Just a thought

Taste, Touch, Smell, Sight, Hearing. These are the senses which have established and developed an entire branch of Epistemology. Empiricism claims that we attain all of our knowledge through these senses. I wonder, what is thought then? It's obvious to everyone that we are thinking. A thought is every bit as subjective to a person as those senses are and can be articulated with just as much difficulty. But how do we think? What sense is giving us our thoughts? Are we listening to our thoughts? What about seeing them, as in imagination?

What if thought itself is a 6th sense that we've never quite categorized? This would certainly help bridge the gap between Rationalism and Empiricism. Even if we acquire knowledge through our senses, they are still processed by our thoughts. Maybe thought is a kind of higher sense that all our senses channel through. So we attain knowledge of the exterior world through our senses, as the Empiricist say, and then it is digested by our thoughts.

But then how is extrapolation explained? How does someone invent or create something new? Suppose you teach someone how to add numbers together. Then that person figures out on his/her own that doing that process backwards is subtraction, or by adding several times you end up with multiplication and then that backwards is division. From there they begin to work out basic algebra and start fooling around with imaginary numbers. Once they've gone this far they can start piecing together basics physics formulas and start to recognize the laws of nature, deal with the concept of infinity and eventually surpass where Quantum Physics has taken us today. Was that knowledge acquired through the senses somehow? Should thought not be considered a sense in itself somehow?

There would be no difference betwixt them

I've just come back from traveling (hence the lack of a "March" post.) I went to Istanbul and of course went to see the sights. This meant a great many mosques. As I was over there I was reminded of something I heard a lot when I was in Jordan. Insha'Allah. It means "God-Willing." That was all I would ever receive as an answer when I was living there. If you try to book an appointment, there is not guarantee that it will be met, only if God wills it. This can be quite frustrating when you're trying to make a deadline but I think there is something beautiful in this faith.

In my life I've noticed that devoutly religious people seem much more even keeled, even happier. This is not unique to Islam. Their security comes from knowing that everything is taken care of. Imagine how little anxiety you would have over a job interview, applying to college, whether your kids will be ok or what sort of retirement plan to sign up for if you knew it was all planned ahead of time. Get the job or not, everything will work out the way it's supposed to. I'll say right now that I'm not making an argument for the nature of free will. What I'm more concerned with is the attitudes of people who don't believe they have it.

It seems to me that with this carefree attitude come happiness, and with happiness comes more value out of life. A firm faith allows people to enjoy the moments in life that I, or someone else who is less sure of his/her faith, might miss because I'm thinking about something else. The closest thing I can think of this being akin to is childhood; before responsibility set in and mom and dad took care of everything, life was beautiful.

So the typical atheist's objection would probably be something along the lines of saying there can be no plan because there is no God. I wonder if a strong faith in science and the scientific method is really any different from a strong faith in God. Taking this from the Empiricist angle, knowledge comes from our experience. Assuming that most people reading this haven't circumnavigated the world, I can say that from our individual experience there is no evidence that the world is actually round. Yet we are sure of it. We are sure of it because people who we trust have told us that it is round, and it is only if the world is round that the rest of astrology, and meteorology, and geography makes sense. That seems the like the same steps of belief as believing a priest who tells a creation story and says that this is the only way for creation, and morality, and language to make sense. For those of you who object and say "but we have PROOF" of some event, I ask you if YOU have actually done the experiment that yielded that proof yourself. Even video evidence of the experiment is insufficient because it is only a representation of reality. I could show you a video of superman flying but that wouldn't be proof that he exists.

And then, for those scientists who have actually done the research, they have David Hume to deal with. Hume was an empiricist and a skeptic. Science is based on the idea that under the same conditions everything always happens exactly the same way and if an event can be reproduced than we have knowledge about that event. Hume saw a logical fallacy in this assumption, which he called the problem of induction. The Scientific Method assumes that the laws of nature are unchangeable, and bases all of it's enquiry on this assumption. Hume realized that we could never never make any predictions about the future under any circumstances because we could not see the future. To make that not seem so obvious try to understand that sense data is all that existed to Hume. He realized that assuming the principle uniformity of nature based on experience is the same as assuming that all swans are white just because every swan we've seen in our lifetime is white. Suppose that every time you drove a car, you drove 20 mph over the speed limit. Suppose you never received a speeding ticket. You would surely say it was stupid to think you would never receive one in the future just because it has never happened in the past. As an empiricist, Hume saw this is a the same problem science faces when making predictions because it assumes that the laws of nature will continue to exist just as they always have because they always have in our experience with them. Therefore, we can never trust that anything that has happened in the past will ever continue to happen again in the future.

To bring this back to the larger argument at hand, Hume has shown us that "proof" we believe in in science is a logical fallacy. Yet we still govern our lives by it. We still comfortably believe that the sun will rise tomorrow, and that when we drive our car to work the car will respond the way we direct it to and that the ground will not fall from under us. Knowing that this is all based on a logical fallacy I don't see another alternative but to call it faith that these things won't happen. We have faith that our experiences from the past will continue to hold up in the future and we have faith that people who have had experiences, such as circumnavigating the world, are telling the truth about their experiences and we believe them.

An argument to Hume might come from the Rationalist corner. A Rationalist doesn't believe that all of our knowledge comes from sense data but rather the knowledge has always existed within us innately and only discover it through thought and senses. To make this a more clear juxtaposition, an Empiricist would believes that without anyone to experience a sensation, the sensation does not exist, while a Rationalist will uphold that everything has always existed regardless of whether or not there is anyone around to know about it. One of the first and most famous Rationalist was René Descartes.

Descartes was an unparalleled scientific mind who is perhaps known today for the line that awoke Philosophy from a 1500 year slumber and brought about the enlightenment: Cogito Ergo Sum = I think, therefore I am. The way he reached this conclusion was through a methodological skepticism similar to Hume's. Descartes also believed that we acquire knowledge through the senses. Descartes realized that he had awoken from dreams that he thought were real. Because he thought that his senses were telling him the truth in the dream and he woke up to realize that this was not reality, that he could never be sure that his senses were telling him the truth at any time. Therefore, the only thing he could ever be certain of was that he was thinking and that there must exist something to be doing the thinking. However, this still leaves us with the problem of the external world. If the only thing we can be sure of is that we are thinking, then everything else is either delusion or reality and we take it on faith that it is reality. In other words we have Solipsism. Since Solipsism contests that nothing outside of our minds is real any way, the claim that faith in God is just as valid as faith in Science is valid to the Solipsist.

But no one likes Solipsism, and very few people even take it seriously anymore. It's worth mentioning that Descartes defeats Solipsism by defending the existence of God, which would also make an argument for a faith in science being as relevant as a faith in God superfluous because God would have to exist.

Two great Epistemological thinkers have come to the same conclusion, that our knowledge of the world is only attainable through faith.

Tis nothing either good nor bad, but thinking makes it so

A smart woman is raised in an affluent society. She works hard, and goes to a good college. She does well there but nothing exceptional. After graduating, she floats around for a bit enjoying her youth. Towards the end of her twenties, she gets a job with a newspaper. She works hard and is very capable. She gets noticed by the higher ups who give her a promotion. She continues to work hard and is spotted by a head hunter who offers her work for multi-national corporation. She takes the offer and moves out of the city into a suburb with her 2 children, husband and a dog. Her work ethic and intelligence help her to be promoted to an executive position. She works this position for years, earning 6 figures, building a new home and sending her children to private school. Her relationship with her husband is having trouble and they are thinking about a divorce. One of her children is suicidal and the other is being bullied for weight issues. She goes to therapy frequently and is taking anti-depressants to get through the day.

Then, a recession hits and the company has to start a round of lay offs to keep the stock-holders happy. She loses her job and is given a severance package. This lasts a couple of years and things look like they are going to be just fine. She finds another job, but hates it. She is laid off again after 9 months. The job market has no openings and she is forced to open her own business in order to pay the bills, which are becoming increasingly hard to keep up with. She continues to look for a job but has no luck and after a year of grinding to pay the bills, is diagnosed with Breast Cancer. The treatment takes her out of work completely. The family is now so short on money that they rely on Medicaid to pay for their mother's cancer treatment and food stamps to buy groceries. This woman rekindles her belief in religion and lets it blaze. Her children have long since been in public school and the relationship with her husband has improved. After the cancer treatment is over, she is still without a job and money is still a problem. Left without choice, she takes a job as a cashier at a local grocer. She is happier than she has ever been.

What I am presenting here is a story that illuminates a belief held by Psychologists Barry Schwartz and Dan Gilbert (see links below). Both men have theorized that we are happier when we believe that we don't have any choice. This of course runs contrary to a fundamental belief we hold in America: That given the freedom to choose, a person can determine his/her own destiny and be in control of his/her own happiness. Indeed, the whole foundation of democracy was based on this simple, self-evident truth. Could we possibly be wrong?

On the opposite end of the spectrum is mind control. What if we didn't have any free will what so ever and all of our choices were made for us? Would we be happier or just less sad? Would we even be anything? It seems hard for people to admit that "synthetic happiness" (as Dan Gilbert calls it) can be just as real as "true happiness."

Suppose the latter theory is true. What if the system we've set up for ourselves will only lead to our inevitable dissatisfaction with our lives and the only way out of it is to surrender our will and just accept things for the way they are? Is this a life that you would want to live? You'd be happy (or less sad) but it wouldn't be your choice.

I think people want to believe in free will, people want to believe that they are in control of their lives. To me, the same way it turns out to be harder to justify free will, it is also harder to justify choice in happiness. My answer to the problem of free will is to take the existentialist track and realize that we are still stuck on this earth with the illusion of free will. I think the same can be applied to this problem, that we are stuck here with the illusion that having choices will make us happy even though they will not. What if we had someone making all the choices for us all along but we didn't know about it? Say hard-determinism, or on a less cosmic scale, mind control. After all, you wouldn't know that you're being controlled. So where's the problem?

Schwartz: http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html

Gilbert: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html

The Nature of Identity

This is one of my favorite thought experiments. I’ll start from Carl Rogers ideas on the self-concept vs. the ideal self vs. the organismic self. According to Rogers, the Organismic self is the raw physical being of you. It is not likely to be entirely part of your self concept or your ideal self. How much time do you spend thinking about what your back looks like? Or your liver? Unless your stomach starts to malfunction or cause you some discomfort, it is not likely to be part of your self concept. The self concept is how we see ourselves. It is also how we think other people perceive us. Finally there is the Ideal Self. This is the person we aspire to become. Rogers postulated that the closer aligned our self concept is with our ideal self, the more complete/happy of a person we will be. 

I'm going to come back to that later. First I’d like to tackle this issue a little bit more philosophically in regards to identity. I want to ask about the idea of a self-concept vs. the organismic self and better yet, my self concept vs. your concept of me, and then finally my self-concept while I’m alone vs. my self concept when I’m with a group of friends or in an uncomfortable social situation etc. 

So first of all, there’s the organismic self; the physical specimen. This reminds me of the Ship of Theseus thought experiment; as proposed by Plutarch. In this experiment, there is a ship which has been in use for many years. Every time something on this ship grows moldy, or breaks it is replaced with a newer piece. Over a number of years the ship is made up of entirely new parts. Plutarch wonders if this can rightfully still be called the Ship of Theseus. Thomas Hobbes introduced another element to this thought experiment that makes it even more interesting. In his experiment, the original parts of the ship are brought together and assembled. When juxtaposed with the new ship of Theseus, though the one that carries the original name, we are left wondering which is the actual ship of theseus. Is it the ship with the original parts or is it the ship that has existed, been known as, and performed the duties of the Ship of Theseus? 

There is a similar dilemma in being Human. Our cells die off and are created all the time, to the point when we are an entirely different set of cells every 7 years or so. Yet throughout our lives we seem identify ourselves as Jack or Jill. Granted we grow and mature and our personalities develop but we never seem to say that we cease to be ourselves. Could I really look back at my 5 year old self and claim that that person was not me at all? Will I be as different a person when I’m 70 as my accountant and I are now? 


Somehow, although we are undergoing such physical change thorough our lives, we never seem to really question who we are. I've never picked up one of those "Hello, My Name Is" tags and wondered if I should write "Helen" or "Frederick." However, we certainly go through stages of role confusion. There are issues of authenticity that we struggle with throughout our lives. I wonder when we are at our most authentic. We all act differently when we are by ourselves than we do in the presence of our friends. Differently in front of our parents than our spouse/lover. We all have our separate worlds. Is one of them more true to who we really are than any of the other ones? This isn't even considering the issue of how other people perceive us. If I think my self to be a generous person but everyone else who knows me calls me cheap, who is right. Objectively you would have to say everyone else is right, wouldn't you? Can we ever really know ourselves at all then?

Egoism during the Holidays

The past month has been filled with commercialist campaigns designed to convince me that the best way to show my affection for another person is to buy a Lexus for them. The act of gift giving is ideally supposed to be a symbol of affection for a loved one, the gracious thing to do in the holiday spirit, or any number of altruistic endeavors. However, as I did my Christmas shopping this year I couldn't help but wonder about Egoism and if the tradition of gift giving could possibly supplant the idea that all of our actions are self-interested at their core even if for only a couple of weeks out of the year. 

So let’s begin by the simple and typical act of buying a gift for someone in your family. I bought my Dad a professional japanese kitchen knife this year. I had been thinking about giving him this gift since the summer and wanted to give him the knife purely out of the pleasure of giving him the knife. This may seem like it defeats the idea of egoism because I haven’t expressed any thoughts of this being some kind of tit for tat. Even if I had expected a gift of equal consideration, thought, and value in return from my father, it still would not have been the reason I bought him that knife. However, I did receive some pleasure in the process giving him the knife. The anticipation I felt for Christmas Day made my holiday experience more satisfying. This pleasure was mine not his. Does this mean that my act of gift giving was driven by self interest?

Psychological Egoism would argue that it does. In the behaviorist sense I was rewarded for thoughtfulness. If Psychological Egoism is to be believed, than this joy I felt in the build up to giving the knife is evidence of my action being self motivated; I knew that giving him something he would want would make me feel good so I went through the trouble of buying him a gift. The Psychological Egoist believes that the actions we take are the most agreeable compromises between our drives. If you take the example of law in society we can see that laws are put in place because they offer the most agreeable compromises between two or more parties to avoid conflict. Therefore, we agree to the laws because they conform to our own self interests. 

Plato had an interesting take on the morality that applies to this quite nicely. In book II of The Republic, Plato references the myth of Gyges. The myth describes a character who finds a ring that when turned a certain way renders him invisible. Once invisible he is free from the moral law of society and is allowed to become his own moral agent. Plato argues that in the same way that a society without morality would soon reduce to anarchy, so too does the individual. A person with no moral compass would be incapable of making a decision and would destroy himself. More specifically, our drives are fleeting; without a conscious agent allowing us to weigh drives against each other, external stimuli would be too much to handle. Therefore, some innate quality must exist to prevent us from incapacitating ourselves. Plato would call this morality. meaning that some form of morality must exist and if this morality does exist than we act not only out of self interest but out of compromise.

This of course sounds quite a bit like Freud’s theory of personality with the Id, Ego, and Superego. Indeed, we can use Freud’s theory of personality to suggest that Psychological Egoism is in fact wrong because a premise of Psychological Egoism is that we act as we do as because we are driven so; I gave my father the knife because I would receive pleasure from it. However, both Plato and Freud have suggested that morality is a necessary attribute to keep our personalities from destroying themselves, therefore morality guides us regardless of our drives and Psychological Egoism is stumped. 

What does this mean to the original question? Does my argument against Psychological Egoism suggest that the holidays are an example of unadulterated altruism? If Plato’s argument is to be believed than I gave my father that knife because it was the moral thing to do.