The Strongest Support for Anti-Realism is 'Rhf-Gumnlad Hoopiewid'
Actually written JANUARY 22, 2023
This is a spontaneous little philoso-rant, the conclusion of which probably isn’t valid (like many of my other writings), but tugs on some intuitions that I think sets us up well for another writing following this, in which I describe the great epistemic quagmire.
So, my idea here is that the strongest support for anti-realism is incoherent vocal noises, or meaningless arrangements of symbols.
The basis for this is the fact that anti-realism logically contradicts itself, a fact we’ve known about at least since Plato’s Theitetus. Briefly, anti-realism is a kind of omnipotence, wherein the mind is omnipotent, as in, the mind can make anything true / make anything exist - precisely because the mind creates all truth / existence. The self-contradiction can be seen in the classic objection to God being omnipotent. If God is omnipotent, then God can make an object that even God can’t move, which is logically impossible. Omnipotence contradicts itself because, since it can do anything, it cannot be opposed; yet, because it can do anything, it can oppose itself. It can oppose itself, but it can’t oppose itself. Another expression of the logical problem is that, because it can do anything, omnipotence can nullify its own omnipotence, and retroactively so, such that it undermines its own power to nullify its omnipotence. In terms of the omnipotent mind, such a mind can make true that it is not, and never was, omnipotent, which would nullify the omnipotence required to have nullified its omnipotence, ... - logically impossible.
Not only is omnipotence logically impossible when it tries to oppose itself, but it’s even logically impossible in the mundane cases of doing anything else. If omnipotence changes a chair into a dog, it must do so by a specific means. It cannot exercise its power to change particular things into other particular things - by a process that was itself not any particular process. For example, omnipotence must focus its change-power on the chair, rather than the planet Mars, in order to change the chair into a dog. Changing the chair into a dog requires changing the chair, not Mars. This is a restriction on the power that omnipotence has. It cannot exercise its power without at least focusing that power on what it is creating or changing. Thus even mundane change must conform to the identities of what is to be changed. Omnipotence cannot evade the identities of other objects while exercising control over them - any more than omnipotence can evade its own identity when attempting to oppose its own power. In all cases, omnipotence must work with things as they are, including what it itself is. Even omnipotence cannot escape, evade, or contradict identity. Likewise, identity is the reason omnipotence is impossible. The fact that everything is what it is (that A is A) applies even to omnipotence - omnipotence is omnipotence - and the identity of omnipotence is precisely what defeats its attempt to become not-omnipotence. And the identity of everything is what defeats its attempt to change anything without regard for identity. Identity is the restriction on power of any sort. And omnipotence cannot escape this restriction - which means there’s stuff that omnipotence cannot do - which means that omnipotence is not omnipotence - which means that omnipotence is impossible.
Likewise, anti-realism’s claim that the mind creates everything / creates all truth, is a claim that the mind is omnipotent, which is impossible. (Of course the mind does create some things. Just not all its own objects nor any truths about them.)
Not only that, but another expression of anti-realism’s inescapable self-contradiction is the fact that any attempt to give supporting arguments for anti-realism implicitly rests on the validity of realism. Implicitly, anyone stating that anti-realism is true is implicitly stating “I’m not making this up. This is the way things are, really.” (And again “the way things really are” is none other than identity, the identity of the things, including the identity of mind.) All arguments for anti-realism rely on the validity of realism in their attempt to establish the validity of anti-realism.
Any argument for anti-realism is logically self-contradictory and, when we try to fully grasp what it means, shuts our minds down. The mind goes blank. This is a symptom of the fact that anti-realism has no actual cognitive content. It is cognitive nihilism. The most eloquent and voluminous verbal argument in support of anti-realism erases itself by contradicting itself and reducing to zero cognitive content. In short, there is no possible cognitive support for anti-realism.
Ok, so anti-realism is logically self-contradictory and impossible. And this leaves realism the default winner, the only true epistemic theory
This leaves us wondering whether there can be support of any kind for anti-realism. If such support cannot be cognitive, then can anti-realism be supported some other way, in some other form.
Instinctively I would say no. I would just dismiss anti-realism as totally unsupportable.
But I want to keep an open mind about this, to be “charitable”.
So if I take a few steps back and try to imagine other ways of supporting anti-realism, I see this as a range of possible support bound at each end by asymptotic limits. Cognitive support is one of these limits that one can approach but never reach. The other limit is to do nothing, to offer no support for anti-realism of any kind. And so, I imagine there could be some form of support for anti-realism somewhere between these two limits.
And in this range of support, the most plausible form of support I can come up with is: incoherent verbal noises or meaningless arrangements of symbols, e.g. “Rhf-Gumnlad Hoopiewid”.
If you can think of other forms of support in this range, I’d like to know.
[[[[[ BUT - THE GREAT EPISTEMIC QUAGMIRE! ]]]]]
Anti-realists know all this. And here is their come-back: Like children who are losing some game they are playing, they change the rules on the fly to make themselves the winners instead. They say, “Ya, we contradict ourselves, but logical self-contradiction is just the product of our minds. It has no bearing on the way things really are. Anti-realism can still be correct, even if our minds can’t make logical sense of it.”
And of course, they are again relying on the validity of realism when they claim all this. They are implicitly adding at the end: “I’m not making this up. This is the way things are, really.”
So they rely on realism to refute realism. And when we object: “that’s self-contradictory”, they say self-contradiction is ok and again rely on realism in saying so, again contradicting themselves. It is an infinite regress of self-contradiction and meta-self-contradiction and meta-meta-self-contradiction and ...
Any realist who engages with an anti-realist willing to go down that infinite regress of meta-self-contradiction just gets sucked in and trapped in it as well. The realist can’t offer anything that decisively ends the regress. Here the anti-realist and the realist can only repeat their undercutting attack on one another - each attack undercutting the attack of the other infinitely. It is a mutually undercutting infinite regress that I call the “great epistemic quagmire”. And there is no logical escape from it for either side. None.
Put any conceivable argument for realism in a box and give it to the anti-realist. The anti-realist can just say “Oh, that’s just logic, a product of our mind that need not reveal anything true of the real world.”
Put what the anti-realist just said in a box and give it to the realist. The realist can just say “There you go again relying on the validity of realism to imply that what you are saying is true of the real world, thus using the validity of realism to refute realism and being self-contradictory.”
But now the anti-realist might get all excited, thinking the quagmire itself proves that anti-realism is true. If logic can’t get out of the quagmire, such proves that logic has failed to escape its own refutation, which should cast doubt on the reliability of logic’s ability to track reality. Logic is flawed. Logic is arbitrary. Logic is just part of the mind we are trapped in.
Again, put that in a box and give it to the realist. The realist again says it relies on the validity of realism, the validity of logic. It is the attempt to refute logic using logic. It is self-contradictory cognitive nihilism.
Likewise, the realist might get all excited, thinking the quagmire itself proves that realism is true. The quagmire only demonstrates the futility of even entertaining anti-realism. The quagmire only exists as a consequence of trying to grant anti-realism some validity worth refuting when no such validity exists. As such, it is only anti-realism that creates the quagmire. It’s all anti-realism’s problem. It’s anti-realism’s circus, anti-realism’s monkeys.
So put that in a box and give it to the anti-realist, who then says: well, you guessed it - the same old thing.
I invite the reader to try getting out of the great epistemic quagmire using reason/logic. Just try it. No matter what you try, it will end up in a box and re-absorbed into the quagmire. There is no possible escape. But go ahead. Just try it.
If either is to persuade the other, it can’t be done in terms of reason/logic. All persuasion must be some kind of aesthetic argument. Here’s some examples of some aesthetic arguments:
An anti-realist aesthetic argument is: “If you want to maximize the relief of suffering, use reason and logic, but don’t take it so seriously. Taking it seriously is a slippery slope to elitist fascism that will only inflict more suffering on us. What works best for relieving suffering is to just be friendly. Bond with others. Believe what others believe. Form affinities.”
As a realist, my version of an aesthetic argument is: “If you want to solve problems and maximize the relief of suffering, then accept realism and reject mind-destroying self-contradiction. Use your mind to help relieve suffering.”
Other realists (such as Objectivists) use a kind of aesthetic argument that they try to disguise as a purely logical argument by way of moralism. They turn values into intrinsic properties of the things they value, such that those values are the values you must accept in the name of truth, the same way you must accept true facts in the name of truth. To fully grasp a morally good thing is to understand that one is obligated to value that thing on penalty of being in denial of a fact. Finally, this kind of realist makes the case that realism itself is one of these good things that one must value, i.e. must accept and believe.
So those are some examples.
But now again, the anti-realist might get all excited about how only an aesthetic argument can get out of the quagmire. They might smear aesthetic persuasion with truth. Like this: “If the only way out of the quagmire is aesthetic persuasion, then such persuasion must therefore be the standard for truth. And if persuasion is the standard for truth, then realism’s correspondence theory of truth cannot be the standard of truth, meaning that anti-realism is true instead.”
And let’s be clear, aesthetic persuasion, in contrast against logic and reason, means faith. Truth is here a matter of faith.
Yep. Now put that in a box and give it to the realist. You know what happens next. (I might have just made a dig at Alvin Plantinga - I’m not sure.)
And it is worse than all that. It seems all cognitive roads lead to the great epistemic quagmire. It is the churning vortex of internecine conflict sucking all human knowledge into it.
Ha! Now here is an embarrassing confession on my part:
I am a realist on faith. I decide how to resolve the quagmire by my own aesthetic stance on it. And doing so is therefore a matter of faith.
I hate this. It puts me on par with theists.
But I take consolation in this one asymmetry: Those who don’t believe in God can still use their minds and think. But anti-realists, insofar as they actually are practicing anti-realists, cannot use their minds, cannot think. Atheism is just a cognitive option. Anti-realism is cognitive nihilism.
[Cue: Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians - What I Am]
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