1.
(Inspired by "The Conceivability of Mechanism" by Norman Malcolm)
"How did you get in here?"
"Your wife let me in."
"No, I mean how did you physically enter this room?"
"What do you mean? I opened the door and walked in."
"But that's an automatic door. It opens when someone steps in front of it. So you didn't open it yourself."
"Oh. But I pushed on it and felt resistance."
"You must have pushed on it at the same pressure that would have been necessary to open it."
"Well, I turned the handle anyway."
"No you didn't. The handle automatically turns too. When someone steps in front of the door, the handle turns and then the door opens."
"But ... I felt pressure when I turned it. It felt like I was really turning the handle."
"Well, again, you must have used the same amount of pressure that it would have taken to turn it if it hadn't turned automatically. And you still haven't answered my question."
"What question?"
"How did you get in here?"
"Oh. Right. I can't say I opened the door; I can't say I turned the handle; well, at least I can say I moved my hand on the doorknob and moved my legs when I walked in here."
"Can you?"
"What do you mean?"
"Weren't those actions caused by preceding physical conditions?"
"Well, sure."
"Then those conditions caused your hand and legs to move."
"Well ... those conditions don't mean that I didn't move my hand and legs. I mean, maybe I caused the conditions."
"Except that those conditions had conditions which in turn had conditions, et cetera. Pretty quickly it leads to conditions external to you. In fact, we can trace them back to before you were even conceived. The conditions a hundred years ago inevitably led to your hand and legs moving a few moments ago. All of these conditions were inevitable. You didn't contribute anything to them. They caused it; you didn't."
"But, but ... isn't there anything I did?"
"Isn't there anything who did?"
***************
2.
(Inspired by "The Man Born Blind" by C. S. Lewis)
"I'm starting to think that 'sight' is a conspiracy."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, not a conspiracy. A myth. An illusion."
"Again: what do you mean?"
"I mean that no one has ever been able to explain it to me."
"Well, you're blind. I don't know how they could."
"Why not?"
"It's outside your experience."
"Why should that matter? I've never experienced Antarctica. I've never experienced being dipped in a vat filled with milk and corn flakes. I can still understand such experiences."
"That's not ... it's ... hmm."
"Tell me what 'sight' is and I'll let you go back to your book."
(Sigh) "Fine. Let's see ... light waves bounce of an object, traverse the distance between the object and your eyes, and then impress the image of the object on your retina."
"But that's touch."
"What?"
"Impressing something on a part of your body is the sense of touch. Sight is just a subcategory of touch."
"Maybe I didn't describe it well. Sight allows you to perceive all kinds of qualities, such as color, that you can't perceive through touch."
"All that means is that the eyes are particularly sensitive, sensitive enough to feel the impression of light waves. If the rest of our bodies were as sensitive we would 'see' with our whole bodies."
"Dude, that's crazy. Sight is different from touch."
"How? By allowing you to perceive things you don't perceive through touch? We've just seen that's not the case. Sight is reducible to touch, therefore sight is not a separate sense. Seeing just means feeling things that come into contact with you. I can do that. You just have a greater sense of touch in one part of your body than I do."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying I'm not really blind. You can't really see. There's nothing to see, there's only something to feel, and I can feel. The difference between you and me is like the difference between someone with 20/20 vision and someone who's near-sighted."
"But that would apply to hearing as well."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, hearing is feeling the sound waves bouncing around inside your inner ear."
"That's true. Yes, that's true. You're right. Hearing is reducible to touch as well. We really only feel sound waves in a particular part of the body where we're sensitive to it."
"That was meant to be a reductio ad absurdum. Obviously hearing is different from touch."
"'Obviously' it's not, if all there is to it is feeling sound waves. Feeling is already a sense. If hearing is just feeling of a particular type, then it falls under the category of touch. We don't hear anything for the same reason you don't see anything: there's nothing to hear or see."
"But you can hear the difference between certain types of sounds, certain qualities, certain timbres ..."
"All of which are reducible to sound waves which are felt by the inner ear."
"This is insane."
"Not at all. In fact, now that I'm thinking about it, it would apply to smell and taste as well. Both of these senses are feeling something impress itself upon us, right? It's just that the organs that smell and taste are very sensitive and so can feel things, certain refined qualities, that we can't feel with the rest of our bodies. Thus, taste and smell, along with sight and hearing, are subsumed under the sense of touch. That's all there is. Touch."
"So food doesn't taste sweet or sour? Scents don't smell good or bad? Music doesn't sound pleasant or unpleasant?"
"What you call 'sweet', 'sour', 'good', 'bad', 'pleasant', and 'unpleasant' are just a type of feeling. They are reducible to touch. Everything you see, hear, smell, and taste are illusory. All there is is touch."
"Then how are we having this conversation? I mean, you're hearing the words I'm saying, and responding to them, right?"
"Well ... hmmm. That's an interesting point. Hearing is just feeling, so why should my feeling the sound waves you produce have any more value than feeling something? There's nothing to hear, ergo, I can't hear you."
"Right, and that's crazy. Obviously you can hear me."
"..."
"Right?"
"..."
"Dude, are you OK? Can you hear me?"
"..."
"Um, why are you wiggling your finger?"