The Horton Dilemma [ONC 2022]

PROFESSOR BELVIN'S LECTURE

10 YEARS LATER |

I sit at the bottom of the lecture hall, looking up at the many faces of my students. Various expressions take residence amongst this crowd, from overwhelming confusion, to sheer boredom, to hungry fascination.

I continue my lecture. "An infinite regress is an unending series of items in which each item is governed by some recursive formula. That formula determines how each item in the series depends on and/or is produced by the item preceding it."

More confusion, boredom, and, thank goodness, fascination.

"Infinite regress exists in many fields—language, math, art, science, nature, epistemology...the list goes on! For example, in art, infinite regress can be expressed in a painting of a painting of a painting...you get it."

Some look like they do not get it, so I project an image on the wall-length screen. The image depicts a painter painting a picture of himself painting a picture of themself painting a picture of themself, and so on. Lightbulbs begin to go off above some of their heads. So many of my learners are visual.

"But what I want to talk to you about today is the infinite regress fallacy. The simplest way to illustrate infinite regress in epistemology—the study and theory of knowledge—is with the 'turtles down forever' analogy. Some worldviews have proposed the world exists on the back of the turtle. Why does such a story exist? It exists to answer the question: 'What holds up the world?' If the world needs a turtle to support it, though, then shouldn't we also ask, 'What holds up the turtle?' Would not the turtle need something to support it, perhaps another turtle? No scientific explanation gets to the heart of such questions, because any answer will always require new support, and any new support will require more support, and on and on to infinity. Turtles down forever. That is infinite regress."

One of my favorite students puts her hand up, and I nod to her, giving her permission to speak. "So does any creation argument rely on infinite regress?" she asks. "Like when people say that there has to be a creator to make sense of the existence of the world, and then people ask, 'Who created the creator?'"

"That's absolutely right, Penelope. All of those arguments rely on infinite regress reasoning. So why do people call that reasoning a fallacy?"

"Because any new support will always rely on other support. Nothing can ever truly be proven with this kind of reasoning."

"Bingo."

"But what if the truth can't be proven?" another student named Toba asks. "Does infinite regress have to be considered a bad thing? Can't it be viewed as a valuable argument in some cases?"

"Well, you're all metaphysics students: you tell me."

None of the students has an answer to offer, so I say, "Maybe you can answer that question in your paper, Toba." Then I show the next slide.

As many of the students begin to furiously take notes on the last lecture slide, I'm hit with an old memory. Of Nakomi and me at Psyche-Delish, getting ready to go out of this world.

For so many years, I thought taking the Vivecticta™ with Nakomi had been such a mistake, resulting in my loss of self, a sort of demotion from my former glory. That decision is now met with peace, though. I never lost my sense of self. The thing that most drives me—the thing that has always driven me—is still intact. My curiosity compels me forward with everything I do. I may be a professor now, a philosopher in the field of metaphysics. Science is the study of questions that can be answered, while philosophy is the study of questions that can't be answered, supposedly. Metaphysics, some say, is a philosophy masquerading under the science of physics. The pursuit of such knowledge is still shunned, even now in 2060. I'm well aware that my work is viewed as far less important than the Queen of Grasshoppers's was. (Even though I left her far behind, I can still be proud of how Belvin Grasshopper protein powder is distributed around the globe to communities in need.)

The good thing about my Vivecticta™ journey is that it left me with lots of questions. It made me more curious about things I'd never been curious about before. I continue to feel like there are discoveries just out of my reach—waiting for me. So many questions plague my mind, but "plague" is not the right word, because it implies that the questions are uninvited, that I would rid myself of them if I could. No. The questions are important, and the answers are, too. I know, I just know, that I can find some of the answers.

Metaphysics 101 isn't always my favorite class to teach. Many of the students take it as a filler elective and don't care about the questions I ask. Some of them care. That hungry fascination I observe convinces me that some of them, like Penelope and Toba, are downright obsessed with the possibilities of how the world might function and why. I love that.

As sounds of note-taking cease, I get ready to bring the class to a conclusion. "Okay, students, your ten-page paper is due in two weeks. Remember that it's meant to be an exploratory research paper that uses at least five scholarly sources. You can choose any of the topics we've explored in our course discussion. Preferably, you should narrow your paper down to a more meaningful subtopic."

I project the list of topics onto the screen:

Ego

Consciousness

Nature of reality

Monism versus dualism

Perception

Illusion

Free will

Ego dissolution

Infinity

Paradox

Life versus Nonlife

Chaos

Levels of consciousness

Time

Memory

Infinite Regress

Students get up to leave, and while some look upset at the thought of a ten-page paper, I believe I do detect hints of excitement in others.

I swell with pride. That's all I want to do: infect my students with some of my own curiosity. My secret desire: I want my students to finish my class with more questions than answers. I want them to feel comfortable, and not discomforted, being confronted with strange possibilities. With paradoxes.