I need to look into Frege’s view, but this practice—though a perhaps cumbersome, idiosyncratic way of thinking about true sentences—seems to be rigorous in a way that forces one to think of the metaphysics underlying any utterance at all. This sounds to me more Platonic than I remember any of Frege’s writings to be, though.

I concede that there certainly is a sense in which when I state any true sentence, then it refers ultimately to The True, but it does so by-way-of that circumstance or thing I posit. There has to be something I’m not seeing: it seems either redundant to say that each true statement has as its reference the true—or indolent not to affirm it.

If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.
—Goethe

When I was just old enough to know that I should control myself in the company of my elders but young enough to know I could still get away with being obnoxiously rambunctious and what was to my parents embarrassingly honest, I found myself confronted by a crisis of conscience.

At that point in my life, I thought of “department stores” as something like cubby holes, only bigger, where adults walked around like they knew what they were there for, while I hid giggling inside the circular standing racks of women’s blouses just because I knew that somehow it was something I could never get away with someday. My mother and I had gone to one such department store, and there in the midst of an aisle was standing a ridiculously irate toddler. He wanted something, clearly, from his mother; or rather, for her to buy him something—you know, I wasn’t clear on how all those transactions worked at just over half a decade old—and I crept up to investigate. I was an extremely shy child, you understand, but I just had to know what that kid was screaming about—and it ended up being something that I thought was utterly ridiculous. I thought to myself that he ought not to have been screaming about something so stupid, so utterly needless. But then, it hit me: maybe that’s how Mom thought of the stuff I wanted….

That didn’t make me want it less, whatever “it” might have been—and I would whine, beg, flash those doe eyes kids and seductresses share, and tug at her blouse to get it (thereby prophetically setting my path before me as a philosopher who would disprove the Socratic knowledge-as-virtue tenet). But that was only because I knew I could get away with it.

Another time, in a J. C. Penney, around the same age, the horrifying fate that must befall all firstborn sons and their poor distraught mothers occurred to me: I got lost. Here in these suffocating cubby holes, these cold, gridded floors with their fake tile and unyielding, Astroturf-esque carpeting that comprised some system that I just couldn’t grasp, I had gotten distracted by a diamond necklace or some such at the jewelry counter. Obediently not touching the glass, I stared in wide-eyed wonder at this sparkly rainbowmaker; and when my reverie broke, I turned to find—men, women, racks of clothing, an infinite sea of “stuff” and “things”—and precisely zero people who were my mother.

Knowing that this was when the “little kids” always panicked, I gathered myself, determined to outstay the anxiety with faith that Mom would realize where I was and come to rescue me from my present state—uncertain, hands clasped behind my back, rocking from the balls to the heels of my feet across the line between pseudotile flooring and stiff beige carpeting. Finally (probably after all of ninety seconds), my resolve eroded and I wandered at a near-gallop past all the places I thought she had been, only to find myself more lost than before, somewhere between “soft shiny things Dad likes on t.v.” (lingerie) and “things that would make Mom sneeze a lot” (perfume)—my sense of direction has only marginally improved since then. It was somewhere around this time that I passed the escalator, that great unmanned beast of a machine I’d heard of trapping my peers’ feet and ceaselessly moving people to and fro, up and down. Presently, I gave up hope, and began to tremble, then to softly weep; for it had been an eternity, and I had moved from the spot I’d been left besides, against all admonitions I’d ever received to the contrary. Lost to my curiosity, inadvertently abandoned light years from home, at the top of the gaping maw of an unfriendly peoplemover, a bad son for making my mother worry (and God only knew what Dad would say when we got home), I presently gave up hope. I felt more vulnerable standing, so I walked very slowly, sobbing quietly into my sleeve, embarrassed at the looks I got and still anxious about (not) being rediscovered—

But then there was a certain man who greeted me sheepishly. He was an elf to my hobbit, tall and thin and full of years yet still youthful somehow. (Looking back, he couldn’t have been any more than in his late twenties.) Kind but somehow timid eyes regarded me beneath a concerned brow framed by a close-cropped shock of black hair; he was dressed in a suit with shoulder pads the likes of which no one has seen since 1989. A regular joe, just a customer in the store, he had found me and asked me if I was lost. Yes, I replied, but truth be told it was Mom who was lost, or both of us, or—oh, I didn’t know! And he smiled a half-smile that bespoke what I later understood to be amusement and a gentle kindness tempered by the social awareness that he was trying to exude extreme professionalism and yet was talking to a lanky wet-faced six-year-old in the midst of a department store in the middle of the afternoon. Still nearly smiling, he offered to help me find my mother. Having grown up with pure, 1980s archetypes of what good and evil looked like (the former with geekiness, silliness, bombasticism, or at least, self-consciousness, and the latter with cigarette-smoking, sleazy self-assuredness, and sly turns of phrase), I trusted him for his half smile and his youth, which won out over his height and suit-wearing.

Rising in a small elevator with no more than this stranger who wore the look of kindness and pathos, my eyes dried. I steeled myself, drawing up my chest and clenching my fists; and with all the power of every bit of manners that had been drilled into me, I thanked the man straight-faced. But it was the kind of caricature of a straight face that I fancied must have looked like Jean Claude Van Damme in every movie in which I’d ever seen him, so I couldn’t help but smile, then giggle in spite of myself.

In what seemed a miracle tantamount to Philip being translocated by the Spirit, the two invested parties found each other upon the opening of the elevator doors. My mother was, as she tells it, “boo-hooing,” thinking she’d lost me forever, and I thought how interesting, how meaningful it was that she was just as upset as I had been (”—and then some,” I’m sure she’d interject). She thanked the man profusely, but kept crying till we got to the car, and even as we were pulling out of the parking lot. Finally, pitying her and thinking she must be going through the same thing I was going through in the store (only outside the store, that whole adults-thinking-abstractly thing), I patted her leg softly and said, “It’s okay, Mom, I’m right here, now. I love you!”

Vanitas-Viciosa © 1991 by Elsie Russell

I learned a lot in those department stores, from the ridiculously chainsaw-loud crying toddler who was murderously desperate for something inconsequential, and the half-smile man in a suit who, though a tall stranger, neither offered me candy nor tried to seduce me into his car. I learned that adults have different priorities than I did; and that if I were to earn worth and respect in their eyes—not as a child, not as a human being, but as someone real, someone worth hearing out—then I was going to have to really think about the things I wanted, and the things I did around them. And I learned that not all strangers are evildoers and “bad” to talk to, and purposed thenceforth to be kind to children when I became an adult—because maybe they would feel suspended in eternity, abandoned in deep space, just like me. In short, I began to really ponder how I came across to others, and how important it was to think and be conscious of how I should interact with what, years later, I would learn Sartre and Camus dubbed the Other. Indeed, how important was maturity itself—to act one’s age was not enough, but to act more than the age that one looked! (In my case that was quite a disparity, being very tall for my age.)

Just a couple of years later, this concept was gilded into the floor of my psyche.

As was the custom in earlier times, my father’s side of the family went on a sojourn from the far reaches of South Carolina to a quaint little town near its center, a town famous for slow talkers, the wisdom connoted by grey hairs, and a recently-restored historical Opera House. We all gathered at Thanksgiving and Christmas at the Matriarch’s house—dearly beloved and much-respected mother of my father—a barely-modern one-story embedded like a fine gem in the residential district of what could be called the “downtown” of this minor city. We drove for what seemed like days to reach this little house: all the cousins would be driven by their respective parents, and all would park on the lawn because there was so very much of it. I got in trouble if I parked my bike on the grass at home; so I surmised there was some rule of which adult children were aware, approximately phrased, “You can do whatever you want, within the restraints of your own self-discipline.” (That I would have abused this rule only served as a reminder that I wasn’t “old enough.”)

There was a peculiar, warm mysticism that hung around this abode and the activities to which it was a witness, like a wreath of pipe-smoke might ever ring the smiling avuncular face of an ancestor’s informal portrait. Bounded by a shallow drainage ditch I always thought of as a creek on two sides, and buttressed by a lush and meticulously cared-for, award-winning rose garden on the rear, this was a mysterious little oasis of fellowship with all the cousins born of Grandmama’s seed. Many lessons were learned, many deep thoughts found their birth on the granite steps of that old house. Whenever we would get together, I soaked up the experience with all the voracity a curious youth could muster, and attempted to varying degrees of success to act years ahead of the age I looked. The youngest cousin save for my sister on my father’s side of the family, I knew that the more mature and calm, the more understanding I not only acted but truly was, the more respect I would gain from my cousins, who I knew somehow, someday, I would consider my peers. If we were ever to have a relationship in which I didn’t look like a stupid, whiny, desperate toddler in their minds, it would have to be up to me not to act but to be an adult, with all the pains and responsibilities thereunto pertaining, whatever that meant.

A den view from the kitchen, off of which is also the dining room.

So when one Thanksgiving in my eighth year I sneaked into the dining room to see the usual preliminary spread of homemade rolls and so forth, I was surprised to find a scalloped porcelain dish filled with a grand bundle of small, purplish-black orbs, around which was what looked like an expertly crafted domino-cascade of very expensive-looking seeded crackers. Set aside in the official dining room, whose walls were paneled with a richly-stained wood, it sat on a pristine crimson tablecloth that covered what I knew was an ancient, hand-crafted table whose particular veneer matched the shade of the China cabinet—an inconceivably old set of shelves on which were priceless, sparklingly ornate vessels of lead crystal and Sterling silver that were apparently designed to look practical, but were never in my lifetime touched, let alone used. I lingered over these tiny fishy spheres, segregated to a place of honor amongst these majestic sundries. Something about the whole arrangement seemed perfectly ridiculous, perfectly adult, to me. It wasn’t chip dip—there wasn’t enough of the purple stuff for one to pile it liberally on each cracker and have enough to go around, and I’d never seen the likes of this anywhere in the grocery store. It looked foreign, and smelled fishy; and had it been on the floor with no crackers, even lacking felines at any gathering in this place of gathering, I would have fancied it cat food. But to my young senses, you must understand—this look was the look of very adultness; this smell was the bouquet of sophistication. This wasn’t the usual salsa, and it certainly bore no kinship to sugary, processed “kid-food” I held in such contempt as a child. Growing up, the “kids’ menu” was my enemy, not only because of disappointingly-sized portions and disappointingly-fried selections were frustratingly insufficient to satiate a rapidly-growing preadolescent boy, but because I resented the symbol of a whole “world” that adults had made up for kids, to keep them contained, manageable, and happy only because of an ignorance about what they were missing. If adults could do it, I wanted to do it—including being thoughtful and doing things that made me really uncomfortable without a second thought. To possess the courage not to complain about anything, but to learn from everything—this was the lofty ideal to which I held adulthood, the bedrock criterion of maturity to which I aspired.

The rest of the family was scattered about the kitchen and den in pairs and trios, talking mostly about what I considered mundane mathematical nonsense that adults liked to talk about when they couldn’t find any other creative way to fill the air (the insufferably dry conversation, including words like “debits” and “credits” and “annual withholding” was the only part of adulthood I didn’t idolize). Knowing somehow they thought it rude to stop talking once they’d started, I seized the opportunity to test the waters by first wading out just a bit: I had a fancy cracker. It was brittle, tough, and seedy; and left a taste in my mouth quite different than the Saltines I had known from times of illness. I didn’t like it at first; but this sentiment was crushed with all the swiftness that I realized my own reaction—and in my anger at being a child, schooled myself: “No, this cracker is a symbol of adulthood. Adults eat these thin crackly wafers, you silly child!” I acquired a taste for rye, right then and there, by force of will.

Growing still more brave, I withdrew another from the domino-arrangement and plunged it into the purplish-blackness in the center of the plate; and, with a heap of the slick-looking fishy stuff, crammed the whole thing into my mouth, suddenly afraid I’d be discovered and embarrassed—not for eating prematurely, but by the awareness that I, a then-prepubescent child whose age could be numbered with a single stroke of a pen, was trying so hard to be an adult. But, half-cowering, chewing ferociously, I tried to get a handle on what I was tasting: little bursts of salty fishiness were exploding quietly like muted firecrackers of sophistication in my mouth; crunching on the rye, the crisp taste of grown-up reality! I reveled in the experience as much as in the taste—as when at a stranger’s wedding reception one hears an otherwise intimate toast by a tipsy groomsman transmuted by champagne into a wisecrack about the groom’s lavatory habits and, despite his ignorance, one finds himself laughing.

Before I realized what I’d done and came back to myself, I’d finished off almost the entire bowl of the mystical purple spheres that had hailed anonymously from the Adult Realm. Fulfillment yielded haltingly to the second round of the aforementioned shame as I realized I would be found out. I made peace with my decision to own my gluttonous misdeed when asked, so that I didn’t seem even more the child. Meanwhile, I weaved my way sheepishly through the discussion of insurance policies and football scores into the den, to at least appear as though I was on my way to doing something meaningful. But the only people in the den were staring into the television. Rapt to near-sacrilege at what seemed to me a bunch of bullies in helmets running over each other to the elation of a crowd who apparently felt that a dome was technically no occasion to use “inside voices,” and since to sit still was a punishment mete for breaking vases and not for independent volition, I went off to explore—

—Until I got called with great authority back into the dining room. Demanding an explanation, my aunt and parents had realized that the one who had single-handedly pilfered all the tiny fish marbles and spicy unsalted crackers was none other than I. Blushing, I apologized and attempted to explain away my private ambitions of sophistication by the highly plausible excuse that I had just been hungry and impatient.

My aunt, however, was thoroughly amused and, chuckling earnestly with understanding eyes, bent down conspiratorially to explain that the reason I’d been called in with such gravitas was that I had just eaten caviar with rye crackers. She asked gingerly, tenderly as though somehow seeing yet not laughing at my plight to be an omniscient adult, whether I knew what the word “caviar” meant. Though sorely tempted to lie, my curiosity directed my tongue to the negative. She explained the concept, bracing herself visibly for a starkly and altogether childishly negative reaction, that it was a French word for “fish eggs.”

Having steeled myself against an answer lesser children (and other poor mortals) might have found disgusting, the barest flash of a grimace was replaced with a proud and authentic declaration that I enjoyed it, and to prove it presently took another triumphant bite! Fledgling freedom over arbitrary internal schemas, innovation over familiarity, sophistication over naiivete, adulthood over childishness—this was my victory, an initiation, a step from naiiveté to experience! Everyone laughed; but I felt they were laughing with me, anticipating my future…. Twelve adults—and one child well on his way.

Obviously, I came to realize that adulthood was not nearly so ideal as I’d anticipated, as must be the course of all who live with any awareness of themselves and of others. The point is not, however, that starry-eyed youth inevitably fades, but rather that it makes all the difference how we conduct ourselves in light of our failures—and those of people and the circumstances in which we find ourselves—to meet our expectations. If, knowing that every member of the category of persons broadly called “adults” has any number of unemulable character traits, and that with tragic frequency we show the vestiges of the self-seeking, careless, petulant brats we once were—does that give us license to stagnate, or impetus to change?

Sophistication need not mean jadedness; complexity need not mean waste; and the changing of tunes from “Twinkle, Twinkle” to the Song of Experience need not mean a transition into a minor key. Those who consciously insist on the bliss that is ignorance say so only until they realize that to say so is to minimize the gift of awareness of Himself, of others, and of the universe God gave man. Infants can’t even handle honey, and children find steak hard to swallow, but women and men know that caviar on rye is finer than reconstituted American on Saltines. Indeed, is the gift of marital coitus, that singular instantiation and signification of Christ and the Church, accompanied by the love a couple is commanded and delighted to show one another, for children? Little ones are precious beyond words to God and to Man, and cannot affirm that ignorance is bliss precisely because of the blessedness of their state; but an adult who allows the child within to reign into the ripeness of age is merely pining for the womb, or the grave.

David J. Grossman, Quaternion Julia Set (7). [Info: Julia set.]

A quaternion fractal that does not morph over many iterations is more than an anomaly; it’s a mathematical impossibility. Even so for humans: to settle instead of striving, to exist instead of thriving, to complain instead of acting, to criticize instead of creating, to remain children instead of maturing, to choose ignorance instead of truth—in so doing, we try to keep the variables of our experience from iterating—i.e., we fight the complexity and dynamism with which we were intended to live. Empower yourself by empowering your brother and sister; encourage your neighbor by being better than you are; and love your family by authentically forgiving more than just their peccadillos—and overcome the temptation to pit one against another by being even-handed through all the vicissitudes that cause you or your brother to stumble into childish ambition and resentment.

Are we content to live slothfully yet miserably within our own narrow parameters we in our frailty have tried to impose upon the world and so bury the talents we’ve been given, or do we push ourselves to learn, to grow, to love, to forgive, and to do all the rest of the things that entropy and flesh would have us neglect? Do we claw in vain at the riverbed of Time to hold on to the familiar and the comfortable, and so spend our lives always on the brink of death by drowning in our own arbitrary rules—sentencing ourselves to suffering that is unique to the self-willful failure to adapt and grow, to forgive and let go, to take on the new and the dangerous if it will mean change? The human—not the spirit, the body, or the mind, but rather all these and the private world of his experience—was meant to adapt, to flourish under pressure, to endure, to grow and move at the same pace as the rock onto which he was born, hurtling through space and time.

It is by the power of God’s grace that we have what we have; and by the very same that we are empowered to grow beyond our natural limits of selfishness and hatred into humility and brotherly sacrifice. May 2007 prove for you a rich glass of edifying challenges: great with grace; abundant in love; full of dynamic lessons and rediscoveries of eternal Truth, a canvas for your creativity and a template for personal growth.

Technorati Tags: challenges, relationships, grace, innocence, ignorance, sophistication, vanitas, Christ, personal growth, archetypes, anecdotes, childhood, experience, aging

These are all based on assumptions that we hold that pertain to our daily lives. I will be soon posting a list of my “assumptions” as well, though of course these will be for public discussion and will not be unchallenged in the sense that I am asking you, my beloved readers, to consider your “assumptions.” Do you know of any off the top of your heads?

As we grow up, we learn that even the one person that wasn’t supposed to ever let you down probably will. You will have your heart broken probably more than once and it’s harder every time. You’ll break hearts too, so remember how it felt when yours was broken. You’ll fight with your best friend. You’ll blame a new love for things an old one did. You’ll cry because time is passing too fast, and you’ll eventually lose someone you love. So take too many pictures, laugh too much, and love like you’ve never been hurt because every sixty seconds you spend upset is a minute of happiness you’ll never get back.

I really enjoy texts like this. Give it to me straight, Doc. Don’t sugar-coat. But often things that are meant to be straightforward are just angsty; this seems beyond angst. The unfortunately saccharine ending (your typical “dance like no one’s looking” nonsense, as though that actually means something) detracts from the thought, but nevermind that. Again, I really want to know your opinion.

Whence this kind of thing springs, too, is interesting; rage and retaliation are driven at base by honor, a sense of one’s own reputation and value in and of oneself over and above another person, or above their (negative) actions done to you. What makes Christ so radical is that He tells us to submit to His power and (only thereby) lay down that sense of selfish pride, the honor in oneself that makes us hold grudges and seek vengeance and nurse ill will and make the ones who did us wrong come groveling back to kiss our feet before they’re in our good graces once again. This is a huge part of the reason that to the Gentiles (Greeks especially), Jesus and His whole message were “foolishness,” that is to say, a laughingstock—because the thymos by which the Greeks governed themselves and their sense of self-seeking pride was the very foundation of personal dignity and warlike sensibilities. The Greeks were appalled to hear anyone known as “wise” to be telling them that they had to lay down their pride and vengeance voluntarily—since the only ones who did that were the ones who were too weak to fight in the first place.

“This gun’s bullets will only pierce the flesh of your true love!” Genius; so is this.

Some are funnier than dark.

Some are both, admittedly.

Thanks, PJ.

Jan Johnstone from Kincardine, Canada writes: It is a huge ethical dilemma. Once the drug companies get a hold of it, it becomes marketed as a fix for everything. I remember reading advertisements in People Magazine for a popular antidepressant. Part of the script was aimed at getting rid of those pesky sad feelings of grief. Don’t feel blue, ask your doctor for this. But feeling grief and sorrow is a good thing, unless we all believe that certain emotions and states of being are more desirable. Dito for this drug. Our memories, no matter how painful, are important. This drug if marketed should be limited. I could see uses for it but it should not be the pancea for all bad memories. I think there could be uses for it, especially around people who have bad memories around torture.

Technorati Tags: medicine, memory, ethics, propranolol, anxiety

Why is it that so many of the good ones, even the prophets, speak to deaf ears? It’s maddening. What do you think?

The more I know of Stephen Colbert the more I like him. Articulate, hilarious, and precise. Do you remember his roasting of President Bush back in April? No? Well, I didn’t either, so you’re in good company: here’s the full transcript, and the YouTube mirror of the videos [First, Second, Third parts], as well as the opening segment of the next broadcast of the Colbert Report (01 May 2006) after the roasting.

The more I understand, the more questions I have; and the more I get to know Colbert, the more I believe him to be a genius.

Among the reasons for joining the military is certainly “to fight in the present war.” But each of my friends had a different agenda going in, and that doesn’t figure high on their list of desires, if at all. But if you have friends that are in the armed forces or are considering joining them, don’t be a jerk because of your own agenda. Our men and women “over there,” wherever and whenever that happens to be, need our support. Don’t sell them short.

The debates start raging over the very possibility of amor platonicus, however, as soon as we move into the realm of two heterosexual individuals of opposite gender. “Can a guy and a girl really ever just be friends” ranks right up there with “Is it okay for two guys to share the same bar of soap” and other such mysteries of the æons!

The answer, I think, is obviously affirmative; but not without caveats and complications, and it will take a bit of explanation.

I hold that the soul, at its core, is not intrinsically “male” or “female”: that artifact of Aristotelian philosophy was what allowed him to say that women were inferior to men, what allowed men to say that women were ignorant and shouldn’t be allowed to vote (or what have you), and what still, even today, makes women scared of fields like science and mathematics. If this were the case (male and female souls being extant), that would mean we could infer things about the value of mens’ versus womens’ souls.

This is absolutely not, however, to say that there are no differences between men and women, or in the way that we interact, or in the different capabilities of each gender. Obviously, for romantic love or any kind of generative eros to be possible, there must be crucial differences that penetrate to the soul. But it goes back to the difference between the ways in which we approach one another through the two kinds of love, eros and philia: one approaches from the outside, the body, through that part of the soul that owns the gender roles and embodiment as one is, and finally, if ever, to the core of that person as they are; the other strings a bridge between cores, from person to person, black, white, man, woman, boy, girl, Japanese, Indian, Zambian, or Canadian. It respects individuals as they are, with all their differences but not focusing on them, like cells in a human body.

We are given bodies and a sense of gender to perpetuate the theatron, to play out the beautiful drama of Christ and his bride, and of the state of all creation in our lives; we are all “feminine” in relation to God, being the bride of Christ collectively, so there is certainly a large part that gender must play in our lives and interactions with others, and framing it this way is in no way diminishing the importance and joy of erotic and/or sexual love. In that sense, we are all like actors on the stage of this world; where Paul talks about the apostles being “made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men” in 1 Corinthians 4:9, I say it applies to us all. While we are on stage, we are dressed in fruity frills to play a role, whether we know it or not. But when we finally finish our part of the play, our final act, we go backstage, and remove the face-paint, the clothing, the shoes, and what-have-you: and we’re all dressed alike, we’re all just people.

All Christians will someday be backstage together, behind the scenes sipping heavenly joe together, if you like: having exited the stage of this world, we will be backstage, in heaven, in the greater part. To approach someone on a level of pure friendship is to approach someone as though already backstage—it is to give them their due as a human being, an individual created in the image of God. People today have become so oversexed, and have forgotten that it is possible and even desirable to be “just friends,” to such an extent that we equate love and sex, and we forget that the greater part is underneath the makeup and costumes. Some people, I expect, will get to heaven like some stunned accidental Saducee, for whom finally the Scripture Jesus spoke will finally make sense: “In the resurrection men will neither marry nor be given in marriage, for they will be like the angels in heaven” (Matthew 22:23-30).

It will be this and only this, I think, that will allow us to realize that works of art including literature that is permeated and shot through with a sense of gender is nevertheless art and literature, the product of an individual person made in God’s image, a product not of costume but of substance; likewise for manifestations of emotions (she may cry, he may punch a wall, &c.).** Yes, there are different communication styles between men and women; yes, there is a reason for stereotypes, and there are vast psychological differences between the two genders as played out; but we nevertheless communicate the same things, do the same things, only in different ways. So the manifestations of the soul will be varied and sundry according to all sorts of external factors, like gender, race, and creed, but we all are human beings.‡

So Platonic love, that kind of deep friendship that focuses on the beauty of a person’s character and intelligence, emotional profile and spiritual relationship as opposed to the beauty of the physical delights of a body, is certainly possible. Those that deny it deny the greater part of their humanity, have forgotten what it is like to be children,†† and (I believe) have not understood what it will mean to be fulfilled spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically in Christ at the resurrection to come.

But that doesn’t make it easy. I propose that it is much easier to be Platonic friends with a person when one or both of you is unattracted to the other in some fundamental way, and imagine that’s probably self-evident. When there’s a barrier to being “more than” friends, whether it’s your lack of attraction or the other’s, or some external circumstance, or some internal knowledge that something is or would be deeply wrong about it, it’s easier to be friends. It’s that in-between stage that’s the trouble, where there are no concrete barriers to being “more than” friends with someone.

More on this tomorrow.

** The greatest error of militant feminism is that it goes beyond equality in terms of soul and makes the female lust for the male’s role: some feminists forget that they are fighting for a 1:1 soul-to-soul interaction and instead go backstage and raid the “male” costumes and refuse to take it off, even when they leave the theater.

‡ This is what really infuriates me about men who claim that their wives are unknowable, or wives that claim their husbands can’t be understood. The reality is that they have hardened themselves against placing themselves mentally in a different costume, in their spouse’s shoes specifically, to figure out what it is they’re communicating and why. It’s like the old grandmother of a friend of mine who claimed she didn’t know how to pump gas; and even though she had been shown many times, she claimed ignorance (the lady was sharp as a whip)—not because she was truly senile or couldn’t learn, but wouldn’t—because her husband had always pumped the gas; it was a “man’s job.”

†† In so saying, I realize that children, too, are given gender roles and know and act instinctively on gender differences; but not because their cores are different, but because they are still trying to find their role, find some clothes that fit in observing Mom and Dad as they act out their own roles.

[This is the second of a three-part series.]

Romance

In a romantic relationship, partners relate from a top-down, outside-in perspective, it seems. If I spy you across a room and you are immediately beautiful to me, or vice versa, that notion carries with it a certain amount of romanticism. (I will use “I” here for simplicity’s sake; but you may place yourself in my shoes, regardless of your gender and orientation.) I see your body, or you see mine; and immediately either or both of us picks up on something in the other’s body or, more precisely, way of being embodied, that relates to my way of being embodied, at least as I see myself. As we talk and get to know one another, we are looking for ways to complement ourselves in the other; what began with the body and gender-roles filters down through to the top layer of the soul, if you will—that part of ourselves that is still shot through with our conception of our gender and relates to other people with a sense of our own embodiment in relation to the other’s in terms of, not necessarily sexual, but procreative, erotic love.**

Now, there is certainly a place for that kind of love in us; it is God-ordained, and if you have any doubts about that, read Song of Solomon without framing it allegorically.

Friendship

There is another kind of love, too: friendship. My first impulse is to type “friendship-love,” but this is an artifact of postmodern social networking: we say “So-and-so is my friend,” but in reality, what we mean to say is that they are an acquaintance whose existence is somewhere between benign and beneficial to our own lives, but which, if removed, would cause us no great disappointment. So friendship here means a deep and abiding, rich dedication to another’s well-being. Thomas Jay Oord defines friendship—philia—as “an intentional response to promote well-being when working in cooperation with others.” Aristotle indicated that the action behind friendship is “wanting for someone what one thinks good, for his sake and not for one’s own, and being inclined, so far as one can, to do such things for him” (1380b36–1381a2).††

It doesn’t require knowing someone very well, either, though that is often a part of it: several of my cousins on my mother’s side and I don’t really know each other extremely well (though I think they do read this blog these days, which is delightful—Hi guys;)), but I would nevertheless do whatever was needed for them, any time, day or night—likewise for the cousins on my father’s side, most of whom I haven’t seen at all in about ten years. This is an example of friendship that springs from blood ties.

But it can also spring from other means, as well, and I think from a different way of approaching another human being. It hinges on the difference in meaning between eros and philia: friendship approaches the other person from inside-out and bottom [i.e., foundation]-up, and is not concerned with how its embodiment interfaces with another’s embodiment.

In friendship relations, people seek the other person’s good for their own sake, not because there’s a sexual, political, academic, or other power-related attraction there but because of the image of God, that sentient, rational, loving part of oneself that takes joy in doing for others where one is able because it is something for which he or she is uniquely designed.

When you need someone to talk with at three o’ clock in the morning, a romantic partner acting solely from romantic love will (if at all) be there for you because of a sense of obligation, or because they might get something out of it, or because the power of attraction and genitive love overcomes the self that wants to merely sleep. A friend will be there for you not because they get something out of it, but because they are in a unique place, one soul to another, to help you. (A romantic partner might well stay up with you and talk out of friendship, or a mix of eros and philia, and is how dedicated relationships are supposed to work, but I give the above example a sharp dichotomy for purposes of contrast.)

Likewise, a professor under whose active tutelage you find yourself will look over something you’ve written and critique it, free of charge, even if it’s not part of the class—because he or she knows that it will look good and you’re in a position to give them high marks in the evaluation at the end of the semester. But a friend will do the same, even if it bores them to tears, because, one soul to another, they care about you. (Let me take this moment to thank those of you who are reading this!)

Men and women, boys and girls, and any combination thereof can act out of friendship for the sake of another, independent of and irrespective of gender, AMDG, without respect to procreativity (sexual or otherwise).

This has been on my mind a lot lately, and I’ll tell you why tomorrow.

** Eros in the Greek from at least Socrates’ and Plato’s day carries with it any kind of creative, constructive force. There is the image, for instance, in Socrates about wiser men planting the seeds of thoughts in young men and fools and helping nurture them until it is time for them to be given “birth”—implied allusions to pederastic ancient Grecian nonsense aside, this isn’t so foreign to us today, as in the advisor(s) when a student is coming up with, writing, presenting, and then defending a massive thesis paper. This same process is at work when two people are bouncing ideas off of one another with one person playing the lead: think Bible studies, questions in the classroom, and so forth. When a couple is engaged in helping build one another up, make each other better, and help each other enjoy life, whether walking down the street in deep and meaningful (productive) conversation or in an act of marital coitus, both are erotic.

It is a shame of Occidental culture today, particularly America, that we have made all friendships into erotic relationships, and all erotic acts into sexual acts. It is for this reason that, particularly young people (among whose demographic I include myself) these days claim that in order to know that they are loved, they must be kissed, touched, and well-sexed.

The conservative lady or gentleman who reads this explanation of eros presently, blushing, is evidence that the meaning of the word has been twisted into something altogether sexual. I invite you to re-evaluate your conception of the word, because you have but the very top layer of snow on the tip of the iceberg, or the sprinkles on top of the frosting of a cupcake, from this crippled conception.

†† From Wikipedia on -phil- and Philia.

[This is part one of a three-part series.]

So it is. This is where Solomon comes back full-force: there really is nothing new under the sun.

142: “There is one fatality which is death, and outside this all other fatality disappears. In the space of time between birth and death, nothing its [sic] predetermined. You can change eveything, you can stop the war and even maintain peace, if you want to do so intensely and for a long time.”

That’s so existential it hurts. You just have to want to change the world, and you can. Too optimistic, or is there something hidden there that’s closed to my eyes because of cynicism?

142: “Rule: Start by looking for what is valid in every man.”

Absolutely. And, furthermore, look for what is valid in every thought and philosophy that exits a person’s mouth or pen—and never stop learning. As soon as you think you’ve mastered what it is to live, think again.

144: “Goethe (to Eckermann): If I had wanted to throw off all forms of constraint, it would have been in my power to cause my own complete ruin and that of everyone around me.

“The first thing is to learn to rule over oneself.”

Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful, the amount of truth here. It’s not a testament of Goethe’s unique strength so much as it is a testament of how we’re all interconnected, and how one person affects another, for good or for ill. The closer you are to someone, the more power they have to destroy you—aye, but also you them. It’s what makes love so profound in the first place.

The book is split into three primary sections, with a thin introduction by the authors in the beginning of the book. Sections in the book include writings by Epicureans, Stoics, and Skeptics, with each of these lines of thought delimited by its own section heading. Each of the main sections contains English translations of the Greek texts. Because of the differing availability of writings on and differing focus within each train of thought, sections are represented differently. The book is intended to give an overview of Hellenistic thought through the mouths of the Greek thinkers themselves.

As a didactic work consisting almost entirely in original writings, the anthology is remarkably intuitive and well laid-out. There is also a consistency in the method of presentation for each section: the book begins with a selection from Diogenes Laertius discussing the biographical account of Epicurus, for example, but the Stoic section is laid out according to the primary sections in their doctrines—logic, ethics, physics, and so forth—while the account of the Skeptics treats of the progression and deepening of their methods. The glossary of key terms in the back of the book is helpful for pinpointing exactly what word is being used at any point in the translations, and the indices of names, sources, and translated fragments were highly useful, particularly where to the novice many of the names and concepts can seem to bleed together. The only things I personally missed in this anth0logy were persistent section headings and a cross-referencing system. By persistent section headings I mean the intermittent reminder of where the reader is in the hierarchy of readings: in long sections, it was easy for me to lose track of the author, particularly. I would liked to have seen more cross-referencing in the texts than merely the occasional footnote, also; since I realized numerous times that I had read of X concept before but could not pinpoint it, I would spend a good deal of time finding like passages to the one I was reading.

Overall, I would recommend this anthology to anyone who is interested in Hellenistic philosophy. As an anthology of original writings, this plain-English translation is very well put together and is as friendly to the novice as to the more seasoned Hellenistic investigator.

But it seems to me that this is a fundamental question for all of us to answer, if we’re being honest. The obvious question implied here is about humans—materialistic accounts of reality don’t account for consciousness satisfactorily (at least, so goes the claim).

It’s a question we all have to answer for ourselves, though, is, “What is it like to be myself?” See, consciousness is defined by experience insofar as the debate between materialism versus all the other approaches are concerned. This, to me, seems to be analogous to the difference between popular psychology, literature, and even pop culture—and the truth of one’s own experience as themselves. I struggle with this; though I am not a materialist, I have been guilty of committing what I see as an analogous error: of believing that people are constituent units of whole stereotypes that make up an entire whole. This whole is not unique, not really. If you are an ESTP, I know something about you, if I know something of Jungian typology; if you were born in Minnesota, I know something about how you are, where you come from, insofar as I know about Minnesota and the way people there interact; if you are a brother, a sister, a husband, a wife, a runner, a swimmer, a biker, a writer, a lover, a drinker, a smoker—all these labels tell me something about you. I am discouraged, often, by my falling into a trap of believing that the set of { ESTP | born:MN | non-smoker | occasional-drinker | passionate lover | climber } tells me all, or nearly all, of what I need to know to nail that person down.

It’s really uncanny, though. Ask an iNtuitive [Jungian] type who also scores high on Feeling to predict what someone is like. They’ll usually nail it, right down to the propensity toward rhinestone belts and the cowboy hats (for example), if he or she is really intent on the request.

Now, there’s something to that. You know something about me by knowing I am a male in my twenties who was born in South Carolina, an enjoyer of fine wines, cigars, cyberpunk novels, and concertos by Bach; you know something more about me by knowing my height, my weight, my ethnicity, my marital status, and the fact that I’m an INTP according to the MBTI, IPTI2, and KPI. But do you really know me, knowing all that?

No, you can’t. There’s an element of uniquity in everyone because of, if nothing else, the circumstances surrounding his or her life: the historicity of his or her being, the fact that this person at this point in time has never existed before or since, regardless of similarities shared in terms of ethnicity, aesthetics, cosmetics, personality, and all the rest.

But that means the onus is on each one of us to find out what it really means to be an “us,” an Ego. You share so much with other people; what defines you as apart from them? What separates you from others in such a way that allows you to connect and serve them in a way that is not identical to your own? It’s here that we find identity; and that’s why Christ’s admonition that “whomsoever seeks to save his life shall lose it; but whomever loses his life for My sake shall find it.” While we merely dwell in what can be described by stereotype, delimited by rules, we never own our sense of identity as placed here, in time, just in this moment, to do precisely what we were meant to do.

You are not unique: you can be defined in any number of ways. And yet you are unique in this, that the infinitely dynamic image of God resides in you, and that there are no others precisely like you in the ways you can serve others, and be a help to others. Aye, and to hurt others; but this is a part of life, and part of the responsibility that comes with consciousness, with uniquity, with life. What is it like to be who you are?

1.
“Russell pointed out that physics characterizes physical entities and properties by their relations to one another and to us. […] At the same time, physics says nothing about the intrinsic nature of these entities and properties. […] So this is one metaphysical problem: what are the intrinsic properties of fundamental physical systems?”

2.
In the eleventh section of his paper, Chalmers reintroduces one of the fundamental problems with a materialistic view of consciousness in a way that sets the stage for an answer in what he calls type-F monism. This passage is particularly interesting because of this question regarding the intrinsic nature of that which is functionally described by physics. It is usually taken for granted in the empirical sciences, including psychology, that physics is complete where we can accurately measure data, infer conclusions, and test hypotheses. But, taking a cue from Bertrand Russell’s The Analysis of Matter (1927), Chalmers points out what’s missing in physicalism as a viable theory of consciousness—and the viability of something more than reductive materialistic explanations of the mind—by pointing out the deficiencies of physics itself. He does this by pointing out, what physics does describe, viz. the relations of entities within physical systems. We know what a quark is by the way it relates to other physical entities; likewise with all the elements of atoms. We know how to define mass in terms of resistance to acceleration (from another entity having mass), but we do not have a substantive explanation of the “intrinsic properties associated with mass,” or of the intrinsic physical constituency of a quark itself. If we cannot deduce or observe the intrinsic properties of fundamental physical systems, then there is a gap precisely there in the explanation of consciousness which, claims Chalmers (with Russell), provides enough ontological gap for there to exist something intrinsic to the nature of the physical for which relational, dispositional physics cannot account.

3.
In order to understand how Chalmers reaches this conclusion and somewhat strange hypothesis for the nature of consciousness, it is necessary to evaluate his project in this article. He gives a sweeping overview of the problems that have traditionally beset discussions of the metaphysics of consciousness from an admittedly anti-materialist viewpoint. Distinguishing between the “hard” and “easy” problems of consciousness, Chalmers claims that problems of empirical investigation, those things readily accounted for in a physicalist system, are “easy”—we can see how there can be eventual neurobiological explanations of the “easy” problems of consciousness. Stimulus discrimination, internal state monitoring, and information report are examples of these problems. The so-called “hard” problem of consciousness, as Chalmers continues, is that of experience. There is something that it is to be like a human being, to have a conscious experience, which (Chalmers argues, though disputable to some materialists) is unaccounted for by a purely physicalist view of consciousness. Even if we are able to explain cognitive functions and systems in terms of structure and dynamics, we will nevertheless not have explained the subjective experience that is tied inextricably to consciousness. In the third section of his paper, Chalmers sets forth three arguments against materialism to which he refers in later sections. Specifically, the “explanatory argument” is tied explicitly to the distinction of the hard and easy problems of consciousness: physical theories of consciousness can account for structure and function and no more; but this is insufficient to explain consciousness; therefore, physical theories of consciousness are inadequate. This is a part of what Chalmers seeks to answer in his proposal of type-F monism, or what he calls panprotopsychism, by offering a theory that postulates precisely that “the natural world contains more than the physical world.” The second broad argument against materialism is the “conceivability argument,” involving the thought experiment of zombies—that is, beings with the exact and comprehensive physical constitution of human beings which nevertheless have no conscious experience—to provide the hinge of the debate. Specifically, since it is conceivable that zombies exist, it is metaphysically possible that they do exist; hence, consciousness is nonphysical. Finally, there is the “knowledge argument,” which states that there are facts about conscious experience that cannot be deduced from physical facts. This argument is favored by epiphenomenalist Frank Jackson, as exemplified in Mary the neuroscientist who from a black and white room learns everything there is to know about the workings of the human brain and all the physical facts about what constitutes the structure and function of consciousness—only to learn something genuinely new when she actually leaves the room and experiences “red” (and so forth) for herself. Again, this is the proposal of Chalmers’ panprotopsychism, that there are intrinsic properties of which physical entities are constituted that account for phenomenal, subjective experience in a way that purely physical science cannot. All of these arguments amount to one crucial underlying argument against materialism: that there is an epistemic gap between physical and phenomenal truths, which implies the existence of an ontological gap—and therefore, materialism is false.

Chalmers goes on to explain the positions of what he sees as the three broad views that materialists tend to take in arguments about consciousness. The first are whom he calls type-A materialists, who deny that there is an epistemic gap between physical and phenomenal truths. For the type-A materialist, either consciousness does not exist as such, or by explaining fine neurobiological detail along with the functional state and the environmental position, we have thereby accounted for phenomenal truths and conscious states. For Chalmers, this denies the obvious, and I am inclined to agree; there is something to phenomenal, subjective experience—and in the light of a lack of extraordinary evidence, type-A materialism does not seem to be adequate. This is a different problem than that of “vitalism” to account for life, or the reduction of chemistry from physics: there is conscious experience that remains unexplained by the explanation of neurobiology, &c. The second type of materialism holds that while there is an epistemic gap, there is no ontological gap: type-B materialists, then, deny that from the premise that there is an epistemic gap between physical and phenomenal truths it follows that phenomenal reality is somehow greater than or removed from a full explanation of physical reality. In the same way that water and H2O are identical, but are different concepts, so for the type-B materialist are physical states identical with conscious experiences. Chalmers argues at length against the type-B materialists, claiming that this epistemic gap is different than the epistemic gap that has existed in other, hard sciences, and that a type-B materialist essentially gives up a reductive explanation of consciousness.

Eventually, through a nuanced argument in section six, Chalmers reaches the conclusion that materialism is false—or that type-F monism, panprotopsychism, is true. This will be revisited momentarily. Type-C materialism concedes that there is presently an epistemic gap between physical and phenomenal truths, but that it will be closed eventually. According to Chalmers, this position is either untenable or collapses into one of the other forms of materialism, or into a kind of Cartesian dualism, or again, into type-F monism. The basic argument against type-C materialism that makes it untenable for Chalmers is as follows: “physical descriptions of the world characterize the world in terms of structure and dynamics”; from these descriptive truths one can only deduce more truths about structure and dynamics; those sorts of truths are not truths about conscious experience.

Having dispensed with reductive materialism, Chalmers argues that we must expand our conception of what constitutes natural reality, to either take consciousness as a fundamental aspect of universal constitution or as necessitated by something fundamental—hence the proto- in panprotopsychism, which holds to the first position. Essentially, if arguments against materialism are substantial enough to knock them down, physics cannnot fully explain consciousness, and we must look to the most viable alternatives, viz. dualism (types D and E) and type-F. Type-D dualism is the position that microphysics is not causally closed, that “[p]sychophysical principles specifying the effect of phenomenal states on physical states will also play an irreducible role” alongside physical principles. This view of consciousness includes Descartes’ substance dualism, in which there are two distinct substances working on one another, as well as property dualism, which holds that there is a fundamental substance which includes physical as well as phenomenal properties. Answering the strongest objection to this theory of consciousness, viz. that it flies in the face of Newtonian physics, Chalmers counters that in fact, quantum mechanics suggests a kind of type-D dualism itself, and that the objection from contemporary knowledge of physics is only a kind of appeal to authority. On the other hand, Chalmers says, we can accept the causal closure of microphysics such that no phenomenal properties play any kind of role whatsoever in determining the nature of physical reality as such. On this view, referred to as epiphenomenalism, especially according to Frank Jackson, consciousness is an evolutionary appendage having no effect on the natural order but simply arising from it. This means that there is no causative mental process working on the physical body in any circumstance; the flow of causation is one-way. Jerking away from a flame would then not be due to the pain, but merely concurrent with it; seemingly rational decisions that end in physical actions are actually not causing those actions, and so forth. Chalmers is more willing than I to concede that while it is counterintuitive, it is still a contender for an explanation of reality. The sixth and final option that Chalmers is willing to consider as a viable explanation of consciousness is the aforementioned panprotopsychism. With this type-F monism, Chalmers draws deeply on scientific ignorance of the intrinsic nature of physical entities to propose a system in which phenomenal characteristics are intertwined with the physical by nature, instead of relationally or structural-dynamically in the conception of contemporary physics. Phenomenal properties, then, play a causal role along with physical properties in a causally closed microphysical schema, but would constitute the intrinsic nature of physical properties instead of being defined relationally. This is what Chalmers is doing in the above quote, challenging notions that physics alone as we know it today is able to explain consciousness. Chalmers claims that it is reasonable to expect that there are neutral protophenomenal elements of the natural world which by their relation with one another constitute what we understand as the physical world, while each of the has phenomenal properties in itself because of its intrinsic nature. Objections to this, other than the obvious about physics not constituting the basest understanding of the natural world, include that of counter-intuition and what is called the combination problem for panpsychism itself. The combination problem is that, if there are phenomenal properties intrinsic to some protophenomenal properties, then it still must be shown how these various phenomenal elements combine in each human being to make one coherent, rich, differentiated structure. Resorting to higher-level processing arguments to answer the combination problem, says Chalmers, turns type-F monism into type-D dualism. In conclusion, Chalmers briefly mentions Berkeleyan idealism (type-I monism) and overdetermination (type-O dualism), but does not treat them as the most rational or coherent alternatives to materialism.

4.
Type-F monism is an attractive alternative to materialism if for no other reason than it seems so strange yet coherent. Invoking Russell is perhaps not the best course of action for Chalmers, though, in introducing panprotopsychism: for all the respect he deserves as a critical thinker, Russell could not have known certain things about the nature of science. On the other hand, physics has not given us any more knowledge about the intrinsic nature of things, so there is no direct evidence contradicting type-F monism in the same way that Chalmers says occurs with all three broad types of materialism. The idea that each particle, each of the underlying intrinsic properties of natural reality has its own “what it is like to be,” its own conscious experience in a sense, its own phenomenal actuality—this seems very close to animism, the idea that all things have spirit, and are alive. This seems untenable, but only because it is so counterintuitive in light of modern philosophy. Brentano (1995) and Chisholm (1957), for example, held that intentionality was the mark of conscious experience—but nowhere in their systems does one find metaphysics of consciousness explained in terms of intrinsic phenomenal properties. Still, this seems a much better alternative to Jackson’s (1982) epiphenomenalism, which I see as untenable because it makes us simply conscious observers of the deterministic march of reality. We could have held to this perhaps in pre-Socratic Greece, before we knew how rich and complex the psyche was, before we were able to infer relationships between cognitive, neurobiological processes and physiological, bodily actions. But today it seems ridiculous, a step backward from materialism itself for no other reason than to try to have the metaphysical schema both ways: a causally closed microphysics along with qualitative experience. The idea that physics does not provide a fully comprehensive explanation of reality, however, is compelling. Cartesian dualism has been largely rejected these days for what I think should be similar reasons to reject epiphenomenalism; but the spirit of Descartes may be preserved in panprotopsychism. Certainly Ryle (1949) and Putnam (1968) would dismiss it outright as mysticism in relation to a clear-cut explanation of cognition in terms of behavior. But it seems that nevertheless there remains a gaping hole in the behavioristic account of consciousness, viz. the existence of qualia, especially Nagel’s (1974) “what it is like to be” problem—there is no account of what it is like to be a human being in describing “psychology in physical language” (Carnap, 1932). Panprotopsychism should prove a fascinating jumping-off point for research as advancements are made in quantum physics; there is still hope for a non-materialistic account of consciousness if it ultimately fails, but overall panprotopsychism seems the most compelling and, in a sense, most cutting edge option to philosophers of mind today.

References

Brentano, F. (1995). “The distinction between mental and physical phenomena.” In Psychology from an empirical standpoint. D. Terrell, A. Rancurello, & L. McAlister, Trans; L. McAlister, Ed. New York: Routledge.

Carnap, R. (1932). “Psychology in physical language.” In Erkenntnis, 3:107-42. Norwell: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Chalmers, D. J. (2002). “Consciousness and its place in nature.” From Blackwell guide to the philosophy of mind. S. Stich & T. Warfield, Eds.

Chisholm, R. (1957). “Intentional inexistence.” From Perceiving: A philosophical study. New York: Cornell UP.

Jackson, F. (1982). “Epiphenomenal qualia.” From Philosophical quarterly 32:127-136.

Nagel, T. (1974). “What is it like to be a bat?” From Philosophical review 83:435-50. New York: Cornell UP.

Putnam, H. (1968). “Brains and behavior.” From Analytical philosophy: Second series,
in Blackwell, 1968.

Russell, B. (1927). The analysis of matter. London: Kegan Paul.

Ryle, G. (1949). “Descartes’ myth.” From The concept of mind. In Hutchinson, 1949. Oxford: Oxford UP.

All citations taken from:

Chalmers, D. J., Ed. (2002). Philosophy of mind: Classical and contemporary readings.
New York: Oxford UP.

Yet now we seem to have entered into an epoch of uncertainty about whether metaphysics is possible at all. Rorty says it’s all conversation, that philosophy qua Philosophy is meaningless, that all is relative. Gadamer concedes that a better hermeneutical understanding is still limited by the asymptotic impenetrability of objective truth-out-there apart from interpretation. Randian “objectivism” dismisses truth-out-there altogether, declaring the supremacy of sense-perception.

Now it seems we’ve returned to a wholly negative reworking of Socrates’ method: from “I don’t know (and neither do you!) but perhaps we together through dialogue can come to an agreement about the nature of reality” to “I don’t know and neither do you—nor can we know—the end. Let’s have a nice sit-down chat about how great America is and is not, but don’t dare make any absolute claims about anything. Except not making absolute claims.”

Are we going to see a resurgence of metaphysicians? Can we make any more ontologically certain claims about the nature of reality apart from resorting to relativism, subjectivism, or other (essentially) absolute claims of ultimate ignorance? Will we (we who?—us, of course!) decide again that by conversation we can achieve some absolute knowledge and re-start the Socratic process over?

The beginning and the end are common on the circumference of a circle. —Heraclitus

Discuss!

1. “[S]uppose S sees a speckled hen on which there are (on the facing side) 27 speckles. Each speckle is clearly visible. Not troubling to count, S does not realize that (hence, is not aware that) there are 27 speckles. Nonetheless, we assume that S looked long enough, and carefully enough, to see each speckle. In such a case, although S is aware of all 27 speckles (things), he is not aware of the number of speckles because [that] requires being aware that there is that number of speckles (a fact), and S is not aware of this fact.”

2. This passage is talking about the possibility that we can be conscious (that is, aware—for Dretske the terms are interchangeable) of things in a way that is fundamentally different than our awareness of facts. When S looks at this visible side of the hen, his attention is not directed toward the fact that there are twenty-seven speckles on this particular hen; but he is nevertheless aware of all of the speckles simultaneously—aware of their existence as things to be perceived. This becomes a crucial distinction for Dretske in his argument against higher-order thought processes—i.e., introspection—as being meaningfully explanatory of consciousness.

3. In order to understand what Dretske is trying to do with this article, it is important to know what he is arguing against. He objects to the idea that consciousness can be explained by a higher-order mental state that is directed at lower states: it is this theory of introspection as constitutive of consciousness that leads, e.g., Rosenthal, to argue that conscious states are those of which we are conscious. Dretske insists this is not the case, and sets up his argument in the following way.

In the introduction to the article, Dretske argues that while it sounds odd to the aforementioned higher-order theorists of consciousness to say that it is possible to have a conscious experience that one is not conscious of having, there is nothing contradictory about this claim. The first distinction he draws in fleshing out this conclusion is that distinction between awareness of facts and awareness of things. For Dretske, awareness of things is that which occurs in us when we become perceptually aware of items in our environment: the stereo, the computer, the music; and awareness of facts is a kind of “awareness that”—taking the form of my being aware that the computer is playing music through the stereo. This kind of awareness takes form in the statement, (1) “S sees (hears, etc.) x (or that P) => S is conscious of x (that P),” but goes on to differentiate between awareness of facts and of things, such that in the case of awareness of facts, one is by definition able to speak about that thing in one’s awareness. Thus in the above quotation, S sees (becomes perceptually aware of) the speckles on the hen, but is not aware that there are 27 speckles. It is for this reason Dretske introduces statement (2), such that for all concrete objects x, “S is conscious of x =/> S is conscious that x is F.” From this foundation, Dretske goes on to argue that the intransitive sense of “consciousness” is implied by, and indeed given rise by the transitive sense—that is, for any x and P, (3) “S is conscious of x or that P => S is conscious (a conscious being)” and therefore, (4) this means S is in a conscious state. Consciousness, then, is not directed toward things, or toward our awareness of our perception of things; rather, our perception of things makes us conscious of the world around us. Furthermore, Dretske uses a couple of examples from the realm of visual perception to illustrate the point: in looking at two slightly different pictures or objects, he says, people are thing-aware that there is a difference; but they are not aware of the fact that actually makes two objects or pictures differ. From this point, he says, we can deduce that one can be conscious of a thing without having transitive (metacognitive, introspective) consciousness of it. After two visual examples, he argues this point from experimentation with monkeys, in which they were thing-aware of different sized boxes, but only fact-aware of the abstraction “INTERMEDIATE IN SIZE” after learning to discriminate more carefully between the boxes. After tying up some loose ends in the fourth and final section of his article, Dretske concludes that fact-awareness (belief) is conscious not because the person is metacognitively aware of that fact, but because the belief is “a representation that makes one conscious of the fact (that P) that it is a belief about.”

1. “When we imagine a possible world in which a phenomenon is experienced as pain but we have no C-fibers, that is a possible world in which there is pain without there being any C-fibers. This is so, argues Kripke, for the simple reason that the experience of pain, the sensation of pain, counts as pain itself. We cannot make the distinction here, as we can with heat, between the way it appears to us and the phenomenon itself.”

2. Here Levine is referring to the difference between statement (1), “Pain is the firing of C-fibers” and statement (2), “Heat is the motion of molecules.” There is a certain way of conceiving of heat that is purely empirical; it is that phenomenon in the world which causes certain events (expansion and excitation of molecular clouds, boiling of water, &c.), on the one hand. On the other hand, heat feels to us in a certain way. There is, however, a way of explaining away the difference between what heat is and how it feels to us, by virtue of the fact that heat or its lack causes sensations in our physical bodies in a certain, predictable way—indeed, in the same way that it causes expansions of gases, and so forth. This is not the case with (1): that we could explain pain in terms of the firing of C-fibers tells us nothing about the subjective experience of pain as such, and because we can imagine a possible world in which the firing of C-fibers is not necessary for pain to exist, pain itself can exist apart from C-fibers. The differentiation between the sensation we call pain, and pain itself, is null: when we have begun talking about the one, we necessarily talk about the other. For this reason, there is an explanatory gap between the materialist way of explaining consciousness and the way in which we subjectively experience pain. Statement (1) seems contingent to us intuitively, whereas one can be disabused of the notion that (2) is contingent by explaining that the same thing that is explained by the motion of molecules is that which causes the sensation of heat to us.

3. Levine’s starting point in this article is Kripke’s argument that, firstly, all statements of identity in which both sides are true are necessarily true in all possible worlds; and secondly, that since a world can be conceived of in which statements of physical activity and psychological activity (viz., consciousness) are different, we must deny the materialistic necessity that psychological activity is reduceable to physical claims. Levine thinks that Kripke’s argument does not so strongly support a metaphysical claim as to the nature of consciousness, but that it does present a troubling epistemological problem. For the sake of argument, Levine essentially accepts a materialistic premise for the nature of the mind, but says that there is an explanatory gap between objective, empirical statements about neurophysiology and how we conceive of and subjectively experience what those statements purport to describe. He goes on to explain that this is a problem not only for strictly physical materialists, but also for functionalists as well, citing Ned Block’s argument that it is conceivable that for statement (3), “To be in pain is to be in [functional] state F,” an organism or even an entire nation of people, could corporately realize state F without actually being in pain. That this is logically possible is, for Levine, a strike against the abstraction of functionalist descriptions; as is the hypothesis that two people could share identical functional states but experience different sensory qualia, the so-called “inverted spectrum” hypothesis. None of this, even the functional description of states, helps us to understand the way something feels subjectively. Indeed, even if we restrict “pain” to being that which is subjectively felt when there is that sort of experience as C-fibers firing, that “makes the way pain feels into a brute fact,” and doesn’t tell us anything about why pain actually feels the way it does. In answer to this problem, Levine suggests that it is only highly organized physical systems that exhibit this kind of ambiguity; nevertheless, since the human mind is one of those systems, that (1) could be metaphysically factual while remaining epistemologically inaccessible. In the addendum to the article, Levine merely reiterates the dichotomy between physical description and subjective experience.