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How to Break a Maniac
My daughter sent this Existential Comic to me. It shows three ancient philosophers competing in the Philosophy event at the Greek Olympics: Thales, who declares everything is water. Zeno, who declares motion is impossible. Socrates, who declares they’re full of bulls***.
Socrates won.
But of course, he didn’t really win: he refuted nothing.
His refutation was even worse than Samuel Johnson’s stone-kicking “refutation” of George Berkeley.
It’s a well-worn anecdote: Samuel Johnson and his companion, James Boswell, stood outside church in 1763, talking about George Berkeley’s startling philosophical conclusion that matter doesn’t exist.
Here’s how it works: We only perceive matter’s characteristics. That green thing has four legs, a vertical surface, and a horizontal surface. Our mind then combines those things to declare “chair.” But we don’t perceive chair. We only perceive the things that comprise the chair and, therefore, the chair itself doesn’t really exist. Since all things are mere combinations of other things that we perceive in their relation to other things, nothing really exists. Everything is just our ideas. All is mind. There is no matter.
Boswell said, though it can’t be true, it’s impossible to refute.
