Chapter 11     Summing Up the Case so Far

How do we know things? Or, worse yet, do we ever really know anything? What is an individual who is sincerely straining after truth to conclude at the end of a careful analysis of the problem of epistemology? The pattern is there; records of centuries of fruitless seeking for a model of knowing are there; the conclusion is clear: Rationalism and Empiricism are both hopeless projects.

Whatever else human minds may successfully cognize and manipulate – in abstract forms like arguments in Philosophy or in more tangible forms like computer programs – the mind will never rigorously define itself.

A human mind is much larger and more complex than any of the systems it can devise, including systems of ideas that it uses to try to explain itself. From within itself, it can make systems of symbols for labeling, organizing, and expressing its thoughts: the symbol systems cannot make or contain it.

                                 

                 

   

                 IBM supercomputer Blue Gene/P (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

But the model of the mind called Bayesianism is workable enough to allow us to get on with building the further philosophical structures we need in order to devise a modern moral code. The Bayesian model of knowing contains some hard parts, but it doesn’t crash like Rationalism and Empiricism do.

Yes, it will be a gamble. No, there isn’t a way to avoid that. And we have to gamble. We can’t stay where we are. So let’s take the smartest gamble we can. 

Bayesianism doesn’t attempt to justify itself as being infallibly true, but it offers itself as a smart gamble, very likely to be true. And it will do what we need it to do.  It will serve as a base upon which we may construct a universal moral code. It just requires of us that we gamble on rational gambling as being our best, and likely our only, way of getting on with life.

And I stress again: we must have a moral code. We have to see, grasp, plan, and act in order to get on with life. A moral code tells us the answers to: “What matters here?” and “What should I do about it?”   

Alternative models of thinking and knowing usually are variations of either Empiricism or Rationalism. For example, Marxism was an original form of Rationalism. It built a theoretical model of how human society could be, then attempted to cram millions of real, often uncooperative, humans into the state plan it had devised. It didn’t work. The evidence is clear. Centrally planned economies wither. Marxism also makes citizens corrupt, lazy, and resentful.

Scientism is a form of Empiricism. It too let its adherents down. Too many scientists during WW2 found their life philosophy silent on what the Nazis, the Fascists, and the leaders of Imperial Japan were doing in the world. For them, Science did not take moral positions. A few even accepted the Nazis’ version of Evolution, and ultimately regretted this choice of life philosophy.

On the other hand, religious leaders all over the world still claim knowledge can be gained by other means, namely from holy texts or revelation. But as we saw in our early chapters, this revelation/scripture based thinking in the past has led people into some painful mistakes. Given its history, we’d be wise not to trust this way of thinking again.  

And, finally, a few ways of explaining human thinking are merely ways of completely dodging the issue of how human thinking works. Postmodernism is such a dodge.

And let’s be even clearer. We get on with living every day in our lives now. Therefore, we must already be using some way of thinking and acting. Attending to sense data and responding to them effectively. A mind that can’t recognize, organize, prioritize, and respond to the sensory details being fed into it moment by moment is going to go catatonic. Anyone reading these words and making sense of them already has some program in place for simply handling daily life.

It is also true that many people do not want to look at how they do the thinking they actually do in order to handle their lives. But this book is for the person who does want to understand herself and the world around her.

The case argued in the book so far, then, makes these claims:

1. Our role in this world is in deep trouble. Overpopulation, global warming, and nuclear arms proliferation all threaten our survival. We must act to counter these threats.

2. All the moral codes and the morés that humans have used in the past are inadequate for dealing with the world we have before us now.

3.  We must build a new code of behavior that can work, ideally, for all of us. We must enable team action on a global scale. We can’t just let our situation drift and hope for the best. That is tantamount to relying on old moral codes that overwhelming evidence is telling us are bankrupt.

4. In order to do the reasoning that we need to do to build this new code, we need to begin with a new way of understanding how it is that we think, form conclusions, and act on them. Bayesianism looks like the best candidate for a new epistemology on which to build the new moral code we need.

5. At this point in our project of building a new moral code, we can begin to study the data of our human history in order to then propose a theory/model of how our history works. Look for patterns. Form a theory. Test that theory against more data. The theory I will now propose is called cultural evolution.

Thus, from here on, I am going to trust my Bayesian way of thinking and use it to build a theory that describes how humans got to their present ways of life and how we could update it so that we may live with more health and joy and less pain and misery in the future.

Please notice again that this theory will not claim to be logically airtight. There is no such theory. But it is the best gamble, the most likely looking of the options we have before us.

Here we pause for a short rest. 

   

                                         Labrador Retriever  (credit: Wikipedia) 

Oyama Morning

The restful sleep of boyish innocence

Awakens, stretches, smiles through dreamy eyes,

Looks over sunlit window ledge and spies

His Labrador, Black Queen, fixed, pointing, tense,

Below the dewy grass and picket fence,

Stock still, as now the air her black nose tries,

Then delicate with stealth, she steps ... Surprise!!

A pheasant cock splits dawn light rays' suspense

And arcing, flapping, squalling, climbs the skies,

Squawks window-by, a boyish reach away;

Flinch-startle back, now pause, now hear him bray;

Lean out and see the red-blue-golden glide

Fade into drifting dust of breaking day,

The flowing tail and wings’ defiant pride,

Through fresh, rose-saffron Canada, immense.

   

     

       Pheasant in flight  (credit: Archibald Thorburn, via Wikimedia Commons) 

So we’ve had a rest and looked back over how far we’ve come. Let’s take up our task again and press on toward the summit of our mountain, Moral Realism. The next step in the logic is to study the data of our own history, propose a model of human social change, and test it against more data. Then, we can use that model to reason our way to a universal moral code.