Chapter 6.                              (continued) 

The two famous rationalists have had millions of followers, in Descartes’s case for 400 years and in Plato’s case for well over 2000. These Rationalists have attacked Empiricism for as long as it has been around. Since the 1600s with Locke’s Empiricism, or even, arguably, since before 300 B.C., with Aristotle’s version of Empiricism, which Plato and some of his followers disputed.

Since Aristotle’s time, the debate between Rationalists and Empiricists has not let up. But in our attempt to build a universal moral code, we find we must discard Rationalism just as resolutely as we did Empiricism; Rationalism contains a flaw worse than any of Empiricism’s flaws.

 

                                                Eohippus (artist's conception) 

                 (By Heinrich Harder [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

Do we, in our endlessly subtle rationalizations, see what is not there? Not really. A fairer way of describing the dissonance-reducing tendency in human minds is to say that, out of the billions of sense details, the googols of patterns we might see among them, and the infinite number of interpretations we might give to those details, we tend to choose those that are consistent with the view of ourselves that we find most comforting. We don’t like seeing ourselves as hypocrites. We don’t like feelings of cognitive dissonance. Therefore, we tend to be drawn to ways of thinking, speaking, and acting which reduce that dissonance. In short, deep down, we need to like ourselves. 

There is nothing really profound being stated so far. But when we come to applying this theory to philosophies, the implications are a little startling.

Other than rationalizations, the Rationalists have nothing to offer.

What are Plato’s forms? Can I measure one? Weigh it? If I claim to know the forms and you do too, how might we determine whether the forms you know are the same ones I know? If, in a perfect dimension somewhere, there is a form of a perfect horse, then what were eohippus and mesohippus (biological ancestors of the horse), who were horsing  around  long before anything Plato would have recognized as a “horse” existed? Are eohippus fossils a lie?

Questions similar to the ones we can ask about Plato's rationalism, can be asked about Descartes' version. What are Descartes' clear and distinct ideas? Clear and distinct to whom? Him? His contemporaries? To me, they do not seem so clear and distinct that I can stake my thinking – and thus my sanity and survival – on them. Many people don’t know, and have never known, what he’s talking about. Not in any language. Yet they’re fully human folk. Descartes’ favourite clear and distinct ideas – the basic ideas of arithmetic and geometry – have been unknown in some human cultures.

This evidence suggests strongly that Descartes’ categories are simply not that clear and distinct. If they were inherent in all human minds, all humans would contain these ideas from birth – which they clearly don’t. (A point first noted by Locke.) Looking at a broad spectrum of humans, especially those in other cultures, tells us that Descartes’s clear and distinct ideas are not built in. We acquire them by learning them from other humans. Arguing that they are somehow real, and that sensory experience is illusory, is a way of thinking that can then be extended to arguing for the realness of the creations of the fantasy writers. In The Hobbit, Tolkien describes Ents and Orcs. I go along with the fantasy for as long as it amuses me. But there are no Ents, however much I may enjoy imagining them.

In short, by a little reasoning, we can see that Rationalism undermines itself.

 

 

                                            J.R.R. Tolkien     (credit: Wikipedia)

So, then, what are our concepts? 

They are mental models that we devise to help us to organize our memories. Our memories are what we consult as we go through the world and try to act effectively. We invent concepts by looking over our memories to find patterns. When we see a pattern, we put a concept-label on that file of memories. The concept label helps us to sort through memories more reliably and quickly so that in future we can make sound plans and act on them in timely ways. If a concept regularly helps us to get good results, if it keeps us from pain and in health, as individuals and whole societies, we keep it. When it doesn't work well anymore, we look for a better tool. Almost, but not quite, always. (Why I say “not quite always” I will be explain in upcoming chapters.)

Even ideas of numbers, Descartes’s favorite “clear and distinct” ideas, are just mental tools that are more useful than ideas of Ents. Counting things helps us to act strategically in the material world and thus to survive. Imagining Ents gives us temporary amusement – not a bad thing, but not nearly as useful as an understanding of numbers.

But numbers, like Ents, are mental constructs. In reality, there are never two of anything. No two people are exactly alike, nor are two trees, two rocks, two rivers, or two stars. So what are we really counting? We are counting clumps of sense data that roughly match concepts built up from memories, concepts that were built on much larger banks of data, and that have been tested and proven over years, or in the cases of whole societies, over generations, to be far more useful for survival than the concept of an Ent. 

Even those concepts that seem to be built into us (e.g. basic language concepts) became built in to already mapped areas of the brain because, over eons of evolution of our species, those concepts gave a survival advantage to their carriers. Language enables teamwork; teamwork helps a human tribe to get things done. Thus, language is a physically explainable phenomenon. It belongs in the fold of Empiricism.

Geneticists can locate the genes that enable a developing embryo to build a language centre in the future child’s brain. Later, an MRI scan can find the place in your brain where your language program is located. If you have a tumor or an injury there, a neurosurgeon may fix the “hardware” so that a speech therapist can then help you to fix the program. In other words, the surgery on a physical part of you can give you back your ability to speak. Even the human capacity for language is an empirical phenomenon.²

 

                    

                                                                  Stone Age

                                  (credit: V. Vasnetsov, via Wikimedia Commons)

 

In the meantime, eons ago, counting enabled more effective hunter behavior. If a tribe leader saw sixteen of the things his tribe called deer go into a patch of bush, and if he counted only fifteen coming out, he could calculate that if his friends caught up, circled around in time, and executed well, and if they worked as a team and killed the deer, this week the children would not starve. Both the ability to count things and the ability to articulate detailed instructions to other members of one’s tribe boosted an early tribe’s survival odds. Similarly, the medicine woman taught her skills to her daughter. That’s why numbers and words were invented and used and are still being used. They work to aid the survival of their carriers.