This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 3, Issue 4, from 1989.
Paul Kurtz recently gave a talk in London, entitled The Transcendental Temptation. Kurtz was interesting, but the behaviour of the audience left much to be desired. There seemed to be a self-righteous smugness in the air. A section of the audience made a notably ill-mannered response to a man attempting to explain his sense of bliss. This sensation, which he sometimes felt during periods of intense and productive scientific work, had a flavour which disturbed the flat certainty in a simple material world. No such doubt appeared to trouble the lives of many of the audience, who laughed openly and loudly.
Many of Kurtz’s audience would perhaps argue that they run their lives according to the precepts of science – an aseptic technique guaranteed not to allow irrationality to contaminate thought. In what way does this differ from logical positivism? This philosophy, associated with, among others, the late A.J. Ayer, argued that only things which were empirically testable had any meaning (I say testable deliberately to fudge the issue of verifiability versus falsifiability) It fell down by not applying its own metaphysical premise to itself. If metaphysics was untestable – and thus meaningless – so was the basis of logical positivism. A thorough skeptic also runs this risk.
Limits of logic
On the wall of the library where Kurtz spoke is a portrait of Bertrand Russell. Russell tried to set mathematics-and thus the basis of science – on a completely rigorous footing. With Alfred North Whitehead he wrote Principia Mathematica, which was to expound once and for all the essence of logic. They failed. It was proved mathematically soon after, by Kurt Gödel, that their central problem was not solvable. Perhaps they didn’t know it at the time, but their explanation was founded on a great fallacy. It is also one which many who condemn other people’s belief systems suffer from: it is the fallacy of the metaposition. A metaposition is a higher viewpoint, a position from which all can be seen, including other people’s reliance on implicitly contradictory language. My contention is that such a stance cannot be attained. Wittgenstein suggested that language is a ladder that we should dispose of once we have climbed above its constraints. But this ladder cannot be climbed-it doesn’t go anywhere. There is no directed ladder but a large spider’s web which goes off in all directions, and never ends.
Deep down doubts
Can we ever know anything with certainty? A simple starting point is that perception is a constructive process. Sensing is never mere passive reception of data. Data is sorted and processed according to preconceived categories. Whether these categories are a matter of nature or nurture is irrelevant here. The answer is probably both. Outright assertion of the primacy of the subjective may not be the best response, but surely neither is the alternative – which is what sociologist Habermas has called scientism: the belief that the only legitimate source of knowledge is science.
Limits of language
Language divides the random chaos of experience after it has been filtered by very low-level ‘prejudices’, the ‘stereotypes’ mentioned above-into categories which are to a significant extent defined by the language in which they are expressed. This can be demonstrated by the different ways languages divide the light frequency spectrum into different (and arbitrary) sections to label as colours. There are probably basic clusters of sense data which receive corresponding labels in all languages; like dogs, bodily organs and musical instruments; but many of the truly important elements of social existence can lay no such claim to inter-cultural coherence.
Two experiments provide nice illustrations. An experiment involved showing slides of playing cards to people, very rapidly. There would be errors introduced, such as the ‘six of spades’ being red. This would be perceived as either a six of spades, or hearts, without any inkling that anything was wrong. Gradually the subject would be exposed to the cards for longer and longer periods, and eventually would see the errors. In between, a period of anxiety was noted. Subjects began to suspect something, but could not see what. A similar experiment has been conducted using film of people speaking-but with a mismatched soundtrack. The picture would show the speaker saying ‘jump,’ and the sound would be ‘bump.’ Subjects heard nothing unusual, either jump, bump, or perhaps dump.
The pit of solipsism
We must surely, then, doubt even the evidence of our senses. How can such scepticism, such doubt, be ruthlessly applied without falling into the pit of solipsism? Solipsism is the belief that there is nothing the existence of which we can be certain. Everything could be an imaginary construct. Descartes’ way out – which included the famous I think, therefore I am – is doubtless unacceptable to many (Perhaps it should have been rewritten as ‘there is thinking… probably’?). It was based upon the belief that God would not fool us. So if God does not exist, how can we be sure we are not being tricked? It is easy to believe that we are able to manage without any need for faith that we can manage our whole lives according to the certainties which follow verification by science.
Some of this certainty can be wisely diluted by a solution of Popper from which a notion of science can be distilled. Science uses the best available theories to explain the known observations. We can perhaps mark the limits of science, but are these the same as the limits of knowledge? Science helps to explain plate tectonics and the genetics of schizophrenia, but what about aesthetics, or shopping? Claiming to live this rigorous way is reasonably convincing, but does it account for the discomfort associated with the playing cards above or the wrecking of Einstein’s blackboard? Einstein’s only lecture at Cambridge left two blackboards covered in his notes, calculations and explanations. They were kept in the seminar room as a souvenir. A Professor came into the room one morning to find the cleaner kindly finishing wiping one of the boards clean, about to start on the other. An academic horror story? And a true one. A disaster? But no information was lost. Nothing of scientific value – only of sentimental worth. Would a true sceptic feel any discomfort at this? Why?
‘Explanations should be as simple as possible but not simpler, ‘ said Einstein. Perhaps this is a route to a reasonable basis for limiting scepticism? If we are part of a swirling mass of meaningless, arbitrarily divided existence, then we need some rules to judge one thing against another. Simple empiricism is not good enough, unless you are prepared to suspend your scepticism at an arbitrarily chosen point. Perhaps then parsimony is an alternative – arbitrarily attempt to keep the number of arbitrary rules and judgements to a minimum.
It should be remembered that truth and certainty only have meaning in so far as they have behavioural consequences. And perhaps the most immediate behavioural consequence for many people should be the recognition that smugness is usually unfounded.
