The ‘God’ problem— revisited
by Witty Ludwig
– it must be an idea willingly abandoned, a primitive relic of primitive cultures; and this can only happen through understanding how the misconceptions were born in the first place.
I feel as if I’m in the midst of some sort of transition stage. I feel uncomfortable. Not, mind you, a transition in the sense that I’m becoming in any way religious but I can’t help but feel haunted by some of his observations that, only now, are starting to take shape for me. I had read snippets before but wasn’t truly grasping his point but, following my recent discovery of his notes on Frazer’s Golden Bough, piece by piece, my approach, my perspective has been shifting.
I read the following the other day as a criticism of someone who believes in the power of prayer:
“I have no beef with a person who thinks god answers their prayers. Having been brought up religious, I can tell you I haven’t had the need to pray since my deconversion and it doesn’t even bother me. This first reason should have been changed to read; I like to talk to myself and think that something is actually happening. Am afraid if I stop talking with myself, I will become a hopeless wreck.”
And I would have agreed with this wholeheartedly as recently as a couple of years ago but now I suppose my stance is creeping towards these lines:
“… it is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting dearly and I would not for my life ridicule it.”
Now, I can’t say I respect it dearly but the fact is I am starting to see it as some remarkable insight into what I suppose is referred to as the human condition. From my most recent entries before this one, the reader will note the trend of what I have been reading recently and so to borrow again the quotes from an earlier piece I documented:
“Burning in effigy. Kissing the picture of one’s beloved. That is obviously not based on the belief that it will have some specific effect on the object which the picture represents. It aims at satisfaction and achieves it. Or rather: it aims at nothing at all; we just behave this way and then we feel satisfied.
[When I am furious about something, I sometimes beat the ground or a tree with my walking stick. But I certainly do not believe that the ground is to blame or that my beating can help anything. “I am venting my anger”. And all rites are of this kind. Such actions may be called Instinct-actions.”
And:
“Really what I should like to say is that here too what is important is not the words you use or what you think while saying them, so much as the difference that they make at different points in your life. How do I know that two people mean the same thing when each says he believes in God? And just the same goes for the Trinity. Theology that insists on certain words & phrases & prohibits others makes nothing clearer. (Karl Barth)
It gesticulates with words, as it were, because it wants to say something & does not know how to express it. Practice gives the words their sense.”
I suppose my change of heart is that I starting to see more and more the wonder in the fact that something as seemingly absurd, to me, as the act or prayer can have the importance it does to so many people.
Don’t get me wrong, I still find religion itself very frustrating and often abhorrent, particularly in Christianity’s case; however, religious belief, or more importantly, religious expression is starting to indicate to me something more profound than simply ‘nonsensical actions’ or ‘the absurd’, a socially acceptable ‘madness’. I see something very animal about it– as contradictory an idea as that may seem to some– and although I don’t think I’ve mentioned this in any of my previous posts for some reason, I have held the view for many years now that we often forget that we are in fact animals and that language goes some way to obfuscate this fact.
This is why I couldn’t help but wince when I revisited my old post at the final two lines (at the top of this post). It is in fact quintessential to realise that it is primitive– and that this in fact more profound than my dismissive label suggested. I will be thinking on this further no doubt, try as I might not to.
I should add that, although this affects the first part of my original post, there is still much to stand by in that part.
wittyludwig 
I think it’s possible that after I die my consciousness might continue. Does Wittgenstein think it is dumb or cowardly to think that this is possible? Is it misusing the words “die” or “consciousness” or “continue” in some fashion? How would we know?
He would not, I’m fairly sure. I think you have already read them but I remember L.W. started one of his Lectures on Religious Belief with a quote by an Austrian general: “I shall think of you after my death, if that should be possible” and goes on to say how there are two groups of people– ones who find the statement ludicrous and another that wouldn’t.* I was formerly in the first camp, now in the latter.
I think at some point within the lecture, he went on to say that his stance, essentially, was: how should I know what a person means when they make such a statement? I don’t understand what they mean and I wouldn’t know where to begin so I neither agree nor ridicule it.
I think this stance might be duplicated with your statement– I don’t think it’s necessarily misusing the words depending on what you mean by them. If I were to offer my own take on it, I think I could move past ‘die’ relatively quickly but once I reach ‘consciousness’ and ‘continue’ it does become hazy because I don’t think I believe what you believe. I’ve had similar conversations with people before and have had it explained to me that it’s because they see consciousness as an ‘energy’ or perhaps the ‘soul’ or ‘mind’ etc. I’m not sure if you mean any of these, a combination, or none and so I don’t really know how to engage. Personally, I would say ‘I disagree with you’ were we to meet; but, I think L.W. would say to me on what basis? That really I should be honest with myself and say that I have no idea what you’re saying to me rather than dismiss it out of hand. It would need much more exploration. Perhaps, by consciousness you mean your mind and that you would still be able to think, reminisce, anger, fear, calculate, etc.; would this be floating in the ether? Perhaps you mean as a soul in heaven and thought isn’t necessary. If you mean the former, that you would have all the thoughts etc., then certainly the word ‘die’ for you and ‘die’ for me would be very different. For me I would hit a brick wall where I try to imagine the state of being I had before birth; for you, a lot more connotations would hang with the word.
Does this make sense at all?
*This is paraphrased, but I think quite accurate.
I don’t know precisely what I mean by them! Didn’t LW think sometimes people think they mean something by their words but they’re wrong? I don’t know if I am one of those people. I find it very weird and hard to explain that I exist at all, and I find it weird that this particular hunk of meat and bones and brain tissue is me, so since those facts are hard to talk about in a sensible way I feel like “existence after death” is at least not more nonsensical. I guess I don’t quite understand how I am able to exist at all. Since “I exist now” seems hard to understand I’ve deciding “I will exist after death” seems to be no worse. But maybe I am kidding myself! What do you think?
” Didn’t LW think sometimes people think they mean something by their words but they’re wrong?”
I can’t think of anything (which doesn’t necessarily count for much) quite like this. As you say, there’s misuse and, in different notes, he suggests thought experiments like: “Say that you’re ‘going to the cinema on Sunday at 4pm’ and *mean* by it: ‘it’s rather unpleasantly hot outside.'” I might be having a mental blank but can’t think of a time where it’s the case.
“I find it very weird and hard to explain that I exist at all,”
Wittgenstein describes this ‘sensation’, or sensations like this, on a few occasions– the sense of bewilderment, wonder, or marvel at the fact that we exist at all. The earliest example I can find, which I think is relevant to you here, is from his 1929 lecture on ethics in Nottingham. You may have already read it but, if not, the excerpt I’m thinking of is below and the link to the full lecture is at the bottom:*
“[…] One man would perhaps choose as his stock example the sensation when taking a walk on a fine summer’s day. Now in this situation I am, if I want to fix my mind on what I mean by absolute or ethical value. And there, in my case, it always happens that the idea of one particular experience presents itself to me which therefore is, in a sense, my experience par excellence and this is the reason why, in talking to you now, I will use this experience as my first and foremost example. (As I have said before, this is an entirely personal matter and others would find other examples more striking.) I will describe this experience in order, if possible, to make you recall the same or similar experiences, so that we may have a common ground for our investigation. I believe the best way of describing it is to say that when I have it I wonder at the existence of the world. And I am then inclined to use such phrases as “how extraordinary that anything should exist” or “how extraordinary that the world should exist.” I will mention another experience straight away which I also know and which others of you might be acquainted with: it is, what one might call, the experience of feeling absolutely safe. I mean the state of mind in which one is inclined to say “I am safe, nothing can injure me whatever happens.” Now let me consider these experiences, for, I believe, they exhibit the very characteristics we try to get clear about. And there the first thing I have to say is, that the verbal expression which we give to these experiences is nonsense! If I say “I wonder at the existence of the world” I am misusing language. Let me explain this: It has a perfectly good and clear sense to say that I wonder at something being the case, we all understand what it means to say that I wonder at the size of a dog which is bigger than anyone I have ever seen before or at any thing which, in the common sense of the word, is extraordinary. In every such case I wonder at something being the case which I could conceive not to be the case. I wonder at the size of this dog because I could conceive of a dog of another, namely the ordinary size, at which I should not wonder. To say “I wonder at such and such being the case” has only sense if I can imagine it not to be the case. In this sense one can wonder at the existence of, say, a house when one sees it and has not visited it for a long time and has imagined that it had been pulled down in the meantime. But it is nonsense to say that I wonder at the existence of the world, because I cannot imagine it not existing. I could of course wonder at the world round me being as it is. If for instance I had this experience while looking into the blue sky, I could wonder at the sky being blue as opposed to the case when it’s clouded. But that’s not what I mean. I am wondering at the sky being whatever it is. One might be tempted to say that what I am wondering at is a tautology, namely at the sky being blue or not blue. But then it’s just nonsense to say that one is wondering at a tautology. Now the same applies to the other experience[s] which I have mentioned, the experience of absolute safety. We all know what it means in ordinary life to be safe. I am safe in my room, when I cannot be run over by an omnibus. I am safe if I have had whooping cough and cannot therefore get it again. To be safe essentially means that it is physically impossible that certain things should happen to me and therefore it’s nonsense to say that I am safe whatever happens. Again this is a misuse of the word “safe” as the other example was of a misuse of the word “existence” or “wondering.” Now I want to impress on you that a certain characteristic misuse of our language runs through all ethical and religious expressions.”
These ideas are later refined and discussed further in other notebooks etc. but I can’t think of where the passages are off the top of my head.** I suppose it’s worth bearing in mind that this is in the earliest possible stages of ‘late Wittgenstein’ and so much revision I’m sure occurred. That said, I’m pretty confident the core message message remains the same; i.e., that it’s misuse.
“Since “I exist now” seems hard to understand I’ve deciding “I will exist after death” seems to be no worse. But maybe I am kidding myself! What do you think?”
I think he might have suggested (well, barked ferociously, probably) that you’re misusing language when you say ‘I exist now’.
What do I think? I found On Certainty very influential and so am probably poorly regurgitating points within it but: as you say, it is difficult to talk about sensibly because, in isolation, as a philosophical / existential claim, it seems meaningless. The fact that you exist forms the very framework, the scaffolding, for the rest of your thoughts. If you could doubt it, I’m not sure that you could be confident of anything else. Personally, if I were struggling with the language or having some sort of existential crisis, I’d home in on everyday examples of ‘exist’ and think about its grammar. Generally, we use the word on an everyday basis without a problem: Unicorns don’t exist. A cure-all for Cancer doesn’t exist. In the first case, this means something like: there has never been a documented sighting and there never will be (compare with: “unicorns only exist in fairy tales”); in the second case, it might mean something like: science hasn’t yet reached the point where we can cure cancer. There are all sorts of everyday examples where you can see its function in the language game. In your case, is it meant to be a reassurance? I think you could almost stop with the word ‘I’ as the misuse would probably start there if you genuinely doubted your existence. Who are you explaining it to and for what purpose? If you visited a hospital for the mentally ill, perhaps they could doubt whether you existed or not but in the vast quantity of cases, it will be a given that you do exist– and by that, I guess I mean that you have an impact, are acknowledged, influence, can be seen, can be felt, function, etc. and everything else that hangs in the air with the word ‘exist’.
In essence, I agree with you that ‘I will exist after death’ is, if anything, probably equally nonsensical! But it might be a religious exertion, for example, and so mean a great deal to some people.
I haven’t read it for a couple of years now but one of my past posts examined the grammar or ‘exist’ directly or indirectly. I’m not sure if I still vouch for it but it might make for an interesting read.
Was I too tangential in any way or did I stay roughly on track?
*http://www.geocities.jp/mickindex/wittgenstein/witt_lec_et_en.html
**On certainty strikes me as an obvious hunting ground. Right off the bat, I think the discussion gives examples such as ‘ I know I am a human’; ‘I know I have a brain’; ‘I know I have two hands’; etc.
“I think I might exist after death” and “I wonder at there being anything at all” are similar uses of language. LW says they are “misuses of language” but when his Austrian general friend says “I hope we will meet again after death” that is not a misuse of language. Or is it? Is “I hope we will meet again after death” more a misuse of language than “I know we will never meet again after death”?
Really very sorry for the delay in coming back; I’m usually on top of these things but took an extended break from thinking recently.
I’m not going to re-read what I wrote above but it approach it freshly; I thought about it quite a lot after you posted. I think the misuse depends on what you’re trying to convey. For me, in the Austrian general case, I think a sentiment is being expressed; I think it was meant as an emotional or deep gesture. Are you familiar with L.W.’s appreciation of Count Eberhard’s Hawthorn?(1) I see similar qualities here– I think if you *try to say deep things*, in L.W.’s eyes, you’re going to struggle (boundaries of language etc.). For the Austrian general, I think the context is important– if these words were said before a final charge where both men concerned knew death was inevitable, the meaning could be taken simply to be as comforting words; or as a note of affection, or admission of respect/comradely love.
With something like ‘I think I might exist after death’, it sounds theoretical, propositional when not in a context. I think it would As a stand-alone sentence, or random point made to a friend/stranger, I don’t know where to start with it.
At the conclusion of a deeply religious conversation, perhaps a meaning could be found. I can’t see it myself. As I try to imagine it now, I feel I need more context.
As to ‘I wonder at there being anything at all’– I struggle with L.W. here. I feel I understand the sentiment if the sentiment is along the lines of ‘isn’t our awareness of what’s going on around us, of the ‘I’, of the physics of everything etc. etc. gobsmacking, astonishing.’ I think I know that feeling he described in that lecture hall and I’m sure the reason he has given it as an example is because it will have affected almost everyone at one time or another. Isn’t it enough that the sentence helps direct our attention towards that sensation/realisation/thought? The above quotation from the lecture was from 1929 and so perhaps he departed from this view to some extent later on.
It’s difficult to discuss his ideas/stance but then, fortunately, I don’t think I’m the first to admit that.
(1) I’ve only ever read it in translation and in heroic couplet form– it’s definitely an example, in my eyes, of a poem that has its content suffer for it.
Thanks for thinking about it. I cannot follow your train of thought here. How can I tell if I’m “trying to say deep things”? I don’t think I’ve ever done that in my life!
This is probably a reason not to take breaks and then thrust back into the middle of things!
I was jumping all over the place too much. You know how early L.W. talks about how the ethical, the mystical, cannot be put into words? They can only be negatively defined or ‘shewn but not said’? I’ve found a pertinent quote online, which is handy:
“And this is how it is: if only you do not try to utter what is unutterable [das Unaussprechliche] then nothing gets lost. But the unutterable will be – unutterably – contained in what has been uttered! ”
I think an example of trying to express something deep, to some, could be: “I wonder at there being anything at all.” For L.W., I don’t think this says anything.
I think if there was, for the sake of argument, a poem where we see something particularly ‘touching’, or behaviour that highlighted this sensation indirectly, L.W. would approve.
What I was trying to say was that I think this is an attitude, ‘shewing rather than saying’, that does continue through to later Wittgenstein. The idea of looking to practices to give words their meaning.
Not necessarily a fair example [reading your blog, I certainly don’t have your knack for analogies] but, in respect to something like love: if you imagine two people who, having lost someone very dear to them, behave differently. One, losing their wife, starts a new family within a year and she becomes a distant memory; the other still feels it would be unfaithful to his [dead] wife ever to lie with another woman, won’t throw away her belongings, visits their favourite spot, re-reads her letters and emails from the years of their relationship etc.
When both men say they loved their wives [first wife for the first example], do both have the same view of ‘love’ or is there a case to say they might view it quite differently? Did one love her more than the other or is it simply one was more emotionally fragile? The other more pragmatic?
I suppose I sort of understand it, when I consider my own grandmother– her husband died very young and she has never discussed with me (or anyone else as far as I’m aware) why she never remarried and, as it happens, very rarely talks to anyone about him. He occasionally pops up in a certain context: at what point they moved from Cambridge, his reaction at the time to one of my father’s life decisions, etc. etc. but is generally very quiet on the subject. Then, on rare occasions, during a conversation she will laugh quite heartily about a particular memory and speak so fondly of him; and I remember on one occasion, during the middle of a day together, she suddenly muttered quietly to herself ‘It’s Tom’s birthday today’, and I remember that striking me quite powerfully. More than had she always said how much she missed him or how deeply they were in love.
As ever, I think I might have become distracted and gone off-piste again but I’m trying, if nothing else, to highlight what I mean by talking around it! It’s the little things, the context, that help you to understand what certain things mean to certain people. This is my way of interpreting a potential distinction in the examples you originally gave. I can more easily imagine a range of potential meanings from the General’s words but if a philosopher approached me and said opened with: “I marvel that I exist.” I think I might have an inkling of what the person is trying to say but not much more! I think I might just think they go through life in a general state of puzzlement.
Suppose the two widows you mention both say “I hope I meet my spouse in heaven”? Do they mean different things? Supposing there are two spouses both of whom re-marry and one says “I hope I meet my spouse in heaven” and the other says “I am sure I will not meet my spouse in heaven.” Do they mean the same thing?
I think the grammar of ‘heaven’ strikes me here. I’m sure you’ve met people with varying ideas of what heaven is. I think two people from a small community with similar religious beliefs might, for a while in their discussions at least, be on the same wavelength. It might break down after a certain amount of digging; but, when you compare it with someone from a different religious community, even if we limit it to a judeo-christian one, you could find differences very quickly. One imagines a world very similar to this one where you live for eternity with your loved ones; the other imagines nothing of that sort, just an eternal state of bliss as a drifting consciousness; another thinks that consciousness doesn’t feature etc. I remember people at school believing in heaven but then having fierce debates where one approached it logically, others didn’t see logic as necessary.
I think in these examples, meeting their spouse is relatively safe ground but the difficulty is with “heaven”– for some, all the good people in the world will be present, all family, it would be seasonless, living in the clouds, in God’s company; for others, none of this might be present. It depends on what hangs with that word, what connotations and assumptions are present. If everything aligns, I would think they do mean the same thing: otherwise, they might be worlds apart.
I thought you were a “meaning is use” guy and believed that religious language was meaningless! Now that we are bringing in connotations and assumptions for sure you are correct, but how much of the Wittgensteinian criticism of metaphysics as meaningless remains?
I thought I was too! Am I not? I think once upon a time I thought that religious language was meaningless but doesn’t my original post on this page chronicle my departure from it?
For me, the connotations and assumptions still come about through social use, through community– I’m not endorsing a Lewis Carroll, Humpty Dumpy, “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean”, if that’s what you endorse or think I endorse?
Whilst a person’s concept of heaven might be very personal or private, I don’t think they’ve reached this all on their own.
As for Wittgenstein on metaphysics, I think it depends. In the most simplistic nutshell I can muster, I think for him metaphysical sentences or proclamations are only nonsensical, tautological, or meaningless when extracted from context and inserted into a philosophical one. Within their contexts, meanings can be found. Take Moore’s ‘I know I have two hands’. For L.W., this was nonsensical in the abstract, as an existential claim, as a piece of philsophy; but he also posited in O.C. that there were contexts that would give the words a home (I think one example was something like: following a medical accident and speaking to a paramedic).
By the way — how about those Silicon Valley guys who say they are going to “upload themselves into a computer”?! To me that sounds like they are going to have hot buttered Thursday — it is literally nonsense. But I have a sociological and psychological critique of why I think they say things like that — they have a mistaken idea of what it is to be a person — they think a person is a separated individual who makes money and consumes experiences — and this warped view of human life makes them say and think crazy things. But I wonder if LW has the resources to make those kind of judgment calls.
I don’t know that I can speak for L.W. but I agree on the nonsense part. For me, it sounds as if they’re abusing the word ‘themselves’ because, whatever they do manage to achieve, I think it would open a lot of debate as to whether the ‘themselves’ before and after are even comparable! Your take on their ‘warped view’ could well be right. For me, there’s definitely a lack of appreciation of the mind/body problem. I haven’t read a great deal around the claims, though– do you know whether they have addressed this? I’d imagine, if they haven’t, the internet/media will have certainly had something to say.
Do you (or he) not think philosophers say what they say because of their political and social and personal context? I don’t know much about Moore but he was the Bloomsbury group, right? So he felt that there were a lot of oppressive dogmas being pushed by religion and “square” society and he and his friends wanted to live lives based on art and friendship and bisexual romances. So he started to write about what you know and what you don’t know to advance that agenda, and make it clear to himself.
Doesn’t everyone say what they say because of their political, social, and personal context? And so I suppose that’s your point.
I don’t believe he was part of the Bloomsbury group by the way– I think he was part of the Cambridge Apostles, in case that’s what you’re thinking of. Let’s assume that he was part of it anyway, are you suggesting that, in this case, it comes from a personal existential crisis rather than a purely academic agenda?
yes that’s my point. everybody, or everybody sincere, has some kind of personal context (historical, psychological, social) that gives their remarks meaning. So I don’t believe that language is “on holiday” when people are doing philosophy. Their arguments may be bad, or prove less than they think they do, but there’s an existential reason why they think the way they do.
In all of our discussion so far, our examples have concerned ethical or religious language (until I mentioned Moore). For L.W., my understanding is that he fully accepts and is aware that there are ethical problems, mathematical problems, logical ones, social ones, etc. but felt (strongly of course!) that there are no genuine *philosophical* problems and that, if there were ones, they were borne from language; whether that’s misuse or misunderstanding. Could you elaborate slightly on your last sentence? It sounds like a psychological point where, owing to internal influences as well as external ones, we all think in different ways.
And, to clarify, when you say that the personal context gives their remarks meaning: you mean to them themselves? I.e. they have their own understanding, meaning of the word ‘heaven’ when using the word? If so, I agree but, going back to our original discussions (which I have now read through for a refresher), that doesn’t mean I personally could understand what they mean without a great deal of digging and, even then, there might come a point where I stop being able to follow!
As a partial tangent, if someone asked you to pose a philosophical problem/puzzle, what would be the first to spring to mind or the one you would pose?
my philosophical puzzle would be one of personal identity. you remove pieces of a person and he continues to be the same person as the gaps get fixed. but then you used the old pieces to make a person. who is the same person? it’s a real puzzle for me. I can imagine waking up like Gregor in the metamorphosis and being a beetle. I just find personal identity very puzzling. But as far as philosophy I view it as continuous with religious and personal concerns. So when Socrates says “The good man cannot be harmed” or Descartes says “The only thing I know is my own consciousness” these seem to me to be continuous with the sort of worries and issues those two people were involved in — Socrates standing up to an ignorant mob, Descartes trying to get some room for freedom of thought in a culture dominated by reverence for the past and organized religion.
Like a variant of Theseus’ paradox? What’s an example of putting ‘the old pieces to make a person’?
In fact, what’s an example of removing pieces of a person? Could it be through therapy (self or third party), like removing aggressive behaviour or creating new habits/desires/appreciations? Or simply natural change; i.e., the me twelve months ago hated whisky but the me now loves it– how can we be the same person?
no I meant some kind of sci fi version of the ship of Theseus. Monday morning they take out a piece of my brain (a cell) and replace it with some kind of artificial copy that does the same thing. Tuesday they take another piece. By the end of the year my whole brain is artificial. It seems to me like nothing much is different — I still drink coffee, still carry on web conversations with you about Wittgenstein. But then they take all the meat pieces of my brain and put them together and give them a new body. He seems like he is obviously me, but I seem to myself like I’m obviously me. It seems tricky. I have trouble saying who I am is a linguistic convention or a language game, since me being me seems more basic.
BTW I came across a good example of the in-real-life use of religious language: By 1837, Elijah Lovejoy knew he was going to be killed. “If the laws of my country fail to protect me,” he wrote shortly before he was murdered, “I appeal to God, and with him I cheerfully rest my cause. I can die at my post, but I cannot desert it.”
re Elijah Lovejoy– that’s a good example. Where did you come across it?
an article by Sarah Kendzior about the us election
You’ll have thought about this a lot more than me so I may come across a little slow on this topic but I’d be interested to hear at which points you diverge or where you continue where I stop:
*Could* you be the ‘same’ though? I mean, I’m not sure what your thoughts are on discussions concerning the mind/body problem but, for me, I often find that there’s an underestimation of the influence of the body, the chemicals, the language used when discussing these things. The word ‘same’ also seems to open up a can of worms. The difference between the *same* man walking past your door each day and you and your friend owning the *same* sneakers.
I mean, taking your first example concerning Eric(1), let’s say the piece by piece process happens during the course of a week, is the you on day 7 the ‘same’ as the you from two weeks before? Physically, no. Essentially comparable? Well I suppose the result would be in the pudding to some extent but let’s compare the Eric from two weeks ago to Eric on day 1, when the first little piece is changed: you’re still not the *same* as you were before the process even if, functionally, nothing discernible has changed at all.
Sci-fi hypothetical aside, if you compare yourself now to ten years ago, I imagine you’re different in many ways. Do you see a crisis of identity here as well? Is it the constant change that troubles you and this sci-fi version helps to demonstrate it more clearly?
As for Eric(2), going back to my first paragraph, my view of what we call the mind is that it’s more than just the brain. Logically, perhaps there’s an argument to make that, supposing it functioned it would be an identical reconstruction, the same, as what the original, pre-dismantled Eric had. Even if it could be achieved physically, the artificial body and chemicals, simulating your original body, wouldn’t be the ‘same’ in a mirrored version of Eric(1)’s situation.
How grounded do you stay when thinking about this topic? Do you presuppose that the biology, the science could work perfectly for the purpose of treating it as a thought experiment? For me, at a point, it feels so hypothetical, so linguistic, that it’s as if we’re trying to prove, find, or simply contemplate a triangular circle; i.e. a grammatical/linguistic issue. Where the understanding of what we call a ‘mind’, or how we use the word, is creating the problems.
personal identity is a puzzle. the mind body problem is a puzzle. but I think whatever your take on the mind body problem is (and I think these days I’m sort of a Davidsonian or Spinozist) it doesn’t solve issues of personal identity. The science fiction stuff just dramatizes the weirdness of the issue. Am I the same person as I was twenty years ago? Hard to say, but I make plans now for myself in the future. I have an experience and a bunch of practices that make sense of me as a continuing being, much more than I do of myself as a collection of time slices that have to somehow be unified at a later point. And yet, as I mentioned before, I don’t feel like my linguistic practices are what make me who I am because I feel like I’m the one engaged in the practices. I was a Buddhist monk for a while in my 20s and we (or they) believe that the self is an illusion. But who is having the illusion? I never figured that out.
On your comment opening with personal identity being a puzzle:
I have found myself occasionally thinking on this from time to time, even though quite some time has passed.
The issue of personal identity has not been an issue for me, and so I was not sure how to approach it. Either it hasn’t been because I don’t find myself in that particular fly bottle or perhaps it’s because I’m too naive.
I think my stance, despite all of the occasional dwellings, hasn’t altered and this is because in my mind I think I am Herclitean to some extent. Seeing myself as fundamentally chemical– which of course is where a philosophical divergence could and likely does already occur– I don’t have an issue in seeing myself as uniquely myself and yet constantly changing (I think he made a reference to ‘fire’ being such).
Perhaps this is something you have already explored but found unsatisfactory. I believe I have read in the past that Eastern philosophies have been influenced by Heraclitus and I know with certainty you will be more familiar with these than me.
However simplistic, I find solace in this, which, again, either has its own importance or which shrouds me in blissful ignorance. In any event, I don’t feel that particular mental burden. It of course certainly ties into the mind-body problem though, again, I’m not sure it’s a dichotomy that needs to be embraced but that’s the Wittgensteinian approach in me.
I suppose I type all of this because I want to hear the dilemma first hand in the full knowledge and in spite of the fact that I’m unlikely to be of any help.
Separately, upon rereading, I’m not sure what comes to mind when you say that you don’t feel your linguistic practices are what make you who you are. In my mind, the social practices are a huge part but supposing you reduce yourself to the most basic of animals, especially if not social, I accept there would be some level of consciousness. Though one with the concept of ‘identity’ or the ‘I’, the Ego, I’m not sure.
I’m afraid I’ve lost my train of thought here. What are we discussing?
The issue of personal identity. I think you once commented that it’s a real issue you wrestle with. Or used to. I’m now talking to the you of today and so the thoughts may have changed of course! As you yourself have; and the rest of us.
Oh I guess I don’t care about that anymore! Did you figure out a way to fit God talk into your life?
For me I think it will only ever be when used as an exclamation. More importantly for me was how to engage with others’ use of the word. Or religious language in general. I think that’s figured out now. It was a gradual process!
I wonder where it all came from!
I think I see what you mean. I don’t think I was appreciating enough the spiritual dimension to what you were saying (unless you think I’ve missed the mark again!).
“spiritual” is a funny word! what does it mean to you?
Good question– I’m not entirely sure. For most of my life to date, I wouldn’t have considered myself in any way spiritual and, in all honestly, probably belittled spirituality at the time; but that started to change a few years ago.
I don’t mean the following parts conclusively or exhaustively but in my eyes it is personal to a great degree; whether that’s self identity or in how you choose to conduct your business life. Reflective. I think sincerity is important; I don’t think spirituality, as I conceive it, could feature vanity or superficiality of any sort as I think it needs to be honest.
I haven’t given it much thought before but I suspect those are core properties for me. It doesn’t *need* anything external for me, like a god etc. but that element could certainly feature for some.
What are your thoughts? Do you have a clear picture/idea yourself?
I like Kierkegaard’s definition in “The Sickness Unto Death” (although in that work he calls being spiritual “having a self”). He thinks that human beings are inherently drawn in two opposite directions. One direction pulls us to make the specific, concrete, vulnerable commitments in our lives important, the other pulls us to have an overall, general, eternal perspective on what matters for us. Spirit is taking a stand on how to put those two opposing pulls together in our lives. So there are different spiritual approaches to life — some people might just throw themselves into the immediate, some people might try to forget about the immediate and live for some abstract goal — it’s all spiritual. Being insincere or distracted or evading this fundamental paradox is not spiritual.
I also like that. I think I should persist with Kierkegaard. I find Concluding Unscientific Postscript hard work, I have to admit. His writing style, even appreciating that it’s in translation, I find tough. If you had to recommend one piece of his work, which would it be?
I would suggest reading Hubert Dreyfus on Kierkegaard first and continuing to tackle CUP.
I’ve had a look at what books of his are available– is there one in particular that you had in mind? Many thanks for the recommendation.