Every modern scientist owes an intellectual debt to René Descartes. In addition to his mathematical contributions--Descartes invented the coordinate axes and made early contributions to calculus--his philosophy instigated the rationalist movement, which arguably forms the basis of the scientific method. Though a Catholic, Descartes' philosophy was founded on ultimate skepticism. Sense experience is subjective and therefore unreliable, he argued, so everything is open to doubt until it can be proven logically. He posited that for all he knew an "evil genius" was manipulating his sensory input, constructing a false reality. His only given (either an axiom or a tautology depending on your perspective) was his famous pronouncement "I think, therefore I am". He (ostensibly) constructed his entire philosophy from this single premise, eliminating the possibility of the evil genius and logically establishing the existence of God.
'Ostensibly', of course, is the key word. I have to give Descartes credit, as his efforts at radical doubt were seminal, but by modern standards he was a lightweight skeptic. His proof for the existence of God is essentially an elaborate repressing of Anselm's ontological argument. Put very simply, Descartes' argument goes as follows: I can imagine a perfect, benevolent God; something cannot come from nothing, but since I am imperfect, the idea of a perfect God cannot come from within me; thus the idea must come from something perfect; that something is God. Regardless of your theological loyalties, this argument is not terribly convincing. It's not at all obvious, for example--and Descartes leaves it unproven--that an imperfect being cannot conceive of something perfect. Yet Descartes rejected critics' arguments and maintained throughout his life that his proof was complete.
Descartes was no fool; in fact, I'm convinced that he was highly intelligent as well as fully sincere in his philosophical quest. In spite of his extreme efforts at skepticism, however, he ended up more fully convinced of his convictions even though the evidence was far short of watertight. His goal was to discard everything he couldn't justify logically, but he ended up unilaterally embracing a logically unprovable proposition. I have no quarrel with Descartes' beliefs, but it's disheartening to see a brilliant and sincerely skeptical man peg his philosophy to a facile, credulous argument simply because it confirms his preconceptions.
Descartes' example highlights a worrying reality: smart people rationalize their preconceptions just like the rest of us. In fact, they may be even worse about it. Intelligence and education can encourage us to be honest with ourselves, but just as often they provide us merely with the sophistry we need to talk ourselves into believing whatever we choose. Every think tank with an innocuous name and a viciously partisan agenda testifies to the fact that, with enough intellectual effort, we can study ourselves into whatever ideological corner we prefer. It's a sobering thought, one that should give us particular pause in our religious and political affairs where intransigence so often prevails. I'm not arguing that we can't believe in anything, of course--I'm nobody's nihilist--but we must be careful with the arguments we accept for belief, ensuring that we don't simply follow tortured intellectual paths because they lead to the conclusion we wanted all along. Our instinct is to confirm our biases, and intelligence and education are not enough to counter it; only sustained, self-skeptical honesty can successfully keep it in check.
8 comments:
Yeah, right.
I detect skepticism. That's a great start.
Great post!
I agree with plenty that was said, but would add to Matt's warning a positive viewpoint. To help explain, I am going to rehast several of Matt's points. I promise, I'm not trying to strawman your argument.*
"I think, therefore I am," and the conclusion it brought Descartes--that there is a God--is an excellent example of a natural limitation with objective, scientific reasoning. Syllogisms need a premise. At least two.(**) If, for a moment, we assume that all truth is connected is such a way that two carefully selected premises could lead to (with rigorous logic) all truth, then we would be assuming a lot. But, we would still need to make two big leaps of faith. I agree with Matt, we should take great care in deciding our original premise.
But, disagree that we need a sustained, self-sceptical viewpoint on every idea. Just because we cannot objectively prove a truth through logic and proofs does not mean that we may be wrong. For example, I would think it foolish to be skeptical about the fact that Descartes was, even though he himself couldn't prove it. I love my wife and she loves me, though these are clearly subjective truths. Any man can disagree with them and I can't prove them to you*** unless you are willing to accept certain premises. But that doesn't mean that I need to be skeptical about it. Nor does it mean that it is true in a relativistic sense. We love each other in an absolute, though admittedly imperfect, sense. That truth is both absolute and objective.
In fact, I think that the most important truths are found only outside of objective reason. Descartes' "I think, therefore I am," freed him from the endless doubt and dispair that destroys those without faith. My absolute knowledge of my family keeps me on course and provides me with much more satisfaction than anything I learned in school.
There is truth, absolute truth, that cannot be found through reason. Since they cannot be found through reason, no one can force them on an honest mind. But after faith, they can be known with absolute certainty.****
*In fact, I'm not even trying to rebuttle, just rehash.
**Since the conclusions are based on the same premises, two premises offer very few very few orthogonal conclusions. It could be argued that two orthogonal conclusions are not possible. Or even that the conclusion cannot be orthogonal to the premises, since it is just a rehash of old information. That is, there is no new Shanon information. So, you probably need many more than two premises to get through this life. :)
***I have comical images in my mind of some kind of peer review process declaring that I don't love my wife because I can't prove it. Sadly, when I try to defend my thesis, I can't even define love.
****Yes, 4 footnotes. This comment is, of course, not well edited and is not an attempt to stand up to legalistic hacking (or even a spell checker). Ultimately, I'm relying on the fact that, "You get the idea."
@Warren- I shall now try to get through life on only two premises, one of which has to do with Oreos.
@Matt- Good post...I've been thinking about this a lot recently, and I'm seeing that not only is skepticism not well-practiced by people who need it most (Warren did a good job of outlining it), but by skeptics themselves. An atheist friend recently confided in me that a string of very bad luck had him questioning his beliefs. Kind of funny, but that's modern skepticism.
This Wired article talks about science, and how people ignore data that doesn't fit. Light swearing. Link
oh, and the summary of all previous comments made:
This comic.
Thanks, Warren, for your comment, particularly pointing out something I left unsaid. So let me be clear: I'm not advocating for the kind of pure rationalism that Descartes did. Logic won't take you very far in your search for fundamental truth. So, even though we can't get around the subjectivity of sense experience, we need empiricism to give us at least a provisional look at the outside world. I might even argue that even our laws of logic are nothing more than prejudices that have survived thousands of years of empirical agreement with sense experiment. There are, for example, mathematicians who reject both the law of the excluded middle and all inductive proofs. Crazytimes.
I agree that we don't need sustained skepticism on EVERY idea. But I do assert that, on balance, we need it more often than we apply it, which is why we so often see people rationalizing away their doubts. Certainly we need it on controversial issues where dogma dominates and moderation is undervalued. But we also need it in self-analysis, in evaluating our strengths and weaknesses and examining the dusty recesses of our mental and emotional selves.
Your example of your love for your wife is an interesting example, and I've been going back and forth on it for a few days. On one hand, most of us have known someone (if not ourselves) who has tried to talk themselves into believing that they love (or don't love) someone. Their efforts may fail in the long term, but they often have short-term success. On the other hand, there is something special about love--enough so that I believe that an honest, well-adjusted person can "know" that he's experiencing it. I'm left with a contradiction; the best I can do by way of a resolution is a Bertrand Russell quote: "When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others."
Ben: Thanks; the Wired article was quite interesting. But I believe that the relevant xkcd entry is: http://xkcd.com/258/
On the matter of fundamental premises, I thought some of Matt's readership would like to read Elder Oak's words to a Harvard audience this week titled, "Fundamental Premises of our Faith"
Just wanted to congratulate you on this post and the blog in general. I had not seen it before and it was definitely and interesting read.
I have but one comment about what you talked about. Claiming that intelligence and education are not enough to overcome our bias can lead us to the conclusion that we can't be sure of anything. Take, for example, your claims in this post. You have thought about them and concluded what you wrote, yet maybe that's what you wanted to conclude all along.
One possible answer here is "self honesty," the idea of objectively pursuing truth. There are two main problems with it though. 1)It is really hard to achieve and 2) when you achieve it there is no way to prove it. But as far as I can tell, honest, objective questioning can only, at worst, take you in the right direction.
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