I recently quoted<\/a> 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." A reader comments, "Doesn't P. 108 strike you as a hopeless non-sequitur, if we take it as an argument at all? Just try to recast it as a valid inference."<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n If I thought that the aphorism embodied a non sequitur<\/em>, I would not have approvingly quoted it. So let me rise to the challenge and present Pascal's thought in the form of a valid argument.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n But let's first note that <\/span><\/span> the first question in the Pascal quotation is genuine while the second is rhetorical. The second, therefore, is a statement in interrogative dress. The second question expresses the proposition that nothing material is the subject of sentient states. Needless to say, Pascal is not talking about just hand, arm, flesh, and blood. They are but examples of any physical part of the body where 'body' covers brain as well.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n But does the passage embody an argument? The 'must' in the third sentence suggests that it does. So let's interpret the passage as expressing an enthymematic argument. The argument could be made explicit as follows:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n 1. We are sentient: we feel pleasure, pain, etc. (suppressed premise) Clarificatory note: (2) is to be understood as saying that nothing material could be the ultimate subject of sentient states, the ultimate bearer or possessor of such states. This is compatible with the admission that, in a secondary sense, the body of a sentient being is also sentient. (Compare indicative sentences and the propositions they express. That propositions are the primary truth-bearers does not prevent us from saying that sentences are in a secondary sense either true or false.) <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The above is a valid argument: the conclusion follows from the premises. Hence the Pascal passage, interpreted as I have interpreted, does not embody a non sequitur, let alone a "hopeless" non sequitur.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Of course, a much more interesting question is whether we have good reason to accept the premises. Since the first is self-evident, the soundness of the argument rides on the second. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> Now some will say that the argument begs the question at the second premise. But that depends on what exactly 'begging the question' amounts to. Let's not go there. And please note that begging the question is an informal fallacy, whereas accusations of non sequitur question the formal validity of arguments. I will cheerfully concede, however, that the anti-materialist must support (2): he cannot just proclaim it obvious or self-evident as he can in the case of (1).<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I will conclude by pointing out that although (2) is not self-evident, neither is its negation. So this is a point on which reasonable dispute is possible. This is a live issue. (That some do not consider it such is not to the point.) Subsequent posts will examine the case for the immateriality of the subject of experience. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I recently quoted 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." A reader comments, "Doesn't P. 108 strike you as a hopeless non-sequitur, if we take it as an argument at all? Just … Continue reading “Pascal on the Subject of Experience: A Non Sequitur<\/i>?”<\/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":[113,54,287],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-logica-utens","category-mind","category-pascal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10208","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=10208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
2. Nothing material could be sentient.
Therefore
3. As subjects of sentient states we are not material beings.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n