Discourse on Intercourse
Discourse on Intercourse is a well-intended though basically wrong-headed philosophical tract formulated by delusional Austrian librettist Otto Büchstein in the depths of dengue fever delirium in 1769. It immediately preceded his last, great unfinished play Die Schweizer Heulsuse.
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Outraged by René Descartes suggestion in 1637 that the only indubitable thing in the universe was one’s own existence as a thinking thing, Büchstein attempted to deduce an entire multi-personal epistemology from the commercial inevitability of conference calls.
His logic was this: all-hands conference calls must exist, since no-one in her right mind would make the idea up if she didn’t have to. So, since someone has had such an idea, and indeed it is endemic, conference calls must be a necessary, indubitable, fact of corporate life.
On that predicate, it follows that as it is an a priori fact that a conference call must comprise more than one person (“a man cannot meet alone”, Büchstein was fond of quipping), for conference calls to be possible the most basic irreducible ontology of the universe must contain multiple individuals.
At least three, thought Büchstein: the “meetor” (which he regarded as an analog of Descartes’ “thinking thing”, or “res cogitans”), one “meetee” (which Büchstein characterised primarily as a talking thing (“res verbositans”) and since, transparently, neither of these homunculi would willingly meet without there being some kind of compulsion to do so, a third person (usually a management consultant or project manager) to ensure the meeting happens, that minutes are taken, actions assigned and timelines “agreed” for “action closure” (this third person Büchstein called an “action-assigning thing” or “res bossitans”).
In any case, since they were all engaged on a conference call, none of them needed to be God.
“God is omniscient,” Büchstein said. “God doesn’t do conference calls. What would be the point? God already knows everything. Any come to think of it, God is omnipotent. It is, as I have said, axiomatic that no one goes on a conference call that she is not obliged to. Since there is no way of forcing an omnipotent being onto a conference call it follows that omnipotent beings will not do conference calls.
Rather than simply rebutting Descartes’ proof that there must be a God, by illustrating one was not necessary, Büchstein went further: “a universe in which conference calls necessarily exist,” he contended, “is logically inconsistent with the continued presence of an omniscient, benign, omnipotent deity”. He took this as an a priori proof of the non-existence of God.