Maverick Philosopher – Page 633 – Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Memory, Memory Traces, and Causation

Passing a lady in the supermarket I catch a whiff of patchouli. Her scent puts me in mind of hippy-trippy Pamela from the summer of '69. An olfactory stimulus in the present causes a memory, also in the present, of an event long past, a tête-à-tête with a certain girl. How ordinary, but how strange! Suddenly I am 'brought back' to the fantastic and far-off summer of '69. Ah yes! What is memory and how does it work? How is it even possible?

Let's start with the 'datanic' as I like to say:

1. There are (veridical) memories through which we gain epistemic access to the actual past, to events that really happened. The above example is a case of episodic personal memory. I remember an event in my personal past. To be precise, I remember my having experienced an event in my personal past. My having been born by Caesarean section is also an episode from my personal past, and I remember that that was my mode of exiting my mother's body; but I don't remember experiencing that transition. So not every autobiographical memory is a personal episodic memory. The latter is the only sort of memory I will be discussing in this post. The sentence in boldface is the nonnegotiable starting point of our investigation.

We now add a couple of more theoretical and less datanic propositions, ones which are not obvious, but are plausible and accepted by many theorists:

2. Memory is a causal notion. A mental image of a past event needn't be a memory of a past event. So what makes a mental image of a past event a memory image? Its causal history. My present memory has a causal history that begins with the event in 1969 as I experienced it.

3. There is no action at a temporal distance. There is no direct causation over a temporal gap. There are no remote causes; every cause is a proximate cause. A necessary ingredient of causation is spatiotemporal contiguity. So while memory is a causal notion, my present memory of the '69 event is not directly caused by that event. For how could an event that no longer exists directly cause, over a decades-long temporal gap, a memory event in the present? That would seem to be something 'spooky,' a kind of magic.

Each of these propositions lays strong claim to our acceptance. But how can they all be true? (1) and (2) taken together appear to entail the negation of (3). How then can we accommodate them all?

Memory trace theories provide a means of accommodation. Suppose there are memory traces or engrams engraved in some medium. For materialists this medium will have to be the brain. One way to think of a memory trace is as a brain modification that was caused at the time of the original experience, and that persists since that time. So the encounter with Pam in '69 induced a change in my brain, left a trace there, a trace which has persisted since then. When I passed the patchouli lady in the supermarket, the olfactory stimulus 'activated' the dormant memory trace. This activation of the memory trace either is or causes the memory experience whose intentional object is the past event. With the help of memory traces we get causation wthout action at a temporal distance.

(Far out, man!)

The theory or theory-schema just outlined seems to allow us to uphold each of the above propositions. In particular, it seems to allow us to explain how a present memory of a past event can be caused by the past event without the past event having to jump the decades-long temporal gap between event remembered and memory. The memory trace laid down in '69 by the original experience exists in the present and is activated in the present by the sensory stimulus. Thus the temporal contiguity requirement is satisfied. And if the medium in which the memory traces are stored is the brain or central nervous system, then the spatial contiguity requirement is also satisfied.

Question: Could memory traces play merely causal roles?

Given (2) and (3), it seems that memory traces must be introduced as causal mediators between past and present. But could they be just that? Or must they also play a representational role? Intuitively, it seems that nothing could be a memory trace unless it somehow represented the event of which it is a trace. If E isthe original experience, and T is E's trace, then it it seems we must say that T is of E in a two-fold sense corresponding to the difference between the subjective and objective genitive. First, T is of E in that T is E's trace, the one that E caused. Second, T is of E in that T represents E.

It seems obvious that a trace must represent. In my example,the sensory stimulus (the whiff of patchouli) is not of or about the '69 event. It merely activates the trace, rendering the dispositional occurrent. But the memory is about the '69 event. So the aboutness must reside in the trace. The trace must represent the event that caused it – and no other past event. The memory represents because the trace represents. If the trace didn't represent anything, how could the memory — which is merely the activation of the trace or an immediate causal consequence of the activation of the trace — represent anything? How a persisting brain modification — however it is conceived, whether it is static or dynamic, whether localized or nonlocalized — can represent anything is an important and vexing question but one I will discuss in a later post.

Right now I want to nail down the claim that memory traces cannot play a merely causal role, but must also bear the burden of representation.

Suppose a number of strangers visit me briefly. I want to remember them, but my power of memory is very weak and I know I will not remember them without the aid of some mnemonic device. So I have my visitors leave calling cards. They do so, except that they are all the same, and all blank (white). These blank cards are their traces, one per visitor. The visitors leave, but the cards remain behind as traces of their visit. I store the cards in a drawer. I 'activate' a card by pulling it out of storage and looking at it. I am then reminded (at most) that I had a visitor, but not put in mind of any particular visitor such as Tom. So even if the card in my hand was produced by Tom, that card is useless for the purpose of remembering Tom. Likewise for every other card. Each was produced by someone in particular and only by that person; but none of them 'bring back' any particular person.

Bear in my mind that I don't directly remember any of my visitors. My only memory access to them is via their traces, their calling cards. For the visitors are long gone just like the '69 experience. So the problem is not merely that I don't know which card is from which person; the problem is that I cannot even distinguish the persons.

Had each visitor left a differently colored card, that would not have helped. Nor are matters helped if each visitor leaves a different sort of trace; a bottle cap, a spark plug, a lock of hair, a guitar pick. Even if Tom is a guitar player and leaves a guitar pick, that is unhelpful too since I have no access to Tom except via his trace.

So it doesn't matter whether my ten visitors leave ten tokens of the same type, or ten tokens each of a different type. Either way I won't be able to remember them via the traces they leave behind. Clearly, what I need from each visitor is an item that uniquely represents him or her — as opposed to an item that is merely caused to be in my house by the visitor. Suppose Tom left a unique guitar pick, the only one of its kind in existence. That wouldn't help either since no inspection of that unique pick could reveal that it was of Tom rather than of Eric or Eric's cat. Ditto if Tom has signed his card or his pick 'Tom Riff.' That might be a phony name, or the name of him and his guitar — doesn't B. B . King call his guitar 'Lucille'?

If I can remember that it was Tom who left the guitar pick, then of course I don't need the guitar pick to remember Tom by. I simply remember Tom directly without the need for a trace. On the other hand, if I do need a trace in order to remember long gone Tom, then that trace must have representational power: it cannot be merely something that plays a causal role.

Traces theories have to avoid both circularity and vicious infinite regress.

Circularity. To explain the phenomenon of memory, the trace theory posits the existence of memory traces. But if the explanation in terms of traces ends up presupposing memory, then the theory is circular and worthless. If what makes the guitar pick a trace of Tom is that I remember that Tom left it, then the explanation is circular. Now consider the trace T in my brain which, when activated by stimulus S causes a memory M of past experience E. M represents E because T represents E. What makes T represent E? What makes the memory trace caused by the encounter with Pam in '69 represent Pam or my talking with her? The answer cannot be that I remember the memory trace being caused by the encounter with Pam. For that would be blatantly circular. Besides, memory traces in the brain are not accessible to introspection.

Infinite Regress. Our question is: what makes T represent E and nothing else? To avoid circularity one might say this: There is a trace T* which records the fact of E's production of T, and T represents E in virtue of T*. But this leads to a vicious infinite regress. Suppose Sally leaves a photo of herself. How do I know that the photo is of Sally and not of her sister Ally? If you say that I directly remember Sally and thereby know that the photo is unambiguously of her, then you move in a circle. You may as well just say that we remember directly and not via traces. So, to hold onto the trace theory, one might say the following: There is a photo of Sally and her photograph, side by side. Inspection of this photo reveals that that the first photo is of Sally. But this leads to regress: what makes the second photo a photo of the first?

Conclusion: To avoid both circularity and infinite regress, memory traces must possess intrinsic representational power. Their role cannot be merely causal.

A later post will then address the question whether memory traces could have intrinsic representational power. If you are a regular reader of this blog you will be able to guess my answer.

REFERENCE: John Heil, "Traces of Things Past," Philosophy of Science, vol. 45, no. 1 (March 1978), pp. 60-72. My calling card example above is a reworking of Heil's tennis ball example.

Merry Scroogemas!

In this season especially we ought to find a kind word to say about the much maligned Ebeneezer Scrooge. Here's mine: Without Scrooge, the sexually prolific Cratchit wouldn't have a job and be able to support his brood! This thought is developed by Michael Levin in In Defense of Scrooge.

And is there not something preternaturally knuckleheaded about the calls from some liberals that the presentation of Dickens' masterpiece be banned? They ought to consider that there is more of anti-Capitalism in it than of Christianity — an irony that no doubt escapes their shallow pates.

Minimalist and Maximalist Modes of Holiday Impersonality

'Tis the season for the letter carriers of the world to groan under their useless burdens of impersonal greetings.

Impersonality in the minimalist style may take the form of a store-bought card with a pre-fabricated message to which is appended an embossed name. A step up from this is a handwritten name. Slightly better still is the nowadays common family picture with handwritten name but no message.

The maximalist style is far worse. Now we are in for a lengthy litany of the manifold accomplishments of the sender and his family which litany may run to a page or two of single-spaced text.

One size fits all. No attempt to address any one person as a person.

"It's humbug, I tell you, humbug!"

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Rock, Roll, and Reason

Tim Hardin, Reason to Believe (1966)
Tracy Chapman and Eric Clapton, Give Me One Reason (1996)
Bobby Darin, You're the Reason I'm Livin' (1963)
Bobby Edwards, You're the Reason I Don't Sleep at Night (1961)
Connie Stevens, Sixteen Reasons (1960). Written by Bill and Doree Post. Their version.
Tocotronic, Pure Vernunft Darf Niemals Siegen

Intimations of Elsewhere Ignored

A colleague once reported an out-of-body experience. He had been resting on his back on a couch when he came suddenly to view himself from the perspective of the ceiling. He dismissed the experience. He had too much class to use the phrase 'brain fart,' but that is what I suspect he thought it was: a weird occurrence of no significance. Vouchsafed a hint of what might have been a reality beyond the ordinary, he chose to ignore it as if it were not worth the trouble of investigating. That sort of dismissive attitude is one I have trouble understanding.

It would be as if the prisoner in Plato's Cave who was freed of his shackles and was able to turn his head and see an opening and a light suggestive of a route out of the enclosure wherein he found himself were simply to have dismissed the sight as an insignificant illusion and then went back to 'reality,' the shadows on the wall.

I have no trouble understanding someone who, never having had any religious or mystical experiences, cannot bring himself to take religion seriously. And I have no trouble understanding someone who, having had such experiences, and having seriously examined their epistemic credentials, comes to the conclusion that they are none of them veridical. But to have the experiences, and not think them worth investigating — that puzzles me.

So maybe some things human are foreign to me after all.

Ebeneezer Scrooge and the Limits of Doxastic Voluntarism

Here is my favorite scene from my favorite movie version of Dickens' Christmas Carol. "There is more of gravy than of grave about you. Humbug!"

Peter Hitchens Remembers His Brother

Excerpt:

Last week I saw my brother for the last time in a fairly grim hospital room in Houston, Texas. He was in great pain, and suffering in several other ways I will not describe. But he was wholly conscious and in command of his wits, and able to speak clearly. We both knew it was the last time we would see each other, though being Englishmen of a certain generation, neither of us would have dreamed of actually saying so. We parted on good terms, though our conversation had been (as had our e-mail correspondence for some months) cautious and confined to subjects that would not easily lead to conflict. In this I think we were a little like chess-players, working out many possible moves in advance, neither of us wanting any more quarrels of any kind.

". . . and suffering in other ways I will not describe." I understand and respect the reticence of the Englishman, a reticence we Americans could use a little more of; but that is one teaser of an independent clause! One wants to know about that mental or spiritual suffering, and not just out of idle curiosity. The moment of death is the moment of truth. The masks fall away. No more easy posturing as in the halcyon days of health and seemingly endless invincibility. In wine there is truth, but in dying even more. Ego-display and cleverness are at an end. What was always hollow is now seen to be hollow. Name and fame for example. At the hour of death one hopes for words from the dying that are hints and harbingers and helps to the living for their own preparation for the hour of death.

Peter's chess image is a curious one. We work out many possible moves in advance the better to inflict material loss, or time-trouble, or checkmate upon our opponents. We are cautious, not so as to avoid conflict, but to render it favorable to ourselves. On second thought, however, the chess comparison is apt: in the end the brothers circled around each other 'keeping the draw in hand.' Each could then withdraw from the fray feeling neither that he had lost to the other nor that he had bested him.

I am struck once again by the insignificance of blood-relations. These two brothers in the flesh came to inhabit different planets. As one of my aphorisms has it, consanguinity is no guarantee of spiritual affinity.

A second case in point: the flaming atheist David Stove and his Catholic son.

On Hitchens and Death

The Hitch is dead. The following is a re-post, slightly emended, from 16 August 2010.

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I just caught the last third of an interview of Christopher Hitchens by Charlie Rose. Hitchens looks bad, the chemotherapy having done a nasty tonsorial number on him. But his trademark intellectual incandescence appeared undiminished. 'Brilliant' is a word I don't toss around lightly, but Hitch is one to whom it unarguably applies. Public intellectuals of his caliber are rare and it will be sad to see him go. Agree or disagree with him, it is discourse at his level that justifies the high regard we place on free speech.

In the teeth of death the man remains intransigent in his unbelief. And why not? He lived in unbelief and so it is only fitting that he should die in it as well. He lived for this life alone; it is fitting that he should die without hope. As I read him, God and the soul were never Jamesian live options. To cop out now as debility and death approach must appear to him to be utterly contemptible, a grasping for straws, a fooling himself into a palliative illusion to ease the horror of annihilation.

For what he takes to be the illusion of immortality, Hitch substitutes literary immortality. "As an adult whose hopes lay assuredly in the intellect, not in the hereafter, he concluded, 'Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and — since there is no other metaphor — also the soul.'" (Here)

But to the clearheaded, literary immortality is little more than a joke, and itself an illusion. Only a few read Hitch now, and soon enough he will be unread, his books remaindered, put into storage, forgotten. This is a fate that awaits all scribblers but a tiny few. And even they will drink the dust of oblivion in the fullness of time.

To live on in one's books is a paltry substitute for immortality, especially when one recalls Georg Christoph Lichtenberg's aphorism: Ein Buch ist ein Spiegel, aus dem kein Apostel herausgucken kann, wenn ein Affe hineinguckt. "A book is a mirror: if an ape peers in, no apostle will look out." Most readers are more apish than apostolic. The fame they confer cannot be worth much, given that they confer it.

To live on in one's books is only marginally better than to live on in the flickering and mainly indifferent memories of a few friends and relatives. And how can reduction to the status of a merely intentional object count as living on?

The besetting sin of powerful intellects is pride. Lucifer, as his name indicates, is or was the light-bearer. Blinded by his own light, he could see nothing beyond himself. Such is the peril of intellectual incandescence. Otherworldly light simply can't get through. One thinks of Nietzsche, Russell, Sartre, and to a lesser extent Hitchens. A mortal man with a huge ego — one which is soon to pop like an overinflated balloon.

The contemplation of death must be horrifying for those who pin all on the frail reed of the ego. The dimming of the light, the loss of control, the feeling of helplessly and hopelessly slipping away into an abyss of nonbeing. And all of this without the trust of the child who ceases his struggling to be borne by Another. "Unless you become as little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven." But this of course is what the Luciferian intellect cannot do. It cannot relax, it must hold on and stay in control. It must struggle helplessly as the ego implodes in upon itself. The ego, having gone supernova, collapses into a black hole. What we fear when we fear death is not so much the destruction of the body, but the dissolution of the ego. That is the true horror and evil of death. And without religion you are going to have to take it straight.

Have you read Philip Larkin's Aubade?

What would Hitch lose by believing? Of course, he can't bring himself to believe, it is not a Jamesian live option, but suppose he could. Would he lose 'the truth'? But nobody knows what the truth is about death and the hereafter. People only think they do. Well, suppose 'the truth' is that we are nothing but complex physical systems slated for annihilation. Why would knowing this 'truth' be a value? Even if one is facing reality by believing that death is the utter end of the self, what is the good of facing reality in a situation in which one is but a material system?

If materialism is true, then I think Nietzsche is right: truth is not a value; life-enhancing illusions are to be preferred. If truth is out of all relation to human flourishing, why should we value it?

‘It Depends on Who You Talk To’

Really? Suppose some question is posed, some question concerning which there is an objective answer, regardless of how difficult it is to ascertain the answer. For instance, Is the Social Security system currently taking in more in payroll taxes than it is paying out in benefits? People have a knee-jerk tendency to say, 'It depends on who you talk to.'

But of course it doesn't. What depends on who you talk to is the opinion of the one doing the talking. The answer to the question precisely does not depend on who you talk to. It depends on the way the world is.

If you want to say that different people have different opinions on a certain (objective) question, then say that. But don't say that it depends on who you talk to. The latter is a phrase that thoughtful people ought to beware of. Don't let your sloppiness of speech aid and abet a sophomoric relativism.

Language matters.

Addendum 12/16. A reader complains that the second sentence of the second paragraph should read, 'What depends on whom you talk to is the opinion of the one doing the talking.' That's right, except that, for stylistic reasons, I was paralleling the street idiom on which I was commenting. The problem with the street idiom is not the grammatical peccadillo it contains, but the conceptual confusion it embodies.

One ground of my dislike of editors is that the typical editor is a Besserwisser. He knows better what you really want to say, or ought to say. But he lacks the subtlety to realize that there are stylistic questions which may require the flouting of a grammatical rule.

You may enjoy The Paltry Mentality of the Copy Editor.

When I insist that language matters, I am not insisting on the satisfaction of the grammatical punctilios of schoolmarms, but on avoiding expressions that impede clear thinking.

What is Naturalism? How is it Related to Scientism?

Having just mentioned naturalism and scientism in my plug for Plantinga's new book, you may be wondering what naturalism is and how it is related to scientism. J. P. Moreland gives a full answer in his book The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism (SCM Press, 2009). What follows is my summary of Moreland's explanation with a critical comment near the end. My summary is excerpted from my post, J. P. Moreland on Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism.

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Moreland views contemporary naturalism as consisting of an epistemology, an etiology, and a general ontology.

A. The epistemology of naturalism is (weak or strong) scientism with its concomitant rejection of first philosophy. Strong scientism is the view that "unqualified cognitive value resides in science and nothing else." (6) Weak scientism allows nonscientific subjects some cognitive value, but holds that "they are vastly inferior to science in their epistemic standing . . . ." (6) On either weak or strong scientism, there is no room for first philosophy, according to which philosophy is an autonomous discipline, independent of natural science, and authoritative in respect to it. So on scientism, natural science sets the standard in matters epistemic, and philosophy’s role is at best ancillary. The method of explanation allied to this scientistic epistemology is combinatorial and third-personal. It is combinatorial in that every complex entity is to be understood as a combination of simpler entities. Whether this enormously fruitful approach, which resolves wholes into parts and complexes into simples, can work for types of unity such as consciousness is one of the key issues in the debate. The scientistic method of explanation is third-personal in that first-personal "ways of knowing" are eschewed in favor of third-personal ways. (8)

B. The etiology or "Grand Story" of naturalism is an event-causal account of how everything came to be, spelled out in the natural-scientific terms of physics, chemistry, and evolutionary biology. There are three main features of the Grand Story. The first is that the event-causal account must proceed bottom-up, as is done in the atomic theory of matter and in evolutionary biology, not top-down. A second feature is "scientistic philosophical monism" according to which everything falls under the aegis of the methods of natural science. As monistic in this sense, naturalism is most consistently understood to entail strong physicalism, the view that everything is "fundamentally matter, most likely, elementary ‘particles’ (whether taken as points of potentiality, centers of mass/energy, units of spatially extended stuff/waves, or . . . ) organized in various ways according to the laws of nature." (9) If a naturalist fights shy of this strong physicalism, in the direction of admitting supervenient or emergent entities, he will nonetheless have to maintain, if he is to remain a naturalist, that all additions to his ontology in excess of what strong physicalism allows must be rooted in and dependent upon the physical items of the Grand Story. The third feature of naturalism’s Grand Story is that its account of things, because it is event-causal, must reject both agent-causal and irreducibly teleological explanations. Fundamentally, the only allowable explanations are "mechanical and efficient-causal." (9) A corollary is that the Grand Story is both diachronically and synchronically deterministic. Diachronically, in that the state of the universe at a given time together with the laws of nature determines or fixs the chances for the state of the universe at later times. Synchronically, in that the properties and changes of macro-wholes are determined by and dependent upon micro-events.

C. The general ontology of naturalism countenances only those entities that figure in a completed physics or are "dependent on and determined by the entities of physics. . . ." (6) There are three main features of naturalism’s general ontology. The first is that the only admissible entities are those "knowable by third-person scientific means." (10) The second feature is that it must be possible, with respect to any entity admitted into the general ontology, to show how it had to arise by chains of event causation in which micro-entities combine to form increasingly complex aggregates. The third feature of naturalism’s general ontology concerns supervenience/emergence. The idea is that anything admitted in excess of the entities of physics, chemistry, and biology must be shown to be determined by and depend upon (whether with metaphysical or nomological necessity) natural scientific entities.

Moreland grants that a naturalist can stray ‘upwards’ from strong physicalism by admitting emergent properties, but in only two senses of ‘emergence.’ A feature is emergent₀ if it can be deduced from its base. Moreland gives the example of fractals. For a simpler example, my own, consider the weight of a stone wall. Its weight can be computed (and thus deduced) from the weights of its constituent stones. Suppose the wall has a weight that is utterly novel: nothing in the history of the universe before this wall came into existence had its exact weight. The property of weighing 1000.6998236 lbs, say, despite its utter novelty, is innocuously emergent and surely no threat to naturalism’s epistemology or Grand Story or ontology. Ordinary structural properties are emergent₁. The property of being water, for example, is structural in that it is "identical to a configurational pattern among the subvenient entities," (10) in this case atoms of hydrogen and oxygen. Structural emergent properties are also easily countenanced by naturalists. But there are five other types of emergent entities that according to Moreland are beyond the naturalist pale: sui generis epiphenomenal properties; sui generis properties which induce causal liabilities in the things that have them; sui generis properties that induce active causal powers in the things that have them; emergent egos which are consciously active and rational; emergent egos which are conscious, active, and rational and are rights-possessors.

With the exception of the first two types of emergence, emergent entities, whether properties or substances, "defy naturalist explanation and they provide confirmation for biblical theism construed as a rival to naturalism." (11-12) Human persons in particular "are recalcitrant facts for naturalism and provide evidence for Judeo-Christian monotheism." (14)

At this point I need to register a misgiving I have over Moreland’s use of ‘emergence.’ On his way of thinking, human persons are emergent entities, albeit ones that cannot be accommodated by naturalism. But I should think that, because Moreland’s purpose is to "provide confirmation for biblical theism," human persons and "suitably unified mental egos" (11) are precisely the opposite of emergent. If persons are created by God in his image, then they do not emerge since what emerges emerges ‘from below,’ from suitably organized material configurations. But it all depends on how we will use ‘emergence.’ There is an innocuous sense of the term according to which an entity emerges just in case it manifests itself or comes into being. Apparently this is the way Moreland uses the word. But in its philosophically pregnant sense, ‘emergence’ is a theoretical term, a terminus technicus, that always implies that that which emerges has an origin ‘from below,’ from matter, and never ‘from above,’ from spirit or mind. (See the opening paragraph of Timothy O'Connor's SEP article, Emergent Properties.) I suggest we use it as a technical term, but Moreland is of course free to disagree.

Plantinga on Where the Conflict Lies

The publication of Alvin Plantinga's latest book has been noted in the NYT (HT: Dave Lull):

In “Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism,” published last week by Oxford University Press, he unleashes a blitz of densely reasoned argument against “the touchdown twins of current academic atheism,” the zoologist Richard Dawkins and the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, spiced up with some trash talk of his own.

Mr. Dawkins? “Dancing on the lunatic fringe,” Mr. Plantinga declares. Mr. Dennett? A reverse fundamentalist who proceeds by “inane ridicule and burlesque” rather than by careful philosophical argument.

On the telephone Mr. Plantinga was milder in tone but no less direct. “It seems to me that many naturalists, people who are super-atheists, try to co-opt science and say it supports naturalism,” he said. “I think it’s a complete mistake and ought to be pointed out.”

Exactly right. The notion that science supports the philosophical position, naturalism, is an error no less grotesque for being widespread. My categories Naturalism and Scientism may contain some helpful material.

Jonathan Bennett’s Argument Against Explanatory Rationalism

The topic of explanatory rationalism has surfaced in a previous thread. So it's time for a re-run of the following post (ever so slightly emended) from nearly three years ago. How time does pass when you're having fun.

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Explanatory rationalism is the view that there is a satisfactory answer to every why-question. Equivalently, it is the view that there are no brute facts, where a brute fact is a fact that neither has, nor can have, an explanation. Are there some truths that simply must be accepted without explanation? Consider the conjunction of all truths. Could this conjunctive truth have an explanation? Jonathan Bennett thinks not:

Let P be the great proposition stating the whole contingent truth about the actual world, down to its finest detail, in respect of all times. Then the question 'Why is it the case that P?' cannot be answered in a satisfying way. Any purported answer must have the form 'P is the case because Q is the case'; but if Q is only contingently the case then it is a conjunct in P, and the offered explanation doesn't explain; and if Q is necessarily the case then the explanation, if it is cogent, implies that P is necessary also. But if P is necessary then the universe had to be exactly as it is, down to the tiniest detail — i.e., this is the only possible world. (Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza's Ethics, Hackett 1984, p. 115)

Bennett's point is that explanatory rationalism entails the collapse of modal distinctions.

The world-proposition P is a conjunction of truths some of which are contingent. So P is contingent. Now if explanatory rationalism is true, then P has an explanation in terms of a Q distinct from P. Q is either necessary or contingent. If Q is necessary, and a proposition is explained by citing a distinct proposition that entails it, and Q explains P, then P is necessary, contrary to what we have already established. On the other hand, if Q is contingent, then Q is a conjunct of P, and again no successful explanation has been arrived at. Therefore, either explanatory rationalism is false, or it is true only on pain of a collapse of modal distinctions. We take it for granted that said collapse would be a Bad Thing.

That is a cute little argument, one that impresses the illustrious Peter van Inwagen as well who gives his own version of it, but I must report that I do not find it compelling. Why is P true? We can say that P is true because each conjunct of P is true. We are not forced to say that P is true because of a proposition Q which is a conjunct of P.

I am not saying that P is true because P is true; I am saying that P is true because each conjunct of P is true, and that this adequately and noncircularly explains why P is true. Some wholes are adequately and noncircularly explained when their parts are explained.

Suppose three bums are hanging around the corner of Fifth and Vermouth. Why is this threesome there? The explanations of why each is there add up (automatically) to an explanation of why the three of them are there. Someone who understands why A is there, why B is there, and why C is there, does not need to understand some further fact in order to understand why the three of them are there. Similarly, it suffices to explain the truth of a conjunction to adduce the truth of its conjuncts. The conjunction is true because each conjunct is true. There is no need for an explanation of why a conjunctive proposition is true which is above and beyond the explanations of why its conjuncts are true.

Suppose the three bums engage in a ménage à trois. To explain the ménage à trois it is not sufficient to explain why each person is present; one must also explain their 'congress': not every trio is a ménage à trois. A conjunction, however, exists automatically iff its conjuncts exist.

Bennett falsely assumes that "Any purported answer must have the form 'P is the case because Q is the case'. . ." This ignores my suggestion that P is the case because each of its conjuncts is the case. So P does have an explanation; it is just that the explanation is not in terms of a proposition Q which is a conjunct of P.

I conclude that Professor Bennett has given us an insufficient reason to reject the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

I apply a similar critique to Peter van Inwagen's version of the argument in my "On An Insufficient Argument Against Sufficient Reason," Ratio, vol. 10, no. 1 (April 1997), pp. 76-81.

Plato’s Cave

Here is a very good animation of Plato's Parable of the Cave, from Book VII of The Republic.

Moksha: Soteriological Riddles

Over lunch Friday the topic of moksha (release or liberation from samsara; enlightenment) came up in the context of Advaita Vedanta. Moksha is attained when the identity of Atman and Brahman is realized. My interlocutor wanted to know how such realization is possible. If I realize my identity with the Absolute, then I cease to exist as something separate from the Absolute. In that case, however, there is nothing left to realize anything. How could the state of enlightenment be anything for me if there is no 'me' left after enlightenment? How is moksha different from deep dreamless sleep or from utter nonexistence? A form of salvation that amounts to personal annihilation seems not to be a salvation worth wanting.

Any soteriology worth its salt must answer three questions: Salvation of what? To what? From what? Brahman does not need salvation. It is this indigent samsaric entity that I take myself to be that needs salvation. But if what is saved is destroyed in being saved, by being merged into Brahman, then it is at best paradoxical to call this salvation.

Ramanuja is supposed to have said to Shankara, "I don't want to be sugar; I want to taste sugar."

If I were taking Shankara's side of the argument, I might say something like the following to Ramanuja and my friend:

If I am right and you really are sugar/Brahman in your innermost essence, and you merely taste it, then you are removed from it and haven't yet attained the goal. It is just one more object over against you as subject. Your inquiry into the self, into who or what you really are, has not yet come to an end. The goal is to realize or become aware of your true self. To do that you must ruthlessly disengage from everything that is not-self. If Brahman is your true self, and you realize your identity with it, then you haven't lost your self, but found your self. You cannot be said to dissolve into the ocean of Brahman if Brahman is the true you. To think that you you lose your self when you merge with Brahman presupposes a false identification of the self with something finite. The self you lose is merely an object that you have wrongly identified as your true self; the self you gain is your true self.

This response is not quite satisfactory. Consider the following aporetic triad:

1. Brahman does not need salvation.
2. I am Brahman.
3. My need for salvation is a real (not merely a samsaric, illusory) need.

The first two limbs are parts of the doctrine (Advaita Vedanta) that is the context of our soteriological discussion. So they are nonnegotiable unless we shift out of this context. But (3) also seems true. The three propositions cannot, however, all be true: the conjunction of the first two limbs entails the negation of the third.

So it looks as if the advaitin has to bite the bullet and reject (3). He has to say something like: the very need for release from this hell of an existence itself belongs to maya, the realm of illusion. So both the need for moksha and the one who seeks it are illusory. But this seems to conflict with the starting point of this whole soteriological scheme, namely, that the suffering and unsatisfactoriness of this life are real.

Here is another puzzle.

Using the method of Neti, Neti (not this, not this), we end up with the result that the subject who is seeking is no object, no thing, nothing. Pursuing the question: Who or what am I? I come to the insight that I cannot be identical to any object, whether my car, my house, my clothes, my curriculum vitae, my body, any part of my body, my memories, thoughts, feelings, etc. Any and all objects — inner, outer, concrete, abstract — are to be disengaged from the subject for whom they are objects. The upshot seems to be that any self or subject so disengaged from every object is nothing at all.

On the other hand, I cannot be nothing at all since I am pursuing this investigation. Coming to realize that I am not this, that, or the other thing, I must be something, not nothing. So we bang into a logical contradiction: I am nothing and I am not nothing.

As long as we remain on the discursive/dualistic plane we will get tangled up like this. So one could take these insolubilia as pointing us beyond the discursive intellect. This is what I suggested to my friend. I want him to take up meditation so as to explore the non-dual source of duality. But meditation is insanely hard, and the fruits are few and far between. It can seem like an utter waste of time. Pointless navel-gazing! (But see my plea for omphaloscopy .)

Besides, one can take the insolubilia — if insolubilia they are — as referring us, not into the transdiscursive, but back into Plato's Cave, in particular, into that especially dark corner wherein the Wittgensteinian therapists ply their trade.