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The Messy World Of Observation
There can be a great temptation to imagine that by using as rigorous a style of analysis as is possible at any particular time we are some way marching towards higher truths. In so doing there is a danger of feeling pompously superior to those who appear to have very little analytical basis for their most cherished beliefs. Superficially Richard Dawkins and like-minded people (such as myself) can seem at times to be unbalanced by a desire for rationalism and dismissal of anything that appears to be irrational. It is perhaps better to think of such people as motivated by a desire for empirical evidence and placing great emphasis on observation.
Belief Influences Observation
Nevertheless we need to be mindful of the views of Hilary Putnam who warned us to consider that at times there might not be such a sharp distinction between observation and idea as we can conceive of. For both practical and more abstract reasons we appear to make observations through the 'lens' of ideas that focus our attention and past associations in a particular way. Indeed the mundane example of optical illusions would seem to make the point that seeing really is believing. ( see the BBC Science Magazine page associated with the Horizon documentary 'Seeing is Believing' or other optical illusions). After experiencing illusions it becomes difficult to ignore the possibility that seeing or any other form of human sensing is not independent of our assumptions about the world built up by a very long series of other observations or the deficiencies of our perceptive abilities. It would appear that philosophers such as Dan Dennett are fascinated by them for this very reason.
Art, Music and Religion
Art music and religion are also of course worthy of our philosophical attention for pragmatic reasons, although for me personally not by virtue of their metaphysical content or supposed transcendental qualities. From my perspective art, in its many forms, is to be enjoyed in the least cerebral way possible. I appreciate of course that does not apply for others. As a result I have almost nothing to say about art and music in relation to philosophy. This is a deficiency I am happy to live with. I then understand that for others the joy of religion fills a similar and comforting niche in their mind. Where that joy does not impinge negatively on me in any way I am entirely content to let others believe what they wish and enjoy their religion to the full provided it does not in any way diminish the society of which I am part. This view might be described as negative utilitarianism or consequentialism for I am content for religion to have no beneficial consequences provided that there is no significant harm caused. Personal benefit to me and others would of course be welcome provided it would not give rise to philosophical inconsistency.
Of course we can see that relativism as well as absolutism can lead to excesses of interpretation and action. Visit the Tate Modern Gallery in London to see the worst kind of relativism at work amongst the curatorial staff, who will willingly present you with life affirming acts of creative genius as well as a parody of art which insists that only interpretation matters. These pitfalls arise when we neglect the empirical and so undervalue action in the world (in this case the actions of the artist) and overvalue analysis.
Click the picture for catalogue entrySomething to Admire at Tate Modern
Click the picture for catalogue entry
A lack of empirical relativism evident in the curators (from my point of view !)
To fully appreciate my point of you read the utter drivel in the catalogue entry for the picture I have labeled Tat.Let me be clear, I am not arguing that you or I can be objective. I have no interest in claims of objectivity in art any more than I would with reference to moral decisions. I merely ask you to consider the emotional and empirical criteria by which you personally would want to make distinctions between the art illustrated here and to what extent those decisions would satisfy you as an individual at this particular point in time, given your present tastes. When framing your personal experience of art in the context of your life, is there any point in reaching a description about what you feel based on your view of what others feel? You might label that art education.
Using Approximations of Ideas: Example of 'Simple' Explanation
Simplistic conceptions of truth no matter how obvious can often be meaningfully questioned. As a simple exercise concerning everyday life and scientific 'truth' cast your mind back to school where you might have been taught in the physics class that when light strikes a mirror the angle of reflection equals the angles of incidence of a light beam as shown in the diagram below.
Reflection in a Mirror
( modified from Johan Arvelius)
Your physics teacher might even have set up a simple experiment to show you that was indeed the case. There is nothing quite like observation and measurement for helping us to 'believe'. In many senses this concept actually is 'true enough' for everyday life. You might agree with that claim as you look in the rearview mirrors of your car then adjust their position so that you can indeed 'see' what is going on behind you. At one level you might then be arguing 'seeing is believing'. In the simple case of looking in a mirror, Newtonian optics might therefore appear to be the mechanistic explanation that we require. Similarly a geometric conception of optics was all that Newton required when he constructed a reflecting telescope.
The diagram shows the apparent reflective geometry of a Newtonian Telescope
(modified from that by ArtMechanic )Are there more complex and perhaps better explanations ?
The question then arises are these 'laws of reflection' and related geometric formulations all that is needed to explain other optical phenomenon and optical devices and do they fit with the very fundamental quantum mechanical explanations of physics. The answer appears to be that it is easily possible to construct other conventional optical devices such as the partial mirror or diffraction grating where simple geometric optics are much more problematic, for those devices produce behaviour that seems inconsistent with such simple explanations. That difficulty does not however prevent there being useful mathematical equations that describe the behaviour of optical gratings. However do explanations of geometry produce a sufficiently detailed explanation of what the grating does to light and in some way act as a sufficiently practical explanation? The nobel prize winner Richard Feynman who amongst other things became well known for the path integral formulation of quantum physics argues that the difficulties encountered with understanding some simple optical devices should also bring us to question what we understand about the way mirrors work, even although we have used mirrors most of life and might have even have experimented with them in the physics class. " In Feynman's path integral, the classical notion of a unique trajectory for a particle is replaced by an infinite sum of classical paths, each weighted differently according to its classical properties" (see Wikipedia article on Functional Integrals)
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Three possible paths that contribute to the quantum amplitude for a particle moving from point A at some time t 0 to point B at some other time t 1 (a Wiki Commons Diagram )
"Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful".
George E.P.BoxThe way of thinking about mirrors we were taught in school, he might have argued, was just a useful approximation for what can be said at a more complex or deeper level of mechanistic analysis that is consistent with a corpuscular or quantum theory of light. The reflection we observe just happens to be the one that dominates the integral. Other reflections are occurring that have little effect on our eye or our detectors. By invoking quantum mechanics we are merely taking into consideration other observations and abstractions of the world that we can make, which might in the first instance appear to be unrelated. We should of course refrain from the intellectual arrogance of saying actually happens 'in reality'. Feynman would go further and argue that we should not even think of light as traveling in straight lines, as we have all been taught in school. In his lectures he explains that we only 'see' light at a particular reflected angle because that represents the shortest time and shortest path to our eye. As a result of the timed-limited 'sum' of paths that are close to the classical reflected angle are the ones that have most effect on our retinas or physical detectors that we can build. When we build a focusing lens we are merely adjusting the timing of light so that it arrives near the same spot on our retinas at approximately the same time. Feynman is in effect trying to teach us that the physical nature of the world is more complex than we observe in everyday life using our senses or machines that we can build to extend our senses. From an abstract philosophical or pragmatic perspective such a claim does not seem at all surprising.
Contentment with Ideas and Limited Rationality
If like me you find the credibility of the diagram above hard to accept on first sight you could listen to the convincing tale told by Feynman in his Lectures on the subject of 'Today's Answers to Newton's Queries About Light' at the Vega Science Trust.
Perhaps because of my limited mathematical abilities it is more comforting for me to consider that light propagates in straight lines and mirrors effectively behave in the way that I have been taught. Although I can only appreciate Feynman's claims in a non-mathematical way, since I am mathematically illiterate, I am happy with their philosophical implications. However in order to lead my life, for this particular purpose, I am content with a picture of the world where tiny entities such as photons of light are bouncing around like billiard balls (although they appear to behave with probabilistic wavelike vector properties). Similarly particle diffraction does not normally enter my world view although it is presumably happening at fantastic frequency in very cell in my body. Please do not misunderstand me for I stand in awe of Feynman's path formulation for it means that there are many paths but we can only 'see' one because we are limited in the time frame of our perceptions. I love the poetical beauty of that thought. I am content however with a different level of approximation in a way that a non-fundamentalist theist might be content or even happier with an imprecise idea of god.
Richard Feynman Lectures
Notice that despite his genius, or even possibly because of it, Feynman only claims to be talking about 'today's answers' based on current observations not presenting a truth. The reason we would wish to invoke the mysteries of quantum physics when a simpler geometric explanation would do is because of the comprehensiveness and completeness that such an explanation would bring and its applicability to a wider range of observations. In some way the quantum explanation seems more inclusive. In more general terms we also need to consider whether or not our explanations of the world can be made more precise, more comprehensive, more coherent, more powerfully predictive, more testable, more falsifiable, more verifiable, and so in some senses more fundamental and therefore more rational. This of course might mean some redefinition of what it means to be rational. So be it. This stance does not mean however that we need to feel constrained to think at the most fundamental level on analysis that we can envisage for any given problem.
I accept that for many purposes imprecision, or if you prefer less resolution, produces a picture that is pleasing enough for me and sufficient for my practical needs. In the real world I know that when I take portrait photographs the sitter usually does not want see the full resolution that my camera can offer and view every pore on their skin. Similarly I do not need to contemplate the magnificent and mysterious world of quantum electrodynamics to know what it feels like to put my hand on a table and also be sure that my hand will not miraculously pass through it.
More or Less Rational
Notice that above that I have used the term 'more rational'. This phrase implies that that we also might have uses for the phrase 'less rational' in addition to the ideas of being rational and non-rational. There has been a tendency from Greek times in Western thought to see rationality in 2 states or assume the 'truth values' of falsity and trueness as logical conclusions to arguments. Could we not instead have some quantization of logical states or even a smooth continuum going from the wholly irrational or meaningless to the partially rational and from there to the completely rational and totally meaningful. My thinking in part derives from a well known criticism of 'logical positivism', which attempted to look at the isolated 'truth values' of individual statements and decided whether any given statement is true or false. Indeed such a criticism applies more generally to the deductive logic so prized by some philosophers. I am on the side of those who favour empiricism over rationalism and see induction as the only way to have knowledge about anything useful in the world.
If we subscribe to a view that expressions of knowledge, or more generally language statements, are interdependent for meaning then we have a more complex situation. We do not have a dictionary for example that uses non-language statements to explain language. If we are not careful however we can become unnecessarily distracted by such problems of self-reference and the regress argument.
Relativism
Although we often adopt rules of thumb (or heuristics) that conveniently describe particular situations ( such as light reflection above) I feel that there is no need for a 'common sense' philosophy for everyday life and another way of thinking that is suitable for the exactness of scientists and professional philosophers. In so doing we might even formulate a series of explanations for the same phenomena which are convenient to use at different levels of analysis. The complexities of modern science mean that a common sense school of philosophy that had existed in my native Scotland might now have more limited scope for analysis. We simply need a pragmatic approach which allows us to both live, enjoy living and be comfortable about what we believes provided that we do not begin to treat others as objects.
Relativism should in my view extend to the level of analysis and the purpose of analysis. It is simply more convenient and more utilitarian to adopt a certain analytical methods depending on what we want to achieve. Our concept of relativism should extend to our methodologies of approach and we should be wary of notions of incommensurability. We should not confuse the strict definition of commensurability used in physics or in mathematics with complementarity of method, level of analysis or observer perspective. We should always be concerned that apparent incommensurability could be due to our own incompleteness of thought or that we are not committing the error of an appeal to ignorance.
I am not arguing that relativism should mean that "different points of view are equally valid". That stance would be very non-pragmatic and thus for me be self-contradictory. I argue instead that we must combine the concepts of pragmatism, relativism and empiricism. A form of pragmatic relativism is therefore adopted here, which stresses the importance of the methods by which we arrive at ideas rather than the discovery of truths or the reliance on absolutes. By definition a relativist is somebody who does not see the necessity to be concerned with 'truths' in an absolute sense. In this way I deviate sharply from Dawkins who to me seems a very naive critic of relativism. He would do better to consider to what extent we cannot know in absolute terms and whether or not we are forever constrained to investigate (or experiment) and compare the value of competing ideas that emerge as a result.
Whether or not we adopt the quasi-religious positions of Kantian of transcendental idealism or a more contemporary philosophical realism is merely a mater of pleasure. In no way of course should we ignore the pleasure and satisfaction of belief. I would no more want to to discuss such positions however than I would the merits of particular aspects of Christian Theology. Indeed because of the moral and social content of religions I find those aspects of them to be more worthy of examination, although without allowing any form of acquiescence to their precepts or authority.
The overall philosophical stance adopted here might also be described as Observational and Experimental Materialism. This is because of the stress that is put on the utility of ideas, the primacy of observation, be it flawed or otherwise, and the treatment of human beliefs, decisions and the actions that flow from them as explorations (or experiments) in living be they derived from others or brought about by personal realisation.
Skepticism
Skepticism is an easy path to follow due to the inter-relatedness of beliefs and the complexity of the world which make universality or universal propositions difficult to achieve at any given point in time or maintain in the long term. We should therefore not overindulge in skepticism even although at times it gives a feeling of liberation. Synthetic and productive analysis is by contrast much more difficult and requires a much greater degree of originality followed by action in the world.
Thomas Kuhn would be happy for us to even conceive of the development of original thinking as involving paradigm shifts that punctuate 'normal science'. For me this is an untenable thesis of which we should be strongly skeptical for it imposes an wholly unnecessary demarcation (or boundary) problem. I much prefer to see all change as sequential, contingent and accumulative and therefore evolutionary. I would even prefer a hermeneutic approach than be faced with the creation of artificial boundaries, although that would not sit easily with me.
I can do no better in summarizing my position on skepticism in this matter than by quoting Carl Sagan.
"It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas. If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. You never learn anything new. You become a crotchety old person convinced that nonsense is ruling the world. (There is, of course, much data to support you.)
On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish useful ideas from worthless ones. If all ideas have equal validity then you are lost, because then it seems to me, no ideas have any validity at all. "
Carl Sagan, 'The Burden of Skepticism', Pasadena Lecture 1987, Quoted in 'Why People Believe Weird
Things Pseudoscience and other confusions of our time' by Michael ShermerHow does it feel to be human?
Rationalism, and to a very large extent empiricism, at best produces mechanistic interpretations of the world and human existence but would seem to ignore at least one crucial component; our self-conscious desire for satisfaction in life and our existence as emotional creatures. A purely rationalistic way of looking at the world does not communicate what it feels like to be human, so for this and many other reasons is incomplete. For me it is essential that we consider the wider utility of our beliefs and the emotional satisfaction that they bring. Although this site is really only concerned with an empirical and rationalistic examination of belief, life would become entirely vacuous if we were to completely ignore our emotional characteristics and needs. I hope Dawkins would agree. When I rework and expand on the ideas presented on this site in book form I hope to include such an approach, although I apologize for not considering the role of personal satisfaction more in these pages.
Examining Science
It dismays me to encounter scientists who cling to notions that they are discovers of 'truth' ( see also the SEP article on truth). I hold this view for 2 reasons. Firstly, the history of science should convince us that all, or almost all, of the theories of tomorrow will be more elaborate than the theories of today. It seems naive to image that we are, by the results of our efforts over the past few hundred years entering the threshold of a golden age of truth. Surely we can hope that in future better approximations will be found that tie together current ideas and at the same time explain a wider range of phenomena. Secondly, while scientists may be, to use a rather old fashion term, 'seekers after truth' claims of actually finding a truth or knowing when it has actually been encountered should always be regarded with suspicion. Such weakness is perhaps forgivable in physicists who deal with very limited parameter spaces and simplistic although mathematically complex models. (Even the string theorists only propose 26 space-time dimensions.) However for biologists, who deal with what is possibly the most complex arrangement of matter in the universe not to acknowledge that they are only ever dealing with provisional theoretical statements is inexcusable. As my correspondent Andrew Leeuwenberg says "in science P<1", meaning nothing is true in the sense of being immutable. In more formal language AJ Ayer said " "no proposition, other than a tautology , can possibly be anything more than a probable hypothesis. " (see source)
Why should I be particularly critical of the actions of some scientists and not be at all concerned with the ruminations of those who speculate on metaphysical ideas. Simply because the ideas of the later group will not impact on my life. I feel that we should in part focus our attention on the amoral (as distinct from immoral) practice of science as well as the good that can derived from it. This is for the purely pragmatic reason that science has profound relevance to our entire culture. Where our analysis impacts on our action in the world, it is there that we should focus our analyses. We should then see philosophy as a continuum with science, engineering, medicine, law, politics, and many other aspects of our culture. As an empiricist, I view the obstinacy of some philosophers who refuse to consider in detail the relevance of data and directly related empirical ideas as unfortunate. For me this has resulted in the emaciation of philosophical discourse and produced a sort of 'disembodied' thinking that refuses to consider the world of sense data and by extension all kinds of machine-originated data.
On the Philosophy of Belief
www.onbelief.org
Scotland, 12th October 2007 and thereafter
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