In a dialogue incorrectly labelled a short story, Edgar Allan Poe has his character Agathos say: "There are no dreams in Eden--but it is here whispered that, of this infinity of matter, the sole purpose is to afford infinite springs, at which the soul may allay the thirst to know which is for ever unquenchable within it--since to quench it, would be to extinguish the soul's self."
Oinos, the other character, stated before this:"I clearly perceive the infinity of matter is no dream" to help clarify the obscure subject.
To give this some form:
P1: not D (tacitly: not D implies I)
P2: I (infinity of matter) & IS (infinite springs)
P3: Q (quench) implies EX (extinguish)
Conclusion: not Q (unquenchability of knowledge)
We don't want to extinguish our souls; I hope that's tacit also. I'm having a bit of difficulty with the variables. I want to prove this but I can't extract EX from Q implies EX without it elsewhere in the form. Does anyone else see how I can fix this?
Yikes! This is a tough one, and I’m not sure we have all the necessary tools to pull it off yet. Likewise, although I find it compelling on the surface, I’m not sure that this argument is even valid. The first challenge is identifying the conclusion. Is it possible to read this as an argument for the necessity of the infinity of matter?
ReplyDeleteIf the soul could quench its thirst to know, it would extinguish itself. The soul cannot extinguish itself. Therefore its thirst to know must be unquenchable. If its thirst is unquenchable, then there must be infinite opportunities to ease that thirst. There can be infinite opportunities to ease the soul’s thirst to know if and only if matter is infinite.
I don’t feel very confident about this, but, like you, I’m having a hard time.
It also depends what Poe means by "infinite springs"; those could be distinct parts of this infinity of matter or something more abstract; OR the abstraction of the infinity of springs comes from matter. Plus the element of the "dream" is confusing to me unless he's just saying that infinity of matter is the opposite of unreal things (dreams). That makes sense. I think that if we had a not-I then we could say "not-I implies Q" and implicitly you've got an extinguished soul. Does that seem to work? But since it is absolutely certain there are no dreams in Eden (these are angels of some sort having a discussion so they know their stuff, supposedly but at the end one becomes emotionally compromised so maybe not so much) and that's our infinity of matter, which, if we didn't have through quenchability, would prevent us from having this conversation. Knowledge is unquenchable.
ReplyDeleteThat's a tough one. Interpreting the figurative language into propositions will be the hard part.
ReplyDelete