Skeptic Reading Room The View From Nowhere or Somewhere

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T HE VIEW FROM N OWHERE OR

S OMEWHERE ?
by Maia Caron
SINCE MY EARLY TWENTIES I have madly underlined the

metaphysical bits in novels like War and Peace and The Razor’s
Edge, preferring that my philosophy be delivered in the pages of a
fictional work. One might argue that all great literary fiction
illuminates the human experience, but the relatively new
philosophical novel genre is burgeoning and undertaking more than
a cursory examination of existential questions. The continued
popularity of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and
Sophie’s World, suggests that more individuals seek answers to
existential queries such as “Does God Exist?” through such works,
and it is in this genre on this question that Rebecca Newberger
Goldstein gives us in her book, 36 Arguments for the Existence of
God.
Ms. Goldstein’s protagonist, Cass Seltzer, is an academic with his

Ph.D. in the psychology of religion who has written a book called
skeptic.com/…/the-view-from-nowhere-o… 1/14
The Varieties of Religious Illusion, which becomes a surprise
bestseller and earns him the dubious title, “atheist with a soul.” In
his book, Cass presents 36 Arguments for the Existence of God
with a skeptic’s precision, and yet it’s obvious that he also
perceives the world with a poet’s passionate intuition, symbolized
by his choice of the number 36 for its mystical significance rooted
in the Kabbalah’s “Lamed-Vav”—named for the 36 righteous who
greet Ayn Sof, the divine presence. In Gematria, a form of Jewish
numerology, 36 also symbolizes a notion of “two lives.”
“Two lives” are metaphorically represented in 36 Arguments for

the Existence of God by Cass Seltzer’s devotion to his mentor
Professor Klapper (who dismisses skepticism as “positivistic,
nihilistic scientism”), and the pure brilliance of the child genius,
Azarya, who at the precocious age of six years, discovers that
there is no largest prime number. Goldstein poses complex
metaphysical questions and precisely takes apart 36 arguments for
the existence of God in a manner that will appeal to both the
existential thinker and the skeptical questioner—proof that it’s
constructive to use metaphor and analogy to bring some clarity to
questions about the nature of reality.
To those not schooled in the methods of critical thinking, the big

questions can seem out of reach, answerable only by minds
trained in classic systems of investigation. Many individuals thus
unschooled get their existential fix in pop culture, in music and
movies such as The Matrix. As is suggested in Goldstein’s title,
many individuals still turn to a work of fiction called the bible for
their answers to life’s big questions. Biblical scholars would agree
that the ancient Hebraic texts were originally written to impart
metaphysical truths, but any pure symbolic references have
devolved through messy translation and misinterpretation, into a
travesty that has rooted a God problem within the belief systems
of billions of people worldwide who deify the messenger rather
than the message.
Like her protagonist, Cass Seltzer, Rebecca Goldstein is a Ph.D and

the author of papers addressing reduction, realism and the mind,
as well as the book Incompleteness: the Proof and Paradox of Kurt
Gödel. She is interested in more than cursory investigations into
the nature of reality. As a self-described atheist, Goldstein has also
asked herself such questions as, “How does all this philosophy I’ve
studied help me to deal with the brute contingencies of life?” and
“How does it relate to life as it’s really lived?”
Early on in the story, Cass Seltzer happens upon Thomas Nagel’s

book, The View from Nowhere, and is struck by the fact that here
is a man who shares the same “bedtime metaphysical” question:
“How can I be a particular person?” I examine this question myself
in my own forthcoming book, Conversations with Eddie Other,
considering the notion that the human thinking process can access
realms of thought that are purely objective, and what this tells us
about the theory of undecidability: whether a proposition can be
clearly found provable or refutable in a specified deductive system.
Regardless if the “language” used is mathematical or linguistic,
subjective interpretation confuses any deductive system.
Throughout Goldstein’s narrative, Cass Seltzer’s internal dilemma
symbolizes this notion of the impossibility of a purely objective
interpretation as he flirts with point-of-view perception of reality.
Early in her book, Goldstein quotes from Nagel’s The View from
Nowhere. One passage is particularly illuminative: “I may occupy
TN [Thomas Nagel] or see the world through the eyes of TN, but I
can’t be TN. I can’t be a mere person. From this point of view it
can appear that ‘I am TN,’ insofar as it is true, is not an identity but
a subject-predicate position.” Cass Seltzer summarizes Nagel’s
book, surmising that “the basic idea (in the book) is that we
humans have the unique capacity to detach ourselves from our
own particular point of view, achieving degrees of objectivity, all
the way up to and including the view of how things are in
themselves, from no particular viewpoint at all.”
I share Cass’s notion that it may be quite possible to access this

view from nowhere, but the distinction should be made between a
“no place” that is a “thing in itself” and a no place that is “no thing”
at all.
Because most individuals cannot grasp an infinite nothing, this

notion of a View from Nowhere has been made into a religion, into
a God. Spinoza’s own conclusion was that, “the universe that itself
provides all the answers about itself simply is God.” In Buddhism,
this “groundless ground” is the absolute that can only be accessed
by relinquishing the thinking process. Goldstein considers this
possibility: can an individual inhabit a position that is not a position?
A position neither based in the dual/binary worlds of scientism on
one side and intuition on the other? Is it possible to perceive reality
from this View from Nowhere, this Ayn Sof, this nothing, this
groundless ground and to then understand existence?
Einstein said, “If, then, it is true that the axiomatic basis of

theoretical physics cannot be extracted from experience but must
be freely invented….I hold it true that pure thought can grasp
reality, as the ancients dreamed.” Nagel’s View from Nowhere, the
notion of a “centerless world” and the proposition that “none of us
occupies a metaphysically privileged position” cannot be proved
empirically (although some might argue that Einstein reduced it to
a perfect metaphysical equation with his theory of relativity).
Perhaps there is a way to solve Nagel’s “unsolved problem of

particular subjectivity.” If it is the case that E = mc2 (and this
theory has not been disproved), perhaps the very sole-centered
position of perception is the key to understanding existence, what
Stephen Hawking and other physicists hope to discover as the
source of “what breathes fire into our equations.” This nothing can
be noted, using not what Buddhists consider the only manner in
which one may perceive objective reality (the meditative state), or
a “unique capacity” of intuition, but by utilizing a very specific
manner of critical thought. Perhaps that is the only way Thomas
Nagel’s questions, “What kind of fact is it—if it is a fact—that I am
Thomas Nagel? How can I be a particular person?” can be
answered. Perhaps by questioning and noting the clarity of pure
thought (as Einstein mentioned) is the only way a particular person
is “himself.”
If Heidegger was correct and it is the case that the notion of

Platonic forms set ontological investigations back by focusing on
existence as a being (a thing with properties and substance), the
focus should be directed toward what is prior to being—which he
famously referred to as “the nothing.” This then becomes the issue

with philosophical investigations that cannot get beyond Platonism
—a frustration shared by Wittgenstein when he said, “How
extraordinary that Plato could have got even as far as he did! Or
that we could not get any further!”
In the same way that Wittgenstein pressed the boundaries of

empiricism and came to das mystiche, works by philosophers such
as Heidegger tell us that our “bedtime metaphysical” pondering,
this observing of a self and questioning one’s own existence: “Here
I Am,” should not end in a pat empirical answer, nor some vague
transcendental or mystical sensation. Rather, “Here I Am” is simply
how it is.
If the universe is both personal and universal, as both Seltzer and

Nagel suggest, and it’s not possible for an individual to wrap his/her
logical thinking process around the notion, one should neither
assign mystical significance to this nothing, nor should it seek to
empirically dissect it as a “thing in itself.”
Even when Goldstein’s child genius, Azarya, becomes an adult, his

life choices show how difficult it is for an individual to resolve its
own human foibles or “reconcile the necessary with the
impossible.” Can we humans reconcile the often contradictory
qualities of our behavior, the messes that we so often find
ourselves in when having to face the consequences of poorly
thought out choices in life? Perhaps when one perceives from the
View from Nowhere, one’s previously contradictory axiomatic
choices that once reduced life to a series of tautological
propositions, come clear, and the ability to understand what has
previously been a mystery is unconcealed.
At the end of Goldstein’s book, a Harvard debate between her

protagonist, Cass Seltzer, and a religious apologist argue the
proposition: “Does God exist?” Goldstein shows us that a line in
the sand cannot be drawn with precision when Cass concludes his
argument with the claim that while an objective point of view from
the View from Nowhere is available to us all, each individual is
ultimately responsible for its own moral choices.
In her appendix, Goldstein exposes flaws inherent in the weaker

arguments one hears from theists (from the Cosmological
Argument to the Argument from Pragmatism (William James’ Leap
of Faith), but she also points out the flaws in reasoning within
more subtle claims, such as The Argument from the Fine-Tuning of
Physical Constants and The Argument from the Hard Problem of
Consciousness. 36 Arguments for the Existence of God not only
delivers what the freethinking reader wants from a philosophical
novel, but is a must-read for any skeptic who wishes to arm
him/herself with thoughtful ammunition in the ongoing battle to
end religious irrationality.
In particular, within the Argument from the Intelligibility of the

Universe, Goldstein examines the idea that perhaps no answer
exists to certain hard questions. Although I suspect that Ms.
Goldstein shares Thomas Nagel’s view that Wittgenstein is a
philosophical idealist, I think that he mirrors her sentiments as
evinced in one of his aphorisms at the end of the Tractatus when
he writes, “We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be
answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all. Of
course there is then no question left, and just this is the answer.”
Goldstein evocatively concludes her own book thus: “Maybe some

things just are (“stuff happens”), including the fundamental laws of
nature. Philosophers sometimes call this just-is-ness
“contingency.” Perhaps in the end, we are all humbled by “the
brutality of incomprehensibility that assaults us from all sides.”
Perhaps indeed.
About the author

Maia Caron is author of the soon to be published book Conversations with
Eddie Other, a philosophical novel about why the world of the persona is
upside down and how only the individual can right it again, and what this
portends for theology and theistic arguments for God’s existence.
Comments (10)
10 responses to this post.

1. N.R.G. says:
January 27, 2010 at 7:25 am
Just a small clarification regarding Ms. Caron’s short

discussion of Kabbalah in her otherwise intelligent, interesting
and thoughtful review. Not that skeptical readers will be that
interested, or even react to this so positively, but I offer it
just for the sake of clarity.
The 36 Righteous are not called “Lamed-av”, but rather

“Lamed-Vav”. Lamed and Vav are both letters in the Hebrew
alphabet (Aleph Beit, the first two letters); Lamed is the 12th,
and Vav is the 6th. Regarding the first ten letters of the
alphabet, their ordinal position equals their gematrial value,
hence Vav = 6. The values for the 11th through 20th letters,
however, increase by tens instead of units, hence the 11th
letter Chaf = 20, and our 12th letter Lamed = 30. “Lamed-
Vav”, therefore, equals 30+6=36.
From the 20th letter onwards, the increase is by hundreds.

So between the 22 regular letters and the special end forms
for five of them, we have values from 1 through 900. The
name for the first letter Aleph, which equals 1, can also be
read Eleph, which means 1,000, closing out the set of units,
tens and hundreds by returning to the beginning. Works out
nicely, doesn’t it?
So how does 36 symbolize “two lives”? Because the word in

Hebrew for “life” is Chai, made up of the 8th and 10th letters
Chet and Yood, totalling 18. And two lives equals 36. Charity
is often given in multiples of 18, as a reminder that the
money should improve our lives.
Now, to the Ayn Sof. I offer this explanation both admitting a

lot of ignorance about the concepts, and without taking a
position regarding their truth or falseness. For a long time, I
did believe all of this to be true, but recently I’ve become
skeptical (which brings me here!).
The “divine presence” is usually called the Shechinah, not Ayn

Sof. Ayn Sof literally means “without end” – and implicitly,
without beginning. In other words, the boundlessness and
eternality of God. Shechinah, on the other hand, means
“Indwelling (Presence)”.
According to my very limited understanding, Ayn Sof is

unreachable by any created being, so the 36 Righteous
wouldn’t “greet” the Ayn Sof, but rather a “closer” spiritual
reality, God throughout remaining “One”. “Presence” implies
being perceivable and accessible, which is not the case with
Ayn Sof. At this level, God can only be described by what It is
not (hence boundless, endless, etc.), not by what It is.
There is much wisdom in the Kabbalah. The question is, do

we need a God for it to be so…
N.R.G.
Reply
2. Rumbles says:
January 27, 2010 at 11:00 am
It is a shame that Caron’s review becomes more of a

prologue for her own, soon to be published, book.
The second shame, and great surprise for that matter, is that
skeptical philosophy, according to this article, looks so similar
to western new age mysticism or its eastern parent religions.
Is skeptical philosophy really akin to new age belief? The

nothing seems akin to a higher plane or the divine; the
answers found, or the key to reaching that place found, in the
mind or within. Wow, what similarities.
The article debunks religious thinking using logic and then

copies religious thinking towards “nothing” in order to find
meaning. Seriously? Is this a surprise to anyone else? The
two groups may believe they are coming from very different
places, but they sure read like country cousins in this article;
and both seek meaning.
It makes sense culturally that western new age beliefs have

been influenced by western rational philosophy. But is it
possible that the reverse is just as true? Or, are these two
polar opposites of thinking really saying the same thing in
5/27/2011 Skeptic
polar opposites » Reading Room
of thinking » The
really View from…
saying the same thing in
different ways? Caron’s article reads like they are.
Reply
MFG says:
January 27, 2010 at 1:01 pm
“Are these two polar opposites of thinking really saying

the same thing in different ways?”
Well, what if they are?
Perhaps the opposites are not such opposites after all?
Or, pushed to their extremes, meet?
Perhaps it’s a mistake to categorize the admission of

mystery as a “new age belief”?
Indeed, are we to characterize Wittgenstein as a “new

age believer” for recognizing the limits of logic?
Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to Goldstein’s and

Caron’s books, both.
Reply
3. Brock says:
Stop the nonsense already! Philosophers are caught in the

cages of their self-created “rules” of logic–in addition to the
limits imposed by their own singular lack of experience. The
“world” is! I am! If I touch you or drop a rock on your foot,
you will know you and I exist. Will breaking a bone or burning
your home be any more “real”? If you or I disappear, the
universe will get along just fine, thank you. Hundreds of
millions of people have been deliberately killed by other
people and the “laws” of the universe remain unchanged. We
can know there is no such thing as a god because none is
necessary to account for all phenomena. Get over it! get on
with it! As for “mystery”-of course there is more to learn-
isn’t that the most wonderful news? Creating worlds that
don’t exist is called fiction–enjoy it as such.
Reply
MFG says:
January 28, 2010 at 12:10 pm
That was my point, basically.
We may never be able to “explain” absolutely

everything, but life goes on, right?
Admitting as much doesn’t make you a “new age

believer.”
Reply
4. Eliezer Pennywhistler says:
It’s a bit of a side issue, but I need to correct two of your

comments on Jewish mysticism.
1) While “36″ does equal “two lives” in Kabalistic numerology,

it refers to the entwining of two lives (and all the implications
thereof).
2) NRG is right –“Lamed-av” is really “lamed-vav”. (Lamed-

av would mean something like “learned father”).
3) The notion of the 36 is not Kabbalistic, but Talmudic.

(Specifically TractateSanhedrin 97b and Tractate Sukkah
45b.)
4) Lamed-vavniks do not greet “Ayn Sof”. Ain Sof is that

non-physical part of Divinity that humans cannot reach. What
the Talmud says is that in every generation 36 holy people
“greet the Shechinah” – the Divine Presence that interacts
with Creation.
4a) It may be worth mentioning that the notion is poetic and

mystical. It is not meant to be taken literally.
4b) The role of the 36 hidden righteous is to justify Humanity

in the eyes of God. For the sake of these 36, God preserves
the world (even if the rest of Humanity has sunk to the level
of total barbarism).
The twin implications of this tradition are that 1) the existence

of the Universe may just depend on your ethical conduct; and
2) all people have hidden depths you might not perceive and
might never know about, so you should interact with every
other person as if the Universe depends on them.
Reply
N.R.G. says:
January 31, 2010 at 7:29 am
E.P. – 1) I hadn’t heard the idea that the two lives

represented by 36 are necessarily intertwined, but it
sounds nice. Source?
3) Thanks for the confirmation. I never thought that I’d

learn some Torah here! (source fo the 36.)
4) What is the “physical part of divinity” – JC? Not

according to Judaism – God is not physical in any way
(if He is at all, that is).
Interesting that you assume that any one of us could be

one of the 36 Hidden Righteous, upon whom the
universe depends. The whole idea doesn’t make much
sense, but it’s very positive to think so.
I don’t think that she included Hindus and Buddhists

among the “billions of people worldwide who deify the
messenger rather than the message.” I think that she
basically meant the Christians – although there is a
tradition that Abraham gave his other children gifts and
sent them to the East. But I thought that Chinese and
Indian religions predated Judaism anyway – they just
got it “wrong”…
And I don’t think that she meant that it was the Jews
who made the messy translations and
misinterpretations – it was everyone else (although
wayward Jews could have also).
P.S. – is there a way to get notification of new

comments in a particular thread?
N.R.G.
Reply
5. Eliezer Pennywhistler says:
Nearly forgot.
The paragraph “Biblical scholars would agree that the ancient

Hebraic texts were originally written to impart metaphysical
truths, but any pure symbolic references have devolved
through messy translation and misinterpretation, into a
travesty that has rooted a God problem within the belief
systems of billions of people worldwide who deify the
messenger rather than the message.” makes no sense in
English, and gives me a headache just trying to parse it out.
It seems to imply that Jewish Scripture caused the Hindus

and the Buddhists to believe in God. Or caused them to stop
believing in God. Or screwed up their notion of God. Or
something.
It also seems to imply that Judaism has no idea how to

translate it’s own Hebrew Scriptures into other languages,
and has made a big mess of it all. And then forgot how to
interpret what their Scriptures say — which created and
“rooted” problems in the religious traditions of China, Japan,
Vietnam, India, Europe and the New World.
Busy beavers, those Jews!
Reply
6. Jonathan Lubin says:
February 6, 2010 at 6:31 pm
Well, I just finished the book, and it’s hard to see that Ms.
Caron and I read the same work. She doesn’t mention at all
that it’s hilarious: I laughed so loud while reading it that my
partner had to close the bedroom door to get to sleep. Or
partner had to close the bedroom door to get to sleep. Or
that it’s a wonderful sendup of academic politics. Or to what
extent the faculty baron Jonas Elijah Klapper is exhibited as a
monumental philistine and colossal pompous fool.
Reply
7. alan delman says:
February 17, 2010 at 5:46 am
Interesting thought-provoking discussion and commentary

with some further evidence of the usual lack of understanding
of the history and essence of Buddhism among many
skeptics.
(Michael,need to consider addressing this ongoing gap
sometime.)
Reply
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5/27/2011 Skeptic » Reading Room » The View from…

Skeptic: Promoting Science and

T HE VIEW FROM N OWHERE OR

SINCE MY EARLY TWENTIES I have madly underlined the

Ms. Goldstein’s protagonist, Cass Seltzer, is an academic with his

“Two lives” are metaphorically represented in 36 Arguments for

To those not schooled in the methods of critical thinking, the big

Like her protagonist, Cass Seltzer, Rebecca Goldstein is a Ph.D and

Early on in the story, Cass Seltzer happens upon Thomas Nagel’s

I share Cass’s notion that it may be quite possible to access this

Because most individuals cannot grasp an infinite nothing, this

Einstein said, “If, then, it is true that the axiomatic basis of

Perhaps there is a way to solve Nagel’s “unsolved problem of

If Heidegger was correct and it is the case that the notion of

famously referred to as “the nothing.” This then becomes the issue

In the same way that Wittgenstein pressed the boundaries of

If the universe is both personal and universal, as both Seltzer and

Even when Goldstein’s child genius, Azarya, becomes an adult, his

At the end of Goldstein’s book, a Harvard debate between her

In her appendix, Goldstein exposes flaws inherent in the weaker

In particular, within the Argument from the Intelligibility of the

Goldstein evocatively concludes her own book thus: “Maybe some

About the author

10 responses to this post.

Just a small clarification regarding Ms. Caron’s short

The 36 Righteous are not called “Lamed-av”, but rather

From the 20th letter onwards, the increase is by hundreds.

So how does 36 symbolize “two lives”? Because the word in

Now, to the Ayn Sof. I offer this explanation both admitting a

The “divine presence” is usually called the Shechinah, not Ayn

According to my very limited understanding, Ayn Sof is

There is much wisdom in the Kabbalah. The question is, do

It is a shame that Caron’s review becomes more of a

Is skeptical philosophy really akin to new age belief? The

The article debunks religious thinking using logic and then

It makes sense culturally that western new age beliefs have

“Are these two polar opposites of thinking really saying

Well, what if they are?

Perhaps the opposites are not such opposites after all?

Or, pushed to their extremes, meet?

Perhaps it’s a mistake to categorize the admission of

Indeed, are we to characterize Wittgenstein as a “new

Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to Goldstein’s and

Stop the nonsense already! Philosophers are caught in the

That was my point, basically.

We may never be able to “explain” absolutely

Admitting as much doesn’t make you a “new age

It’s a bit of a side issue, but I need to correct two of your

1) While “36″ does equal “two lives” in Kabalistic numerology,

2) NRG is right –“Lamed-av” is really “lamed-vav”. (Lamed-

3) The notion of the 36 is not Kabbalistic, but Talmudic.

4) Lamed-vavniks do not greet “Ayn Sof”. Ain Sof is that

4a) It may be worth mentioning that the notion is poetic and

4b) The role of the 36 hidden righteous is to justify Humanity

The twin implications of this tradition are that 1) the existence

E.P. – 1) I hadn’t heard the idea that the two lives

3) Thanks for the confirmation. I never thought that I’d

4) What is the “physical part of divinity” – JC? Not

Interesting that you assume that any one of us could be

I don’t think that she included Hindus and Buddhists

P.S. – is there a way to get notification of new

The paragraph “Biblical scholars would agree that the ancient