April 2015 – Page 5 – Maverick Philosopher

A ‘No’ to ‘No Self’

Dale Tuggy is in town and we met up on Thursday and Friday. On Good Friday morning I took him on a fine looping traipse in the Western Superstitions out of First Water trail head to Second Water trail to Garden Valley, down to Hackberry Spring, and then back to the Second Water trail via the First Water creek bed. We were four hours on the trail, 6:55 – 10:55, both of us wired up (in both senses of that term) for one of Dale's famous podcasts. One of the topics discussed was the Buddhist anatta/anatman doctrine which we both respectfully reject. I believe that Dale concurred with all of the following points I made and with some others as well:

1. The nonexistence of what one fails to find does not logically follow from one's failing to find it. So the failure to find in experience an object called 'self' does not entail the nonexistence of the self.

2. So failure to find the self as an object of experience is at least logically consistent with the existence of a self.

3. What's more, the positing of a self seems rationally required even though the self is not experienceable. For someone or something is doing the searching and coming up 'empty-handed.'

4. There are also considerations re: diachronic personal identity. Suppose I decide to investigate the question of the self. A moment later I begin the investigation by carefully examining the objects of inner and outer experience to see if any one of them is the self. After some searching I come to the conclusion that the self is not to be located among the objects of experience. I then entertain the thought that perhaps there is no self. But then it occurs to me that failure to find X is not proof of X's nonexistence. I then consider whether it is perhaps the very nature of the subject of experience to be unobjectifiable. And so I conclude that the self exists but is not objectifiable, or at least not isolable as a separate object of experience among others.

This reasoning may or may not be sound. The point, however, is that the reasoning, which plays out over a period of time, would not be possible at all if there were no one self — no one unity of consciousness and self-consciousness — that maintained its strict numerical identity over the period of time in question. For what we have in the reasoning process is not merely a succession of conscious states, but also a consciousness of their succession in one and the same conscious subject. Without the consciousness of succession, without the retention of the earlier states in the present state, no conclusion could be arrived at.

All reasoning presupposes the diachronic unity of consciousness. Or do you think that the task of thinking through a syllogism could be divided up? Suppose Manny says, All men are mortal! Moe then pipes up, Socrates is a man! Could Jack conclude that Socrates is mortal? No. He could say it but not conclude it. (This assumes that Jack does not hear what the other two Pep Boys say. Imagine each in a separate room.)

The hearing of a melody supplies a second example.

To hear the melody Do-Re-Mi, it does not suffice that there be a hearing of Do, followed by a hearing of Re, followed by a hearing of Mi. For those three acts of hearing could occur in that sequence in three distinct subjects, in which case they would not add up to the hearing of a melody. (Tom, Dick, and Harry can divide up the task of loading a truck, but not the ‘task’ of hearing a melody, or that of understanding a sentence, or that of inferring a conclusion from premises.) But now suppose the acts of hearing occur in the same subject, but that this subject is not a unitary and self-same individual but just the bundle of these three acts, call them A1, A2, and A3. When A1 ceases, A2 begins, and when A2 ceases, A3 begins: they do not overlap. In which act is the hearing of the melody? A3 is the only likely candidate, but surely it cannot be a hearing of the melody. For the awareness of a melody involves the awareness of the (musical not temporal) intervals between the notes, and to apprehend these intervals there must be a retention (to use Husserl’s term) in the present act A3 of the past acts A2 and A1. Without this phenomenological presence of the past acts in the present act, there would be no awareness in the present of the melody. But this implies that the self cannot be a mere bundle of perceptions externally related to each other, but must be a peculiarly intimate unity of perceptions in which the present perception A3 includes the immediately past ones A2 and A1 as temporally past but also as phenomenologically present in the mode of retention. The fact that we hear melodies thus shows that there must be a self-same and unitary self through the period of time between the onset of the melody and its completion. This unitary self is neither identical to the sum or collection of A1, A2, and A3, nor is it identical to something wholly distinct from them. Nor of course is it identical to any one of them or any two of them. This unitary self is given whenever one hears a melody.

The unitary self is phenomenologically given, but not as a separate object. Herein, perhaps, resides the error of Hume and some Buddhists: they think that if there is a self, it must exist as a separate object of experience.

Merton Quotes Evdokimov

Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p. 308:

Evdokimov demands a virile ascesis, not simply gentlemanly retirement into leisure. The monk does not build his monastic city 'on the margin' of the world, but instead of it.

[. . .]

He frankly regards monastic chastity as a refusal to procreate and to continue the existence of a society that has reached its term . . . .

These quotations are relevant to the theme of Christian anti-natalism, a topic to which I hope to return. But first I need to lay my hands on Evdokimov's books.

Imagine No Religion?

You are free to imagine a world without religion as per the silly ditty of John Lennon, but if Pew Research Center predictions are correct, atheists and leftists need to brace themselves for serious disappointment:

. . . the religiously unaffiliated population is projected to shrink as a percentage of the global population, even though it will increase in absolute number. In 2010, censuses and surveys indicate, there were about 1.1 billion atheists, agnostics and people who do not identify with any particular religion.⁵ By 2050, the unaffiliated population is expected to exceed 1.2 billion. But, as a share of all the people in the world, those with no religious affiliation are projected to decline from 16% in 2010 to 13% by the middle of this century.

The above hyperlink via Richard Fernandez, The Easter of Crisis. An excellent column. Read it!

In the first article below I lay into Michael Walzer, one of the smarter lefties, for his failure to understand both religion and the human heart.

Finally, if you have a hankering to imagine things, then I suggest you

Imagine No 'Imagine'

Imagine no 'Imagine'
It's easy if you try
No more lefty lyrics
Above us more than sky.

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And Lennon's song'll go unsung.

Bertrand Russell: Empiricism is Self-Refuting. Is He Right?

An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (1940), 1969 Pelican ed., pp. 156-157:

I will observe, however, that empiricism, as a theory of knowledge, is self-refuting. For, however it may be formulated, it must involve some general proposition about the dependence of knowledge upon experience; and any such proposition, if true, must have as a consequence that [it] itself cannot be known. While therefore, empiricism may be true, it cannot, if true, be known to be so. This, however, is a large problem.

It is indeed a large problem. But, strictly speaking, is empiricism self-refuting? A self-refuting proposition is one that entails its own falsehood. *All generalizations are false* is self-refuting in this sense. It is either true or not true (false). (Assume Bivalence) If true, then false. If false, then false. So, necessarily false. Other self-refuting propositions are antinomies: if true, then false; if false, then true.

Let empiricism be the proposition, *All knowledge derives from sense experience.* Clearly, this proposition does not refute itself. For it does not entail its own falsehood. It is not the case that if it is true, then it is false. Rather, if it is true, then it cannot be known to be true. For it is not known by experience, and therefore not knowable if true.

Empiricism, then, is not self-refuting, but self-vitiating, self-weakening. It is in this respect like the thesis of relative relativism (RR): it is relatively true that all truths are relative. (RR) does not refute itself, but it does weaken itself. Presumably, what the relativist really wants to say is something stentorian and unqualified: all truths are relative! But the demands of logical consistency force him to relativize his position.

The real problem is that if empiricism is true, then it cannot be believed with justification. For on empiricism the only justificatory grounds are those supplied by sense experience. It is also quite clear that empiricism is not a formal-logical truth or an analytic truth. A logical positivist would have to say it is cognitively meaningless. But we shouldn't go that far. It plainly enjoys cognitive meaning.

You might say that empiricism is just a linguistic proposal, a non-binding suggestion as to how we might use words. Equivalently, one might say it is just a stance one might adopt. If you tell me that, then I will thank you for 'sharing,' but then politely voice my preference for either a non-empirical stance or a stance that is not a mere stance, but the blunt asseveration that empiricism is false. After all, I know that kindness is to be preferred over cruelty, ceteris paribus, and I know this by a non-empirical value intuition.

Another wrinkle is this. If all knowledge derives from sense experience, then presumably this cannot just happen to be the case. I should think that if empiricism is true, then it is necessarily true. But what could be the ground of the necessity? I have already noted, in effect, that the necessity is neither formal-logical nor analytic. Is the necessity grounded in the nature, essence, eidos, of knowledge? That would be a rather unempirical thing to say. Empiricists have no truck with essences or Forms or eide.

Here then we appear to have a further embarrassment for empiricism. It cannot be the nature of knowledge to derive from and have its sole justificatory ground in sense experience. So it just happens to be the case. This cannot be ruled out as logically impossible. But it smacks of deep incoherence and is, shall we say, profoundly unsatisfactory.

Please note that similar reasoning can be deployed against scientism. If all knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge, then this proposition, if true, cannot be known to be true. Is it then merely believed without justification? Is it merely a matter of adopting the 'scientistic stance' or doing the 'scientistic shuffle'? If so, I will thank you for 'sharing' but then politely refuse your invitation to dance.

Hat Tip: I thank Patrick Cronin for reminding me of the Russell passage.

Harry Reid on Burden of Proof

Here:

Harry Reid, the top Democrat in the Senate, was asked by CNN’s Dana Bash this week if he regretted his 2012 accusation on the Senate floor that GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney “hasn’t paid taxes for ten years.” Reid presented no evidence at the time and claimed he didn’t need any: “I don’t think the burden should be on me. The burden should be on him. He’s the one I’ve alleged has not paid any taxes.”

Holy Saturday Night at the Oldies: Religious Themes

Herewith, five definite decouplings of rock and roll from sex and drugs.

Norman Greenbaum, Spirit in the Sky

Johnny Cash, Personal Jesus. This is one powerful song.

Clapton and Winwood, Presence of the Lord. Why is Clapton such a great guitarist? Not because of his technical virtuosity, his 'chops,' but because he has something to say.

George Harrison, My Sweet Lord

George Harrison, All Things Must Pass. Harrison was the Beatle with depth.

Thomas Merton on Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

I read the seventh and final volume of Thomas Merton's journals, The Other Side of the Mountain, in 1998 when it first appeared. I am currently re-reading it. It is once again proving to be page turner for one who has both a nostalgic and a scholarly interest in the far-off and fabulous '60s. But what a gushing liberal and naive romantic Merton was! Here is but one example:

Yesterday, quite by chance, I met Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and his secretary . . . . Chogyam Trungpa is a completely marvelous person. Young, natural, without front or artifice, deep, awake, wise. [. . .] He is also a genuine spiritual master. (October 20, 1968, p. 219, emphasis added)

Unfortunately, the 'spirituality' of many 'spiritual masters' is of the New Age type, a type of spirituality that fancies itself beyond morality with its dualism of good and evil. One of the worst features of some New Age types is their conceit that they are beyond duality when they are firmly enmired in it. Perhaps the truly enlightened are beyond moral dualism and can live free of moral injunctions and prohibitions. But what often happens in practice is that spiritual aspirants and gurus fall into ordinary immorality while pretending to have transcended it. One may recall the famous case of Rajneesh. Chogyam Trungpa appears to have been cut from the same cloth. According to one report,

. . . Trungpa slept with a different woman every night in order to transmit the teaching to them. L. intimated that it was really a hardship for Trungpa to do this, but it was his duty in order to spread the dharma.

With apologies to the shade of Jack Kerouac, you could say that this gives new meaning to 'dharma bum.'

That Merton could be taken in by the fellow says something about Merton. A phrase such as 'genuine spiritual master' ought not be bandied about lightly. But perhaps Trungpa's excesses were not in evidence at the time.

Herewith yet another indication of why philosophy is essential to balanced thinking and living. Jerusalem and Benares are both in need of chastening, and Athens wields the rod. Although I maintain that philosophy needs completion by what is beyond philosophy, that maintenance is not a license to abandon rational critique. Every sector of life requires critique, including Philosophy herself, and Philosophy is the Critic.

As for putative 'spiritual masters,' run as fast as you can from any such 'master' or 'guru' who has something to sell you or is not in control of his lower self.

Control of the Heart

If you can see the moral necessity of controlling the head, why then can't you see the moral necessity of controlling the heart? With all due respect to 'the King,' you can help falling in love with her.

Perils of Helping

Help a man, and he may be grateful to you. Or he may resent it that he needs your help, or envy you your ability to provide it, or act as if he has it coming, or become dependent on you, in which case your 'help' is harm.

Absolutely, one must do no harm. (Primum non nocere.) But when to help and when to leave well enough alone require careful thought.

Refutation

To refute an argument is not to refute its conclusion.

Contradiction and Koan

What is a contradiction from one angle is a koan from another. In a contradiction, logical thought hits a dead end. Discursive thought's road end, however, may well be the trail head of the Transdiscursive.

The Highest Mastery

The highest mastery is self-mastery. The highest self-mastery is thought-mastery. To control one's thoughts is to control the seeds of one's words and deeds.

Jim Ryan’s Self-Evident Truths of Social and Political Philosophy

The following is verbatim from a post by Jim Ryan, dated 14 August 2013. The truths below are important and need to be widely disseminated.

Some Self-Evident Truths

A "self-evident" proposition is one that is obviously true to anyone who understands it. These truths are self-evident:

1. To support a free market does not mean to oppose the regulation of commerce. On the contrary, the concept of a free market without the rule of law hardly makes any sense.

2. It is not theocratic to argue that abortion ought to be as illegal because it is the wrongful killing of a human being. The civil rights movement, as deeply Christian as much of it was, was not theocratic. It is not obvious that the current moral support for abortion is not as foolish and wrongheaded as the moral support for slavery was in the early 19th Century.

3. To argue that big government welfare destroys self-reliance and prosperity and makes national bankruptcy inevitable should not be confused with arguing that one should not offer assistance to the poor.

4. There is a wide array of values we have inherited: liberty, hard work, justice, limited government, courage, charity, involvement in civil society, etc. It makes no sense to raise equality in property above these values.

5. It is not clear that equality in property is ever preferable to liberty, hard work, team work, charity, and self-reliance. It is not clear what would count as a good reason to say that a society in which liberty, hard work, team work, charity, and self-reliance were flourishing would be even better if the the government decreased the achievement of those values so that equality in property could be increased. For this reason it is not clear that equality in property is even a value at all.

6. It is hypocritical for a wealthy person to maintain his great wealth while advocating equality in property and holding that it is unjust for some to be rich while others are poor.

7. To advocate a system in which a small group of leftwing leaders and their technocratic experts maintain enormous political power and wealth while they keep the overwhelming majority of people in society relatively powerless and poor is to advocate kleptocracy and totalitarianism, not to take any sort of moral stance at all.

8. Leftism and totalitarianism both advocate the government's having great control over individuals' economic endeavors and property. If all the preceding truths are self-evident, then it is not clear how a leftwing government can maintain power without controlling speech and thought in order to stop those truths from being communicated, explained, discussed, and understood. If that is true, it is not clear how a leftwing government can avoid full totalitarianism if it is to maintain power.

Related: Jim Ryan's Story and Mine

Go For Broke and Die With Your Boots On!

Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, pp. 56-57:

Moore's health was quite good in 1946-47, but before that he had suffered a stroke and his doctor had advised that he should not become greatly excited or fatigued. Mrs. Moore enforced that prescription by not allowing Moore to have a philosophical discussion with anyone for longer than one hour and a half. Wittgenstein was extremely vexed by this regulation. He believed that Moore should not be supervised by his wife. He should discuss as long as he liked. If he became excited or tired and had a stroke and died — well, that would be a decent way to die: with his boots on. Wittgenstein felt that it was unseemly that Moore, with his great love for truth, should be forced to break off a discussion before it had reached its proper end. I think that Wittgenstein's reaction to this regulation was very characteristic of his outlook on life. A human being should do the thing for which he has a talent with all of his energy his life long, and should never relax this devotion to his job merely in order to prolong his existence. This platonistic attitude was manifested again two years later when Wittgenstein, feeling that he was losing his own talent, questioned whether he should continue to live. (Emphasis added)

Yes! No wife, only fair Philosophia herself, should preside over and supervise a philosophical discussion. If an interlocutor should expire in the heat of the dialectic, well then, that is a good way to quit the phenomenal sphere.