Five Thousand B.C. and Other Philosophical Fantasies

by Raymond Smullyan

  EPISTEMOLOGIST: I am sorry to interfere with your idyllic fantasies, but I am afraid that there are a few sober questions I must ask you. Your solution of the solipsist problem is certainly nonstandard, to say the least (though I do not think it is wholly original).4

  The solution is both crazy and ingenious, and I am not wholly insensitive to a certain poetic value. But—with my hard-boiled empiricist training—I cannot let its poetic value seduce me into believing that it really makes any sense. I think that both the craziness and the ingenuity of your viewpoint are more apparent than real. In the last analysis, I think that all you are doing is using words in a nonstandard sense. You say that other minds exist, but they are all identical with yours. To a logician, this is, of course, a straight contradiction since the very word other means not-identical. But then you get out of it by saying that you are not using identity in the logician’s sense. And when asked in what sense you arc using it, you have great difficulty in being precise. Some will say that your inability to define identity in your sense indicates that you don’t mean anything by it. I am willing to be more charitable and admit that maybe you do mean something by it but simply cannot explain what it is.

  At any rate, it is clear that you are using language in a highly nonstandard manner. I think the crux of it is this: When you say, “Other minds exist, but they are identical with mine,” how do you know that you mean anything more or less than I mean when I say more simply, “Other minds exist”? I think this is really the key question.

  ANDRICUS: I would not be the least bit surprised if we meant exactly the same thing.

  EPISTEMOLOGIST: In that case, why don’t you simply delete the part, “But they are identical with mine,” since this is superfluous and only confusing to others?

  ANDRICUS: Confusing to others? Unfortunately, it is confusing unless I try to explain. But superfluous? It is not superfluous to me. For without adding this, I simply find it psychologically impossible to believe in other minds! I realize perfectly well how irrational I sound, but which is really more important, that I talk rationally or that I actually believe in other minds?

  MORALIST: Why this dichotomy? Can’t you both be rational and believe in other minds? I am perfectly rational, and I believe in other minds. Why can’t you be like me?

  ANDRICUS: Why can’t I be like you? I don’t know why I can’t be like you, but the fact is that I simply can’t. Who knows, maybe one day I will be like you, but for the present I can’t. I sincerely envy you—or anybody who is able to integrate rationality with belief in other minds. But so far I have simply not yet found the means to do so.

  FIRST PHILOSOPHER: You mean to say that you think that the belief in other minds is irrational?

  ANDRICUS: Of course not! What I said was that I find it impossible for me to both be (or sound) rational and to believe in other minds, which is very different!

  SECOND PHILOSOPHER: But what about when you were a child? You told us that in those days you had no difficulty believing in other minds. Did you then have to say, “Other minds exist, but they are all identical with mine”? Did you then have to get enraptured by the notion of enlightened solipsism?

  ANDRICUS: Of course not. Those were my days of innocence and true knowledge. As I told you, those were the times when I accepted other minds as a matter of course without any doubts whatsoever—though of course I never verbalized this.

  EPISTEMOLOGIST: So what happened to you in the interim?

  ANDRICUS: What happened to me? My troubles all started in adolescence when I read the philosophers. Then for the first time bugs were put into my brain: How do you know other minds exist? Is it certain or only probable? What could it mean for other minds to exist? How can you possibly think of or believe anything outside your own experience? Having swallowed all this poison, the only way I know how to return to sanity is, unfortunately, by violating language, and talking about such things as enlightened solipsists.

  Yet I don’t know. Am I really so much worse off than I was before? Just think of it! A world full of enlightened solipsists! What could be more perfect?

  Notes

  1

  One of my objections to the positivist invitation to reject metaphysical statements since they are cognitively meaningless is that these statements may nevertheless suggest other statements that are meaningful, even in the positivist sense—that may never have occurred to one who had not first seen the others Similarly, in mathematics a false proof of a theorem might well suggest a correct one that would never have occurred to one who had not first seen the false one.

  2

  George Berkeley, Complete Works, Vol. 4, ed. Alexander Campbell Fraser (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901), p. 161. Italics are mine.

  3

  This is perhaps somewhat reminiscent of the idea of only one physical particle in the entire universe that oscillates all over the universe.

  4

  It is not too far from the views of certain mystics, and in a strange sort of way, not too far from Wittgenstein.

  13

  5000 B.C.

  Part I

  ANCIENT METAPHYSICIAN: For years I have been trying to find out what keeps the earth up; why does it not fall down? The number of so-called wise men who have claimed to give a satisfactory answer to this problem is appalling! One told me that the earth is resting on another body. When asked upon what this body rests, he described another body. When asked upon what this second body rests, he said, “I have given satisfactory answers to two questions, and that is enough. One can’t keep questioning forever!”

  This reminds me of an equally exasperating theologian who claimed that there must be a God; otherwise, there could be no explanation for the creation of the universe. But when asked, “How was God created?” he likewise answered, “One can’t keep asking questions forever.” I replied, “I promise not to keep asking questions forever; I think it is unfair of you to stop the enquiry just at the point where you are ahead. So I merely wish to ask but one more question; how was God created? If you answer that satisfactorily, I am perfectly willing to end the enquiry there.” He replied, “Some things are simply a mystery.” I was somewhat softened by the candor of that reply, but as I explained to him, why not simply say that the existence of the universe is a mystery, and let it go at that; why must God be brought in? To put the matter another way, I certainly believe that some things may in principle be mysteries, but of what use is a hypothesis for explaining a mystery when the very hypothesis raises another mystery just as baffling as the one it explains?

  However, I diverge. Coming back to the question why the earth doesn’t fall, I could conceive of the possibility, although I find it rather counterintuitive, that there may be infinitely many bodies, each resting on the other, going infinitely far downward with the earth resting on top. Alternatively, perhaps the earth could be resting on a single infinite body that extends infinitely downward. Now, this possibility, though rather difficult to believe, does not appear a priori to be completely out of the question. But even if true, I still cannot understand why the earth together with this body wouldn’t fall down together as a unit. No, the whole situation is extremely mysterious, and I am honestly very depressed these days at the fact that I simply cannot make any progress in this direction.

  FIRST PHILOSOPHER: Perhaps this question is another mystery. That is, it may be totally beyond the powers of any human being ever to find out why the earth stays up.

  METAPHYSICIAN: Of course, it may be beyond our power, but why should we give up so easily?

  SECOND PHILOSOPHER: It may be that in essence your question is unanswerable! The very question itself presupposes a premise, which in fact may be false.

  METAPHYSICIAN: What premise is that?

  SECOND PHILOSOPHER: The assumption that everything that happens must have a cause or a reason! The earth does stay up: That is indeed a fact. But it does not follow that there must be a reason for this fact. It may simply be that the earth stays up, and that’s all the
re is to it!

  METAPHYSICIAN: Before I answer, let me ask you, Is there any significant difference between your viewpoint and that of the first philosopher, who claimed that the reason why the earth stays up is a mystery?

  SECOND PHILOSOPHER: Of course they are different. The first philosopher never doubted, as far as I could tell, that there is a reason why the earth stays up but merely expressed skepticism as to whether the reason can ever be found. I am proposing the more radical hypothesis that there is no reason. There certainly is a difference in these two viewpoints. Indeed, there is a great difference between believing that something exists but not knowing how to find it and believing that the thing doesn’t even exist and hence that it is hopeless to even look for it. I believe the latter.

  METAPHYSICIAN: I have certainly considered it possible that the earth stays up without any reason whatsoever. But I regard such a hypothesis as extremely sterile. If I were to accept it, then I certainly would never find the answer even if there was one and it were in principle discoverable.

  FIRST PHILOSOPHER: But you said yourself that you have made absolutely no progress in this direction, so why do you keep paining yourself against such hopeless odds?

  METAPHYSICIAN: It is true that I haven’t made any overt progress in the sense of having yet come up with any solution. It may be that I have made some latent progress—time will tell. But the point is that if I should adopt either the viewpoint that the answer is an unsolvable mystery or that there is no answer, then I certainly won’t find the answer if there is one, whereas if I have faith that there is an answer and that it can be found, then at least I might find it.

  ANCIENT POSITIVIST: Has it ever occurred to you that in principle you can never find an answer because you are not even asking a question?

  METAPHYSICIAN: What on earth are you talking about?

  POSITIVIST: I am suggesting that your so-called question is not really a question at all.

  METAPHYSICIAN: I still can’t understand you!

  POSITIVIST: I am saying that the sequence of words, “Why does the earth stay up,” though it sounds superficially like a question, is really no question at all; it is merely a meaningless sequence of words.

  METAPHYSICIAN: Which words of the sequence are meaningless?

  POSITIVIST: I did not say that it is a sequence of meaningless words but that it is a meaningless sequence of words. Of course each word of the sequence is meaningful, but the sequence as a whole is meaningless; it is simply not grammatically formulated.

  METAPHYSICIAN: What in the world does grammar have to do with why the earth stays up?

  POSITIVIST: It is your use of the word why that is causing the trouble. This word is of course meaningful in certain contexts but has no meaning in your context.

  METAPHYSICIAN: Why not? Or am I again asking a meaningless question?

  POSITIVIST: Ignoring this flippancy, I will answer you. When one asks why a certain phenomenon occurs, he is simply asking what known general laws account for it. But to ask why the very laws of the cosmos are as they are has no meaning whatsoever. This is really what you are doing in asking why the earth stays up. It is a perfect example of what should be termed a pseudoquestion, that is, a sequence of words that sounds like a question but in reality is meaningless.

  METAPHYSICIAN: May I ask how you know that the question is meaningless?

  POSITIVIST: The answer to this, though elementary in principle, is technically rather involved. After much time and thought, I have finally succeeded in giving an absolutely precise definition of meaningful; I have a perfectly exact set of rules called formation rules for language with the marvelous property that, given any sequence of words, the rules can decide in a completely mechanical manner whether the sequence is meaningful or not. And it is a simple, demonstrable fact that your pseudoquestion is not meaningful in this perfectly precise sense of meaningful.

  METAPHYSICIAN: I don’t for a moment doubt that you are right! I certainly take your word that according to the rules you have in mind my question is meaningless. But what does this prove? Merely that the question is meaningless according to your definition of meaning. It does not show that it is meaningless according to my notion of meaning.

  POSITIVIST: What notion is that? Can you precisely define this notion and rigorously prove that your question is meaningful according to a precise definition of meaning?

  METAPHYSICIAN: It seems that you are asking me two somewhat different questions. Do you want me to define my notion of meaning, or merely to define some notion of meaning according to which my question is meaningful? The latter is trivial. Of course, given any sequence of words, one could easily frame some definition of meaning according to which the question is meaningful and another according to which it is meaningless. But this strikes me as a completely empty game. The former is of more interest. No, I don’t believe that I can define my notion of meaning. Every definition I have yet heard or yet considered somehow fails to hit the mark; it almost always leaves out something that I would call meaningful.

  POSITIVIST: Ah, then you admit that you don’t have a precise notion of meaning!

  METAPHYSICIAN: It is not clear to me that the inability to define a notion necessarily indicates the lack of precision of that notion. A dog cannot define a bone, but he knows what to do with it, and I would say his notion of a bone is as clear and precise as yours or mine.

  No; I certainly think that one should carefully distinguish between the following three things: (1) meaning something by a word, or group of words; (2) knowing what one means; and (3) being able to explain what one means.

  POSITIVIST: Well, if you cannot explain to me your notion of meaning, perhaps I can form some idea by considering some examples. Suppose someone asked you, “Why is red?” Would you label this as meaningless or meaningful?

  METAPHYSICIAN: I certainly can perceive absolutely no meaning to that question whatsoever. No one has ever asked me such a question (except perhaps in jest). If someone seriously asked it, I would surely be quite puzzled. As I said, I can see no meaning in it; it is meaningless to me. But I would hate to label it as downright meaningless. I don’t consider it very nice to stigmatize another’s words as meaningless.

  POSITIVIST: Oh come now, you are just being excessively polite! Why should the truth be hidden just to spare another’s feelings? You know damn well that, “Why is red?” is completely meaningless!

  METAPHYSICIAN: I know that it is meaningless to me, and I am quite sure it is meaningless to almost everyone. But from this, I cannot conclude that it is meaningless to him.

  POSITIVIST: I am not talking about the subjective notion of being meaningful to a given person; I am speaking about meaning in a purely objective sense.

  METAPHYSICIAN: The only sense I can significantly attach to objectively meaningful is subjectively meaningful to a large number of persons. If this is all you mean by objectively meaningful, then of course the question, “Why is red?” is objectively meaningless in this sense. But I doubt that is what you do mean since this definition would fail to exclude my question, “Why does the earth stay up?” No one to whom I ever have previously asked this question has failed to understand what it means; they have merely not known the answer. Indeed, you are the first person I have ever met who rejects the very question itself as meaningless. That you do this strikes me, I must confess, as utterly astonishing!

  POSITIVIST: The question has the same fault as so many other “questions” asked by metaphysicians. For example, consider what is perhaps the most ancient, and about the most senseless, metaphysical question of all: “Why is it that there is something instead of nothing?” Would you regard that as a meaningful question?

  METAPHYSICIAN: Of course I would! How could one possibly fail to understand this question?

  POSITIVIST: I should have guessed you would call this question meaningful; it is so analogous to your so-called question. Let me put it this way: Do you agree that for a question to be meaningful there must in principle
exist at least a possibility of an answer?

  METAPHYSICIAN: Of course.

  POSITIVIST: And do you further agree that there must in principle exist some possible experience that the questioner could have that would constitute an answer?

  METAPHYSICIAN: Yes.

  POSITIVIST: Then let us stop kidding around. I ask you point-blank: What conceivable experience could you envision that would constitute an answer?

  METAPHYSICIAN: I have no idea what such an experience could be! If I knew that, I might be well on the road to finding the answer. POSITIVIST: So you mean to say that you can regard a question as meaningful even though you have no conception of what kind of an experience would constitute an answer?