is subject to no such requirement; as Davidson says, the principle of rationality and coherence has "no echo" in physical theory. But suppose that we have laws connecting beliefs with brain states; in particular, suppose we have laws that specify a neural substrate for each of our beliefs -- a series of laws of the form "N occurs to a person at t if and only if B occurs to that person at t," where N is a neural state and B is a belief with a particular content (e.g., the belief that there are birches in your yard). If such laws were available, we could attribute beliefs to a subject, one by one, independently of the constraints of the rationality principle. For in order to determine whether she has a certain belief B, all we need to do would be to ascertain whether B's neural substrate N is present in her; there would be no need to check whether this belief makes sense in the context of her other beliefs or even what other beliefs she has. In short, we could read her beliefs off her brain. Thus, neurophysiology would preempt the rationality principle, and the practice of belief attribution would no longer need to be regulated by the rationality principle. By being connected by law with neural state N, belief B becomes hostage to the constraints of physical theory. On Davidson's view, as we saw, the rationality principle is constitutive of mentality, and beliefs that have escaped its jurisdiction can no longer be considered mental states. If, therefore, belief is to retain its identity and integrity as a mental phenomenon, its attribution must be regulated by the rationality principle and hence cannot be connected by law to a physical substrate.

I've mentioned three issues: the problem of qualia, the problem of mental causation, and the dichotomy between rational processes and physical processes. The difficulty in each case is reconciling some property of the mind with physicalism. One might be tempted to say, with Kim, that we can have Physicalism, or Something Near Enough; the fact that we have a few threads that are left hanging doesn't put the physicalist project in jeopardy. But the "hanging threads" metaphor implies that the threads are on the periphery. These three examples, however, are at the center of the cloth, touching, in some way, every other thread. If one of these threads were removed, the whole thing would unravel.

Next up is Kim's Supervenience and Mind. Wish me luck.

Book Review: The Achilles of Rationalist Arguments

I just finished re-reading this book, having read it for one of my Master's theses. (Full bibliographical details: Ben Lazare Mijuskovic, The Achilles of Rationalist Arguments: The Simplicity, Unity, and Identity of Thought and Soul from the Cambridge Platonists to Kant: A Study in the History of an Argument. Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Idees Minor, vol 13. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974.) It's on the development and use of a particular philosophical argument throughout history, but primarily in the early Modern era. The Simplicity Argument is the claim that, "The essential nature of the soul consists in its power of thinking; thought, being immaterial, is unextended, i.e., simple (having no parts); and what is simple is (a) indestructible; (b) a unity; and (c) an identity." In the first chapter, Mijuskovic traces the argument back to Plato in the Phaedo, where Socrates argues that "in order for the soul to grasp the essence of immaterial forms, in knowledge, it must itself share in the attribute of immateriality." Aristotle also argues for the soul's immateriality, but interestingly, Mijuskovic does not employ the most obvious text to demonstrate this, namely, De Anima, but uses the Metaphysics instead. He doesn't appeal much to Medieval philosophy because he doesn't think the argument developed much in this time, but I would have liked to see how this argument related to the position of divine illumination, that human knowledge requires a direct link to God in order to be valid.

The meat of the book, however, is the middle three chapters where he demonstrates how the Simplicity Argument was used to argue for the immortality of the soul, the unity of consciousness, and the identity of the (moral) self with thought. Mijuskovic really shows an in-depth knowledge of early Modern philosophy, appealing to most of the great philosophers of this era and even popular-level writers -- the latter to demonstrate how deeply the argument had permeated society at the time. It's interesting how some thinkers employed the argument for one of its uses but not for the others, like Descartes. He also points out how Locke argued (following Hobbes) that matter may be able to think, and so thought is not necessarily immaterial. But it should be pointed out that Locke argued that thought could not be explained simply as matter in motion: God had to "superadd" thought onto matter in order for the "matter can think" thesis to be possible (on this, see this essay and this essay by Margaret Wilson).

The most interesting of these chapters, for me, was on the unity of consciousness. Mijuskovic summarizes the Simplicity Argument's use here as follows:

The argument from the simplicity of thought and its postulation as the "transcendental" condition for the unity of consciousness most often occurs in opposition to the Epicurean-Hobbesian principle that senseless matter can think; and the argument always refers to the peculiar nature of consciousness and, especially, of selfconsciousness. Thus, for instance, the rationalist tradition involved in this epistemological aspect of the simplicity theory constantly stresses the idea that either all consciousness is actually selfconsciousness; or that there is something special, "rational," about selfconsciousness which essentially distinguishes it from mere sensation, perception, or consciousness. And that even if perception might conceivably be explained on Epicurean grounds, selfconsciousness could never be so understood. Furthermore, unless different "thoughts" or concepts inhered in something essentially unified and simple, they would fall apart and crumble into distinct pieces and a disunity of consciousness would thereby result. But the fact that we cannot divide our idea of, say, blue into pieces as we can partition a blue object demonstrates that there is something different in principle between ideas and objects; and if there were not, stones could think and reason as readily as minds. Thus unless consciousness were unified by something intrinsically simple, and therefore necessarily a unity (for what is simple must be a unity), sensation, perception, cognition, awareness, memory, reason, etc., would all be impossible.

He also goes over Hume's skepticism regarding the unity of consciousness and the soul's identity in some detail, concluding with an interesting point reminiscent of the Argument from Reason: "It may be noted, however, that Hume's ultimate scepticism concerning the self is, paradoxically enough, based on the reflexive character of thought, on selfconsciousness."

The final chapter goes over the argument's role in the development of Idealism. Mijuskovic argues that Kant's claim that space is merely an appearance is not based -- or at least is not solely based -- on his antinomies but also on the Simplicity Argument (indeed, it was Kant who referred to this argument as Rationalism's "Achilles").

In what ultimately may be traced back to "Platonic," "Aristotelian," "Neoplatonic," or "Cartesian" sources, the principle that both thoughts and minds are unextended seems to lead philosophically to a conclusion which states that whatever "appears in" or "belongs to" the mind also must be thereby necessarily unextended. For in whatever fashion we contrast or distinguish thoughts and minds (and term the former the attributes or accidents and the latter the substances, or if we identify the two) the important consideration revolves around the recognition of the essentially unextended nature of thoughts and minds. And if both thoughts and minds are incorporeal, and the immaterial is identified with the unextended ... then it follows that everything which is cognitively apprehended by the mind must likewise by essentially unextended. And indeed, even the common man -- who may be tempted to say figuratively that a thought is deep in meaning or that his cares weigh him down -- would find it literally meaningless to speak of an idea two feet deep or a pound in weight.

He concludes by pointing to some possible influences of this argument on 20th century philosophy, such as Husserlian phenomenology, and its relevance for combating certain reductivist philosophies, such as Behaviorism and Materialism. Overall it's an interesting book and a valuable contribution to the history of ideas.

Superman's Secret Identity

I was just re-reading my ridiculously long post on Nietzsche and realized something. Nietzsche makes a sharp distinction between the rational man and the intuitive man. The rational man lives his life by forcing everything into categories, allowing him to learn from mistakes so as not to make them again. This is unacceptable to Nietzsche for several reasons: first, classifying things like this would mean ignoring all the things about an experience that make it that particular experience and treating it as if it were the same as other experiences which are, by definition, different experiences. It is to ignore the uniqueness of each experience. Second, classifying things like this is motivated by fear: the fear of not being in control (by not being able to understand things), which amounts to a fear of life itself. It is the attempt to limit the effect life has on us. But you can't do this without also excluding the great joys that life offers as well. Thus, the rational man lives by fear, and lets this fear determine how he lives. He is afraid of life, running away from it. Third, classifying things like this can only be done if one accepts a Platonic/Christian worldview, which posits a world beyond the physical universe, a world of which the universe we experience is just a shadow or pale reflection. Nietzsche absolutely rejects such a worldview. Indeed, his philosophy is the working-out of the consequences of God's non-existence.

In contrast, the intuitive man -- the Übermensch (overman or superman) -- is the one who accepts life on its own terms, as it comes to him, not trying to understand it but just experiencing it, living it. He does not live negatively out of fear, but positively. This allows him to experience all the great joys that life has to offer. It also means that he will experience all the great pains and even horrors that life has to offer, and will never learn to avoid them -- in order to avoid them, he would have to learn from previous experiences not to do certain types of things, but that would mean classifying certain types of experience. Thus, the Übermensch rejects this, refuses to run away from life by living in fear, and allows himself to live life to its fullest.

But if that's the definition of the Übermensch -- someone who will not rationally think about things, will not try to understand things by comparing them with similar things in order to learn from them -- then a rather radical conclusion follows.

The Übermensch is ... Homer Simpson.

This can easily be verified by simply watching the Simpsons to determine for oneself that Homer exemplifies precisely these qualities.

So if you want to be a full-blooded Nietzschean, if you really want to reject the Platonic/Christian worldview, just be aware of what you're aspiring to. Homer Simpson: the ultimate realization of Nietzsche's philosophy.

Yes Virginia, there are flat-earthers

There are some good essays online on the flat earth myth -- the belief that people thought the earth was flat prior to Columbus. I recently linked to this post by M&M, here's another, and here's one James wrote. Humphrey wrote a couple of excellent blogposts on it here and here. The go-to book for all of this is Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians by Jeffrey Burton Russell (you can read a short essay by Russell here) who traces the myth to about 1830 when Washington Irving wrote his "history" of Columbus.

Rather than add to what they wrote, I'd like to address a parallel issue. Once non-Christians started ridiculing Christianity as promoting a flat earth, some Christians sought to defend their faith by ... accepting a flat earth. The most prominent defender, in the mid-19th century, was Samuel Rowbotham, who wrote the book Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe. Rowbotham compiled dozens of evidences supporting his claim that the earth was flat and stationary, such as lighthouses that could be seen from further away than they should if the surface is curved, cannonballs fired straight up from moving platforms (demonstrating that the earth is not moving), etc. To this day there is a flat-earth society which defends this kind of thing. Here is a list of flat-earth literature available to read online. A list of resources by and about flat-earthers is here.

I collect flat-earth literature. It seems to me to be an extreme example of Christians reacting to the conflict myth by letting secularists tell them what to believe, another example being contemporary defenses of geocentrism, something which has gained support among young-earth creationists.

That leads me to my main point: I think young-earth creationism is another example of Christians letting secularists define Christian belief. I don't think it's on the same level as belief in a flat-earth for the simple reason that, throughout history, many of the holiest Christians believed the earth and universe to be young. Nevertheless, the history of young-earth creationism in the last 50 years reveals it to be a reaction rather than a reasoned response, in a very similar fashion as belief in a flat earth was a reaction against the forces of secularism. I submit that this is not an appropriate way for a Christian to act. You can't love the Lord with all your mind if your theology is based on knee-jerk reactions. Moreover, it leads to two deplorable situations: first, as I've already mentioned, where the dictates of one's faith are actually made up by people trying to mock it. I don't think it's wise to let those who deprecate our faith define it for us. Second, it creates a rather large stumbling block for belief in Christianity. If that's what you have to believe in order to be a Christian, then it just obviously fails the smell test.

There are plenty of parallels between young-earth and flat-earth literature. Both make their claim the linchpin to orthodoxy, so that disagreeing with them leads to the denial of central doctrines. Both locate the problems of contemporary society in the rejection of their claim. Both claim that the denial of their claim makes God into an incompetent Creator. Both claim that the denial of their claim is a purely recent phenomenon. Both explicate their claim via bluster and a feigned over-confidence. Etc.

To illustrate that last point, I have a flat-earth book entitled A Reparation: Universal Gravitation a Universal Fake by C. S. DeFord, originally published in 1931, that begins thus:

To me truth is precious. I love it. I embrace it at every opportunity. I do not stop to inquire, Is it popular? ere I embrace it. I inquire only, Is it truth? If my judgment is convinced my conscience approves and my will enforces my acceptance. I want truth for truth's sake, and not for the applaud or approval of men. I would not reject truth because it is unpopular, nor accept error because it is popular. I should rather be right and stand alone than to run with the multitude and be wrong.

Methinks he doth protest too much.

Size Doesn't Matter, addendum

Forgive me for coming back to this, but I just remembered a loose thread that I'd like to tie up. In part 2 of this series, I relied heavily on two books Measuring the Universe: Cosmic Dimensions from Aristarchus to Halley by Albert Van Helden, and The Discarded Image by C. S. Lewis. While these two books are generally in agreement, I stated that Van Helden disagreed with Lewis regarding Roger Bacon's Opus Maius. I didn't go into any detail about it because it's a minor point and this is really my only area of contention with Van Helden.

What he takes issue with is the following quote from Lewis:

The reader of this book will already know that Earth was, by cosmic standards, a point -- it had no appreciable magnitude. The stars, as the Somnium Scipionis had taught, were larger than it. Isidore in the sixth century knows that the Sun is larger, and the Moon smaller than the Earth (Etymologies, III, xlvii-xlviii), Maimonides in the twelfth maintains that every star is ninety times as big, Roger Bacon in the thirteenth simply that the least star is 'bigger' than she. (Discarded Image, 97)

Van Helden uses this quote to claim that Lewis was "curiously uninformed" about the dimensions of the medieval model of the universe, and states, "Had Lewis actually looked at Roger Bacon's Opus Maius instead of using a secondary source, he would have found the Ptolemaic System in all its detail laid out before him" (Measuring the Universe, 28).

There are a few points to make about this. First, to claim this one quote somehow demonstrates a general unfamiliarity with medieval cosmology on Lewis's part is simply unjustified. We would need more evidence, much more evidence, to warrant such a conclusion. Second, Lewis directly quoted Bacon only a few pages earlier (Discarded Image, 93), so he was obviously familiar with his writings firsthand. Third, the quote in question is only referring to the size of the stars, not to their distances; something made evident by the fact that immediately following the quote, Lewis clearly changes the subject to their distances, writing, "As to estimates of distance..."

With this, I am unable to see that Van Helden's criticism has any merit. Lewis's statement that "Roger Bacon in the thirteenth [century maintains] simply that the least star is 'bigger' than she [i.e. the Earth]", seems relatively innocuous. Perhaps Bacon wrote extensively about the size of the stars, and so Lewis should not have written the word "simply". However Van Helden does not cite any such estimations on Bacon's part, and I don't have a copy readily available to check. At any rate, Lewis's statement does not appear to be a significant misrepresentation. Bacon certainly affirms his main thesis when he writes that "the Earth does not possess any sensible size with respect to the heavens" (Opus Maius, 1:258), something Van Helden himself notes (Measuring the Universe, 36).

Thus Spoke Cratylus

Below is a paper I wrote several years ago on Nietzsche’s essay ‘On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense’. The title, a takeoff on Nietzsche’s book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, refers to the ancient Greek philosopher Cratylus, a disciple of Heraclitus, and one of Socrates’ interlocuters. In Metaphysics 4.5 Aristotle wrote,

But the reason why these thinkers held this opinion is that while they were inquiring into the truth of that which is, they thought, ‘that which is’ was identical with the sensible world; in this, however, there is largely present the nature of the indeterminate—of that which exists in the peculiar sense which we have explained; and therefore, while they speak plausibly, they do not say what is true (for it is fitting to put the matter so rather than as Epicharmus put it against Xenophanes). And again, because they saw that all this world of nature is in movement and that about that which changes no true statement can be made, they said that of course, regarding that which everywhere in every respect is changing, nothing could truly be affirmed. It was this belief that blossomed into the most extreme of the views above mentioned, that of the professed Heracliteans, such as was held by Cratylus, who finally did not think it right to say anything but only moved his finger, and criticized Heraclitus for saying that it is impossible to step twice into the same river; for he thought one could not do it even once.

I think if Cratylus, in a fit of inconsistency, tried to write down the philosophy that led him to forsake communication, it would be something very close to Nietzsche’s.
__________

The acumen of Nietzsche’s parable with which he begins his essay ‘On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense’ rests in its definition of humanity as ‘clever beasts [which] invented knowing.’ One might first think that Nietzsche is stating that the clever beasts tricked themselves into thinking they knew something when they really did not; that their ‘knowledge’ about reality was incorrect. But this is not the case. Knowledge refers to some kind of objective information; even if it is information about the subject, it is about the subject qua object. If man’s ‘knowledge’ is false, it would imply that there might be correct knowledge, ‘truth,’ to be had, even if merely theoretic truth. But there is no such information. This does not mean that Nietzsche is a solipsist, but that what does exist is so radically different and discontinuous with man, that there is no way for him to ever come into contact with it. By saying that humanity invented knowing, Nietzsche is saying that there is no such thing as knowledge; that the dichotomy of true and false is illusory. The beliefs that plague humanity exactly parallel those that any other animal has: they have no corresponding object, and only reveal something about those who hold them.

The reason Nietzsche’s point is particularly brilliant is that he is taking Kant’s claim that man cannot know the noumena, the thing in itself, and then takes a step further back by applying this to the concept of knowledge itself. While claiming that man cannot know the object qua object does not necessarily mean that there is no object, when man looks for knowledge qua knowledge, the whole epistemological pursuit necessarily self-destructs, since it is by knowledge that he seeks it. Since he cannot know knowledge qua knowledge, Nietzsche necessarily concludes that there is no such thing.

Nietzsche then goes on to wonder how this belief in knowledge could have arisen from the intellect, an evolutionary adaptation, the only purpose of which is to help the individual survive and produce progeny. The answer is that the individual protects himself from others and the world by means of deception, since he does not have the capacity to do so by physical means. However it is not merely the deception of others, but his own deception as well. His dreams deceive him, but he does not object. He tricks himself into thinking he knows about the external world, when there is not anything to know. He thinks he knows himself, while nature is preventing him from having even the most rudimentary knowledge thereof.

One major point Nietzsche makes here is that man only employs his senses (which, themselves, are entirely untrustworthy) superficially to try to understand reality. Such exercises are only a ‘groping game on the backs of things,’ and man’s ‘eyes merely glide over the surface of things and see "forms."’ This is the beginning of Nietzsche’s direct assault on Plato’s doctrine that the sensible world is merely a shadow of the world of forms or ideas. Humankind has immersed itself in deception—man can never know things as they are, because there is nothing to know, so he only superficially looks at the information presented to him by his senses, and then tricks himself into believing that he has encountered reality; and in so doing, becomes completely enamored with his own excellence.

This gives rise to a very important conundrum: humanity finds itself in a state of constant deception and dissimulation. But given this state, how could man have a genuine desire for truth? Nietzsche’s answer is that humanity does not merely want survival, but fellowship with each other. Man is a social animal. Therefore, as Hobbes declared in Leviathan, the individual must make a kind of peace treaty with others in exchange for such fellowship—and such a treaty necessarily involves the establishing of ‘uniformly valid and binding designation(s),’ in order to achieve some kind of rapport with each other. Hence, the ‘truth’ is now what the herd has established, and the ‘liar’ is one who uses these appellations contrarily to their designations.

However, this is only a first step towards the desire for truth. Nietzsche shrewdly points out that one who behaves as a ‘liar’ will be excluded from the herd—not for lying, but for causing harm by means of lying. The point being that it is not the deception itself that is offensive, just the consequences. Similarly, man wants the truth as long as it is comfortable and safe, but if it is inconsequential or harmful he is apathetic or hostile towards it.

This is precisely where Nietzsche’s view of the nature of language comes in: he argues that language must have subjective reference in order for it to have any meaning to man. The phrase ‘the stone is hard,’ does not say anything about the stone itself, but about man’s subjective experience of the stone, since ‘hard’ does not refer to something in the external world, but to man’s encounter with an object. Here, Nietzsche seems to be saying that if language had no subjective reference, it would not make sense to man as subject, because it would not have any connection to him; but insofar as language has a subjective reference, it cannot be considered to be describing objective reality, and hence, cannot be considered to be truth. Truth would be for language to describe the noumena, the ‘thing in itself.’ But this is simply impossible. Man can only describe things as they come into contact with him, and the consequent relationship determines his understanding thereupon. Language does not describe things: it describes man’s relationship with and perception of things.

Nietzsche goes on to further remove language from objective reality, by arguing that it is even discontinuous with man’s perception itself. He points out the fact that most, if not all, words are totally arbitrary designations. Even in the case where they are not, they simply take their cue from another designation, and this process itself is entirely arbitrary.[1] Many languages assign gender to objects, but it is difficult to see this as reflecting any objective reality. The fact that there are different languages makes this point evident. Nietzsche is once again arguing against Platonism here, particularly the position Plato takes in Cratylus. The only way to avoid this is through rigid application of the laws of logic, which Nietzsche dismisses as ‘tautologies’ and ‘empty husks’; that is, these laws do not reveal anything that is not already contained within the concept.

He further illustrates this by pointing out that the spoken word is merely ‘the copy in sound of a nerve stimulus,’ and any inference to an external cause is an invalid application of the principle of sufficient reason (contra Schopenhauer, whom he more often agrees with). He states that there are two unjustifiable inferences made in the process of language: first, a nerve stimulus is translated into an image; second, the image is translated into a sound. But there can be no connection between these three spheres. To ‘translate’ a nerve stimulus into an image, or an image into a sound, means to make one thing into something entirely different and other than what it is. He illustrates this by asking if someone who is deaf can understand the experience of hearing when sound is ‘translated’ into touch (vibrations) or sight. The obvious answer is: no. When translated thus, it ceases to be sound. Similarly, when man translates an image into a sound, it ceases to be an image, and consequently has no relationship to the image. Thus, Nietzsche calls these translations ‘metaphors’ and ‘illusions,’ and elsewhere in this essay, he refers to them as ‘lies.’ The word-symbol used to designate an object has no logical relation with the thing in itself, not being derived from its essence; and hence, everything the scientist and philosopher build on the content of language, i.e., concepts, is straw.

Nietzsche thus broadens his assault to include concepts themselves. He argues that conceptualizing necessarily involves classification: making the commonalities shared between individual entities preeminent and definitive, while disregarding the differences as trivial. But, Nietzsche points out, the differences are the only thing man actually experiences. He does not encounter ‘the’ leaf, he encounters countless individual leaves, not one being exactly the same as another. He then disregards all the unique properties of all of these experiences, and classifies them according to their commonalities. But, in this process, man has done two things: first, he has equated things which are not equal. He has chosen to ignore those aspects which made them unique, which simply means that he has made them what they are not. He sees two leaves, and calls them such; but in so doing, he has taken two things which are not the same and claimed that they are. Second, he has created a concept that does not resemble any particular example of which it is supposed to be the archetype. Once again, he is arguing against Plato’s doctrine of the Forms. He uses this to not only mock Plato, but ‘Platonism for the masses,’ by suggesting that if all of the individual leaves are copied from an original, it would imply that the ‘counterfeiter’ is incompetent, since none of them are accurate representations.

While the example of the leaf is perfectly in line with Plato’s philosophy, it is not the most evident example. When an individual sees a leaf, he does not tend to instinctively infer a larger reality of which it is merely a representation. Thus, in order to attack Plato head on, Nietzsche further illustrates his critique with a clearer example: honesty. This is a more lucid example than the leaf because when man encounters someone behaving honestly, he tends to see this as representative of something about that individual; that is, he believes the particular act of honesty he witnesses is a manifestation of a larger reality, namely, a character trait. But, Nietzsche says, this is precisely the lie that man tells himself. He has individual encounters of people behaving honestly, none of which are the same, and then invents a trait called ‘honesty’ which he then claims is not only the commonality between these encounters, but is actually the cause of this behavior in the first place. He has invented an unseen and obscure property, and claimed that it is the reality, instead of the actual experience.

Nietzsche even applies this to the distinction between individual and species, that is, the difference between experience and the categories under which man classifies them. However, he quickly qualifies this: to say this distinction is not part of the world itself would be just as dogmatic as saying in fact that it is. This, I think, shows the primary weakness in his argument: his claim is that our concepts (the species) do not reflect the real world at all, and the linchpin is that by inferring the species via the observation of the individual, man leaves behind his actual observations for a hidden concept. But Nietzsche recognizes that he would be contradicting himself to say that the distinction between species and individual itself actually reflects the essence of the way things are: not only because he has already argued that man cannot approach the way things really are, but because this distinction is itself a concept. Thus, he finds himself, for consistency’s sake, having to point out that this distinction cannot be said to represent reality. But since his whole argument depends on this distinction—that by focusing on the species, man misses the individual, and exchanges his experience for an imaginary world—he also points out that it cannot be said to not do so. However, to make this point at this juncture is arbitrary, since the same thing could have been said of any step in the argument. This inconsistency parallels how Nietzsche’s denial of metaphysics led him to affirm the doctrine of the eternal return—which is itself profoundly metaphysical.

Truth, therefore, is ‘a sum of human relations, … illusions which we have forgotten are illusions … the duty to lie according to a fixed convention.’ But, this still does not explain how man could ever desire ‘truth’ in sincerity. In order to do so, Nietzsche must couple what has been said thus far with what is, essentially, a case of collective amnesia. Man has grown so accustomed to this scenario, that he participates therein unconsciously. A subjective standpoint is established in order for people to coexist, and it is soon mistakenly thought to represent an objective standpoint. This is precisely how these clever beasts obtain a drive for ‘truth’: man feels morally obligated to acknowledge the traditional arbitrary designations. But, as has already been noted, these designations are removed from the individual and unique experiences that the individual has actually had. Hence, he governs his life according to abstractions, rather than experiences. He is supposed to let these abstractions guide him, rather than be ‘carried away’ by sudden impressions—that is, actual experiences—and thinks, in so doing, that he is being ‘rational.’ This is the first step toward the creation of an entirely different world than the one in which man really lives, a project that is distinctively human. Man is trying to impose an order on the world that does not exist in order to make it easier for him to endure. He does not realize that he is just using the agreed-upon symbols in order to avoid exclusion from the herd.

Now that man has these abstractions, Nietzsche says, he can arrange them into whatever order he wants; subordinating one to another or vice versa. He can then use this invented schematization to create laws and systems and castes to further itself, and further remove himself from his actual experiences. In fact make itself seem ‘more solid, more universal, better known, and more human’ than the latter, or in other words, make itself seem more real. But of course, this is a complete illusion; it is a ‘crap game.’[2] Nevertheless, Nietzsche points out, it is a particularly brilliant maneuver: men are geniuses of construction who have built ‘an infinitely complicated dome of concepts upon an unstable foundation, and, as it were, on running water.’ Such construction requires great ingenuity. It is like a spider’s web in that its parts are simultaneously malleable and strong. And yet, the spider builds his web out of given material; the bee builds his hive with that which he collects from nature. Man, however, does not merely construct his edifice, but actually invents the material he uses in the construction itself.

However, Nietzsche takes away with one hand what he has offered with the other. The ‘material’ with which man constructs his tower of Babel is simply the result of anthropomorphic thinking, which, of course, has nothing to do with reality. Concepts have no reference beyond man, they are merely the ‘residue of a metaphor.’ Man is classifying and constructing a world out of human interests. He is trying to make the world seem more like himself, because he has a powerful need to feel as if he belongs in it. He wants to be a part of the world, so it would only seem reasonable that he can apply the terms of his own existence thereupon. Man sees the universe either as a person par excellence, or as having such a person behind it. This leads to an interesting twist: the traditionalists, with their attempts to know objective reality as it is in itself, independent of themselves, are the ones who have made man the measure of all things. But they err in that they have mistaken their experience with actual objects, with things in themselves, and have forgotten that they are merely metaphors.

Thus far, Nietzsche has engaged in criticism or deconstruction. At this point, he begins to propound his own view of these matters. Man’s forgetfulness that the world is a metaphor is the forgetfulness that he is the one who created the metaphor in the first place. The fact that man has crafted the world as an artist according to his instincts of survival and community implies that he can craft it according to more appropriate ends: he must take into account aesthetics. This is a point which forms the basis for much of Nietzche’s later philosophy. Man is to create the world he wants, while holding before his mind all the while that it is his creation. As soon as he forgets this, he has slipped back into the lie of believing that his creations actually correspond to things in themselves, and hence, are true. The Übermensch is the one who can accept this scenario, and thus live life on its own terms. After the lion destroys the world that has been deeded to him, he is free to metamorphosize into the child who simply plays, by creating and then destroying for no external purpose.[3] It does not take anything into account other than aesthetics.

By contrast, the man who is unable to accept this scenario is the philosopher who has effected his own survival ‘only by means of the petrification and coagulation of a mass of images which originally streamed from the primal faculty of human imagination like a fiery liquid.’ This was not done primarily for aesthetic purposes, but in order to survive and commune with others. He refuses to live life on its own terms, and instead tries to tame it. Precisely by creating the world of concepts in order to sustain his own life, he denies life. The phraseology in Nietzsche’s quote above illustrates the contempt he has for this process, a contempt which is further demonstrated by his referring to this process as the ‘dissolv[ing of] an image into a concept’ which itself is ‘less colorful’ and ‘cooler’ than that of which it is supposedly the archetype.

However, this is not meant to imply that Nietzsche does not understand how this situation came about. It is the desire to live with ‘repose, security, and consistency.’ To deny the world of concepts requires one to not only give up all security and constancy, but to destroy their self-consciousness.

Nietzsche then builds on a claim he made at the beginning of his essay: since all animals perceive that the universe revolves around them, perceptions only reveal something about the one who experiences them, and thus, these perceptions have no corresponding object. Even if humankind had the strength to admit this fact, it would only lead man to ask which animal has the correct perspective. Nietzsche destroys this from both sides: first of all, in order to determine the correct perspective, one would have to have some kind of independent perspective by which he could judge them all. But this is unintelligible. How can one have a perspective independent of perspectives? Such a vantage point is simply unavailable. Thus, when man tries to move from himself to the world, he fails.

Second, when he tries to move from the world to himself, he fails again, since these are two different universes. The world is an entirely different realm than man, and between the two no information can flow. It is not that humankind has not yet discovered a way to move from one to the other, but that such movement is nonsensical. The question Nietzsche has been implicitly asking throughout this essay is, what would it mean to know the thing in itself, apart from experience? This question makes no sense. In order for man to know something, he has to experience it. Knowledge presupposes experience. It is basically asking, what would the experience of something which man does not (and cannot) experience be like? The only way for man to have ‘knowledge’ is by experiencing something—and this means that such knowledge is not of the thing itself, but of man’s experience of and relationship with it. Since man’s knowledge is based on his subjectivity, it cannot be said to have anything in common with the object he is supposedly encountering. ‘Truth’ would be knowledge of the noumena, the thing in itself, knowing it in its objectivity. But this is simply a contradiction in terms. There is no causal link between these two domains. One cannot express itself in the other.

Where does this leave man? There is still ‘a suggestive transference, a stammering translation into a completely foreign tongue—for which there is required, in any case, a freely inventive intermediate sphere and mediating force.’ There is, in other words, an aesthetic relationship between these two spheres. ‘Aesthetic’ because it involves free invention or creation, which is precisely the role Nietzsche sees for the superman: the ability to live life on its own terms. Man creates his own sphere and forces it to mediate between himself and the world. However, it would be a mistake to think that this mediation actually enables him to make contact with the world. Man has created this sphere; it is not an invention, it is a work of art, the purpose of which is to please, not to accomplish an external goal. The lie is that man has forgotten this is the way things stand with him. He has spent so much time looking at the same work of art, that it has hardened and congealed in place. The lie has been repeated so often that it has the same status as if it actually established a causal relation between ourselves and the world. Man has mistaken his creation for something it is not, in much the same way that a dream can be mistaken for reality.

At this point, Nietzsche changes his focus to another audience. He recognizes that the last step before one achieves his philosophy is the positivism which the natural sciences promulgate.[4] So he addresses those who hold this view, by broadening his assault to include the scientist as well as the philosopher. He begins by stating that those who are familiar with the objections he has made thus far obviously reject any sort of idealism, and instead embrace what they perhaps consider to be the only alternative: ‘the eternal consistency, omnipresence, and infallibility of the laws of nature.’ This is the view that science (or, perhaps, ‘Science’) will continue excavating a reality which is completely consistent with itself, and shows forth no hint of the anthropomorphic thinking Nietzsche has thus far condemned. Such faith is reasonable, for, unlike idealism, it is strikingly discontinuous with man’s imagination, and therefore is unlikely to be a product thereof.

Nietzsche’s response is to ask what the positivist means by the ‘laws’ or ‘regularity’ of nature. He has no experience of such laws; he only has experiences of their (alleged) effects, and infers a larger reality of laws behind them. Nor can he infer any particular law in isolation, since he only experiences the supposed effects of such a law in its relation to other laws, and thus as a collection of relations, which only refer back to each other. Such a construction is particularly reminiscent of the edifice of concepts, although, in this case, it is more closely based on experience. These laws are simply the medium through which humanity perceives things. What if, Nietzsche asks, each individual experienced things differently? Would this not render the community impossible? What would it mean to ‘lie with the herd’ if each man did not even have the same experience to lie about? At the very least, he would not perceive the world as regular or law-like; rather, ‘nature would be grasped only as a creation which is subjective in the highest degree.’

Obviously, man does not experience nature in such a way; he experiences it in ways common to all, and this is precisely what allows humankind to be communal animals. But the positivist has mistaken these common paths of experience with reality itself, instead of recognizing it as just a part of humanity’s collective makeup. These paths allow him to unify that which is divergent. All of these laws are based on the imposition of mathematical precision on the world via the representations of time and space. But, as Kant pointed out a century earlier, time and space are simply the nets which man cannot help but throw over the world in order to comprehend it. Man is unable to understand anything divorced from these media, so it is not particular impressive that he perceives everything in accordance with them. ‘All that conformity to law, which impresses us so much in the movement of the stars and in chemical process, coincides at bottom with those properties which we bring to things.’ Through science, man tries to investigate the world mathematically; but the concept of number is not something in the world, but is merely in man’s experience. Thus, man’s amazement with the laws and regularity of nature is simply amazement with himself. The edifice of concepts is only made possible because of the edifice already constructed ‘by the firm persistence of these original forms.’ Idealism, in other words, is an imitation of positivism, in that it copies the latter’s use of metaphors (in this case, time, space, and number) in order to construct a world.

However, in another sense, it is positivism which copies idealism, since it is simply ‘filling in’ the cells of the great edifice composed of concepts, just as the bee fills the cells of his hive with honey. To be sure, it does not accept this edifice on its own terms. It certainly renovates. But to renovate a building is not to create a new one in its place. The positivist/scientist thus modifies the structure, remodels the schematization, and reforms the caste system, in order to bring it up to code; that is, in order to bring it into agreement with the empirical—the anthropomorphic—world. The scientist works with concepts, derived from language, just as the philosopher does. Both seek to remove themselves from life by constructing a shelter from the continuous hail of powers that oppose the ‘truth’ they have created.

Thus far, Nietzsche has explicated the human condition, and scorned those who would seek to escape it. Rather, humankind should embrace the creative nature of life, and live in consonance with it. In the past man has created metaphors and mistaken them for reality. The solution is not and cannot be to stop creating such metaphors, since this is the ‘fundamental human drive.’ The tyranny of concepts, which has forbidden man from creating new metaphors, does not in any way lessen this drive. Man must instead find a new way to express this drive, and this is done, Nietzsche says, in myth and art. The reason these channels are better suited to the formation of metaphors than concepts, is because they have no pretense to constancy. Instead of capturing experiences and subordinating them under abstract rubrics—where they sit and grow stale, tasteless, and tepid—myth and art focus on the exhilaration, the color, the sharpness of the experiences themselves; and as soon as the focus begins to dull and the colors become less bright, they immediately change the view.

Of course, this also entails leaving behind the constancy, regularity, and reliability which the conceptual framework has afforded. The metaphors of myth and art do not allow coherence or results, since there is no regularity upon which one can rely in order to achieve them. Instead, the world will be like a dream. Not a fulfilled wish, but a dream, where there is no assurance from one moment to the next of any kind of stability. In a sense, preferring myth and art to reason and concepts is a matter of preferring the dreaming life to the waking life. Art awakes this possibility, and this is why the positivist sees value elsewhere (in scientific inquiry). Myth captures it even more beautifully, since it creates a world where anything can happen. Nietzsche mentions some of the incredible motifs of Greek mythology, and one hardly need catalogue the tales of the gods’ deceptions in order to see how the waking life of one who lives in such a world would be like a dream: chaotic, unpredictable, untamable, colorful, intense, and brilliant. ‘All of nature swarms around man as if it were nothing but a masquerade of the gods, who were merely amusing themselves by deceiving men in all these shapes.’

There are, essentially, two conflicting and irreconcilable drives waging battle within man. One is to create, to accept life as it comes and glory in it. The other is to effect one’s own safety, to run away from life; or at the very least, tame it so that it can no longer cause harm. The bravery of the former contrasts with the cowardice of the latter, which is based on the fear of misfortune, and seeks to minimize the experience thereof. To this end, it dulls life, by denying experience and upholding concepts as ‘reality.’ Of course, the same medium which makes possible this experience of misfortune which the philosopher and scientist so desperately seek to avoid, also makes possible the experience of overwhelming elation. ‘The man who is guided by concepts and abstractions only succeeds by such means in warding off misfortune, without ever gaining any happiness for himself from these abstractions.’ Man cannot cancel out one without simultaneously canceling out the other. By neutralizing misfortune, he has neutralized elation, and neutered life. The fear of misfortune holds the pursuit of elation hostage.

Nietzsche ends his essay with another parable which sets these two drives against each other in the form of two men. As the rational man lacks artistry and fears the intuitive man, so the intuitive man lacks rationality and has nothing but contempt for the rational man. One cannot choose both reason and art; they are mutually exclusive. One must choose whether to govern his life by abstractions or by experiences; he must choose between concepts and creating. Both men seek to conquer life, but by different means; the rational man by seeking to minimize its effect, the intuitive man by embracing it, by living it. He glories in the dissimulation, the deception which art and myth make possible. While one cowers in the face of life, the other ‘play(s) with seriousness.’

Both also seek to avoid misfortune, but again, by different means. The intuitive man ‘reaps from his intuition a harvest of continually inflowing illumination, cheer, and redemption’; in other words, he seeks to avoid misfortune positively, by pursuing elation. Of course, this means that he experiences misfortune more often, and that when he does, it is more intense, since he lacks any method for avoiding or minimizing it. ‘He does not understand how to learn from experience and keeps falling over and over again into the same ditch. He is then just as irrational in sorrow as he is in happiness: he cries aloud and will not be consoled.’ The rational man, on the other hand, seeks to avoid misfortune negatively, by running away from it. Instead of a human face, subject to the distortions which misfortune wreaks, he wears a mask, unaffected by circumstances.

Thus, both employ deception. However, the intuitive man does so in his elation, the rational man in his misfortune.

Notes:
[1] Nietzsche’s example of this is how the German word Schlange (snake) is derived from the verb schlingen (to wind or twist), a connection which could have been made to many other things, and which only arbitrarily selects one aspect of the object in question.
[2] I have to believe that Nietzsche would fully appreciate the double entendre this phrase captures in modern English.
[3] ‘Of the Three Metamorphoses’, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
[4] ‘How the "True World" Finally Became a Fable’, in Twilight of the Idols.