The worst speculative Skeptic ever I knew, was a much better Man than the best superstitious Devotee & Bigot. –David Hume (Letter to Gilbert Elliot of Minto, March 10, 1751)
Before I go on to share more with you about Ralph Waldo Emerson and continue to unfold his early and profound evolutionary spiritual philosophy I wanted to explore some of my most recent thoughts – thoughts that were spurred by some of the commenting on this blog. Some of the comment exchanges that Chuck, Frank and Catherine in particular have made me think more deeply about the nature of belief.
Before getting to belief, let me set some philosophical context. Three huge pillars of philosophy are ethics, ontology and epistemology. Ethics includes the set of values that we hold and believe to be valid enough to act on as the basis for making decision. Ontology is the study and description of the way things are. Ontology is the domain of metaphysics, religion and science and it deals with the fundamental essence of reality. Epistemology is the discipline that answers the question, how is it that we know what we know? How do we know what is true? How do we decide what to believe in?
When we question why we believe certain things and not others we are asking epistemological questions. Those are the kinds of questions that have been showing up in some of the commenting on this blog. Why do I believe in the reality of my spiritual experiences and why has Chuck decided that his earlier commitment to mysticism was unfounded. Why do we believe what we believe? That question is as important – if not more important – than the questions, what do we believe?
Before I get into why we believe what we believe let’s talk for a minute about the difference between facts and beliefs. We could ask the same question by asking what is the difference between what we know and what we believe in. Making these distinctions is actually harder than you might think. What do I know? What do I really know? What does it mean to know? If I say I know something, what I am saying is that I am aware of the reality of something beyond the possibility of doubt.
If you think too much about this you end up like David Hume the Scottish philosopher (see quote below) who in the end realized that he couldn’t know anything. All we have are our sensations and thoughts and no idea how these relate or not to any “real” thing. Continuing down this track we veer dangerously toward nihilism and despair.
I want to avoid this track by using more common sense definitions of fact and belief. A fact is something you believe in as a result of direct irrefutable evidence. If I see a man in a room and I talk to him and I touch him then I can say that I “know” he is there. It is an empirical fact. The fact that there is a man in the room with me we can safely say is a fact. (I realize we could argue that maybe I am delusional or hallucinating, but remember I am sticking only to common sense definitions for arguments sake.) A belief then is something that I “know” without direct irrefutable evidence. I might believe in God for instance, and even if I cannot point to direct irrefutable evidence, I will say that I know God exists. I might also believe that human beings have evolved from other life forms, but I don’t really have direct evidence. I have to trust the evidence gathered by other people and trust a great deal of experiments and conclusions of others.
Michael Shermer in his book “How We Believe” (a book that another commenter, Brian, turned me on to) describes the mind as a “belief engine” that is constantly creating patterns of belief. From fractured information and sense impressions the mind weaves together plausible pictures of reality that we believe in. What do we mean when we say we “believe” then? Things that we believe in are things that we “think that we know.”
I want to introduce a way of thinking about belief that the American philosopher William James was fond of and that I have come to accept myself. We can tell what we actually believe in because those are the things that we are willing to act on as if they were true. I can say that I believe I can walk on air. I can even say that I “know” that I can walk on air. But if you take me to a rooftop and I refuse to step off of it, then you would have to question if I really believed it. So a belief is that which we are willing to act upon. I can see that I believe that my spiritual experiences are real because I have been and am acting as if they are real in fairly dramatic ways.
But the question remains, how do I know? How do any of us know anything? Why do any of us believe in anything? William James again provided interesting thoughts for me on these questions. He wrote about knowing being essentially the feeling of the cessation of not-knowing. Not-knowing feels uncomfortable. When we don’t know something we feel tense. The experience of agitation at not-knowing spurs us to search for answers. When we find the answer we are searching for we feel calm and content because the tension of not-knowing goes away. If someone questions our belief we get tense or even angry. Why? because they are making us feel the tension of not-knowing again and we don’t want to. Much of the time we (and I don’t exclude myself) are more interested in the feeling of knowing than actually knowing. Could this be it? Are we all just chasing a feeling of existential contentment and then believing in it? This is the kind of questioning that sent David Hume to the public Backgammon tables to drown his uncertainty in some good clean fun.
“Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? … I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty.
Most fortunately it happens, that since Reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, Nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends. And when, after three or four hours’ amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.” — David Hume (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding)
Carl
/ May 20, 2010Does your definition of fact suggest that facts are only things that I directly experience with my own senses?
What about superstition? If the elevator closes when I jump up and down inside of it, and this happens several times, do I “know for a fact” that jumping up and down in the elevator makes it close?
I’m trying to understand the implications of what you say for HOW we “know” things, the process by which we conclude that things are facts or not.
Whether experienced directly or reported by others, isn’t the process and the logic by which I conclude that something is true as important as, if not more important than the first-handedness of the experience itself?
Jeff Carreira
/ May 20, 2010Hello Carl,
I am so happy to have your commenting, I have missed your thoughts over the past little while.
You are of course totally and astutely correct. “Why we believe?” is the most important question – much more important than “what we believe?” I am not sure about the answer actually. This post, like many of mine, are a form of public thinking out loud. I want to keep going into the reasons why we believe and you are absolutely correct that empirical evidence is not enough to define truth. I was grossly over-generalizing in an effort to make a point. That point was to raise the question that what we ultimately “trust” in determining truth, might just be a feeling of existential satisfaction that arises with a certain answer. We might have different reasons why certain answers “feel satisfactory” to us, but in the end it may be the feeling that is determining what we believe in more than our reasoning. That is a question or hypothesis for contemplation that I wanted to raise anyway. I do want to go deeper into this – as a romantic spiritualist who has devoted his life to his beliefs it is a mater of grave importance to me. I would appreciate any thoughts you have about that question “why we believe?”
Jeff Carreira
/ May 20, 2010Carl, I think what I am trying to create here is a peer-reviewed blog!
Carl
/ May 20, 2010Well, you might have anticipated my view as far as the establishment of “facts” is concerned. What I think is meant by the perhaps grandiose term “scientific method” is the same thing that developmental psychologists such as Piaget pointed to in how children come to know the world: a process of experimentation, elimination of alternative explanations joined with the emergence of logical reasoning and the drawing of implications from observations.
I think, for example, that my own “belief” in the non-duality of the world is based on both the accumulation of scientific evidence that everything is connected and interdependent in countless ways (chemically, biologically, mechanically, behaviorally, etc.) and on my own direct experience — both visual and visceral — of the unity of what arises in my awareness. Certain peak moments of conscious experience have sort of “capped” that accumulation of evidence and logic to cause me to believe — I would even say “know” — without any doubt that there is only One Thing and that I and my awareness are part of that Whole at this point in time and space.
But it’s not just about a feeling, or personal experience. It is also about the observations of others, experimental evidence in which alternative explanations were eliminated, etc. The reason that I left professional philosophy in favor of the science of behavior is that I thought that the epistemology/methodology/process of drawing conclusions of the latter was far more likely to lead to understanding based on how things actually work than on speculation and logic in the absence of experimental method.
Carl
/ May 20, 2010P.S. Jeff, I never left. Still checking in regularly. I just haven’t had anything to add.
Jeff Carreira
/ May 20, 2010This is great. I can totally relate to what you say when you say ” But it’s not just about a feeling, or personal experience. It is also about the observations of others, experimental evidence in which alternative explanations were eliminated, etc.” because I feel the same way.
And as I think about this deeply I start to wonder if observations of others, experimental evidence and even logical consistency actually constitute objective “proof” of what I believe, or are they just things that I feel more comfortable believing in. Is it that for me I can’t get to that feeling of “satisfied knowing” unless I see proof of this kind, and is this different than the fundamentalist Christian who can’t get that feeling of “satisfied knowing” unless he sees his ideas corroborated in the text of the bible. Are we in both cases simply searching for a feeling? I am not trying to say that this is the case, more I am trying to figure out if it is.
Carl
/ May 20, 2010My particular branch of science, the science of behavior, depends on “replication” of single-subject experiments. That is, you apply the same conditions repeatedly to different individuals or in different situations and you accumulate examples of where a particular outcome occurs. With repeated replication, you become increasingly confident that if you do the same thing again, you will get the predicted outcome. And you also uncover the variations in conditions that predict a different outcome. So there is a refinement of “knowing.” This could, I suppose, be called a “feeling.” Or you could call it a matter of probability testing, if you want to place confidence in the rational vs. the emotional. But in either case, it is by no means perfect. It is simply the growth of confidence. Once one is confident, as in the tight-rope walker who is ready for the high wire, then one feels ready to predict and influence or “control” outcomes based on that accumulation of evidence/confidence. One is ready to turn science into technology. But it’s never a sure thing. There is always more that is unknown.
Chuck R
/ May 20, 2010Jeff:
Good questions. It never hurts (well, maybe just a little) to question belief and the process of belief.
James’ characterization of belief as “what we are willing to act on as if they were true” is truer than most people can tolerate. We are daily surrounded by people professing all sorts of beliefs on which they do not and in many cases cannot act. My model for this phenomenon is this: the normal state of the human mind is compartmentalization. We hold multiple beliefs, multiple thoughts and perform multiple sorts of actions & behaviors all at the same time. Contradiction & competition among them is inevitable. Examples: The devout Christian prays in deep reverence during Sunday service; afterwards in the parking lot he curses the other drivers. We believe that all people are our brothers and sisters, but won’t give a dime to the homeless person.
It IS possible to partially overcome compartmentalization through intentional effort, but as it caused by the modular construction of the human brain, it is the norm, and the mind, when left to “run on idle” reverts to compartmentalization.
Everyone who eats, breathes, sleeps, works to make a living, clothe and shelter themselves thereby proves their belief in the material world and their existence in it, whatever they may claim to the contrary. Compartmentalization ensures the near-certainty that they can and will hold beliefs contrary to their material existence, but very few act more from those beliefs than they do from their set of material beliefs.
In your description, Hume “realized that he couldn’t know anything. All we have are our sensations and thoughts and no idea how these relate or not to any “real” thing.”
My response is: As far as he goes, Hume is right. We don’t know anything perfectly. Everything is incomplete, imperfect. Our words and thoughts create maps of reality, but “the map is not the territory, nor is it the complete territory.” Imperfection, incompleteness, and error are inevitable. We live on quicksand, and we are comfortable doing so except when we pause to realize that it actually is quicksand. This is the 2nd law of thermodynamics – for you non-physicists, nothing is perfect / entropy – as applied to organic systems, especially symbol-using organic systems (a.k.a. humans).
But the very fact that we are here, today, discussing this, and that our species has survived for many 1000′s of generations proves that what we perceive and know is close enough to reality for us to survive and, one hopes, prosper. If our maps were seriously in error, we would not have survived as a species.
Moral of the story: Perfection is impossible; striving for perfection is inevitable.
J.
/ May 20, 2010“”If you think too much about this you end up like David Hume the Scottish philosopher (see quote below) who in the end realized that he couldn’t know anything.”"
Some scholars might say that is a naive reading of Hume. Hume’s points on induction–at least two major thrusts– concerned necessity, really–not just skepticism, as usually read, or misread (including by Popper). Even high-powered academic scientists can not make perfect predictions about, say, upcoming hurricanes. Or the stock market or MLB pennant race for that matter. Nor can we obtain infallible knowledge of past events (ie causes).
That doesn’t mean knowledge is impossible, however nor does it mean we don’t perceive a world independent of our senses (even if that is rather difficult to prove). Hume at times sounded rather Newtonian, actually (as with his essay on miracles)–yet he also knew something about probability–perhaps not at the level of a modern quantum physicist, but in ways his views anticipate indeterminacy….Einstein himself said something along those lines
Brian
/ May 20, 2010“real” “believe” “know” “trust” “facts” “proof” “feeling” “replication” “control” — Y’all are taking “abstractions” to new heights! I guess your not feeling very “extensional” today.
Meanwhile, I put down a 6 mil plastic sheeting vapor barrier in my crawlspace.
Jeff Carreira
/ May 21, 2010J – I have to admit that I am guilty as charged, my reading of Hume is superficial indeed – and as with all great intellects characterizing their thought in any specific way is inevitably disastrous. I also wanted you to know that this post was not meant as a final statement on knowledge. I was opening up the inquiry and I am honestly trying to figure out how knowledge is possible. I guess over the past couple of years my epistemology has leaned heavily toward Pragmatism, but I still have questions unanswered for myself. I keep trying fresh approaches – like a wrestler. By the way your mention of probabilities was part of the insight of the Pragmatists as they wrestled with these questions.
Chuck – besides the fact that you were a mystic who became an agnostic and I was an agnostic who became a mystic – we agree remarkably on almost everything – especially when you say, “Perfection is impossible; striving for perfection is inevitable.” If the word knowledge were put in place of perfection it would be equally true.
A human life is the biggest risk there is – you only get one and it will turn out to be worth something or not – so I am trying to increase my odds of living a meaningful one.
Catherine
/ May 21, 2010I am horribly busy today [ our small new Institute here in Brazil is welcoming a few Nobel Prices, an the minister of research on monday for the Inauguration; one of my favorite physicists, David Gross, will be present...]. But well I cannot resist to comment on this post.
OK here is my point of view .
IKnowledge is nothing without the Drive for Knowledge, the “Wanting to Know”. My point [ and my everyday experience as a researcher] is that “Wanting to Know ” completely transcends knowledge itself. The Drive for Knowledge is always alive, the conclusions of knowledge itself are already dead, already in the past. The drive for knowledge is “en avant”.
With “Wanting to know”, we touch an absolute, and there are very few human actions which invariably touch an Absolute and are so easy to perform as the act of “wanting to know”. If one is blessed to run or the be actively carried away on this Drive for Knowledge, then there is nothing to add.
Now of course, we can concentrate on the relative results of this transcendent inspiration. There is indeed such a thing as the scientific method, which is very precious to humanity as a whole. It takes some training and some time to adapt to it, but this can be taught to most of the people living on this planet.
This method is based on beliefs [ or suppositions, assumptions] , doubts and checks [ through any observable ``facts '' that one can find]. This method is functioning, and helps us to create objects, new concepts, new behaviors. In that sense I agree it is applied.
The strange thing, is that although I value so much the scientific method, deep down, in the deepest of deepest of me I do believe that if I really “want to know” ANYTHING, then I will know.
Of course this belief itself has got intensified in me, because of the observation that it is just working for me, as a researcher of science. When I am animated by this belief, quite mysteriously it is when the most creative ideas come to me. And the fact that I observed this, is then part of the scientific method itself.
Hence I would say: both the scientific method [ assumption, doubt, and checks] and the transcendent method [ the hard core drive for knowledge that we share as human beings] are necessary. But there is an order. The transcendent method comes first [ as its name indicates] and the scientific method comes second: it is the faithful servant of transcendence.
to finish here are a few quotes by Einstein, master of science, master of the driver for knowledge:
`The intuitive mind is a sacred gift; the rational mind is faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift”
`The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible”
“I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.”
“To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty… this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness”
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one”
“Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal”
“They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities.”
“I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details”
“I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right”
“When the solution is simple, God is answering”
“I never think of the future – it comes soon enough”
“Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts”
“Gravitation can not be held resposible for people falling in love”
Anonymous
/ May 21, 2010Dear Jeff and “commentors”.
I am happy to be back in these discussions after a few months’ break!
Maybe I am not completely aware of the discussions you have had, but I have a perspective that I want to share, so forgive me if it is not completely about this topic.
I think that brainscience is the most interesting area for the next step in our understanding of ourselves and the world. What I keep coming back to when I get a new understanding is how our brain contains all our evolutionary history. We have a part in the brain that is still like a crocodile – controlled by instincts and figthing for survival. Then there is a more social part where we like dogs like to follow a leader and be seen by others to have a place in the hierarchy. And then there is the newest part of the brain that contains logic, empathy and selfdiscipline.
(thats similar to the super-ego in psychological terms)
When we “decide” we use all parts of our brain, but the different parts of the brain offer their answers and put it on the “weighing scale” or in a calculator. To “choose” something that comes from the newest part of the brain implies that the weight has been so CONVINCING that it had a bigger weight than the other outputs from the other parts of the brain. To do what is the best thing to do is a complex thing and we sometimes need to use our instincts, but could benefit from training the newest part of the brain (the frontbrain). That, I think, is the same struggle as in spiritual terms to discriminate between ego and not ego all the time.
Love
Mette
Mette
/ May 21, 2010Dear Jeff and “commentors”.
I am happy to be back in these discussions after a few months’ break!
Maybe I am not completely aware of the discussions you have had, but I have a perspective that I want to share, so forgive me if it is not completely about this topic.
I think that brainscience is the most interesting area for the next step in our understanding of ourselves and the world. What I keep coming back to when I get a new understanding is how our brain contains all our evolutionary history. We have a part in the brain that is still like a crocodile – controlled by instincts and figthing for survival. Then there is a more social part where we like dogs like to follow a leader and be seen by others to have a place in the hierarchy. And then there is the newest part of the brain that contains logic, empathy and selfdiscipline.
(thats similar to the super-ego in psychological terms)
When we “decide” we use all parts of our brain, but the different parts of the brain offer their answers and put it on the “weighing scale” or in a calculator. To “choose” something that comes from the newest part of the brain implies that the weight has been so CONVINCING that it had a bigger weight than the other outputs from the other parts of the brain. To do what is the best thing to do is a complex thing and we sometimes need to use our instincts, but could benefit from training the newest part of the brain (the frontbrain). That, I think, is the same struggle as in spiritual terms to discriminate between ego and not ego all the time.
Love
Mette
Stuart
/ May 21, 2010Great post. I too am struggling with these all too real question? Is there any substance to our certainty? Is any action possible from uncertainty? What is a belief founded on? How do we act on a belief when we “know” it is “just a belief?”
Michael Polanyi in his book “Personal Knowledge” proposed, as Catherine has said, that our tacit knowledge comes prior to our empirical knowledge. Meno’s paradaox – how do we know where to look for the solution if we really don’t know the solution – is solved by the fact that we do know it somehow, we have a intuitive connection with the whole, and this reveals to us a lot more than we can articulate to ourselves or to anyone else. We “know more than we can say.” As I interpret it, this amounts to a kind of epistemology of belief that is not far removed from pragmatism. Rather than retreat from the world because we cannot know it, Polanyi said, we have to embrace our understanding fully as belief through and through, test it against the world, and find out how it needs to be modified.
I agree with what James said. What you believe is what you do. But can we simply will ourselves to believe something different? And if you want to believe something different, do you simply force yourself to act differently until your mind gets in the groove and your doubts fall away? Do we eventually become the belief that we want to believe? Seems like there needs to be a reality check in there somewhere.
Has anyone else out there come across Polanyi?
Chuck R
/ May 21, 2010Brian:
“Extensional.” Excellent! I “love” it.
Let me know how that vapor barrier in the crawlspace works out. I considered doing that but decided it was beyond my limited desires and abilities. The crawlspace was far too large and”crawly”.
Brian
/ May 21, 2010Actually I’m moving on to pondering hopeless abstractions like you guys. From Hayakawa’s Abstraction Ladder in the book Chuck R recommends “Language in Thought and Action”:
Bessie –> cow –> livestock –> farm assets –> asset –> wealth.
I wonder if we continued we could find the most abstract word of all, infinitely abstracted, the mother of all abstractions, exalted in its abstractedness ——-> God.
Jeff Carreira
/ May 21, 2010Mette great to have you back….I want to do more studies in brain science and cognitive psychology. It is totally fascinating and getting so sophisticated that the promise of deep answers is ever-alluring.
Brian
/ May 22, 2010Can anyone suggest a word more abstract than “God”?
Chuck R
/ May 22, 2010Brian:
You wrote: Can anyone suggest a word more abstract than “God”?
As a single word, probably not. But I, like Brian, would be interested if such a word existed (in English).
As a phrase or sentence, of course there is. Just use “God” in that phrase, such as, “the concept of God” or “the ramifications of the concept of God”, or “the socioeconomic effects of the implications created by the ramifications of the general belief in the concept of God.” There is literally no end to this sort of abstracting.
Seeing statements such as those I just invented above should cause one to wonder if such statements mean anything at all. If the word “God” has no meaning because – as many philosophers have held – it has no sense-able referent, then any phrase containing such a word will itself have no meaning, excepting perhaps a statement like, “the word god has no meaning.”
People then say, “but I have my internal sense of certainty of the existence of God. I KNOW, without the need of any external proof or support that (s)he exists. [And, I might add, she has a beard.]” Such a belief or statement carries no force beyond the world-view of the speaker. Try using such an argument in a court of law, before a jury of your peers.
“Just the facts, Ma’am”, as Sgt. Joe Friday used to say.
Questions for y’all:
1). Is the search for (capital ‘T’) Truth more like staring at clouds and finding patterns, or more like a police procedural story?
2). Does such “Truth” exist? Can it exist? Or can only an enormous number of (little ‘t’) truths exist, as in “I got out of bed today”?
Brian
/ May 22, 2010So all this abstracting is probably a uniquely human activity (at least to our level of proficiency). And we are so enamored with it that we create the greatest abstraction of all and make it the object of our worship. True?
I don’t know about truth with a capital T unless it starts a sentence. But I know lots of little truths.
Chuck R
/ May 22, 2010Brian:
Re: Abstracting.
I think that’s pretty much correct. I don’t see how any animal species could create all these abstractions without some sort of versatile symbolic means of communication (either to others or to oneself). If any other animal species has one, we haven’t yet been able to perceive it. So in that sense we’re unique in this ability to abstract.
Worship it? Again, symbols & inferences (probably) needed for that sort of behavior. Humans are born with neural systems which search our surroundings for patterns and then draw inferences for survival purposes. We can’t turn these systems off other than momentarily. (Meditation, anyone?) The more we infer, the more we abstract. Pascal’s “Religion Explained” does a nice job of showing why this situation is a product of our peculiar evolutionary history. This doesn’t mean our inferential systems are high-quality systems, or that the patterns we find are correct (is that really an elephant in the clouds?), or that our inferences are correct or appropriate to the situation, or that our abstractions are accurate or useful or even anything other than utter nonsense. It does mean that we’re stuck with using these innate inferential systems as well as using some sort of symbolic language, so if we can get better at using them, that would be a Very Good Thing To Do.
Stuart
/ May 22, 2010Question: what is more abstract, to try to articulate your experience, or to doubt your experience?
Liesbeth
/ May 23, 2010I am reading the mystery-drama’s of Rudolf Steiner. Here he is explaining that we are conscious of the world through our senses. What everybody will agree with is that great art transmits something which goes beyond the senses. I, for example, deeply experienced this when I was reading Emerson. I have read great books with great ideas, I have read writers with beautiful language, but Emerson transmits more. It widens awareness for a moment. Steiner says: God is that which we experience beyond our senses; in evolutionary philosophy it is called: the force that created the universe (Eros): some energy drives us all, drives It all.
Liesbeth
/ May 23, 2010To be clear: above, I was looking for something more abstract than the word God. I remembered something of Whitehead; he also points to poetry as ‘expressing deep intuitions about the Universe: poetry confronts science with the totality of reality’. He connects abstractions of science with insights expressed in literature, art, religion and expressions of normal healthy thinking: To try to understand reality we shouldn’t reject any source of evidence.. Expressions of great poets are specifically important because they express deep intuitions of humanity penetrating into that which is universal in the total of reality’.
Chuck R
/ May 26, 2010Stuart:
You wrote: what is more abstract, to try to articulate your experience, or to doubt your experience?
You didn’t indicate to whom this question was addressed (perhaps to everyone?) but I’ll try a brief answer.
First, let me add a phrase to your question: “…or to doubt YOUR INTERPRETATION of your experience?”
Every moment of every day of your entire life is an experience of some sort, even if only of dreamless sleep. Thus you cannot doubt that you are always experiencing something, whatever it might be.
What you can doubt, and should always be prepared to doubt, is your interpretation of your experience. Everyone knows that first impressions can be wrong and often are. Thus we should always be alert to the possibility of our own errors of interpretation.
Articulation of experience is fine, and humans are by nature constantly involved in such activity. If, however, your articulation is based upon a (perhaps initial) misinterpretation of an experience, all your articulation is for naught, other than as flights of fancy beautifully phrased.
To doubt the interpretation is to go back to the initial experience, as best you can, and to re-examine it. Review the evidence, as a lawyer might say. Such doubt is – in my opinion – less abstract than articulation (which is necessarily based upon an interpretation already arrived at). Articulation can endlessly abstract upon abstract upon abstract. Doubt necessarily goes back to the source of all interpretation and abstraction – back to the “raw” experience itself.
The problem, as Brian has stated far more succinctly than I seem to be able to do, is not with abstraction in and of itself. Humans necessarily abstract. We cannot avoid it. It is not an “evil” or “bad behavior”. Our nervous systems were molded by natural selection to produce abstractions, and the history of human linguistics includes the history of abstraction. The ability to abstract is perhaps the primary characteristic of our species’ collective difference from the other animals.
The problem, rather, is abstracting without knowing that you are abstracting, and without knowing that all your abstractions are but models of reality, not reality itself. All models are necessarily incomplete: something less than that which they model. The person who abstracts without such self-awareness is a person who has mistaken “the map for the territory”. When a word or thought – “god” for example – is highly abstract, does it actually “map” to anything at all? In the case of the word “god”, when there almost as many “meanings” given to it as there are people giving such meanings, one should wonder if there actually is any useful meaning at all, or if it is a “map” without a territory to relate to.
Brian
/ May 26, 2010“men became superstitious not because they had too much imagination, but because they were not aware that they had any” Santayana
Stuart
/ May 27, 2010Brian, great quote!
Chuck,
I agree in general with the spirit of the critical method. We have to recognize how our interpretations are built upon previous interpretations, which are in turn built on previous interpretations, etc. And then we have to ask, are we really experiencing anything or are we just throwing concepts around. Still, just as I don’t have to buy into someone else’s interpretation of their experience, I don’t have the right to say that they have no experience at all of what they are talking about. The standard critique of metaphysics first questions the interpretation of our experience as hopelessly distorted, which it probably is, but then throws out the whole experience as meaningless from the start. This is what I object to.
Also, I’m not clear what this process of “going back to the raw experience iteself” really is, which is why I think it is actually a very sophisticated use of the mind and therefore far more abstract then simply adding your interpretation to the pile. You’ve probably read a text by Heidegger or Sarte or Merleau-Ponty. The phenomena might be simple but describing it is far from straight forward. I think what typically counts for most people as going back to the raw experience is simply adding an interpretation on to another pile that they like better.
This is why I think there’s some truth in this idea of getting clear what you really believe, which simply means getting clear what your interpretation really is. And I don’t mean analyzing language statements, I mean analyzing your own experience in relation to language statements. Only when you get clear what you really mean by a concept like “God”, can it rub up against your actual experience or lack of it. And yes, I think most of us would be surprised how different our experience is from what our language statements about it actually communicate.
Chuck R
/ May 27, 2010Stuart:
You wrote: “The standard critique of metaphysics first questions the interpretation of our experience as hopelessly distorted, which it probably is, but then throws out the whole experience as meaningless from the start. This is what I object to.”
I agree with you. I would say that human interpretations will always be inaccurate to a varying degree, but I wouldn’t say they are hopelessly distorted, let alone meaningless. If they were “hopelessly distorted”, humans couldn’t survive in a difficult and dangerous environment. Thus, natural selection weeds out, over the millennia, organisms whose interpretations tend to be “hopelessly distorted”. But metaphysicians who consider mind more important than body (an anti-existentialist “essence precedes existence”) would probably consider natural selection to be irrelevant anyway.
Raw experience: You’re sitting in the park. The sun shines, a soft breeze blows. A few leaves fall off a tree. You hear the sound of voices in the distance. A dog walks by.
Now, if you can experience that, or even perhaps recall the experience without labeling the various elements: “sun, tree, breeze, voices, dog.” That’s about all I mean when I use the term “raw experience.” General Semantics uses the term “un-speakable experience.” Experience that precedes the labeling of the elements of experience. I don’t know where this would lie on Jeff’s recently blogged sensation-perception schema.
Stuart
/ May 27, 2010Chuck, I’m not sure where I stand on the idea of unspeakable experience. On the one hand I think our experience is somewhat ineffable. We are aware of more than we know and we know more than we can say. But on the other hand to know what we know we need language and concepts that are hard wired into a cultural context, a kind of background that is full of interpretations.
There seems to be two kinds of knowledge. There’s knowledge that is pre-linguistic, where we just know without knowing how, and there is knowledge that is post-linguistic or analytical, where we think we know because we know how we know. (I can’t believe that sentence makes sense).
You’re right, we should probably pick this up with Jeff’s recent blog. The question is fascinating though. How do we know that we know anything, and on what are we basing that experience?
Frank Luke
/ May 28, 2010Hi Brian, re: “Can anyone suggest a word more abstract than “God”?”
The Buddhists put forth “Nothingness” which is not Nothing but Pregnantness. Is this abstract enough? I believe it’s naming what existed before existence and that to which all returns.
Chuck R
/ May 31, 2010Stuart:
You wrote: (1)(…on the idea of unspeakable experience. On the one hand I think our experience is somewhat ineffable.” (2)We are aware of more than we know and we know more than we can say. (3)But on the other hand to know what we know we need language and concepts that are hard wired into a cultural context, a kind of background that is full of interpretations.
(1) Somewhat ineffable. Agreed. (Especially when it comes to mystical experience, which is probably the least “effable” of all experiences.) But it is possible to simply “experience” an ineffable experience without putting labels and interpretations on it. Or to set aside labels and interpretations already created around a previous experience, and – imperfectly – re-experience it.
(2) Agreed. Also our whole-brain knows more than our conscious mind, we take in more data than our brain receives, our sensory organs pick up more data than they transmit, more environmental signals fall on our bodies than we can sense, and there are innumerably more process-events than we can ever be aware of. Its like the 2nd law of thermodynamics applied to information & organic systems: information is lost at every step along the way.
(3) Agreed. We also have built-in neurological pattern-seeking inferential systems (a human inheritance, not greatly affected by cultural context) which automatically categorize sensory data below the level of consciousness. Some of these inferences make their way through to consciousness. Many don’t. Conscious “free-will” can analyze and select among the inferences presented to it, but it often “waives” this privilege and simply accepts the inference(s) unchanged.
Chuck R
/ May 31, 2010Frank:
You wrote: “The Buddhists put forth “Nothingness” which is not Nothing but Pregnantness. Is this abstract enough? I believe it’s naming what existed before existence and that to which all returns.”
Your definition also operates quite well as one type of description of the mystical experience. Stuart (above) reminded me of the word “ineffable” which is very often applied to this experience. However, humans being what they are, we can’t leave the “ineffable” as simple that. (“Oh, it was ineffable. What’s for dinner?” Thus we come up with innumerable descriptions of the ineffable mystical experience. Nearly all these descriptions are heavily influenced by the cultural context in which the describer is living. In other words, the describer is forced to fit the experience into his/her current paradigm, or use the terminology of that paradigm to try to create a new paradigm, and this effort will frequently entail creating a new terminology.
Frank Luke
/ June 2, 2010Hi Chuck, re: “However, humans being what they are, we can’t leave the “ineffable” as simple that.”
To leave the matter as ineffable is true and also a cop out in that there are common denominators to the experience which I submit is The Awakening of spiritual consciousness tha can be shared. The details seem to vary and seem to be as individualistic as there are individuals undergoing the experience, IMO. Zen chronicles many instances of people chopping wood or seeing the blossoming cherry trees, maybe even being whacked by the roshi and experiencing satori (awakenng). But the effects of awakening have a commonality in that the person is transformed in a joyous and mind-expaniding, soul-expanding experience that persists with a conscious commitment to the spiritual path as delineated in the Perennial Wisdom, the Golden Rule and other spiritual teachings.
Stuart
/ June 2, 2010Hi Chuck,
Your number “3″ is really interesting. Can you refer me to some sources?
Chuck R
/ June 2, 2010Stuart:
You wrote: Your number “3″ is really interesting. Can you refer me to some sources?
This comment on inferential systems was mostly a combination of what I gleaned from two books, stirred (not shaken) and mulled with some additional spices:
1. Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought – Pascal Boyer
2. Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief – Newberg, D’Aquili & Rause
The comment on “free will” is my own conclusion.
Chuck R
/ June 2, 2010Frank:
On the “ineffable”: The problems encountered in writing/talking about “it” was well noted in the Tao Te Ching: “He who knows does not speak. He who speaks does not know.”
But, like this Zen Master story:
“Shuzan held out his short staff and said: If you call this a short staff, you oppose its reality. If you do not call it a short staff, you ignore the fact. Now what do you wish to call this?” Zen Flesh, Zen Bones – Gateless Gate #44
Humans, being humans, have to say something. But we’ll never get “it” *right*.
I completely agree that, as you wrote above, “there are common denominators to the experience.” My experience (previously documented ad nauseam on this blog) is that the common denominator par excellance is the structure of the human brain itself. The “experience” is neurological, taking place entirely within the brain, rather than “tapping into” some spiritual-mental source of ultimate Truth. It’s a powerful experience, much like a sexual orgasm. Our imagination and our cultural contexts have overlaid the experience with all sorts of religious-mystical-spiritual “meanings”.
Sudden Enlightenment” while chopping wood or being whacked by the master’s staff is more like an Aha! experience, which all people experience from time to time. A recent experiment found the Aha! in rats. Link: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/59137/title/Eureka%2C_brain_makes_real_mental_leaps
Quote from article: “When each rodent figured out the new system, its aha moment could be seen as a change in brain activity. Electrodes implanted in the rats’ prefrontal cortexes recorded a sudden across-the-board change in the pattern of firing neurons; dimly firing cells amped up, while previously hyper cells calmed down. About half the rats learned the new rule quickly, accompanied by the sudden switch in neuron activity. Other rats seemed to realize the old rule wasn’t working, but hadn’t quite figured out the new rule. In their brains, some neurons began to change their firing intensity, then a few more, and then, bam, the rats understood the new rule and the new firing pattern took hold.”
My take on this is that we get Aha! experiences when the various modules of human brain become temporarily “in sync”. Things fall into place. Breaking free of one’s models or maps of reality (all of which are constructed of words and inferences based on those words) can constitute a *major* Aha! Like seeing through the master’s question about his short staff.
Frank Luke
/ June 3, 2010Hey Chuck, TY for your comments and response. It’s as I disccovered subsequently and have been speaking of my experience as an Awakening, a small e enlightenment that is a step on the way to big E Enlightenment. Compounded on that experience I was in an audience where the Dalai Lama administered the Bodhisattva Vow that I tentatively took with the others. At first I was dubious but as time has gone by, I do feel I’ve taken the vow to heart and do feel now I am a bodhisattva, not a big deal now but something I accept as natural like saying I’ve taken a pledge and try to live accordingly.
I wonder if it will be given to me to be graced or that I will be able to attain even higher consciousness in the time given to me in this lifetime or will I be given another lifetime subsequently? I’m rather satisfied with the level of consciousness I now have and only wonder what higher consciousness may entail? I acknowledge there’s work yet to be done.
Regards, aloha, namaste, Frank
Frank Luke
/ June 3, 2010Hi again Chuck, re: rats / aha moments
Furthermore, I must submit that in cases of human spiritual Awakenings, they differentiate from the rat experiment conclusions in that I feel my experience is not simply a matter of a task being understood but more like a life-changing event where I’ve not only perhaps had brain alterations but my life has undergone a transformation as well, I’ve had a psychic metaphysical transformation. It may be said that the rats also have had their lives transformed, becoming more efficient in their tasks but I submit my experience has been for profound than that. I wonder if those who have been Awakened and you yourself would say the same?
Chuck R
/ June 3, 2010Frank:
Re: Additional lifetimes. What if this really, *really* is the very last incarnation for you? Would that knowledge affect your behavior in any way? If it would, in what way?
Re: Dalai Lama. I read a while back – maybe 4-8 years – in an interview that he didn’t really believe in the whole “returning” lama aspect of Tibetan Buddhism. Do you know what his current position is on that?
Also: As “original” Buddhism held that there was no permanent “soul”, thus no “transmigration of the soul”, thus no reincarnation, and instead developed the concept of rebirth (not the same as reincarnation), why would an Buddhist accept the belief in “future lifetimes.”
My take on the Buddha – difficult, as nothing was written down for several hundred years after his death and there has been a fantastic accumulation of mythology piled up on him since then – is that whenever someone would ask him about past or future lifetimes is about the time he’d bop them on the head with his staff, like a Zen master, and say “Pay attention! Why are you bothering to think about that?” Like that flag in the Zen Koan.
Chuck R
/ June 3, 2010Frank:
It may be that there are Awakened rats, but we don’t know about them because they have nothing to say to humans, only to other rats.
Rats are animals. Humans are animals. Why would there be spiritual wonders and Awakenings for humans but not for rats? Would we know an “Awakened” rat if we met one? Would he act like Yoda, the Jedi Knight? For that matter, would we know an “Awakened” human if we met one? Or will he always exude an unmistakable “aura” of saintliness and wisdom? Is their personality and behavior that predictable? Or perhaps he’ll say, as he shakes your hand, “Hi, I’m Bodhidharma Smith, Enlightened Master.” What if he/she doesn’t want you to know he/she is enlightened? Traveling incognito, perhaps?
Frank Luke
/ June 6, 2010Hi Carl re:
1) Awakened rats
For all we know there may be such, and there are swifter rats than others more able to perform tasks efficiently. But you must remember our brains are so much more complex than others on the chain of life, even those of our closest cousins, the apes.
2) Living my ultimate life
I go about attempting to make this one as meaningful as I can manage, which may be wanting but I try and keep attempting to grow in conscioiusness.
3) I so respect his saying that if science proves Buddhism to be wanting (or some other word) he will change his views. But how can you prove or disprove the transmission of Wisdom except with their asking a child candidate questions that seem to verify the concept that wisdom can be transmitted from soul to soul and it’s necesssary to live many lives to attain that kind of wisdom. A child with that accumulated knowledge is more qualified to be recognized as a Dalai Lama than anyone else, IMO.
4) Re: belief in future lifetimes
If you are familiar with the Tibetan Book of the Dead, it seems postulated on the concept of Life and Death being a cycle, and we return again and again until ulitimate Buddhahood and Enlightenment is attained. This implies that many, many subsequent lifetimes are necessary to achieve becoming Enlightened, learning the truths that transform humans into higher conscious beings.
5) I say I’m a bodisattva based on my taking the Vow from the Dalai Lama and behaving as much as I can to honor that vow. I now realize there are no Enlightened Beings or very few and they may be among us but can only be recognized by observing their behavior, not by egoistic self-proclamation that would seem to disqualify them.
It’s gratifying and fun to be having this dialogue back and forth with you and appreciate your interest and questions. I love touching base with others discussing these things as a way of hearing myself think and getting feedback to pull me back in line if necessary.
Thank you, namaste, aloha, Frank
Chuck R
/ June 11, 2010Frank:
1). Unless you know exactly what “awakened” (“spiritually”) entails, how can you judge whether someone or something (like a rat) is capable of such a (postulated) state or if they have achieved it? If you’ve been hungry every minute of your life, can you really know what “fullness” is?
Of course our brains are more complex (& larger too) than those of rats. Does this mean that one’s potential to become “awakened” depends on the neural structure of one’s brain? If it does, and you seem to imply that it does, then is *anything* else necessary for such “awakening”? If it’s only sufficiently complex neural structure that is necessary, then how can we presume that “awakening” involves anything other than neural structure? Thus “awakening” is entirely a phenomenon within the brain.
2) “Grow in consciousness.” Is this supposed to involve anything other than the usual maturation process that we all go through, all our lives, with maybe some aha! experiences thrown in? If so, what do you think it is?
3). “Prove or disprove”. Again, what is possible is not necessarily probable. Things we can imagine do not thereby become truths. All sorts of people can acquire “wisdom” within one lifetime yet do not claim to be reincarnating entities spending many lifetimes to become “wise”. As far as a child “picking out” the possessions of his presumed prior incarnation, it reminds me of the story of “Clever Hans”. In case you don’t know this true story: Hans the horse supposedly could do math – counting, adding, maybe even multiplying. His master would ask the question, and Hans would tap out the numerical answer with his hoof. When scientists observed the display, they discovered that the master was unconsciously nodding his head every time the hoof was tapped, but would stop when the answer was achieved. The horse had unintentionally been trained to tap his foot in response to head-nods. I can easily imagine a young boy watching the monks, picking up smiles or frowns when he reached for the right or the wrong object.
Carl Sagan said: “Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.” Believers nod their heads and see miracles.
4). I’ve read the Tibetan Book of the Dead (TBotD). I used to give it credence, but no longer. If you believe what this book says, do you also believe the Jewish scriptures, the New Testament, the Koran, the Book of Mormon? If not, why not? They aren’t any more fanciful or unlikely. What is your standard for accepting one such document over another? Billions of people accept one or the other of these documents as “revealed truth” and reject the TBotD. Why are they wrong and you are right? What makes your intuitive sense of “this is true” more valid than their intuitive sense of “this is true”? These books utterly contradict one another: thus all cannot be true. With no significant evidence beyond the intuitive sense of billions of people each thinking “this is true” about utterly different and contradictory “revealed truths”, doesn’t it seem likely that *none* are true, but are the products of the vivid imaginations of many humans?
5). Is it possible to be “moral”, “ethical”, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, or expend your efforts on behalf of all humankind, without expecting any sort of reward in some sort of future incarnation, rebirth or heaven? In other words, behaving humanely because such behavior is its *own reward*, with no extra accolades or awards expected or necessary?
This last point is of course one faced by all atheists. We know we’re in our last (as well as first) incarnation and once we die, that’s it. No after-death prizes for good behavior. Yet we still behave as humanely as we can manage, because that’s what we humans do, for the most part. Not perfectly, not all the time, but as best we can.
Frank Luke
/ August 28, 2010Hello Carl, re: “that my own “belief” in the non-duality of the world is based on both the accumulation of scientific evidence that everything is connected and interdependent in countless ways”
As the sages through the ages propound, duality is errant, that reality is not dualistic. But that I believe is an Enlightened view of reality, as your statement is. I don’t think we can simply ignore that a dualistic view of existence is common with those who have not come to a realization that all dualities are negated, synbolized in the emblem of Yin/Yang, a synthesis of all opposites that also incorporate a speck of the opposite in themselves. When one is Awakened and sees reality in holistic way, dualities can be dissipated. Any who have experienced Awakening can attest to this realization.
We know there are many (a majority of humanity?) who have still to be Awakened and continue to observe dualities, pertetuating that perception.