Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Where do I begin?

TWICE or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name ;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame

Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be.

Still when, to where thou wert, I came,

Some lovely glorious nothing did I see.

But since my soul, whose child love is,

Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,

More subtle than the parent is

Love must not be, but take a body too ;

And therefore what thou wert, and who,

I bid Love ask, and now That it assume thy body, I allow,

And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow...

AIR AND ANGELS. by John Donne


Once it grasps that an outer world exists, the self begins to discover where he leaves off and where the other begins. At first it seems obvious. It is his skin, his flesh, that is the outer limit of himself. It is his blood which flows when his flesh is gored, it is he who feels the pain. Beneath his skin, inside his skin, is where his personhood resides. It is his body which is himself.
Gradually, however, an awareness grows that it is not his body which is himself, it is his mind, his consciousness, the awareness itself which is his self. In many ways, his body is also the outer world. This becomes more obvious as we get older and infirmities develop. Then the body becomes an enemy, or at least a beast of burden that must be coddled and fed for it to do the work required of it.
Conversely, he learns very early that he cannot live in isolation. His sense of self requires an awareness of who he is, and that cannot be conceived of without reference to his family, his community, his ancestry, his language, his religious beliefs. This psychic armature he builds around his sense of self is analogous to the physical structure of his body. What he is depends on his physical structure. Who he is depends on his psychic structure, but the boundary keeps shifting. Follow that reasoning far enough, as many have, and, which may be the truth, there is no boundary. For me to be depends on the universe being exactly what it is. Are all distinctions illusory, then?
It is his physical self coupled with his psychic self that is the face he presents to the world.
But if he thinks about it even more deeply, he recognizes that both his physical self and his psychic self are merely shells. A deeper level of selfhood exists which stands above both of these manifestations. That deeper sensibility is the voice that arbitrates, approving or disapproving whatever may seek entry into this protected space.
The origin of this voice is not so easily traced. The materialistically minded defer to the physical structures. The religiously minded invoke a supernatural explanation. These are fairly standard divisions of human mentality. But that still begs the question of why some of us are drawn to one school of thought and others to a different one. One man is drawn to the inner life, another is fond of the objects of the world. It isn't a matter of sitting down at age four with your parents and being asked to choose. We grow into our dispositions as surely as we grow into adolescence, and without being asked for our preferences. Only a few of us systematically ransack our inner motivations, even fewer turn them into schools of philosophy. A few of those, such as David Hume, of Hume's Fork fame, go so far in one direction that they categorically and vehemently deny the validity of the other. But very few materialists would deny the existence of an inner life, and very few idealists would deny the existence of objective reality.
Most members of humankind unconsciously use these unexamined motivations to blithely adopt a set of principles to guide them through life. But although they don't often think about these principles, the deepest of passions can be aroused when they are challenged, and the most abject despondency when they are undermined.
The question remains, why do we wish to believe one thing over another? What is this voice that says yea or nay at every moment of our existence? What is the source of that desire? I can't answer that ultimate question. The only certainty I feel (and it's one of those yea or nay feelings) is the one that says that it is my subjective will that acts on objective reality. Objective reality is passive. It just is, and cares nothing about me or my aspirations. It is indifferent. But I am not indifferent, either about myself or about the objective world. I want to live but that's not sufficient. I want happiness, satisfaction, purpose, validation. And for that I must seek to exert force upon objective reality, I want to shape it, mould it into something it would not be if it weren't for me. Many of these mouldings have to do with my physical well-being, but that is never enough. I may love the natural world, bird song, sunsets, green meadows, but it only makes me want to furnish my life with things I especially like. I want to colour my walls with that burnished glow of sunset, I want to carve a chair from the strong, beautiful wood of the oak tree, I want to make my own songs, I want to situate my house so I can see the mountain in the distance from my porch.
Again, where is the dividing point between me and the world? And while the objective world is readily apparent to my senses, and the many and subtle ways in which I am connected and intertwined with the entire universe, it is not apparent at all to what sort of a universe my inner vision is directed. But it has not escaped my notice that ever since Galileo first invented the telescope our range of perception has broadened to the point where we can almost see as far as the beginning of creation. And yet, already some scientists theorize that more universes exist beyond the one we now see. Perhaps future scientists will figure out a way of 'seeing' them, too. Similarly, our ability to see at the smallest scales has improved exponentially since Leeuwenhoek invented the microscope. First, unseen living things, the microbes, then the structures inside the cell, then molecules and now it is possible to 'see' an atom. The atom was thought to be the indivisible building block of matter until it was shown to consist of still smaller particles, and even those smaller particles are made up of even smaller particles- though 'particle' may not be the proper word. In other words, no matter how far we learn to see outward there is always something farther away, and no matter how closely we scrutinize matter, there always seems to be something smaller.
But so far (in modern times) we haven't devoted anywhere near as much effort to discovering what it is that lives in the deepest parts of our awareness. What is it in me that is aware, and how does it work?





Friday, March 19, 2010

Self and other

When it comes right down to it the only way we know about anything directly is through our feelings. Some things hurt, others feel good. This is probably the first knowledge we have as we take that first breath and feel the air on our naked skin. We open our eyes and see light. Vague figures handle us, and we have no control over what they do. We soon notice there are some things we like and some things we don't. We get hungry. Sometimes it is too warm or too cold. We learn that to remedy our dissatisfactions we must complain to those beings who handle us. Unable to speak or ambulate, lacking strength or even teeth, we are helpless. But if we make the right noises someone will come and give us food or clean our bottoms or tuck a blanket around us. We soon come to realize that this person has a name, mama, and it becomes important to learn how to make that sound, mama. Because when that magic word is uttered, smiles and coos reward us, and then we are happy together, which is something very important, but not exactly in the same way as food is important.
As the months go by we are so engrossed at learning everything we can about this little circle we inhabit that only gradually do we become aware that it is a part, a very small part, of a greater world. Our powers are growing too but not as fast as the outer world. So busy are we at learning 'the rules' that we are not inclined to think about a fundamental truth that forms the foundation of all our aspirations. That truth is this: there is a me, and there is a world apart from me. How does he know this? Because the world does not always respond to his demands. In the beginning a child hardly knows the outer world is separate from himself, but because everything he wants comes from outside he is inclined to think it exists for him. It is an unpleasant surprise to discover that he cannot have everything he wants. There are two realities. One is the inner reality of needs and wants. Those he knows about from direct experience. It is himself. The other is the outer reality from which we seek satisfactions. That is the other. You could almost say that maturation is the process of defining the difference between oneself and external reality. Life is a struggle to define what we are. Where do I begin and where does the rest of creation begin?
Cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am, is the conclusion of a long sequence of logical reasoning arrived at by the philosopher Rene Descartes. It is because he is able to think that he knows he exists, and he knows this by introspection. But isn't it just the opposite? Isn't the experience we have of the outer world what convinces us that we exist? Absent all sensory input could we really know of our own existence at all?
It soon behooves a child to learn as much as possible about this outer reality because it has a will independent of his own, and furthermore it's desires do not coincide with his own. Sometimes the outer world's aims are in conflict with his. Competitors may be hostile. Predators see him as food. It is impossible to learn enough on a case by case basis, and he soon learns to look for connections between these separate cases. All fire burns. If I pull the cat's tail he will scratch me. Large things are more to be feared than small things as a general rule, but small though they be, wasps carry a painful sting. A jar on top of the fridge usually has cookies in it, and if I pull the chair over to the fridge I can reach it when nobody's looking. Life is full of rules and lessons, and though it's fun to learn by oneself, it is sometimes a good idea to listen to the experience of others. We have learned there is an order to the world, and we find we can manipulate it to some degree.
Science is nothing but a refined version of these investigations. Science is all about that external world. But science can tell us nothing about the interior world, though it has made a few pitiful attempts.
Primarily, it has no basis for accounting for why we place a value on useless things- like beauty, love, friendship. When scientists try to explain they invoke the mysterious force they call natural selection, because obviously (to them) something useful has to be involved. The solution then is to find how these values contribute to our survival. However, the unasked question is, why survive? Why live? Living is a hell of a lot of trouble. But even if it wasn't, even if all physical needs were met- fed an adequate diet every day, given shelter from the elements, protection from all dangers, provided with every comfort- we know that we would not be satisfied. Something would be lacking, something that has nothing to do with the survival of the body.
Often it is thought that the thing lacking can be satisfied by satiating bodily pleasures. But there is only so much sex one can have, only so much food one can eat. Those things we obtain from the outside, but the desire to live comes from the inside, and so does the desire to do more than merely live.
In the real world, Plato observed, such a thing as a perfect triangle could never be found. Our world is one of decay and imperfection. Only in the ideal world of geometry did a perfect triangle exist, and this perfect world could only be known through introspection. This in itself is part of the search for beauty and order, and I would contend that it is the primal human drive. We live to seek beauty and order, to disentangle the confusions of the experienced, external world.







Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Subjective vs objective

In recent years there has been much debate over the validity of objective knowledge. The word 'objective' comes from medieval Latin and means 'the things presented to the mind,' but in common parlance it refers to the common sense notion that there are things in the world that have a separate existence from us. A horse is a horse to both me and thee. Not only is it common sense, but all rational thought, including science depends on it. An object, therefore, is something external to the self.
On the other hand, 'subjective' refers to inner feelings. A horse is a horse, but how I feel about a horse may not be the same to me or thee. To a jockey, a horse is valued according to how well it can run. To a horsefly, a horse is a banquet. What the horse thinks is hard to tell.
Certain schools of thought in Western philosophy have used the latter observation to cast doubt on the validity of objective knowledge. They are especially fond of trotting out, not a horse, but a broomstick, and partially submerge it in a pool of water. "Yikes," they cry. "Our eyes deceive us. They tell us that the broomstick is bent where it enters the water. So much for objectivity. So much for the value of our observations." The fact that human beings are perfectly capable of compensating for the refraction of light is forgotten in the exciting glow of self-congratulation. How clever they are. Dumbfounded by this brilliant insight, another school of philosophers, the post modernists, labouring mightily, took the logic one step further. Obviously, if we cannot trust our perceptions then there is no absolute truth. One man's truth is just as good as another's. Eureka! Thus, by a commodius vicus of recirculation we arrive at Howth Castle, now known as cultural relativism. Relativism is a word made magic by the theories of a Swiss customs clerk.
Einstein's theories of relativity, incomprehensible to most of us, and the even more baffling theories of quantum mechanics summed up in a document called the Copenhagen Convention, delivered a more telling blow to the idea of objective reality. Alas, they seemed to say, and proved it beyond doubt to all the world at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nothing is what it appears to be, and it is all but impossible for the human mind to grasp reality except through the workings of increasingly esoteric mathematical formulations. But still, they needed Hiroshima to prove the theories. It's pretty hard to argue against the objective truth of two incinerated cities.
But the objective world is only knowable to us through our senses. This was already noticed by Plato and his followers. Plato imagined a higher existence where the perishable and imperfect things known to our senses had a perfect, immutable and ageless reality, knowable by us not through our senses but through reason. Running with this idea, his successors over the following centuries imagined more and more elaborate spheres of existence, guarded over by hierarchies of angels or other fantastic beings. This became the accepted science of all the civilizations of the ancient world and lasted until the time of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and others who showed that the stars in the heavens were not arranged in the perfect spheres that the theory predicted. The earth and human beings were no longer at the centre of creation but merely insignificant specks in a vast ocean. From then on the prestige of our reasoning faculty waned while the importance of observations based on measurements gained importance. Numerical reasoning became the sine qua non of scientific reasoning, but the only way to establish the truth of the mathematics was by reference to the observable world.
We have never stopped puzzling over this issue. An English philosopher had a few things to say
about it.

All the objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, Relations of Ideas, and Matters of fact. Of the first kind are the sciences of Geometry, Algebra, and Arithmetic ... [which are] discoverable by the mere operation of thought ... Matters of fact, which are the second object of human reason, are not ascertained in the same manner; nor is our evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature with the foregoing.

Put into the formula that became known as Hume's Fork, it comes out like this:
Which line of reasoning led to this conclusion:

If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.



Here in a nutshell we have the foundational reasoning behind modern scientific atheism. As a statement of how the game of science should be played it is admirable. How much can we learn about the workings of nature by sticking to those two rules? Quite a lot. It's an extremely valuable and beneficial tool that has taken us from the beginning of time to the edge of the universe, from the unimaginably large scale of galaxies to the infinitesimally small scale of the atom. It's shown us that matter and energy are only different phases of the same thing. It is an incredible achievement. But when it is claimed that what science reveals is all there is to know then that is not a statement of science but of metaphysics, and nothing about metaphysics can be known in principle by use of the scientific method.
The application of scientific principles as a practical and powerful tool of inquiry has provided us with unprecedented material well-being. The conversion of science as a tool into science as a philosophy is perhaps the most important factor in explaining why humanity went insane in the 20th century.