Autor: Evan Garrett

The Argument From Contingency

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In this essay I will discuss a type of cosmological argument branded “The Argument from Contingency”. This line of thought is intensely relevant to endeavors in philosophical analysis of the divine, for many philosophers consider it to be the strongest argument for the existence of a Necessary being. Not only is the Argument from Contingency important for philosophical studies of God, but it also seems to exist as a rigorous formulation of the basic question most humans will find themselves contemplating at least once in their life: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” I plan to briefly discuss the nature and historical development of cosmological arguments in general before I movye into a more in depth focus on the argument from contingency, assessing its premises, goals, and assumptions to see how logically compelling its conclusion for the existence of a non-physical necessary being is.

In focusing intently on the topic at hand, I will regrettably be forced to leave the long and reputable history of Cosmological arguments and their authors at best examined in very shallow detail. The topic of consideration (the contemporary Contingency Argument) largely derives from the thought of philosophers such as Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716), David Hume (1711-1776), and even contemporary thinkers like Alexander Pruss and William Rowe, all of whom represent small periods in time of the much larger history of Cosmological arguments. This does not, however, preclude a short overview of their nature and history, to which I shall now turn.

The Nature of Cosmological Arguments

First, let’s address the obvious question: What is the Cosmological Argument? It must first be made clear that Cosmological arguments come in many forms, with different assumptions, premises, and demonstrative goals. David Oderburg was correct in stating “There is no such thing as the cosmological argument” to begin his article about cosmological arguments in The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion. Instead, the Cosmological Argument is best described as the name for a family of a-posteriori style arguments which seek to infer from the existence of temporality, contingency, movement, or change in or of the universe to an ultimate cause beyond the universe. In an attempt to create an organizational typology of the subject, William Lane Craig divides cosmological arguments into three categories: “(1) Those that maintain the impossibility of an infinite temporal regress, (2) those that maintain the impossibility of an infinite essentially ordered regress, and (3) those that have no reference to an infinite regress at all.” This illustrates the fact that there is far more than just one “Cosmological Argument”. Throughout the history of human thought, different versions of the cosmological argument have been formulated, all of which fit into one of these categories which Craig has insightfully supplied. Let us very quickly trace these formulations and their criticisms as they arose throughout history.

A History of Cosmological Arguments

The ancient philosophers Plato (427-347 B.C.) and Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) are considered “the originators of the classic prime mover argument.” The “prime mover” argument fits into the second classification of Craig’s typology as arguments which maintain the impossibility of an infinite essentially ordered regress. Plato, considered the “inventor of philosophical theism”, authored the first cosmological argument in an attempt to prove the existence of God by the existence of motion. His main thesis was this: In the world exists motion. There are two main types of motion: communicated motion (motion received by a being and then given away) and self-motion (motion which originates in a being). Communicated motion implies self-motion, because communicated motion can never be the source of itself by its very nature. Therefore, self-motion must exist in a self-mover, or, a soul. Aristotle made use of Plato’s logic and developed his argument far more elaborately, resulting in an argument for an ultimate ‘unmoved mover’, or ultimate cause of the cosmos. Due to the brevity of this essay, a more focused look at these topics is not possible, and so we move on in history. 

A very important group of thinkers to consider in the history of cosmological arguments is the collection of Arabic philosophers and theologians around the ninth to twelfth centuries AD. Two schools divided Islamic thought on the cosmological argument: kalām and falsafa. From the kalām school emerged arguments from temporal regress (these fit into Craig’s 1st category), and from the falsafa school emerged primitive arguments from contingency (these fit into Craig’s 2nd category). Without prematurely getting into too much discussion of the actual content of the arguments, the kalām school attempted to demonstrate the existence of God from the impossibility of an infinite temporal regress of moments in time and infer from this a beginning of the universe. The beginning of the universe, to their minds, called for a cause beyond the universe. The falsafa school produced argumentation which seems to be the first reflection on an argument from the contingency of the universe. This school’s contention was that the universe was equally possible to exist or not exist, and because of this it required a “determinant” which gave it being. The universe, then, according to the falsafa school needed an explanation because of its contingency. The explanatory principle, in this argument, is an early (and slightly different) version of what would later be expressed by Leibniz’s Principle of Sufficient Reason. There is much debate and discussion about the nature of these arguments which I will not be attempting to cover currently.

Various versions of these three categories of argument have been formulated and supported by different thinkers throughout subsequent history, most notably Jewish Philosophers, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus (1265-1308), Benedict de Spinoza (1632-1677), and Leibniz. Jewish philosophers are known for having derived much of their thought from Islamic philosophy. Aquinas authored the celebrated “Five ways”—five arguments for the existence of God, the first three of which are cosmological arguments from different categories. Duns Scotus’ singular cosmological argument is considered one of the most “outstanding contributions ever made to natural theology” because of its complexity and rigor. Spinoza’s argument is very different from other cosmological arguments in that it called into question the nature of the being proved by cosmological arguments. Leibniz is responsible for a version of the argument from contingency which is now well known as the “Leibnizian Cosmological Argument”, an argument we will examine later in this paper. All of these and many more affirmed the effectiveness of at least one type of cosmological argument. For all its supporters, however, the Cosmological argument has run into critics.

 In the late 18th century, philosopher David Hume (and others) forcefully criticized the argument from contingency, questioning the premises on which it is based such as the Principle of Sufficient Reason. I will not discuss these criticisms yet because they are relevant to my interaction with the argument later in the paper. With criticisms of other versions of the cosmological argument arising along with Hume’s, suffice it to say that David Oderburg is accurate in claiming that most philosophers today do not think that the cosmological argument has yet recovered from its modern criticisms. Nevertheless, contemporary defenders (and critics, of course) of the cosmological argument exist in the contemporary philosophical setting. Philosophers Alexander Pruss, William Lane Craig, Joshua Rasmussen, and Richard Taylor are a few of many proponents of the arguments, while William Rowe, Quentin Smith, Graham Oppy, Wes Morriston, and John Mackie have criticized contemporary cosmological arguments. 

As I stated earlier, the argument I wish to focus on is from the 3rd category supplied by Craig– an argument which does not make reference to an infinite regress. First, however, let me state my goals in analyzing this argument: I do not wish to defend any argument, but I do wish to find the best possible expression of the argument from contingency and then discover whether the argument stands despite being subjected to the most penetrating criticisms available. If this occurs, I will consider the argument a successful piece of evidence for the existence of a necessary being. Let us then move on to the main task at hand as we first consider the Leibnizian argument from contingency.

Constructing the Argument from Contingency via Leibniz

Apart from his use of an existential premise, Leibniz’s argument from contingency relies upon two main principles: the first being the principle of non-contradiction, and the second being the Principle of Sufficient Reason (hereafter PSR). Since we all take the principle of non-contradiction for granted, I will not spend time elaborating on it or providing defense for it. Leibniz elaborates on his PSR here:

…And that of the principle of sufficient reason, in virtue of which we hold that there can be no fact real or existing, and no statement true, unless there be a sufficient reason why it should be so and not otherwise…

Leibniz’s PSR essentially states that any state of affairs has a sufficient explanation or reason for its being so. In accordance with the a-posteriori nature of the argument from contingency Leibniz joins the PSR with an observable fact of experience: something exists. That “something” of which Leibniz speaks, of course, is the universe. It is evident that Leibniz takes the universe to be a collection of contingent beings, of which a “sufficient reason” is required for explanation. When I say contingent beings, I mean beings which do not necessarily exist, or, could have not existed. The true fact that a contingent being exists is not necessarily true, yet it is still true that such a being can exist contingently. Leibniz makes a distinction between necessary truths and contingent truths in his Monadology:

There are also two kinds of truths: those of reasoning and those of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary, and their opposite is impossible: truths of fact are contingent, and their opposite is possible.

Using this distinction, then, one can see that in his argument Leibniz applies the PSR to contingent facts– for necessary truths and beings do not call for any more explanation than their own necessity. But if contingent facts exist, Leibniz reasons, there must be a sufficient reason for their existence. I’ll let him speak for himself:

…But a little while ago we proved [the necessary being] a posteriori, since there exist contingent beings, which can have their final or sufficient reason only in the necessary being, which has the reason for its existence in itself.

If the contingent beings of this universe have an explanation, as the truth of the PSR guarantees, then they require an explanation which is not contingent. That explanation is best found in a Necessary being, according to Leibniz’s reasoning. But what if the explanation for the contingent beings of our universe arises from the fact that there is an explanatory regress of causes all the way back to infinite? Would that not destroy the need for explanation in a Necessary being? The reply to this question is what distinguishes Leibniz’s argument as a third category argument—an argument which makes no reference to the impossibility of an infinite regress. The distinguishing trait of arguments from contingency is that they do not require that the universe began. Leibniz himself would reply to the question in this way: 

There is an infinite of present and past forms and motions which go to make up the efficient cause of my present writing; and there is an infinity of minute tendencies and dispositions of my soul, which go to make its final cause… And as all this detail again involves other prior or more detailed contingent beings, each of which still needs a similar analysis to yield its reason, we are no further forward: and the sufficient or final reason must be outside of the sequence or series of particular contingent things, however infinite this series may be.

His reason for rejecting the force of the counter-argument is this: Even if every contingent being which exists has a causal explanation—think with me as far back as your mind will allow—, even if billions and billions of causes into the past are sufficient and explanatory for the effects which occur subsequent to them and events which occur now, in looking to every cause for an explanation, one still finds that these are, on the whole, unexplained. Contingent beings can never fully explain everything, because in the end these very contingent beings themselves need explanation. If this reasoning is correct, then the explanation of all of the contingent beings of the universe as a whole is a necessary being in which the sufficient reason for all contingent beings exists. This concludes a brief summary of Leibniz’s argument from Contingency. Let us now listen to his critics.

Hume’s Criticisms

  In his writings, philosopher David Hume published several criticisms of Leibniz’s style of argument from Contingency. His first attack is aimed at the idea that the Universe itself needs an explanation if all of its parts are explained. His fictional character Cleanthes claims, “Did I show you the particular causes of each individual in a collection of twenty particles of matter, I should think it very unreasonable, should you afterwards ask me, what was the cause of the whole twenty. This is sufficiently explained in explaining the cause of the parts.” This charge is similar to the question asked in the previous paragraph, “Why should the universe need a cause if each contingent being it contained could be explained by an infinite regress of causes?” Leibniz seems to have anticipated this question, however. He would answer this question with the same statement he made in a passage I made use of earlier: “And as all this detail again involves other prior or more detailed contingent beings, each of which still needs a similar analysis to yield its reason, we are no further forward: and the sufficient or final reason must be outside of the sequence or series of particular contingent things, however infinite this series may be.” Leibniz thinks that, in an infinite regress of contingent beings (which is being supposed, for this argument), explanation of it all simply could not lie in the contingent beings, because all contingent beings require an explanation for their existence, according to the PSR. Contemporary philosophers of religion seem to think this is an adequate reply. Dr. Joshua Rasmussen, in his article about Arguments from Contingency, shows why: 

Imagine a world in which there are purple balls of an unspecified quantity. Suppose we want an explanation as to why those purple balls exist. Here’s an answer that would not satisfy us: the fact that those balls exist is explained by the fact that each purple ball was itself produced by a purple ball. This answer is not satisfying because it in no way alleviates the sense of curiosity concerning why there should be those purple balls… even if there were an infinite number of purple balls, for example, where each one was produced by an ancestor purple ball, the fact that there have been those purple balls at all isn’t explained solely by the purple balls themselves.

This reply by Hume, then, can be laid aside as ineffective. But Hume’s next criticism may hit closer to home.

 “…But further, why may not the material universe be the necessarily existent Being, according to this pretended explication of necessity?” This counter-argument that, again, comes through the mouth of Hume’s fictional character “Cleanthes” in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, if sound, could remove the need to explain the Universe by some factors beyond itself. What if the Universe is a necessary being, and could not possibly not exist? There are a couple ways to respond to this objection: The first is that Hume treats the universe as if it were some sort of necessary being prior to its contingent parts. But the universe is not the type of candidate for “necessary being” since all Leibniz or contemporary philosophers mean by “universe” is the collection of contingent beings. To sustain this type of reasoning requires that one supplies a sort of necessary “essence” or “substance” to the universe which, apart from implying a sort of pantheism, is very doubtful. Rasmussen pointed out to me via email that, “If [by ‘universe’] you mean something that contains everything else as a part, then it’s not a trivial matter that there even is such a thing as that.” The second way to reply to this objection is to simply show that there are contingent facts. The fact that “there are the contingent things that there are” is a fact which calls for explanation. If contingent facts are true, they need not have obtained, thus requiring explanation for why they indeed do obtain. 

Hume’s last objection to be considered is an objection to the PSR. In his Treatise on Human Nature Hume makes arguments against the insistence of philosophers contemporary to his time that everything that begins must have a cause. Though his attack seems more aimed at category one arguments that claim that the beginning of the Universe requires a cause, it equally applies to formulations of the PSR.  Hume claims that “new existence[s]” cannot be shown to require a cause until first one has shown that it is impossible for anything to begin and not have a cause:

…it will be easy for us to conceive any object to be non-existent this moment, and existent the next, without conjoining to it the distinct idea of a cause or productive principle. The separation, therefore, of the idea of a cause from that of a beginning of existence, is plainly possible for the imagination; and consequently the actual separation of these objects is so far possible, that it implies no contradiction nor absurdity; and is therefore incapable of being refuted by any reasoning from mere ideas; without which it is impossible to demonstrate the necessity of a cause.

Again, this argument is directed more at causes for beginnings of things. But these same principles can be applied to the PSR and causal explanations. Might it be the case that contingent facts cannot be shown to require an explanation unless we first show that it is impossible for a contingent fact to obtain without an explanation? Surely we can imagine things popping into existence uncaused. This question essentially boils down to, “what evidence do we have for the PSR itself?” Many naturalists claim that the universe is just a “brute fact”, or that, like Bertrand Russell said, “The universe is just there, and that’s all.” Does every contingent fact really have to have an explanation? Despite the power of this objection, there are several ways to defend the PSR: 1) appealing to every-day experience and 2) illustrating the price of rejecting it, just to name a few. I will now attempt to answer this objection with these methods.  

First, it seems that our every day experience is very inconsistent with the falsity of the PSR. Nothing in our collective empirical experience has been shown to have no explanation. If nothing we know of is bereft of explanation, then we have evidence that is very inconsistent with the idea that contingent facts require no explanation. Though this does not prove the PSR with certainty, it lends credence to the fact that contingent things require explanation. Second, if the PSR is indeed false, why should we not expect inexplicable contingent events to occur all of the time?  Surely if contingent facts require no explanation then we genuinely should expect that things come into existence often and for no reason whatsoever. What’s more, science needs the PSR to function. In creating explanatory hypotheses, one may explain away disconfirming facts simply by appealing to the fact that these particular facts have no explanation. Suppose I postulated a theory that the earth was eternally existent and had never been created—all of the evidence that the earth formed four billion years ago could be chocked up to phenomena which have no explanation, removing any inferential duties based on facts that prima facie suggest that the earth actually did form four billion years ago. If one takes this reasoning even further, she sees that supposing the falsity of the PSR allows us to create hypotheses consistent with almost any amount of facts which would have otherwise disproved them. Science collapses on the falsity of the PSR. Not only does science require the principle, but Philosophy also requires the truth of the PSR. Alexander Pruss illustrates this brilliantly: “In this world, torture is wrong. In that world, exactly alike in every other respect, torture is a duty. Why? No reason, just contingent brute fact. Here Pruss points to the absurdity of supposing that even immaterial, moral facts have no explanation. Though there are massive amounts of literature concerning the PSR, I cannot continue to discuss it in this paper for brevity’s sake. Perhaps it is not evidence for the PSR that is in question however—some have simply suggested that Leibniz’s version of the PSR entailed falsehoods.

Contemporary Criticism

The last objection to the Argument of Contingency I wish to consider, then, is an argument against the PSR. The argument is that the PSR either is false or entails that everything is necessary—which is taken to be false. Peter Van Inwagen articulates the argument in his book Metaphysics; I will summarize it here. The argument goes like this: suppose that the PSR is true. If there are contingent facts, there will be a set of all contingent facts. To explain these contingent facts, you must find a contingent explanation. But there could never be a contingent explanation of the set of all contingent facts, for that would be circular. Thus there can only be necessary truths (which is clearly implausible). According to this, the PSR is false, because there can be no explanation of these contingent facts. 

 This counter-argument has received the attention of many contemporary philosophers. Some think that there is no way around this objection, at least for this version of the PSR. Timothy O’Connor wrote in his book Theism and Ultimate Explanation, “The Argument from Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) to the necessity of all truths is, I believe, unanswerable.” Other philosophers believe that there is a chance for this version of the PSR still. William Lane Craig admits to being influenced by Alexander Pruss’ work on the PSR on his website Reasonable Faith: “On the basis of Alexander Pruss’ work, moreover, I’ve come to question whether the sort of objection expressed by Van Inwagen really does succeed against a strong version of the PSR.” The complexity, however, of this response to the counter-argument requires that I leave it out of this paper. I will instead make use of a different way to respond: revising the PSR. 

The second way of responding to this argument is simply to revise the PSR. Leibniz’s PSR seems too strong and open to counterexamples, at least according to Craig. But Rasmussen shows that one can revise the PSR in such a way that avoids these counterexamples. Leibniz’s PSR, “no fact could be found to be genuine or existent, and no assertion true, without there being a sufficient reason why it is thus and not otherwise”, boiled down, sounds like, “Every contingent fact requires an explanation”, and this is susceptible to counterexamples. But if we modified it to, “Every contingent fact concerning the existence of things requires an explanation”, we have a more modest, but also less vulnerable principle. The reason this is so is because in restricting the scope of beings that it claims require explanation, this principle avoids counterexamples like Van Inwagen’s mentioned above. A Necessary being’s willing contingent things to exist could be the contingent explanation of the existence contingent things, and itself lack an explanation, for example. Thus, the PSR as a principle can be restricted and still successful against this objection.

The question may arise, then, as to what the nature of this new revised PSR is and what it can do. Does it match up with the requirements of science and philosophy? 

Does the Argument from Contingency provide a substantial argument for a Necessary Being, then? If one can believe that it is more likely that our universe is not a brute fact or a necessary being, and that the PSR is in some form true, then the answer is in the affirmative. I believe that in this paper I have found good reasons to affirm that these options are more likely to be true than their negations (and no compelling reasons otherwise), and thus one can find a respectable argument for a necessary being in the joining of the premises of the Argument from Contingency. The important thing to remember, however, is that this does not prove God’s existence—for 1) it must be shown that the Necessary being has God-like qualities and 2) this does not prove a necessary being in the absolute sense of the word “prove”. It is simply an argument which can lead to confidence in the existence of a necessary being. 

Works Cited

  1. Craig, William L. “Leibniz’s Cosmological Argument and the PSR.” Reasonable Faith. http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/theism-origin.html. (accessed 4/20/2012).
  1. Craig, William. The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1980.
  1. Hume, David. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Edited by Richard H. Popkin. Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1998.
  1. Hume, David. Treatise on Human Nature. Public Domain. Kindle.  
  2. Inwagen, Peter Van, Metaphysics. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2009.
  1. Leibniz, Gottfried. The Monadology. In Classics of Philosophy, edited by Louis P. Pojman and Lewis Vaughn. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
  2. O’Connor, Timothy.  Theism and Ultimate Explanation: The Necessary Shape of Contingency. Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2012.
  1. Oderburg, David S. “The Cosmological Argument.” In The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion, edited by Paul Copan and Chad Meister. New York: Routledge, 2007.
  1. Pruss, Alexander. “Philosophy needs the Principle of Sufficient Reason.” Alexander Pruss’s Blog.http://alexanderpruss.blogspot.com/search?q=contingent+brute+fact. (accessed 4/20/12).
  1. Rasmussen, Joshua. “Cosmological Arguments from Contingency.” Philosophy Compass 5/9 (2010): 806–819.
  1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. “John Duns Scotus”.

Evan Garrett — 5.4.2012

Vorstellungskraft: Die Voraussetzung der Wahrheit

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Wer die Wahrheit versteht, ohne sie zu lieben, oder wer die liebt, ohne zu verstehen, besitzt weder das eine noch das andere“ – Bernhard von Clairvaux

Die Vernunft kann niemals die Fülle der Wirklichkeit verkörpern und vermitteln, so wie die Regeln eines Spiels niemals das Spiel selbst verkörpern können. Ich zögere jedes Mal, wenn ich das sage, als jemand, der sich sehr dafür einsetzt, den Regeln der Vernunft zu folgen. Aber da es eine Wahrheit ist, die der Realität entspricht, muss sie gesagt und hoffentlich auch verstanden werden.

Wie kann sie sonst beschrieben werden? Die Vernunft ist wie die sprachliche Struktur einer Sprache, aber nicht die eigentlichen Realitäten, auf die sich die Sprache bezieht. Die Maße eines Häuschens sind nicht das Häuschen selbst, sondern beschreiben eher seine Umrisse; um das Wirkliche zu erkennen, bedarf es der Vorstellungskraft und der Kontemplation. Ich mag wie ein Mystiker klingen, wenn ich das sage; aber die Realität ist, dass Sie sehr wohl zu einem solchen werden müssen, um die Welt zu verstehen, wie sie wirklich ist.

Wenn Sie jemand wie ich sind, neigen Sie dazu, sich oft mit Fakten und Logik zu beschäftigen, fast ausschließlich in Ihrem Gedankenleben. Aber allein aufgrund dieser Vorzüge das Gefühl zu haben, dass Sie mehr Kontakt zur Realität haben als andere, ist so, als würden Sie glauben, eine Gegend besser zu kennen als die Einheimischen, die ihr ganzes Leben dort verbracht haben, weil Sie einen Blick auf eine Karte des Ortes geworfen haben, zu der sie nie Zugang hatten. Vielleicht gibt es etwas sehr Wichtiges, das Sie übersehen; eine ganz andere Dimension des Ortes, und zwar eine echte, wichtige Dimension.

Und jetzt machen Sie sich vielleicht ein Bild davon, was ich mit der Idee des „Kennenlernens“ einer Sache als wahres Verstehen derselben meine, so wie ein Liebender durch Erfahrung mit seiner Geliebten vertraut ist, aber obwohl dies die Idee ansatzweise berührt, meine ich eigentlich etwas viel Tieferes.

Der Unterschied zwischen dem bloßen Erblicken der Dimensionen
der Realität und dem wirklichen Verstehen besteht darin, dass man im ersten Fall lediglich Bilder in die oberflächlichsten Ebenen des Bewusstseins eindringen lässt, während man sich im zweiten Fall in die durch die Worte geschaffenen ideologischen Welten einbringt und diese in sich selbst hineinholt. Es handelt sich um eine Aneignung auf einer phänomenologischen Ebene – ein Eindringen in das Bewusstsein auf einer viel tieferen Ebene als nur einer oberflächlichen Bekanntschaft. Es gibt eine gewisse eifrige Liebe und Umarmung, die man mit der vorgestellten Welt haben muss, um sie wirklich zu sehen, unabhängig davon, welche Art von Satz man sich vorstellt, sei er wissenschaftlich, theologisch oder weltlich.

Das ist der Grund dafür, dass der Tag, an dem Poesie, Musik und Kunst aussterben, der Tag ist, an dem die Menschen den Kontakt mit der wahren Welt verloren haben. Wenn ich wahre Welt sage, meine ich nicht irgendeine phantasievolle, menschenzentrierte, ästhetische Sphäre, die uns hilft, mit dem Leben zurechtzukommen. Ich meine wirklich die tatsächliche wahre Welt und den Zustand der Dinge, oder, wenn Sie philosophisch orientiert sind, die Welt, der die wahren Sätze entsprechen. Es gibt einen sehr realen Sinn, in dem die Realität nicht verstanden werden kann, ohne dass man sie liebt und sich ihr verpflichtet fühlt. Man kann die Wahrheit nicht erkennen, wenn man nicht auf diese Weise tugendhaft ist, man kann nur an ihr vorbeigehen wie an einer anderen Person in einem Lebensmittelladen.

Wir müssen uns daran erinnern, dass wir subjektive Geschöpfe sind. Die Realität „präsentiert sich“ uns nicht einfach, indem wir direkten Zugang dazu haben. Wir haben einen Verstand und ein Gehirn, die sie konstruieren und uns durch die Linse unserer Sinneserfahrung und unserer mentalen Interpretation derselben präsentieren. Daher ist das Verstehen der Realität, wie Sie vielleicht erwarten, keine passive Sache. Wir müssen nicht nur danach streben, die Wahrheit über die Welt zu finden; selbst wenn wir die Wahrheit gefunden haben, müssen wir sie wirklich lieben, um sie zu verstehen. Denn einfach nur die Wahrheit zu haben und die Wahrheit zu werden, die man hat, sind völlig verschieden, obwohl diejenigen, die sich im ersteren Zustand befinden, oft in dem Glauben getäuscht werden, sie hätten das letztere gefunden.

Englische Version

Imagination: The precondition of Truth

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“He who understands truth without loving it, or loves without understanding, possesses neither one nor the other.”– Bernard of Clairvaux

Reason can never embody and communicate the fullness of reality, just as the rules of a game can never embody the game itself. I hesitate every time I say this, as someone who is highly committed to following the rules of reason. But since it is a truth which corresponds to reality, it must be said.

How else can it be described? Reason is like the linguistic structure of a language, but not the actual realities the language refers to. The dimensions of a cottage are not the cottage itself, but describe rather its contours; to know the real thing requires imagination and contemplation. I may sound like a mystic in saying this; but the reality is, you very well may need to become such a thing to understand the world as it really is.

If you are someone like me, you tend to busy yourself with facts and logic quite often, almost exclusively in your thought life. But to feel, purely on those merits, that you are more in contact with reality with others, is like thinking you know an area better than the natives who have lived there their entire lives because you’ve glanced at a map of the place that they’ve never had access to. There may be something very important you’re missing; an entirely different dimension of the place, and a real, important dimension no less.


And now you may be building a picture of what I mean by the idea of „acquaintance“ with a thing as understanding it truly, just as a lover is acquainted through experience with his beloved, but though this does begin to touch on the idea, I actually mean something quite deeper.
The difference between understanding reality truly and having simply glimpsed at its dimensions is like hearing a sentence and letting the words leave impressions upon your mind versus bringing yourself into the picture the sentence is creating and that back inside you; it is a matter of appropriation on a phenomenological level — entering into the conscious on far deeper level than just surface acquaintance. There is a certain eager love and embrace that must be had with the imaginative world being pictured to truly see it, regardless of what kind of proposition you are imagining, be it scientific, theological, or mundane.

This is the reason that the day poetry, music, and art go extinct is the day humans have lost touch with the true world. When I say true world, I don’t mean some imaginative, human centered, aesthetic realm that helps us get by with life. I really mean the actual true world and state of affairs, or, the world corresponded to by true propositions, if you’re philosophically oriented. There is a very real sense in which reality cannot be understood without being loved and committed to. You cannot know the truth if you are not virtuous in this way, you can only brush by it as you would another person in a grocery store.

We must remember that we are subjective creatures. Reality doesn’t simply „present itself“ to us with our having direct access. We have minds and brains which construct it and present it to us through the lense of our sense experience and our mental interpretation thereof. Thus, as you may expect, understanding reality is not a passive thing. Not only do we need to strive to find the truth about the world; even once we’ve found the truth, we have to truly love it to understand it. For simply having the truth and becoming the truth one has are entirely distinct, though those in the former state are often deceived in thinking they have found the latter.

A Review of “The Righteous Mind” by Jonathan Haidt

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Introduction

„The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion“ is the title of Jonathan Haidt’s book summarizing his studies on moral, political, and religious psychology that came out in 2012.

As I am not knowledgeable enough to comment on the current state of evolutionary psychology 8 years after the publishing of this book, I will refrain from speaking directly of its enduring significance and persuasive power in the scientific communities in which it was received. I can only say that from having listened into many discussions of and among such scientists as Bret Weinstein, Heather Heying, Sam Harris, and Steven Pinker that Haidt’s ideas, although having encountered significant opposition from the political arena, found also a good deal of support among many evolutionary biologists and social psychologists.

If you would like, you can continue your research into the impact of this book on its Wikipedia page.

My primary purpose in this review is to document (for myself) and interact with some of the most significant ideas proposed by Haidt in his book. For the record, I really enjoyed the book. Haidt did a good job of appealing to my ‚elephant‘ nature and in doing so helped me overcome any emotional resistance I had to succumbing to the idea that I am an utterly biased creature. I agreed with most everything Haidt had to say, with a few nuances and exceptions here and there.

Significant Ideas

Evolutionary Theories About the Development of Morality are Plausible

Haidt argues that human morality is not at its most basic level, as is commonly believed, an outgrowth of the human capacity for reasoning applied to abstract concepts of fairness and justice, constantly worked out in every day life — as a sort of rationalism, but rather an complex network of innate moral intuitions which worked together to preserve human groups in our evolutionary history. Not only that, but this is a testable theory which can make falsifiable predictions and has explanatory power.

The primary starting point he makes is that, granted evolutionary theory is extremely powerful in explaining many of the features of the human body and genetic makeup, how can we not, then, further proceed to the conclusion that it has also played a significant role in explaining patterns in human psychology?

Culturally and politically speaking, the point Haidt makes here is a controversial one. Although many in the Western world have abandoned theism and particularly abrahamic religions as an overarching worldview that explains the biological features of the creatures as well as human psychology, many are not willing to accept the idea that naturalistic evolution is the primary explanation for human morality. The fear is that the is/ought distinction will be lost on society. I find this fear understandable.

If evolution is predicated upon the success of creatures which best ensure the reproduction of their own blood, doesn’t that mean that the ‚final cause‘ of the moral equipment we’ve developed as humans is sexual reproduction? And if we know that our final cause as humans is sexual reproduction, why not skip over the elaborate societal outworking thereof and skip straight to the rape, murder, theft, and rule over others which would directly guarantee it? Why not practice Eugenics and everything else that follows? What other dangerous conclusions about humanity might this field of research lead us to which could translate to real harm and violence in the real world?

We ought to remember, however, that the is/ought distinction is a real and important distinction, and that we cannot put a stop to scientific investigation or the search for truth simply because people may engage in faulty reasoning based on what we find. If evolutionary theory provides plausible explanations of human morality, in this direction we should go, while remembering that normative morality does not come from the sciences, but from the humanities, and we have yet to and never will find reason to accept a description of what is as a prescription for what should be when the discussion is about morality.

As a Christian who has in any case no issues with evolutionary explanations of humanity and even a fully naturalistic theory of the generation of genetic information within the confines of spacetime, I see evolution as a result rather of God having created a self-creating world. (why perform corrective miracles when it’s possible to do it right the first time?)

I am inclined to believe that God predisposed the physical world, however, with initial conditions which would lead to certain outcomes, and therefore I cannot affirm that evolution, even if its full course were to be limited to a fully naturalistic process, is in itself directed only towards reproduction. I believe that the evolutionary process of biological life had a real aim imposed upon it by God which includes but is not restricted to the propagation of reproductively successful species.

As God’s intention for humanity is to share an intellectual and emotional participation in the morality which constitutes his nature, this has implications for the moral development of his image-bearers and the scope of explanatory power that non-directed or non-influenced processes of evolution can and should play when one adopts a worldview which has implications for the teleology of processes developing human nature.

In conclusion, Haidt and I agree that evolutionary history probably plays a huge role in the development of human morality and psychology. But if he were to claim (and I’m not all too sure that he did), that evolutionary processes were the only thing that had to do with it, I think he would be breaching the bounds of methodological naturalism and entering into philosophical naturalism.

Human Reasoning: an Elephant and a Rider

Throughout human history, we have predominantly defined ourselves as primarily rational creatures who suffer from delusions, temptations, desires, and passions which prevent us from fulfilling our role primarily as rational creatures.

But Haidt disagrees. Based on some very compelling results from research he did in forming the ideas which constitute his book, he concluded that humans are primarily intuitive feelers who strategically justify their feelings with thoughts. Humans start with a moral intuition — which we will get to shortly — and reason from that deep moral intuition to conclusions that can be rationally justified.

Reason, then, takes a secondary role. Our rational minds are like riders on elephants. When the elephant slightly leans to the left, our rider automatically finds ways to justify the left turn. When we deeply feel that something is wrong, we find reasons for it, even if the reasons are very low quality. Haidt recounts a story of having overheard a father and his young son talking in a fast-food restaurant bathroom. The son insisted on asking why he couldn’t poop in the urinal. The father resorted to all sorts of explanations, the rather intelligent son hypothetically wiggling his way out of each one until the end, the father said, exasperated, something to the effect of „well, if you did, we’d all be in trouble!“.

Even as I heard the story, in the midst of laughing I thought to myself, ‚I know it would be wrong to do this, however a clear explanation does not come to mind!‘. I believe the answer is best described as resorting to a general ethical principle of cleanliness and order in our outer lives reflecting the internal order of our own minds. If we put things which we consider ‚unclean‘ in places which we consider ‚clean‘, or in any case cleaner, it would represent a violation of the internal order of our own minds. Try explaining that to your own child, or even more difficult, communicating it in a tweet. This is indeed a moral intuition that we all have innately. People who don’t adhere to it don’t do so randomly, they seem to be either disordered, psychologically undeveloped, or intentionally rebelling against it.

Fascinatingly, in the studies that Haidt and his colleagues conducted, even when voluntary subjects of interviews (specifically intended to appeal to different moral intuitions) could not find any rational justification for their views, they in many cases continued to hold these views strongly even when encountering persuasive arguments against them.

On the face of it, this suggests that as humans tend to hold to specific moral, political, and philosophical stances not primarily on the basis of a concern for what is true and ultimately correct, but because of the emotional and cultural meanings that they associate to them and how they correspond to their deeply held moral intuitions. Is that at all surprising? Does it conflict with your own experience at all?

But, as you noticed above, it was not the case that nobody changes their mind in response to persuasive arguments. Haidt argues that it is possible, but rare, for people to change their minds purely on the basis of arguments. He argues that the best way to convince someone of something is first to gain their empathy with it. When the elephant is already leaning in a certain direction, the rider may have at first been inclined to defend turning the opposite direction due to rational arguments, but will likely in the end be compelled to lean in the direction of the elephant due to the immense influence the elephant has on him.

This is a massive topic to unpack and I won’t be able to do it in a book review. Here are a few thoughts:

I suspect intuitively that the rider and elephant analogy is accurate, though flawed only by omission, in the sense that it captures a certain important glimpse of human behavior, but does not describe all that humans are capable of.

Is it true that rational thought is restricted to the rider and absent in the elephant? Is the elephant pure feeling or is cognition something that, so to speak, ‚runs underneath it all‘? Is there really so much of a distinction between our immediate consciousness and our deep seated consciousness in terms of their inherent nature of makeup? I have no hope of answering these questions fully, as I have only direct evidence from my own consciousness and mediated observations from other people.

From what I gather from my own consciousness, I can absolutely affirm that I tend to want things to be true and also to look for reasons to justify them. I also simply feel better when I read someone that agrees with me than I do when someone disagrees with me. But I can also say that I feel pangs of conviction after some time, that in order to do my full duty to the truth, I should really make an effort to open my mind and heart to those who disagree with me.

I also wonder whether there is room in this picture for the style of consciousness that many religious (and Stoic) teachings encourage and insist upon — a type of living in truth and reason instead of using ideas mainly as justifications for deeper intuitions and feelings. I don’t think that this would be such a historically insisted upon phenomena if it were not supported by the human hardware of psychology.

When I meditate upon truths or realities with a certain determination and intensity, the outward-oriented part of my brain (or the intellect, as some may call it) seems to fill and dominate my mind, and things like love, justice, peace, and primarily joy seem to flood my consciousness like a light shining into darkness. Surely if an illusion, it has been a persistent and life-changing one.

Is this accounted for by Haidt’s theory? Perhaps the ‚hive switch‘, which I will get to later, can account for it. I tend to think that many theories of human consciousness and psychology cannot help but play out like the oft-repeated parable of multiple blind men touching an elephant. These glimpses into the reality of human psychology are extremely valuable and important, but just as the Stoics‘ understanding of human consciousness as a struggle between logos (rationality and order) and passions which the logos could win was itself only a limited glimpse, I believe so also is the elephant and rider picture.

To be clear, I think that Haidt’s postulations about the dominance of ‚the elephant‘ in human’s mind is an apt descriptive account of humans as they commonly operate. But I also don’t believe that it portrays the full spectrum of human capability in terms of interaction with truth an reality. I could be wrong and have misunderstood him on this.

Intuitive Moral Foundations as the Bedrock of Human Moral Reasoning

As I mentioned earlier, Haidt concludes that the best explanation of Human morality is an evolved set of moral intuitions. Why, when the success game in evolution is about reproduction, would moral intuitions develop? The simple answer is that it is actually a very complex endeavor to ensure the reproduction of humans, and operating in groups is almost always more advantageous. As humans learned to operate in groups, over millions of years, the most successful and reproductive groups developed sets of moral intuitions which guided them towards more cohesiveness and team-play in groups. This ultimately allowed them to out-compete other hominids.

These are the five moral intuitions.

  1. Care/Harm (Caring for others and preventing harm to them)
  2. Fairness/Cheating (Resources should be distributed fairly. Cheaters should be punished)
  3. Loyalty/Betrayal (Be loyal to your tribe; you deserve significant consequences for betraying them)
  4. Authority/Subversion (Submit yourself to the established authority)
  5. Sanctity/Degradation (Cleanliness and order in mind, body, and environment)
  6. Liberty/Oppression (every person deserves to be free from oppression of others, and no person should oppress others)

I will not go into much detail about the exact nature of these moral intuitions as they are postulated — for that you’ll need to read Haidt’s book. Most noteworthy is that Haidt believes that the major source of political and religious disagreement is the selective emphasis and de-emphasis of specific moral intuitions in our mental lives, and that it does have some non-determinative genetic component. Indeed, research has shown that there are certain genetic components which can predispose someone in the direction of conservatism or liberalism.

 

Another thing worth shortly mentioning is that Haidt sees the common Left / Right political divide as extremely predictive of which moral intuitions one emphasizes. Liberal political beliefs are extremely predictive of an personal emphasis on only two moral intuitions, while being rather indifferent to the others: 1) Care/Harm,  and 2)  Liberty/Oppression. 

Conservatives, however, tend to focus on all six moral foundations as important values in society. This shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. After all, conservatives are often accused of being overly concerned about ‚what people do in their private lives and with their bodies‘. Perhaps this requires a closer look to better understand. Why is it that conservatives are often so characterized with a concern for how people conduct themselves in their private lives regardless of the fact that much socially aberrant behavior does not directly harm anyone?

Haidt makes it clear in his book that he learned while doing this research that his liberal understanding (or lack thereof) of conservative motives changed significantly when he came to understand that these moral foundations / intuitions were the primary motivation for conservative emphasis on specific political stances which seemed rather intrusive in others‘ lives, whereas his liberalism relied largely upon John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism and the rather sterile principles of Liberty: „actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness“. 

He also described an experience he had living long-term in India as a moral education like nothing he had ever had before in the United States. As a liberal he learned for the first time, in another culture, to embrace all six moral foundations which are more commonly embraced by conservatives in the U.S.

He came to the conclusion that there is genuine value to these six moral foundations and that the real moral world is much ‚thicker and richer‘ than the liberal moral understanding of the world. That evolution has built humans innately for a moral spectrum that goes far beyond just care, harm and liberty, but also sanctity of mind and heart, loyalty to cultural values, fairness and justice, and respect for authority, and any understanding of human nature needs to account for these moral intuitions. 

 

The Hive Switch

Lastly, Haidt reviewed research showing that humans have a specific module in the brain which is in a sense a ’switch‘, that when triggered by specific social circumstances, enacted such oft lauded human behaviors as self sacrifice, wonder, group identity, ‚losing oneself‘, and etc. 

This ‚hive switch‘ as he called it, is named after the behavior that bees are so well known for. Bees live extremely selfless lives and all is done for the sake of the hive. Haidt claims that although humans are primarily primate, there is a built in mechanism in the human mind which makes us also partly bee-like. Humans really are capable of selflessness towards those in their groups. But it doesn’t come naturally and specific conditions must be in place to trigger it.

A number of things have been known to trigger such experiences. Military marching techniques has been known to foster incredible experiences of oneness and self-sacrifice among soldiers. Meditation has been known to trigger wonderful mystical experiences in which humans allegedly have an encounter with a ‚much greater reality‘. Even some drugs are known to trigger experiences like this, which have ended up leading to persistent life-changing moral effects on the lives of those who participated in trials.

Haidt believes that the hive switch can be abused and has been to great degree in societies — the 20th century is full of examples of fascist dictators taking advantage of human groupishness towards heinous and awful ends.  The problem is that, as mentioned earlier, humans can be selfless — but the hive mechanism is purportedly evolved to support group survival, not universal human survival. That means that the hive switch could be triggered to support huge amounts of selflessness towards one’s own group, but out-group members can be simultaneously demonized as ‚the enemy‘. 

I believe that Haidt has touched on something very important about human psyche. I also believe that, again, it could fall prey to a lie of omission if it is considered the full picture of human psychology. 

Philosophical assumptions can determine our conclusions and unintentionally skew reality. If the goal here is simply to explain human behavior with full and unambiguous assumption of philosophical naturalism, the only conclusion that we could possibly come to is that the hive switch is purely oriented towards group survival. As a Christian, however, though I believe that the so-called hive switch is certainly a real phenomena which aided in group survival for humans throughout the process of evolution, I also believe that a theistic intention in the process of evolution would have had ‚experience of the Divine‘ in mind as an additional purpose of the hive switch.  As I believe that the hive switch is a shortcut into a deeper experience of the human intellect (outward oriented imaginative faculties), and that a truly religiously faithful life is characterized by regular pursuit exactly such things, I believe that this mechanism exists to some degree to usher people into deeper experiences with God and love for others. 

Other Reflections

 

The New Atheism’s Core Tenet Rejected

In his book Haidt takes a position in striking contrast to the ’new atheist‘ attitude toward religion at the time the book was released. The common new atheist’s militant perception toward religion as a ‚mind disease‘ which ‚poisons everything‘ advocated the complete eradication of religion in society, citing religious wars, strife, bigotry, and moral stances on marriage, among other things, as reasons that religion was very much bad for culture in society.  

Haidt argues, to the contrary, that religion is an essential component to the evolution of humans, and that communities of shared moral understanding like religion regularly trigger the hive switch and lead to generosity, shared meaning and purpose in life, and well-being. He argues that human psychology is now, whether we like it or not, is built for religious belief and religious communities, and that religion has caused more good in society than the new atheists are willing to admit, as well as far less evil in the past than they recognize. 

That the new atheist vitriol towards religion has toned down in recent years is noticeable. Even many atheists and evolutionary biologist have begun approaching religion more as a ’necessary fiction‘ which is predicated upon the needs of human psychology. 

In the end, this fits fairly well into my picture of the world. My only nuance is that religious belief after all is not a necessary fiction for human psychology but a necessary response to an ever-present Reality.

Nicht auf Eigenes Verständnis Verlassen? (DE)

Evan GarrettHinterlasse einen Kommentar

Sollten wir uns nicht auf unser eigenes Verständnis stützen? Und was bedeutet es, dies nicht zu tun? Dieser Gedanke ist in der Postmoderne von bleibender Relevanz.

Auf Eigenes Verständnis Nicht Verlassen

Es wird oft gesagt, dass wir uns nicht auf unser eigenes Verständnis verlassen sollten. Man könnte annehmen, dass es auch mit gutem Grund so ist. Man kann dies auf die eine oder andere Weise in vielen Denkrichtungen finden: in der Postmoderne, in der Theologie und sogar in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft. Aber was bedeutet das wirklich?

Im Guten wie im Schlechten, jedes Mal, wenn ich das höre, zucke ich ein wenig zusammen. Denn ich weiß nicht, welche Art von Ideen danach kommen werden. Ob ich mich auf etwas vorbereiten muss, das ich offen gesagt für absurd und anti-intellektuell halte, oder ob ich bereit bin, mich durch eine echte Ermahnung zur Weisheit demütigen zu lassen, ist in vielen Fällen nicht klar.

In religiösen Kontexten hört man dies manchmal zur Rechtfertigung von respektvoller, aber aufgeschlossener Demut bis hin zur Rechtfertigung, offensichtlich problematische theologische, philosophische oder moralische Standpunkte nicht in Frage zu stellen. In wissenschaftlichen Kontexten hört man das alles von epistemischer Vorsicht bis hin zur Einführung von Szientismus und positivistischen Philosophien rechtfertigen. In einem kritische Theorie (postmodernen) Kontext wird man alles hören, von Ermahnung zur Bescheidenheit über Ihre Wahrnehmung der Welt und die Behauptungen anderen Menschen, die Dingen erfahren haben, die man noch nie erfährt hat, bis hin zu der Behauptung, dass man kein Recht hat, über die Realität zu sprechen, weil er noch nie unterdrückt worden ist.

In Sekten bedeutet es praktisch immer: „Legen Sie Ihr kritisches Denkvermögen beiseite und lassen Sie mich das Denken für Sie übernehmen“. Und wir alle wissen, wohin das führen kann.

Es handelt sich jedoch um eine interessante Idee, die, wie ich bereits sagte, auf vielfältige Weise vermittelt wird. Im Gespräch zwischen Katholiken und Protestanten sind die Protestanten oft perplex darüber, dass die Katholiken absolut kein Problem damit haben, die Idee der Transsubstantiation zu akzeptieren, weil sie im protestantischen Geist bestenfalls eine Ad-hoc-Metaphysik von Brot und Wein ist und schlimmstenfalls keinen philosophischen Sinn ergibt. Katholiken antworten oft, dass Protestanten zu sehr dazu neigen, alles verstehen zu müssen, bevor sie es akzeptieren, und sich selbst zu Rationalisten formen, anstatt Gott zu vertrauen. Dies ist ein ziemlich zweideutiger Fall. Ist eine Partei schuldig, sich auf ihr eigenes Verständnis zu stützen? Oder tun sie dies beide auf unterschiedliche Weise?

Was ist ‚unser eigenes Verständnis‘?

Unsere eigenen Auffassungen sind fehlbar. Soviel wissen wir hoffentlich alle. Und unsere Vorfahren haben im Laufe der Geschichte offenkundig Dinge geglaubt, von denen wir in unserer privilegierten Fähigkeit, auf ihre Gedanken und Ideen zurückblicken zu können, jetzt sehen können, dass sie offensichtlich falsch waren.

Das Problem, das subjektiven, nicht-wissenden Personen bleibt, ist jedoch, dass unser eigenes Verständnis alles ist, was wir haben. Wir müssen uns darauf verlassen, auch wenn es uns manchmal in die Irre führt. Wie kann ich meinem eigenen Bewusstsein entkommen? Wie kann ich jemals ohne Vernunft und Wissen aus meiner eigenen solipsistischen Erfahrung herauskommen? Das ist nicht möglich. Es kann sich in einem emotionalen Sinn wie etwas anfühlen. Aber es ist nicht die Realität.

Unsere gesamte Erfahrung der Welt wird durch unsere Überzeugungen über die Welt konstruiert, und wir benutzen unsere Vernunft ständig, um Aussagen über die Realität abzuleiten. Sich vom Prozess der Vernunft und des Verstehens zu entfernen, bedeutet, sich von der Realität selbst zu entfernen, insofern als die Menschen Zugang zur Realität haben.

Das bedeutet nicht, dass wir uns bei der Bildung von Überzeugungen immer auf unsere eigene Argumentationskraft oder logische Deduktion verlassen. Ich vertraue meinem eigenen Verständnis ebenso sehr, wenn ich das Wort einer verlässlichen Autorität akzeptiere, wie wenn ich die Implikationen der göttlichen Souveränität selbst sorgfältig ausarbeite und akzeptiere. Nicht anzuerkennen, dass wir unserem eigenen Verständnis vertrauen, wenn wir die Lehre oder die Ideen anderer als zuverlässig erachten, ist eine kritische Nuance, die, wenn sie ignoriert wird, zu einer antiintellektuellen Haltung führen kann, die zunehmend von der Realität abweicht oder jedenfalls nicht mehr auf sie abzielt.

Eine manipulative Unterdrückung kritischen Denkens und Verstehens

Denkt an die Mitglieder einer Sekte, die sich um ihren Anführer scharen. Der Anführer einer Sekte hat viel zu gewinnen, wenn er dieses Argument verwendet, das sogar im Buch der Sprichwörter ausdrücklich unterstützt wird:

 Vertraue auf den HERRN von ganzem Herzen und verlass dich nicht auf deinen Verstand; erkenne Ihn auf allen deinen Wegen, so wird Er deine Pfade ebnen.
Sprichwörter 3: 5-6

Aber das Ziel des Sektenführers ist es, seine eigene Ideologie zu kontrollieren und einem Menschen seine eigene Ideologie aufzuzwingen. Wenn er ihnen sagt, sie sollen sich nicht auf ihr eigenes Verständnis verlassen, meint er damit, dass sie aufhören sollen, kritisch über das, was er sagt, nachzudenken, und es einfach akzeptieren sollen. Es gibt keine Garantie dafür, dass diese Sektenmitglieder zu wahren Überzeugungen gelangen, aber es besteht eine eindeutige Chance, dass sie ausgenutzt und einer Gehirnwäsche unterzogen werden.

Man denke an eine Kirche, die schlecht ausgebildete und verschlossene Ansichten über die Welt hat, was größtenteils auf ein historisches Erbe des Anti-Intellektualismus zurückzuführen ist, der sich weigert, sich mit kritischen Argumenten gegen seine eigenen Ideen auseinanderzusetzen, auch innerhalb des Christentums. Diese Kirche kann insofern gute Absichten haben, als sie wirklich glaubt, dass die anderen Unrecht haben und ihre eigenen Vorstellungen der wirklich beabsichtigten Lehre der Bibel entsprechen. Aber Kirchenmitglieder, für die z.B. wissenschaftliche Beweise oder philosophische Argumente ein starkes Zeugnis gegen diese Ideen ablegen, werden am Ende vielleicht zum Schweigen gebracht, indem sie ermahnt werden, sich nicht auf ihr eigenes Verständnis zu stützen.

Eine Betonung der Demut und die Anerkennung eines fehlbaren Intellekts

In den oben genannten Fällen wird das „Verständnis“, an das wir uns nicht anlehnen sollen, als die gesamte Fähigkeit einer Person behandelt, kritisch zu denken und mit der Realität zu interagieren. Aber es gibt andere Arten der Verwendung dieses Ausdrucks, die, so würde ich sagen, die wahre Bedeutung dieses Ausdrucks erfassen, wie sie im Buch der Sprichwörter und von reifen Menschen, die sich darauf berufen, beabsichtigt ist.

In Sprüche 16:25 wird ein Punkt dargelegt, der praktisch die Voraussetzung für die Idee ist:

Es gibt einen Weg, der einem Menschen richtig erscheint, aber sein Ende ist der Weg in den Tod.

Sprichwörter 16:25

Der Schwerpunkt liegt hier auf Schein versus Sein. Wenn wir zugeben, dass wir getäuscht werden können, nicht nur durch falsche Argumentation, sondern weil auch als Menschen unser Urteilsvermögen durch unsere Leidenschaften, Emotionen und Wünsche getrübt werden kann, erkennen wir, dass wir vorsichtig sein müssen, wenn wir akzeptieren, dass nur das Scheinbare wahr ist, und uns eher darauf verlassen müssen, was der gesamte Umfang unseres Wissens und unserer Fähigkeiten zum kritischen Denken leisten kann. Schein ist nicht gleich Sein. Was wir verstehen, ist nicht immer das, was ist.

Dieses Eingeständnis der Fehlbarkeit ist keineswegs dasselbe wie das Nicht-kritische Hinterfragen der uns vorgelegten Ideen, Doktrinen und Philosophien. Tatsächlich ist es das Gegenteil. Wenn wir erkennen, dass unser Verständnis fehlbar ist und dass uns Dinge vernünftig erscheinen können, die in der Tat falsch und unklug sind, müssen wir einfach Fragen stellen.

Immerhin haben Menschen Dinge „beweisen“ können, die offensichtlich nicht stimmten, z.B. dass Bewegung unmöglich war und dass „kein Mensch jemals zweimal in denselben Fluss tritt„. An dieser Stelle müssen wir demütig anerkennen, dass unsere Logik, auch wenn wir uns auf sie verlassen müssen, falsch sein kann. Vor allem, wenn wir uns in tiefe Details vertiefen und anfangen, logische Schlussfolgerungen aus Prämissen zu ziehen.

Was ist wirklich gemeint, und wie es manchmal missbraucht wird

Der Aufruf, sich nicht auf unser eigenes Verständnis zu stützen, lässt sich am besten als demütige Anerkennung unserer eigenen Fehlbarkeit als Menschen verstehen. Die Anerkennung unserer eigenen Fehlbarkeit rechtfertigt jedoch nicht, Ideenquellen, die sich selbst noch nicht als zuverlässig erwiesen haben, Autorität zuzuweisen.

Dieses Argument wird oft benutzt, um das Vertrauen einer Person in ihre eigene Fähigkeit zu untergraben, zwischen wahr und falsch zu unterscheiden, sei es im Stil einer moralischen „Kafka-Falle“ oder auf andere Weise, um das Gewicht der epistemischen Autorität von den eigenen kognitiven Fähigkeiten einer Person auf diejenigen zu verlagern, die sie ausnutzen würden.

Und wir müssen erkennen, dass, obwohl solche auf menschlicher Fehlbarkeit beruhenden Appelle an die Autorität oft im Zusammenhang mit emotionaler oder kultureller Manipulation gemacht werden, wir mutig genug sein müssen, um zuzugeben, dass unsere eigene Unfähigkeit, die Welt perfekt zu verstehen, per Definition keine andere Person, Organisation oder Bewegung ausmacht, die über eine solche Fähigkeit verfügt.

Die Beglaubigung der Autorität

Bitte beachten Sie, dass ich keineswegs gegen das Konzept des Vertrauens in eine zuverlässige Autorität an sich argumentiere. Dies wäre in Wirklichkeit absurd. Denken Sie an Ihr Vertrauen in die Etiketten im Supermarkt und in den allgemeinen Konsens der Wissenschaftler in den meisten Fragen. Denken Sie an das Vertrauen, das Sie einer Historikerin entgegenbringen, wenn sie Ihnen bestimmte historisch entdeckte Aspekte der elisabethanischen Periode in Großbritannien erzählt. Denken Sie auch daran, wie sehr Sie sich darauf verlassen könnten, wenn es Gott wirklich gäbe und er Ihnen eine bestimmte Wahrheit offenbart hätte (vorausgesetzt, Sie hätten sie richtig verstanden). All diese Dinge bilden ein vernünftiges Vertrauen in die Autorität, das Sie akzeptieren, weil sich die Quellen der Autorität als zuverlässig erwiesen haben.

Die Autorität muss jedoch, wie die meisten anderen Dinge, die wir zuerst in Frage stellen würden, bevor wir glauben, zuerst sich selbst verifizieren oder ihre eigenen Referenzen vorlegen. Darauf müssen wir bestehen, denn es gibt in der Tat keinerlei Garantie dafür, dass man mit der Wahrheit in Berührung gekommen ist, indem man die Behauptungen einer ungeprüften Autorität akzeptiert.

Sobald wir jedoch die Wahrhaftigkeit einer Autorität festgestellt haben, können wir uns frei fühlen, den Behauptungen der Autorität berechtigterweise Glauben zu schenken, solange die Behauptungen im Zusammenhang mit der letztendlichen epistemischen Grundlage stehen, die die Autorität hat.

Dann, selbst wenn wir auf Beweise gegen das stoßen, was die Autorität behauptet hat, können wir, solange die Stärke der Beweise nicht die Beweise für die Wahrhaftigkeit der Autorität selbst verdrängt, weiterhin frei fühlen, den ursprünglichen Behauptungen Glauben zu schenken.

Dies ist in der Tat das klassische Verständnis von Glauben.

Schlussfolgerung

Ich möchte dem Leser raten, sich der menschlichen Fähigkeit zur Selbsttäuschung sowie der extremen Grenzen unserer Möglichkeiten, die Welt vollständig zu kennen, bewusst zu sein.

In einem sehr realen Sinn sollten wir uns nicht auf unseren Verstand verlassen, wenn mit unserem Verstand gemeint ist, „wie uns die Dinge erscheinen“, oder „unsere ungeprüften ersten Eindrücke“, oder „wie wir über die ganze Sache fühlen“. Es zahlt sich sicherlich aus, ein gesundes Misstrauen gegenüber dem eigenen Verstand zu haben.

Jonathan Haidt beschreibt in seinem Buch „The Righteous Mind“, dass die psychologische Forschung gezeigt hat, dass der Mensch der Typ ist, der sich zuerst in Schlussfolgerungen „hineinfühlt“ und dann sein Gehirn in erster Linie als „Pressesprecher“ benutzt, um seine Schlussfolgerungen rational zu rechtfertigen. Obwohl ich glaube, dass der Mensch zu mehr in der Lage ist, ist dieses glaukonische Menschenbild in jedem Fall eine beschreibende Darstellung, die ihre Berechtigung hat.

Ich möchte dem Leser aber auch raten, vorsichtig zu sein, wenn er einer Bewegung, Organisation, Person oder Beziehung begegnet, die ihn dazu ermutigt, sich im umfassenderen Sinne „nicht auf sein eigenes Verständnis zu verlassen“, und die Fragen und kritisches Denken unterdrückt. Wenn man in solcher Gesellschaft bleibt, wird man vielleicht feststellen, sich in eine sehr falsche Richtung begeben zu haben.

On Leaning on Our Own Understanding (EN)

Evan Garrett2 Kommentare

Should we not lean on our own understanding? And what does it mean not to do so? This idea has enduring relevance in a post-modern age.

Lean Not On Your Own Understanding

It is often said that we should not rely on our own understanding. One could assume it’s also with good reason. You can find this in one way or another stated in many strains of thought: postmodernism, theology, and even philosophy and science. But what does it really mean?

For better or for worse, every time I hear this I cringe to some degree. For I don’t know what kind of ideas are going to come afterward. Whether I need to brace myself for something I consider frankly absurd and anti-intellectual or be prepared to be humbled by a genuine admonishment to wisdom is in almost every case not clear.

In religious contexts, you’ll sometimes hear this used to justify anything from respectful, yet open-minded humility all the way to the justification of not questioning obviously problematic theological, philosophical, or moral stances. In scientific contexts, you’ll hear it justifying anything from epistemic caution all the way to introducing scientism and positivistic philosophies. In a critical theory (post-modern) context, you will hear anything from being humble about your perception of the world and others, not having had their own experience, to the claim that you have no right to speak about reality because you have never been oppressed.

In cults, it virtually always means, „put your critical thinking faculties aside and let me do the thinking for you.“ And we all know where that can go.

It is, however, an interesting idea, which, as I said before, has been communicated in many ways. In the conversation between Catholics and Protestants, Protestants are often perplexed that Catholics have absolutely no problem accepting the idea of transubstantiation because, in the Protestant mind, it is at best an ad-hoc metaphysic of bread and wine, and at worst makes no philosophical sense. Catholics often reply that Protestants lean too much towards needing to understand everything before they accept it, fashioning themselves into rationalists rather than trusting God. This is a rather ambiguous case. Is one party guilty of leaning on their own understanding? Or are they both doing so in different ways?

What Is ‚Our Own Understanding‘?

Our own understandings are fallible. This much we all hopefully know. And our ancestors are known manifestly throughout history to have believed things which we, in our privileged ability to look back upon their thoughts and ideas, can see now were obviously false.

The problem that remains to subjective, non-omniscient persons, however, is that our own understanding is all that we have. We must rely on it, even if it sometimes misleads us. How can I escape my own consciousness? How can I ever get outside my own solipsistic experience without reason and knowledge? It’s not possible. It may feel like something in an emotional sense. But it is not reality.

Our entire experience of the world is constructed by our beliefs about the world, and we use our reason constantly to derive propositions about reality. Departing from the process of reason and understanding is departing from reality itself, inasmuch as humans have access to reality.

That doesn’t mean we always rely on our own powers of reasoning or logical deduction to form beliefs. I trust my own understanding just as much when I accept the word of a reliable authority as when I carefully work out the implications of divine sovereignty myself and accept them. Failure to recognize that we are trusting our own understanding in deeming the teaching or ideas of others as reliable is a critical nuance which when ignored can lead to an anti-intellectual attitude, which increasingly departs from reality, or in any case is no longer aimed at it.

A Manipulative Suppression of Critical Thinking and Understanding

Consider the members of a cult, rallied around their leader. The leader of the cult has much to gain in using this argument, which even finds explicit support in the book of Proverbs:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Proverbs 3 5-6

But the cult leader’s aim is to control and force his own ideology upon a person. When he tells them not to rely on their own understanding, what he means is to stop critically thinking about what he is saying and simply accept it. There is no guarantee of reaching true beliefs for these cult members, but there is a definite chance that they will be exploited and brainwashed.

Consider a church which has ill-formed and closed-minded views about the world largely due to a historical inheritance of anti-intellectualism, which refuses to engage with critical arguments against its own ideas, even within Christianity. Said church may have good intentions in that they truly believe that the others are wrong and their own ideas are correspondent to the truly intended teaching of the Bible. But for those church members for whom, for example, scientific evidence or philosophical arguments bear a powerful witness against these ideas, they may end up being bullied into silence by being admonished not to lean on their own understanding.

An Emphasis on Humility and a Recognition of a Fallible Intellect

In the above cases, the ‚understanding‘ which we are not to lean on is treated as the entire capacity of a person to think critically and interact with reality. But there are other ways in which the phrase is used, which I would argue capture the real meaning of this phrase as it is intended in the book of Proverbs and by mature people who invoke it.

In Proverbs 16:25, a point which is virtually the precondition to the idea is spelled out:

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.

Proverbs 16:25

The focus here is upon seeming versus being. When we admit that we are capable of being deceived, not only by false argumentation, but because also as humans our judgment is capable is being clouded by our passions, emotions, and desires, we come to recognize that we must be careful about accepting what only seems to be true, and rely rather on what the entire scope of our knowledge and critical thinking abilities can deliver. Seeming does not equal being. What we understand is not always what is.

This admission of fallibility is not at all the same thing as not critically asking questions of ideas, doctrines, and philosophies presented to us. In fact, it is the opposite. When we recognize that our understanding is fallible, and that things can seem reasonable to us which are indeed false and unwise, we simply must ask questions.

After all, humans have been able to ‚prove‘ things which were obviously not true, for example that movement was impossible and that ’no man ever steps in the same river twice‘. This is where we must humbly recognize that our logic, although we must rely upon it, can be wrong. Especially when we get into deep details and begin making logical deductions from premises.

What is Really Meant, And How it is Sometimes Abused

The call to lean not on our own understanding is best understood as a humble recognition of our own fallibility as humans. Recognizing our own fallibility, however, does not justify assigning authority to sources of ideas which themselves are not yet demonstrated to be reliable.

This argument is often used to undermine a person’s trust in their own ability to judge true from false, whether in a moral ‚kafka trap‘ style, or otherwise, in order to shift the weight of epistemic authority away from a person’s own cognitive faculties and onto those who would exploit them.

And we must recognize that although such appeals to authority based on human fallibility are often made in the context of emotional or cultural manipulation, we must be courageous enough to admit that our own inability to perfectly understand the world does not by definition spell out any other person, organization, or movement having such an ability.

The Credentials of Authority

Please note that I am not by any means arguing against the concept of trusting a reliable authority in itself. This would be in reality absurd. Think of your trust in the labels at the supermarket, and in the general consensus of scientists on most matters. Think of the trust you have in a historian when she tells you certain historically discovered aspects of the Elizabethan period in Britain. Think also, that if God really did exist and he had revealed some specific truth to you (provided you had properly understood it), how much you could rely on that. All of these things constitute a reasonable trust in authority which you accept because the sources of authority have shown themselves to be reliable.

Authority, however, just like most other things we would first question before we believe, must first verify itself or provide its own credentials. On this we must insist, for indeed there is no guarantee whatsoever that one has come in contact with the truth by accepting the claims of an unverified authority.

Once we have established the veracity of an authority, however, we may feel free to justifiably believe the claims the authority makes, as long as the claims are made in connection with the ultimate epistemic foundation that the authority has.

Then, even when we run into evidence against what the authority has claimed, as long as the strength of the evidence does not displace the evidence for the veracity of the authority itself, we may continue to feel free believing the original claims.

This is, indeed, the classical understanding of faith.

Conclusion

I would advise the reader to be very weary of the human capacity for self-deception, as well as the extreme limits placed upon our capabilities to have full knowledge of the world. In a very real sense we should not rely on our understanding, if what is meant by our understanding is „the way things seem to us“, or „our unverified first impressions“, or „how we’re feeling about the whole thing“. It certainly pays to have a healthy suspicion of your own mind. Jonathan Haidt, in his book „The Righteous Mind“ describes that psychological research has shown humans to be the type to first ‚feel‘ their way into conclusions, and then use their brains primarily as a ‚press secretary‘ to justify their conclusion rationally. Although I think humans are capable of more than that, this Glauconian picture of humanity is in any case a descriptive account which has merit.

I would also suggest the reader to be cautious however, when encountering any movement, organization, person, or any relationship which encourages you to in the fuller sense, „not rely on your own understanding“, and which suppresses questions and critical thought. You may find, in keeping such company, that you are headed in a very wrong direction.

Can you Rate Intellectual Honesty? (EN)

Evan GarrettHinterlasse einen Kommentar

Is it possible to provide a rating from 1-5 of how intellectually honest you are with regard to a specific issue?

Here’s a small 5 point system I put together. Maybe it captures a limited picture of what it looks like.

  1. (Worst) Completely indifferent to reality; doesn’t really have a thought-out stance, but still takes a position; bases most stances on emotion, or even worse, monetary compensation, recognition, personal or political power.

  2. Utterly uninterested in what the other side has to actually say, never for a moment considered the possibility that they could be right, bases decisions on a few impactful observations in their own life and never considers any other sort of information.

  3. Has shallowly considered what could be best described as partially faithful caricatures of the other side(s) on a specific point. Sometimes listens to people from the other side but has defenses up and is ready to mock, rarely (but sometimes) really asks the question if they may actually have a point.

  4. Tries to legitimately listen to the other sides and empathize with their points and the information they refer to justify their points. Allows self to be bothered sometimes that some of their points may be correct. Occasionally listens directly to the other sides through debates or reading their articles/books and tries to imagine their points as faithfully as possible. Perhaps could do a little better to best understand their position by spending more time reading their writings and honestly and introspectively working through the implications of their arguments.

  5. (Best) Extremely self-doubtful and aware of the self-deceiving bias that humans regularly and joyfully engage in. Seeks an awareness of what the actual question is that is being asked and clarifies the assumptions behind the question. Insists on defining words. Makes painstaking efforts to pursue all sides of a position as deeply as is necessary to have a real understanding of it. Regularly listens to and attempts to empathize with all sides of the issue, while also spending personal time contemplating the real content and implications of the claims the different sides make. Never mocks the beliefs of any party, in person, privately, or with friends. Strives not to engage in emotion-driven belief formation. Seeks the truth dispassionately.

3 Commitments for Clear Thinking (EN)

Evan GarrettHinterlasse einen Kommentar

Commit to these three simple principles and you are on the path to maturity and wisdom in seeing the world more clearly.

1. Never mock the beliefs of others. Not to their face, not privately, not with your friends and people who agree with you. It is blinding.

2. Never attack the beliefs of another by providing explanations of why they believe it instead of addressing the actual claims themselves.

3. Always try to be able to state the case of those with whom you disagree better than they can.

Give it a try. You’ll start seeing some differences pretty quickly.