21 levels of Self-Deception: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

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always incomprehensible. On the other hand, if the phenomenal world is the world as it appears through human understanding and via the constraints of the human senses then perhaps a complete and logically-consistent explanation of phenomena is achievable without interference from the mysterious noumenon. The noumenon is always there, but just as a ghost. On this view, for the purposes of human knowledge and understanding, it need not trouble us.

So, there is mystery, and indeed physicist John Wheeler has said that as the island of knowledge grows bigger, the shoreline onto the sea of mystery increases exponentially. Perhaps it is better to start by embracing the mystery rather than trying to deny it. That means to act from the assumption of ignorance rather than the assumption of knowledge. It might be said that this is the response mystery calls from us concerning questions of truth or knowledge. Beauty and goodness — the other broad categories of value — also emanate from mystery. Bertrand Russell for instance — in The Problems of Philosophy — derides the phenomenon-noumenon split but he regards morals and aesthetics as coming ultimately from an unknown source. Wittgenstein, whose famous quote opens this chapter, is one of the few relatively modern philosophers who seems to have accepted that there is a hidden aspect to life for which there are no words.

Our true selves, the essence of who we are, may also derive ultimately from mystery. The soul is the manifestation of that essence within an embodied person. The soul is the adventure of essence in the world. This, I recognise, is

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