contact@onbelief.orgPreface
The complexity of the world is such that thought experiments and abstract analysis cannot be relied upon to predict outcomes or real events. The puritanical reductionist might object to this statement and point to the descriptive power of science and the utility of is technologies. However if we accept that science, like mathematics will by definition remain logically incomplete then we are forced to to admit fundamental limitations of the belief systems that we can devise. As a result we should think of our cultures of science, technology, law, politics and religion as ongoing experiments into the unknown and sometimes the unknowable.
The full expression of our philosophical analysis should therefore comes not in the comparison of ideas but from our actions in the world. Our success comes from the experiments in living that we actually carry out. Nevertheless, it seems sensible to base our actions, important decisions and belief systems on carefully considered analyses.
Rather than be preoccupied by whether or not we have arrived at 'the truth' of a particular matter, I consider that it is better to determine whether our not our ideas have any utility, by whatever criteria we choose to adopt, and whether or not they bring us satisfaction. We can of course act as if we have discovered a reliable proposition and still discard the idea that it is either true or false in any absolute sense. In so doing we can also dispose of some unnecessary metaphysical speculation and concentrate or more productive analyses.
If we were pessimists we might see the casting off of absolutes as creating a terrible tyranny of experimentation from which we could never escape. In our pessimism we might fear being trapped in a perpetual struggle for a better way to be, through experimentation of a moral, intellectual, technological, practical, political, and social nature.
In this experimentation we could not act alone for without the culture in which we are embedded we are naked and can achieve little. Indeed we do not act alone. Instead we are brought into the world as part of a family and live as communities of interest engaged in practical or intellectual enterprises. The transient paths of our short lives cannot be independent of others regardless of our power or weakness, our wealth or our poverty. Our experiments are communal and our sense of self is strongly influenced by our culture.
If we approach the other side of the exploratory (or experimental) paradigm with optimism we can see both the necessity and rewards of experimentation. Through experimentation we become what we and our forebears have not been and present to future generations new styles of existence.
We will not, through our experimentation, knowingly approach any definite conclusions or any higher state of being or even stumble upon how things should be. We can merely seek to discover what is temporarily the most utilitarian and satisfying given our present and transient state of awareness. We will at times justifiably feel that we have continued to make the sort of cultural, technological and scientific progress that took us as a species from the Savannahs of Africa to the libraries, laboratories, courts and parliaments of today. The experiments that brought us to our present situation will at times leave us in strange places and give us bizarre ideas.
The culturally strange: 'Oil refinery' in the centre of Paris (Centre Pompidou)
If, as individuals, we attempt to cast off the bizarre, the inappropriate and the informal conjectures and rituals of religions and relinquish as much of the vulgarities of power as is possible, what then do we have except the freedom to experiment? This freedom entails the fallibility of error and the joy of discovery. That joy will, of course, be illusory at times and appear to create progress on occasions. So be it.
Experiment and belief are not two alternative options. We are all engaged in experiments whether we like it or not. Pascal envisaged us as Philosophical gamblers rather than experimenters. The idea of an experiment seems more appropriate for like the researcher we do not idly stand by while the race is run or the cards are dealt. We pursue a course of action. We simply experiment by being alive and by being part of a culture. We either formulate our own experiments or live those devised by others. We either channel this inevitability of existence into a belief in our cultural values or instead adopt many provisional faiths as motivations for our lifelong experiments.
None of what has been said so far should be taken to mean that we should lack faith for it is through instinct and faith that we are motivated to act in the world. This condition applies to the pursuit of science as it does to acceptance of particular religious or political beliefs. Our faith however should not be arbitrary but be rooted in observation of the world that we actually encounter. We also risk the possibility that out faith might serve little purpose unless we are prepared to test it by prediction and systematic investigation.
To truly understand the boundaries of the experimental paradigm we must turn to reductionism, for this has now become the grand philosophical project of our culture, whether or not philosophers and the philosophical care to acknowledge that state of affairs. Our analysis will be vacuous with respect to today's way of living if we fail to consider the nature of the reductionist project and profit by it. For me reductionism begins where the indiscipline of mysticism stops and where the solace of romanticism encounters its limits.
(I acknowledge the influence of a remark of Prof. Paul Chuchland in one of the 'Beyond Belief' conferences to the effect that 'culture is experimental'. )
On the Nature of Belief
www.onbelief.org
Scotland, 12th October 2007 and thereafter
Copyright 2007 onwards
