Five Thousand B.C. and Other Philosophical Fantasies Read online

  17

  In item # 249 of my book of logic puzzles titled What Is the Name of This Book?, I describe an infallible method of proving anything whatsoever.1 Only a magician is capable of employing the method, however. I once used it on Rudolf Carnap to prove the existence of God.

  “Here you see a red card,” I said to Professor Carnap as I removed a card from the deck. “I place it face down in your palm. Now, you know that a false proposition implies any proposition. Therefore, if this card were black, then God would exist. Do you agree?”

  “Oh, certainly,” replied Carnap, “if the card were black, then God would exist.”

  “Very good,” I said as I turned over the card. “As you see, the card is black. Therefore, God exists!”

  “Ah, yes!” replied Carnap in a philosophical tone. “Proof by legerdemain! Same as the theologians use!”

  18

  Speaking of proofs of the existence of God, the funniest one I have ever seen was in a term paper handed in by a freshman. She wrote, “God must exist because he wouldn’t be so mean as to make me believe he exists if he really doesn’t!” Is this argument really so much worse than the ontological proofs of the existence of God provided by Anselm and Descartes, among others? (See Chapter 10.)

  19

  It has always puzzled me that so many religious people have taken it for granted that God favors those who believe in him. Isn’t it possible that the actual God is a scientific God who has little patience with beliefs founded on faith rather than evidence?

  20

  This reflection on the nature of God may not be too unrelated to the problems raised by Pascal’s wager. Pascal says that it is better to believe in God than not to believe because if God doesn’t exist and one believes that he does, the loss is trivial compared with the infinite loss incurred if God does exist and one believes that he doesn’t. (Failing to believe in a God who exists means eternal damnation, and such a loss is indeed infinite!) Therefore (reasons Pascal), from the objective viewpoint of pure probability, the rational thing to do is to believe in God.

  Now, if it were really true that believing in God increases the probability of salvation one iota, then I would agree that one had best believe in God. But why should this assumption be true? I tend to feel that any God who could be so hideous as to damn a soul eternally couldn’t be trusted on any issue whatsoever!

  21

  A delightful counterexample to the attitude described in §19 is that of a Protestant minister I once knew who said to me, “Why is it that the best people I know are atheists?”

  “How do you ever expect to convert them that way?” I asked.

  “Convert them?” he replied. “Who wants to convert them?”

  22

  When I was quite young I was present during a rather curious conversation. One person said, “I know there is a God!”

  Another said, “And I know there isn’t.”

  Isn’t it remarkable that two contradictory propositions can both be known? In fact, how can either of these two propositions be known? If there really is a God, could that fact be not merely believed but actually known? Perhaps it could—by, say, some mystical insight. On the other hand, if there isn’t a God, could that fact be known? Certainly not by any scientific means! Could it then be known by some mystical means? If so, it would be a rather fascinating type of mysticism that could perceive the nonexistence rather than the existence of something!

  23

  Curiously, people often confuse the following questions: (1) Is there a God?; and (2) is there an afterlife? Just because many religions believe in both is no reason to assume that the answers are necessarily the same! It could be that there is a God and no afterlife or that there is an afterlife and no God; or it could be that neither exist, or maybe both.

  Recently, however, the two questions have become more separated. Indeed, people nowadays tend to be more skeptical about an afterlife than about the existence of God. I wonder why this is?

  24

  In The Future of an Illusion, Freud spends all his time discussing the desirability of civilization’s maintaining or rejecting the “illusion” of religion.2 He tries to project the probable psychological results of outgrowing the illusion, which he feels will be helpful, and he spends much time trying to dispel counterarguments.

  To a realistic Platonist like myself, the real question is not whether religion is helpful or harmful but whether it is true. This question Freud hardly considers. He simply takes it for granted that religion is false, and he offers a purely naturalistic explanation of why people believe in God. Now, I have little doubt that even if there is no God people would still believe in one, quite possibly for the very reasons Freud gave. But this sheds absolutely no light on the more fundamental question of the truth or falsity of theism. As others have pointed out so well, a purely psychological explanation of the origins of a belief does not constitute the slightest rational evidence for or against the belief itself. (I wish more Marxists would realize this!)

  I think that most parental decisions about giving children religious training, though often rationalized in terms of what is good for the children, are really governed by whether the parents themselves believe in God or not. However, this is not always the case. I knew a father who said, “I myself don’t believe in God, but I still think that every child should have religious training.” I have wondered why he had this attitude. Did he believe in deliberately lying to a child for its own good? Or did he perhaps believe deep down in God after all but was unaware of the fact?

  On the other hand, I have never known anyone who believed in God but nevertheless felt that religious training is bad for a child. And so there is a curious asymmetry between theism and atheism. Though many atheists feel that the belief in God is bad, this badness is not a logical consequence of the doctrine of atheism, whereas in many if not most of the existing religions, the badness of disbelief (as well as the goodness of belief) is implied by the religion itself—indeed, is often explicitly part of the doctrine.

  Freud seemed to have been deeply concerned about the general influence his book would have. The book is certainly an interesting one in its own right, but it is doubtful that it ever had or will have much influence at all, especially in either dispelling or cementing religious ties. Religious trends seem to come and go by laws of their own that we do not understand too well, and our choice in these matters is probably less significant than would appear.

  25

  A solipsist is one who says, “I am the only one who exists.” (I am not sure that he actually has to say it; it is probably sufficient that he believe it!) At another seminar given by Alan Ross Anderson, about two hours were spent discussing solipsism. At the end of the period, I got up and said, “At this point, I think I’ve become an antisolipsist; I believe that everyone exists except me!”

  26

  The logician Melvin Fitting, with his typical sense of humor, once said to me, “Of course I believe that solipsism is the correct philosophy, but that’s only one man’s opinion.”

  27

  This comment is reminiscent of the famous story about the lady who wrote to Bertrand Russell, “Why are you surprised to hear that I’m a solipsist? Isn’t everybody?”

  28

  I have met some actual solipsists. One once said to me, “Smullyan, you don’t exist!”

  “Just who is it that you claim doesn’t exist?” I replied.

  29

  Another solipsist once said to me, “I am the only one who exists.”

  “That’s right,” I replied. “I am the only one who exists.”

  “No, no!” he said. “I’m saying: I am the only one who exists.”

  “That’s what I am saying; I am the only one who exists.”

  “No, no, no!” he excitedly shouted. “It is I, not you, who exists!”

  “That’s right.” I repeated. “It is I, not you, who exists. We seem to agree perfectly!”

  At this point, he became somewhat c
onfused.

  30

  This exchange brings to mind the definition of I given by Ambrose Bierce in The Devil’s Dictionary.3 After defining the term, he continues, “Its plural is said to be we, but how there can be more than one myself is doubtless clearer to the grammarians than it is to the author of this incomparable dictionary.” Despite the levity, the issue Bierce raises is a profound one that we will deal with more fully in Chapter 12, titled “Enlightened Solipsism.”

  31

  I have sometimes wondered how a militant solipsist would react if everybody, instead of arguing with him, simply agreed with him! I once asked a professional psychiatrist what he thought. He replied, “I imagine that he would be terrified!”

  32

  Speaking of psychiatrists, I once heard the following anecdote about Freud. Someone asked him, “Would you hold a man responsible for what he dreams?” Freud replied, “Whom else would you hold responsible?”

  33

  The following exchange once occurred between a disciple of Freud and one of his patients.

  PATIENT: Doctor, if you help me, I’ll give you every penny I possess!

  PSYCHIATRIST: I shall be satisfied with thirty kronen an hour.

  PATIENT: But isn’t that rather excessive?

  34

  Turning from psychiatrists to philosophers, a philosopher once had the following dream: First Aristotle appeared, and the philosopher said to him, “Could you give me a fifteen-minute capsule sketch of your entire philosophy?” To the philosopher’s surprise, Aristotle gave him an excellent exposition in which he compressed an enormous amount of material into a mere fifteen minutes. But then the philosopher raised a certain objection that Aristotle couldn’t answer. Confounded, Aristotle disappeared. Then Plato appeared. The same thing happened again, and the philosopher’s objection to Plato was the very same as his objection to Aristotle. Plato also couldn’t answer it and disappeared. Then all the famous philosophers of history appeared one by one, and our philosopher refuted every one with the same objection. After the last philosopher vanished, our philosopher said to himself, “I know I’m asleep and dreaming all this. Yet I’ve found a universal refutation for all philosophical systems! Tomorrow when I wake up, I will probably have forgotten it, and the world will really miss something!” With an iron effort, the philosopher forced himself to wake up, rush over to his desk, and write down his universal refutation. Then he jumped back into bed with a sigh of relief. The next morning when he awoke, he went over to the desk to see what he had written. It was, “That’s what you say!”

  35

  There is a story about a philosopher who went into a closet for ten years to contemplate the question, What is life? When he came out, he went into the street and met an old colleague, who asked him where in heaven’s name he had been all those years.

  “In a closet,” he replied. “I wanted to know what life really is.”

  “And have you found an answer?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “I think it can best be expressed by saying that life is like a bridge.”

  “That’s all well and good,” replied the colleague, “but can you be a little more explicit? Can you tell me how life is like a bridge?”

  “Oh,” replied the philosopher after some thought, “maybe you’re right; perhaps life is not like a bridge.”

  36

  There is also a story about Epimenides, who once became interested in Eastern philosophy and made a long pilgrimage to meet Buddha. When he finally met him, Epimenides said, “I have come to ask a question. What is the best question that can be asked and what is the best answer that can be given?”

  Buddha replied, “The best question that can be asked is the question you have just asked, and the best answer that can be given is the answer I am giving.”

  37

  Cartesian philosophy is the philosophy of René Descartes. Descartes first set out to prove his own existence. His proof is remarkably short; it consists of only three Latin words: “Cogito, ergo sum,” that is, “I think, therefore I am.” When I first heard this, I couldn’t resist writing the following verse:

  I think, therefore I am?

  Could be!

  Or is it really someone else who only thinks he’s me?

  Descartes was a dualist; he believed that mind and matter are separate substances. Idealists like George Berkeley believe that nothing exists but mind. (The absolute idealist furthermore believes that there is only one mind in the universe.) At the opposite pole are the materialists (or realists, as they are sometimes called) who believe that nothing exists but matter and energy.

  I have asked many children, “Do you believe that your mind is the same thing as your brain?” Interestingly enough, about half answered yes and half answered no. Among those who answered no, one said, “The mind cannot be the same thing as the brain because the brain is something tangible and the mind is not.”

  38

  By now, I have defined just about all the technical terms that will be used in this book. I should add that epistemology is the theory of knowledge and should also say a word or two about logical positivism.

  If I were to write a devil’s philosophical dictionary in the style of Ambrose Bierce, I would define a logical positivist as one who rejects as meaningless any statement that he is incapable of understanding. Prejudicial as this definition certainly is, it is not completely without truth. Actually, the logical positivists set up (presumably) precise criteria of meaning, and any statement not passing these criteria is declared meaningless. But it can be argued that in setting up their criteria, they take into account only those meanings that they can understand.

  Let me tell you a relevant true story: I once dined at a country inn. To my surprise, the walls of the dining room were lined with bookshelves that held a magnificent philosophical library.

  “Oh, yes,” the proprietress later explained, “my ex-husband is a philosopher and left me this library. He is a logical positivist, and it was logical positivism that broke up our marriage.”

  “Now, how could that be?” I exclaimed.

  “Because everything I said—whatever it was—he kept telling me was meaningless!”

  39

  One of the basic principles of logical positivism is that no sentence should be regarded as meaningful unless there is, in principle, some method of verifying whether it is true or false. Of course, many people are logical positivists in this sense even though they have never heard the term logical positivism.

  On the nicer side of logical positivism, I believe the pianist Artur Schnabel must have been one such person. I once attended three fascinating lectures given by Schnabel at the University of Chicago. During one of the question periods, someone asked him what he thought of his latest review.

  “I don’t read my reviews,” replied Schnabel, “at least not in America. The trouble with American reviewers is that when they make a criticism, I don’t know what to do about it! Now, in Europe it was different—for example, I once gave a concert in Berlin. The critic wrote, ‘Schnabel played the first movement of the Brahms sonata too fast.’ I thought about the matter and realized that the man was right! But I knew what to do about it; I now simply play the movement a little slower. But when these American critics say things like, ‘The trouble with Schnabel is that he doesn’t put enough moonshine in his playing,’ then I simply don’t know what to do about it!”

  40

  At another lecture, Schnabel said, “You may find this hard to believe, but Igor Stravinsky has actually published in the papers the statement, ‘Music to be great must be completely cold and unemotional’! And last Sunday, I was having breakfast with Arnold Shönberg, and I said to him, ‘Can you imagine that Stravinsky actually made the statement that music to be great must be cold and unemotional?’ At this, Schönberg got furious and said, ‘I said that first!’”

  41

  Sometime around 1940, the composer Leon Kirchner, then a student, was visiting me in New York. We listened to Sc
hnabel’s recording of Schubert’s posthumous Sonata in A and were both deeply moved. (This is as good a piano recording as has ever been made!)

  “Why don’t we phone up Schnabel and congratulate him?” I jokingly suggested.

  Leon immediately rushed to the phone. I went into another room and with great trepidation listened in on an extension. Schnabel was in and Leon told him how he and a friend had just listened to the recording and were so impressed by his remarkable understanding of the architecture of the piece that we had to phone him and let him know. Naturally, Leon and I were both extremely nervous at the idea of taking up the time of the great Schnabel. But what happened was this:

  “Ah, yes,” said Schnabel, “now you see, the first movement of the sonata is still a classic movement, whereas the second movement …” Schnabel went on and on, keeping us on the phone for about an hour as he traced the entire development of the sonata form!

  42

  On one occasion when I visited Schnabel, he was in a rather philosophic mood. “Oh, yes,” he said, “I am a realist! It is because I am a realist that I can sit back and be an idealist!” Seeing my look of bewilderment, he added, “Because ideals are the reality!”