Socrates, Russell, Sartre, God and Taoism

An unlikely congregation, but bear with me and it will all become clear. Earlier this week I received 2 new books from Amazon UK: The Mind’s I, by Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett; and Fundamental Forces of Nature; The Story of Gauge Fields, by Kerson Huang.

Huang is a Chinese born American, now Professor of Physics, Emeritus, at MIT, and 79 years old when he published this book in 2007. The book covers all of physics, in a historical, therefore evolutionary, context, from Newtonian physics (F= ma) up to QED (quantum electrodynamics) and beyond, though it doesn’t include String Theory. The presentation is very unusual, with equations kept deliberately minimalist, yet he manages to explain, for example, the subtle difference between Faraday’s equations and Maxwell’s (an extra term effectively) that led to the prediction of electromagnetic waves propagating at the speed of light. He also introduces mathematical concepts like Lagrangians and Hamiltonians early in his treatise; an unusual approach.

Its relevance to the title of this post is at the end, where he quotes a Taoist poet, Qu Yuan (340-278 BC) who wrote a series of questions called Tian Wen (Ask Heaven):

At the primordial beginning

Who was the Reporter?

Before the universe took shape.

How could one measure it?

(Huang also provides the original Mandarin.)

Then he quotes Russell on mathematical beauty:

A beauty so cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without gorgeous trappings or painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.

He follows this quote with the following rumination of his own:

Physics is truth. It sails down a trajectory in the space of Lagrangians, when the energy scale shrinks from that set by the Big Bang.

I sometimes think that God is in the mathematics; I’ll explain myself at the end.

But the subject of this post really comes from an essay written by Raymond M. Smullyan (in Dennett’s and Hofstadter’s book) titled, Is God a Taoist?. It’s very cleverly written in the style of a Socratic dialogue between God and a mortal, who wants God to relieve him of free will. It reminds me of Sartre’s seminal essay, Existentialism is a humanism, with its famous quote: ‘man is condemned to be free’. I once wrote an entire essay founded on that quote alone, but that’s not the subject of this post.

Smullyan manages to cover an array of topics, including free will and morality, in which, via a lengthy Socratic dialogue, he concludes that the real virtue of free will is that it mandates responsibility for the infliction of suffering on others. In other words, you know when you’ve done it, and you will feel guilt and remorse as a consequence. This is not a verbatim interpretation, just my own summary of it. The dialogue effectively gets the mortal to admit this when God offers to free him of all guilt associated with his ‘free will’. So the choice then of allowing God to rid him of free will, and its consequences, becomes a moral choice in itself, therefore turning the moral dilemma back on itself.

But it’s the particular Eastern references in this essay that appealed to me, in which Smullyan incorporates the idea of God as a process. (A concept I’ve flirted with myself, though Smullyan’s concept is more Eastern in influence.)

To quote Smullyan’s God character in the dialogue:

My role in the scheme of things... is neither to punish nor reward, but to aid the process by which all sentient beings achieve ultimate perfection.

Then to elaborate:

…it is inaccurate to speak of my role in the scheme of things. I am the scheme of things. Secondly, it is equally misleading to speak of my aiding the process of sentient beings attaining enlightenment. I am the process. The ancient Taoists were quite close when they said of me (whom they called “Tao”) that I do not do things, yet through me all things get done. In more modern terms, I am not the cause of Cosmic Process. I am the Cosmic Process itself.

Smullyan, then (as God) quotes the Mahayana Buddhists:

The best way of helping others is by first seeing the light [in]oneself.

He also addresses the issue of personality (of God)

But the so-called “personality” of a being is really more in the eyes of the beholder than in the being itself.

I hope I haven’t been too disparate in this rendition of someone else’s essay. Hofstadter provides his own commentary at the end, with particular reference to the role of free will which he describes thus: ‘a person is an amalgamation of many subpersons, all with wills of their own.’ He says: ‘It’s a common myth that each person is a unity.’ I assume he’s talking about split brains, but I won’t explore that issue here, as Smullyan’s essay has other resonances for me. (I admit I'm not doing justice to Hofstadter, but I don't want to get distracted; maybe another post.)

I’ve said in previous posts that God is an experience, which is one reason I claim religion is totally subjective, because it’s an experience that can’t be shared – it’s unique to the person who has it and only they can interpret it. The essay by Smullyan makes only passing reference to this idea of God (when he discusses personality). I believe he’s referring to a more universal concept, but in an Eastern context rather than a Western one.

I can’t help but make a connection between Huang’s book and Smullyan’s essay, because they both relate to 2 of my lifelong passions: science and religion. Mathematics has given us such extraordinary insights into the physical processes of the universe, at every level, and the idea of God as the process itself, in which we play a very small part is an appealing one. And calling it the Tao, effectively rids it of human personality.

Most people would make no connection between these 2 ideas, but I sometimes think I am a Pythagorean at heart. Mathematics is such a magical medium that one cannot dissociate it from God, especially if God is the Tao, and Tao is ‘the scheme of things’.

Theism as a humanism

Yes, I know, it’s an oxymoron, but it’s appropriate to my worldview. For over 2 weeks I observed and participated in a discussion on Stephen Law’s blog (see side-bar) with a guy called Sye, who maintains he has a proof for the existence of God. Sye’s idea of an argument is to make an assertion, call it a proof ‘by the impossibility of the contrary’, then insist that you prove him wrong. His favourite ploy is to ask you to prove something that doesn’t exist, doesn’t exist, or something that has never happened, never happened. ‘Prove the Bible is not the Word of God.’ ‘Explain how God did not reveal Himself as an objective reality.’ When I say, ‘I can’t explain something that never happened’, he says, ‘It’s your assertion, you prove it.’ In this way, he deludes himself that he can beat the best ‘atheist’ minds at their own game. But his victory is so hollow that it’s not even hot air, more like a vacuum. Yes, I know, I shouldn’t mix my metaphors. (Sye’s web site, by the way, is www.proofthatgodexists.org)

Stephen was patient in the extreme, and kept coming up with new and original arguments, which was an education in itself, and refused to be drawn into the ‘intellectual black hole’ as someone aptly called it. But even arguing with someone who thinks an argument is an endless round of assertions and refutations, and whose most common response is ‘prove it’, can help you to better understand and appreciate your own beliefs – hence the subject of this post.

Ludwig Feuerbach was a 19^th Century philosopher, whose most famous quote was, ‘God is the outward projection of man’s inner nature’, which I used in the introduction to my essay: Is there a God? (Jun.08). Feuerbach, by the way, claimed he wasn’t an atheist, but perhaps he would have been, if he had lived in an age when being an atheist didn’t make you an instant pariah and social outcast. As I’ve said before, I’m not an atheist, and I live in a different age, so I don’t have the same problem. He saw religion as a ‘consciousness of the infinite’ or as ‘the infinity of the consciousness’, but his attempts to elaborate on this conceptually are not very edifying; at least, not to me. But, more significantly, he saw that God, in whatever guise we perceive Him, Her or It (perhaps One is the best label) does not exist independently of humanity. And this was the particular approach I took in my arguments with Sye on Stephen’s blog. At the risk of offending some people, I have to say that I have ‘issues’ with the Bible, not least, because I believe it was a contributing factor to my neurosis as a child, and that’s all I care to say on the subject.

So how do I justify the statement: theism is a humanism? Well, firstly, I don’t believe God exists independently of humanity, or perhaps, even life, and it is only through human expression that God is given human traits – look no further than the Bible. I read somewhere, possibly in a magazine on Eastern philosophy, when I was studying it, a supposition that the collective karma of humanity creates God. If this is true, then we would not only get the One we believe in, but the One we deserve. So I would suggest, rather provocatively, that we are responsible for God rather than God being responsible for us, simply by living our lives. It's an 'existential' view of God, if you like. And it certainly overcomes the ‘problem of evil’ as philosophers like to call it (read Stephen Law’s satirical post on ‘The God of Eth’). In this worldview, even atheists contribute to the One just by being humanists. Which is why I don’t have a problem with atheists: it is not their beliefs that I judge them on, but their actions and attitudes towards the rest of humanity. And, likewise, I judge all theists as humanists.

Human Nature (a Natural Law philosophy)

This is an essay I wrote in April 2000, but I include it here because it follows on logically from my last posting. Also, it brings a lot of diverse ideas together, and provides complementary material to my posting on Existentialism: the unconscious philosophy, amongst others. The last paragraph iterates my 'epiphany' that I describe in The Universe's Interpreters. This was an attempt, at the time, to bring together as many of my philosophical views as I could under one thesis. There are some minor edits: a comment on Dawkins' 'memes', and a reference to Pan Nalin's film, Samsara. 

It originally had the heading: A Natural Law Philosophy based on Human Nature. Philosophy is a dynamic and evolving process, and yet certain people and certain treatises have had an everlasting effect. Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Ethics, Confucius’ Annalects, Descartes’ Meditations, Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism and Sartre’s existentialism. This is not an exhaustive list but they all represent milestones in philosophical thought. Natural Law philosophy does not fall easily into a category of its own, and in fact it is not even mentioned in many good introductory texts on philosophy. But I introduce it because I believe it has a place, not only in the history of philosophy, but in the machinations of our society.

Natural Law arose in early Greek times as an attempt to replace conventional law with an ethics system based on natural laws. Conventional law was founded in tradition whereas natural law was purportedly based in nature. There are two inherent flaws in this premise. One is that someone’s interpretation of natural law is then prescribed as convention, so that one set of conventional laws are replaced by another; and secondly there are no natural laws for ethics in the same manner as there are natural laws for the physical universe. However there are some very basic laws of human nature that impact on society, and there are some ethical rules that are universal in their very expression. For example, Confucius’ basic creed of reciprocity: don’t do to someone else what you wouldn’t want done to yourself; known as the ‘Golden Rule’ in Western cultures, and also attributed to Jesus some 400 years after Confucius.

It is not my intention to provide an exposition on Natural Law philosophy, but to use it as a springboard to develop a more contemporary philosophical viewpoint. Everyone who has attempted a metaethics has failed: Aristotle, Confucius and Mill come to mind. Both Aristotle and Confucius created a prescriptive ethical system, and Mill was forced to make qualifications and compromises to plug perceived gaps in his edifice. These were gaps perceived by himself, not by his critics. In brief, there are no set of laws that lead inevitably to the right decision in all circumstances. So this is not my approach to natural law philosophy; I am not attempting a metaethics or a set of rules. I’m more interested in studying the nature of humans to develop a philosophical viewpoint that is relevant to our existence in society - specifically our existence in relation to others. In so doing I will address other issues like the belief in God, and our intellectual capacity to comprehend the Universe, but these issues should be considered as detours from the main path or side dishes to the main course.

It is our very human nature that leads me to attempt a form of natural law philosophy for my own time. This inevitably involves psychological considerations, but if I discuss psychological issues it will be in the broadest terms and the broadest context. The basic premise for my treatise is that there are three aspects to our nature which I consider fundamental to our wellbeing, and which are also key to the structure of Western society, if not all societies. They are our essential need for social cohesion, the natural emergence of leaders in any group endeavour, and the individual’s desire to achieve their potential. It is possibly only in the last century that the last social requirement in my list has been recognised as a universal need. It has certainly been a major factor in shaping societies in Western cultures in the last half of the 20th Century. It is also, of course, a core feature in existentialist philosophy since Sartre.

But I need to start at the beginning: our desire for social cohesion is probably the most fundamental of all human needs psychologically, as both our survival and our sanity are dependent on it. Yes Robinson Crusoe could live on a deserted island for a limited period, but social isolation usually has devastating effects. In some indigenous cultures, ostracism from the tribe meant death. But it is even more fundamental than that - the learning of language, key to all things human, can only happen in a structured, complex, social environment. With social cohesion comes a need for social harmony, the resolution of conflicts, and inevitably, a set of ethics for any specific social group. In a society dependent on material goods and economic stability, the need, dependence and value of social cohesion is often underestimated. However if one places social values in their proper perspective, they have a profound effect on ethics. I will illustrate this point by examining one of Plato’s dialogues.

This particular dialogue considers the just and the unjust man. Plato addresses a generally held view, for his time and possibly for ours, that when purely material values are taken into account, the unethical person is the winner and the ethical person is invariably the loser. This is based on the assumption that the ‘winner’ is in a position of power and wealth and can therefore make his or her own rules. In this situation, it is perceived that the ethical person has no chance for success. So the conclusion is that being ethical has no reward or less reward than being unethical. Plato’s response was that the ethical person uses his or her intellect or rational nature to overcome his or her greed and base desires. While this addresses the virtue of ethical behaviour, it does not address the question of reward. In Plato’s philosophy, and indeed most subsequent philosophies, the social aspect of the individual is virtually ignored.

In almost unique contrast to this, Aristotle’s treatise, entitled Ethics, contains a remarkable essay on the moral value of friendship. I won’t elaborate on this in any detail, except to say that Aristotle valued friendship as a considerable virtue in its own right. So if one considers that rewards include such intangible qualities as friendship, loyalty and trustworthiness, then it can be argued that social attributes are just as significant to ethical behaviour as material benefits. While this alone is a significant argument in support of ethical behaviour, there is also a more subtle negative aspect to unethical behaviour which is rarely considered.

The unethical person must necessarily create a distorted perception of his or her world. The unjust man or woman suffers from a dishonesty to the self not unlike Sartre’s notion of ‘mauvaise foi’ or bad faith. The unjust person believes that his or her rewards are justifiably earned and the fate of those less fortunate are self-inflicted. Even Hitler believed that what he was doing was for the betterment of our world. The unjust person often believes, contrary to the perceptions of others, that his or her view of the world is completely just. This psychological component of unethical behaviour is often observed but rarely perceived as a qualitative negative component in the equation of rewards and risks. It is only a negative reward within a social context, and its consequences can be massive and severe for those who abuse their power.

At a more basic level there is a negative aspect to our desire for social cohesion itself, and this has impacted throughout human history. It is the perception of the outsider and it probably has its roots in our evolutionary development, because it is a perception of considerable force and tenacity. Predators in the animal kingdom are usually territorial, even those who exhibit tribal behaviour like wolves and lions. All these animals will shun an intruder of the same species, but never more so than when resources are scarce. Not surprisingly, humans exhibit the same behaviour and the consequences are often horrific. Also humans have so many factors by which they can discriminate an outsider: physical features, language, religion, dress, and culture are the most obvious. Humans are quick to form groups that alienate others and create conflict with alternate groups, even when they are suppose to co-operate. Anyone who has worked in a contractual situation has experienced this, even on a modest scale. This is a significant component of what I perceive as the natural law of our human nature. (For a more detailed discourse on this topic see my posting on Evil.) The other component missing from this discussion is hate, but I will talk about that later.

The natural emergence of leaders in any group endeavour is a social phenomenon that can easily be misconstrued. A leader can be seen as the one who achieves the greatest self promotion rather than the one who is best suited for the job, but there are other factors at work. The natural emergence of a leader is something that involves everyone, but most significantly those amongst us who seek to be led. In any group endeavour we automatically turn to the person whom we believe has the most experience or the most expertise in that endeavour. So a leader in one field is not necessarily a leader in another. James Barrie wrote a play on this theme, when he located a group of people on a deserted island and the butler emerged as the most resourceful and consequently became the leader for the group whilst they were shipwrecked. Barrie’s play, Admiral Crichton, was a satire on English class society, and was very controversial in its day, not least because it contained a great deal of truth. In reality, if a leader fails, people will quickly look elsewhere. This of course, is the basis of democratic government. In dictatorships people feel disassociated from their government and their passive acceptance either hides a frustration or a sense of lack of control over their own lives. There is a danger in these societies that people become dependent on others’ decision making, so that a move to a Western style democracy is both unfamiliar and unworkable in the short term. But this basic aspect of our nature has ramifications at almost every level of society. It shows that leadership only works when the people being led are actively involved in the process.

Confucius was one of the earliest philosophers of ethics to advocate that positions of authority should be given on merit and not on the basis of privilege. He understood that authority given to someone with inadequate expertise or experience had disastrous consequences for all those under his leadership, so the greater the responsibility the more critical the appointment. But even Confucius suffered from the prejudices of his day, including the status of women in society, and he was consistent with his milieu in his belief that women could not acquire leadership qualities outside the family home. This of course was considered a natural law by most, if not all societies up to the 20th Century. It is an indication of how subjective and transient so-called natural laws can be. But Confucius gave a lot of sage advice on leadership, including the aphorism that to rule is to truly serve, and that the most successful leaders were loved, not feared. Confucius understood that the value of loyalty lay in its reciprocity.

Our individual desire to achieve our potential, as I described earlier, has probably become the most salient feature in recent Western societies. Certain psychologists like Abraham Maslow, Rollo May and Carl Rogers created an alternative school of psychology based on this fundamental premise. But to appreciate this trait in a philosophical context, it is best to start with Sartre and his oxymoronic statement: ‘man is condemned to be free’. An entire essay could be written on this subject, but for the purposes of this discussion I will attempt to distil out the most salient points. It must be said, to avoid misrepresentation, that Sartre’s philosophy contains a number of ideas that one would consider pessimistic or even perverse. Specifically, he argued that our relationship with the ‘other’ was always as object: either we were perceived as an object to be possessed by the other or we perceive them as an object for possession. Whilst Sartre was probably making a psychological observation, I think it is a most perverse way to view human relationships. But such pathologies aside, Sartre provided enormous insight into the philosophy of the self. By this, I mean the way we create a self and our propensity for self-deception.

The basic premise of Sartre’s existential philosophy was that ‘man creates his own essence.’ In this we assume that Sartre is making reference to Descartes’ assertion that his ‘essence’ is his thinking self, as opposed to his corporeal self. Descartes of course believed that his essence was his soul, and this has resulted in the philosophical concept of dualism, which is another essay in itself. To quote Sartre: ‘Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realises himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.’ In other words, any individual is purely responsible for their own actions, their own morality and their own life. According to Sartre, we have no recourse to fate or God or circumstances. This is what Sartre is referring to when he says that ‘man is condemned to be free’. Each individual must take responsibility for their own morality and their own destiny. The other key feature of Sartre’s philosophy was his concept of ‘mauvaise foi’ or bad faith, which I mentioned earlier. This is a difficult concept to explain but basically Sartre is critical of people living inauthentic lives. Psychologists like Carl Rogers realised that a lot of neurotic behaviour and depression resulted from people not taking control of their own lives or from living inauthentic lives. By this he means people often live the life that has been thrust upon them by the expectations of their parents, their spouses or their society. I believe this is a common source of ills in our society and a serious impediment to people achieving their potential.

But it is a concept that has even deeper significance. I would argue that self-deception is the greatest impediment we have to growth of character and in realising self-fulfilment. In fact Freud’s psychoanalytic theory is rooted in the idea that much of our behaviour is caused by processes of which we are not conscious. Whilst I believe much of Freud’s theory is flawed, he unearthed a basic aspect of human nature - our ability for self-deception and its role in undermining our psychological health. Modern psychoanalysis is geared more towards exploring the self, and uncovering layers of self-deception, rather than treating psychotic and neurotic patients as it was in Freud’s time.

As I alluded to much earlier, philosophy has generally failed to take into account the social aspect of our existence. In hindsight this seems extraordinarily remiss, but perhaps it has more to do with our reductionist approach to the study of nature rather than a lack of appreciation of the psychology of relationships. The exception, some people would say, is Carl Marx, but Marx’s philosophy focused on the subordination of the self to the whole or the group, although this is only one component of a much more complex philosophy based on his premise of ‘class struggle’ . For all his good intentions of taking wealth from the privileged and giving it to the exploited, I find Marx’s notion of self-sublimation so contradictory to the existentialist philosophy of Sartre, that it borders on the pathological. Having said that, a number of existentialists flirted with Marxist communism, Sartre amongst them. Communism has long been seen as an intellectual ideal, but I simply believe Marx’s philosophy is flawed on two fronts, which is why it has never succeeded in practice. Not only is Marx’s philosophy flawed socially because the self is subsumed by the collective, but his revolutionary model is flawed. It is the State that has to control capitalist enterprises following the 'class' revolution and not the people as he theorises. So contrary to Marx’s intentions, the people have no more control over their lives than previously.

In my introduction, I made it my stated goal to develop a philosophical viewpoint that is relevant to our existence in society - specifically our existence in relation to others. Therefore I now turn to the specific issue of the significance of our relationship to others in regard to the self. In his introduction to Meditations, Descartes makes reference to a mad person as someone who might misconstrue who they are and their relationship to their surroundings, much as we do when we are dreaming, only they are awake. Another person may well ask how do you know who is mad and who is sane? Perhaps it is you who misconstrues their situation and it is the madman who is sane. But I have an answer to that. Basically we use other people as mirrors and when people appear to perceive us as we do ourselves then we consider both them and ourselves sane. The mad person on the other hand, lives in a world that is his or hers alone. No one that they interact with has the same vision of the world as theirs. I think this is the best way of illustrating how the self is at least partly dependent on others for its self-perception. In recent years there has developed the concept of narrative philosophy which has attempted to address this very issue. I think narrative philosophy falls short of its aim, and I will explain why, but also I think there are better means of achieving the same end.

Basically narrative philosophy takes into account that part of the self is contributed to by others. It takes the analogy of narrative because we all exist as a story in someone else’s life. In this respect we continue to exist after our death and in some cases we exist before our birth if the birth is planned. Whilst it attempts to address a problem or a perceived gap in philosophical thought, I think it merely creates an illusion of existence. It is true that others contribute to the self in a number of interesting ways, but being part of someone else’s story really doesn’t mean a lot to me, whether I’m alive or dead. My main opposition to narrative philosophy however, is that as a metaphor, it misses the target entirely. If one has ever written a story, one is conscious of the inner and outer journey, otherwise known as the interaction between plot and character. Of course this inner and outer journey is equally true of life itself, it’s just that in writing fiction, playing God so to speak, one becomes acutely aware of it. Sartre actually makes reference to it as the internal and external world in an interview with his long time companion, Simone de Beauvoir. He never elaborated on it, but I found it a complete departure from his espoused view of the other as object and therefore possession or possessor. In fact he puts it rather poetically: ‘It’s this binding together of without and within that constitutes man.’ To summarise, the inner and outer journey is the interaction between fate and free will: it is the nexus that constitutes the self; it is in fact the core element of an individual’s life.

I find it illuminating to compare the stoics’ view on free will and determinism with the Chinese Taoists. The stoics were in effect natural law philosophers and they had a few things in common with the Taoists. They both believed in attempting to live according to natural laws, in man’s special relationship to both God and nature, and the resolution of free will and determinism. But where the stoics saw determinism and free will as contradictory, the Taoists saw them as complementary. The Taoists deal with this much better in my view, because they assert that man must stand up to his fate, which implies that fate, or life in general, is a form of test against which man must avail. This leads to the view that adversity plays a role in creating character and providing growth. To quote the Chinese classic, the I Ching: ‘Times of adversity are the reverse of times of success, but they can lead to success if they befall the right man.’ It is no surprise that the overcoming of adversity is a universal theme, popular in all forms of storytelling, including biographies as well as fiction.

From my viewpoint, one can’t leave the discussion of relationships with others without including the Eastern concept of karma. Karma is a concept used in Hindu and Buddhist religions to explain or to give a causal essence to good and evil. In the West we have personalised good and evil into the characters of Christ and Satan so that it is seen as having transcendental origins. In the East, karma is associated with the transmigration of souls from one life to another through reincarnation. So karma in this life will affect our next life and karma in past lives affects this life. Now I’m not going to enter into a debate on reincarnation because that’s not the point of my discussion. On the other hand, if one considers karma simply as a concept of transference, then karma permeates the world and affects our lives irrespective of any transcendental connection. We know from watching the world news that acts of violence beget more acts of violence. Vindictiveness, jealousy and revenge all exact their toll, but positive acts are equally effective. Look at the effects of Princess Diana’s attempts at charity on the entire world consciousness and the Dalai Lama’s pacifist presence. But on a much more modest level, acts of kindness and charity produce positive effects beyond their immediate purpose. So I argue that karma works in the real world and we witness it every day. In fact, every encounter is an opportunity to create positive or negative karma, if one looks at it in this way. (Pan Nalin makes a similar point, almost as a footnote, in his award winning film on Buddhism, Samsara, when a Sage shows the protagonist a 'lesson': 'Every encounter is an opportunity to practice the Way'.)

My argument is that evil is uniquely a human condition and has nothing to do with God or the Devil; in fact it could be argued that it is purely a psychological condition. Evil does not exist in nature. A spider is not evil for eating a fly or for even eating its own mate. It does this because that is its nature. Both Aristotle and Seneca, a Roman stoic, argued that ‘man’s reason is the intended end of man’s nature.’ In other words it is in man’s nature to use his reason which is why we have morals. Humans, unlike animals, can use reason to decide whether to kill something or not, and from this we decide whether it is right or wrong. (Again, for a more elaborate argument, refer my posting on Evil). Of course, this makes morals very much a subjective matter, but morals are a social issue because they affect everyone, so we legislate laws and create a justice system. This leads logically to a discussion on utilitarianism, but firstly I would like to discuss the nature of hate which I raised much earlier.

Almost anyone can identify with the emotion of hate yet we all deplore its consequences. Hate is most often associated with revenge, but the problem with hate is that it doesn’t resolve one’s inner pain. The film, Dead Man Walking, illustrated this point very well. Whatever empathy we felt for the victims, we knew that their hate would never leave them in peace. Generally, hate does as much damage psychologically to the person hating as it does to the hated. The Christian religion promotes forgiveness and in fact the entire philosophy of Christianity is based on forgiveness when one considers that its central pillar of faith is Christ dying in order to forgive us all our sins. But forgiveness is only possible when one’s inner pain is resolved. Forgiveness is a letting go of something inside oneself, as much as reaching out to someone who performed some iniquity. It's just that leaving one’s self in peace requires leaving the other in peace as well.

Mill’s philosophy of Utilitarianism is often expressed as the ‘greatest happiness principle’, which is based on the simple premise of the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number of people. Mill’s philosophy was developed in part as a challenge to natural law philosophy, because in his time natural law philosophy was espoused as the law of God by the Church, which Mill saw as an excuse for dogmatism. But Mill’s philosophy is more significant than that, because utilitarianism is probably what we practice in Western societies today, only we call it democracy. There is a lot of cynicism expressed about democracy in modern societies, even though by and large, it is a very robust system that weeds out oligarchies and provides political stability. The truth is that people will always complain and find fault with a system, even though, or especially when, they have never experienced anything worse. But this is not necessarily a bad thing, because nothing guarantees decline and failure with more certainty than complacency.

Mill, by his own admission, wanted to develop a social science which he called psychology, but he was born in the wrong century. The most frustrating aspect of reading Mill, is that a lot of his ideas, or at least the theories behind his ideas, have been overtaken by 20th Century social psychology. The term, social norm, had not been invented in Mill’s time, but he certainly understood the concept. In particular Mill understood that conscience is largely a product of social norms and not some inner voice provided by God. Mill realised that the means of changing and governing attitudes was through a process of creating social norms. This is a form of manipulation that is pervasive in modern society for good or for ill. Attitudes towards smoking, drink driving and feminism, are all recent examples of social norm interventions. Social norms almost totally determine who we are without our conscious awareness. They determine our behaviour and relationships in almost every situation from the family home to the office, to the board room, to the local restaurant to the beach. Social norms arise from our innate desire to conform and occur at the most basic levels of human existence. Social norms are almost unavoidable and have a strong relationship with another psychological concept called the schema.

As an aside, Richard Dawkins calls social norms ‘memes’, as an analogy to genes, because they are passed on from generation to generation and they ‘mutate’. Some people refer to memes as if they are just as ‘real’ as genes, yet I contend that the term is purely metaphorical in that context. There are no corresponding genotypes and phenotypes (genes and traits) with memes as there are with genes; in other words, no corresponding cause and effect elements.

Schemas are mental models that we have for situations, both specific and generic. Where a schema involves social protocols, like how to behave at a restaurant, for example, they are called scripts. In fact, in psychology, the term script is defined as a schema for an event. We use schemas to evaluate other people and we even have a schema for our self. Schemas are directly related to our expectations of other people, ourselves and the many roles that we play. Referring back to the mad person of Descartes, we judge whether someone is sane or not by comparing their behaviour with a schema, and specifically we often use our own self-schema as a reference. Schemas are important because they directly relate to Sartre’s concept of authenticity. Is our self-schema accurate or is it distorted? In any relationship, be it work or family or a team effort, our psychological health is dependent on our self-schema. Specifically, the closer our self-schema, and therefore our expectations of ourselves, is to the others’ perceptions in the group, the more psychologically healthy our relationship is.

Sartre’s philosophy of authenticity reminds me of the Taoist dictum to be true to one’s self, or true to one’s nature. But for Sartre this is a non sequitur because according to him we have no innate nature to be true to. However this is not an issue because the dictum clearly relates to being true to one’s principles. But what if one’s principles involves harm to others. Sartre himself addressed this very dilemma in an essay he wrote on the anti-semite. The anti-semite does have principles but they are not necessarily concordant with the wellbeing of others. Sartre attempted to resolve this dilemma with a call for moral universality: ‘... when we say that man is responsible for himself,... he is responsible for all men.’ But I find this both unsatisfactory and unconvincing.

The most fundamental element I find missing from all philosophies on ethics is empathy. If one considers Confucius’s creed of reciprocity, also acknowledged by Christ, then empathy is the key to putting such a creed into practice. It also provides the perfect response to the anti-semite’s principles. In the field of social psychology, it is generally recognised that empathy occurs in pre-language infants, and is even displayed by some animals. Empathy is often equated with compassion, but I would argue that empathy should be the starting point of any moral philosophy, because one: it stems from a purely emotive response; and two: it’s negation is necessary for all of the world’s inhumane atrocities. In other words, empathy doesn’t require any rational analysis to invoke, and in fact, needs to be ignored, overridden or rationalised to become ineffectual. Whilst I would agree with Mill that moral feelings, or moral attitudes and behaviour, are not innate but cultivated through social norms, empathy remains a wellspring for individual moral action, irrespective of social norms. To quote a journalist in The Age, Martin Flanagan, who in turn quoted a friend involved with Martin Bryant’s prison life: ‘...what makes us human is our ability to empathise. ...Bryant displays no empathy.’ (Martin Bryant was responsible for the Port Arthur massacre 28 April 1996). Empathy is the closest one can get to a first principle or natural law for moral behaviour.

So that is it. I’ve pretty well exhausted all my philosophical ideas concerning natural law, human nature and ethics. But I mentioned in my introduction our tendency to believe in a transcendental realm and in particular a propensity to believe in God. I’m not going to argue one way or the other for the existence of God, but I wish to make an observation that seems to escape most discussions on the subject. There are two aspects of God, which we tend to assume are synonymous, but which I would argue are not necessarily the same. Firstly, there is the concept of God as Creator of the Universe and everything in it - God as primal cause or first cause. Secondly, there is the psychological experience of God, which is the only experience of God that we have first hand. In other words, God occurs as a manifestation in the human mind. In some respects this relates back to my idea of the inner and outer world and their conjunction in the self. Certainly the Buddhists understand this better than we do in the West, yet Augustine also talked about God as an inner journey rather than something external. He said: ‘...to reach the good, which is the real, one must “return into” oneself; for it is the spirit at the heart of man’s inmost self that links him to the ultimate reality.’ Also: ‘Grace awakens the dormant power of the mind to see God’s image in itself, to see itself, that is, as God’s image.’ Karen Armstrong, in her book, The History of God, made constant reference to the apparent conflict between an intellectual concept of God and the mystical experience described by the many sages and mystics throughout history.

The prime cause, on the other hand, need be nothing more than a set of physical laws to put the whole dynamic of the universe into action. This is not an original idea and was espoused by Voltaire amongst others. God may well be a product of consciousness rather than the other way round. This is consistent with a belief in God as a process rather than as a static entity; an idea that coincides with Jung’s hypothesis of a collective unconscious. The truth is we don’t know, but I merely point out that there are many ways of perceiving a transcendental realm and its consequences.

Finally, I wish to expound on a perfectly natural phenomenon that places our unique position in the Universe in a most intriguing perspective. The human mind is unique because we have the faculty of language, and it is through language that we are able to express ideas, invent, synthesise and manipulate concepts. Without this unique trait we would be nothing special at all. But it is more than that. The human mind, through language, has a very special ability. We are able to create concepts within concepts ad infinitum. We do this in all our endeavours: music, mathematics, storytelling, design. It is best illustrated in writing. A single word is the most fundamental element that has meaning, but we place the word into a sentence and the sentence has a meaning of its own. The sentence then exists within a larger passage that again takes on a meaning beyond that of the single sentence, and so it goes on. But nature works exactly the same way. No matter at what scale we examine it, nature consists of worlds within worlds that extend both inwards and outwards, and takes on a completely different form and function depending on what level we look at it. The human body consists of individual cells which are self consistent but are another world altogether to the human world in which we live - this is just one very obvious example. The point I wish to make is that the reason we can comprehend the universe is that we are the only species (that we know of) which has a mind that works in exactly the same way that nature works. This, in my view, gives us a unique responsibility. We have the intellect and the power to understand, to cultivate and to destroy the world in which we live. Even if God, or a transcendental realm, exists, then clearly that responsibility has been empowered to us. Should we not then execute all our earthly endeavours with humility and caution?

Sunday 21 October 2007

Existentialism: the unconscious philosophy

My contention is that existentialism is the unconscious philosophy of secular Western society, and the following dissertation is my attempt to support that contention. If you tell people that you’re an existentialist they make a number of assumptions. The first assumption is that you are a follower of Jean Paul Sartre, and the second assumption is that you’re an atheist. (Personally, I was more influenced by Camus). But existential ‘themes’ can be found in the strangest of places: the stoic philosophy of ancient Greece and Rome; Confucian commentary in the I Ching; and the ruminations of humanist psychologists like Carl Rogers. Many philosophers have also commented on similarities between some aspects of Buddhism and existentialism. So what do I mean by existentialism? Perhaps we should start with Sartre. 

Essentially, existentialism argues that you are personally responsible for who you are: morally, socially, politically and religiously; you create your own identity. Sartre put it differently, but the message is the same: you ‘create your own essence’ and you make your life a ‘project’. By essence, he was almost certainly referring to Descartes, who talked about ‘essence’ as something intrinsic; what some would call the soul. (I provide a different, one might say, existentialist, concept of ‘soul’ in my first posting on Self.) 

Sartre himself acknowledges that ‘Existentialism is a Humanism’, the title of one of his most famous essays, and, by so doing, identifies himself with the earlier humanists in Western Philosophy. These were heretics of their time, who dared to posit that ‘man’ is responsible for his own destiny: materialistically, morally and spiritually. Sartre famously stated in that essay that ‘man is condemned to be free’, meaning, in essence, that we have to take responsibility for whom we become. It’s only in the 20th Century, and only in Western society, that we have come to accept that almost anyone can achieve their dreams and ambitions. Previously, and in many other cultures (though not all), one’s ambitions and aspirations were limited by birth and demography, not to mention sex. 

To some extent this is still true, and certainly true in a global sense, but at least people are aware of inequality and the long term harm it causes. An existential philosophy acknowledges that everyone should ‘ideally’ be able to create their own persona. But Sartre’s specific contribution was to emphasise that individuals are responsible for their own moral actions, and have no recourse to religion, cultural or metaphysical origins. This was a direct response to what happened in WWII, and I discuss this specifically elsewhere in my posting on Evil (Oct.07). But returning to the topic at hand, Sartre argued, significantly, that one can’t offload one’s responsibility, or society’s collective responsibility, to a religious entity such as God or the Devil. I think this had direct consequences for the post war generation. 

There was a worldwide cultural revolution in 1960s Western society, that effectively questioned the role of the Church, the role of God and the relationship between the individual and the State. To many people, conservatives in particular, this created a rupture in society that we are still paying for. To quote Cardinal George Pell (Archbishop of Sydney), quoted in turn by journalist, Christopher Pearson (as recently as January this year) ‘Times have changed and many are troubled by the consequences of the revolutions of the 1960s.’ Reading between the lines, I conclude that Pell resents the rise of feminism, the introduction of the contraceptive pill, the loss of the virtue called virginity, and the recognition that homosexuals and lesbians deserve the right of respect in all avenues of society. Personally, I see all these as positives. 

Not surprisingly, all of these are sexually related, and the Church, historically, had thought it fit to govern all our sexual activities through the application of guilt, fear and the wrath of God. Existentialism changed all that, in that we became unconscious existentialists: we came to the realisation that, through education, we could make our own moral decisions and become the person we were meant to be rather than the one dictated by the mores of a religious dominated society. Pell and his supporters, would point out the negative consequences of this revolution: the rise in drug abuse, the breakdown of marriages, the pursuit of material gain over spiritual solace. And I would agree that these are not issues to be ignored, but the positive consequences are that we live our lives more honestly, and are encouraged not to live a lie, which was the most damaging aspect of the pre-existentialist revolution. People living in marriages that destroyed their souls, transsexuals unable to live with the identity they were born with, young women forced to carry through pregnancies that could have been avoided. These led to neuroses on a large scale. I'm not saying that all neuroses inherent in our society have been eliminated, but I see no advantage in turning back the clock with the inevitable consequence of creating neuroses for the future. 

Does this make me irreligious or an atheist? No, it doesn’t, but that’s another discussion for another time. Most people don’t know what existentialism is, yet most people, living a secular life in a Western society, follow an existential philosophy whether they are theists or atheists. I call it the unconscious philosophy because most people believe they create their own destiny, their own identity and their own morality, and, in principle, that indicates a psychologically healthy state of mind. The corollary to this is that self-deception is our greatest weakness, which, in extremis, can lead to avoiding responsibility for who one really is. As Hugh Mackay points out in his excellent book on moral philosophy, Right & Wrong (subtitled, how to decide for yourself), 'The most damaging lies are those we tell ourselves'. In fact, he devotes an entire section to this topic, with that quote as his heading. Postscript: the consequences of self-deception are elaborated upon in a later post, Human Nature (Nov.07), and again in a post on Trust (April 08). You may also want to read my views on God, theism, atheism (Aug.07)

Saturday 25 August 2007

The Meaning of Life

This is a submission I made to the magazine, Philosophy Now, in response to their 'Question of the month' last February. The entries had a strict word limit, which I incorporated exactly. This blog has similar themes to my very first posting on Self, unsurprisingly, as the meaning of life is a purely subjective concept. One can also see a similar perspective to Victor Frankl's philosophy (Man's Search for Meaning and The Unconscious God). I think it's fair to say that we came to similar conclusions via different paths. When I read Frankl over 20 years ago, I couldn't have written this treatise; it's only in hindsight that I can see the connection. 

For each and every one of us there exists an internal and external world. Some argue that only the external world can be discussed with any definition, and besides, the internal world is completely dependent on the external world, even to the extent that we think. This is because we all think in a language, and, for all of us, our language was gained from the external world. If we took this at face value then it could be argued that the internal world is irrelevant. However, this ignores the undeniable sense, we all have, that the internal world is the Self, and therefore has a significance that belies this simple analysis. 

There is another argument put forward by some evolutionary psychologists that the only reason we have a self is so we wouldn’t become automatons. This leads to the plausible hypothesis that nature doesn’t really require us to have a sense of self at all; it’s sole purpose, from a biological perspective, is that it provides an effective conscious compulsion for us to survive and propagate our genes. But both these arguments suffer from an examination of the internal and external world as if they are independent entities. 

They ignore the interaction that we all experience, and how, through our responses to the external world over a lifetime, we develop and grow into complex psychological beings. No one passes through life without experiencing pain or emotional hardship at some level. The Buddha, according to legend, lived a sheltered and unscarred life until he went outside his palace walls and witnessed poverty, illness and death for the first time. The allegorical and truly insightful aspect of this story, is not the four noble truths that apparently arose from his observations, but that pain and suffering at some level are unavoidable for each of us. 

We all yearn for stories, both fictional and biographical, that deal with the overcoming of adversity; it’s universal. Wisdom does not come from an extensive education, nor does it come from high achievements. Wisdom comes from dealing with all the adversities and misfortunes that fate throws in our path. Ultimately, it is how we respond and deal with life’s misfortunes that leads us to becoming someone we are happy to be or someone we inwardly despise. Adversity is the universal means through which we all gain wisdom and self-knowledge, and that is the meaning of life. This subject is also touched upon in a later posting: Does the Universe have a Purpose? (Oct.07)

Wednesday 22 August 2007

Self

This is merely a starting point, but it seems to be a starting point for many of my philosophical discussions. For each and every one of us there is an inner and outer world - it is the interaction of these 2 aspects of our experience that determines the self.

If one takes language as an example: we all think in a language, and without it, we would find it extremely difficult, probably impossible, to conceptualise, compare, manipulate and develop abstract ideas. This is such an internal and fundamental process that we tend to forget that we all gained our language from our external world. My point is that we underestimate the dependence of the self on the external world.

This also extends to relationships, because without our interaction with others the self would be sterile, unreflective and probably unexamined. So the self is not something that we can consider in isolation of our external world because it has an extension into that world which both receives and transmits information, energy, emotion and our very soul.

What do I mean by soul? My own interpretation is that it is an evolving process, tempered and moulded by life that we can learn to be comfortable with or we can learn to inwardly dislike. The latter experience can create depression, hatred and a perverse outlook on the world. I speak from experience, so this is part of my journey.

For further elaboration on this, refer my post on The Meaning of Life.

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

Creative Commons Licence

Journeyman Philosopher by Paul P Mealing is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

To subscribe by email

If you want to be notified of new posts (via link) Leave a comment - it won't be published

Translate

Search This Blog

Most Popular Posts in the past month

• Trying to understand Schrodinger’s equation
  This is one of my autodidactic posts – I’m not a physicist so this is a layperson’s attempt to explain one of the seminal equations in physi...
• In the beginning there was logic
   I recently read an article in Philosophy Now (Issue 154, Feb/Mar 2023), jointly written by Owen Griffith and A.C. Paseau, titled One Logic...
• The Mirror Paradox
  The mirror paradox is best stated as a question: why is a mirror image seen as left to right reversed but not top to bottom? I’m not sure wh...
• Secret heroes
  A writer can get attached to characters, and it tends to sneak up on one (speaking for myself) meaning they are not necessarily the characte...
• The genius of differential calculus
  Newton and Leibniz are both credited as independent ‘inventors’ of calculus but I would argue that it was at least as much discove...
• Revisiting Donald Hoffman’s alternative theory of evolution
    Back in November 2016, so 5 years ago, I wrote a post in response to an academic paper by Donald Hoffman and Chetan Prakash called   Obj...
• Why and how European Western philosophy begat the scientific revolution
  I’ve been reading a book, The Patterning Instinct by Jeremy Lent, subtitled A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning . At close ...
• Do you think Hoffman’s theories about reality and perception are true?
  I’ve written about this twice before in some detail, but this was a question on Quora, I addressed last year. I include it here because it...
• What does physics really tell us about reality?
   A little while ago I got into another discussion with Mark John Fernee (see previous post) , but this time dealing with the relationship be...
• The philosophy of Philippe Petit
  I never intended to write movie reviews but this is certainly relevant to philosophy in more ways than one. Last night I saw the film, Man O...

Followers

Labels Anthropic Principle (13) Art (72) Artificial Intelligence (21) Being (137) Chaos (11) Consciousness (25) Epistemology (123) Evolution (8) Existentialism (19) Free will (18) God (26) Language (10) Mathematics (92) Morality (110) Political (106) Psychology (119) Quantum Mechanics (27) Relativity (28) Religion (79) Science (188) Sport (3) Storytelling (55) Time (35)

Blog Archive ▼  2024 (14) ▼  May (1) Why you need memory to have free will ►  April (5) ►  March (1) ►  February (3) ►  January (4) ►  2023 (22) ►  December (2) ►  November (2) ►  October (3) ►  September (2) ►  August (2) ►  June (1) ►  May (2) ►  April (3) ►  March (3) ►  January (2) ►  2022 (20) ►  December (1) ►  November (1) ►  September (3) ►  August (3) ►  July (1) ►  June (2) ►  May (1) ►  April (3) ►  March (2) ►  January (3) ►  2021 (26) ►  December (1) ►  November (3) ►  October (4) ►  September (1) ►  August (1) ►  July (2) ►  June (5) ►  May (1) ►  April (1) ►  March (3) ►  February (3) ►  January (1) ►  2020 (26) ►  December (2) ►  November (3) ►  October (2) ►  September (3) ►  August (1) ►  July (2) ►  June (1) ►  May (4) ►  April (1) ►  March (2) ►  February (4) ►  January (1) ►  2019 (19) ►  September (3) ►  August (3) ►  July (2) ►  June (1) ►  May (3) ►  April (2) ►  February (2) ►  January (3) ►  2018 (22) ►  December (1) ►  November (2) ►  October (1) ►  September (1) ►  August (4) ►  June (1) ►  May (2) ►  April (2) ►  March (3) ►  February (2) ►  January (3) ►  2017 (16) ►  December (2) ►  November (2) ►  September (2) ►  August (1) ►  July (1) ►  June (1) ►  May (1) ►  April (2) ►  March (1) ►  February (2) ►  January (1) ►  2016 (18) ►  December (2) ►  November (3) ►  September (1) ►  August (1) ►  July (1) ►  May (2) ►  April (1) ►  March (2) ►  February (2) ►  January (3) ►  2015 (26) ►  December (2) ►  November (2) ►  October (1) ►  September (5) ►  August (1) ►  June (4) ►  May (2) ►  April (1) ►  March (4) ►  February (2) ►  January (2) ►  2014 (17) ►  December (2) ►  November (1) ►  October (2) ►  August (3) ►  July (2) ►  May (3) ►  March (2) ►  February (1) ►  January (1) ►  2013 (26) ►  December (1) ►  September (2) ►  August (1) ►  July (3) ►  June (6) ►  May (3) ►  April (3) ►  March (2) ►  February (3) ►  January (2) ►  2012 (34) ►  December (2) ►  November (2) ►  October (2) ►  September (2) ►  August (2) ►  July (3) ►  June (5) ►  May (3) ►  April (3) ►  March (5) ►  February (3) ►  January (2) ►  2011 (34) ►  December (3) ►  November (2) ►  October (5) ►  September (4) ►  August (2) ►  June (4) ►  May (3) ►  April (2) ►  March (2) ►  February (3) ►  January (4) ►  2010 (24) ►  December (3) ►  November (1) ►  October (3) ►  September (1) ►  August (1) ►  July (1) ►  June (1) ►  May (2) ►  April (2) ►  March (3) ►  February (2) ►  January (4) ►  2009 (25) ►  December (2) ►  November (3) ►  October (2) ►  September (2) ►  August (3) ►  July (2) ►  June (3) ►  May (2) ►  April (3) ►  March (2) ►  February (1) ►  2008 (21) ►  December (2) ►  November (2) ►  October (2) ►  September (1) ►  August (1) ►  July (3) ►  June (2) ►  May (1) ►  April (2) ►  March (3) ►  February (1) ►  January (1) ►  2007 (15) ►  November (2) ►  October (3) ►  September (5) ►  August (5)

My Blog List

• Stephen Law

  Cult of MAGA: The Crisis, The System, and The Enemy

  2 months ago
• The Mirror & The Lamp

  On John Cage’s 4’33”

  11 months ago
• Sylvia's Mother

  Sylvia - Episode 14

  10 years ago
• ELWYN'S BIG BANG PAGE - Foreword

Watermark theme. Theme images by Jason Morrow. Powered by Blogger.