Are We a Self or a Soul? – The Ghost in the Machine (1/5)

How dost thou reckon thyself only a puny form

When within thee the universe is folded?

(Ali, Successor to Muhammad,

quoted by Bahá’u'lláh in ‘The Seven Valleys‘ page 34)

Star-Stuff

Near death experiences come to the same conclusion as Ali:

As I indicated at the outset, what I have quoted here from our conversation describes only a portion of Mellen’s NDE, but it is enough, I think, to make clear that his vision is one of absolute wholeness in which all things are connected in a living cosmic web of organic unity. The visible universe is a universe of vibrating fields within fields, a dance of exquisite harmony, where, as Blake said, “Energy is eternal delight,” and everything sings of God’s immanent presence. At its core, exfoliating from the Void, is that radiant Light, which some have called the Central Sun, and which metaphorically may have its physical representation in the Big Bang, the genesis of it all, including the star-stuff we call ourselves. Because all things are truly one within this vision of life, we human beings-indeed, all living creatures-are one body indivisible and, as such, not separate from God either, but His very manifestation.

(‘Lessons from the Light‘: page 291)

Reductionists, those who would explain everything in the simplest possible material terms and insist there is nothing left over, find all such experiences irrelevant to an understanding of ‘reality.’ When we explore the issue carefully though, it is my belief that we will find a way of reconciling the idea of a soul and a limitless interior (inscape as I called it in an earlier post) with ordinary human experience.

Let’s start relatively small.

The Ghost in the Machine

The argument rages over whether the ghost in the machine, the pilot in the cockpit of our being, really exists or not. The question would then become not ‘Are we a self or a soul?’ but ‘Are we even a self?’

Daniel Dennett is clear. There is no ghost whatsoever in the machine. It’s a myth. Serial consciousness is itself an illusion. We also kid ourselves  if we believe for one moment that the self we feel ourselves to be is really in charge.

I’d better say, right at the outset, I’m not a philosopher as Dennett is. I am or was until I retired an applied psychologist by profession

A 'real' lamp post!

and before that a teacher of English Literature. When it comes to philosophy I’m about as advanced as Dr Johnson when he kicked a lamp post to refute Bishop Berkeley‘s solipsistic claim that things existed only as ideas in our minds placed there by God.

I will argue none the less that Dennett is fundamentally mistaken.

He produces what for him is compelling evidence that our complex brain has plotted and initiated its responses before we were even aware of what we intended to do let alone had the faintest possibility of making a decision about it. The fact is though he is talking about a response time experiment when we also know, for instance, that athletes delegate their decision to react to the gun to parts of the brain that respond subliminally before conscious attention gets the signal. That’s one of the reasons you get false starts.

But the decision to delegate is not made by those parts of the brain. So that we do not get eaten all that often by tigers and the like, evolution has shaped us to be able, in emergency situations, to react faster than we can think: that does not mean we choose to do that all the time. It’s not how we decide to buy a house or write a book. If it were ‘Consciousness Explained‘, the Dennett book in which this theory is propounded, would simply be the product of the automatic processes of a complex calculating machine not the purposeful carefully wrought creation of a person.

The brain has also evolved to automate well-learned skills such as driving a car. We’ve all had the experience of driving several  miles on ‘automatic pilot.’ To suppose, as Dennett seems to do, that  this is the same kind of process as deciding where to drive is treating mud as though it were cheese. Even if we were blindfolded with a peg on our nose, the latter error would become immediately obvious when we put the mud in our mouth. Unfortunately we do not have a similar palate wired in for distinguishing logic from confusion. So, Dennett gets away with his extravagant overgeneralisation. We end up believing, if we are not very careful, that my decision to go and visit my cousin in Manchester was not an act of will but of unseen processes in the brain automatically unfolding.

I’m afraid free will is a lamp post for me. When I decided to write this blog I kicked it and it was definitely there. (The brain’s complex automation adds a further complication to this which, for simplicity’s sake here, I am deferring to a later post: in spite of it I still can kick my lamp post of free will!)

But if there is still some kind of ghost in the machine what kind of ghost and what kind of machine are we talking about?

Identity, Self, Character and Soul

Previous posts on this blog looked at some of the arguments and evidence as to whether or not we will enjoy some kind of afterlife. If this belief has substance, then we have some kind of soul. What are the implications of that for our identity?

‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in his conversations with Laura Clifford Barney (Some Answered Questions [SAQ]: Page 212), explained that there are three kinds of character: the inherited, the acquired and the innate.

`The inherited character’, which he sees as the source of weakness of strength, most closely corresponds in layman’s terms to the idea of `temperament’ or `constitution’. ‘The acquired character,’ which for ‘Abdu’l-Bahá is the source of good and evil, has no simple equivalent being a composite of all that results from our life experiences: the concepts that stand closest to it are the `empirical self’, (which interacts with others, performs social roles and meets the gaze of introspection), and, perhaps, the `personality’ (which, it is claimed by some, can be measured by questionnaires and tests but generally has no moral implications for the psychologist who studies it).  The last, `the innate character’, is described as `purely good’ because it is a `divine creation.’ This seems to relate it closely to the human soul: `The personality of the rational soul is from its beginning; it is not due to the instrumentality of the body . . .’ (SAQ, page 240).

This description suggests that our sense of who we are is likely to be a composite and we may choose at different times to identify with these different aspects. We could be a self and a soul on this model, and not have to choose between the two as the title of this post suggested.

It is easy to see how we come to identify with our body and with the character we slowly develop as we grow and learn from interactions with the world and with other people. It may be harder, if not impossible for some of us, to experience our soul at all let alone identify with it.

How do we do that? What does it feel like?

Those are big questions and will have to wait for the next post.

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The Limits of Reason

An Insult to Reason

To disparagingly call reason a candle in the dark vastness of the universe as I did in a recent post might seem a bit dismissive. Perhaps there was a touch of overstatement there. It may not be quite that feeble but the difference between a candle and a searchlight in virtually infinite space might not count for much.

My problem is, though, that Western culture does tend to display what Karl Popper calls an ‘irrational faith in reason’. That we, who

Elephant and Rider

are its inheritors, do so is a value judgement not an objective assessment. This is what I wanted to call into question.

The earlier bald statement could be seen as an example of the dogmatism I distrust so much. So, I thought I’d better unpack my thinking now with a touch more humility.

Reason is not perfect

From 1904, for a period of about three years, Laura Clifford Barney recorded her conversations with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the son of the founder of the Bahá’í Faith. This record was published as Some Answered Questions. It covers a wealth of fascinating topics including a  discussion of how we acquire knowledge. On page 297 he is recorded as saying:

the method of reason is not perfect, for the differences of the ancient philosophers, the want of stability and the variations of their opinions, prove this. For if it were perfect, all ought to be united in their ideas and agreed in their opinions.

Of course, our modern methodology involves using reason alongside systematically explored experience. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá questions the reliability of sense data as well (same page).

. . . the principal method of gaining knowledge is through the senses; [philosophers] (a term he used at this point in a way that would include scientists) consider it supreme, although it is imperfect, for it commits errors. For example, the greatest of the senses is the power of sight. The sight sees the mirage as water, and it sees images reflected in mirrors as real and existent; large bodies which are distant appear to be small, and a whirling point appears as a circle. The sight believes the earth to be motionless and sees the sun in motion, and in many similar cases it makes mistakes. Therefore, we cannot trust it.

We may well feel, reading this, that quoting what was said in someone’s “tired moments” (page xvii) more than 100 years ago,  no matter how wise and spiritual the insights might be, is about as helpful in the 21st Century as a furcoat in the Sahara.

I think instead that what he said is more relevant than ever and I am not alone. Much has been written on the same issue since, and some of it very recently at that, and it’s coming from much the same position. Highly regarded thinkers, whose lives have been dedicated to puzzling over precisely these problems, are among those espousing this point of view.

Reviewing Some Recent Thinking

I’ll be looking very briefly at what Jurgen Habermas, Ken Wilber and Jonathan Haidt have said about the limits of reason and dangers of an uncritical acceptance of the supposedly scientific approach.

Before I talk about Habermas I have a confession to make. I don’t read German and I have struggled with English translations of his work.  I’ll be relying instead on secondary sources, mainly Michael Pusey‘s excellent book, and will be slightly simplifying the discussion there for present purposes.

Pusey explains (page 51) that at the threshold of modernity Habermas sees three modes of relating to the world becoming increasingly differentiated: there is first the ‘instrumental’ approach, then the ‘ethical’ perspective and thirdly the ‘aesthetic’ take on reality. These need to be in balance and integrated. We have increasingly privileged the instrumental (ends/means or rational/purposive) at the expense of the other two (moral and expressive). This mode has ‘colonised’ what Habermas calls the ‘lifeworld.’ Discourse from the other two positions plays second fiddle to the ‘instrumental’ (sorry! I couldn’t resist the pun!) This impoverishes the decision-making processes of our public lives. Values and subjectivity are seen as second rate, on no objective basis whatsoever.

Ken Wilber in ‘The Marriage of Sense and Soul‘ does not shrink from using a more expressive and subjective language when he makes his case. Again I will be highly selective in my treatment here in order to keep it short as well as relatively straightforward. The book, though, is brilliant and needs to be read from cover to cover more than once.

He says (page 56):

Put bluntly, the I and the WE were colonialised by the IT. The Good and the Beautiful were overtaken by a growth in monological Truth . . . . Full of itself and flush with stunning victories, empirical science became scientism, the belief that there is no reality save that revealed by science, and no truth save that which science delivers. . . . Art and morals and contemplation and spirit were all demolished by the scientific bull  in the china shop of consciousness.

For monological substitute ‘monochrome’ or ‘tunnel-visioned’ if it helps.

He advocates a broader sense of what empiricism is (page 152-3):

. . . there is sensory empiricism, . . . mental empiricism . . . , and spiritual empiricism. In other words, there is evidence seen by the eye of the  flesh, evidence seen by the eye of the mind, . . . and evidence seen by the eye of contemplation.

Interestingly this brings us back to ‘Some Answered Questions,’ the point from which we started:

Know then: that which is in the hands of people, that which they believe, is liable to error. For, in proving or disproving a thing, if a proof is brought forward which is taken from the evidence of our senses, this method, as has become evident, is not perfect; if the proofs are intellectual, the same is true; or if they are traditional, such proofs also are not perfect. Therefore, there is no standard in the hands of people upon which we can rely.

But the bounty of the Holy Spirit gives the true method of comprehension which is infallible and indubitable. This is through the help of the Holy Spirit which comes to man, and this is the condition in which certainty can alone be attained.

Whether you accept that spiritual insight is the only approach we can rely on or whether you feel it is one of several ways of knowing that complement one another, what is clear is that the spiritual method is not to be discounted and the method of reason is not to be enshrined.

The Last Word (for now)

I’ll give the last word on the limitations of reason to Jonathan Haidt from his book ‘The Happiness Hypothesis.’ He draws upon the analogy used in the ancient traditions of the East, which see reason as the rider on the back of a huge elephant consisting of all the other forces inside us (page 17):

. . . the rider is an advisor or servant: not king, president or charioteer with a firm grip on the reins. . . . The elephant, in contrast, is everything else. The elephant includes the gut feelings, the visceral reactions, emotions and intuitions that comprise much of the automatic system. The elephant and the rider each have their own intelligence, and when they work together well they enable the unique brilliance of human beings. But they don’t always work together well.

And he goes on to analyse why and in what ways.

In my view, what is true for an individual is also true by analogy of a society. It’s time we as a collective dethroned reason and learned to work with the elephant and reason together. The price of failing to do so could be very high indeed.

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