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.
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 thre 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 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,” write 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 tot 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, fools 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.
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