Deeper Studies
Reason and Metaphysics
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Greetings, my friends! Be at peace, and be welcome. The fire is burning, the cider is mulled, the marshmallows are ready. Ah, but are we? Well, ready or not, let us sit down and begin.
Last week, I told you that while I quite agree that the study of knowledge is important, the study of reason is far more important. But what is reason? Is it possible for people to live without reason? Is reason infallible? And if it's not, how do we reason correctly?
Reason
I'm typing this from home, so of course I have one of my cats in my lap (he's correcting my spelling ). Now, I love my cats: they're wonderful creatures--loving animals that always know what they want, and they want it NOW! Do cats reason? Well, cats can be trained to do tricks, and they can solve simple problems, but we normally don't think of cats, say, sacrificing their time to lay in a sunbeam to clean the kitchen. Currently my cat is trying to lay across my arms--this interferes with my typing, so I'm more likely to pet him. Cats and other animals live for the moment, and they do not plan for the future in a constructive way: they do not reason--at least, they do not reason as human beings do.
Humans do plan for the future--well, let me rephrase that. Human beings have the capability to plan for the future: we do not always exercise that capability. The capability to plan for the future involves making choices. I could choose to go ahead with my typing (and thereby disappoint my cat), or I could choose to pet him--or I could choose to get up and do something else entirely. Which is the right choice? More precisely, since none of these choices would be "wrong," which is the best choice? "Right" and "best" are terms that we use when discussing ethics, and while we will not get to a full discussion of ethics until Section III, we can look at how to reason properly from a strictly utilitarian point of view now.
Strictly speaking, reason is the ability to evaluate our selves, our world, and the relationships between the two. This evaluation covers both time and space, since we can think not only about different places, but about the past and future.
The Importance of Reason
It is reason that allows us to correctly interpret the world around us. Now, the word "correctly" can also be used in an ethical sense, but this time we're just using it in the sense of accuracy. If I am not accurate in my reason, I could do myself some severe damage: if I did not use my reason to understand that fire is hot, I could put my hand in the fire, instead of my marshmallow, and get severely burned. Avoiding things that can hurt us is only one use for our faculty of reason.
But we also have other choices where reason comes into play where the situation is not immediately dangerous. If I spend all of my money on marshmallows and cider, and have nothing left for my house payment at the end of the month--not to mention what all those marshmallows would do to my weight--then the situation that I have placed myself into is not immediately dangerous, but it is still not good for me. That is one advantage that we, as human beings, have over, say, my cat, who only wants the demands of that moment met--we can plan for the future, and we can decide to forgo a momentary pleasure for a larger purpose.
Human reasoning gives us the capability to either accept, or to reject, incoming information. Because of reason, we know (or we believe that we know) the difference between fact and fiction. If we watch a movie, or read a novel, we may choose for the time being to temporarily suspend that distinction, but we understand that the two are not the same: this ability to separate what is true from what is not true is also part of our ability to reason.
This ability do make a distinction between reality and falsehood can be fooled. Stage magicians do this all the time--they deceive our senses to make it seem that coins can appear from thin air, or train cars disappear from the tracks. Stage magicians deceive our senses as a form of entertainment: we know that the seemingly impossible things that are happening on the stage are actually tricks, but we enjoy the tricks, and we reward the skillfulness of the magician by buying tickets to their shows.
There are others who attempt to deceive our senses, or sway our ability to reason, whose motives may not be so pure. People who write advertisements attempt to entice the audience to purchase their product, or at least to accept their point of view. Political speeches are written to persuade the audience to vote the way the candidate desires. People who write political or social propaganda--everything from the Elder Protocols of Zion to Mein Kampf to some of the anti-Communist screeds of the 1950s and 1960s--attempted to persuade their audiences that their social views should be followed. These are all examples of persuasive writing, and it should be remembered that there is nothing intrinsically "wrong" with persuasion, in and of itself: the ethics of persuasion lie in what you are attempting to persuade your audience to do, as well as in your methods.
We will discuss ethics of persuasion in more depth in Part Three, but for now it is enough to realize that not everyone who tried to persuade you to accept their point of view is honest. We use our ability to reason to attempt to make a distinction between honest and dishonest writing, television shows, speeches and discussions.
This is, however, one area in which we can get into problems: our reason is influenced by our worldview, and our worldview is not based solely on fact: if our worldview is not based on how the world really is, we not only have a greater chance to be deceived by others, we have a greater chance of deceiving ourselves.
"Deceiving ourselves?" Yep. Because our reason is based on our worldview, if our worldview is factually incorrect, then our ability to reason is affected. If someone truly believes that people of Hebrew or African descent are evil, they will be more likely to believe Mein Kampf, or books with a similar philosophy. If someone feels that rock music is of the Devil, then they may believe that every ambiguous or suggestive lyric is part of a "diabolical plan" to influence the young. Deceiving ourselves is a serious possibility for anyone, so it is imperative that we use our reason to reject those components of our worldview that do match reality.
The Problems With Reason
This potential for self deception stems from many sources, but the common thread is that we all have the capability to use reason to "explain away" things that we do not wish to include in our worldview.
Most of us form an emotional attachment to our worldview: we do not like it when someone criticizes our understanding of the world around us, and we tend to defend our views emotionally. This is true even if our worldview is accurate (or is accurate to the best of our knowledge)--we often react passionately when criticized. Passion is important, and can be a useful tool, but when we try to defend our worldviews with emotional arguments, we end up spouting far more rhetoric than logic--and we also tend to get as stubborn as the proverbial Missouri mules.
Let's take sports as an example: I lived for a while in the Chicago area, and was nominally a Chicago Cubs fan. This was back in the late 1970s, when it seemed that the Cubs could do nothing right. Now, it must be understood that I don't particularly care for baseball, but I would root for the Cubs if it was an important game. Yet I have seen Cubs fans who were so passionate about their preference in baseball teams that--even if the team was particularly awful that year--they would go on and on about how good the players were, and that this was "their year." If people can be that passionate about sports teams--and remember, the term "fan" comes from the word "fanatic"--imagine how emotional we can get about our religious beliefs, or our worldview.
The fan's attachment to their favorite sports team is a milder example of the emotional attachment that many of us form for our worldview. It's a bit more profound than the adherence of a fan for his favorite sports team, but we form an emotional attachment to our worldview, and we gain comfort from it--if nothing more than the comfort of understanding, or believing that we understand. Even an atheist, who believes that Deity does not exist, gains the comfort of believing that they understand how the universe came to be, and their place in it.
This "comfort of understanding" can lead to what I call "easy believe-ism." The emotional discomfort that we go through when our basic assumptions are challenged can be traumatic. The strain of searching the universe, and our own souls, for the answers to those basic questions can lead to doubts, anger, fear, or any number of negative emotions. How much easier, for most of us, to simply ignore the questions?
For Wicca, "easy believe-ism" is a real problem. Many Eclectic Wiccans are encouraged to believe whatever suits them, so long as it fits within the (extremely) broad parameters of Wicca: if you can wrap your concepts around the basic theology of the God and the Goddess, most Eclectic Wiccans won't blink twice at it. Many basic Wiccan books currently on the market have all the intellectual depth and clarity of your average bowl of mud.
Most humans don't like their basic beliefs to be challenged by other people, and many don't bother to challenge their beliefs themselves. As a species, well, we're lazy: most of us want to do nothing more than what we have to, and then we want to relax in the comfort of our lives. Truth to tell, it's a bit more complicated than that, but laziness does play a part in the process of reasoning. Thinking about philosophical questions can be a lot of work: separating our assumptions from our facts, sorting through what we know, what we believe, and what we're just guessing at. Heck, it's not just philosophy--look at any academic subject, like mathematics. While I do know some people who enjoy advanced math--sick and twisted souls that they are--I know of very few who would prefer doing math homework to, say, relaxing with a loved one.
Laziness gets its appeal because reasoning--applying rigorous thought to the situations in our lives--is plain, hard work. Reason requires work: to reason, we have to be willing to look at all of the available evidence; we have to be willing to properly gauge the information coming to us from our senses, our education, and our worldview; we have to be able to properly and accurately decide what information is correct, and what information is incorrect. One example is the web-pages that you're reading: this took a lot of work to write and revise, and I had to question my basic assumptions rigorously.
And I cannot even guarantee that this work is accurate. That's the biggest possible downfall of our human ability to reason: when we reason, we have the potential to be wrong. In part that's because our understanding is finite; in part, it's because we have the ability to reject incoming facts; but in part, it's the human potential for honest error. Because our reasoning is based on our worldview, and our worldview is based (at least, in part) on our current education, experience, and beliefs, what happens if we honestly accept as fact something that is incorrect. Don't say it hasn't happened to you--I know it's happened to me. To be perfectly honest, it's a good thing I don't claim to be wise--I have so much evidence to the contrary.
So Why Use Reason?
So, if reason is subject to error, why do we use it at all? Well, besides the fact that as human beings we cannot stop reasoning, reason can be a useful tool. That's not to say that human reason has no flaws, or is infallible: our ability to reason is like fire--a useful tool, but one that you must make sure that we use properly.
Reason can be an effective tool for discerning and understanding facts, but only if used in an effective manner. Let's say that you're sitting in front of your television. If a commercial comes on about a product you're interested in, you use your reason to evaluate the information presented in the commercial. If it sounds too good to be true, or if the claims made in the commercial are not reasonable, you're probably going to reject the assertions made. If the claims are reasonable, and you like the presentation, you may accept the assertions. You've just used your reason to evaluate the commercial--but wait a minute. What happens if you've reached the wrong conclusion? In that case--whether you rejected good information, or accepted bad information--you failed to use your reason effectively.
Reason can be a useful tool--when used for useful purposes. That sounds a bit odd, but think about it for a moment. I like Babylon 5, the science fiction television show. If I use my ability to reason to temporarily set aside my knowledge that the show is fictional, that's a useful purpose: I get an hour's worth of entertaining television. But if I use my ability to reason to try to rationalize the thought that Babylon 5 is actually true, then I've used my reason for a purpose that is not useful. Believing that Babylon 5 is real is not going to help me in my life--indeed, if it interferes with my life too much, I'm likely to get locked away somewhere with padded wallpaper.
In the same way, there are people who use their reason for any number of purposes that are, frankly, not useful. OK, I see some hands--what is useful? Well, we'll cover it in more depth in Part 3, when we talk about ethics, but one definition of "useful" is that it helps me live my life and be happy. Now, that doesn't mean I have to always use my reason to think deep, philosophical thoughts about life. Heck, I'm talking about a television show. There's nothing wrong with entertainment, so long as I use my ability to reason (there's that word again) to know when it is appropriate to watch TV, and when it is appropriate to do something else.
The problem comes in because we are all capable of using reason for good purposes, or for not-so-good purposes, or even for purposes that can only be considered evil. Reason can work for us, or against us: that's why it is important that our understanding of the world match the real nature of the world as closely as possible.
Reality
So what is the world? What is reality? Metaphysics--the category of philosophy that deals with the nature of reality--cannot be completely separated from epistemology--the category of philosophy that deals with the study of knowledge. We cannot know about the nature of the universe without knowing about knowledge, and we cannot study knowledge without studying the universe. Truth to tell, all philosophy is connected, and discussions in one segment of philosophy lead, invariably, into discussions of the other areas, but these two are especially closely related.
So what does our ability to reason tell us about the universe? If we remember that reason relies on both external information (sensory input) and on internal information (worldview), then we are aware that reason does not completely rely on objective fact, but it is a useful tool for discovering fact.
Order
With our ability to reason, we can see patterns of order in the Universe around us. We can see that things have structure, and that their structure defines what they are. We can observe that there are regular occurrences in our universe, such as gravity, and we can classify those occurrences.
Because the universe has order, we can try to understand it. Ah, yes, we discussed earlier that "understanding" also has an emotional or subjective component, but there is also an intellectual component: we can attempt to understand the mechanics of the universe by looking at the patterns. True, our understanding is limited because of our finite nature, but we can strive to understand as much as possible within those limitations.
But order is not the be-all and end-all of the universe, just as understanding is not the be-all and end-all of human knowledge. There are things in the universe that break the patterns of order that we can experience.
Surprise
The universe has patterns of order in it, but with our ability to reason, we can observe breaks in those patterns. It is the breaks in the pattern that tell us that our understanding is incomplete.
The patterns that we observe are human-based understanding of the universe. That sounds like I'm contradicting myself, but I'm really not: for us, as human beings, to understand creation, we have to classify and order our observations in our own mind--we use reason for that. But while the patterns that we see are important to our understanding, the universe is not constrained by that understanding. How many times have you seen something in the world that surprised you? You might as well ask "How many times have you seen things that defied your understanding?" This concept of incomplete understanding becomes very important when we consider metaphysics, but we'll get into specifics in the next section.
Chaos and Entropy
One of the patterns that we can see is entropy. The universe is decaying: patterns of organization are falling apart, and one of the physical patterns that we can see is called entropy.
Entropy can be illustrated in a simple match. Imagine lighting a match: it produces light, heat, and smoke, but the match itself burns. While it burns, particles from the match are dispersed into the atmosphere. The match is in a less "organized" state after lighting than before. No big deal, right? Our sun--our entire universe--is going through a similar process. No, it's not going to "burn up" in our lifetimes, but eventually--millions of years from now--the universe will be a burnt-out, used up husk. We will not live to see that end--but entropy also affects us on a local scale. Metals rust, stones erode, wood dries out and rots, living things age and die. Even on a local scale, the world around us is on an inevitable slide towards chaos.
Entropy can be resisted--on a local scale, and temporarily. While it would be impossible to re-gather all the smoke from the match and make a match again, there are things that we can do to resist the slide towards chaos. However, choosing to resist entropy or to assist it is more a matter for ethics than for epistemology, so we will discuss it in further depth in Part 3.
Opening the Door
Science teaches us the physical, knowledge-based structure of the universe around us; faith teaches us the non-physical, belief-based purpose of the universe.
Philosophy teaches us how to combine the two.
Well, my friends, this brings us to the end of our discussion of epistemology. It's been a rough road, but hopefully we've set the foundation for the remaining areas of study. Go out and practice what you have learned. I hope you will give long with these principles and they will help you in your Path of theWise.
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Copyright © 1997-2003 c.e., et seq., Justin Eiler. This text file may be freely distributed via computer, print, or other media, provided that no editing is done and this notice is included.
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