Tag Archives: truth

Common Sense

Perhaps I’m the only one who thinks this, but we give too much weight to facts. In many conversations — politics, science, religion, you name it — one often suggests that if we could only get down to hashing out the facts, they would speak for themselves and only one interpretation would be possible. I’m not so sure.

When one speaks of these facts, one actually means quantifiable and verifiable observations (how scientific!). While I readily accept that, such sentiment often misses the more important part of the equation: one still reads and interprets those facts, removing them from their original contexts and placing them in a ready-made context which often reinforces one’s own viewpoint. This is why, for example, those who claim that Obama was not a ‘natural-born’ citizen of the United States (and therefore disqualified from being President) continue to insist the truth of their claims despite the evidence provided precisely because they consider that evidence (birth certificate forms) to be fabrications on the basis of his not being born on U.S. soil. While the people who either don’t care or don’t agree with these ‘birthers’ accept the evidence as factual proof that Obama was a ‘natural-born’ citizen, the ‘birthers’ take that evidence as factual proof that he wasn’t.

This kind of logic has developed from two different psychological effects which are based in the Common Sense Realism of the eighteenth century. The first effect is the belief that one will change one’s beliefs when sufficient evidence is presented. The second is the belief that one welcomes divergent views. Both are illusions. Together, these two create the understanding that one has more knowledge of the subject at hand than other dialogue partners and, if only those partners were rational, they would change their minds by the sheer force of evidence presented. The harsher reality is that all the participants in the dialogue are enmeshed in their own reality and refuse to accept evidence contrary to their beliefs as facts. Either the science is biased, the presenter misinterpreted, or the context from which those facts were ripped is inaccurate (or unrealistic!). Whatever the case may be, people (including myself!) do not take new, contrary facts easily (if it is even possible).

The real result of these effects and the presentation of facts is that the very definition of facts is up to interpretation. Take, for example, the general scientific consensus that there is sufficient evidence to support the claim that modern human activity has contributed significantly to global warming. As far as scientific evidence goes, this is confirmed observation, but yet those who disagree speak about believing in climate change. The same also goes with the general scientific consensus on evolution. In other words, even evidence facts must be believed for them to have any degree of truth.

Where this leaves human dialogue, then, is in the realm of debate between orthodoxies. In many (if not all) cases, we have two or more dialogue partners who have their own ready-made realities and every discussion of substance without agreement is a clash of these realities that can never be harmonised. Instead, what normally happens is that the partners end their dialogue (at best, by ‘agreeing to disagree’) with further confirmation of their own set of beliefs as truth and their partners’ set of beliefs as heterodoxy (which is also often equated with heresy).

If this can be overcome, it is through the embrace of pluralism which doesn’t just welcome divergent views but expects them. Such polydoxy can be found in some ecumenical dialogues which find an important point around which agreement can be centered and friendly relationships established. It can also be found in religiously plural environments where people practise multiple faith traditions simultaneously (e.g. Buddhist Christians) as well as in religious groups like the Marranos and Messianic Judaism which also hold two different faiths in tension. In other words, the way out of entrenched orthodoxies is to become, in essence, a Marrano and find a new harmony in the discordance of beliefs.

On Proofs

Soon after I posted my previous post (‘On Belief’), I began thinking what would be a positive response to Loftus’s questions. After all, a critique of a critique does not constitute a proof. However, the concept of proofs might itself be problematic here…

First, let me step sideways and describe the two primary categories of proofs: deduction and induction. A deductive proof is theoretical but logically consistent. It begins with as few premises (i.e. assumptions) as possible and results in a direct correlation between those premises and the conclusion as a necessary correlation. In other words, it begins with Premise A and Premise B and develops an argument via known a priori rules that have been decided for the particular thought system (a proof in geometry will have different methods than one in symbolic logic). At the end, the conclusion (which is what one wanted to prove) is deemed inescapably necessary. That is, the conclusion cannot be avoided if the premises are taken for granted. A good deductive proof will use very few premises, stick to the agreed upon methods (zero-order propositional logic starts with less than 10 operations), etc. I remember in high school doing geometric proofs which depended on five axioms. While the axioms used in the geometric proofs differ from the logical ones, the basic structure and methodology is the same. To counter a deductive proof, one must either show faulty logic or critique the premises.

Inductive proofs have more guesswork in them and the conclusion is rarely necessary (i.e. if all the premises are true, the conclusion may still be false). Given enough time, inductive proofs sometimes may be treated as ‘rules of thumb’. For example, the grammatical rhyme learned in school, ‘I before E except after C or when it sounds like A as in neighbour and weigh’ can be taken as an inductive proof. It would be incorrect to treat it as a deductive proof because, as one may know, there are cases that still don’t obey the rule or the exceptions (weird science). Inductive proofs are rarely a priori as they are based on experiences and observations…and it is precisely because of that I believe I have a good argument against proofs for/against the existence of God.

The problem skeptics and theists alike have is that they conflate the two types of arguments. Like or not, most of empirical science is inductive as it is based on quantifiable observations, not a priori propositions. In this regard, Kant attempted to bridge the gap between observations and experiences with his concept of synthetic a priori propositions. For Kant, synthetic a priori propositions were necessarily a priori while stemming from issues arising from empirical experiences. For example, the question ’7+5=12′ is necessarily true in our world of experience but there are possible alternative worlds in which it can be deniable. In other words, the truth of a synthetic a priori proposition cannot be false in any logically possible world (link for more). I suggest (without an argument) that some aspects of empirical science (e.g. physics) falls under the synthetic a priori category. The rest, however, is purely contingent, based on the particular world, universe, etc we live in and experience. For example, the speed of light, biological taxonomy, evolutionary growth, etc are not a priori.

What skeptics and theists wish to do is to provide a deductive argument that (dis)proves God according to empirical science. Yet, as I believe I have shown, empirical science itself is not deductive! Therefore, I propose an alternative and a brief analysis of that alternative. Rather than trying to prove God through a method that is doomed from the start, let us inductively explore two parallel situations: one in which God exists and another in which God does not. That is where the ‘proof’ for the existence of God should come.

My analysis, however, isn’t straightforward. In both situations, we are left with difficulties (e.g. the problem of evil) that cannot be explained by the existence or non-existence of God. In other words, the ‘proof’ for the existence will remain ambiguous. One might, at this point, wish to apply Occam’s Razor and say the situation without God is just as bad, particularly as people who have claimed to believe in God have committed terribly atrocities. Yet there is an issue with the understanding of Occam’s Razor. Simplicity is not always the most correct answer. For example, simplicity is what had given us Ptolemaic astronomy (e.g. geocentrism) because if one looked down, the earth did not move while if one looked up the sun did. In other words, simplicity is a relative term. Occam’s Razor is not an a priori tool for argumentation but a guiding principle. One could argue that the situation with the existence of God is slightly better because there is slightly more hope, as religions do occasionally provide hope when the many problems in the world just don’t make sense. Note that I am not saying hope is something that religions can only provide; rather, religions can cultivate hope as can other areas of life (e.g. art, music, etc).

As I said in my response to Loftus’s article, the only way one can truly ‘disprove’ the existence of God (or at least religion) is to demonstrate that the atrocities committed in the name of God (or religion) is integral to God (or that religion), that these atrocities would have never occurred had God/religion never existed, and that God/religion provides no positive value to the world. Only with all three can one suggest the nonexistence of God/religion is necessary. It’s not an easy task, perhaps impossible because it’s not a deductive argument. It’s an argument based on observations, and as any good scientist knows, observations can change. Does God exist? Sure, why not. Isn’t that illogical? Sure, but then is reality logical? After all, the interesting twist of Kant’s synthetic a priori is that truth cannot be singular. Neils Bohr is often attributed with saying, ‘The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth‘. Yes, I am deliberately being ambiguous here because if one honestly thought I could or would prove the existence of God in a thousand words is looking for answers to the wrong questions in the wrong places. Again, following with Bohr, I’m ‘not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images’, and the image here is one of duplicity and plurality. In other words: objectivity’s overrated, own your beliefs, and live a bit.

EDIT: In true Reading Rainbow fashion, don’t just take my word for it! (h/t: AKMA)

Ideological Delusions

Nietzsche writes in one of his better-known fragments, On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense, that the concept of ‘truth’ is an illusion which we have forgotten as such. This forgetting of the illusion is driven by the desire for knowledge; in other words, it is the desire for truth that transforms illusions into knowledge and masks them further by calling them ‘truths’. The power of desire turns against all possible opposition by declaring that lies are deceptions of the real that utilise real words to fabricate a false image. Nietzsche’s larger focus here isn’t an attack on epistemological frameworks but on the language that already validates those frameworks:

In a similarly limited way man wants the truth: he desires the agreeable life-preserving consequences of truth, but he is indifferent to pure knowledge, which has no consequences; he is even hostile to possibly damaging and destructive truths. And, moreover, what about these conventions of language? Are they really the products of knowledge, of the sense of truth? Do the designations and the things coincide? Is language the adequate expression of all realities?

Our language formulates arbitrary abstractions that rarely (if ever) ‘really’ exist. Take for instance, the concept of ‘leaf’: it exists as an abstract class that is always instantiated differently. The qualities of ‘leafness’ are made so that one can say a lettuce leaf is a leaf just as much as a maple leaf even though the two have different qualities as well. Another example would be that of ‘worm’ in which its definition is slippery enough that it could be twisted to also designate the concept ‘snake.’ In other words, the language of ‘truth’ is at best metaphors. The cynic in Nietzsche sees in that language something a bit more sinister, that which will become the Will to Power breaking through language. Correct perception can only be an aesthetic relation; that is, perception is art. It follows from this that powerful speakers will be able to paint perceptions and to mask them as something more than perceptions–as ‘truth’. It is in this vein that I wish to turn to the primary focus of this article: concepts we (Americans and possibly the West in general) have deluded ourselves in believing.

Free Propaganda

Three concepts which the US has consumed wholeheartedly are the illusions of freedom, its cousin democracy, and capitalism. These began to be consumed en masse after WW2 during the beginnings of the Cold War, but it must be kept in mind that these are strictly arbitrary and their influence can be found much earlier. In order to paint America and the West as being radically different from the USSR and communism, we began to market to ourselves these differences. It is during this time that the phrase ‘under God’ was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in order to differentiate America from atheist Russia. However, all of this was a marketing ploy, much like the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ for the actions in Iraq. We’ve been able to see the fruits of this marketing in the last 20 years once the Cold War ended. We’ve deluded ourselves further into thinking that our military actions in various places (post-collapse Russia, Yugoslavia, Africa, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc) as spreading freedom and democracy (oh, and capitalism, of course). Ironically, we have never been a free nation. Our freedom has always had qualifications, some quite reasonable (e.g. restricting murder) and some less reasonable (e.g. restricting ‘free speech’ obscenities). The way the marketing works is that our ‘freedom’ is only a relative measure typically used in comparison to what is perceived as the most oppressive nations (e.g. USSR, mainland China, East Germany, etc). We’ve then taken this relative comparison and made it an absolute statement: not only are we more ‘free’ than (insert oppressive nation) but we are truly ‘free’ and all that the concept contains. What this rhetoric produces is not only the belief that ‘we’ are ‘free’ but that there cannot be anyone more ‘free’ because we ourselves are already ‘free’. By utilising this language and forgetting the relative nature of the original claims, we have created a situation in which one cannot think of ‘freedom’ outside of the restricted concept we’ve been marketed. While the US is not as overtly oppressive as Oceania from Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, we’ve created the paradigm of the perversion of fascism it utilised.

The same also goes for the concept of ‘democratic.’ There are countless occasions in which we’ve elected one president under the guise of repairing the problems of a previous president (e.g. Obama’s election), but what we’ve failed to notice collectively is that the executive branch uses this in order to further abuse its privileges and abridge ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ in order to give us a ‘better’ place (e.g. the original PATRIOT act). As long as people continue to vote reactively, we will continue to see the restriction of ‘freedom’ under the guise of a ‘good-natured’ president that is trying to restore ‘freedom.’ In contradistinction to this, the ‘restoration of freedom’ is a re-interpretation of the concept of ‘freedom’ in light of the new, limited ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’. Another useful example is the American Civil War in which we quickly discovered that a state cannot peacefully leave the union (further echoed in Texas v White). We may begin to see this issue rise again in cases like Montana and Georgia. The US Constitution names the government as a republic (and only a ‘democracy’ with qualifications) and requires/guarantees all states within to have the same kind of government.  In other words, we’ve created our own definition of ‘democratic’ so that we ourselves are the epitome of such and there can never be another who is more ‘democratic’. We have forgotten how we became ‘democratic’ and refuse to allow others that same path.

Our last illusion is that of ‘free market capitalism’. In some ways, we can never have a ‘free market’ society because we are only human and it will be abused however which way possible. We have also been able to paint the West as the only source of ‘free market’ capitalism even though mainland China (which is still ‘communist’) has allowed ‘capitalist’ growth beyond what the US could imagine. In a ‘free market’ system, there are no absolutes except the abstract concept of value. Everything has a value and this is always in flux and depends on the production of desire (through marketing techniques). Capitalism is the believing machine that believes in humans who, in turn, provide for its very survival. Yet we have forgotten that even capitalism is an illusion created in the past few centuries. Capitalism subsists in the world by managing the production of desires through marketing and advertisement; ‘You need that $50,000 car to feel happy‘ which then leads to ‘you need that $75,000 car to really feel happy.’ This process of a never satisfied desire is very familiar to psychoanalysis, as it is a manifestation of the unchecked ego. It is by its very nature never satisfied for the satisfaction of its desires implies the end of its existence. The unchecked ego transforms its process of desire by desiring desire itself; this provides the vehicle for it to exist indefinitely as the desire of desire is one that can never be satisfied. Capitalism is able to survive by tapping into this process and equating objects (e.g. cars, food, phones, computers, etc) with that desire–but only temporarily. The team of capitalism and ego have wreaked havoc on the individual and, by extension, society by reducing the individual to a set of desires and an illusion of freedom. You are free to do what you desire, as long as you are happy in doing it! Fortunately for capitalism, the means to enjoy desire also includes the proliferation of capitalism.

Escaping Freedom

In short, we are slaves to our own desires. Capitalism abuses this enslavement and has helped us delude ourselves into thinking we are free. We have never been free; but we willingly delude ourselves into thinking such and ignoring it by buying things to satisfy our displaced desires. And it is this distinct lack of freedom that we find in Paul’s letter to the Romans:

Did that which is good, then, become death to me? Absolutely not! But sin, so that it would be shown to be sin, produced death in me through what is good, so that through the commandment sin would become utterly sinful. For we know that the law is spiritual – but I am unspiritual, sold into slavery to sin. For I don’t understand what I am doing. For I do not do what I want – instead, I do what I hate. But if I do what I don’t want, I agree that the law is good. But now it is no longer me doing it, but sin that lives in me. For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For I want to do the good, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but I do the very evil I do not want! Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer me doing it but sin that lives in me. So, I find the law that when I want to do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God in my inner being. But I see a different law in my members waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

Paul’s escape from this ‘freedom’ is servitude, slavery by choice. It is a wonderful working of rhetoric of Paul here in that he short circuits the concepts of freedom and slavery by arguing to be free is to be enslaved and to be enslaved is to be free. Because of ideology, mankind is never free…and because of this, whichever ideology is the most prevalent will always be the most corrupt and it will always delude us into thinking we are free.

Returning now to Nietzsche, who sees the rhetoric in Paul; Nietzsche also sees in Paul the very reactive nature that continues the cycle of ideology (cf The Antichrist). For Nietzsche, the real escape isn’t choosing another ideology (e.g. religion) but moving past ideology altogether and returning to active thinking. In other words, freedom is to actively shape one’s own reality by taking controlling of one’s own ideology. That is the true power of the overman in Nietzsche (cf Thus Spoke Zarathustra). It is with this purpose in mind that the mad man in Nietzsche’s The Gay Science proclaims the death of God. It is not because some entity known as God is killed by Nietzsche (for that already happened 2000 years ago at the hands of Jewish ressentiment according to Nietzsche) but that the ideological Master that was erected in place of that God is now dethroned and revealed to be the powerless creature of ressentiment. Freedom is the power to create values, something which mankind has long since forgotten. This is the same power that capitalism wields over us now and the revolution isn’t finding a better ideology (e.g. socialism, communism, etc) but the radical revaluation of ideology itself to show the chains that always bind us.

Purchasing Politics

The debate about healthcare in the US has provoked my thinking about politics in general. I’ll be upfront in case my point gets lost in the mix: political ideologies are consumer products that are marketed, purchased, and consumed like any ‘trendy’ clothing line.

Right after 9/11, the ‘trendy’ thing was to be conservative and ‘patriotic’. When the Dixie Chicks spoke their opinions about President Bush, they wound up committing public suicide because, from one perspective, they were out-of-sync with the ‘trendy’ political stance. At this point, conservatism was marketed as the minority fighting against the overwhelming liberal majority. They were the sane part of the government who were thankfully in power at the time. In the Autumn of 2008, these conservatives joined with their ‘liberal’ counterparts and pumped millions of dollars into large corporations to keep them afloat. Yes, at that moment in time, ‘socialism’ was the trendy thing. It was happening throughout developed nations. Now, as Obama and the Democrats (NB: that would be a cool band name) are trying to reform healthcare, the trendy product has been to reject that healthcare because it is ‘socialist’ (ignoring that other ‘socialist’ thing that happened before the election even took place). Right now, the hot, trendy political ideology is  right-wing Republicanism (both traditional conservatism and neoconservatism), probably in part to the consumption of right-wing leaning products such as FoxNews, Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Times (two of which are owned by Rupert Murdoch).

With ideologies being consumed like products, there is no independent thought even though most would agree one of the hallmarks of modernity was thought independent of any overbearing institution (be it king or church). Perhaps that should read ‘there has never been independent thought’. We have deluded ourselves into thinking that our thoughts are truly independent, even if they reverberate clearly with the marketed political products. These products have been so successful at fading into the background that we have long forgotten they ever existed as products and accept them as our own core beliefs. I am deliberately echoing Nietzsche’s definition of ‘Truth’ here because we take our political products as things based on some unshakeable Truth. We no longer see ourselves as members of a political party towing the party line but as independent observers who happen to agree with the party lines. We’ll argue that if the party were to change a particular set of beliefs, we would disagree with them, but so far no action in any party has been sufficiently large to really provoke this. Even Arlen Specter’s jumping ship to another party was, for all intents, a non-event.

We have succumbed to the siren song of truth in politics. Even politics has its own advertisements–not just for candidates during election but for every ‘major’ issue. These advertisements succeed in the same way Wikipedia does: cite something, give a source, and hope that nobody reads it well enough. The problem with this comparison, however, is that people on Wikipedia do (sometimes) read things well enough to see the forest for the trees and change it. That doesn’t happen in politics. At best, we get more non-events (like David Cameron publicly rebuking Daniel Hannan while also drumming up support for the same things he’s rebuking Hannan) that are always void of substance. That’s because the substance was never there to begin. It’s always been an empty façade hiding an empty void. The ‘Truth’ in politics is that there is no Truth beyond that which is fabricated for the product…and we all have purchased it.

Fundamentalisms

In an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the doctor (Bashir) is speaking with Garak, an acquaintance/”friend” about whom he knows little.  Through a medical problem, Garak began to reveal his past to Bashir, but in multiple versions and stories.  As the episode progresses, Bashir learns that none of them were completely true.  In the final scene, however, Garak, healthy again, resumes his weekly lunch with Bashir as if nothing has happened.  Bashir is confounded and tells Garak that he wants the truth as to which stories Garak told him were true.  Garak’s response was that “they all are true.”  Bashir pushes his question further and asks “even the lies?”  In a very twisted answer, Garak agrees, “my dear doctor, especially the lies.”  The importance of this story to this investigation will become more noticeable in future posts, but it marks the most important facet of dealing with fundamentalism: even the lies are true and they may, in fact, be more telling than the “truth.”

Historically

Fundamentalism’s roots were perceived to be “good grounds.”  What are these grounds?  Fundamentalism began in the mid-19th century American. Historically, it has been associated strictly with American evangelicalism as a reaction to contemporary ideological changes. Its main concerns were the “higher criticism” of European Biblical scholars and the “discovery” of evolutionary science. In many ways, fundamentalism wanted to protect the theology and tradition from these new, radical ideas. The first concern was seen (and is still seen by the theological descendants today) as an attack on the integrity of the Biblical text, largely because the fundamentalist understanding was based on a literal, common sense reading.  What Biblical scholars now call the grammatico-historical method (other names include textual criticism, historical-grammatical method, etc) and practice regularly was a new thing in the 19th century and some proponents of it had radical (revisionist) readings of the Bible.  The emergence of fundamentalism (what I will call historical fundamentalism) was a reaction against such readings.  The reasoning used by these fundamentalists was that the meaning of the Bible is very clear and in plain English; further study was not needed because one only needs common sense to clearly understand the Biblical text (WYSIWYG: what you see is what you get).

The second reaction historic fundamentalism had was against recent scientific developments, namely Darwin’s evolution. This was perceived as an attack on the literal interpretation of the creation account which narrates God’s carefully guided sculpting of things. We can see the effects of this reaction in documentaries like Jesus Camp where children are taught that “science proves nothing” (which would also include the Copernicus’s heliocentrism, modern immunology, and modern technology).

The Fundamentals

Here is the very true “lie” behind historical fundamentalism: their reading is the closest reading to that of the earliest Church. They believe they have recovered the lost truth hidden behind traditional readings. It is this concept of having recovered the “real interpretation” that marks fundamentalism across religious boundaries.  In order to differentiate it from the historical variety above, I will refer to it as generic fundamentalism.  We see this aspect in modern fundamentalist groups whether they be Christian (e.g., Army of God, Moral Majority), Muslim (e.g. al Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood), Hindu, or Buddhist. This type of thinking is common to both Osama bin Laden and Jerry Falwell, even though their practices (terrorism vs. political campaigning) were very different. The methodology focuses on a highly literal reading of texts. As a result of this methodology, newer theologies (e.g., premillenialism) were advocated over older ones on the basis of simple, literal interpretation divorced from any kind of contextual understanding of the text (whether it be linguistic, historical, or even textual).

The second true “lie” that permeates fundamentalism is that the fundamentalist interpretation/reaction is recast as being the most reasoned, logical possibility. Earlier, I mentioned Jesus Camp where children are taught “science proves nothing.” This is followed by an argument that all of science is merely faith belief (which I think is a poor view of faith as well, but that’s another story!). Therefore, the fundamentalist opinion must be the best option because it rests on the stable absolute, unchanging interpretation of things that can be traced all the way back to God’s thoughts and actions. In other words, fundamentalists have God on their side and must be correct because of that fact. The irony, however, is watching the fundamentalist use things that are direct results of scientific exploration (which apparently gets lucky every now and then even if it proves nothing), such as celleular phones (radio waves discovered by science as well as the technology to use those waves as a medium for communication), electricity, modern farming (which uses chemicals developed by science), etc.

The two “lies” that form the foundation for fundamentalist ideology are as important to understanding fundamentalism as are the truths. This is because these “lies” fabricate the illusioned reality that fundamentalism has reached its ultimate point of interpretation: the Truth. As such, no alternative can be entertained without entering the danger of total collapse. By setting up camp in a particular conflux of history and ideologies, there is no possibility of change or growth within an iteration of fundamentalism.  There can only be a whole new fundamentalism, more extreme than the last and yet exactly the same. Fundamentalism, as an ideology, is a perfect example of Nietzsche’s eternal return as it is a repetition of the Same. The difference itself is as much of an illusion as the foundation beneath fundamentalism. It is the potential of change that creates the violence which always surfaces through militant groups battling the evil that is contemporary society, whether it be seen in spiritual asceticism or physical attacks. These two images are one and the same coin, always occuring simultaneously that form the central element of a living religious tradition, especially when the two are at odds with one another.