Suppose that a child were to construct a toy house out of blocks and leave the room. Then, suppose an adult comes into the room and accidentally destroys the toy house. Mindful not to upset the child, the adult places all of the blocks back in the places they were before, reconstructing the same house. Question: is this house the same as the one that was destroyed by the adult? [. . .]
What is the correct answer as to the status of the toy houses, and what am I doing wrong?
The first thing you’re doing wrong is taking terribly seriously what’s really a very silly question.
Normal people don’t think up questions such as this. At least in our modern age, questions of this kind typically are not the product of an honest person’s quest for intellectual understanding — quite the opposite: they are concocted and presented to rational and intelligent people in order to undermine their self-confidence, and induce in them exactly the kind of uncertainty you’re experiencing now.
Note that although the question was given to you, apparently no attendant answer — not even a mistaken one — was provided. Such would almost certainly defeat the purpose: Tomorrow, all the tortured and sleepless young minds will file in to class and proceed to have a marvelously “intellectual” discussion about the metaphysical status of the toy house, with some students arguing in favor of positions they’re not entirely sure of, and others merely watching uneasily (or bored) and saying nothing. The teacher in this instance will likely act as a facilitator and play devil’s advocate against the arguments raised. By the time the schoolbell rings there will have been no clear, solid conclusion reached; everyone will leave even more hopelessly confused and tired, even more turned off to this moronic subject known as philosophy — and perhaps just a little less certain that they can make sense out of the universe, or that there’s much use in trying.
The solution to what’s known in academic circles as the Romper Room Conundrum is really quite simple. In other words: don’t plan on hearing about it class — unless you intend to stand up and present it. The answer is first to confess that you’ve reconstructed the house to the child who originally built it, and then ask him for his opinion on the matter. Assuming he’s a reasonably bright kid above the age of 5, he’ll probably say something along the lines of the following:
"Gee, Pops, are you really that dumb? Have those crackpot philosophy profs finally obliterated your very last brain cell? Just what exactly are they teaching you in that big highfalutin university? Haven’t you ever heard of the concept of respect? That is, that something can be true in one respect , but not true in another?
“If you asked me whether or not the house that you’ve built is the same as my original, I’d have to ask you: What exactly are you referring to when you speak of ‘the house’? If you mean my design and the actual blocks I used to execute it, then yes, it is the same. If, however, you mean ‘the thing which was the work of my hand’ — then no, clearly this is something different. The answer depends entirely on the respect one speaks of things being ‘the same’ — and more, the answer is virtually contained in this meaning, and becomes practically self-evident once such meaning is indicated. Should the person posing the question fail to make clear what he means, the question is quite impossible to answer — which makes it his problem, not yours. Now quit torturing yourself over such foolishness and move out of the way: you’re blocking Sesame Street.”
I want to emphasize that, at least in today’s world, no such question would ever come up in the mind of a normal, rational person in the course of his life (or at the very least he would never consider it to be anything terribly vexing or important) — without the influence of modern philosophy. Thousands of years ago, people got confused stepping into rivers and replacing boards on ships, and understandably so: such people were just beginning to learn how to think, and had not yet experienced the dawn of Aristotle’s phenomenal epistemological influence. Sadly, that light has not yet reached many of our present culture’s most illustrious educators, ensconced as they are in the lonely isolation of their ivory towers and inside their own heads.
[P.S. — Statements here are intended as a general indictment of academia and modern philosophy, and are not a commentary on any particular individual or institution.]
