The Trappings of Falseness

1: "What do you make of habits? Do you believe in them?"
2: "What do you mean 'believe in them'?"
1: "Do you think people are 'creatures of habit,' as they say? I mean, do you think habits play a central role in an individual's life?"
2: "I suppose so, yes. Students sit in the same seats in classes without seating charts because they are comfortable with the seat they first sat in. It's the path of least resistance. Do what you've done before because you already know how to do it. You have to designate less thought to the action. We all favor autopilot."
1: "Right. I couldn't agree more. Does that fact scare you, though--our penchant for autopilot, that is?"
2: "Not really. It doesn't seem to me like it's any better or worse than anything else that is a common human trait. The phenomenon of forming habits is neutral because you could just as easily form a good habit as much as a bad habit. There's nothing about habits in the abstract that should scare anyone."
1: "In the abstract, right. Again, I am with you. But what about in the particular, what about for you or me? When we form habits, is it really so neutral? I'm not so convinced. Sure we have many benign habits, like the chair-sitting you mentioned. But habits are the grease that makes slopes so slippery."
2: "No. Slopes are slippery because people are given to being recalibrated so often. We like novelty so much--or loath staleness, whichever--that our scales are frequently being zeroed, as it were. Take romantic love, for instance. Everyone knows about honeymoons and their "wearing off." Infatuation leads to institutionalization, and then love is dead. Was the relationship any different? Not necessarily. The only thing that definitely changed was the fact that each person became comfortable, got used to it, and then we hardly take notice of those things we once found endearing. So we need more all the time. And porn--everyone whose ever been caught in the web of porn knows you start with Sears catalogs and end with snuff films. It's like hunger. You have to keep eating, more and more and more--because you are a grist. So, you start walking downhill, and that gets boring, then you start jogging, and that gets boring, then you start running--and before you know it you're buttering up your sneakers and trying to ski down that slope. That's how slopes get slippery."
1: "I see your point. But habituation has a hand in it..."
2: "You know slippery slopes are logical fallacies, right?"
1: "Logical fallacies, yes. But I am talking about human nature, where logical fallacies become actionable. And I am trying to make an ethical observation if you would only indulge me."
2: "By all means, continue. I was only making sure you weren't confused from the start."
1: "It's interesting you should put it thus. Because that is what frightens me so much about people being creatures of habit. Err once, and you're more likely to err again. And err consistently in one area of life, i.e., make a habit of it--and you'll make errors in another area of life. And then, you find yourself sliding uncontrollably. Or rather, you would find yourself sliding if you could even recognize motion anymore. But if you start in a confused state--though you think you are thinking clearly because it seems to you like any other accurate thought you have experienced--well...that just damning. Right?"
2: "I'm sorry. I can't agree. I'll grant you that if you don't understand arithmetic, you'll be poor at algebra. I agree that a erroneous pattern of mathematical thought will increase the likelihood of all you mathematical thoughts--but I hardly see how it has any bearing on your aesthetic thoughts, say."
1: "Think of falseness as a fatal disease. Maybe it starts in the kidneys, but it progresses throughout the whole body until you're dead. Health engenders health, illness, illness."
2: "Just because you break your arm doesn't mean you won't be able to think straight anymore."
1: "That's silly--and a red herring. I'm not saying that a illness in one spot will engender illness in another given spot. I'm saying that it tends to propagate though, if left untreated."
2: "I hardly think the body is an analogy for the mind. The mind isn't so interrelated."
1: "Well, humans aren't so compartmentalized as you take them to be."
2: "So, you're telling me that if I am wrong in my estimation of what the good life is--since you wanted to bring ethics in--then I am going to be wrong in my scientific investigations? I'm sorry. I don't think habits have that much sway."
1: "If you are wrong about something so fundamental, how could you ever be right about anything--short of being right by accident?"
2: "There are plenty of asshole scientists and ignorant poets who, though excelling in one area of life, are off base in another area."
1: "Of course, of course. I'm not talking about guarantees, here. Perhaps even so much emphasis on forming good writing habits, for instance, depletes the energy needed for forming good social habits. Nevertheless, let falsity in somewhere and I think you ruin your own credibility. And now we have full warrant to be paranoid, because falsity and truth hardly seem different to the person holding the beliefs--provided that have an equal amount of conviction."
2: "So, you want everyone to excel at everything, only accept that truth everywhere, and never function on hypotheses and hunches?"
1: "I just want everyone to be careful about everything they do, because everything takes us one step closer to habits. And bad habits have a way of multiplying."
2: "Well--I find this desire of yours a hopeless one. Why emphasize something that you yourself admit escapes our own scrutiny?"
1: "Well, it doesn't have to escape our scrutiny, it just does. Because we have formed a habit of being credulous. If you pause and reflect on what you do and why often enough, if you try to pay attention to that conglomeration of your self--heart, mind, body, etc.--then you'd have a better nose for falsity."
2: "I have better things to do than stop all my forward momentum and reflect all the time."
1: "So you'd rather have more beliefs and risk them being false, act on more principles and risk them being false--than have fewer ones with greater assurance of truth?"
2: "What is this assurance of truth nonsense, and all this talk about 'having a nose' and listening to your 'heart'? That's all drivel. You said yourself you can't tell, and I agree with you. Falsity feels like truth sometimes."
1: "Yes. But that's because you want it to be."
2: "What? No. I don't want the world to be as it is, but I take it like I see it just the same."
1: "Not all error is willful. I'm not speaking clearly. Sometimes error is a result of the force of habit. And so we return to my point. Perhaps your 'taking' of the world is as it is because that's the way the world hit you a long time ago and now you can't help talking it otherwise. Because it practically unquestioned by you. And now you can't discern between truth and fiction."
2: "Oh, please! Let's not start dragging armchair psychology into this."
1: "Fine, fine... how are your classes going?"

Against Verificationism

December 13, 2008

The anatomy of a metaphysical belief: upon introspection, a self cannot be found. What a scandal for philosophy! Cast your interior light upon all your thoughts and all things you can think--never will you find a self. It is no part of your consciousness. Ought we then say that the unity is a groundless presupposition? Perhaps. Ought we say it is a convenient grammatical shorthand? Perhaps. But can I assent to either? No! I reject the possibilities, my core spurns it! There is no resting with such a bleak conclusion. There must be a self--must!

2: But you cannot point to it.
1: You cannot point to all sorts of things that exist.
2: You cannot speak intelligibly about those sorts of things, even though you speak about them.
1: So much the worse for intelligence! There is more to reality than what can be fathomed. What of the ineffable of which we have an inkling? What of the dim windows we see through with the eyes of our conscience? You mean to argue them away as well?
2: Not argue them away, no. I just mean not to dogmatically assert them.
1: Everyone rests on dogmatism somewhere.
2: What's your point?
1: That the distinction between rational dogmatism and irrational dogmatism is non-existent. That the groundwork we all build upon is equally irrational. Why, for instance, should sensory verification be the ultimate criterion for existence?
2: Your question does not make any sense. You ask why as though there was something that could answer you. You are already smuggling in the very sorts of things you want to legitimize--metaphysical entities. But there is no such thing that we know of. Existence is brute. It simply is. There is no why to it, or if there is, we can never know it. All we are faced with is brute facticity. When dealing with facts, we rely upon the fact that our interactions with them are only successful insofar as they are empirically grounded.
1: Who said anything about knowing? I never said I know there is a self. I said that there must be one. I asserted that there is one. It is as brute as your facts. And now you see my point poking through--that the basis of all systems of thought are equally irrational. They always begin with a conviction, something unknown...something willed to be true.
2: How hopeless! You are suggesting we will never know the truth!
1: I fail to see the connection between your exclamations. The self-assurance of truth as you construe it may be beyond us, but hopeless? No, no. What other hope can there be for us than to strive for the sort of interior restfulness that comes from believing that the propositions that are undeniable for us are true? Such is the anatomy of my belief of selves. Reality without them is so unbearable that refuse to assent to the possibility. I may be living by presumption, but that does not guarantee that I am living by error.
2: It provides no assurances to the contrary. I would rather believe something I can convince others of than believe in something I simply want to believe.
1: Again, I see no reason to think the one sort of belief to be more accurate than another. You speak as though truth is something we decide upon together, and criticize me for saying belief is something that is decided by us and for us by our interiority. You are taking my assertions a step further, that's all. How else are each of the individuals in your group of rational-deciders supposed to offer their input but by relying upon their own interiority? Maybe they are unaware that their criteria for truth, which consists of its being assented to by a group of rational individuals with properly functioning senses, is something that itself was not be assented to by a group of rational individuals with properly functioning senses. It was assented to personally, by each individual. And again, my point pokes through--the grounding is always irrational! And if I am right, then I may be forgiven for holding fast to metaphysical entities like my self.
2: You willingly cede all claims to knowledge so easily?
1: What is so frightening to you about that? Do you think it makes you less of a person? On the contrary, it makes you more of one. It gives you life! You would not call a man weak of body for eating when he is hungry. Why do you think a man weak in mind for believing what he most deeply needs? Refraining from either leads to the same thing: starvation. Do you hate yourself so much that you wish to withhold food from yourself? Do you picture yourself, in your personal emaciation, to be a sort of Atlas--the bearer of great burdens? Do you think your heart's needs to be burdensome obligations that you can use, by way of denying them, prove yourself a hero?
2: All this bluster from a coward who collapses in the presence of his childish longings! I will not indulge the sniffling inquisition of a man who by his own admission is incredulous. Go play in your dream world and stay away from me!