On Unbelief I. Introduction
December 10, 2014 at 12:44 am
(This post was last modified: December 10, 2014 at 2:21 am by Mudhammam.)
“In some remote corner of the universe, poured and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the haughtiest and most mendacious minute of ‘world history’’---yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star grew cold, the clever animals had to die.” - Friedrich Nietzsche [1]
One may rightly celebrate the achievements of Wittenschaft but few seem persuaded that the results are sufficiently fröhlich. [2] The debates that entertained the ancient Greek philosophers continue on as impassioned as ever at the dawn of the 21st century, yet with the tool of Wittenschaft, or, our “invented knowledge,” we have traveled a long way from Democritus’ atomic theory and Ptolemy’s geocentric cosmology. Curiously, while the wool over our eyes has begun to recede on virtually everything from the structure and history of the Universe to the psychological development of our species---where “seven heavens” and an underworld have become eleven dimensions and visions are a sign of mental illness---many of the basic ideas that have divided human beings remain obscure, or worse, no longer fit within any sensible context of present evaluation. If anything is certain, however, it’s that science, while continually helpful in many respects, hasn’t solved humanity’s miseries, and perhaps, has even compounded a few; certain metaphysical beliefs, whether untenable or simply unfounded, remain in many minds an unparalleled cure for the truly sick soul. The anxiety often induced by the realization that we are the embodiment of an apparent inconceivability, a Nothing in an Infinity or an Infinite Nothingness, a ground zero in a numeric set that seems to extend ad infinitum in all directions, yet the product of elaborate mathematical principles that infer a beginning of time, an organism almost infinitely interconnected with other organic and inorganic conditions, distantly related to the stars, and in our case, more recently, the blobfish; that we must eventually relinquish the elements by which, per current scientific hypotheses, our brief apprehension of life under this one particular star, was conceived, returning our being to the environment to be recycled: indeed, that can seem frightening.
“Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” has always been the question, and “Gott ist tot” is the modernist’s response. [3] The past few centuries have witnessed a surmounting wave of skepticism regarding religious commitments, superstition, the idea of immortality, “the resurrection of the dead” (formulated in Zoroastrianism and later adopted by most fractions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Many perceive these ideas with as much suspicion as they do astrology, demonic magic, or the doctrine of reincarnation. A growing minority of the world population is beginning to doubt these concepts; far longer this has been especially true among academics.
But perhaps I get ahead of myself; our first concern ought to be recovering our tabula rasa [4], arriving at that existential frame of mind that some have called a crisis, forcing ourselves outside of any unnecessary assumptions we have hitherto cherished. 1st, we must understand the nature of belief and unbelief. Can we really trust our own senses? How do we determine fact from fantasy when nobody seems to agree on anything? Are our epistemological and moral foundations “reduced” to utility without the sustenance of an Alpha and Omega, of which (whom?) is said to have once communicated with the ancients?
The biologist and controversial anti-theist Richard Dawkins writes in one of my favorite passages of any author: “After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings.” [5] It would seem natural to begin asking ourselves where it is we ought to begin. It may also be advantageous to bear in mind when it is we should stop. If we find ourselves growing increasingly committed to empiricism, we will be obliged to surrender our beloved traditions that fail to meet a basic criteria of trustworthiness, a stubborn framework designed to separate the chaff of credulity from the nourishing grains (and gains) of evidence and hard data, provided by generations of rigorous inquiry into the very fabric of reality, or, human experience. That means, as religions have recognized since the Scientific Revolution was first initiated by Nicolaus Copernicus (standing on the shoulders of the Greeks and medieval scholastics), if our discoveries erode the faith we once placed in the constructs of old, we must embrace doubt, and accept its consequences. If, as certain gentlemen have always alleged, a loss of spirit necessarily follows from a disbelief in divinities, we must decide whether former human projects can and should be retained for practical usage, or torn down and rebuilt.
Of this possibility, that empiricism is especially friendly to atheism---because either its budding seeds lie on a small patch of fertile soil in an otherwise barren desert, or the tools required for cultivating theological fruits are of a different set than those religious philosophers have hitherto offered---pessimism often reigns supreme. “We do not require great education of the mind,” wrote the gifted mathematician Blaise Pascal, “to understand that here is no real and lasting satisfaction; that our pleasures are only vanity; that our evils are infinite; and, lastly, that death, which threatens us every moment, must infallibly place within us a few years under the dreadful necessity of being for ever either annihilated or unhappy. There is nothing more real than this, nothing more terrible.” He continues, in a passage that can easily be imagined as a direct reply to Dawkins: “Now, what do we gain by hearing it said of a man that he has now thrown off the yoke, that he does not believe there is a God who watches our actions, that he considers himself the sole master of his conduct, and that he thinks he is accountable for it only to himself? Does he think that he has thus brought us to have henceforth complete confidence in him, and to look to him for consolation, advice, and help in every need of life? Do they profess to have delighted us by telling us that they hold our soul to be only a little wind and smoke, especially by telling us this in a haughty and self-satisfied tone of voice? Is this a thing to say gaily? Is it not, on the contrary, a thing to say sadly, as the saddest thing in the world?” [6]
Contrast that to Dawkins, fairly said to be representative of one sentiment on the rise: “We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born.” And at the conclusion of the same work: “We are also alone among animals in being able to say before we die: Yes, this is why it was worth coming to life in the first place.” [7] These are two distinct attitudes among an endless array of oftentimes incompatible stances towards questions of fact, and some would even be so audacious to suggest, truth. Perhaps we would be wise to recall Nietzsche when he insisted that “in any event, the greatest suspicion of a ‘truth’ should arise when feelings of pleasure enter the discussion of the question ‘What is true?’ The proof of ‘pleasure’ is a proof of ‘pleasure’---nothing else… The experience of all severe, of all profoundly inclined spirits teaches the opposite. At every step one has to wrestle for truth; one has had to surrender for it almost everything to which the heart, to which our love, our trust in life, cling otherwise. That requires greatest of soul: the service of truth is the hardest service” (emphasis in original). [8] If we must decry the death of God sorrowfully, so be it.
Others may justly protest at even the remote suggestion of heralding empiricism as the exclusive tool by which human beings acquire knowledge. 1st, we are told, science presumes a certain rationality, and foremost, it is understanding that shapes a coherent perception of the material world. It is as if our conceptions reveal a world of Ideas and ideal forms, distinct and in some sense immaterial, the essences from which intelligent beings emerged to ascertain the foundational principles of existence in philosophical and----perhaps with a pinch of pious self-confidence----theological reflection. 2ndly, if a Deity can be assumed, intelligence, design, morality, self-awareness, our sense of infinity, freedom, and anything else that can be simplified to maximal effect while simultaneously underlying the fundamental paradoxes that stump the brightest minds (with the restriction that qualities must relate to our conceptions of justice and general goodness, derived by the external world and so-called divine inspiration and revelation); if this can be granted, a Universe ought to reflect such characteristics, and this is the Universe in which we find ourselves, beings that are each part of an infinitely complex determination. 3rdly, we must have faith; the most important truths cannot be established on science and reason, but only by implicitly trusting in the senses, believing that reality has an independent and rational constitution as such that science can discover “brute laws,” but not first causes, ultimate reality, or Kant’s Ding an sich. [9] Lastly, why does our species have a relentless desire to pursue truth? Is it truth for truth’s sake? What if the truth does not set one free, but plagues “the ungrateful biped” [10] with anxiety and pessimism? After all, one may suggest that man has “the right to desire for himself even what is very stupid and not to be bound by an obligation to desire only what is sensible. Of course, this very stupid thing, this caprice of ours, may be in reality, gentlemen, more advantageous for us than anything else on earth, especially in certain cases. And in particular, it may be more advantageous than any advantage even when it does us obvious harm, and contradicts the soundest conclusions of our reasoning concerning our advantage---for in any circumstances it preserves for us what is most precious and most important---that is, our personality, our individuality.” [11] Is that not at some level a fair point?
Questions about the value of truth will have to be set aside until later. For our present discussion, we must be content to adjoin ourselves with Pontius Pilate in his delicious retort to a bold and defiant Jesus (whose character and behavior varies depending on which Gospel you read) in the Gospel of John, “What is truth?” [12] So, we shall proceed, with the curiosity and resilience of Dawkins, and the cautious refrain of Pascal, heartily concurring with the latter when he wrote that, at the very least, we ought to consider the pursuit of higher knowledge “from principles of human interest and self-love,” and of those who remain content to doubt without desiring to seek further, we “have no words to describe so silly a creature.” [13] “The unexamined life is not worth living,” we repeat with Socrates. [14]
Who am I? What am I? What are these appearances extending throughout space that my mind perceives? Where did everything come from? These are thoughts that can shake a person to their core when “the anesthesia of familiarity” wears off, even if only for a moment. “I know not who put me into the world,” affirms Pascal in eloquent prose, “nor what the world is, nor what I myself am. I am in terrible ignorance of everything. I know not what my body is, nor my senses, nor my soul, not even that part of me which thinks what I say, which reflects on all and on itself, and knows itself no more than the rest. I see those frightful spaces of the universe which surround me, and I find myself tied to one corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am put in this place rather than in another, nor why the short time which is given me to live is assigned to me at this point rather than at another of the whole eternity which was before me or which shall come after me. I see nothing but infinites on all sides, which surround me as an atom and as a shadow which endures only for an instant and returns no more. All I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least is this very death which I cannot escape.” [15]
The first observation that might strike us, aside from our ignorance, is our total and utter reliance on sounds and symbols used to denote concepts that are reflective of experience, concepts which in turn attempt to “cut out and fix, and exclude everything but what we have fixed. A concept,” continues the great American philosopher and psychologist William James, “means a that-and-no-other… whereas in the real concrete sensible flux of life experiences compenetrate each other so that it is not easy to know just what is excluded and what not. Past and future, for example, conceptually separated by the cut to which we give the name of present, and defined as being the opposites sides of that cut, are to some extent, however brief, co-present with each other throughout experience.” He adds that “the intellectual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of a conceptual order for the perceptual order in which his experience originally comes,” yet noting, “the best way to show that a knife will not cut is to try to cut with it. Rationalism itself it is that has so fatally undermined conception, by finding that, when worked beyond a certain point, it only piles up dialectic contradictions.” The problem is that “the whole process of life,” which we perceive with a semblance of understanding by means of rational conception, “is due to life’s violation of our logical axioms” (emphasis in original in both instances). [16]
When attempting to erect a sensible philosophical framework by which to interpret our experiences of the world, I can relate no better advice than that which was offered by two of the most distinguished empiricists, one being James himself. After commenting on why “metaphysical discussions are so much like fighting with the air” in his essay The Meaning of Truth, he ably writes: “Beautiful is the flight of conceptual reason through the upper air of truth. No wonder philosophers are dazzled by it still, and no wonder they look with some disdain at the low earth of feeling from which the goddess launched herself aloft. But woe to her if she return not home to its acquaintance; Nirgends haften dann die unsicheren Sohlen---every crazy wind will take her, and like a fire-balloon at night, she will go out among the stars.” [17] The other empiricist whose words seem particularly pertinent in this case is the English scientist, philosopher, and statesman, Francis Bacon. I have often thought how much philosophers might benefit if more adhered to the following sentiment: “That philosophy only is the true one which reproduces most faithfully the statements of nature, and is written down, as it were, from nature's dictation, so that it is nothing but a copy and a reflection of nature, and adds nothing of its own, but is merely a repetition and echo” (emphasis in original). [18] We must bear in mind that whatever conceptual shortcomings we may find ourselves up against, the difficulties lie in our ability, or lack thereof, to abstract and quantify the middle points between complete extremes of being and non-being, beginning and end, colossal and minute.
Thus we peer out into the world, absorbing a three-dimensional space overabundant with color, sounds, smells, feeling our way through the light by way of touch, as an infinitely complex arrangement of matter and energy communicates with the materials that comprise our brain, illuminating our existence. Within this experience, which always appears to be moving forward in the dimension of time, are thoughts, ideas, mental constructs that in some sense allow us to comprehend ourselves and our surroundings. “The very fact,” wrote Albert Einstein, “that the totality of our sense experiences is such that by means of thinking (operations with concepts, and the creation and use of definite functional relations between them, and the coordination of sense experiences to these concepts) it can be put in order, this fact is one which leaves us in awe, but which we shall never understand... The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle.” Furthermore, “nothing can be said concerning the manner in which the concepts are to be made and connected, and how we are to coordinate them to the experiences. In guiding us in the creation of such an order of sense experiences, success in the result is alone the determining factor. All that is necessary is the statement of a set of rules, since without such rules the acquisition of knowledge in the desired sense would be impossible. One may compare these rules with the rules of a game in which, while the rules themselves are arbitrary, it is their rigidity alone which makes the game possible.” [19]
Some clever gentlemen will protest that we have already assumed too much. “A set of arbitrary rules, like the rules of a game?” they ask with a half twisted grin. “But that is to admit the necessity of faith! As you might have inferred, without faith, we can accept nothing more than skepticism, and even solipsism!” While skepticism is to be admired, solipsism must be ignored. “But on what grounds?” we hear them protest. “Surely, you would not propose that there is a reason for reason! What would be the reason for that? Reductio ad infinitum! And if you say, ‘there is no reason for reason,’ reductio ad absurdum! Is it not better to admit that we can know nothing about reality that transcends immediate perception?” Perhaps, we reply, but that is agnosticism on appeal of radical skepticism, not solipsism. “But our original point stands. If solipsism is to be overcome by reason, it is reason alone, though perhaps also faith, and that would only establish the supremacy of reason, and possibly faith in your reason, over the senses, and then you would be forced to concede that, for knowledge, strict empiricism is insufficient, as more is required, contrary to what you have henceforth seemed to imply.”
While it is a rare occurrence to meet a person who claims to be solipsist, the charge that our most basic assumptions cannot be established without faith in our reasons and senses is all too common. But as faith is taken to mean trust in this instance, what does it mean for an otherwise healthy-minded person to doubt his or her senses or reasons? Is it not enough to admit that our senses may be limited, our reasons flawed, and yet, in a reality that appears to contain objects that exist independently of our perception, which we can understand to some degree, imperfectly and with restriction, this remains sufficient ground upon which to build or “invent knowledge”? If the solipsist believes in nothing but phantasmical appearances construed by his own mind, is it not his mind that exclusively hears the argument, and appears to our mind, which is actually his (or are they both ours now?), a far more absurd reductio ad absurdum? The solipsist who disagrees with you is disagreeing with himself. Even so, I do not doubt that they will find a cleverer retort. We must decide then, what does it mean to speak about an “external” or “objective” world that is separate from our private, “internal” or “subjective” experiences? How we do know other minds besides our own really exist? This shall be the subject of our second inquiry.
1. Quote taken from “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense,” “a fragment published posthumously” and included in Nietzsche, F. W., & Kaufmann, W. A. The Portable Nietzsche. New York, N.Y., U.S.A: Penguin Books. 1982. Print. (From here on abbreviated VPN)
2. Walter Kauffman writes that Wittenschaft “does not bring to mind only---perhaps not even primarily---the natural sciences but any serious, disciplined, rigorous quest for knowledge…”; fröhlich means gay; merry. Nietzsche, F. W., & Kaufmann, W. A. The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs. New York: Vintage Books. 1974. Print. (pps. 4-5; from here on abbreviated GS).
3. “And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Mark 15:34 (King James Version). “Gott ist tot” translates “God is dead,” ironically placed in the mouth of a certain “Zarathustra,” as well as “The madman” in the German philosopher’s classic works, GS and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the latter included in Nietzsche, F. W., & Kaufmann, W. A. 1982. Nietzsche thought that belief in God would persist until we “vanquish his shadow,” as when the Buddha had died, “his shadow was still shown for centuries in a cave---a tremendous gruesome shadow.” (See GS, Sections 108 and 125, and per Kaufmann’s commentarial note, “VPN , pp. 124f., 191, 202, 294, 371-79, 398f., and 246”).
4. Latin for “blank state,” which the British empiricist John Locke argued was the condition of the mind at birth.
5. Found on page 6 in the aptly phrased first chapter, “The Anaesthetic of Familiarity,” Dawkins, Richard. Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. Print.
6. Pascal, Blaise, W F. Trotter, and Thomas M'Crie. Pensées: The Provincial Letters. New York: Modern library, 1941. Print. (pp. 67, 70). The Pensées was compiled and published posthumously by Pascal’s friends, using fragments of a manuscript on the “evidences of religion” that he had previously been writing. Pascal was regularly plagued by illness and died in 1662 at the young age of thirty-nine.
7. Dawkins, Richard. 1998. (pp. 1, 313).
8. Nietzsche, F. W., & Kaufmann, W. A. 1982. (pp 631-632).
9. German for “thing-in-itself.”
10. “In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped,” writes the “Underground Man” in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s classic short novel, Notes from Underground. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, Constance Garnett, Ernest J. Simmons. Notes from Underground; Poor People; The Friend of the Family: 3 Short Novels. New York, NY: Dell Pub., 1960. Print. (p. 49).
11. Ibid. (p. 48).
12. John 18:38 (KJV); See also Mark 15:1-5; Matt. 27:11-14; Luke 23:15. John’s Gospel, typically considered a successor to “the Synoptics,” clearly expands on the technique of earlier Christians who used literary narratives to transmit a community’s theology or lessons on proper conduct.
13. Pascal, Blaise, W F. Trotter, and Thomas M'Crie. 1941. (pp. 67-68).
14. As recorded in Plato’s narration of the trial of Socrates, The Apology (Section 38a). Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. Plato, Harold North Fowler, W.R.M. Lamb. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1966. Print.
15. Pascal, Blaise, W F. Trotter, and Thomas M'Crie. 1941. (p. 78). See also page 74: “When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant, and which know me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then. Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have this place and time been allotted to me?”
16. All quotes in the above paragraph are taken from William James, found in his works, A Pluralistic Universe and Some Problems of Philosophy, compiled in William James: Writings 1902–1910. James, William. New York: Library of America, 1987. Print. (pp. 746, 748, 1008, 1039).
17. Ibid. (pp. 851-852). According to the notes on page 1371, the German text translates: “Nowhere is there a place to which the uncertain soles of the feet can cling.”
18. As quoted by the 18th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer: “There, aptitude for philosophy consists precisely in what Plato put it in, namely in knowing the one in the many and the many in the one. Accordingly, philosophy will be a sum of very universal judgments, whose ground of knowledge is immediately the world itself in its entirety, without excluding anything, and hence everything to be found in human consciousness. It will be a complete recapitulation, so to speak, a reflection of the world in abstract concepts… Bacon already set philosophy this task, when he said: ea demum vera est philosophia, quae mundi ipsius voces fidelissime reddit, et veluti dictante mundo constripta est, et nihil aliud est, quam ejusdem SIMULACRUM ET REFLECTIO, neque
addit quidquam de proprio, sed tantum iterat et resonat (De Augmentis Scientarium, 1. 2, c. 13).” The Latin is translated in the commentarial notes by E.F.J. Payne; emphasis in original. Schopenhauer, Arthur, and E F. J. Payne. The World As Will and Representation: Vol 1. Indian Hills, N.Y.: Col., 1958. Print. (pp. 82-83)
19. Quote originally found in the article “Physics and Reality” as featured in the Journal of the Franklin Institute (Mar. 1936); can be read in full at the following web address: Einstein, Albert, Jean Piccard. Physics and Reality. Professor Milivoje M. Kostic, 1936. Web. <http://www.kostic.niu.edu/physics_and_reality-albert_einstein.pdf>.
One may rightly celebrate the achievements of Wittenschaft but few seem persuaded that the results are sufficiently fröhlich. [2] The debates that entertained the ancient Greek philosophers continue on as impassioned as ever at the dawn of the 21st century, yet with the tool of Wittenschaft, or, our “invented knowledge,” we have traveled a long way from Democritus’ atomic theory and Ptolemy’s geocentric cosmology. Curiously, while the wool over our eyes has begun to recede on virtually everything from the structure and history of the Universe to the psychological development of our species---where “seven heavens” and an underworld have become eleven dimensions and visions are a sign of mental illness---many of the basic ideas that have divided human beings remain obscure, or worse, no longer fit within any sensible context of present evaluation. If anything is certain, however, it’s that science, while continually helpful in many respects, hasn’t solved humanity’s miseries, and perhaps, has even compounded a few; certain metaphysical beliefs, whether untenable or simply unfounded, remain in many minds an unparalleled cure for the truly sick soul. The anxiety often induced by the realization that we are the embodiment of an apparent inconceivability, a Nothing in an Infinity or an Infinite Nothingness, a ground zero in a numeric set that seems to extend ad infinitum in all directions, yet the product of elaborate mathematical principles that infer a beginning of time, an organism almost infinitely interconnected with other organic and inorganic conditions, distantly related to the stars, and in our case, more recently, the blobfish; that we must eventually relinquish the elements by which, per current scientific hypotheses, our brief apprehension of life under this one particular star, was conceived, returning our being to the environment to be recycled: indeed, that can seem frightening.
“Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” has always been the question, and “Gott ist tot” is the modernist’s response. [3] The past few centuries have witnessed a surmounting wave of skepticism regarding religious commitments, superstition, the idea of immortality, “the resurrection of the dead” (formulated in Zoroastrianism and later adopted by most fractions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Many perceive these ideas with as much suspicion as they do astrology, demonic magic, or the doctrine of reincarnation. A growing minority of the world population is beginning to doubt these concepts; far longer this has been especially true among academics.
But perhaps I get ahead of myself; our first concern ought to be recovering our tabula rasa [4], arriving at that existential frame of mind that some have called a crisis, forcing ourselves outside of any unnecessary assumptions we have hitherto cherished. 1st, we must understand the nature of belief and unbelief. Can we really trust our own senses? How do we determine fact from fantasy when nobody seems to agree on anything? Are our epistemological and moral foundations “reduced” to utility without the sustenance of an Alpha and Omega, of which (whom?) is said to have once communicated with the ancients?
The biologist and controversial anti-theist Richard Dawkins writes in one of my favorite passages of any author: “After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings.” [5] It would seem natural to begin asking ourselves where it is we ought to begin. It may also be advantageous to bear in mind when it is we should stop. If we find ourselves growing increasingly committed to empiricism, we will be obliged to surrender our beloved traditions that fail to meet a basic criteria of trustworthiness, a stubborn framework designed to separate the chaff of credulity from the nourishing grains (and gains) of evidence and hard data, provided by generations of rigorous inquiry into the very fabric of reality, or, human experience. That means, as religions have recognized since the Scientific Revolution was first initiated by Nicolaus Copernicus (standing on the shoulders of the Greeks and medieval scholastics), if our discoveries erode the faith we once placed in the constructs of old, we must embrace doubt, and accept its consequences. If, as certain gentlemen have always alleged, a loss of spirit necessarily follows from a disbelief in divinities, we must decide whether former human projects can and should be retained for practical usage, or torn down and rebuilt.
Of this possibility, that empiricism is especially friendly to atheism---because either its budding seeds lie on a small patch of fertile soil in an otherwise barren desert, or the tools required for cultivating theological fruits are of a different set than those religious philosophers have hitherto offered---pessimism often reigns supreme. “We do not require great education of the mind,” wrote the gifted mathematician Blaise Pascal, “to understand that here is no real and lasting satisfaction; that our pleasures are only vanity; that our evils are infinite; and, lastly, that death, which threatens us every moment, must infallibly place within us a few years under the dreadful necessity of being for ever either annihilated or unhappy. There is nothing more real than this, nothing more terrible.” He continues, in a passage that can easily be imagined as a direct reply to Dawkins: “Now, what do we gain by hearing it said of a man that he has now thrown off the yoke, that he does not believe there is a God who watches our actions, that he considers himself the sole master of his conduct, and that he thinks he is accountable for it only to himself? Does he think that he has thus brought us to have henceforth complete confidence in him, and to look to him for consolation, advice, and help in every need of life? Do they profess to have delighted us by telling us that they hold our soul to be only a little wind and smoke, especially by telling us this in a haughty and self-satisfied tone of voice? Is this a thing to say gaily? Is it not, on the contrary, a thing to say sadly, as the saddest thing in the world?” [6]
Contrast that to Dawkins, fairly said to be representative of one sentiment on the rise: “We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born.” And at the conclusion of the same work: “We are also alone among animals in being able to say before we die: Yes, this is why it was worth coming to life in the first place.” [7] These are two distinct attitudes among an endless array of oftentimes incompatible stances towards questions of fact, and some would even be so audacious to suggest, truth. Perhaps we would be wise to recall Nietzsche when he insisted that “in any event, the greatest suspicion of a ‘truth’ should arise when feelings of pleasure enter the discussion of the question ‘What is true?’ The proof of ‘pleasure’ is a proof of ‘pleasure’---nothing else… The experience of all severe, of all profoundly inclined spirits teaches the opposite. At every step one has to wrestle for truth; one has had to surrender for it almost everything to which the heart, to which our love, our trust in life, cling otherwise. That requires greatest of soul: the service of truth is the hardest service” (emphasis in original). [8] If we must decry the death of God sorrowfully, so be it.
Others may justly protest at even the remote suggestion of heralding empiricism as the exclusive tool by which human beings acquire knowledge. 1st, we are told, science presumes a certain rationality, and foremost, it is understanding that shapes a coherent perception of the material world. It is as if our conceptions reveal a world of Ideas and ideal forms, distinct and in some sense immaterial, the essences from which intelligent beings emerged to ascertain the foundational principles of existence in philosophical and----perhaps with a pinch of pious self-confidence----theological reflection. 2ndly, if a Deity can be assumed, intelligence, design, morality, self-awareness, our sense of infinity, freedom, and anything else that can be simplified to maximal effect while simultaneously underlying the fundamental paradoxes that stump the brightest minds (with the restriction that qualities must relate to our conceptions of justice and general goodness, derived by the external world and so-called divine inspiration and revelation); if this can be granted, a Universe ought to reflect such characteristics, and this is the Universe in which we find ourselves, beings that are each part of an infinitely complex determination. 3rdly, we must have faith; the most important truths cannot be established on science and reason, but only by implicitly trusting in the senses, believing that reality has an independent and rational constitution as such that science can discover “brute laws,” but not first causes, ultimate reality, or Kant’s Ding an sich. [9] Lastly, why does our species have a relentless desire to pursue truth? Is it truth for truth’s sake? What if the truth does not set one free, but plagues “the ungrateful biped” [10] with anxiety and pessimism? After all, one may suggest that man has “the right to desire for himself even what is very stupid and not to be bound by an obligation to desire only what is sensible. Of course, this very stupid thing, this caprice of ours, may be in reality, gentlemen, more advantageous for us than anything else on earth, especially in certain cases. And in particular, it may be more advantageous than any advantage even when it does us obvious harm, and contradicts the soundest conclusions of our reasoning concerning our advantage---for in any circumstances it preserves for us what is most precious and most important---that is, our personality, our individuality.” [11] Is that not at some level a fair point?
Questions about the value of truth will have to be set aside until later. For our present discussion, we must be content to adjoin ourselves with Pontius Pilate in his delicious retort to a bold and defiant Jesus (whose character and behavior varies depending on which Gospel you read) in the Gospel of John, “What is truth?” [12] So, we shall proceed, with the curiosity and resilience of Dawkins, and the cautious refrain of Pascal, heartily concurring with the latter when he wrote that, at the very least, we ought to consider the pursuit of higher knowledge “from principles of human interest and self-love,” and of those who remain content to doubt without desiring to seek further, we “have no words to describe so silly a creature.” [13] “The unexamined life is not worth living,” we repeat with Socrates. [14]
Who am I? What am I? What are these appearances extending throughout space that my mind perceives? Where did everything come from? These are thoughts that can shake a person to their core when “the anesthesia of familiarity” wears off, even if only for a moment. “I know not who put me into the world,” affirms Pascal in eloquent prose, “nor what the world is, nor what I myself am. I am in terrible ignorance of everything. I know not what my body is, nor my senses, nor my soul, not even that part of me which thinks what I say, which reflects on all and on itself, and knows itself no more than the rest. I see those frightful spaces of the universe which surround me, and I find myself tied to one corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am put in this place rather than in another, nor why the short time which is given me to live is assigned to me at this point rather than at another of the whole eternity which was before me or which shall come after me. I see nothing but infinites on all sides, which surround me as an atom and as a shadow which endures only for an instant and returns no more. All I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least is this very death which I cannot escape.” [15]
The first observation that might strike us, aside from our ignorance, is our total and utter reliance on sounds and symbols used to denote concepts that are reflective of experience, concepts which in turn attempt to “cut out and fix, and exclude everything but what we have fixed. A concept,” continues the great American philosopher and psychologist William James, “means a that-and-no-other… whereas in the real concrete sensible flux of life experiences compenetrate each other so that it is not easy to know just what is excluded and what not. Past and future, for example, conceptually separated by the cut to which we give the name of present, and defined as being the opposites sides of that cut, are to some extent, however brief, co-present with each other throughout experience.” He adds that “the intellectual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of a conceptual order for the perceptual order in which his experience originally comes,” yet noting, “the best way to show that a knife will not cut is to try to cut with it. Rationalism itself it is that has so fatally undermined conception, by finding that, when worked beyond a certain point, it only piles up dialectic contradictions.” The problem is that “the whole process of life,” which we perceive with a semblance of understanding by means of rational conception, “is due to life’s violation of our logical axioms” (emphasis in original in both instances). [16]
When attempting to erect a sensible philosophical framework by which to interpret our experiences of the world, I can relate no better advice than that which was offered by two of the most distinguished empiricists, one being James himself. After commenting on why “metaphysical discussions are so much like fighting with the air” in his essay The Meaning of Truth, he ably writes: “Beautiful is the flight of conceptual reason through the upper air of truth. No wonder philosophers are dazzled by it still, and no wonder they look with some disdain at the low earth of feeling from which the goddess launched herself aloft. But woe to her if she return not home to its acquaintance; Nirgends haften dann die unsicheren Sohlen---every crazy wind will take her, and like a fire-balloon at night, she will go out among the stars.” [17] The other empiricist whose words seem particularly pertinent in this case is the English scientist, philosopher, and statesman, Francis Bacon. I have often thought how much philosophers might benefit if more adhered to the following sentiment: “That philosophy only is the true one which reproduces most faithfully the statements of nature, and is written down, as it were, from nature's dictation, so that it is nothing but a copy and a reflection of nature, and adds nothing of its own, but is merely a repetition and echo” (emphasis in original). [18] We must bear in mind that whatever conceptual shortcomings we may find ourselves up against, the difficulties lie in our ability, or lack thereof, to abstract and quantify the middle points between complete extremes of being and non-being, beginning and end, colossal and minute.
Thus we peer out into the world, absorbing a three-dimensional space overabundant with color, sounds, smells, feeling our way through the light by way of touch, as an infinitely complex arrangement of matter and energy communicates with the materials that comprise our brain, illuminating our existence. Within this experience, which always appears to be moving forward in the dimension of time, are thoughts, ideas, mental constructs that in some sense allow us to comprehend ourselves and our surroundings. “The very fact,” wrote Albert Einstein, “that the totality of our sense experiences is such that by means of thinking (operations with concepts, and the creation and use of definite functional relations between them, and the coordination of sense experiences to these concepts) it can be put in order, this fact is one which leaves us in awe, but which we shall never understand... The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle.” Furthermore, “nothing can be said concerning the manner in which the concepts are to be made and connected, and how we are to coordinate them to the experiences. In guiding us in the creation of such an order of sense experiences, success in the result is alone the determining factor. All that is necessary is the statement of a set of rules, since without such rules the acquisition of knowledge in the desired sense would be impossible. One may compare these rules with the rules of a game in which, while the rules themselves are arbitrary, it is their rigidity alone which makes the game possible.” [19]
Some clever gentlemen will protest that we have already assumed too much. “A set of arbitrary rules, like the rules of a game?” they ask with a half twisted grin. “But that is to admit the necessity of faith! As you might have inferred, without faith, we can accept nothing more than skepticism, and even solipsism!” While skepticism is to be admired, solipsism must be ignored. “But on what grounds?” we hear them protest. “Surely, you would not propose that there is a reason for reason! What would be the reason for that? Reductio ad infinitum! And if you say, ‘there is no reason for reason,’ reductio ad absurdum! Is it not better to admit that we can know nothing about reality that transcends immediate perception?” Perhaps, we reply, but that is agnosticism on appeal of radical skepticism, not solipsism. “But our original point stands. If solipsism is to be overcome by reason, it is reason alone, though perhaps also faith, and that would only establish the supremacy of reason, and possibly faith in your reason, over the senses, and then you would be forced to concede that, for knowledge, strict empiricism is insufficient, as more is required, contrary to what you have henceforth seemed to imply.”
While it is a rare occurrence to meet a person who claims to be solipsist, the charge that our most basic assumptions cannot be established without faith in our reasons and senses is all too common. But as faith is taken to mean trust in this instance, what does it mean for an otherwise healthy-minded person to doubt his or her senses or reasons? Is it not enough to admit that our senses may be limited, our reasons flawed, and yet, in a reality that appears to contain objects that exist independently of our perception, which we can understand to some degree, imperfectly and with restriction, this remains sufficient ground upon which to build or “invent knowledge”? If the solipsist believes in nothing but phantasmical appearances construed by his own mind, is it not his mind that exclusively hears the argument, and appears to our mind, which is actually his (or are they both ours now?), a far more absurd reductio ad absurdum? The solipsist who disagrees with you is disagreeing with himself. Even so, I do not doubt that they will find a cleverer retort. We must decide then, what does it mean to speak about an “external” or “objective” world that is separate from our private, “internal” or “subjective” experiences? How we do know other minds besides our own really exist? This shall be the subject of our second inquiry.
1. Quote taken from “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense,” “a fragment published posthumously” and included in Nietzsche, F. W., & Kaufmann, W. A. The Portable Nietzsche. New York, N.Y., U.S.A: Penguin Books. 1982. Print. (From here on abbreviated VPN)
2. Walter Kauffman writes that Wittenschaft “does not bring to mind only---perhaps not even primarily---the natural sciences but any serious, disciplined, rigorous quest for knowledge…”; fröhlich means gay; merry. Nietzsche, F. W., & Kaufmann, W. A. The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs. New York: Vintage Books. 1974. Print. (pps. 4-5; from here on abbreviated GS).
3. “And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Mark 15:34 (King James Version). “Gott ist tot” translates “God is dead,” ironically placed in the mouth of a certain “Zarathustra,” as well as “The madman” in the German philosopher’s classic works, GS and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the latter included in Nietzsche, F. W., & Kaufmann, W. A. 1982. Nietzsche thought that belief in God would persist until we “vanquish his shadow,” as when the Buddha had died, “his shadow was still shown for centuries in a cave---a tremendous gruesome shadow.” (See GS, Sections 108 and 125, and per Kaufmann’s commentarial note, “VPN , pp. 124f., 191, 202, 294, 371-79, 398f., and 246”).
4. Latin for “blank state,” which the British empiricist John Locke argued was the condition of the mind at birth.
5. Found on page 6 in the aptly phrased first chapter, “The Anaesthetic of Familiarity,” Dawkins, Richard. Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. Print.
6. Pascal, Blaise, W F. Trotter, and Thomas M'Crie. Pensées: The Provincial Letters. New York: Modern library, 1941. Print. (pp. 67, 70). The Pensées was compiled and published posthumously by Pascal’s friends, using fragments of a manuscript on the “evidences of religion” that he had previously been writing. Pascal was regularly plagued by illness and died in 1662 at the young age of thirty-nine.
7. Dawkins, Richard. 1998. (pp. 1, 313).
8. Nietzsche, F. W., & Kaufmann, W. A. 1982. (pp 631-632).
9. German for “thing-in-itself.”
10. “In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped,” writes the “Underground Man” in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s classic short novel, Notes from Underground. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, Constance Garnett, Ernest J. Simmons. Notes from Underground; Poor People; The Friend of the Family: 3 Short Novels. New York, NY: Dell Pub., 1960. Print. (p. 49).
11. Ibid. (p. 48).
12. John 18:38 (KJV); See also Mark 15:1-5; Matt. 27:11-14; Luke 23:15. John’s Gospel, typically considered a successor to “the Synoptics,” clearly expands on the technique of earlier Christians who used literary narratives to transmit a community’s theology or lessons on proper conduct.
13. Pascal, Blaise, W F. Trotter, and Thomas M'Crie. 1941. (pp. 67-68).
14. As recorded in Plato’s narration of the trial of Socrates, The Apology (Section 38a). Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. Plato, Harold North Fowler, W.R.M. Lamb. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1966. Print.
15. Pascal, Blaise, W F. Trotter, and Thomas M'Crie. 1941. (p. 78). See also page 74: “When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant, and which know me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then. Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have this place and time been allotted to me?”
16. All quotes in the above paragraph are taken from William James, found in his works, A Pluralistic Universe and Some Problems of Philosophy, compiled in William James: Writings 1902–1910. James, William. New York: Library of America, 1987. Print. (pp. 746, 748, 1008, 1039).
17. Ibid. (pp. 851-852). According to the notes on page 1371, the German text translates: “Nowhere is there a place to which the uncertain soles of the feet can cling.”
18. As quoted by the 18th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer: “There, aptitude for philosophy consists precisely in what Plato put it in, namely in knowing the one in the many and the many in the one. Accordingly, philosophy will be a sum of very universal judgments, whose ground of knowledge is immediately the world itself in its entirety, without excluding anything, and hence everything to be found in human consciousness. It will be a complete recapitulation, so to speak, a reflection of the world in abstract concepts… Bacon already set philosophy this task, when he said: ea demum vera est philosophia, quae mundi ipsius voces fidelissime reddit, et veluti dictante mundo constripta est, et nihil aliud est, quam ejusdem SIMULACRUM ET REFLECTIO, neque
addit quidquam de proprio, sed tantum iterat et resonat (De Augmentis Scientarium, 1. 2, c. 13).” The Latin is translated in the commentarial notes by E.F.J. Payne; emphasis in original. Schopenhauer, Arthur, and E F. J. Payne. The World As Will and Representation: Vol 1. Indian Hills, N.Y.: Col., 1958. Print. (pp. 82-83)
19. Quote originally found in the article “Physics and Reality” as featured in the Journal of the Franklin Institute (Mar. 1936); can be read in full at the following web address: Einstein, Albert, Jean Piccard. Physics and Reality. Professor Milivoje M. Kostic, 1936. Web. <http://www.kostic.niu.edu/physics_and_reality-albert_einstein.pdf>.
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza
