[This piece originally appeared in The Thought in January of 1993. I apologize for my rather simplistic views of Kant and Hegel in this piece. I blame my ignorance, tohugh I had read through some of the works at the time, I had not really thought deeply about what I did read.]
Tebye's recent contribution to the cosmology debate ("Tebye's Reply to..." The Thought, 9/92) was less systematic than his earlier pieces. It seems that while Price is going all out to develop a comprehensive -- and, to me, overreaching -- theory of everything, Tebye is moving toward a mellowed out -- and yet, to me, still over-reaching -- set of observations. Again, I urge caution. I think it is foolhardy to build theoretical castles in the sky. I'm not against speculation per se, but against drawing too many conclusions from scant or even ambiguous data. Tebye and Price, of course, stand on a long tradition that started with the Greeks (or before?) of groping for a grand scientific theory of everything. There's nothing wrong with that as such. However, the tools to separate truth from falsehood must be developed. These are sadly lacking in both my colleagues' pieces.
Tebye wonders at the reality of reality and at that of dreams. Yet to have even an idea of what dreams are one must already have some notion of their difference from waking life. This confusion is an example of what one philosopher called the stolen concept, denying something upon which your case rests. I think it's also called the genetic fallacy by others. He's betraying his debt to Descartes by not recognizing this. He's not alone in this respect as modern philosophy, especially philosophy of science, started with Descartes and holds many Cartesian assumptions (e.g., no distinction between the means and contents of awareness, the mind as metaphysically active (i.e. possibly creating its contents), a confusion of ideas and perceptions (i.e. we perceive our ideas and not objects), and a misunderstanding of proof and its role in validation.). These assumptions are what need to be questioned. Barring that, any theory built on them is suspect.
Defining reality and the real does not require a familiarity with the unreal. Reality can only be defined obstensively. We can have standards for truth, but ultimately reality is what is, nothing more, nothing less. Also, realism, in the sense of conformity to reality, is not a halfway house between optimism and pessimism. Nor is it a form of skepticism.
I'm not sure how much ground he gives to skepticism. At times he's using it in the qualified sense -- he's not certain about a specific stand. At other times he's using in the wider sense -- he's doubting everything, including existence and knowledge. The wider sense is contradictory. Total skepticism, like that of Gorgias, is self- contradictory. It rests on the claim that knowledge is not possible. (As a sidelight, Gorgias maintained 1) nothing exists, 2) even if something did exist we couldn't know it, and 3) even if we could know it we couldn't communicate our knowledge.) Now if knowledge is impossible, then so is the claim "knowledge is impossible". Clearly, to be a total skeptic, one must have knowledge. Thus skepticism refutes itself.Q.E.D.
Usually skeptics adopt conventionalism as an approach to the living of life. They are hard pressed to get any guidelines for living from their philosophy. Not much follows from the claim that one can't know. But this only means that skeptics must rely on other means to decide how to live life. Without any rational basis, they can only fall back on faith or tradition (convention) or emotion or authorities. Tebye follows this course too, though his skepticism, as I've pointed out, isn't "consistently" total.
As for the rising sun versus earth's rotation, perception can go both ways. If I focus of the sun, it appears the earth is moving. If I focus on my surrounds it appears the sun is moving. Try it. The same effect happens in cars and on trains. This does not mean that per- ception can't give truthful information about the world, but that in a given case more perceptions may be needed before a good judgement can be made. (Also, I see no major problem here since motion is always relative to some frame of reference.)
As for Descartes "cogito ergo sum" (I think therefore I am), Tebye sees there's a problem with it. I agree. I accept the analysis of Ayn Rand and David Kelley on this issue. Consciousness presupposes existence, therefore existence not consciousness is the most fundamental assumption of all knowledge. As Rand put it: "extant ergo cogito" (I exist therefore I think). Of course, in any act of aware-ness consciousness is presupposed, but we're talking about what is the most fundamental notion, existence or consciousness.
The fact that perception is a process of filtering, of selectively attending to certain features of reality to the exclusion of others, is not a good reason to doubt perception. In order to function at all, consciousness has to function in specific ways and not others. The role of consciousness is to help in the organism's survival. Certain facts are more relevant than others in survival. For instance, being able to see a cat approaching is more important to a pigeon than being able to measure the amount of neutrinos passing through it. This doesn't mean that reality has no attributes that the perceiver doesn't perceive directly. I can't see air, yet it does exist and through other observations I can come to know it. However, to say that those parts of reality not directly perceived (such as x-rays, the curvature of spacetime (if there really is a curvature), and such) has some higher or even a different reality is to miss the point. I'm sure few would maintain that ultrasound is part of another reality merely because we can't hear it. This is just the mistake Tebye is making, but with more esoteric phenomena.
The same reasoning applies to the assumption of psychoses or what- ever. One can't just assume one's perceptual apparatus isn't working. The concept of psychosis, or of any failure of the mental type, is posited on prior knowledge of what isn't a failure. One can know truth without being aware of falsehood, but one can't reverse the situation. One can't know truth by starting out with untruth. This also applies to his assumption of nothingness as not needing an explanation. This is wrong. One does not start with nothing, but with something (even it is only one's perceptions), else there could not even be a starting point.
To define mind as the activity of a living brain begs the question, but minds only seem to exist where brains (of fair complexity) are. I'd rather define mind solely by reference to its differentiating attribute, awareness. Consciousness itself is an axiomatic concept, so it can't be defined. Definition requires breaking something down in its fundamentals. The only thing we can say about consciousness is that it exists (at least in me) and it's conscious of something. Finding out material causes or relations to it is not defining it. "Automobile" isn't defined by a reference to its causes. It's defined by differentiating it from other things. This involves pointing out its essential qualities, e.g., automobiles are self-propelled land vehicles as opposed to horse drawn carriages.
There could very well be levels of language. It depends on how language is defined. Are communications of threats or cries for food to be considered language? It is doubtful. Such an interpretation is stretching a metaphor. I think language has to include the ability to use concepts. Otherwise, any noise or gesture, regardless of intention or other factors, could be construed to be language.
Next is Tebye's dualism. This is a trait that has come down to our culture from Plato through such thinkers as Rousseau, Kant,and Hegel. The usual form dualism takes is to split reality into two realms and give one of these two a higher ethical and truth value. Thus Plato wants to get at the Forms over and above the particulars, Rousseau tries to grasp the essence of Man, Kant looks for the moral order, and Hegel tries to synthesize (this is not his term; he spoke of affirmation, negation and the negation of the negation or appearance, essence, and actuality not thesis, antithesis, and synthesis though these terms do describe the same thing) the two realms.
To point out the historical trends of a particular line of thinking is not to show that it is wrong. Can one rely on such divisions to reveal anything about reality? No, especially when one realm is arbitrarily given attributes that make it more real. Dividing reality into any number of realms can be justified if it's done to elucidate not eliminate the nature of things. For instance, biologists divide the world into living and nonliving. The division is justifiable in certain contexts. Neither side of this division (which may be fuzzy) has more validity than the other. The only reason for the division is to understand what living things better, to narrow focus, not to deny reality to nonliving things. (It would be interesting to see if there's a link between reductionism and dualism. Is there any common ground between the two?)
On population, I'm not sure what Tebye's "[h]istorical evidence" is. I'm willing to wade through it if he's willing to display it. Since he hasn't, I assume he's just talking off the top of his head. His claim "that the world almost always has been over-populated" is the just plain redefining terms to suit his conclusions. He's almost defining any population as overpopulation. It would be interesting to see what sort of policy conclusions he draws from this. I can imagine someone justifying death camps with his claim.
The proofs of God's existence or nonexistence offered are superficial. Cressy Morrison's seventh proof is really a winner as Tebye point out. If God exists because some have an idea of one in their head, then why not anything else they have ideas on? This is merely showing one of the more absurd outcomes of Morrison's "proof" not a refutation. The refutation lies in proving that the idea of God does not derive from any God's existence but from the human imagination, the ability to create new concepts. If ideas always coincided with actual objects in the world then Morrison would be correct and we could eventually run into centaurs and satyrs and Batman and Bugs Bunny.
The disproof for God's existence that Tebye offers is likewise superficial. Just imagine that nonmathematicians would have to wait around until someone discovered irrational numbers before deciding the issue! One problem he seems to have is a confusion between irrational numbers and irrationality. Irrational numbers are just numbers not expressible as a ratio of integer. They are not RATIO-able. This has nothing to do with rationality as a practical ideal. Anyhow, the typical answer of a theist might be that we are deluding ourselves if we think we can know the motives of God. I'm sure, Eastern religions would have a different perspective on irrational numbers as they have a different view on everything else. However, my goal is not to speculate on how the religious mind would deal with the claim, but to point out that it isn't a strong, profound, or even valid refutation.
The real refutation of the idea of God is in epistemology. How does anyone come to think God exists? This is getting to the root of the issue. The contradictory qualities attributed to God -- such as omnipotence, omniscience, His ability to contradict the laws of reality (such as identity and causation) -- show that the concept itself is flawed. Theists usually retreat to unknowability after their other proofs are refuted (e.g., Aquinas' Five Proofs), but unknowability is contradictory. How can one know something is unknowable? When one claims he does he is contradicting his very claim. One can't know the unknowable! A more extensive treatment of this problem is given by George H. Smith in Atheism: The Case Against God.
Too often people flout this almost meaningless babble about questions being just as or more important than their answers. Personally, I think it adds nothing to the discussion and is not really a profound revelation. I can imagine that Tebye's motive in saying such a thing is not sheer pretentiousness. Rather, I think he probably wants to stress that one should think questions through carefully giving thoughtful instead of than knee-jerk answers to them.
Perception isn't limited to humans. Experimental evidence bears this out. Most animals can distinguish objects perceptually given the limits of their senses -- often less limited than ours! Therefore, they show signs of awareness. However, I doubt most animals (despite my review many issues back) can think, i.e. use abstractions.
Time, according to both relativity theories, is related to space. A common misconception is to equate the temporal and the spatial. What special relativity theory shows is that a there is an exact relation between the observation of space and time and the relative velocity of the observed. This relation does not mean space and time are the same thing. Rather, it shows they are or can be interpreted as aspects of something else, spacetime. An analogy might help but remember analogies can be abused. Coal and diamonds are both types of carbon, but really there are not equal except in the sense that they are carbon.
Therefore, 2-dimensional beings would not experience the third dimension as time. They would experience time as time. If they were thrown into that higher spatial dimension, as happens in Abbott's Flatland, they couldn't perceive things as we do, but time would remain a separate issue. Notice here that calling length the first dimension and not the second, third, or fourth is totally arbitrary. The same applies to time. Don't confuse symbol conventions with reality's rules. The whole point of relativity was to find out which properties of phenomena were invariant, i.e. unchanging, and which varied relative to our particular conditions of observation.
Again, Tebye reads modern ideas into Parmenides. Parmenides thought only pure unchanging, undifferentiated Being existed. To him notions of space and time or spacetime would have been illusions. He wasn't talking about a statically structured universe, but of pure Being. Sure his Being never changed, never moved or did anything except be. Yet this means that no idea of anything else was possible. Any other ideas would mean something, to him, that was nonBeing -- in his view this would mean non-existent. Since only Being exists, he would argue, there can be nothing else. This is not a difficult point to grasp.
The only conclusion that can made at this time is that many fundamentals aren't being touched on by Tebye. This is the fault of his Cartesian outlook. This handicaps his ability to tackle cosmological and metaphysical problems. I hope he will take a closer look at his outlook and reject major features of it. I believe I've shown good reasons for him to do so.