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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The Afterlife Hypothesis Tested (2/3)

Is it just a question of faith?

An earlier post I made ended with a question: why should the existence or not of an afterlife matter to you if you don’t believe it, even if it matters to me who does. Why on earth should you consider believing what I believe?

Let’s see if we can make some progress on that one.

Some people believe there is an afterlife and I am now one of them, though it was one of the more difficult things I had to accept when I investigated the spiritual life. After all why should beings so imperfect have an immortal soul? We hardly seemed entitled to such a privilege. To be honest, as a former atheist, I found it easier to believe in God than in an immortal soul.

The Bahá’í Faith is clear on the issue:

The soul is not a combination of elements, it is not composed of many atoms, it is of one indivisible substance and therefore eternal. It is entirely out of the order of the physical creation; it is immortal!

(‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Paris Talks: pages 90-91)

It is also clear that how we live now will affect the kind of afterlife we have. This is to do with how well we have fed our souls. When our spirit goes from the narrow womb of this world to the vast expanses of the next we will need all our spiritual faculties in the best possible order if we are to cope.

And just as, if human life in the womb were limited to that uterine world, existence there would be nonsensical, irrelevant — so too if the life of this world, the deeds here done and their fruitage, did not come forth in the world beyond, the whole process would be irrational and foolish.

(Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: No. 156)

I needed help with coming to terms with this improbable hypothesis and found it hard to take it simply on trust, though I did try.

I’m going to be basing a strong case to support the idea that beliefs in transcendence and the afterlife are the strongest possible motivators to building a better world. There is a problem with that though as an argument to defeat people who are sceptical. They could concede the point while still saying that there is no afterlife. There are many examples we could draw on to support the view that mistaken beliefs can be very motivating indeed. People have died and been killed for them – in fact are still dying and being killed. If the only difference is that one person’s belief wreaks havoc while the other one’s creed enhances life, we haven’t moved all that far in terms of truth value: just because a belief seems benign doesn’t make it true.

So if this pragmatic argument were the best one going in support of transcendence and the existence of an afterlife, we’d have to say that the case was at least one wing short of a complete aeroplane! Even high levels of positive usefulness, after all, do not prove truth.

So, before we move in more deeply to the implications for our society of a belief or lack of it in transcendence and the afterlife, it seems a good idea to tackle the evidence issue from another angle.

A Black Swan: the Case of Pam Reynolds

Is there really no evidence for an afterlife and/or the value of transcendence other than indirect and inconclusive notions of how it is better for our society if you believe it than if you don’t?

I think there is. We need to start with the black swan problem.

Taleb has used this as the title for his extremely relevant guide to the inevitability of the market crashes which continue to astonish us despite all the evidence confirming their eventual recurrence, but that is not the point for now.

It’s to Karl Popper that we need to turn. He originated the term in a discussion about falsifiability. If you assert that all swans are white, you cannot prove it even by discovering an extremely long sequence of white swans. You can though falsify it. One black swan will sink the theory.

The same can be said of mind/brain independence. I accept that a near death experience (NDE) which happens to involve the mind apparently functioning without any support at all from the brain does not absolutely prove there is life after death, but it is a necessary if not sufficient condition for maintaining that belief. I believe that this necessary condition has possibly been fulfilled at least once under completely controlled conditions. I think it may constitute a black swan for those that say an afterlife can be ruled out as completely impossible.

What is this black swan?

In Atlanta Georgia, the case of Pam Reynolds was investigated in the 1990s by Dr Michael Sabom (page 184 passim). His account is incorporated into a wider discussion of NDEs by David Fontana, a professor of psychology, in his book “Is There an Afterlife?”. Sabom states, and the surgical team corroborates it, that Pam was fully instrumented, under constant medical observation and completely unconscious as indicated for part of the time by the flatline EEG (a measure of brain activity: flatline would mean no brain activity at all that would support consciousness). It was as close to a controlled experiment as we are ever likely to get, he said on a television documentary on NDEs some time later. The surgical procedure she needed required a complete shut down of brain and heart activity in order safely to operate on an aneurysm at the base of the brain.

None the less, after being anaesthetised for 90 minutes but not as the video suggested when she was flatlined, she accurately observed aspects of the surgical procedure which were either a departure from what would have been the standard order of events or had unusual features, such as the bizarre appearance of the “saw” used, of which she could have had no prior knowledge. The surgeon in the case, and others who commented such as Peter Fenwick, felt that the usual methods of registering visual perceptions and memories in the brain would certainly have been  unavailable to her and could offer no explanation of how she could have subsequently had access to the experiences she described.

There is a huge literature on NDEs which many people with a materialist perspective refuse to inspect on the grounds that no amount of evidence can prove the impossible. This is scientism, not science, and I would urge everyone, no matter how sceptical, to investigate this thoroughly for themselves. The arguments parroted by so many that NDEs are the results of material causes such as anoxia or drugs just don’t stand up in this case (or in many others, according to Peter Fenwick).

What is of additional interest here is that the investigations of Ken Ring plainly indicate that NDEs are life transforming. His list of the changes they induce includes: appreciation for life, concern for others, reverence for life, antimaterialism, anticompetitiveness, spirituality, sense of purpose, and belief in God (pages 125-127). These are all things that we will hopefully come back to in more detail in the lifetime of this blog (though for some people it may already seem to have gone on far too long).

That list of Ring’s is a very significant one that paves the way for the next more pragmatic approach to the issue of why it should matter to everyone, why everyone needs to investigate carefully before they jump to the conclusion that an afterlife is impossible. A sense of the transcendent allied to a belief in life after death does seem to create a different more life- and community-enhancing pattern of behaviour in the individual who possesses them.

Time for a break, I think: more on that next time.

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