The Human Predicament

EPILOGUE

THE HUMAN PREDICAMENT

A predicament is "a deeply perplexing problem", or "a situation from which one extricates oneself only with great difficulty." And humans do indeed seem to be deeply puzzled and perplexed by the situation in which they find themselves. There are many facets to this puzzlement, one of which is the nature of the external world they must deal with. This problem has occupied most of this book. However, in the chapters on philosophy of the supernatural, and on the meaning of life, we also took up the problem of the feeling of cosmic alienation.

In dealing with the question of what is the nature of external reality, we discovered that it seems to have a very peculiar metaphysical status. Looked at one way, it seems to be objective; but looked at another way, it seems to be subjective. This raises the question of whether the seeming paradox is due to semantic problems, or whether the external world is actually paradoxical in nature.

After thoroughly examining various proposals, we have inclined towards the thesis that humans are in fact dealing simultaneously with two quite different external realities. The reason for this is to be found in the nature of human perception. The brain apparently constructs an external world of awareness out of both internal and external data. Although mental, it is a virtual external reality because it appears external, we assume it to be external, and we interact with it by interacting with a realm which is in fact physically external and independent. We use the former to achieve things in the latter, and we use the latter to achieve things in the former ... all the while assuming that we are interacting with only one external reality.

This bizarre situation has produced a great deal of puzzlement as to the nature of this supposedly single external world, and just what it is we are presumably accomplishing in it. And just as surely, it has produced a great deal of semantic puzzlement. This is the source of the philosophical school of thought which proposes that the problems are just semantic, and can be removed by proper semantic analysis. But our contention in this book has been that the semantic puzzlement is caused by the extremely peculiar metaphysical position in which we find ourselves. The semantic problems can only be cleared up by becoming very clear about the nature of the human predicament. Once we are clear on this, we can then make proposals about how to deal with this situation semantically. The hypothetical monist suggests that we acknowledge that everyday language is in fact doing double duty ... in referring simultaneously to both the noumenal (physical) world, and to a hypothetical public phenomenal realm, and that there is really no practical way to change this. We need to accept it, and change some of our rules about the use of language ... such as that a word should not refer simultaneously to two different things.

Even more important than changing our semantic expectations, the hypothetical monist contends that we need to change some of our expectations about the nature of reality. Through no fault of our own, we are faced with two, very different types of reality: one subjective, and the other objective ... and both "external", though in different senses. We must interact with both; and yet, for most daily purposes we must assume that we are interacting with only a single external realm ... possessing both objective and subjective features. Our challenge is to make personal sense and meaningfulness out of this, and to reach some degree of agreement with others as to what will constitute "the" public external world. This is a most daunting task.

Finally, we have also looked briefly at the larger picture of the human predicament. Our metaphysical predicament, caused by the nature of perception, is just one of a much larger set of problems resulting from human conceptual ability. Many lower animals share our perceptual situation; but it does not pose any puzzlement for them ... because they cannot reflect on it. The dual nature of reality has become a predicament for humans only because we have become aware of the paradox involved.

A second major problem introduced by our conceptual capacity, is the feeling of cosmic alienation. This takes many forms; but we have suggested here that perhaps the most basic form derives from the fact that we comprise a new species which is in the process of embarking on a new lifestyle: the cultural lifestyle. The host of problems produced by the new orientation is often felt as an alienation from a previous, much more harmonious, lifestyle. It is a problem in the philosophy of the meaning of life, to try to account for this seeming state of alienation.

Philosophy is the nonscientific discipline which tries to make sense of the human predicament, which apparently has its origin in the genetic development of our conceptual capacity. We have looked at two major consequences of this: a great puzzlement in trying to understand the nature of external reality, and a nagging feeling of alienation. There are many other puzzling aspects.