Sophie's World_ A Novel About The History Of Philosophy Part 28

"I hope Hume didn't try to deny that I am me. He'd be talking off the top of his head."

"Sophie, if there is one thing I want this course to teach you, it's not to jump to conclusions."

"Sorry. Go on."

"No, why don't you use Hume's method and a.n.a.lyze what you perceive as your 'ego.' "

"First I'd have to figure out whether the ego is a single or a complex idea."

"And what conclusion do you come to?"

"I really have to admit that I feel quite complex. I'm very volatile, for instance. And I have trouble making up my mind about things. And I can both like and dislike the same people."

"In other words, the 'ego concept' is a 'complex idea.' "

"Okay. So now I guess I must figure out if I have had a corresponding 'complex impression' of my own ego. And I guess I have. I always had, actually."

"Does that worry you?"

"I'm very changeable. I'm not the same today as I was when I was four years old. My temperament and how I see myself alter from one minute to the next. I can suddenly feel like I am a 'new person.' "

"So the feeling of having an unalterable ego is a false perception. The perception of the ego is in reality a long chain of simple impressions that you have never experienced simultaneously. It is 'nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed one another with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement,' as Hume expressed it. The mind is 'a kind of theater, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pa.s.s, re-pa.s.s, slide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations.' Hume pointed out that we have no underlying 'personal ident.i.ty' beneath or behind these perceptions and feelings which come and go. It is just like the images on a movie screen. They change so rapidly we do not register that the film is made up of single pictures. In reality the pictures are not connected. The film is a collection of instants."

"I think I give in."

"Does that mean you give up the idea of having an unalterable ego?"

"I guess it does."

"A moment ago you believed the opposite. I should add that Hume's a.n.a.lysis of the human mind and his rejection of the unalterable ego was put forward almost 2,500 years earlier on the other side of the world."

"Who by?"

"By Buddha. It's almost uncanny how similarly the two formulate their ideas. Buddha saw life as an unbroken succession of mental and physical processes which keep people in a continual state of change. The infant is not the same as the adult; I am not the same today as I was yesterday. There is nothing of which I can say 'this is mine,' said Buddha, and nothing of which I can say 'this is me.' There is thus no T or unalterable ego."

"Yes, that was typically Hume."

"In continuation of the idea of an unalterable ego, many rationalists had taken it for granted that man had an eternal soul."

"Is that a false perception too?"

"According to Hume and Buddha, yes. Do you know what Buddha said to his followers just before he died?"

"No, how could I?"

" 'Decay is inherent in all compound things. Work out your own salvation with diligence.' Hume could have said the same thing. Or Democritus, for that matter. We know at all events that Hume rejected any attempt to prove the immortality of the soul or the existence of G.o.d. That does not mean that he ruled out either one, but to prove religious faith by human reason was rationalistic claptrap, he thought. Hume was not a Christian, neither was he a confirmed atheist. He was what we call an agnostic."

"What's that?"

"An agnostic is someone who holds that the existence of G.o.d or a G.o.d can neither be proved nor disproved. When Hume was dying a friend asked him if he believed in life after death. He is said to have answered: "It is also possible that a k.n.o.b of coal placed upon the fire will not burn."

"I see."

"The answer was typical of his unconditional open-mindedness. He only accepted what he had perceived through his senses. He held all other possibilities open. He rejected neither faith in Christianity nor faith in miracles. But both were matters of faith and not of knowledge or reason. You might say that with Hume's philosophy, the final link between faith and knowledge was broken."

"You say he didn't deny that miracles can happen?"

"That didn't mean that he believed in them, more the opposite. He made a point of the fact that people seemed to have a powerful need of what we today would call 'supernatural' happenings. The thing is that all the miracles you hear of have always happened in some far distant place or a long, long time ago. Actually, Hume only rejected miracles because he had never experienced any. But he had not experienced that they couldn't happen either."

"You'll have to explain that."

"According to Hume, a miracle is against the laws of nature. But it is meaningless to allege that we have experienced the laws of nature. We experience that a stone falls to the ground when we let go of it, and if it didn't fall-well, then we experienced that.'1"

"I would say that was a miracle-or something supernatural."

"So you believe there are two natures-a 'natural' and a 'supernatural.' Aren't you on the way back to the rationalistic claptrap?"

"Maybe, but I still think the stone will fall to the ground every time I let go."

"Why?"

"Now you're being horrible."

"I'm not horrible, Sophie. It's never wrong for a philosopher to ask questions. We may be getting to the crux of Hume's philosophy. Tell me how you can be so certain that the stone will always fall to the earth."

"I've seen it happen so many times that I'm absolutely certain."

"Hume would say that you have experienced a stone falling to the ground many times. But you have never experienced that it will always fall. It is usual to say that the stone falls to the ground because of the law of gravitation. But we have never experienced such a law. We have only experienced that things fall."

"Isn't that the same thing?"

"Not completely. You say you believe the stone will fall to the ground because you have seen it happen so many times. That's exactly Hume's point. You are so used to the one thing following the other that you expect the same to happen every time you let go of a stone. This is the way the concept of what we like to call 'the unbreakable laws of nature' arises."

"Did he really mean it was possible that a stone would not fall?"

"He was probably just as convinced as you that it would fall every time he tried it. But he pointed out that he had not experienced why it happens."

"Now we're far away from babies and flowers again!"

"No, on the contrary. You are welcome to take children as Hume's verification. Who do you think would be more surprised if the stone floated above the ground for an hour or two-you or a one-year-old child?"

"I guess I would."

"Why?"

"Because I would know better than the child how unnatural it was."

"And why wouldn't the child think it was unnatural?"

"Because it hasn't yet learned how nature behaves."

"Or perhaps because nature hasn't yet become a habit?"

"I see where you're coming from. Hume wanted people to sharpen their awareness."

"So now do the following exercise: let's say you and a small child go to a magic show, where things are made to float in the air. Which of you would have the most fun?"

"I probably would."

"And why would that be?"

"Because I would know how impossible it all is."

"So... for the child it's no fun to see the laws of nature being defied before it has learned what they are."

"I guess that's right."

"And we are still at the crux of Hume's philosophy of experience. He would have added that the child has not yet become a slave of the expectations of habit; he is thus the more open-minded of you two. I wonder if the child is not also the greater philosopher? He comes utterly without preconceived opinions. And that, my dear Sophie, is the philosopher's most distinguis.h.i.+ng virtue. The child perceives the world as it is, without putting more into things than he experiences."

"Every time I feel prejudice I get a bad feeling."

"When Hume discusses the force of habit, he concentrates on 'the law of causation.' This law establishes that everything that happens must have a cause. Hume used two billiard b.a.l.l.s for his example. If you roll a black billiard ball against a white one that is at rest, what will the white one do?"

"If the black ball hits the white one, the white one will start to move."

"I see, and why will it do that?"

"Because it was. .h.i.t by the black one."

"So we usually say that the impact of the black ball is the cause of the white ball's starting to move. But remember now, we can only talk of what we have actually experienced."

"I have actually experienced it lots of times. Joanna has a pool table in her bas.e.m.e.nt."

"Hume would say the only thing you have experienced is that the white ball begins to roll across the table. You have not experienced the actual cause of it beginning to roll. You have experienced that one event comes after the other, but you have not experienced that the other event happens because o/the first one."

"Isn't that splitting hairs?"

"No, it's very central. Hume emphasized that the expectation of one thing following another does not lie in the things themselves, but in our mind. And expectation, as we have seen, is a.s.sociated with habit. Going back to the child again, it would not have stared in amazement if when one billiard ball struck the other, both had remained perfectly motionless. When we speak of the 'laws of nature' or of 'cause and effect,' we are actually speaking of what we expect, rather than what is 'reasonable.' The laws of nature are neither reasonable nor unreasonable, they simply are. The expectation that the white billiard ball will move when it is struck by the black billiard ball is therefore not innate. We are not born with a set of expectations as to what the world is like or how things in the world behave. The world is like it is, and it's something we get to know."

"I'm beginning to feel as if we're getting off the track again."

"Not if our expectations cause us to jump to conclusions. Hume did not deny the existence of unbreakable 'natural laws,' but he held that because we are not in a position to experience the natural laws themselves, we can easily come to the wrong conclusions."

"Like what?"

"Well, because I have seen a whole herd of black horses doesn't mean that all horses are black."

"No, of course not."

"And although I have seen nothing but black crows in my life, it doesn't mean that there's no such thing as a white crow. Both for a philosopher and for a scientist it can be important not to reject the possibility of finding a white crow. You might almost say that hunting for 'the white crow' is science's princ.i.p.al task."

"Yes, I see."

"In the question of cause and effect, there can be many people who imagine that lightning is the cause of thunder because the thunder comes after the lightning. The example is really not so different from the one with the billiard b.a.l.l.s. But is lightning the cause of thunder?"

"Not really, because actually they both happen at the same time."

"Both thunder and lightning are due to an electric discharge. So in reality a third factor causes them both."

"Right."

"An empiricist of our own century, Bertrand Russell, has provided a more grotesque example. A chicken which experiences every day that it gets fed when the farmer's wife comes over to the chicken run will finally come to the conclusion that there is a causal link between the approach of the farmer's wife and feed being put into its bowl."

"But one day the chicken doesn't get its food?"

"No, one day the farmer's wife comes over and wrings the chicken's neck."

"Yuck, how disgusting!"

"The fact that one thing follows after another thus does not necessarily mean there is a causal link. One of the main concerns of philosophy is to warn people against jumping to conclusions. It can in fact lead to many different forms of superst.i.tion."

"How come?"

"You see a black cat cross the street. Later that day you fall and break your arm. But that doesn't mean there is any causal link between the two incidents. In science, it is especially important not to jump to conclusions. For instance, the fact that a lot of people get well after taking a particular drug doesn't mean it was the drug that cured them. That's why it's important to have a large control group of patients who think they are also being given this same medicine, but who are in fact only being given flour and water. If these patients also get well, there has to be a third factor-such as the belief that the medicine works, and has cured them."

"I think I'm beginning to see what empiricism is."

"Hume also rebelled against rationalist thought in the area of ethics. The rationalists had always held that the ability to distinguish between right and wrong is inherent in human reason. We have come across this idea of a so-called natural right in many philosophers from Socrates to Locke. But according to Hume, it is not reason that determines what we say and do."

"What is it then?"

"It is our sentiments. If you decide to help someone in need, you do so because of your feelings, not your reason."

"What if I can't be bothered to help?"

"That, too, would be a matter of feelings. It is neither reasonable nor unreasonable not to help someone in need, but it could be unkind."

"But there must be a limit somewhere. Everyone knows it's wrong to kill."

"According to Hume, everybody has a feeling for other people's welfare. So we all have a capacity for compa.s.sion. But it has nothing to do with reason."

"I don't know if I agree."

"It's not always so unwise to get rid of another person, Sophie. If you wish to achieve something or other, it can actually be quite a good idea."

"Hey, wait a minute! I protest!"

"Maybe you can try and explain why one shouldn't kill a troublesome person."