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Making Sense of Anything
Babies aren’t stupid. They look stupid, but they aren’t. They can start manipulating people around them when only a few days old. The problem babies have is that the world simply produces far too much data, and it takes a person years to figure out how to filter out enough stimulus to be able to accurately use our senses.
As we grow, we keep advancing this skillset. Most highly-productive adults manage precisely because we have trained their minds to ignore or otherwise block out the vast majority of data that our bodies is capable of receiving. Otherwise, we would be as paralyzed as a newborn.
So how do we make sense of it all? Not, as we might like to think, by using cold reason. “Correlation is not causality” is certainly a well-known logical fallacy, but correlation is causality for the vast majority of life experiences, especially for human thoughts, words and emotions that have little or no physical reality. In other words: we adopt or make up stories to make sense of the world.
There is, in human experience, no other way. These stories are not necessarily fairy tales or biblical; stories exist within the Scientific Method and all manners of technical fields as well. Every scientific or engineering model is a story. We need stories to find a way to make sense of all the noise, to separate the important things from the tangential or irrelevant.
Stories, are of course, not true, at least not in any absolute sense. As George Box put it, “All models are wrong but some are useful.” Any story includes or omits some data, at least on the fringes. The prism of our experience, our senses and instruments, as well as our language and culture further narrows down any experience we might have.
The vast majority of people are not remotely self-aware of any of this: data comes in, is filtered more-or-less automatically, and a response is generated. In cultures and societies where original thought is discouraged, it is even less likely that someone will see something differently. People see what they expect to see. And the old adage about hammers and nails continues to be true: if you are holding a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
This is not necessarily a criticism, of course. To do something very well, we need to be well adapted for a given task. A soccer player or a soldier needs to act quickly and decisively – under stress – in order to be successful. It takes years of training for such an expert to learn not to second-guess themselves.
Those few people who are able to consciously force themselves to mentally take a step back, and examine their assumptions often have to pay a price for this insight: they are invariably not as good at the core skillset, if for no other reason that they lack focus. Innovators are usually not, absent the innovation itself, effective competitors against the status quo. (This is one reason why disruptors are often dismissed out of hand by those who are optimized for the tried-and-true.)
Our stories matter. And, true or not, they are the reality for whomever believes them. There is no way anyone can convince a superstitious person to ignore their superstitions. Religion and science are at least as impervious to logic, and why not? I wrote some years ago on describing a glass that is half full of water:
This is not dissimilar to the question about whether a glass is half full or half empty. Both are objectively true statements, but they may lead to radically different decisions. Someone who chooses to see nature, for example, as beautiful and majestic, is much more likely to go on holiday in the Alps than someone who sees nature as a powerful yet impersonal force, cruelly indifferent to whether someone lives or dies. Both sets of observations are true, but they lead to very different choices.
Indeed, our beliefs allow us to discern patterns, picking them out from an ocean of vast data. Though it may be true that a table is actually almost entirely empty space, only loosely knitted together by atoms that are themselves bonded with spinning and tunneling electrons, nevertheless, for our mundane purposes, the table is a solid and stable surface which we can use. Our beliefs help us make sense of all the data, and to extract what we think we need to know in order to make decisions. We start with our senses, but it is our thoughts, words, and deeds that form the world in which we live.
A glass which is half full may be described as half empty. Or, if one is angry, that same glass might be described as a likely projectile. It could be a useful way to demonstrate refraction or light, or it might be considered as a crude (and perhaps short-lived) hammer. There are, indeed, infinite ways one might tell a story about a glass that is half full of water, and each of these can be true. But none of them can be complete. There is no way, if there are infinite descriptions available, that one could ever encapsulate all of them to give us “true” knowledge of the glass.
With this understanding, it is possible – and certainly highly desirable – for us to tolerate our differences. We don’t have to celebrate them, of course: I am sure that I am right, just as others who disagree with me have no doubt of their own correctness. The key thing is to appreciate that other people can indeed disagree with us without either party being necessarily wrong.
Let me put it another way: there is the old adage of a bunch of blind men surrounding an elephant. They each describe what they are feeling – one a wall, one a column, one a hose, etc. Not one of those blind men is wrong: they are simply connecting with different parts of the same elephant. Different conclusions are not necessarily in conflict with one another.
This is why conservatives and religionists and just about everyone else is making a big mistake when they take refuge in “the facts.” Ronald Reagan once famously said, “You are entitled to your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts.” Ronald Reagan was wrong.
Take a set of data – any data whatsoever. Perhaps, to keep things “objective,” we can use an actual set of numbers: say, for the sake of argument, a chart of the temperature in Boston during the month of August. I hardly need to write anything further to make my case, do I? After all, climate change adherents have already made it for me: mankind cannot even agree on whether or not weather is normal. Statistics do not lie – they tell a story. There is no “objective” way to present data – there are just different ways to make different points.
With the set of temperature data from Boston in August, we could show that temperatures are above, below, or precisely “normal.” By showing extremes rather than averages, we can make one case – and by smoothing the data we can make an opposite case. And that is just with so-called-“objective” numbers!
I have the same problem with any descriptor. What I call “plant food” (CO2) is, in the eyes of climate change adherents, a pollutant. We are both right – CO2 is a necessary and useful feed for plants, but if you think that what mankind does is bad for nature, then CO2 is also a pollutant.
We cannot win when we insist on “the facts.” Facts, like politics, religious beliefs, and schools of scientific thought, are too deeply connected to all the things that we have learned, over the course of a lifetime, to include in our understanding, or filter out as irrelevant to the story we wish to tell.
This is not a flaw in humanity unless we insist on making it one. I think it is actually an endearing feature, and one that anyone who wants to improve the world would do well to understand. Marketing is important because marketing helps change how people think. Assuming that what we are marketing is good – is marketing not a valuable thing to do?
A person’s reality is real for them. My religious belief is as real for me as is the belief of a Muslim or an atheist or a cargo-culter. I cannot deny that a Muslim believes in Allah, with all that comes with that belief, just as I cannot deny the beliefs of a Climate Change-adhering, Gaia-worshipping pagan. It is real for them.
But here is the catch: I do not believe that just because reality is subjective, that what is good or holy is similarly subjective. And what is “good” or “holy” is not measured by defining an underlying reality. To borrow from Matthew 7:16 – they are defined by their fruits – by what they produce.
The beliefs we have should not be measured by their underlying truth (which I believe is unprovable in any case), but by their result. We are very unlikely to change minds based on the assumptions and presuppositions of the people with whom we disagree. People find it extremely difficult to try to erase a lifetime of making the data fit in the stories they use to make sense of the world. Where we can change minds is by comparing the outcomes of the beliefs that people hold. Because while we might not agree on the nature or the name of the Creator of the world, most people can agree that certain outcomes are better than others.
Because I believe that mankind is supposed to improve the world, I am shameless in pointing out that lifespan and wealth and well-being excel in the places where mankind is most encouraged and free to be creative. Liberty should sell because it works, not necessarily because freedom is necessarily “true.”
Which brings me to the question: what promotes liberty? And the answer is as self-serving as they come: American ideals, backed by traditional Judeo-Christian values of hard work and responsibility, and respect for the individual whom we believe is made in the image of G-d. Each man’s life, liberty, and property are necessary (if not sufficient) ingredients for maximizing human creative potential.
For me, both from a historical and a practical perspective, the Torah is the common bedrock for the foundation of liberty. It took thousands of years to mature, but every faith built on different beliefs (and especially the non-faiths that inevitably decay in one form or another of the Law of the Jungle) has fallen fall short of Judaism and Christianity.
Which leads to my specific worldview: I am a libertarian Torah Jew. (It helps that I do not see the Torah as being in conflict with any of the above: the text itself, instead of arguing for some Greek concept of absolute truth, instead shows (and emphasizes) different perspectives on the same events.) For me, freedom and liberty are the keys to the future. But without the underlying text, we lose contact with what is holy and good.
In conclusion: while insisting that we are right and others are wrong is often very satisfying, it is rarely persuasive. (I remember reading once that Muslims in history have only rarely even been the majority population even in their own countries – when “marketing” comes down to “My Deity Says So”, it has already lost most of its audience.)
Instead, we need to help people value what we believe is good and holy: life, creativity, respect, freedom. And we can do that by emphasizing the things that decent people should be able to agree are good: long lifespans, good health, a sense of purpose and fulfillment in each person’s life. We need to tell the stories, celebrating human advancement and goodness. We need to help everyone dream of what they can do. Such a goal helps all of mankind direct our lives toward the holy and the good.
Published in General
The idea of love is a specific idea with specific criteria. The very idea of consequentialist arguments winning people over necessarily requires that both sides agreed that an outcome was good, which means they must share some criteria on what the good is. That shared agreement does not preclude larger differences but it does show that something is objective and thus undercuts your argument that truth is subjective but that we can convince others to adopt ways based on outcomes.
What are you talking about? Are you disagreeing with the adjective “little”? I thought you had already endorsed that language, or at least the idea it was conveying.
Or are you disagreeing with the substance of my remark in # 20? If so, you’re just being illogical: If we’re talking about the reality people you agreed people believe in (in your # 13), then there can be no “my truth” or “your truth” or “her truth” or “his truth.” There’s just some of us having the facts and the rest of being wrong.
I don’t think anyone here is talking about truth as “a noun speaking to underlying reality.”
You are aware, aren’t you, that the word “truth” is often used to refer to the property of a statement? The second definition in the dictionary.
I think that’s what I Walton was talking about. It’s fallacious (or at least missing the point) to respond by commenting on a word denoting the property of a person.
You just stated that reality, the physical world, is subjective. You also stated that outcomes, which occur in reality and not in the abstract, can be objective. There is a blatant contradiction right there.
Honestly, Auggie, sometimes having a conversation with you is like trying to talk to @titus!
I am LOST by what you are trying to say. I see no contradiction between my two statements: that things are good or holy not because of their inherent qualities but based on what MAN does with them.
The Torah is giving us prescriptive, not descriptive, values. Where is the contradiction?
No.
I said that we can generally agree on overall trends.
This is really not that hard: We can agree with liberals that Venezuela’s is not a successful government, even if we might not agree on why that is so.
I am disagreeing with trivializing anyone’s reality.
It is clear that we speak different languages, you and I.
We each are right – in our own minds. And we can each believe that all others are wrong. But freedom necessitates toleration of others. And a good and a holy society values, in broad strokes, the results of freedom.
Ok, great. But I’m not doing that.
(In # 20 I was using the same language you had called “Excellent!” in # 12. If you think that language involves trivializing people’s beliefs, you might have said so then.)
No one said there was a contradiction there.
You’re not paying attention to what either of us says. Let’s try it again. Here is the problem:
The OP says goodness is defined by the results, and then # 18 says that’s “Not exactly” right. Naturally, I asked if # 18 should be read as a retraction of the claim in the OP:
I was presenting a bit of logic in English. If you have trouble following it, I don’t know what I can do to help you understand. I guess I could try rephrasing.
In # 13 you agreed that people often believe in a reality that exists independently of their belief. In # 20 and # 32, I was only saying that truth-claims in reference to such realities are not indexed to a person–“my truth,” “your truth,” “his truth,” “her truth,” and so on. Such claims reference belief-independent reality. It may or may not be possible to know them, but they are either correct and so true (for everyone), or false and so false (for everyone).
Truth-claims in reference to the “little realities” (see your # 12 and my # 6) might be true for you but not for me. I’m not disputing that.
Trying to get back on topic…. I am reminded that there are more objective metrics of any person’s reality: utility. Engineers may not deal with truth – but they deal with what works.
That, to me, squares the circle that Auggie and others are describing: how to agree on any metric if one does not agree on even the existence of an ultimate truth/reality.
Engineers build things that work. So, too, does liberty. We may not be able to define a “perfect” state of work or freedom, but that does not mean that most people cannot agree on a direction of travel toward success or freedom.
I’m pretty sure everyone here loves your practical conclusions! We probably also all like the practical test of what works as a way of knowing what is right or choosing between different beliefs.
Some of us just don’t like the metaphysics (and metaethics) you’re using to defend your practical conclusions, because it’s not very good.
Could Be Anyone (# 21 and # 31), I believe, is trying to help you see that we can only judge by the results if we are also able to judge between results.
How do we judge the results? Not by objective truth, according to you, yet not subjectively either! Nor by goodness, if you insist on defining goodness only by the results.
It does no good to say (your # 18 and # 35) that goodness is defined by what we choose to do; that either returns us to subjectivity, or is another way of saying that the results are the test.
You obviously think it’s possible to say that what Venezuela is not as good as what America does. By what standard do you make that judgment?
You could say, as # 10 seems to suggest, “Who cares? The point is that we do make that judgment, and agree on it.”
That’s fine.
But if that’s your approach, you should just stop there: Stop denying objective truth and then muddling your own position by denying that all morality is subjective. If you really think an answer to that sort of question is not necessary, stop trying to give one, like you did in #s 18 and 35 and in the OP.
I thought academics suspended judgment for the sake of argument, not engaged in it…Heavens, Augie!
Sometimes we do!
As a requirement for academic behavior, it’s something of a postmodern fashion, but selectively applied. (Academics rarely suspend judgment on evolution, on global warming, on the sexual revolution, on the non-overlap of faith and reason, on Donald Trump, or on the question of where to suspend judgment.)
Now that I think of it, I am suspending judgment for the sake of argument, aren’t I?
Suspending judgment for the sake of argument means getting into the arguments. It means judging arguments on the degree of support the premises provide for their conclusion. It means judging positions and arguers by whether they self-contradict or not, whether they are explained clearly, and so on. All while not passing judgment on the fundamental premises of an argument.
Have I done otherwise in this thread, and if so where?
Appreciate the clarification. “Bizarre, as usual…”. didn’t seem like an opening that would lead one very far in discussion, just sayin’. Quite unlike your usual graciousness. :-)
A reasonable concern! I wondered about it myself and concluded it was a conclusion justified by the premises I gave it.
(Except the “as usual” part. To justify that, I would have to find other premises about other threads. But I do believe I could.)
First, let me say that I did not expect iWe to identify himself as a libertarian (explicitly) and a utilitarian (implicitly). I think he is right about both. I am immensely unsurprised by Auggie’s vehement disagreement. God knows, I’ve gone down this road with Auggie before.
Now, about Auggie’s comment quoted above – He is misrepresenting the argument. The goal is good results. The goodness of actions depends on the results those actions achieve. There is nothing circular about this. There is nothing illogical about this. Obviously, we need some other criteria for evaluating the “goodness” of results. As I have told Auggie many times (he sometimes agrees, and sometimes lapses into some mysterious metaphysics which seems to reflect disagreement), human happiness, flourishing and fulfillment is “good.” Human suffering is bad. I take this as a self-evident truth, but even if it is not “true” there is almost universal agreement about this proposition (leaving sociopaths aside), so it is an entirely workable axiom on which society can and should be organized.
There goes Auggie, off into his mysterious metaphysics. He says there is an objective “truth,” independent of subjective perception or belief, and he says that it “may or may not be possible to know” that truth. This is where Auggie’s metaphysics goes off the rails. If it is not possible to know objective “truth” then objective truth is irrelevant. All we can have is our subjective understanding of what is true, and if two people have different subjective understandings then it is (by Auggie’s own proposition) impossible to know who is right about the objective “truth.” In other words, everything iWe has said is exactly accurate, and applies in the realm of all human activities. Auggie’s argument only applies in the realm of his unknowable “objective truth.” Like iWe, I see no benefit in arguing about the unknowable, and I certainly don’t think you can persuade people of anything by relying on the unknowable.
If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? :-)
Yeah, that’s fine. That’s great! There’s nothing circular about that way of thinking, and I never said there was.
If that is what was meant, then it should have been said when I asked for clarification.
iWe, is that what you mean here?
In other words, were you talking only about the goodness of actions?
And is the goodness of happiness what you had in mind as a criterion for judging between results?
I wasn’t saying a thing about my own metaphysics here. I was talking about something iWe said. In fact, I wasn’t even critiquing his metaphysics at this point–just his use of the language of “my truth” and “your truth.”
In # 20, # 32, and # 41 I was only talking about the incompatibility of talk about “my truth” and “your truth” in reference to people’s beliefs in realities existing independently of their belief–beliefs iWe granted they have in # 13.
The existence or lack thereof of objective truth, the knowability or lack thereof of objective truth, and indeed my own metaphysics are entirely beside the point. The only relevant topic is logic.
In fact, logically, as I have already said (see # 41), talk of “my truth” and “your truth” seems totally fine in reference to the beliefs involved in the “little realities” mentioned in #s 12 and 6.
Well, as they say in the South, “isn’t that sweet?” There are two major flaws in that statement (at least two that I see right off the bat; maybe more). First, when iWe mentions “my truth” or “your truth” it is clear that he is talking about a subjective understanding of the world, and not about different “realities existing independently of their belief[s].” Whether you admit it or not, your “realities existing independently of belief” is just another term for what I referred to as your “objective truth.” Of course, if there is an objective truth of the external world then it doesn’t change from person to person. That is true by definition. But it is equally obvious that if we cannot know the objective truth of the external world, and if each individual believes that his own understanding of the “truth” is correct, then it is very unpersuasive to tell someone that their version of the “truth” is wrong. That is what iWe has argued (as I understand it) and you have not addressed, much less refuted, that argument.
Second, there is a huge difference between a hypothetical “truth” regarding the physical makeup of the external world, and a hypothetical “truth” about moral propositions. Someone who believes that the truck coming down the street is “real” and, therefore, does not step in front of it, is relying on a kind of truth that can be confirmed by endless, almost universal, experience and by the scientific method. Someone who believes that it is a categorical imperative that one must not lie under any circumstances cannot rely on universality or science to support that belief. Propositions about morality or goodness are different in kind from descriptions of the physical world. iWe is talking about the latter, while you elide the two. The “realities” (to use your word) of things like rocks and trucks is not the same as the “realities” of someone’s supposed categorical imperative.
If I have not accurately represented iWe’s position, then I apologize, but that is how I understand him. In any event, what I have said here is my position, so if I am misunderstanding iWe, then just take the argument as my own.
That was not at all clear to me. (What iWe means is frequently unclear to me.)
If that is all he meant, then, for at least the third time, my concern in #s 20, 32, and 41 does not apply.
Indeed. That was my point.
That’s fine. I don’t believe I’ve said anything against that. If anything, I’ve supported that approach in # 45!
That’s only a difference in epistemology–a difference in whether or how we can know them. My concern was with the logical consistency of talking about such facts–whether physical or moral–in terms inappropriate to them. (And, for at least the fourth time, my concern evaporates if your interpretation of iWe is correct.)
It’s also beside the point. I repeat: I’m not even talking about my own metaphysics or epistemology in this thread. (I’m way too busy and tired to take that up in this thread.)
That’s only a difference in epistemology? Only? Here’s the problem, Auggie: Metaphysics, and the branch of metaphysics called epistemology, underlie everything. So no matter what iWe says, and no matter what I say, you can challenge it by challenging the underlying metaphysics and epistemology. That forecloses any intelligent discussion of any other subject, including morality. But some of us actually want to discuss other subjects, including morality and including (in the case of this post) rhetoric. You refuse to reach those other issues, by always, always, always challenging the underlying metaphysics and epistemology.
As I told you long ago, I don’t care about metaphysics or epistemology. Those are simplistic topics which are easily resolved simply by admitting what we don’t know. I am interested in getting to the substance of the matter by discussing the subject at hand – which, in this case, is rhetoric. Try to get there. Maybe you have something worthwhile to say about it.
Only. In this thread I have not even made any claim about these realities, and in this particular case I was only making a strictly logical point about how we talk about them.
A point you actually agree with in # 56.
I’ve already been there, and made the necessary agreements in #s 8, 43, and 45! I’m all for the morality here!
I’m not foreclosing any moral discussion by talking about epistemology and metaphysics. I haven’t even touted my own in this thread at all.
As I explained in #s 43-45, my view is that iWe‘s metaphysics and epistemology got in the way of talking about morality.
Not that I have any problem talking about metaphysics or epistemology along the way to ethics. (I like Aristotle!) But it only gets in the way when we do it badly.