A Mendacious Triangular Trade (Part VI)
I promised yesterday to explain the difference between the two sorts of "explanations" mentioned in the following sentence: "We can explain, maybe, how a gasoline engine works, but we cannot explain where came the power that permits the mind to explain how gasoline engines work." I'll do my best to fulfill my promise.
The power of human beings (and to a lesser degree, the other animals) to explain (or understand) things reasonably well remains essentially unexplained. That does not mean, however, that "explanations" have not been made, and believed. The Book of Genesis explains it this way: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him. . . " (Gen 1:27 KJV) Now I grant that this verse does not specifically say that God empowered man with the ability to reason, but if we presuppose that God was a reasoning entity, then it follows that the words "in his own image" imply that man was similarly endowed. Many other metaphysical and theological explanations exist, but the Genesis explanation is the one most widely believed in the western hemisphere.
But what is reason? I can imagine that early humans (or their ancestors) might have witnessed many examples of falling objects without ever having conceived the notion that all objects have a tendency to fall. They could very easily have imagined that each instance of a falling object was a separate and distinct occurence. They would thus not have conceived the idea that a common something was causing all the objects to behave in a similar fashion.
Reason has thus been defined as: "the mental powers concerned with forming conclusions, judgments, or inferences." (Webster's Online Dictionary, def 3.) But as is obvious, the definition tells us nothing we did not already know, and sheds no light on the one thing we did not know: how did we come by those so-called "mental powers"?
Well, we cannot answer that question, but we can say a few things about our power to reason that will help us to see the futility of supernatural explanations such as the one in Genesis (if it were taken literally). We eventually see, for instance, that the general explanation we have applied to falling objects (that their behavior was caused) applies to everything that is worthy of being called a thing. They all behave as they do because of causes. Everything we have learned from science could never have been learned if we had not first learned the so-called law of causes and effects.
And yet, the law of causes is just as mysterious as reason itself. It cannot be proven by any scientific or logical process. That the law of causes cannot be proven has generally been regarded as a weakness, causing some to doubt even that reason is possible. If (they reason) the law of causes cannot be proven, then reason itself is without a provable basis.
Only a very few of the classical philosophers -- Spinoza in particular -- saw a connection between the law of causes and the ultimate nature of reality. If some forms of our knowledge can be identified that do not depend on the senses for their fundamental reality, and if those forms of knowledge cannot be denied by any sane person, then it might follow (claimed the Spinozists and their disciples) that those intuitive forms of knowledge are as real as reality itself. They were claiming that if anything is real then those aspects of human knowing that stand outside of human experience must be fundamental to whatever reality actually is. They were saying that we must acknowledge as true such understandings as the law of causes and the rules of logic without knowing why they are true -- just as we acknowledge that something exists without knowing why or how anything exists.
It's clear that this approach to our ability to reason makes no claim to being an explanation of reason itself. The system of thought that assumes the validity of intuitive knowledge has going for it that by accepting certain objects of human knowing as axioms and working from there, an understanding and explanation can be derived of all that can be known.
But axiomatic reasoning is by its nature an admission that some things that appear to be true cannot be proven to be true. All of Euclidean geometry works on the same assumption. Euclid makes no attempt to prove that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. He just assumes that all sane people would agree.
The real test of Euclid's axioms lies in the system of thought that follows from them. If it turns out to be true that "the square upon the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to sum of the squares upon the two legs," then the axioms -- while remaining unproven -- derive a degree of certainty they would not have if the Pythagorean Theorem were false. The axioms gain more and more power as the facts of geometry develop into more and more powerful tools. When all of mathematics finally emerges as nothing more or less than an extension of Euclid's axioms, we begin to suspect that some forms of knowing exist in relation to our intellect in a more fundamental manner than, say, the law of gravity. The latter is not yet fully understood, so may be modified as more experience is brought to bear on the problem, but Euclid's axioms will remain true and unquestioned regardless of how the law of gravity is finally expressed.
So, we may distinguish between metaphysical systems by observing the extent to which they rely upon axioms that can be doubted. We may, for instance, doubt the existence of a God that speaks Hebrew, but we cannot doubt the existence of, say, Spinoza's God, since he has defined God as whatever is. We may question Spinoza's use of the word "God," but to the extent he uses the word consistently within his system, and to the extent his system explains everythng that is humanly knowable, then we would be inclined (though not compelled) to suspect that his use of the word is more powerful than the use it was put to by those who wrote of a God who spoke Hebrew and had mysterious intercourse with virgin girls.
Thus, as Spinoza might say, I have explained what I set out to explain. If you cannot be content to accept that some things cannot be explained by human beings, then you can make up a better way of thinking than the one I have described.
After all, Spinoza made up his system. There's no reason you cannot make up one of your own. Just don't expect other people to believe it if strays too far into areas of pure fantasy.
The power of human beings (and to a lesser degree, the other animals) to explain (or understand) things reasonably well remains essentially unexplained. That does not mean, however, that "explanations" have not been made, and believed. The Book of Genesis explains it this way: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him. . . " (Gen 1:27 KJV) Now I grant that this verse does not specifically say that God empowered man with the ability to reason, but if we presuppose that God was a reasoning entity, then it follows that the words "in his own image" imply that man was similarly endowed. Many other metaphysical and theological explanations exist, but the Genesis explanation is the one most widely believed in the western hemisphere.
But what is reason? I can imagine that early humans (or their ancestors) might have witnessed many examples of falling objects without ever having conceived the notion that all objects have a tendency to fall. They could very easily have imagined that each instance of a falling object was a separate and distinct occurence. They would thus not have conceived the idea that a common something was causing all the objects to behave in a similar fashion.
Reason has thus been defined as: "the mental powers concerned with forming conclusions, judgments, or inferences." (Webster's Online Dictionary, def 3.) But as is obvious, the definition tells us nothing we did not already know, and sheds no light on the one thing we did not know: how did we come by those so-called "mental powers"?
Well, we cannot answer that question, but we can say a few things about our power to reason that will help us to see the futility of supernatural explanations such as the one in Genesis (if it were taken literally). We eventually see, for instance, that the general explanation we have applied to falling objects (that their behavior was caused) applies to everything that is worthy of being called a thing. They all behave as they do because of causes. Everything we have learned from science could never have been learned if we had not first learned the so-called law of causes and effects.
And yet, the law of causes is just as mysterious as reason itself. It cannot be proven by any scientific or logical process. That the law of causes cannot be proven has generally been regarded as a weakness, causing some to doubt even that reason is possible. If (they reason) the law of causes cannot be proven, then reason itself is without a provable basis.
Only a very few of the classical philosophers -- Spinoza in particular -- saw a connection between the law of causes and the ultimate nature of reality. If some forms of our knowledge can be identified that do not depend on the senses for their fundamental reality, and if those forms of knowledge cannot be denied by any sane person, then it might follow (claimed the Spinozists and their disciples) that those intuitive forms of knowledge are as real as reality itself. They were claiming that if anything is real then those aspects of human knowing that stand outside of human experience must be fundamental to whatever reality actually is. They were saying that we must acknowledge as true such understandings as the law of causes and the rules of logic without knowing why they are true -- just as we acknowledge that something exists without knowing why or how anything exists.
It's clear that this approach to our ability to reason makes no claim to being an explanation of reason itself. The system of thought that assumes the validity of intuitive knowledge has going for it that by accepting certain objects of human knowing as axioms and working from there, an understanding and explanation can be derived of all that can be known.
But axiomatic reasoning is by its nature an admission that some things that appear to be true cannot be proven to be true. All of Euclidean geometry works on the same assumption. Euclid makes no attempt to prove that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. He just assumes that all sane people would agree.
The real test of Euclid's axioms lies in the system of thought that follows from them. If it turns out to be true that "the square upon the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to sum of the squares upon the two legs," then the axioms -- while remaining unproven -- derive a degree of certainty they would not have if the Pythagorean Theorem were false. The axioms gain more and more power as the facts of geometry develop into more and more powerful tools. When all of mathematics finally emerges as nothing more or less than an extension of Euclid's axioms, we begin to suspect that some forms of knowing exist in relation to our intellect in a more fundamental manner than, say, the law of gravity. The latter is not yet fully understood, so may be modified as more experience is brought to bear on the problem, but Euclid's axioms will remain true and unquestioned regardless of how the law of gravity is finally expressed.
So, we may distinguish between metaphysical systems by observing the extent to which they rely upon axioms that can be doubted. We may, for instance, doubt the existence of a God that speaks Hebrew, but we cannot doubt the existence of, say, Spinoza's God, since he has defined God as whatever is. We may question Spinoza's use of the word "God," but to the extent he uses the word consistently within his system, and to the extent his system explains everythng that is humanly knowable, then we would be inclined (though not compelled) to suspect that his use of the word is more powerful than the use it was put to by those who wrote of a God who spoke Hebrew and had mysterious intercourse with virgin girls.
Thus, as Spinoza might say, I have explained what I set out to explain. If you cannot be content to accept that some things cannot be explained by human beings, then you can make up a better way of thinking than the one I have described.
After all, Spinoza made up his system. There's no reason you cannot make up one of your own. Just don't expect other people to believe it if strays too far into areas of pure fantasy.
posted by Benedict S. at 2:34 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home