Narrowing Intelligibility
In one of the many possible worlds, it so happened that John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume attended the funeral of a mutual friend and colleague. After the tradition had culminated and the crowds had moved on, each philosopher endeavored, on their own accord, to walk and to think. The power inherent in nature, which feels especially strong in such situations, conjured within Locke’s mind a strong desire for open space, clean air, and reflection. At the very instant that Locke mind was made up, God, in his supreme wisdom, thought it best to project notions of feet, motion, and clarity within Berkeley, causing him to associate each with the other and in so doing to desire a stroll. Hume, in a synchronous event, found himself on a dirt path lined with with tall disorderly trees for no discernible reason at all. Somehow, by natural power, divine intervention, or pure coincidence, they met upon this dusty road, each seeking truth in their own way.
Upon apprehending each other upon the path, Locke marveled at nature’s ingenuity, Berkeley clasped his hands in a silent prayer to God, and the imperturbable Hume merely shrugged. Locke and Berkeley walked at the same pace, their heads moving seamlessly along the same linear progression despite the wild difference in their gait. Locke had long smooth strides; he loped, with his eyes wet and wide, peering reverently at the world around him. In contrast, Berkeley stepped lightly and quickly, hardly touching the ground that he never saw, for his eyes were turned inward, preferring to investigate himself rather than the world. Hume seemed not to be there at all but to pop in and out of existence each time he offered his thought to a pertinent moment.
With a loping step, Locke sighed and said, “How is it that we came to be here?” Silence followed this question for it seemed too fundamental, too overarching; more information was needed. Feeling a debt toward the world, Locke continued, “What in this world conspired to bring all of us to this exact place, here and now?”
Berkeley answered without hesitation, almost clipping Locke’s last word with his anticipation. “Only God could render such an occurrence. This is the only possible outcome of an unfathomable nexus of causation set in effect by an omnipotent being, for only one who is omnipotent could possibly interpret such a massive store of information. What else could have imbued us three with the idea to walk at the exact same time?”
“Could not nature possess this power?” Responded Locke, “It seems reasonable to me, considering that it is nature that produces ideas within us through our senses.”
Directly after the last word escaped Locke’s mouth, Berkeley’s first word became intelligible, as if the distinct sentences were continuous with one another. “Yet sensation is nothing but a mental process. Nothing exists outside of our minds. And what has the power to influence minds, to present them with what appears to be a material world, but the Almighty Himself?”
The path became narrower, the tress more crowded. The sun was obscured from view but somehow their path became even more brightly illuminated. When Berkeley ended, both older philosophers regained their idiosyncratic strides, staring in opposite directions yet maintaining resolute balance. Locke seemed troubled however, he was bent at the waist as if he carried something heavy with him. As this occurred and as the path narrowed, Hume appeared in front of them both, facing backwards. His feet never moved; he seemed to glide along the path, moved by the people behind him rather than by his own volition. He shimmered. One could almost see through him. It was as if he did not belong in the same realm as the other two. He stared straight through them, and his mouth remained staunchly open as words poured out directly from his brain without the intermediary of purposeful speech. In his right hand he held an image of the funeral and in his left an image of the path. Although the following words were his, I cannot technically say that he spoke them, for his mouth never moved.
As he raised the funeral in his right hand for emphasis, the elder philosophers heard, “We were at the funeral,” and as he raised the path in his left hand to the same level, “and now we are here. It is as simple as that.”
Saying this, he clapped his hands together, destroying both images and any tenuous relationship they may have had, and flickered out of existence. His disappearance created a sound which can only be likened to the sound of a man on his deathbed whispering the word, “Nothing,” to an empty room. The sound could have come from anywhere, but somehow seemed to answer Locke’s overarching question more directly than Hume’s phantasmal demonstration.
“Surely something caused us to be here today, surely there is some reason,” argued the elder philosophers in unison. Their voices seemed strained, and looking upon them one could tell that the metaphysical weight of their arguments bore down brutally upon them. They could not glimmer like Hume for they were too real, perhaps for their own good.
Hume’s voice responded, resounding from nowhere in particular, “Why is it easier for you to believe that some amorphous nature or eternal God caused you to be here rather to believe that nothing did? Your talk of reasons accomplishes nothing but word-play.”
Locke entertained the fleeting thought that it was easer on the soul to think so, if not the mind. But he refrained from making his thoughts explicit, fearing that his friends would misinterpret him, focusing only on his words rather than his sentiment.
“You cannot deny,” offered Berkeley, “that when you sit in bath tub, your body displaces the water inside of it, increasing the overall volume.”
Hume’s voice came from above this time: “The sitting in the tub, and the water being displaced are two separate and unrelated events. To say otherwise is only to amuse yourselves.”
“What about things that only seem to be caused?” Chimed Locke resolutely. “For example, the seasons. Every year of my life I have experienced, invariably, that spring follows winter. Although it may not be right to say that winter causes spring, the latter always follows the former in the same way that displaced water always follows from sitting in a tub. We can account for this difference, we can offer reasons and trace (for a time) the progress of causation. What do you say to this?”
Hume’s response, horrifying to both elder philosophers, seemed to come from within their own mouths. Berkeley’s eyes swiveled to the front and Locke’s became dry and frantic. “Talk of reasons and causes are meaningless. Both hypothetical situations are the same. Everything only seems caused. Things have unfolded the way they have, but unconsciously and without purpose. There is no reason to think that the future will be anything like the past.”
The path was now so restricted that the philosophers walked in single-file, one after the other in chronological order, each more bent and disfigured than the man they followed. Although the sun could no longer be seen, a strange brilliant light, ambiguous in origin, filled the path.
“You offer a truth that cannot be practiced,” whimpered Locke. “What good is a philosopher who accomplishes nothing but the destruction of hope, tradition, and belief?”
Hume continued floating straight in the illumined air, leading the way for the other two. But his head turned 180 degrees to face those who challenged him. This time his mouth stayed closed. His words entered the minds of the other philosophers as if they had thought them themselves: “I am no philosopher. I do not play by your rules. The patterns you think you see in the world are projections of your own minds. Look around you, you who claim that my truth accomplishes nothing. The world is different now, smaller, less full of distraction and noise. The goal of pure truth is visible. Or do you not seek the truth?”
“Meaning,” they groaned in unison.
“I have given you meaning,” Hume replied, “by showing you what is meaningless.”
“You misunderstand,” they said, “we want meaningfulness.”
“This I cannot give you, nor can you rightfully give it to yourselves: I am merely a man saying what he knows.”
With this all three men fell into a rhythm. Their feet striking the ground simultaneously sounded like an instrument being played in staccato, as if each step was a brand new step, wholly its own and completely unrelated to the steps that came before and may come after. Along they marched, Locke and Berkeley buckling under the weight of their own minds, toward some bright indistinct future, allowing experience to wash through them as it might.
