A young Brazilian reader, Vini, refers to an article of mine, Retorsion Revisited: How Far Does it Reach and What Does it Prove? and asks me some questions about it. He is clearly one of those whose interest in philosophy is deeply existential and not merely theoretical or academic. ‘Existential’ has several meanings both inside and outside of philosophy. I am using it roughly in the way it is used by such so-called existentialists as Kierkegaard, Jaspers, Marcel, early Sartre, and many others. For such as these, philosophy is not an academic game. It is not about solving intellectual puzzles, or about achieving a merely theoretical, and thus impersonal view of the world that abstracts from the lived life of the individual truth-seeker who seeks a truth that is subjectively appropriable and personally transformative. On an existential understanding of philosophy’s task and goal it cannot be science given that science aims at a wholly impersonal, or third-personal, or objective view of things, as if Being could be wholly objectified. Being cannot be wholly objectified because, in Jaspersian terms, Being is das Umgreifende, the Encompassing, which includes both subject and objects
Now either you understand what I am driving at with these sketchy remarks or you don’t. If what I have just written doesn’t resonate with you, if you have no idea what I am getting at, then you are wasting your time reading my work. For everything I write, no matter how tediously technical or politically polemical, is oriented toward One Thing, the achieving of my individual, personal, intellectual-cum-spiritual salvation, even if such salvation requires the dissolution of the ego or separative self and its absorption into the eternal Atman or a Buddhist or Christian equivalent or near-equivalent thereof. Sounds paradoxical doesn’t it? How could the salvation of the self require the dissolution of the self? But paradox, contradiction, absurdity and mystery are endemic to our predicament and must be addressed by the philosopher who knows what he is about and is serious about penetrating to the truth of our predicament. Science, by contrast, seeks to banish mystery.
Again, you either catch my drift or you don’t. Young Vini, I suspect, does. He comes across as vexed and tormented by questions that to the superficial are merely academic puzzles. What he has written strikes me as a cri de coeur, and so I feel I ought to be of what little assistance I can be. My years of Sturm und Drang lie 50 years in the past, but their animating spirit remains for me tutelary, guarding and guiding, daimonic in the Socratic sense.
Vini writes,
4) On your post “Retorsion Revisited: How Far Does it Reach and What Does it Prove?”, you said: “3. I exist. The thought that I do not exist is unthinkable salva veritate. Only I can think this thought, and my thinking of the thought falsifies its content, and this is so even if ‘I’ picks out merely a momentary self. (I am not committed by this to a substantial self.) So we have performative inconsistency. Unfortunately, this does not show that I exist apart from my thinking.” So, I must ask: do you think that the self is a substance, or have you changed your mind? This got me a little bit confused, since I may have missed the context.
BV: I think you have missed the context. What I am asking in the post is whether retorsion/retortion is a philosophical procedure or tool that can secure metaphysical results. I wrote:
To be a successful metaphysical tool, a retorsive argument must establish the target proposition as true unconditionally and not merely on condition that there exist contingent beings like us who occasionally and contingently engage in such intellectual operations as affirmation and denial. Otherwise, it would have no metaphysical significance, but merely a transcendental one. (‘Transcendental’ is here being used in roughly the Kantian way.)
I am not addressing the question whether the self is a substance as opposed to a bundle of experiences. The point I am making is that retorsion does not establish the existence of the self on either conception. The argument I gave commits me neither to a substantial self nor to a momentary self. When you ask whether I changed my mind, you are assuming that in my “Chariot” article and the other posts directed against the Pali Buddhist ‘no self’ doctrine I am affirming a substance view of the self. But please note that if propositions P, Q are logically contradictory (i.e., cannot both be true and cannot both be false), and I show that the arguments for P are not rationally coercive, it does not follow that (a) I must find the arguments for Q rationally coercive, or (b) that I accept Q. After all, the problem may be insoluble by us. In the anti-Buddhist articles and entries I was showing that there are good reasons for rejecting the Buddhist anatta/anatman doctrine. A good reason needn’t be rationally coercive or rationally compelling or philosophically dispositive. (I am using these phrases interchangeably.)
To take a different example, if I reject every version of presentism in the philosophy of time, it does not follow that I must accept some version of anti-presentism.
5) I think this question is one of the most important ones: Can I really rest assured that the self does exist, and it is like a Substance? To be completely honest with you, Bill, one thing that this whole 6-year experience showed me is that I know nothing or almost nothing about the world. I never thought in my life that we could even doubt about the reality of things such as the self. Back in the day, this shocked me. I was (and still somehow am) very afraid of things that I don’t know, like “what if there is a hidden argument that I don’t know,” “what if they are right,” and so on. I’m 27 years old, and I got a lot of things wrong in my life — but this is one I don’t want to be wrong about. You know, there are a lot of things with an intellect far, far superior to mine, such as Butchvarov, Husserl, and so on, that you are well aware of, that may have found arguments that I couldn’t even imagine in my lifetime. But, at the same time, I think that philosophy, above all else, can give definitive and satisfactory answers to life. It’s not an empirical science ‘guessing game,’ where things can flip from right to wrong in the bat of an eye (like, if someone got something wrong, he will be wrong no matter what, and that’s what I think about Buddhists, Harris and Co. on these matters). But, at the same time, I have this insecurity of getting things wrong, of something that might not be “sufficient” to show what I want to understand (in that case, the self), since I know so little of philosophy. So how could I rest assured that, no matter the hard work, they will be wrong? The self can’t be a guessing game. I think that there must be a way to establish the truth of this, regardless of the endless discussions that philosophers may have in the future (if he’s right, he’s right; if wrong, he’s wrong). I’m very afraid of being wrong, getting something wrong, and that there is an “unknown argument” that may tumble down what I think is right, but, at the same time, if I had all these dialectical worries since 2019, how could I possibly not exist (as a Substance)? I’m confused, since I also lend more value to what others said rather than my own experience… I don’t know how to think this through. Can you share your thoughts about this? A word of experience from someone who saw a lot more in life than I ever had would be very comforting to hear, especially from a philosopher. Even though your motto is “study everything, join nothing,” I really think that you can have a definitive answer on that matter.
In all of that, sorry for the gigantic, torah-like email. I tried my best to express my worries as quickly as possible and tell you all of them in one shot. As I said, I really hope God touches your heart to help me with these questions. I really, really hope you could spare or find some time to answer me this. Even though for some people these questions are trivial, for me, I think they are life-changing and something that we live up to. I know I sound a little bit platonic (maybe I am), but I think the same centelha [scintilla, see here]of philosophy that resides in you will find and understand the questions in mine.
May God bless you, Bill.
BV: There are different types of philosopher. In another place in your Torah-like e-mail, you say you like Ed Feser’s work. Ed is an ultra-competent expositor and defender of the metaphysics underpinning traditional Roman Catholicism. For him the ultimate truth, which is a salvific truth, is housed in the (trad) RCC. He believes that he found the Answer there, his Answer, but also the Answer, the Answer for everyone whether they accept it or not. I classify him as a dogmatic affirmer. The polar opposite is the dogmatic denier. I am neither. I am a critical inquirer in the Socratic tradition. Feser thinks the existence of God can be proven. I deny that the existence of God can be proven, but I also deny that the existence of God can be disproven. What holds for God, holds for the soul, and all the rest of our highest concerns.
You want to know (with objective certainty) whether the self is a substance that persists, numerically self-same over time, an immaterial substance, capable of existing whether or not it is embodied. This burning desire to know is what distinguishes the true philosopher from the academic hacks and functionaries who dominate our universities. Many of them are clever, and some are brilliant, but they suffer from existentielle Bodenlosigkeit (Karl Jaspers). Their work is a game, a job, a way of filling their bellies. It does not well up from their Existenz. Their real lives are elsewhere. They don’t live for philosophy, but from it, and they would drop it like a hot potato if they could no longer fill their bellies from it. The great Augustine said he wanted to know, more than anything else, two things:, God and the soul: deum et animam scire cupio. So, Vini, you and I are in good company.
So are God and the soul (immaterial substantial self) real or not? Can we KNOW the answer to that question? You say it can’t be a guessing game. You are right about that. It can’t be a matter of flipping a coin or making a guess. That way of talking trivializes the question, as does, I am afraid, Pascal’s talk of a wager. The great Pascal betrays the depth and seriousness of his thought with talk like that, though one understands how a great mathematician and contributor to probability theory would think like that. Be that as it may.
It’s not a guessing game, but nonetheless in the end you must decide what you will believe and how you will live. There are no objective certainties and no knock-down proofs in this life with respect to the Big Questions and the Ultimate Objects. Genuine knowledge in these precincts is unattainable by us here below. Our cognitive architecture is not up to the task. Our reason is weak and merely discursive. And the noetic consequences of sin may have to be factored in.
“I have found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith,” wrote Kant in the preface to the 2nd edition of his Critique of Pure Reason. The great Kant was on the right track. Reason is dialectical in his sense and simply not up to the task of laying bare the nature of the ultimate.
You say, “I think that there must be a way to establish the truth of this.” That is precisely what I deny assuming by ‘establish’ you mean conclusively prove. Reasoned belief is as far as we can go. Th dogmatic affirmers, driven by overpowering doxastic security needs, fool themselves when they pass off arguments that are objectively inconclusive as proofs. I am not saying that they are intellectually dishonest; I am saying that they are in the grip of an overpowering need to be secure in their beliefs.
But more on this later, if you like. I welcome your objections, Vini. Please respond here on this blog, the latest version of Maverick Philosopher. If you do so you will have the honor of being the first to anoint my combox with comments.
Hey Bill,
Wow, I surely wasn’t expecting a post about it! I don’t even know what to say! I will try my best to give a good discussion — or at least not be the first one to make a cringe (as the kids say, nowadays) comment.
I do understand your position regarding knowledge. We are, indeed, fallible beings who can only know things discursively. To make matters worse, I have OCD, so when I get something stuck in my head, I have to find a conclusion, the certainty that I so eagerly look for (in a sense, just like Socrates is said to be eager to know the nature of things).
To be honest, even though I took a lot of beating from philosophy, since it’s a very hard matter, and here in Brazil, our continental philosophy is a lackluster gimmick of politicized sophists, I don’t know so much about the stuff to talk in an intelligent, literate way, but I will use an analogy to defend why I do believe we can achieve at least a reasonable, livable ammount of certainty…using Slapshot (yeah, I loved that movie, even though it may be kinda politically incorrect nowadays — and I dont have the slighlest idea if someone remembers it).
Reggie (Paul Newman), who, for my purposes, is the philosopher, is stuck in a very bad situation with his team (which may be analogous to bad habits of thinking, bad strategy, unsound metaphysics, and so on). But, at one time, the Hanson Brothers (which may represent the intellect, will, and admiration, for my purposes, since they are 3) come along and turn everything around. Of course, the brothers are knuckleheads, without discipline or strategy at first. But, as the game progresses, Reggie gives them a chance to show what they’ve got. They quite made a significant change in the game, even though an unconventional one, i.e,. by beating the living sh** out of the adversary team (which, for my purposes, may represent the stubborn yet determined way to arriving at new truths through trial and error, over and over).
The Hansons, of course, got in a lot of trouble, but they never lost the will to play. But, surprisingly, they not only gave hope to the team (and also the fans) that they would be going places, but even more than that, they got victorious results even in their inherently flawed ways (as I said, by smashing the crap out of the enemy players). They made points, they leveled up the game, even though these 3 have an unusual way of getting at it!
This all may sound a little bit obscure, but what I want to say is that the philosopher (Reggie/Paul Newman) has to give a shot to his inner intellectual appetites, for lack of a better word (the Hanson brothers), because, even though they may falter sometimes, other people, just like Ned Braden in the movie, which saw that the brothers were falter in a lot of ways repeatedly admoestated Reggie. We do have that kind of situation in life, just like an old person may try to correct a young one when he’s straying too far from something. But, surprisingly, even Ned Braden (who was portrayed by Michael Ontkean) saw that the strategy of the brothers was into something — and that made them all win the last game…by disclassifying the enemy team (which we may interpret as finding problems on an adversary theory, once again, for a lack of better word, that make them at least implausible)!
Some die-hard fans of this movie may not like the way I construed the history, and I’m totally okay with that. But, what I tried to say, with some humor in it, is that, even though our faculties may falter (just like the Hanson brothers), they can surprise us and tell us a truth or another, which is the same as leading us to a small, but nonetheless, a victory.
Now, getting a little bit less metaphorical and less elusive, I wish, if that’s okay, to talk mainly about something of your well-thought-out post about the no self, in “Can the Chariot Take Us to the Land of No Self?” I saw all the effort and how deep you went through the Buddhist core doctrine (if it’s okay for me to say that way). The reason I took this seriously was, in part, because IMHO is a kind of bundle theory taken to its ultimate consequences and due to a grueling problem with impermanence, since change was so obvious — and more obvious — than permanence in a sense.
When I first encountered this discussion in my life, back in 2019, as I said, I was totally unprepared to deal with it (and, in some sense, I still am). But, I can’t deny that that opened my life to philosophy — and also showed me how hard it actually is!
Now, speaking of reason leading us to truth, you also made a post about impermanence, which is called “All is Impermanent? Impermanence and Self-Reference.” This, of course, seemed very, very plausible. If everything is just changed, the sentence itself will have to follow that ‘law.’ And, most importantly, even if my mind flits to a skeptical mood (as it often does), thinking about something changes in this absolute (anti-substantial) sense, the very thought I’m having presupposes that if that kind of change occurs, it could detect that “discrepant” state, so implicitly my worries are presupposing that I’m a substance! This little exercise, of course, does not prove that substances exist, only that the notion is implicit in my (unreasonable) worries.
But, if there is a place where the notion of substance is implicit for everyone else, so it seems, is the conscious mind itself, as you aptly showed (or at least gently nodded) in “Can the Chariot Take Us to the Land of No Self?”, when you said the following about the phenomenology of thoughts: “Suppose my mental state passes from one that is pleasurable to one that is painful. Observing a beautiful Arizona sunset, my reverie is suddenly broken by the piercing noise of a smoke detector. Not only is the painful state painful, the transition from the pleasurable state to the painful one is itself painful. The fact that the transition is painful shows that it is directly perceived. It is not as if there is merely a succession of consciousnesses (conscious states); there is in addition a consciousness of their succession. For there is a consciousness of the transition from the pleasant state to the painful state, a consciousness that embraces both of the states, and so cannot be reductively analyzed into them. But a consciousness of their succession is a consciousness of their succession in one subject, in one unity of consciousness. It is a consciousness of the numerical identity of the self through the transition from the pleasurable state to the painful one.”
Also, this fits quite nicely with what Ed has said in his Immortal Souls: “[…] A second thing to note is that despite the fact that no particular mental state, nor any type of mental state, nor any object of a mental state persists through the sequence, they nevertheless are all part of one and the same sequence. What gives the sequence this unity is that each member of it and the sequence as a whole involve the way things are “for me.””” (pp.53) (observation note: Ed said a lot about phenomenology, but I just deliberately cut this part, even on the risk of killing out some of the context, because it fits what I was quoting about Bill above)
You both, in some different contexts, and even from a different traditional stance, arrived at the same terminus. In the sentence I quoted from Ed, if he were a different person (and everything that really exists are these bundles of mental states), it seems quite plausible to me that he couldn’t even tell us all the transitions and history of the thoughts he went through — and the same seems to apply to you looking at the Arizona sunset and then listening to the smoke detector.
What I’m trying to say is that I’m not only taking what you guys said on faith (because I admire both, for example), but because it seems very plausible, and it seems it cannot be otherwise. But, at the same time, I can’t be a fool and think that in all the years of the tradition of Buddhism and Humeaninsm these guys let something like that ‘slide.’ They must have thought of ways around it, but I am too limited to even imagine what it can possibly be.
I know that, for example, Vashubandu tried to bash away the substance from the scene with his (unsuccessful, IMHO) analysis of change through the “karmic seeds” metaphor. I know that if a Buddhist says something like “Oh, it’s not the self, it’s just consciousness experiencing itself,” this so-called consciousness is a substance in a wig. But there are other cases that, due to my very limited knowledge on the matter, I can’t even know if I am on the right track (e.g., can this consciousness that seemingly unifies our thoughts and feelings really be just another property in the package? If so, how can I ever know it? What if I am misinterpreting something and getting too hasty in my conclusions? What if they find a way out of it, and I’m not seeing this?)
It seems to me that one of the greatest oppressors of the mind is ignorance itself, which consumes us with anxiety and a sophisticated kind of thing that “they used to call the blues,” as Karen Ann Carpenter would say in “Rainy Days and Mondays.”
Both the synchronic and the diachronic unity of consciousness are phenomenologically given. That may suffice to refute certain forms of Buddhism. But does it establish a soul substance? Feser infers from this data the existence of a substantial self. But I am skeptical of that move. See Kant’s Paralogisms chapter in CPR.
Hey again, Bill.
Is it okay to ask another question? Why do you qualify “That may suffice to refute certain forms of Buddhism” and not Buddhism as a whole? Are you thinking exclusively about the ‘brands’ that deny unity and any kind of permanence at all, or are you thinking about some other versions that I’m somehow missing?
I was moved by Vini’s heartfelt testimony of his earnest but futile search for certainty about the ontological status of the self and, equally, by your lucid, solicitous response to it. Vini reminds me of my younger self, who for so many years sought conclusive proof about this and so many of the other great metaphysical mysteries that plague our mortal existence. He well captures the doleful state of those who seek certainty on these matters but do not find it. And I would say to him that it precisely this distress, the root of which is arguably fear, that leads so many to become either dogmatic affirmers or dogmatic deniers. Bill is right in saying that such persons put forth “arguments that are objectively inconclusive as proofs” so as to “be secure in their beliefs” and, thereby, assuage the inevitable existential fear that is the fate of beings with our imperfect cognitive faculties. However, doubts, spawned by the ambiguous nature of ultimate reality itself, sporadically act as a solvent that threatens to dissolve this security, and thus both affirmers and deniers seek to repress them in one way or another, from increasingly tortuous, but still inconclusive proofs to emotional diatribes. I believe that while some may find intellectual and spiritual peace in this way, many do not, whether consciously or unconsciously. With age—eighty years old in a few months—I have found that it better to accept uncertainty regarding the great questions and, as Bill, to continue the search for answers to them. None of this stops me from having reasoned beliefs—and I have many of them–and thus in giving meaning to my existence. As importantly, the acceptance that reasoned belief is not knowledge allows me to live in greater harmony with our given, imperfect condition, whether one believes it to be the result of the Fall or not.
A very fine statement, Vito. We are in basic agreement. In particular, I agree with your conclusion: >> the acceptance that reasoned belief is not knowledge allows me to live in greater harmony with our given, imperfect condition . . . << I would add that such acceptance also allows us to live in greater harmony with each other. The Founders of our country, despite their Judeo-Christian heritage, were classical liberals who had learned the lessons of the Enlightenment. It's been said, and I agree, that toleration is the touchstone of classical liberalism, the classical liberalism that is conspicuous by its absence in the Muslim world and those in cahoots with it, the fascists of the Left. William F. Buckley once said that what the Muslim world lacked was the equivalent of Vatican II. An understatement, that. What the Muslim world lacked and still lacks is the equivalent of our Enlightenment. I recommend Douglas Murray's latest, ON DEMOCRACIES AND DEATH CULTS: ISRAEL AND THE FUTURE OF CIVILIZATION.
Happy Saturday, Bill.
Since Vini has already raised phenomenology above, I’ll take the opportunity to ask a quick question about a previous post:
https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2020/10/why-did-i-move-away-from-phenomenology.html
You labeled it “Part I,” but I cannot find Part II. Did you ever do a follow-up?
Thanks much.
Tom
Well, Tom, I am cursed with an interest in too many things, philosophical and non-philosophical, and so I probably veered off onto some other topic. I don’t recall having penned a Part II.
I should say that I did not renounce phenomenology, its antecedents, or further developments. I did not switch to the analytic side. That would have been a highly un-Maverickian thing to do. I straddle what I call the “Continental Divide” — the analytic-Continental split — and attempt to take on board the insights on both sides.
Part II would probably have reported on my fascination with Heidegger’s Seinsfrage and how Carnap’s critique of Heidegger forced me to come to grips with the Frege-Russell- Quine theory of existence — which I forcefully rejected in my 2002 book A PARADIGM THEORY OF EXISTENCE.
I’ll post something today on Substack about Carnap and Heidegger. So stay tuned. And thank you for your interest.
Vini,
Since you’re in Brazil, can I make a suggestion? Check out Antonio Vargas, a Brazilian philosophy professor. https://antoniofilosofo.com/428-2/
Hey, Richard!
Sorry for taking some time to answer. I could only see it now. Thank you so much for the suggestion! I will definitely check it out.
God bless you!