| Fragments |
By Ronald Tower Preface This is a collection of short pieces exploring various philosophical topics.Contents Pyrrhonism Pyrrhonism was founded by the ancient Greek skeptic Pyrrho of Elis. It was a school of philosophy that was intended to provide a practical way of life as opposed to just a theoretical or academic pursuit. The most famous written expression of Pyrrhonism is Outlines of Pyrrhonism by Sextus Empiricus. This is a brief handbook that can be viewed as an attempt to provide a similar outline in the language of the early twenty first century. A Skeptical Narrative At some point in my life I began to notice that there were many different ways of viewing the world from the one that I had been raised in. There were different religions than mine, different philosophies, cultures, ways of life, obsessions than mine. This unsettled me and set me on a search. What was the one true way? I went through many different attempts to find that one true way. But always these attempts at certainty were eroded away by the awareness of other ways. Also, there were disturbing indications that my search for certainty might be unfounded. Is certainty really possible? I encountered various arguments, from diversity, relativity, assumption, vicious circle, and infinite regress, that called certainty into question. This situation left me in distress. Finally, I don't know exactly why, I just gave up for a moment. I just suspended judgement on absolutes and certainties and relied on everyday practices and practicalities. Unexpectedly, this gave me a kind of peace. I still had this itch for certainty, but in time it died down. I decided that suspending judgement on these absolutes might be the best way for me. I decided to just suspend judgement and rely on practical criteria. Types of Philosophy One way of categorizing philosophies is according to how they approach the issue of the one true way, certainty, real knowledge, absolute truth. Dogmatists believe they have found this truth. Nihilists believe there is no such truth. And skeptics suspend judgement and turn to practical criteria. Dogmatists are like skeptics in the sense that they are skeptical of something, namely, views that contradict their dogma. For example, extreme rationalists may think of themselves as skeptics because they are skeptical of religious claims or fringe science, but they are not skeptics in the pyrrhonist sense. They are just counter-dogmatists. Nihilists seem like skeptics because they deny absolute truth, but they are absolutely sure that it is true that there is no absolute truth. Thus they contradict themselves. Pyrrhonist skeptics try to avoid these contradictions by just suspending judgement on the issue of absolute truth. They do no know how to find absolute truth, so they just abandon that approach and move on to practical issues. Skeptical Arguments Skeptical arguments can be general, applied to all truth claims, or specific to one particular issue. One set of general skeptical arguments was first formulated by Agrippa, an ancient Greek skeptic. Updating the terminology a little, they are the arguments from diversity, relativity, assumption, vicious circle, and infinite regress. Suppose I want to determine whether a particular claim is true. First I may notice that there are a diversity of other contradictory claims. How can I know this is the correct claim? Also, this claim may be true relative to the claimant's social position, culture, physical condition, perspective, or other factors, but it might not be true for people in other relative positions. To address this situation, I may look for a criterion to use in proving the claim. But this criterion itself needs proof. To assume it is just an assumption. But if I need to prove it, I need other criteria. But these in turn need proof leading either to a vicious circle or to an infinite regress. Based on these skeptical arguments I do not conclude that there is no truth. I just turn away from this particular game. There does not seem to be any way to win it. Something may come up in the future. Who knows? But for now I will just suspend judgement and move on to practical issues. Practical Criteria Sextus Empiricus enumerated several rules of life or practical criteria that the skeptic can use once he or she decides to suspend judgement on absolutes. He listed such things as laws and customs, the guidance of nature, and the practice of the various practical arts. By the guidance of nature he meant our senses and our everyday reasoning abilities. By practical arts he meant such practices as farming, building, medicine, business, and many others. Updating the terminology a little, this handbook uses language, experience, and desire as the practical criteria. It seems that language, experience, and desire are the basics that we start from in everyday life and that it is very difficult to imagine going beyond them. Other aspects of life seem to be just configurations of these basics. And it seems that we can go very far with these criteria without the need for an absolute justification because we make no absolute claims about them. We just say that we find them useful. If we did try to give them an absolute warrant, we would immediately come up against the skeptical arguments. Talking About Truth Even though we as skeptics suspend judgement on absolute truth, we still need a way of talking about truth issues. Sextus Empiricus elaborated various skeptical formulas. These were ways of talking when confronted with truth claims or asked to make a statement about truth. These included phrases like "perhaps or perhaps not", "I determine nothing", "I suspend judgement", "maybe or maybe not". These are ways of talking when dealing with dogmatic statements about absolute truth. But the word "truth" can be used in various ways. It can be used in everyday conversation to express agreement: "Ain't that the truth!" It can be used to ask about experiences: "Isn't it true that you saw Mister Jones enter the store at 8 AM on April 9th?" It would not be particularly useful to say, "I determine nothing" when you did see Mister Jones and you are just reporting your own personal experience. Also, it may be awkward to preface every assertion with "it appears" or "it seems to me". Pyrrhonism was criticized as impractical by people who confused the two issues of statements of dogma and reports about personal experience. The skeptic will suspend judgement on dogma and use "perhaps" or "maybe" or "I suspend jugdgment" or simply "I don't know" about such things, but for practical discussions, the skeptic can be very comfortable saying, "That is true" when reporting experiences or expressing agreement. Practicing LED It can be convenient to refer to the practical criteria, language, experience, and desire, using the acronym LED. This can then be elaborated into a practical set of tools and terms to use for problem solving while suspending judgement on absolute truth, certainty, grand narratives, or other things that seem to be beyond our knowledge. Here is some jargon that may be useful. LED. A philosophy, religion, path, conceptual tool, and method of self improvement and problem solving. An acronym standing for language, experience, and desire. Language includes natural and artificial languages and texts. It also includes nonverbal languages and texts such as dance, body language, images, movies, etc. Experience includes passive observation as well as action, inner as well as outer experience, emotions, feelings, intimations, the whole vast realm of human experience. Desire includes the whole realm of wants, needs, likes, dislikes, goals, motives, etc. LED implies that we are limited to language, experience, and desire and also that there is no one, true configuration of language, experience, and desire. Finding the one, true configuration would be just another configuration, ad infinitum. Configuration. A particular pattern of language, experience, and desire. Life seems to be just a series of such configurations. Also, religions, cultures, societies, histories, situations, worlds, etc. seem to be such configurations. L work. Exploration, study, and just enjoyment of the whole realm of languages and texts, looking at their diversities and similarities, relationships, etc. in order to understand how language is used, what the possibilities are, and different ways of expressing things, to find coherent theories, to stimulate the imagination, and to just enjoy the play of language, of stories and songs, of patterns and structures. Performance, creation, reading, writing, conversation, inner dialog, mining unspoken assumptions and programming. LE work. Testing texts against experience. Finding texts to describe or express experience. Finding texts that predict experience or provide reliable maps. Correcting harmful inner commentary through experience testing. Exploring and mapping out new experiences. E work. Developing simple mindfulness and awareness. Letting go of descriptions and desires and just experiencing the flow. Following your breath, walking, etc. without comment or desire. Enjoying the moment. ED work. Goal directed action. Following a plan. Executing a program. Following the steps. Getting things done. LD work. Finding ways to express the whole complexity of desire. Developing a useful nomenclature. D work. Understanding your desires. Finding the contradictions and inconsistencies. Untangling the knot. Deciding which desires to keep or add and which to give up. Learning to desire things within your control. Values clarification. Goals clarification. Selecting higher desires and giving up lower desires. Simplifying your desires. Elaborating your desires. Refining your desires. Moderating your desires. LED work. Putting all the other elements together. Finding a coherence of language, experience, and desire that will work for you and bring you a reasonable degree of happiness and satisfaction. Also, more narrowly, finding a configuration for a particular situation that meets requirements. Problem solving. If you are not happy or something is not working, change the experience to conform to desire, change the desire, or change how you view the problem, or some combination of these. Skeptical Inquirers and Debunkers The term skeptic is often used today as a self-designation for a group of people who are fighting what they view as superstition, irrationality, and pseudo-science. They provide a useful service in investigating various fringe claims, but some of them also seem to be putting forward science as some sort of absolute truth and trying to limit experience to just the sort of sense experience that can be shared in public. It could be that science as a practice may choose to limit its domain to only those types of experiences, but we human beings have many experiences beyond that. There is more experience than science can pin down. It may be vague and hard to quantify, but it is still experience. From a pyrrhonist point of view, science is a useful tool for the social production of texts that have been well tested against experience and that can be used to predict future experience and to design technological artifacts, but we would have to suspend judgement on whether science is the only truth. Science is a particular set of configurations of language, experience, and desire. It is a set of social practices and texts. It may be the best tool we have for solving certain kinds of problems and should be used for that purpose, but it cannot replace religion as the source of authoritative truth. Arguments from Authority It is common practice to appeal to some authority, whether a religious prophet, a charismatic leader, some privileged text, or science, as the final source of truth, to be accepted without question. But this begs the question of how we know that authority is an authority. By what criteria do we decide? This immediately leads into skeptical arguments. It may be practical to accept some person or some text as a useful source of suggestions, practices, or information, beyond what we know ourselves, but there is a serious problem in giving unquestioned acceptance to an authority just because they have been in some way put into that position. It can also be a practical danger as shown by suicide cults and world wars. Postmodernism as Skepticism Postmodernism can be defined as skepticism about grand narratives or metanarratives. It also emphasizes diversity and relativity. It could be seen as skepticism using linguistic tools. Postmodernism does not necessarily have the same goals of providing a practical philosophy of life that pyrrhonist skepticism does, but it does share many of the same concerns and approaches. Postmodernism could be seen as providing a set of tools and arguments that skeptics can use out past the linguistic turn. On the other hand, PoMo can become a sort of dogmatism, so the skeptic must be a little wary. Pragmatism as Skepticism Pragmatism can be defined as an emphasis on using practical consequences for making judgements about texts or programs. This fits in very easily with skepticism's practical criteria approach. Also, pragmatism has emphasized pluralism and diversity. This fits in well. Skepticism will just part company when pragmatists try to say that they have the correct definition of truth in opposition to the correspondence or coherence theorists. For the skeptic, truth is first and foremost a word. It can be useful to use the word in a pragmatic, correspondence, or coherence sense depending on circumstances and goals. Pragmatists have also criticized skepticism, but this has been in the "Pyrrho falling into a ditch" vein of criticism that falls away once you understand the distinction between suspending judgement on absolutes and living everyday life using practical criteria. Skeptical Politics Pyrrhonism has been accused (like postmodernism) of implying political conservatism. This was because Sextus Empiricus suggested following the laws and customs of your country given the difficulties in coming up with an absolute standard of morality or social organization. The issue though is what "country" we are talking about. Replace "country" with "culture" or "subculture" and things open up quite a bit. You could be a member of a conservative or liberal subculture. The problem comes when we get to subcultures that require absolute submission to some dogma, such as dialectical materialism. Political movements that depend on their members towing some doctrinal line will be naturally suspicious of skeptics. But a skeptic can have their own personal reasons for wanting to promote freedom, justice, and democracy or for protecting the privileges of landlords or corporations depending on their personal history and desires. Skepticism itself does not lead to one place or the other, except that it does lead away from political subcultures that depend on dogma as opposed to just common desires. Skeptical Morality Skepticism sees the basis of morality in desire and social membership and human experience. I try to be fair because I want to be fair, because I want to be treated fairly, because fairness is needed for my society to function, and because human history has shown that a lack of fairness leads ultimately to rebellion and disorder which I also would like to avoid. I can also choose to use terms like "good", "bad", and "right" in these contexts. Where I run into a problem as a skeptic is moral absolutes. Even though I strongly desire justice, I cannot see how to provide an absolute warrant for justice. It is just something that we humans usually want to have. It becomes more murky when we get into sexual morality. If I have entered into some social contract called heterosexual marriage that involves monogamy, I feel some obligation to live up to my contract. Also, I am motivated by love for my partner. On the other hand, I can imagine other arrangements that could also work well and other ideas about gender and sexual interaction that could be desirable and safe and stable. So I had best keep an open mind. Skeptical Religion Skepticism has trouble with religious dogmatism, appeals to authority, exclusivism, and intolerance, but it does not necessarily have a problem with religious experience, rituals, stories, practices that accept the limits of language, experience, and desire. The problem with religion is dogma. Religious texts can be understood as art, rule books, meditation manuals, and expressions of religious experience without claiming to be the one and only truth. Religions are, as best we can tell, human creations. They are human subcultures that a skeptic may choose to belong to. But the skeptic will be chased away by dogmatism and authoritarianism. A skeptic may have certain mystical experiences, but he or she cannot tell if this indicates a transcendent being. It may be possible that a prophet has experienced God, but a skeptic cannot know without experiencing God for themselves and comparing notes. Even then the experience is likely to be highly ambiguous. Just accepting the prophet's statement on authority will not work. Skeptical Science Skepticism has little problem with science as the social production of texts that are well tested against publicly accessible sense experience and that are useful for tentatively predicting future publicly accessible sense experience. Science is the main source of knowledge in this sense. The problem comes in when science presumes to provide the authoritative truth about the real world. Then we fall into skeptical arguments. As long as it stays in the area of practical criteria, we love it. There also may be some benefit in expanding science into some more ambiguous areas of experience beyond publicly accessible sense experience, paranormal experiences, near death experiences, etc., as long as we don't get too carried away. Skeptical Humanism A skeptic may choose to be a humanist in the sense of wanting to promote humanist themes such as freedom, justice, democracy, tolerance, science, artistic expression, and an emphasis on the human as opposed to a supernatural that is beyond human experience. A problem comes in though in that many humanists consider some form of scientific materialism or scientific naturalism to be a required doctrine of humanism. A skeptic would tend to suspend judgement on these metaphysical doctrines while making use of science as a social practice giving useful results rather than as the only source of truth. So it may be useful for skeptics who would like to move in the humanist camp to define themselves as skeptical humanists, that is, people who like the humanistic values while suspending judgement on scientific materialism as a dogma and instead using the practical criteria approach. Pyrrhonist Societies It is definitely not necessary to join a broad life style group to be a skeptic. Still there may be some benefits to joining a group that promotes and supports a particular philosophy of life. Pyrrhonist societies could be formed to teach and promote pyrrhonist skepticism and to provide a social group through gatherings for lectures, discussions, mutual aid, child education, life cycle ceremonies, and seasonal celebrations. On the other hand it may be more practical to get such social interaction on the liberal fringes of some religious group or in a humanist or ethical culture group. Then again, some skeptics may not feel the need for much social support beyond simple citizenship, family and friends, and membership in special purpose groups such as political parties, issue groups, or recreational clubs. The Real Pyrrho of Martinsburg One late summer morning I headed out on assignment for the local paper to put together a human interest piece about a local "character" who was starting to get a little outside exposure.To get the full experience, I drove north out of Newark on Martinsburg Road, a small country road curving through the small hills we have here at the start of the Appalachian plateau. Many of the fields were covered in late summer wild flowers like goldenrods and dark purple iron weed. I finally drove by a few Amish farms and into the small town of Martinsburg, a few square blocks of houses with a small restaurant, a gas station, a post office, a small Church of Christ painted white in the way of many of these rural churches, and a graveyard on the edge of town. Continuing north out of town and down a few township roads I came to a mail box with the name "Pyrrho" on it in small black letters. I turned into a wooded area of about 20 acres and down a gravel driveway to a parking area for maybe five cars under some old ash and maple trees. Close by was a poll barn type out building with a detached wood deck close by and a small trailer home a little further off close to a fairly large vegetable garden. I was greeted by a man in his late sixties in jeans and work shirt with a big grey beard who reminded me for all the world of Walt Whitman sauntering out. But his hair was short, unlike those pictures of the old Walt Whitman, and he had on metal frame glasses and wore tennis shoes. We exchanged some friendly small talk, and he gave me a tour. The out building had a small store in the front, then a work area and office behind that with some evidence of shipping materials. At the back were two bedrooms with their own entrances and small decks. We settled down on some white plastic lawn chairs on the large deck close to the out building with some bottles of iced tea from the store. Reporter: Let's start with the basics. How did you get a name like Pyrrho? Pyrrho: Well, my real name is Jacob. I started calling myself Pyrrho many years back because of some reading I was doing. Reporter: Don't people think its kind of strange and have a hard time pronouncing it? Pyrrho: Well, they may think it's strange, but they got used to it. I pronounce it PIE-ROW. Maybe they just think it's because I sell some of the Amish baked pies here sometimes to the tourists. [He winked.] Reporter: You get tourists out here? Pyrrho: Oh, a few. I do a little bed and breakfast business and I get some people who come out here for life retreats. Reporter: Life retreats? Pyrrho: To examine their lives. You know, an unexamined life is not worth living. [He smiled.] Reporter: You get people interested in that? Pyrrho: Oh, you'd be surprised. Reporter: And you're what? Socrates? Pyrrho: No, I'm Pyrrho. [Another smile.] Reporter: OK. The reason I came out is because of this Web site about you. I understand that you just turned over the rights to some of your writings. Pyrrho: Well, I thought those young folks might be able to do something with it. Reporter: But what if they make money off it? Pyrrho: Money? Off that stuff? If they can pull that off they are welcome to it. Reporter: You don't care? Pyrrho: Why should I? I'm doing OK here. We talked some more, but not much about poetry or philosophy. Mostly about his mail order business, its ups and downs. And about some problems he was having with his garden. He sent me off with a big bag of squash and zucchini. Look at the sequence of configurations of language, experience, and desire that make up your life. They are transient. You can see no permanent self behind them. Many lead to suffering. Suffering configurations lack a harmony of language, experience, and desire. So train yourself to let go of such configurations and to turn to those that reconcile language, experience, and desire. Learn to suspend language and desire at times and to rest in the simple flow of experience. Be mindful. Examine your views. Cultivate positive configurations. Let go of negative configurations. Cultivate compassion, serenity, joy. Refrain from taking life. Refrain from taking what is not given. Refrain from sexual misconduct. Refrain from false speech. Refrain from intoxicants. Walk your path calmly. Be relaxed and natural. Be practical. Do not worry about what other people think of you. Do your work without attachment. Be free from possessions and status, fortune and loss, success and failure. Do what you really want to do ethically and well. Face death without regret.
Basic freedom: Not being subjected to force or fraud. Effective freedom: Having the resources to do something. Current label: moderate independent Labels can be a real problem. On the one hand, they can be very useful little shorthand devices. Rather than having to spend a lot of time on subtle distinctions and variations, you can more quickly decide what you need to know to navigate your way in the world. They can also be nifty little tokens of group membership. Most of us want to belong somewhere, and with a short, "I am an X", we can often successfully group ourselves. This can work out fine as long as those subtle variations and distinctions don't really matter, or as long as the label doesn't have negative consequences. In some places "apostate" can be a death sentence, despite whatever reasons and distinctions there might be. In other circles, being "religious" can make people take you less seriously. Consider "atheist". By taking on such a label, people may assume you are arrogant, immoral, untrustworthy, and a royal pain. You might immediately exclude yourself from public office, or even some jobs. Some people might not want to associate with you, despite whatever other things you might have in common, like being a bluegrass fan or a bridge player. Some people might actually fear you as if you are there to steal their precious faith from them. All this, when gods are not even a concern of yours. Yet you have felt the need to label yourself in opposition to all the theists bristling about. Enter the Brights. A bright is a person who has a naturalistic worldview, free of supernatural or mystical elements. At first they did not have an antonym to "brights", but now "super" is in use. They define a super as a person who does include supernatural or mystical elements in their worldview. The Brights trying to define their own label is very understandable. All the existing labels that might do have so much baggage. Many of them lead to ideological disputes that seem just besides the point. On the other hand, the Brights see that they are at a social and political disadvantage, much like gays have been. In many ways the Brights movement is not so much about ideology as rights and giving people the courage to come out of the closet about their unpopular worldview, which may not be that unpopular after all. But, as always, there is a problem (other than the unfortunate association of "brights" with "being bright" and the tendency of people to see this as a claim to superior intelligence). The problem is inherent in the whole enterprise of label making. The Brights had to choose some words to define their label, in particular, "naturalistic", "supernatural", and "mystical". Then they go on to say that everyone is either a bright or a super. (See Synopsis.) Too bad they had to come up with an antonym and then group everyone else under that antonym. They did not like to be labeled by the issue of "god", as if that were the only issue, and now they are labeling everyone according to their stand on "naturalistic", "supernatural", and "mystical". And these terms are most problematical if you really try to pin down what they mean in concrete terms. There is much that can be said about this, but let's just consider the distinction between methodological naturalism and metaphysical naturalism. Metaphysical naturalism states that only the "physical world" exists. Methodological naturalism suspends judgment on the metaphysical issues and just proposes to study any phenomena using the same general approach of systematically testing texts against our experiences. If there are any agents without physical bodies, then they will be studied using these same methods. So there could be entities that the Brights are calling supernatural or mystical, but if so, then the only way we human beings can study them is from where we are in our concrete, human situation. Getting into the spirit of coining new labels, let's define a here as a person who starts from where they are, in their concrete, human situation of language, experience, and desire. We can say, "I am a Here" and talk about the Heres. Why not? So the world cannot be conveniently divided into Brights and Supers. There are also Heres. For Heres, the terms "naturalistic", "supernatural", and "mystical" are very hard to pin down and may not be that relevant as ways to distinguish people into groups. The Heres can appreciate the social situation of the Brights and wish them well in their coming out exercise. They may have much in common with Brights in the methods they think are most useful in investigating our experiences. On the other hand, they can also respect the "mystical" paths of some religious people, although they might be very uncomfortable with religious fanaticism and exclusivism since they seem to be based on very weak evidence, if any at all. There seems to be a tendency to exclude the middle in the Bright camp. Everyone who is not a Bright is in the same bucket, the Supers. This goes along with the denigration of religious moderates as being "just as bad" as the religious extremists or in some way facilitators of religious extremists because they do not go all the way over to a "naturalistic worldview, without supernatural or mystical elements". If religious moderates do give cover for religious fanatics and extremists, they should stop doing that, but it is not useful to divide the world into just two big groups, or even three. There are many more than that. Whatever may be true about my beliefs, I can only approach them as a human being, in my own concrete and limited human situation. However much I may think my beliefs should be embraced by all, I must recognize that we live in a world of diverse belief systems. However dedicated I am to what I believe, I must recognize that as a human among humans I may not be seeing the whole truth and therefore a certain amount of humility is needed. We need some common ground. Basic human compassion and practicality are a good place to start. This common ground should apply to all, even people in my own group. I must have the courage to insist on at least this much. I Believe in Knowing Why I Believe Here is a belief. The belief in belief should end. That is, the belief that belief as belief has value in itself and should be protected from challenges should end. But we all have beliefs. If we didn't have beliefs we would be paralyzed and could not act. Our actions in the world are based on a set of beliefs that we carry around with us as guides for action. If we didn't have these beliefs, we would not be able to take a single step. So beliefs are necessary, but which beliefs? First, we need to clear up some issues with how the word "believe" is used. First, there are two main forms, "believe in" and "believe that". Let's take "believe that" first. When we say that we believe that something, we are making a truth claim. We are making a prediction that some kind of experience will happen. If this kind of belief is well tested against experience and for coherence with other beliefs that are well tested against experience, we may even venture to call it knowledge. But even here, it is subject to possible revision based on future experiences and challenges. When we say that we believe in something, it is a sort of endorsement. That is, we are recommending something as a guide for action. It might be an expression of desire. For example, "I believe in compassion" and "I believe in destruction" are both expressions of desire, that I would like to see compassion, or destruction. But I could also say that I believe in science or that I believe in a holy book. When I say I believe in science, I could simply be saying that I believe that science is a useful tool for predicting and controlling experience. Then the belief in science can be played out in the rough and tumble of concrete practice. When I say I believe in a holy book, I often mean that when it expresses desires (like rules and commands) I endorse those as a good guide for action and that when it states claims about experience, those claims will be shown to be true in actual experience. But my belief in the holy book could take a softer form. It could mean simply that it is good guide for action when interpreted within a community in particular ways. So believing in something is most often simply an endorsement of some desire or some guide for action. The reasons why we endorse it need to be made clear. The most common reason is because authorities such as our parents or community leaders endorse it. Or it could be because "everyone" believes in it. There are many times when accepting an endorsement from someone else who we trust makes sense. But we should have reasons to believe that they have good reasons, like personal experience or expertise in a well tested set of texts. We need to be aware that the authorities in turn may only be carrying forward an endorsement from other authorities in the past. And who knows how the chain of endorsement started. Because of this weakness, the authorities sometimes claim that the endorsement chain ends with an invisible agent, and that it would be in our best interest to accept what that invisible agent says without question. This seems to combine an unverifiable claim with a threat, but it still comes down to an endorsement, "or you will be sorry". Given this situation it is tempting to say that it is always wrong to believe anything without good evidence. We should just suspend judgment until enough evidence is in. This is a good conservative policy for minimizing errors and extreme actions. Because once we loosen the connection to justification, history has shown that people may be "guided" to some truly terrible acts. On the other hand, if we were to really suspend judgment on all beliefs until all the evidence is in, we could become paralyzed and unable to act. Sometimes we need to make working assumptions and just act. But there is danger here of doing something truly unfortunate based on just a working assumption. So here is my recommendation: Know what degree of justification your beliefs have and give greater priority to beliefs that are well justified. Beliefs that are well tested against experience and are coherent with other well tested beliefs have the highest justification. Then there are beliefs you get from others who you trust to have done the testing. Then there are beliefs that are at least plausible, that is, they are at least in line with more justified beliefs. It goes on from there on down to situations in which there is very little to go on but feelings and intuitions but you nonetheless have a real need to act and must make working assumptions. In such cases, going with beliefs that your family and community have found useful may be the way to go, if they are not contradicted by more well justified beliefs. One more type of belief needs to be fit into this recommendation, that is, those cases where "believe in" is an expression of desire, like "I believe in compassion". There is no way to test desires directly against experience. Here is where a working assumption is needed. I assume that most people want some basic things, like survival, enjoyment, and group membership. Since I also share these basic desires, I justify my desires by how well they help meet these most basic desires. This usefulness then becomes an empirical question, and I feel justified in saying that a belief in compassion is much more justified than a belief in destruction. Now how justified is this recommendation itself? That depends on goals. Why do I feel the need to make such a recommendation? I feel such a need because of the problems that belief can cause. This has become all to painfully evident recently with suicide bombers, but belief has always been a problem, preventing systematic investigation, limiting freedom, and fomenting violence. In particular, religious belief has had a very mixed record. The recommendation from such books as The End of Faith by Sam Harris, Breaking the Spell by Daniel Dennett, and The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins is to end belief that cannot be well tested. So in the range of justification I describe above, they would say that we should just do away with belief beyond some point when the justification becomes too weak. They would justify this recommendation by pointing to all the harm that such unjustified or weakly justified beliefs do. So, for example, they are critical of the so called religious moderate. I would define a religious moderate as someone who in effect takes my recommendation in that they do allow themselves some weakly justified beliefs because of their strong intuition that there is something more and a strong need to explore that something more, but they would give preference to better justified beliefs in concrete action. For example, basic human compassion and practicality would prevent them from bombing innocent people because of their beliefs. Now I may be overstating their case a little. Probably, it would be more correct to say that my recommedation would be more in line with the approach of religous liberals, but I would also claim that religous moderates operationally follow the recommendation even if they do not want to admit or recognize the weak justification their treasured religious beliefs may have. So the justification for my recommendation is a "don't throw out the baby with the bath water" justification. I largely accept the arguments of these authors for the human nature of religion and the potential harm of religious belief. But I do not think that we need to do away with religion to reduce the dangers of religion. We just need to know what we are doing when we accept beliefs that do not have good empirical justification and why we are doing it - because we want to explore and be open to the "something more" and because of the good that comes from religion. But at the same time we recognize the dangers and make sure we give preference in action to the beliefs that are better rooted and grounded in our common human experience. Beyond a basic economic foundation, consumption is optional. Success is earning our economic foundation doing what we want to do, or earning that foundation in less and less time. Success is more time to do what we want rather than more things. Time is our greatest possession. There is great freedom in not caring what other people think you should have. Buy this! I don't think so. Buy this now! I think I'll wait. Buy! Buy! Buy! I'll decide what I really want and need. Marketing can't be escaped, but it can be laughed at. Question messages. If manipulation does not work, marketers will resort to information. Literalize marketing messages. Shopping is problem solving. Thrift is rebellion. Efficiency for materials, carnival for cultures. Growth areas for the futurist: efficient technologies, quality basics, enabling tools for the masses, non-material culture. A liberal democratic market system must ultimately follow votes and demand. There is no other place to go. Other systems always devolve to control by the few. And we can't trust the few. No great revolution, many small revolutions. Not top down, bottom up. Not force, choice. Change demand and the system will follow. Assign the true total cost to products. We need to give the machine something else to crank on. We are limited to various configurations of language, experience, and desire. No one has any inherent authority over anyone else. Define basic freedom as not being subjected to force or fraud and effective freedom as having the resources to do something. Having authority then means the right to limit the basic or effective freedom of others. Since no one has any inherent authority over anyone else, no one has the right to limit the basic or effective freedom of others. On the other hand, no one has the right to demand their rights from others since rights are not inherent, but are defined within a social context. This situation naturally leads to conflict and inefficiency, so we need a social contract. Rights can be defined and protected only within the context of a social contract. Maximum basic freedom and adequate effective freedom for all seems like a reasonable compromise. However, effective freedom can reduce the basic freedom of others if it is accomplished by forcing them do something they don't want to do. Ideally, effective freedom will come if basic freedom is emphasized and people find their own ways to do what they want without interfering with others. But adequate effective freedom needs to remain in the social contract in case this does not work in some cases. Transitions to greater basic freedom need to emphasize the protection of individuals from force and fraud, especially from powerful economic interests, the creation of true free markets by eliminating corporate subsidies and providing adequate information to consumers, and cushioning the impact of the changes on the weak and the poor. Politics is finding the least objectionable practical means to implement a social contract. Peace requires at least a minimum of agreement. We must investigate our common reality without bias or imitation so hopefully we will converge on some common knowledge. We must have a strong dedication to the unity of the human family, a unity that allows for and celebrates diversity. Religion must play its central role as a force for compassion and fellowship, not conflict and hatred. Religion and science must not waste time and effort in conflict with each other. Prejudice of all kinds must be eliminated so that we can get to know each other with open minds and hearts. The rich must voluntarily help the poor, to reduce conflicts caused by greed and despair. We must assure the equality of men and women and equal rights for all people. We must have a common secondary language so that we can all understand each other. We must encourage education at all levels both as a means of wealth creation and of mutual understanding. We must have a mechanism for global collective security that can enforce peaceful conflict resolution and prevent any nation from attacking another. We each find ourselves in our own concrete human situation. It seems to be various configurations of language, experience, and desire. Our life seems to be a sequence of such configurations. We find ourselves dependent on each other and on our natural environment. And yet we are free and must choose. We fear our freedom and our dependency and seek security in systems. And yet systems often fail us and seem arbitrary and absurd. So we test our systems and patch them and make them better. Or we wage war against anything that seems to endanger our favorite system. Or we make our solitary way, gaming the systems we have no say in. We need playfulness to set the wisdom of our systems free. We need tested texts that we can rely on until we get something better. We need a balance of freedom and mutual assistance.
I guard my freedom.
I resist slavery. |
Copyright © 1999-2008 Ronald Tower (All rights reserved) | ||