Chapter 8 – What Is Bayesianism Saying?

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 purely symbolic forms such as philosophical arguments or in more tangible forms such as computer programs—the mind will never 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 assembles to try to explain itself. It makes, and contains, systems of symbols for labelling and organizing its memories and thoughts: the symbol systems cannot contain it.

                                

   

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

But the model of the human mind and how it works called Bayesianism is workable enough to allow us to get on with building the further philosophical structures we will need in order to arrive at a modern moral code for all humans. The Bayesian model of knowing contains some difficult parts, but it does not stumble and crash in the way that rationalism and empiricism do. Bayesianism can justify itself as being a good gamble. It will do what we need it to do.  It will serve as a base upon which we may construct a universal moral code. But it does require of us that we agree to gamble on rational gambling as being the best way of getting on with life.

And let’s be crystal clear here. All the alternative ways of seeing human thinking and knowing are variations of either Empiricism or Rationalism. All the world’s religions so far. Marxism. Postmodernism. The whole lot.

And let’s be even clearer. We have to get on with life. Therefore, we have to have some way of organizing all our thinking. A mind that can’t organize and prioritize the details being fed into it moment by moment is going to dissolve into madness. Anyone reading these words and making sense of them has some program in place for simply handling her/his daily life.

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

The points made in the book so far then say these undeniable things:

1. Our world is in deep trouble. Nuclear weapons. Global warming. Overpopulation. Etc.

2. All the ways we used in the past to handle life are inadequate for dealing with our world now.

3.  We must find a new way of understanding what being human means. We can’t do without one. 

      4. Bayesianism, as a new way of building a base for our understanding, looks like our best gamble.

Therefore, from this point on, I am going to offer arguments and models of how humans fit into the real world which will not pretend to be perfectly logical; there is no perfect worldview. What we must now try to find is the best gamble, the most likely looking, of the options that we have before us. By the end of the book, I will make the case that the worldview I offer is a better one than any of its alternatives, which is all any writer can aim for.

Here we pause for a short rest. 



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                                                                        (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 sunlight 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 green-red-golden glide

Fade into drifting dust of breaking day,

The flowing tail and wings in angry pride,

Through fresh, rose-saffron Canada, immense.

   

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

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So. We’ve had a rest. Looked back over how far we’ve come. Let’s take up our task again and press on toward the summit of our mountain, namely moral realism. Maybe there, we might even find something unexpected … and unbelievably precious.