Truth as a ‘passionate affirmation of desire’

In William James’ The Will to Believe faith and religion finally move out of the realm of the superstitious and ‘spiritual’ to that of human experience. Religion moves beyond the narrow concept of institutionalized religion, and faith no longer need refer to faith in a supreme being. Truth, knowledge, reality and self are all recognized as being emergent complex culturally constructed notions that are contingent upon their historical and cultural context. There is nothing fixed, static or universal about these ideas. The irrational or ‘non-intellectual’ aspects of our being are acknowledged as being as important (or more so) as our rational side. 

 

Truth exists and is true because “we want to have a truth.” (P 9) James prefaces that comment with the observation that

our belief in truth itself, for instance, that there is a truth, and that our minds and it are made for each other, – what is it but a passionate affirmation of desire, in which our social system backs us up? (P 9)

Science for James is only one manifestation of our desire and search for truth and understanding of our situation in the world. Science, mathematics and logic are part and parcel of our ‘selves’ which also develop belief systems and desires, all of which form a complex web of interactions. He suggests that human nature ‘needs’ all of these mechanisms to continue being. Regarding science he states that 

without an imperious inner demand on our part for ideal logical and mathematical harmonies, we should never have attained to proving that such harmonies lie hidden between all the chinks and interstices of the crude natural world. Hardly a law has been established in science, hardly a fact ascertained, which was not first sought after, often with sweat and blood, to gratify an inner need. (P 55)

So, we are inclined to logical explanations, to empirical observations, to theorizing, to believing, to desiring etc. and therefore find those aspects in things and the world around us. It’s just as destructive to treat science and rationality ‘religiously’ as it is to rely on belief and desire irrationally. Reason and passion, science and art, truth and imagination: these all need to be conjoined rather than treated as either/or polarities. Science to James had become estranged from its own purpose in a way. He suggests that science, through a sort of ‘fear’ of being deceived or mistaken, has developed scientific techniques of verification that have become the real goal of science. Science had come to the point that truth in itself was no longer of paramount importance, but rather that “it is only truth as technically verified that [is of] interest…” (P 21)

 

We must move beyond our intellectual capacities because science can only tell us about things which exist. To be able to decide between the value of things (real or imaginary) requires us to use faculties other than logic, mathematics and science. James says that we need to consult what “…pascal calls our heart.” (P 22) Pascal’s notion of the heart enters into moral and aesthetic territory and acknowledges what I have been repeatedly referring to as the ineffable. Science may show us what things consist of, and how to accomplish certain things, but it will always be incapable of telling us why  and what we should do and to evaluate the inherent value in things. 

 

We believe in certain possibilities and so we pursue those very possibilities. Our opinions can become ‘more true’ by pursuing our interests doggedly with whatever faculties we may have and which may prove to be fruitful. We will recognize even the rationality of something only by “…certain subjective marks…which affects [us].” (P 63) We will recognize when things ‘are right’ because they will feel right and the results will be of value to us. Again we’re back to invoking the ineffable. While James recognizes our propensity to scientific exploration and the simplifying nature of categorization he believes (as do I) that we are only willing to simplify things insofar is that provides us with some particular value or use and, importantly, that we reject ideas when they dissolve away “…their concrete fullness.” (P 66). So, the need for simplicity of explanations must be balanced with the fecundity of experience. We desire both and must have faith that our conceptions of the world will constantly renew that balance. 

 

Thinking through Pascal’s Pensees

Pascal’s form in the Pensees make an interesting 17th century precursor to Nietzsche’s aphoristic writings in the 19th century. Thoughts and fragments variously developed with no strong narrative thread although after reading the entire book certain themes weave their way throughout the fabric of the text. 

 

Pascal clearly owes much to Cartesian dualistic thought. Mind/body, reason/imagination are never far from the surface. He also has a clear discomfort with the notion of the contingent: universals can be the only truth (maybe a neo-Platonist thread too?) while the contingent and historically situated are to be reviled and cast away as false. From this need for the absolute and universal comes also a static notion of human being. 

 

On initial reading I felt almost nothing resonate with me. My disinterest in the religious has been turning into something more akin to distaste, so Pascal’s constant  use of ‘God’ to ‘explain’ things was off-putting to say the least. It seems to be a common strategy in many of the texts we’ve been reading to resort to ‘explaining’ things that we don’t (or possibly can’t) understand by referring to a ‘God’ of some sort. This does move us away from the infinite regress problem, but it does seem the ultimate unassailable explanatory cop out. If we can’t figure something out then it must be due to ‘God’s’ doing. Sure. Why can’t we live with the notion of certain things being too dynamic and mutable to ‘explain’ in a fixed, static manner, or with certain things being possible unknowable? 

 

After discussion, further reflection and re-reading the text I have come to feel some of what I believe Pascal was getting at. His constant critique of the limits of reason made sense to me. Pascal was really picking away at the limitations of reason and of those who considered reason sacrosanct. He recognized that there may be ‘forms of knowledge’ that may not be rooted in mathematical logic and consistency. Although he couldn’t abide by attributing this to any bodily basis of meaning-making due to its historical contingency and finite materiality (so he always fell back on notions of ‘God’ etc.) he seems to have touched on something compelling. The more I read Pascal’s aphorisms the more they struck me as being informed by an essentially ‘aesthetic’ impulse which he ascribed to the divine. I see the basic sense of these thoughts as aesthetic and discuss this in my paper The Lure of the Ineffable. 

 

Pascal treats imagination peculiarly: as enigma, both good and evil. For example in aphorism 44 regarding imagination, Pascal says: “It is the dominant faculty in man, master of error and falsehood,…” and further that “this arrogant force, which checks and dominates its enemy reason,…makes us believe, doubt, deny reason; it deadens the sense, it arouses them….” And then, contradictorily he says: “Imagination decides everything: it creates beauty, justice and happiness, which is the world’s supreme good.”

 

Pascal goes on in aphorism 45 to say that nothing in man’s experience can possibly lead him to truth without ‘grace.’ Without God’s grace we can only wallow in error. He states explicitly that both reason and the sense do nothing but deceive us. Because it is possible to be deceived by our senses or reason incorrectly he jumps to the conclusion that we cannot do otherwise. Strange leap. 

 

His aesthetic sensibilities begin showing in aphorism 110 where he opens by stating that “we know the truth not only through our reason but also through our heart.” he goes on to state, and I believe that this is crucial to seeing Pascal’s aesthetic impulse, that

We know that we are not dreaming, but, however unable we may be to prove it rationally, our inability proves nothing but the weakness of our reason, and not the uncertainty of all our knowledge…. For knowledge of first principles, like space, time, motion, number, is as solid as any derived through reason, and it is on such knowledge, coming from the heart and instinct, that reason has to depend and base all its argument…. Principles are felt, propositions proved, and both with certainty though by different means. It is just as pointless and absurd for reason to demand proof of first principles from the heart before agreeing to accept them as it would be absurd for the heart to demand an intuition of all the propositions demonstrated by reason before agreeing to accept them.

This is a remarkable statement really: something I would almost expect to hear emanating from the lips of a postmodern art theorist! Pascal defers to ‘God’ though, where the postmodern theorist would likely not. What Pascal is saying is in sync with my experience in the world (through art and otherwise). I see this as a primarily aesthetic stance accepting that what we ‘know’ is not simply rational: that the rational is a modality of our experience but not the only one. 

Science, Reason and Humanism: thoughts on Bacon and Descartes

The 17th century, under the influence of writers like Bacon and Descartes, saw a paradigm shift into an era of humanism: a move away from the centrality of the Divine to the supremacy of the individual, scientific method, and human concerns. The self, albeit disembodied, became the center of experience and of knowledge. Through primarily visual observation of logically devised experiments nature was to be apprehended, controlled and ordered.

 

Bacon in The Great Instauration states his intent unequivocally as follows:

For the end which this science of mine proposes is the invention not of arguments but of arts, not of things in accordance with principles, but of principles themselves; not of probable reasons, but of designations and directions for works. And as the intention is different, so accordingly is the effect; the effect of the one being to overcome an opponent in argument, of the other to command nature in action. (P 21)

To command nature in action! No mincing of words here. The purpose of Baconian science is clearly to control and order nature for the use(s) of humankind. His method of choice was inductive reason: one based on empirical observation of carefully constructed experimental procedures. He insisted on what he felt was a new form of induction though: one “…which shall analyse experience and take it to pieces, and by due process of exclusion and rejection lead to an inevitable conclusion.” (P 23) Bacon explicitly rejected deductive reasoning. (P 22) He didn’t accept the a priori as acceptable ‘proof’ of anything. 

 

In developing his experimental method, Bacon also largely dismissed the senses except for their role in observing experiments themselves. The result of the experiment was to be supreme. And as far as the senses go, Bacon had a clear visual bias. He states in no uncertain terms that he will “…admit nothing but on the faith of eyes…” (P 29) Visual observation was central to his evaluation of experimental results. Visual confirmation of repeatable experiments was central to his, and our, scientific method. The senses being suspect and needing logical experiments to determine truth was an early step in disembodying the mind.

 

Descartes, in Discourse on Method, made the disembodied soul central to his conception of truth and knowledge. His famous cogito ergo sum made the split between mind and body complete. The senses again are suspect because they “…sometimes deceive us…” (P 24) The only thing Descartes could be sure of was that he was thinking. The body and its senses were not central to his notion of being or our experience of place. Reason was the ultimate arbiter of truth. He specifically rejects the role of the senses and of imagination in determining ‘truth.’ (P 29)

 

This emphasis on the 1st person present tense, establishes a strong move towards an anthropocentric, humanist view. This marks a profound ascendancy of the individual, or the centrality of human thought and experience rather than that of the divine. This allows a movement from sacred and social duty to the importance of individual self-fulfillment. We may be seeing the inevitable result of this progression in the continuing development of humanism to our time, where self-fulfillment of the individual may be the primary motivating force in people’s lives. 

 

So Much For Gideon

If Paine’s ideas had been universally accepted then we wouldn’t see Gideon Bibles in motels everywhere! Universal Nature would be the only Bible any of us needed: not the paltry confused words of humans. Maybe we would have Paine’s The Age of Reason in those drawers instead.

 

Paine rejected the a priori method of reasoning and instead based everything on experience, and most importantly, evidence. He strongly believed in universals, for example “…upright and equal government…” (Intro P 6) His beliefs are clearly and simply laid out:

I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy. (Pt.1, P 2)      

So he’s a deist who believes in an afterlife and in the equality and intrinsic goodness of humankind. Interestingly he doesn’t extend his desire to “…make our fellow-creatures happy” to his enemies. He states that that’s absurd (citation?) and is in line with Freud on the issue. Tangential point though. 

 

Paine has nothing good to say about the church: in fact quite the opposite when he states in unequivocal terms that “all national institutions of churches…appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.” (Pt.1, P 2) He does quickly follow up by saying that “I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine.” (Pt.1, P2) This brings me back to Zizek’s Defenders of the Faith article from the previous post, regarding the modern role of atheism in fostering plurality. Provocative as that article may be, I see some truth to the claim. He continues right away in saying that “…it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself.” (Pt.1, P 2) (This reminds me of Heidegger’s requirement of ‘authenticity:’ something that I shall look into asap to make sure I’m remembering correctly. If anyone knows the reference I’d love some help!). For Paine the church is an abject institution whose purpose is the maintenance of power and order.  To wit, and in no uncertain terms, Christianity

as an engine of power,… serves the purpose of despotism; and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests; but so far as respect the good of man in general, it leads to nothing here or hereafter…[and further] it has been the scheme of the Christian church, and of all the other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the Creator, as it is of government to hold him in ignorance of his rights. The systems of the one are as false as those of the other, and are calculated for mutual support. (Pt.2, P35)  

 Reason, evidence and science are everything in Paine’s theology. Paine characterizes reason as “…the choicest gift of God to man…” (Pt.1 P 14) and further that “it is only by the exercise of reason, that man can discover God.” Paine rejects the Bible because it consists in the unverifiable words of men of questionable intent. Much of the book goes through detailed arguments (particularly in Part 2) showing the inconsistencies and the logical impossibilities of what is written in the Bible. Paine most certainly maintains a mechanistic world view which is consistent with this form of essentially Cartesian reason. He says, point blank, the “The Almighty is the great mechanic of the creation…” (Pt. 2, P36) For him, mathematics is the root of science and “…the offspring of this science is mechanics….” (Pt.1, P 19) Science cannot be an invention of man according to Paine, because science and mathematics are universal and “man cannot invent any thing that is eternal and immutable…” (Pt.1, P 18)

 

To Paine, the only Bible is the natural world, which it is our role to discover, thereby coming to know God. He believes that each person can discover this for themselves and need no intervention by a priest, pope etc. Man is to use the principles of science to discover the organizing principles of the natural world, and by this alone, commune with God. To Paine, Creation

…is an ever existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed…. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God.(Pt.1, P15)  

There is no mincing of words here! Paine believes that God is universal, and while he allows for everyone to have their own beliefs, he clearly asserts that one God, through Creation, speaks to all humankind. One wonders if he’d still hold this view today, with large scale environmental destruction, genetic modification and cloning? Maybe the world can be forged and altered after all.

 

Paine’s reason is that of a disembodied mind; it is mathematical and mechanistic. His criticisms of the Bible often point to its dependence on narrative, on the poetry of prophets and of the fictional nature of the Bible. Interestingly, his own model is very textually oriented! He refers to the Creation as a Bible which is “…inexhaustible in texts…[and further that it] is a text as well for devotion as for philosophy–for gratitude, as for human improvement.”(Pt.2, P 36) This strong textual bias is peculiar in comparison to his critique of the Bible’s textuality. Paine’s logic is essentially language-based: a discursive conceptual-propositional view of knowledge, and one that doesn’t admit of metaphor and poetry! He summarily dismisses the poetic and metaphorical aspects of the Bible as meaningless. But, isn’t science itself somewhat metaphorical? Doesn’t science posit models of the world and then create ways to show or transmit that idea? Is there not a (perhaps intrinsically) aesthetic aspect to human knowledge and understanding? The primacy of science perhaps doesn’t have to be at odds with a primacy of poetry. Both artistic endeavour and scientific endevour seem to offer models of experiencing, and thereby coming to know, our world.

Freud’s Future of an Illusion

This constitutes one of Freud’s major critiques of religion in general and European forms of Christianity in particular. Freud conducts an investigation of sorts to answer the question: “In what does the peculiar value of religious ideas lie?” (P 18). Freud suggests that the role of religion is similar to that of civilization in general and comes down to protecting us from nature. He suggests that by humanizing nature we are removing nature from the realm of impersonal forces which can’t be dealt with. By humanizing them and attributing ‘passions’ to nature we can now view nature as having a will. This is an interesting connection with Carolyn Merchant’s thought regarding the power of paradigms of nature in shaping our behaviour. (See The Death of Nature).We are now at the mercy of nature, which means that nature may be benevolent and ‘spare’ us death and destruction, it could also be wrathful and Evil in causing death and destruction. Freud says that we have an “…infantile prototype…” (P 21) for this: the model of a small child in relation to a parent. We look to our parent for both mercy and protection and, as well, an assurance of a good future. Freud suggests that religion provides us a “…store of ideas…born from man’s need to make his helplessness tolerable…” (P 23) Freud also suggests here that the ‘soul’ or the ‘spiritual’ has become increasingly disembodied by religion’s positing of the eternal and the possibility of transcendence. Perhaps religion attempts dealing with ‘the ineffable’ in this way. (This needs further investigation and fleshing out).

The ‘personal’ God of Christianity allows the possibility of recovering “…the intimacy and intensity of the child’s relation to his father.” (P 24)Freud suggests that religion is “…prized as the most precious possession of civilization…” (P 25) While this is no doubt true, I find Slavoj Zizek’s short op-ed piece Defenders of the Faith regarding the European legacy of atheism rings most true today.Chapter V opens in an interesting way which brings up issues regarding reality and knowledge. Freud states that:

Religious ideas are teachings and assertions about facts and conditions of external (or internal) reality which tell one something one has not discovered for oneself and which lay claim to one’s belief. (P 31)          

I found myself considering what else may fit in for ‘religious ideas.’ Scientific ideas, artistic or aesthetic ideas, philosophical ideas, even TV ‘worked’ in some sense when swapped in for ‘religious ideas.’Freud goes on to investigate how we corroborate or trust other forms of knowledge acquisition. His example is geography and he concludes that while all teachings require belief in what they’re asserting, we don’t believe these assertions until the teacher has produced some grounds for truth claims. Freud is very much in line with Thomas Paine’s reasoning in The Age of Reason regarding the inability or unwillingness of religious teachers and texts to provide grounds for belief without circular reasoning (a proposition cannot be a proof of itself etc) or unjustified trust in sources.

Freud continues on and comes to the conclusion that religious belief cannot be proven by reason, and that claims that religion is ‘above’ reason make it impossible to prove or disprove religious feelings to someone who doesn’t have them. He acknowledges that religion still has had, and continues to have a major influence on humankind. So Freud’s big question is what is it about religion that allows this to happen?The strength of religion is tied to the strength of our wishes according to Freud. Religion is based on illusions. Freud does point out that illusions are very different from errors because an illusion may turn out to be true whereas an error cannot. Illusions though, like religion, comes from human wishes. This brings up interesting issues regarding the role of the arts in articulating ideas which may (or may not) be realizable. Is the aesthetic impulse essentially the same as the religious impulse? Are both art and religion attempting to confront, or categorize or situate etc the ineffable? Reason clearly needs grounds for its proofs, and so may only be appropriate for certain areas of inquiry. All areas or issues outside of logic and reason perhaps require other forms of confrontation.

Freud is clearly for scientific inquiry and methodology. So much so that he maintains the objective/subjective polarity, not noticing that science as well as religion impose the structures of our own ‘mental life’ on the world. (P 40) He suggests on p 47 that “…psycho-analysis is a method of research, an impartial instrument…” It seems somehow amazing to me that he could consider psycho-analysis as an impartial instrument. Heisenberg famously suggested that by our very act of observation the system being observed has changed.Freud reaches an interesting conclusion regarding a psycho-analytical view of religion. He states that “religion would thus be the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity…” (P 55) He comes to this conclusion in the midst of the psycho-analysis of culture and suggests that society at large is at that stage of ‘development’ and that we can expect to get beyond this at some point in the same way as a child outgrows his childhood neuroses and becomes an adult. The issue of using analogies has come up before regarding their applicability to different domains. I suppose the jury’s out on this still. It could be a potentially powerful model for viewing society and culture. Freud himself is aware of this. (P 56)

Freud emphasizes the need for education (P 66) and asserts that religion is not the path to becoming educated because “…in the long run nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction which religion offers to both is all too palpable.” (P 69) For Freud, science must be the basis of education, our basis for gaining knowledge of the outer world. In the final pages of the book he touches on some interesting issues regarding the necessarily anthropomorphic view of science itself. If even science is essentially anthropic then how can we know anything of the outside world? He grants this point and says that

…our mental apparatus has been developed precisely in the attempt to explore the external world, and it must therefore have realized in its structure some degree of expediency; in the second place, it is itself a constituent part of the world which we set out to investigate, and it readily admits of such an investigation…[and] precisely because of the way in which [the ultimate findings of science] are acquired, are determined not only by our organization but by the things which have affected that organization; finally, the problem of the nature of the world without regard to our percipient mental apparatus is an empty abstraction, devoid of practical interest.      

This final point is something that has come up in class discussions before. We’ve several times gone to the perspective of wondering what the constitution of the natural world would be without our being here to perceive it, and each time we’ve rejected that as not only ultimately uninteresting, but unknowable. We ‘know’ through our senses and mental apparatus as well as through our conceptual models and technologies etc. And that is what we are, or maybe should be, most interested in.