Seeing as verses Seeing that (and the Role of Myth) 

Human worlds. We are not androids. If androids or artificial computer-based intelligence could have a world – a nonsensical thought, I believe – it would be incommensurable with any possible human world. The fundamental features that condition any possible human world are T. S. Elliot’s of ‘birth, copulation and death.’ It is no accident that these are of such deep and abiding concern. We are mortal creatures of flesh and blood aware of our own mortality. That places a gulf between us and an android like Data:

 

                          

        The fact that we come new into a world that was there before us and (hopefully) will be there after us – that distinguishes our birth from the births of cats and dogs. We come into the world not as exemplars of the species but as individual persons. Thus we receive names at birth rather than numbers. In the world, we experience what Hannah Arendt called ‘plurality’:

 

It is in the nature of beginning that something new is started which cannot be expected from whatever may have happened before. This character of startling unexpectedness is inherent in all beginnings … The fact that man is capable of action means that the unexpected can be expected from him, that he is able to perform what is infinitely improbable. And this again is possible only because each man is unique, so that with each birth something uniquely new comes into the world.

 

      Therefore, our death means not only the end of biological life but the end of our world. Unlike the death of our animal cousins, our deaths are not just events in the world. As Winch, following Wittgenstein, puts it:

 

When I speak of ‘my death’, I am not speaking of any future event in my life; I am not even speaking of a future event in anyone else’s life. I am speaking of the cessation of my world. That is also a cessation of my ability to do good and evil. It is not just that as a matter of fact I shall no longer be able to do good or evil after I am dead; the point is that my very concept of what it is to be able to do good or evil is deeply bound up with my concept of life as ending in death. If ethics is a concern with the right way to live, then clearly the nature of this concern must be deeply affected by the concept of life as ending in death.

 

Moreover, the significance of sex transcends ‘copulation’ precisely because human life in the world, conditioned by the newness of birth and our mortality, allows a whole different dimension to emerge out of the biological act: meaning, the meaning of the individual life. We bring forth into the world through the fertility of sex not only another instance of a species, but a new soul, with among other things the capacity to experience joy as well as unspeakable suffering; with the capacity to bless life or curse the day he was born. Sex cannot be merely biological for us.         

 

     Meaning exists only in the world, and the world exists because of our need to live as human beings, making sense of our births, our deaths, and the perpetuation of life in the world through sex. A machine intelligence is worldless, meaningless.  Meaning – what to see the world as, and thus what to see particular things in the world as, or rather, how to experience them: this is why there are myths, and religions as canonized myths. No fact – particular (I am in bed) or general (Water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius) – in and of itself is meaningful. Two potential facts: the destruction of life on earth through a cataclysmic event; an itch in my back – Hume wrote: "tis not unreasonable for me to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger." By “unreasonable” he meant the preferring itself was an attitude to these potential facts, something we bring to them.

       From the point of view of “reason” – defined by Hume as more or less as the capacity to judge whether a given statement corresponds to an actual state of affairs (i.e. is true, expresses a fact) and to draw logical conclusions – both potential facts would be neutral, without value, like the universe itself. As Wittgenstein puts the point: “All propositions are of equal value” – a proposition being nothing more than the logical picture of a state of affairs, a fact in our ordinary sense (if not quite in Wittgenstein’s technical use of the word).

 

. . .

 

        This is how an android intelligence like Data would see the world: objectively, without emotion. Jesus died on the cross. The humidity level was 26% at the time of his death. The soil at the foot of the cross had a measure of 2 on the PH scale, and so was rather acidic. A speck of dust fell to the earth precisely 2.273 meters from the foot of the cross at the precise time that Jesus’ heart went into ventricular fibrillation. The temperature on the south pole of Mars was precisely -45 degrees Celsius. Peter did not cut his toenails on the day of Jesus’ crucifixion. A particular cow in Bethlehem urinated at a particular place at a particular time.  Etc. An android or an army of androids recording such a vast ocean of facts would have no way of judging the significance or insignificance of any of them because he has no frame of reference, no scale of value, no mortal body of flesh and blood, and thus no emotions – in short, he has no world.

 

     And the world is created when we become, as creatures of flesh and blood, self-conscious of our responses to the facts of life, so to speak. A deer is a creature of flesh and blood and is conscious. A doe senses the presence of danger – a hunter perhaps – and flees in fear. We also flee in fear in the presence of danger. But there are times when we must overcome our fear. If we witness a group of thugs brutalizing someone who cannot defend themselves, we have to act in some way to help. If fear overcomes us, we are rightly called cowards. We wouldn’t apply the concept coward to the deer that flees the hunter or to any animal. If the person was killed by the thugs, their death would also mean something: we might say, ‘they died a hero’s death.’ We of course experience emotions – not only of fear but of how we deal with it. We may be deeply moved by someone sacrificing their life in an attempt to help a stranger fend off evil. We may even feel awe and reverence.

 

 . . .

 

    Our concepts of ‘good’ or ‘God’ (and religion), typically expressed in the stories we tell ourselves and the myths we live by – and all the cultural and individual practices, rituals, enactments, or extensions of such concepts and stories – are rooted in our collective responses to such acts. Such acts themselves are enactments of said concepts (the chicken-and-the-egg question suggests itself). [I am tracing a thought of Wittgenstein’s, and Peter Winch’s here.] I guess the most profound question here is whether we are open to such responses – or whether, for example, like Trump, we reject them and consider such people “suckers” or “losers.”

        I will switch examples. Most of us respond to the late John McCain’s years spent in the “Hanoi Hilton” with a kind of reverence for the suffering he endured and for the courage he showed by refusing early release for the sake of others. We know the facts: When and where his plane was shot down; his extensive injuries; his brutal treatment at the hands of his captures, etc. Well, we know these facts like we know most facts: second-hand, based on witness testimony and the reporting of witness testimony. Thus if an enemy like Trump were intent on trashing McCain’s reputation together with the political authority that reputation gave him as well as erasing in the mind of his cult following the contrast between a man of courage and character and himself, he could just invent “alternative facts” – that McCain was shot down while cowardly retreating; that he was not tortured by cooperated with the North Vietnamese; that he betrayed other servicemen. That would not have been a good tactic in 2016 as McCain was still alive – and other witnesses. Now that McCain is dead, and perhaps most witnesses as well, the inventing of  “alternative facts” to fit and reinforce the fantasies images Trump has of himself and wants others to have of McCain could have worked. Much of our world, our sense of reality, is built on facts we accept on trust in the authority of others, that we ourselves cannot directly verify. Thus attacks on the sources of trust and authority as a political weapon are an attack on that sense of reality. Trump’s attempt to steal the election and install himself in a coup played on the fragility of factual truth as well as his claim that his sexual assault of E. Jean Carroll is a political scam – his word against others, and he has a whole media empire that is an echo chamber whose main function is to discredit whatever information he determines should be discredited.

     Another level of reality is fixed by concepts like POW or captive. In our normal understanding these words set up criteria we use to judge reality. We apply them to McCain because all the conditions are met: he was taken by force against his will and imprisoned, etc. Trump might have said he wasn’t a true POW since, for example, no declared state of war was in force or he had a chance to choose freedom. In other words, Trump could have twisted our normal use of the relevant concepts. But there are strong limits here: he would get to a point in this game where he would simply not make sense to other speakers of the language. But our sense of reality is also limited by the sense we can make using our language. To deny that McCain was a captive is not only false factually, but makes no sense because the meaning of captive has become unintelligible. The limits of sense of concepts (like captive) determine the limits of what can be real for us, and thus true or false, factually.

    Trump neither invented “alternative facts” nor stretched the meaning of our language beyond sense in his campaign to elevate himself by diminishing John McCain, his better in every respect. He tried to change the way people see the facts and thus see McCain. Before Trump, almost everyone in America saw McCain as a hero and his comportment during torture and captivity as heroic. Trump wanted his people to see the same things as a defect: being captured as losing; enduring torture as not worthy of respect; implicitly, seeing military service as something only worthy of admiration if it benefits you – makes you wealthier, increases your pleasure, etc. Only success is admirable; nothing one can do as a captive can count as success; therefore, nothing one can do as a captive can be admirable. Heroism is admirable; nothing that one can do as a captive can be admirable; therefore, nothing one can do as a captive can be heroic. Trump doesn’t use arguments, but if his attack on McCain were translated into an argument it would look something like that.

     Seeing McCain as this or that does not require us to deny any fact or stretch any concepts. Our sense of reality is thus not bound to facts we all acknowledge as facts or the limits of sense we all somehow abide by. Most people outside the Trump cult as well as Trump acknowledge the same facts about McCain.  Those of us outside the cult of Trump see him as a hero whereas those in the cult see him as a failure deserving of no admiration.  Since both acknowledge the same facts, no fact can change the way each group sees him. Neither interpretation violates the facts – as in those cases where Trump uses “alternative facts” to undermine people’s sense of reality and conform people’s reason to his will.

     Just like two obstetricians, one a devout Catholic and the other a progressive feminist, will look at an ultrasound – with the same image and the same medical facts: the Catholic sees an unborn child, a soul in the process of becoming loved and wanted by God (if not the woman carrying her); the progressive feminist of the Gloria Steinem bent sees a fetus that is nothing but a part of the woman’s body (her own property) to do with as she pleases. Again, no fact forces either to see it as this or that.   

     Or just like a forest – same facts, same object. Robert Frost sees a mystery: “the woods are lovely, dark, and deep.” The capitalist sees raw materials he can transform into products and profits. Same principle.

     It is not like this: the supermarket sees the dated can of beans as garbage whereas the person who gets it from the garbage can sees it as nourishment. It can be both. From one point of view, that of the supermarket, it is garbage because they can no longer sell it; the person who gets it from the garbage sees it as nourishment because it can be still eaten without danger of poisoning. Different senses of garbage are in play, a verbal disagreement. The examples about McCain, the fetus, and the forest are either-or: McCain can’t both be a hero and a failure. But the facts alone won’t tell you which.

      What does? “The narrative” – the myth, the philosophy, or the theology that serves as the overarching interpretation of the world as a whole and our lives in it. These myths are frameworks in which the phenomena are seen as this or that, in which they appear as this or that. And as I have argued before, myths – and philosophy and theology are translations of myths into conceptual thought – are not theories explaining facts but frameworks that make sense of whatever facts there are, determine their significance, and sometimes whether a given x is to be regarded as a fact at all.

    McCain risked his life and also killed – for the decent man, a sacrifice of another sort – for others. The sublimity of self-sacrifice is expressed in myth and story – culminating perhaps in the sacrifice of God for man in Christianity. That Trump’s world version has no conceptual space for such a deep and abiding source of humanity speaks volumes about the baseness of his soul.

GL