metonymy4u

Behaviorism is often given a bad name by those who I will call the meaning seekers. These are authors who think that to present a description of stimulus and response is inadequate. Whether they wish to add back in some sort of symbol, signifier, or the more scientific sounding “cognitive appraisal,” they are nevertheless engaging the age old practice of seeking something else. For the past 250 years, our particular community version of this quest has it that human psychology can be subdivided into two primary components: the immediate experience, or sense data, and the synthesis of the data through interpretation and judgment.

But what if we looked at the situation from a different perspective? What if instead of seeking the inner synthetic principles of knowledge we instead learned to speak simply about the felt sense of experiences? What if we analyzed events, without remainder, into descriptions of experiences and degrees of certainty about those experiences? And for this felt sense of certainty—a.k.a. meaning—we substituted for the authoritarian sounding “truth,” a poetic discourse whose symbolism could only be cashed out when apprehended by an audience of our peers?

On this reading, “meaning” does not lose any of its value to the community for being interpreted in terms of stimulus and response. It merely abrogates any claim to authoritarianism. And so the meaning seekers lose nothing they didn’t already have, and the behaviorists gain all that they wished to gain from the very beginning. Which is an acknowledgement that meaning itself is simply one event amongst many—though, to be sure, an event particularly interesting to those of us who are aware of living inside our own skins!

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It seems to me that our community spends a great deal of time trying to modify the habits of others, and relatively little time reflecting on our own behaviors. And we seem to teach our young people all about this as a routine part of growing up. But what if, instead of trying to tell everyone else what to do, we spent a little more time and energy on our own habits and biases? We seem to take it for granted that all “well adjusted” individuals should know how to “control themselves.” But where do we learn how to care for ourselves and, by extension, how to care for others? And if some miss out on the opportunity to learn, what then is the solution? All too often the response consists of incarcerations, bombings or other punishments for those “mal-adjusted” to “civil society.” Which seems strange to me. It seems to me in fact that it is just as much the community that failed to teach that should be held accountable. Perhaps even more so than the student who supposedly failed to learn. And so I wonder how we can be so surprised at a world gone astray, when we refuse to spend even the smallest fraction of our military industrial budget on the effort, to teach to learn?

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In my opinion, one of Kant’s greatest contributions was to teach us a language of interdependence. That the series cannot exist without the logical limit and vice versa. That we should stop trying to separate them. Or at least stop being surprised when the effort to do so quickly founders on the shores of confusion.

On this reading, zero can no longer be considered an experiencable number. Rather, like the notion of infinity, it is the conceptual limit of a series of experiences. And so perhaps we can finally dispense with the idea of a nothing. And believe that we will always be a part of the universe.

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Humans often find themselves tangled up in several common dialectics: eternity vs. finitude, freedom vs. determination, duty vs. prudence, order vs. chaos, good vs. evil, etc. We often believe that a choice must be made. That we cannot be both free and determined, good and evil, clear and confused, prudent and dutiful, eternal and limited,— at the same time.

But this is just illusion.

Because the idea of eternity is nothing more than the limit of an infinite series of changes in position and time.

And the idea of good is nothing more than the limit of an infinite series of attempts to remove impediments to freedom.

And chaos is nothing but the limit of what we encompass.

Therefore, because there is effort, there must be limit. One cannot be without the other.

So be comforted: live—and believe.

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The problem of induction has had many faces over the last 250 years, since inductive reasoning was first articulated as the guiding light of the new science in western Europe. Besides the ontological proof, here are some additional ways of conceptualizing the dilemma:

Space travel: if you get up to cross the room to get a cup of coffee, first you have to travel half the distance from here to your coffee. But then you have to travel half of that remaining distance. But then you have to travel half of that remaining distance, but then…and so on…Presumably, each of these distances you travel requires a certain amount of time. So the problem of an infinitely divisible continuum of space and time is that it appears that to travel any finite distance, takes an infinite amount of time. So how can we account for any sort of movement in space and time?

Moreover, how can we account for the beginning of the universe, given that any arbitrary starting point could have been preceded by another starting point, ad infinitum? Are we to accept the absurd conclusion that there was no starting point, and that therefore we ourselves don’t exist?

Ethics and duty: to say that someone ought to do something is to imply that they should not let anything stand in their way of doing it. For example, if we say one ought not to lie, then lying is immoral no matter what benefits might accrue. For to say that lying is ok in some circumstances and not in others is not to talk about duty, but to talk about prudence. So to say that “X” is a duty is to imply that one should not let any concrete extenuating circumstance get in one’s way of performing “X.” But this implies that one could actually eliminate all of those extenuating circumstances in order to guarantee performance of “X.” Because if that’s not possible, then one is just talking about some hypothetical “X” that no one could ever actually accomplish, and to talk about a duty to do something that is not EVER actually physically possible to accomplish is absurd. So how can we ever talk about duties with anything but absurdity, given that it’s probably impossible to eliminate all extenuating circumstances?

The solution, quite simple really, also proposed 250 years ago, involves the concept of the limit of an infinitely inductive series. So time and space are not infinitely experienced across a well defined interval, because we developed a technology (integral calculus) to describe the limit of the infinitely divisible continuum. Likewise we could also describe the limit of our contingent approximations to what we would like to do if we had God’s strength and power. And so God would then be defined as the limit of the infinitely inductive series of spacetime approximations to an arbitrary boundary condition, as well as the limit of an infinite series of attempts to remove all contingencies to the accomplishment of the promptings of duty.

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Do you think that rational beings work for good or for evil? That is, do you think that rational beings, as such, intentionally and deliberately work to bring into being that which they know with certainty to be bad for themselves and the world around them? This seems contrary to our idea of life itself, as that which works for its own self preservation. Therefore, the notion of a rational being seems to imply a being which works for its own good, based at least on its own understanding of that good. Of course, its understanding may be flawed due to insanity or ignorance, but then it can hardly be termed rational. So rational beings work for the good. And to the extent that God is conceived as an all powerful, all knowing rational being, she must therefore be thought to be working for the good, and against the evil. This world, therefore, must be thought to be the best of all possible worlds, since if God, being all knowing and all powerful, knew of a better possible world, she would not fail to cause its existence. So God, in addition to being the cause of everything, necessarily also creates the best of all possible worlds. QED.

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Do you believe in cause and effect? That is, do you think every event must have been caused by some other event? Or do you think that things just happen spontaneously, with no explanation or cause whatsoever? If you believe in cause and effect, then you must believe that the universe as a whole has a cause. If you didn’t, then you’d have to believe that we ourselves don’t exist, which is absurd. So, if you believe in cause and effect, and you believe we exist, you must believe in a cause of everything, which is what most people call God. Therefore belief in God must be rationally necessary, to the extent that we believe in cause and effect and our own existence. QED.

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My students often ask me how I can justify the teaching of science in the face of their religious or spiritual beliefs? My answer is that I have no need for such a justification, because I don’t accept the premise of their question: that science and religion are incompatible.

For science is nothing but an estimate of probabilities, not a statement of certainty.

As such, it is infinitely open to the spiritual possibility.

As proof, I can give a complete description of the dialectic of science without one single reference to religion.

Check it out:

Science investigates the thesis that “A causes B.”
To do this, we consider an alternative explanation, the anti-thesis, “A does not cause B.”
We then estimate the probability that the anti-thesis is the more accurate statement, and the corresponding probability that by accepting the thesis and rejecting the anti-thesis, we are in error. (This is called a type I error).
Generally, if the probability of being in error is less than 5%, we accept the accuracy of the thesis.
Sometimes we ask for more, and insist on only a 1% probability.
It is an arbitrary line in the sand.
But it seems to work much of the time.
But here’s the thing: does this probability stop us from loving the world?
In fact, science would likely tell say that learning to love the world is a healthy thing to do.
To a 5% probability of success.

And those sound like good odds to me.

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could we honor duty more by invoking it less?

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One of the most difficult questions for enlightenment Europe was a choice between ideas of time as absolute and static or relative and dynamic. Newton believed in absolute time, kept by the ticking of a universal clock, against which all other events could be measured. Space also was absolute and unchanging, for what is space but the idea that an object has changed positions while time ticked away? Leibniz on the other hand had trouble endorsing fixed space-time. Because he was committed to the picture of a universe of harmony, a holistically and instantaneously evolving system of the best of all possible worlds, guaranteed by God’s omnipotence and omniscience. This of course is Leibniz’s version of the ontological proof, really just an assumption, that if God exists, she would create the best of all possible worlds, since, being all knowing and all powerful, she would surely know immediately if another more perfect world were possible and would create that instead. Time cannot be a fixed part of the universe in such a model, because if it were, it would be independent of God’s supreme power, and it would be possible for something, acting in time, to interfere with the creation of the most perfect universe.

So change for Leibniz is dynamic and systemic: involving the entire universe and subject to God’s infallible will. This includes our experience of time, which must be supposed malleable enough so as to be no impediment to divine harmony. In this sense, Leibniz is the forefather of modern systems theory and stochastic modeling, in which linear cause and effect relations are minimized in favor of holistic and probabilistic descriptions. So Newton and Leibniz, both towering examples of 17th century genius had their supporters and detractors, and one of the most famous intellectual controversies of the era was fought over allegiances to one or the other. The dialectic probably seemed, in their time, virtually insoluble.

Interestingly, in the early part of the 20th century, Einstein proposed another version of Leibnizian dynamism, which seems to be much more empirically valid, on some scales, than Newtonian models. In this case, Einsteinian time is relative to mass and movement. It’s almost like mass and movement are the dynamic harmony to which we all must dance. This has given modern science a way to synthesize the dialectic: at slow speeds and minimal gravitational potentials, Newton’s model can be used, however at high speeds and significant gravitational potentials, we must go with Einstein, and Leibniz.

Kant also proposed his own synthesis, long before Einstein. Kant’s model of moral duty rehabilitated the notion of a pre-established harmony, just relativized, in this case, to human language. He said that what we mean when we say someone “ought” to do something, is that the performance of the action is required no matter what contingencies might intervene in a world experienced through Newtonian time. To say, “I ought to save your life” translates without remainder to statements about saving your life even if I die myself, or my whole family dies in the process, or the whole planet is destroyed. There is no possibility of qualification for a true “ought.” If qualified, then we are talking about prudence, not duty. Contained within this assertion is the implied idea of an all-powerful and all-knowing God who knows with certainty why it is [good] for the entire planet to die to save your life, and who guarantees the goodness implied by my idea of ought. But the whole scheme is dependent on Kant’s famous acknowledgment (that he also got from Leibniz) of the fallibility of human reason, which often blocks us from knowing the absolute good, and which explains why we don’t always sacrifice the planet for the saving of one life. Not because it is [good] to sacrifice the individual life instead of the planet, but because we are ignorant.

In the end, all we can say is that we have a God like sense of [freedom] inescapably foisted upon us by a world subject to the absolute and inexorable ticking of time. But this “freedom” often also leads to inescapable dizziness and nausea, which is the sense that things could have been otherwise if only we had been smarter, and stronger.

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