{"id":10196,"date":"2011-11-10T15:46:11","date_gmt":"2011-11-10T15:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/11\/10\/pascal-again\/"},"modified":"2011-11-10T15:46:11","modified_gmt":"2011-11-10T15:46:11","slug":"pascal-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/11\/10\/pascal-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Pascal Again on the Immateriality of the Subject of Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BLAISE%20PASCAL%20PORTA\"<\/a>It is surprising what different people will read into and read out of a text.  A reader challenged me to find a valid argument in Blaise Pascal, Pensees<\/em> #108 (Krailsheimer, p. 57): "What part of us feels pleasure? Is it our hand, our arm, our flesh, or our blood? It must obviously be something immaterial."<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Rising to the challenge, I offered <\/a>this:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

1. We are sentient: we feel pleasure, pain, etc. (suppressed premise)<\/span>
2. Nothing material could be sentient.<\/span>
Therefore<\/span>
3. As subjects of sentient states we are not material beings.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

This is a valid argument, hence not a non-sequitur, as my correspondent had claimed.   (Non sequitur<\/em> is Latin for 'it does not follow.')<\/span><\/p>\n

There is no doubt that we have material bodies.  And there is no doubt that many physical pains and pleasures can be assigned more or less determinate bodily locations,  typically where some damage or stimulation has occurred or is occuring.  Those are 'Moorean facts.'  As data of the problem they are not in dispute.  The question, however, is whether that which feels pleasure and pain, etc., call it the subject<\/em> of sentient states, is material or immaterial in nature.  Pascal thinks it obvious that it is not.  I don't think it is obvious one way or the other.  But I do maintain that there are very good reasons to hold that the subject of sentient states is immaterial.  To put it another way, I don't think it is obvious<\/em> that materialism about the mind is false.  But I do think it is reasonably rejectable.<\/span><\/p>\n

My correspondent subsequently suggested the following argumentative reconstruction of the above passage:<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
1. We feel pleasures, pains, etc.<\/span>
2. We do not feel these sensations "in our hand or arm or flesh or blood."<\/span>
3. Therefore, not in any part of our body or in our body as a whole.<\/span>
4. So, if not in our body (the "material" part of us), then in an "immaterial" part of us (mind or spirit).<\/span>
5. So, An immaterial part of us must exist as the only part of us in which pleasures, pains, etc can reside.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
The trouble with this reconstruction is that it is uncharitable: it ascribes to the genius Pascal a premise he could not possibly maintain, namely, (2).  (2) is plainly false, and so not reasonably imputed to any half-way intelligent person, let alone to one of the most powerful minds of the 17th century.  "I take it that Pascal meant to suggest that we don't experience pains and pleasures as located in various parts of our body. But we do, all the time."<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
But surely Pascal in not denying the obvious, namely, that we say things like, 'Doc, I've got a pain on the left side of my left knee.'  It is a plain fact that we experience physical pains and pleasures as located in various part of our body: toothaches in a tooth, headaches in or at the head, etc. <\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
The point, however, is that the pleasures and pains as felt<\/em>, as experienced<\/em>, as data of consciousness<\/em>, cannot be identified with anything physical.  It may sound paradoxical, but it is true: physical pains and pleasures are mental in nature.  My patella is not mental in nature, nor is my chondromalacia patellae<\/em>, nor are it causes.  But the pain I feel is mental in nature.  And it is clearly  not literally in the knee, or literally in any part of my body or brain.  'In' is a spatial word.  You will not find my knee pain literally in my knee or literally in my brain.  What you will find are the physical causes of the pain.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
That's one point.  Related to it is the point that the subject<\/em> (that which feels them and that in which they inhere) of these sensory qualia is also irreducibly mental in nature.  (No doubt the transition from the first point to the second is subject to Humean scruples, but that is whole other post.)<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
Now it may not be obvious that Pascal is right to maintain that pains and their subjects are irreducibly mental in nature, and thus immaterial.  But I think it is perfectly obvious that this is what Pascal is maintaining., and that what he is maintaining is in no way ruled out by any obvious fact.   My judgment, of course, is not based on that one slender quoted passage but on having read the whole of Pascal's magnificent book of Thoughts.<\/span> <\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is surprising what different people will read into and read out of a text.  A reader challenged me to find a valid argument in Blaise Pascal, Pensees #108 (Krailsheimer, p. 57): "What part of us feels pleasure? Is it our hand, our arm, our flesh, or our blood? It must obviously be something immaterial." Rising … Continue reading “Pascal Again on the Immateriality of the Subject of Experience”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,287],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mind","category-pascal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}