Five Thousand B.C. and Other Philosophical Fantasies

by Raymond Smullyan

Of course, one way that color-shape distinctions could arise on this planet would be if some of the color-sighted inhabitants had come from a neighboring planet on which the optical and physical laws were like those on Earth. These few would have made a sharp distinction between color and shape prior to having landed on this strange planet. Imagine their utter surprise! Could they, do you think, be able to test the others for color-vision? Perhaps only by taking them back to their home planet!

  I’d now like to consider a slightly frightening variant of our analogy. Again, our Planet A is such that any two objects have the same shape if and only if they have the same color. Again, half the people are color-sighted—by which I mean that they have that physiological equipment which those of us have who can see colors—and the other half are color-blind. Let us assume now that in fact nobody on the planet had ever suspected that there was any difference between colors and shapes and that the color-sighted people had no idea that they were any different from the color-blind. Furthermore, only one vocabulary had developed; let us say that spherical was used to mean both spherical and red (which are coextensive); cubical meant both cubical and green; and so forth.

  Now suppose a band from that planet were to travel for the first time to another planet—a normal planet like Earth. Imagine the reactions of the color-sighted. They might well think that they were going crazy! They would see, let us say, a red, spherical Object A, a green, spherical Object B, and a green, cubical Object C. Objects A and C would be perfectly normal. But Object B! What kind of a hybrid monster is this! Imagine how they would try to describe it back home! “It is both spherical and cubical!” (By which, of course, they would mean, “It is both spherical and green.”)

  “What do you mean by this nonsense? How can something be both spherical and cubical?”

  “Well, in one way it is spherical; in another way it is cubical.”

  “Oh, come on now, what kind of mystical, dialectical nonsense is this? We all know that the statement, ‘A spherical object is not cubical,’ is analytic—it is necessarily true.”

  “Well, in one sense it is analytic, but in another sense it is actually false.”

  And so forth.

  If the travelers remained on the other planet for awhile, they would, of course, have to develop a dual vocabulary. When they returned home, they would then realize the distinction between color-vision and shape-perception. Would you say that they had had color-vision all along but didn’t know it? (Perhaps this is similar to the belief of certain Eastern mystics that all of us are already in a state of enlightenment but don’t yet know it!) Some readers will probably say, “Yes, they always had it,” others, “No, they did not,” and still others (who are positivistically oriented) that the question is meaningless unless it means that they had the potential to distinguish differently colored objects of the same size and shape on a normal planet. I believe, though, that after returning home most of the travelers would have said, “Yes, I had color-vision all along, but I did not realize it. I have not gained any new faculty, I merely have become aware of a certain faculty I always possessed.” (Perhaps this is again not too far removed from what is meant by certain Zenenlightened people who have claimed, “From enlightenment I have gained nothing.”)

  I hope my reader will at least feel some analogy to the mind-body problem. What baffles me most about this problem is how it is that we disagree among ourselves so radically about such a basic question! Dualists do not talk about sensations as opposed to physical events, as something occult or unknown but as something known directly and with absolute certainty. Monistic materialists claim this notion to be illusory, occult, or mystical, as are the notions of minds or souls. Why this fantastic difference? No amount of deductive or inductive reasoning ever seems to settle it! So, to what can the difference be attributed? I hardly can believe that the dualists have some extra perceptive faculty (like color-vision) that the materialists lack! Is it possible that settling the difference will take something as drastic as the discovery one day of a lack of parallelism between mental and physical phenomena?

  Notes

  1

  Rudolf Carnap, “Psychology in Physical Language.” In Logical Positivism, edited by A. J. Ayer (New York: The Free Press, 1966) p. 165.

  4

  To Be or Not to Be?

  8

  To Be or Not to Be?

  I once posed the question, “What is the difference between an optimist and an incurable optimist?” Answer: “An optimist is one who says,”Everything is for the best; mankind will survive.” An incurable optimist is one who says,”Everything is for the best; mankind will survive. And even if mankind doesn’t survive, it is still for the best.”

  Then there is the pessimistic optimist who sadly shakes his head and says, “I’m very much afraid that everything is for the best.” I think that the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer can best be characterized as an optimistic pessimist. He happily and proudly nods his head and says, “See, everything is still for the worst,” and he is optimistic that things will continue going as badly as he predicts.

  Although Schopenhauer is usually called a pessimist, he can hardly be said to have a truly tragic sense of life, as have such writers as Leopardi or Unamuno. No, he has rather an angry sense of life. William James really hit the nail on the head when he said that Schopenhauer reminds one of a barking dog who would rather have the world ten times worse than it is than lose his chance of barking at it. It is indeed true that Schopenhauer is least convincing as a pessimist when he is most petulant.

  I think a distinction should be made between what might be termed essential pessimism and contingent pessimism. I would define essential pessimism as the belief that life has to be predominantly painful, even under the best possible circumstances. By contingent pessimism, I mean the doctrine that as a matter of fact life is predominantly painful, but there is no a priori reason that it has to be. Thus, a contingent pessimist would say that this world is a pretty rotten one (and will likely remain so), but there is no logical necessity for this to be. Whereas essential pessimism leaves no hope for life at all, contingent pessimism leaves room for some hope, though perhaps only a slim one. It should be noted that the existence of only one predominantly happy life would constitute a disproof of essential pessimism but not of contingent pessimism.

  Schopenhauer kept mixing up the two in a rather confusing way. I think that if he had left out his contingent pessimism, his essential pessimism would have come through more convincingly. As an essential pessimist, he tried to make the point that as soon as one desire is gratified, another one arises, and so the individual is as unhappy as before. As a contingent pessimist he kept ranting and raving about such things as how mendacious and hypocritical people are. But if Schopenhauer’s essential pessimism is correct, why should these issues even matter? If people became less mendacious and hypocritical, how would that solve the real problem, which is life itself?

  Von Hartmann. Now, the philosopher Eduard von Hartmann (a successor of Schopenhauer) strikes me as much more interesting. I am amazed that his book Philosophy of the Unconscious is not more widely known today than it is. His philosophical system is as wild as anything found in science fiction.

  To begin with, he is far more convincing than Schopenhauer. He does not seem to take a perverse delight in how bad things are but instead seems genuinely concerned about what can be done to help matters. He has none of Schopenhauer’s hysteria. His writings are completely sober, which adds to the convincing quality. He is far more an essential pessimist than a contingent one. He first sets out to dispel what he considers the three main illusions of mankind: (1) That life is not really all that bad; (2) that there is an afterlife in which we will be happy; and (3) that through science and progress the world can be improved.

  After many, many arguments to dispel these illusions, he considers the question, In virtue of all this, why shouldn’t we commit suicide? He rightfully rejects Schopenhauer’s silly reason that we would then never
have the satisfaction of knowing we had done it. So why shouldn’t we commit suicide for von Hartmann? It is because he believed that we are all but parts of one vast universal unconscious (gradually becoming conscious through evolutionary processes). We are but limbs of a single tree. Thus, if one individual commits suicide, the general problem would not be helped. What if we all committed suicide? No good. The collective unconscious that has come to life once would surely come to life again and suffer as much as before.

  Then what should we do? Answer: We should develop science and cooperate with the spirit of progress as much as possible. Why? To make the world a happier place? No. This cannot be done, as the author has already argued. The real reason we should cooperate with science and progress is to aid evolution in accomplishing its true end. What is this end? Why, the entire purpose of evolution is that the collective unconscious develop enough knowledge to find a way of annihilating itself in such a manner that it can never come back!

  This, in a nutshell, is von Hartmann’s system. Wouldn’t it be funny if it were correct?

  I once asked the philosopher Bowsma why it was that when I read the pessimistic philosophers, instead of getting depressed, I feel enormously cheered up. He replied, “Of course, because you know it isn’t true!” I’m not sure that this is quite the reason; it may be so for Schopenhauer, whose arguments are so unconvincing (in a way almost fraudulent). But von Hartmann seems so utterly earnest and sincere that it is hardly possible not to take him seriously. Of course, he may well be wrong in any or all of his fundamental theses. It may be that present life is not as bad as he believes. It may be that there is an afterlife after all (who really knows?), and it may be that science and progress can make the world a happier place (though these days the prospects do not look so good).

  The interesting thing, though, is that his system really ends on a happy note. He does have confidence that evolution will finally succeed in its end and all suffering will ultimately cease. So in the last analysis is he really a pessimist or an optimist?

  9

  The Zen of Life and Death

  “You know,” added Tweedledee very gravely, “it’s one of the most serious things that can possibly happen to one in a battle—to get one’s head cut off.”

  Alice laughed loud: But she managed to turn it into a cough, for fear of hurting his feelings.

  Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass,

  Chapter 4

  The subject of life and death appears to be of some general interest, and so a discussion of this topic may not be out of order. The only trouble is that just about anything one can say on this subject is probably wrong!

  The Zen master Huang Po said about the mind, “Begin to reason about it, and you at once fall into error.” I think that the same can be said even more aptly about life and death. All discussions of this subject somehow tend to miss the mark. Then why discuss it? I could give a Zen-like answer and say, “Why not?” The fact is that we are interested in these things and to repress these interests is kind of silly. Of course, many regard such discussions as essentially morbid. This is beautifully illustrated by Bertrand Russell’s story of the man at a banquet who was asked what he thought would happen to him after his death. He seemed very uneasy and tried to avoid the question. But the questioner persisted and finally the man said, “I suppose I shall enter paradise and enjoy total bliss for all eternity, but must we talk about such unpleasant subjects?”

  A somewhat related incident is the following. Once we had a dinner party. I jokingly said about one of the guests (a very close friend of mine), “Don’t give him too much to drink; he gets hostile and belligerent.” His wife then said, “He goes through several stages, one of which is that he becomes infuriated with the idea that one day he will have to die.” My friend is only in his late twenties. Another guest, a gentleman in his early sixties, turned to him and said, “Are you not a bit young to be worrying about that? Do you really find life that wonderful?” My friend replied, “Oh, yes.” He then went on to describe how he simply could not conceive of himself as not existing, the idea of which was infinitely frightening and repugnant. He then added, “I would be less disturbed by the thought of being eternally in hell than of not existing at all.” I told my friend that I found it rather odd and puzzling that he should find nonexistence both inconceivable and frightening. Either one alone I could understand perfectly, but how could something be both nonunderstandable and frightening? The very fact that he could have such a positive emotional reaction as fear attached to a given notion would indicate that he had to have some idea of the notion. He admitted that this was indeed puzzling but found no reassurance in these considerations. I then suggested that what perhaps disturbed him was the thought that time should somehow continue without him, and I asked him, “Would it disturb you as much if tomorrow time itself would suddenly stop, so there never would come an actual time when you were dead?” He replied that the question was meaningless to him since he could form absolutely no notion at all of what it could mean for time itself to stop. I can’t blame him too much for his reaction though I do not find the idea of time stopping so unconceivable. At any rate, I pressed this particular point no further although I did partake of the very lively discussion about life and death that persisted most of the evening.

  The next day, my young friend and I reviewed some of the events of the previous evening. He told me with a mischievous smile that at parties, he would always bring up the subject of death and that the conversation would then remain on this subject all night, sometimes without his saying any more. What particularly impressed him was everybody’s desperate attempts to convince him that there was really nothing for him to worry about! But he believed that the very urgency of their attempts indicated their own desperation at the thought that there really was something to worry about. I think that there is much truth in this observation. Since we all do have certain unresolved inner desperations about the matter, I think it helpful that we all do think about and discuss these matters as freely as possible. Is there really something to worry about? I believe not. But many will interpret this as a sort of wishful thinking, or “whistling in the dark.” I will return to this question later.

  One can approach the question of life and death in many ways. One is from the viewpoint of authority and revelation. Another is from the viewpoint of science and reason, that is, to consider all evidence for and against survival and then balance their probabilities and then decide which is the more “likely.” Related to this approach is the analytic one: First determine whether the expression, “I can survive my bodily death,” has any meaning at all before deciding whether it is true or false. Another somewhat related approach is to consider various meanings of the word survive. Then one can take the psychological approach by considering what are the psychological motivations behind one’s attitudes toward the matter and to investigate how much of one’s beliefs in survival or nonsurvival is simply the result of wishful thinking.

  I believe that all these approaches are weak but shall consider some aspects of them, perhaps mainly to give the reader my feeling for their essential futility. Then I shall consider some mystical and Eastern approaches to the question. These approaches strike me as not wholly satisfactory but nevertheless better than any others I know.

  Authority and Revelation

  Here I face a bit of a quandary. On the one hand, I never have had very much confidence in revelation and still less in authority. (As I once said to a friend, “Why should I believe in other people’s revelations? I have enough trouble believing my own.”) Yet my final attitude may come closer to revelation than anything else. That is about as much as I can say about this at the moment.

  Analysis, Science, and Types of Survival

  In the so-called analytic approach, one often examines a statement in terms of what it means before deciding whether or not it is true. Take, for example, the statement, “I will survive my bodily death.” Some claim that the statement is true, others that
it is false, others that it is certainly either true or false but we don’t know which, others that it has no meaning whatsoever, and still others that if it has any meaning they don’t know what the meaning could be. For example, the logical positivist Moritz Schlick regarded this proposition as perfectly meaningful and possibly true. As he said, “I can perfectly well imagine being present at and witnessing my own funeral.” On the other hand, the logical positivist A. J. Ayer believed Schlick’s statement to be not merely false but self-contradictory. (That’s a rather drastic difference of opinion, isn’t it?) Other logical positivists claim the proposition to be neither true nor false nor self-contradictory but simply meaningless. Since they claim not to understand what this self, soul, spirit, mind, or psyche is apart from the body, then they do not know just what it is that is said to survive or not to survive. Of course, a pure materialist might define the mind to be simply a person’s memories and behavioral dispositions.1 To such a materialist, one possible meaning of survival (and indeed the only one I can think of) is that at some future time after one’s death another physical organism would be in the universe with the same memories and behavioral dispositions (a sort of resurrection). Such a materialist would most likely concede the logical possibility of this type of survival but would hold it as fantastically improbable. At any rate, surely this is not what Schlick meant! Otherwise, we would have the funny picture of another man at Schlick’s funeral with the same memories, dispositions, and very personality of Schlick looking at the corpse of the old Schlick. (At least I find this situation funny, don’t you?) No, this “physicalistic” type of survival, though of possible interest, is definitely beyond the scope of this enquiry. I am interested in discussing what might be called psychic survival, that is, the survival of the soul, psyche, or self.