Last night I was talking with an old friend of mine, an atheist Jew, who is now in the best relationship of her life with a devout Roman Catholic. We talked about the fact that she was more surprised than he was about the fact that their connection transcends their difference in metaphysics. He sees himself as a devout Roman Catholic; she sees him as a good human being.
This conversation reminded me of an older thought that’s been swirling around in my head for a few weeks: the disunity of reason.
It is widely held by philosophers (that peculiar sub-species!) that reason is unified: that the ideally rational person is one for whom there are no fissures, breaks, ruptures, or discontinuities anywhere in the inferential relations between semantic contents that comprise his or her cognitive grasp of the world (including himself or herself as part of that world).
This is particularly true when it comes to the distinction between “theoretical reason” and “practical reason”. By “theoretical reason” I mean one’s ability to conceptualize the world-as-experienced as more-or-less systematic, and by “practical reason” I mean one’s ability to act in the world according to judgments that are justified by agent-relative and also agent-indifferent reasons (“prudence” and “morality”, respectively).
The whole philosophical tradition from Plato onward assumes that reason is unified, and especially, that theoretical and practical reason are unified — different exercises of the same basic faculty. Some philosophers think of them as closer together than others — for example, Aristotle distinguishes between episteme (knowledge of general principles in science, mathematics, and metaphysics) and phronesis (knowledge of particular situations in virtuous action). But even Aristotle does not doubt that episteme and phronesis are exercises of a single capacity, reason (nous).
However, as we learn more about how our cognitive system is actually structured, we should consider the possibility that reason is not unified at all. If Horst’s Cognitive Pluralism is right, then we should expect that our minds are more like patchworks of domain-specific modules that can reason quite well within those domains but not so well across them.
To Horst’s model I’d add the further conjecture: that we have pretty good reason to associate our capacity for “theoretical reason” (abstract thinking and long-term planning) with the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and also pretty good reason to associate our capacity for “practical reason” (self-control and virtuous conduct) with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (and especially in its dense interconnections with the limbic system).
But if that conjecture is on the right track, then we would expect to find consistency between theoretical reason and practical reason only to the extent that there are reciprocal interconnections between these regions of prefrontal cortex. And of course there are reciprocal interconnections — but (and this is the important point!) to the extent that these regions are also functionally distinct, then to that same extent reason is disunified.
And as a consequence, metaphysics and ethics may have somewhat less to do with each other than previous philosophers have supposed.
Suppose I hold two beliefs one (1) that says that reason is unified and another (2) that says that reason is not unified.
If (2) is true then (1) is false and therefore……… reason is unified after all and (2) is false and (1) is true.
IOW If reason is not unified it is indeed impossible and all is irrationality.
peace
What are the implications for science? Is this why Krauss sucks at biology?
I think that the entire practice of science undermines the claim that our reason is not unified, but perhaps we are just fooling ourselves. I would not be surprised to learn, as hinted at by fifth, that Horst’s theory itself depends on the unity of reason to make it’s case.
I agree with a lot of this, except that it is all wrong.
As I want to use it, “reason” as a noun means something similar to “excuse”. That is, we give a reason to explain what we did. A reason is supposed to be of higher quality than an excuse, but it often isn’t.
The idea of reason as something systematic — that’s what seems all wrong. The problem with the expression “disunity of reason” is that it presupposes that there is something to be disunited.
When scientists study something, they do it systematically. But that isn’t nature’s way. Nature’s way is to add one ad hoc solution on top of another. We see this wherever we look.
Chomsky finds deep structure in the grammar of natural languages. I can only find ad hoccery piled on top of ad hoccery. The grammar that we find in language comes from human attempts to systematize it. And the “deep structure” comes from the fact that our grammars don’t actually work. They are at best approximations. So we imagine that there must be a deeper structure to grammar. But, if we find that deeper structure, it also turns out to not work.
The same yearning for systematic structure is found elsewhere. A recent topic here writes of deep structure in the universe. But there is no deep structure. Our systematic account of the universe doesn’t quite work. So people try to extend that to a deeper level, which also doesn’t quite work.
Human ability at thinking is part of nature. And nature’s method is ad hoc. Thinking is very ad hoc.
Here’s an example of what some would call “reason”. Someone on Ted Cruz’s staff attacked Donald Trump’s wife. Then someone attacked Cruz’s wife. Then Cruz got all indignant about his wife being attacked.
That’s what is counted as “reason”. It’s as ad hoc as anything else that we see in nature.
People wonder why I deny that there are laws of nature. It’s because nature is ad hoc. If we are seeing laws, those are human attempts to give a systematic account. Those laws don’t come from nature itself.
This is a great example of the ad hoccery that we find in nature — in this case, we find it in human nature.
Sure, we can suppose all we want. And if wishes were horses we’d all be eating steak.
Point is, can you hold incompatible beliefs about the same issue?
I’m suggesting here that there’s a fallacy, peculiar to philosophers, of supposing that just because we’re usually quite good at achieving local integration (compatibility across a set of domain-specific compatible beliefs), we therefore ought to be just as good at achieving global integration (compatibility across all beliefs, abstracted from domain-specificity).
On this model, real (not fictional or imaginary) irrationality takes place when actions guided by one set of internally-consistent, domain-specific, action-guiding representations conflict with actions guided by some other set of internally-consistent, domain-specific, action-guiding representations. Unless the irrationality makes a difference in conduct, it makes no difference in philosophy, either.
and
Do you see the contradiction? I hope you do it’s pretty obvious.
A better question is do you care?
peace
Of course you can, we all do it at times.
A better question is Can we keep it up?
peace
I think we need to be very careful in describing how this happens.
For example, I don’t think that I both have mustard in the fridge and that I do not have mustard in the fridge.
Suppose that I have mustard, and then I go shopping, I see mustard and buy it, thinking at that moment that I wanted it. (Maybe I was unconsciously attracted by the label, or the color stirred some childhood longing in me, etc. — whatever the psychological story is.) Yet if someone had asked me, at the moment, if I had mustard at home I would have “yes” without hesitation. Only then would I ask myself, “so why I am buying this?”
My point is, we do have incompatible beliefs, but the test of their incompatibility often lies in that they prescribe or guide actions that conflict with each other. But each action is itself guided by a set of internally consistent, compatible representations.
Cross-domain integration becomes a problem — and a necessity — only when different domains prescribe incompatible actions.
Yes, but it isn’t a real contradiction.
A little systematicity here; a little systematicity there; and all linked together in an ad hoc manner.
Horse meat steaks?
Don’t we have another word that serves the purpose you’re looking for?
Why muddy the waters by using the word reason when what you mean is actually called rationalization?
I think one can say that someone reasons correctly or incorrectly, in the same sense that someone sums numbers correctly or incorrectly.
But the axioms and propositions being manipulated have no absolute correspondence with reality. One cannot prove anything about reality.
I am certain that I have mustard in the fridge, in spite of what keiths may think about certainty.
Not a fan of “Firefly,” I take it?
I don’t share Keiths aversion to “certainty”, but I prefer to restrict “certainty” to cases where it is unintelligible that doubt could get a foot-hold. For example, I am certain of being conscious right now. It is unintelligible to me that “I am not conscious” is true of me at the very moment that I assert that claim. Likewise, it is unintelligible that “2+2=4” in any formal system that captures the axioms of Peano arithmetic.
That’s true, but one can still reason well or poorly about reality, even if one cannot prove anything about it. My suggestion here is that, although we can and do reason well or poorly about specific domains of experience, it is not the case that all of our beliefs about reality (and ourselves) cohere into a single systematic whole.
In that sense, no one has a “worldview”, and the very idea of a “worldview” is a philosopher’s fancy.
One thing only do I know for certain and that is that man’s judgments of value follow directly his wishes for happiness – that, accordingly, they are an attempt to support his illusions with arguments.
– Sigmund Freud
That’s clearly false. In most cases our desire for complete happiness informs our conception of the good, but that’s about as far as the truth will allow us to go in agreeing with Freud.
Imagine an algorithm in which each operation is solved precisely and correctly but we abandon order of operation rules for the equation as a whole and just wing it
1) Is that what you have in mind?
2) In such a case would you trust the answer you get?
3) What benefit is it to correctly do the arithmetic at an individual point If the overall answer is wrong?
Is (2+1)*7=21 the same as (2+1)*7=9 in your opinion?
If not why not?
peace
So you are saying that you can hold contradictory beliefs if you have incorrect or incomplete information?
I would agree. nothing controversial about that. In this case your reason is unitary but your knowledge is incomplete.
It would be odd on the other hand if you wanted to buy mustard and did not want to by mustard equally at the same time and in the same way.
peace
A technique usually called “compartmentalization” is actually very common in humans. This allows us to accept and believe a set of related things (the contents of the compartment) while simultaneously understanding the preposterousness of those things with the rest of our minds. Often the underlying problem is with early childhood indoctrination to “facts” later in life recognized to be absurd, while the neural pathways “trained in” can no longer be altered.
This handy technique lets us, for example, take for granted the absolute certainty about OUR god, while recognizing the imaginary (and foolish) nature of the thousands of other gods, no qualitatively different from ours but not trained into us before we could defend ourselves.
This is not necessarily a Bad Thing, because it shows that for most of us, reality can override bad parenting, because we can compartmentalize idiotic but ineducable beliefs.
Cancer is also very common in humans that does not make it a good thing
Do you think we consciously compartmentalize?
Do you think “compartmentalization” is a valid and praiseworthy approach to reason?
It also allows us to see the foolishness of believing false Gods but not recognize the foolishness of not acknowledging the one true God we all know to exist.
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
If you had a point there, then I am totally failing to see it. Your comment seems unrelated to what it purports to be a reply to.
I understand.
Is that what compartmentalization looks like? 😉
Have a good weekend.
peace
I could not have asked for a better illustration of my point. Thanks.
Most of the time no. It’s an unconscious defense mechanism.
Yes, I do. As you have illustrated, it permits you on the one hand to reason about whatever you can, while on the other hand allows you to be Absolutely Certain of what your indoctrination places beyond your reason. If everything were as compartmentalized against reality as your religious delusions, you would not survive a day. Compartmentalization renders your delusions mostly ineffective for the most part, so you can function.
That is because your compartmentalization in this case is not conscious. 😉
You see it in others but not in yourself.
peace
Right back at you.
It’s all fun and games till the God denier starts asking himself “How exactly do I know this stuff?”
peace
Oh goody, a Freudian.
Atheists compartmentalize because they don’t want there to be any God but themselves. They are self-deluded. All unconsciously, of course.
I just love psychoanalysis!
I can’t deny any gods, because there’s nothing there to deny. However, as an outside observer I can’t help but notice that everyone who believes in any gods, all believe in somewhat different gods. The name might be the same, but nothing else. And this is clear when we realize that people with wildly different opinions think they’re all praying at the same god, who always ratifies all of their opinions!
And I would love it if there were any gods, because then we wouldn’t have to spend so many careers, and so much money, teasing out the nature of reality. The gods could simply TELL us. It’s kind of a shame that the ancient gods didn’t tell the ancient peoples anything they didn’t already know, right or wrong.
It’s a complex process involving observation, logic, evidence and reason. Almost to the point where if you have to ask, nobody could ever explain to you.
How much better it is to make up a god that is defined to make all knowledge possible.
Or, you know, make up a plant defined to make all knowledge possible, or a rock (philosopher’s stone?), an element, a drug, or quantum state that encompasses all possibilities. Just define it as being able to make all knowledge possible to you.
It’s better–or at least, far more simple–than the complexities of human reality.
Glen Davidson
I doubt that.
I haven’t used the term “compartmentalization”. I doubt that it actually applies to anything.
Well, what I was trying to say is that Fifth didn’t make it up. It was indoctrinated into him involuntarily. Yes, it could have been a plant or a rock or whatever, and his faith would be qualitatively the same. He would be sincerely assuring us that we would be fools if we did not “acknowledge the One True Rock we all know to exist.” He would MEAN it. No Poe. But his version is better, because rocks and plants and drugs and the like are known to exist, and therefore be subject to observation and experimentation. Invisible pals, not so much.
I’m quite persuaded that there is a Piaget-type window in early childhood during which such an indoctrination must take place (though of course in religious families their various gods are drilled at them from before the window opens to long after it closes.) And if the delusion doesn’t “take” during that period, it never can.
And if there is an age beyond which the delusion cannot be removed, there must surely be an age beyond which it cannot be imposed. I suspect these are the same age, and once one is older than that, they will either ALWAYS or NEVER believe in gods. And whichever way it goes, there is absolutely nothing they can do to change it. I find faith in gods as incomprehensible as Fifth seems to regard the understanding that gods are all imaginary. If any “real” gods came down from the sky and started magicking, I’d regard them as delightful natural phenomena to be weighted and measured, researched and tested.
Indeed, the fact that Fifth’s god CANNOT drop by, and can’t actually do anything whatsoever, ought to be a clue. Along with a thousand other equally compelling clues, NONE of which can penetrate the toilet training. It says something important about brain development, at the very least.
I guess that I kind of think that, while FMM may have been indoctrinated as a child, he wasn’t indoctrinated into that particular type of Christianity, or at least didn’t keep to it strictly. I mean, I’m guessing his identity and, of course, not about to write it anywhere (but I think it’s quite probable), and that he went for his Calvinism rather later in life.
I could be wrong, of course, but I’ve tended to think he’s one who really fell for it as a young adult, or thereabout.
Glen Davidson
Russell in “On Denoting” and Quine in on “On What There Is” explain how you can deny items that don’t exist without contradiction.
I think the capability for the sort of belief that reifies the imaginary is injected into people quite early in childhood. The exact FORM that it takes seems often subject to change later, and people are converting from one denomination to another all the time. I have met quite a few people who spent some years shopping around for a denomination that believed in roughly the same god they did. I’ve even known a few who were (apparently sincerely) able to convert between Islam and Christianity, or between Christianity and Judaism.
In each case, it was to some particular denomination (Sunni or Shiite, Lutheran or Calvinist, Reformed or Hasidic, etc.) The breadth of the sheer RANGE of versions of the Abrahamic god is astounding. It’s a god of peace, of war, of love, of vengeance, of whimsy, of military forces yet of individual personal concern. A god who transcends nations while being intensely chauvinistic, the (somehow) unitary god of Quakers and Nazis, the KKK and the NAACP.
And in the face of all this, we have FMM preaching about “the one true God we all know to exist.” If it weren’t for compartmentalization, you’d almost wish he’d share whatever he’s smoking.
I guess I’m not up with the literature. For me, it’s sufficient to say that there’s an infinity of things for which no evidence exists, and the default position is that they don’t exist pending evidence. When so many billions of people have spent so many centuries searching futilely for any evidence of gods, this strikes me as even stronger evidence of nonexistence. If empty assertion were evidence, we’d be drowning in gods, so I’m glad it’s not.
Anyway, exactly when FMM might have believed these things, it’s just one person.
What I don’t think is a fact is that there is an age above which god belief can or cannot be imposed. Now it does seem true that older people rarely change such beliefs, but surely one has to consider how integrated into their lives religion becomes, or, indeed, how integrated in a non-religious sense the unchurched have become into largely religion-free society.
But for young adults casting about for direction, I think it’s quite possible to leave or to pick up religious beliefs. I know that I heard stories from a number of people who went for religion after tumultuous and a-religious formative years, as young adults (I was raised religiously, after all). And many religious kids these days end up leaving religion, often late teens and early twenties, but sometimes later in life (thirties, forties, that kind of thing).
It does seem true, though, that some people “get religion” and others don’t. I’ve heard it claimed that atheists just don’t get religion, which I think is an exaggeration, but it’s likely true that plenty don’t and never have, even with a religious upbringing. Some people fall into the various emotions and “states” common to religion, and others are rather more analytic in approach. And if the analytic side tends to be promoted, it’s likely that religion will take a back seat for that person.*
Glen Davidson
*But some highly analytic sorts will take the FMM route, assuming rationality to be the essential and foundational component of cognition, thus insisting that rationality must be absolutely grounded (at least in theory) in order to think at all. And God, defined as that absolute ground, becomes necessary for their closed-off little world of logic, not allowed to be questioned, or everything might come crashing down.
If there is a coincidental intersection (overlap) of having the same ethical value on specific question, then a Christian and atheist (coming from two different metaphysical viewpoints), can have unified ethics but differing metaphysics, perhaps only by coincidence. Hence an atheistic Jew can be in love with a devout Roman Catholic since supposedly many values are coincidentally shared.
As far as human brain reasoning, I can reason in Euclidean geometry visually (one mode of reasoning) and analytically (using equations which is another mode of reasoning), the conclusions coincidentally overlap. The visual depictions often give reassurance that the equations describing geometrical features are indeed the right equations. This unity of reason however only overlaps in Euclidean realms, once I started studying General Relativity and the non-Euclidean realm, the visual reasoning went out the window and my visual reasoning couldn’t compute, in fact something inside screamed “non-Euclidean geometries are ‘wrong’ “.
Phillip Johnson’s religious shifts:
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/johnsonp.html
Of course you do have some indoctrination early on, but Johnson seemed not to think that it amounted to much. A personal void turns him toward religion, it seems, and probably an ego trip at the thought of taking down evolution. I don’t know, it’s sort of messy, like most lives would be when you’d look at them to see how religion becomes important, but he did seem not to be religious for quite some time, then to turn to it for meaning as his life hollowed out.
A cautionary tale, it would seem to me. Ken Miller went back to his religious roots, I believe, after letting go for a while, but didn’t see any reason to attack science as a result.
Glen Davidson
As far as disunity of reason or issues with ethics, a somewhat related area is disuinity in aesthetics.
For those of us with strong likes and dislikes in music and art, “right” and “wrong” in aesthetics feels as deep seated as “right” and “wrong” in ethics even almost like the right and wrong in mathematics.
It is hard to articulate the reasons why something just seems “right”, it just does. Some things that are widely heralded as genius strike me as utter abominations. The movie Citizen Kane is one the top of most movie critics lists of the best movie of all time — I thought it was an abomination, visually revolting and a forgettable music score to boot.
If there is disunity between people in the realm of reason, I see it most pronounced in the realm of aesthetics.
Neil:
Mung:
I agree with Mung. (It does happen occasionally.)
Neil, you are muddying the waters by using the word ‘reason’ idiosyncratically. Rationalizations are reasons, but not all reasons are rationalizations.
And in any case, KN is not talking about rationalizations. He’s talking about the faculty of reason and whether or not it should be regarded as unified.
Mung,
Okay, we’re back to disagreeing. You may be quite certain that you have mustard in the fridge, but you aren’t absolutely certain.
Think about it. There is a nonzero probability that you are mistaken, and that’s all it takes to eliminate absolute certainty.
Flint:
walto:
Flint:
Flint,
You’re missing walto’s point, which is that you can rationally deny Zeus or Ahura Mazda despite there being no existing Zeus or Ahura Mazda to deny.
KN:
fifth:
fifth,
His knowledge isn’t incomplete. He knows he has mustard at home — it’s just that that knowledge doesn’t factor into his decision to buy the mustard he sees in front of him.
KN,
There’s no question that there isn’t a single neurobiological substrate for reason, and that different subsystems can yield different and contradictory results. That’s the point of Kahneman’s System 1 vs System 2 dichotomy, for example.
But we can decide (in most cases) which system is right, and that makes all the difference.
I think you’re taking ‘absolute certainty’ to be truth-generating. I.e. If S is certain that p, then p must be true. But many people just use ‘certainty’ as a psychological predicate having nothing to do with probabilities at all. Taken that way ‘absolute certainty’ is just the highest degree possible of being sure, a property consistent with being wrong. Dunno, but mung may mean only to convey that regarding the mustard.
I recently read an article that touches on that: Critical thinking suppressed in brains of people who believe in the supernatural. The headline leaves out the idea from the original study that analytical thinking may be in conflict with “moral concern”. The paper finishes with:
While I agree that upbringing has a lot to do with it, it’s possible that natural differences in what we individually find important could be a factor as well.
That’s definitely in line with the paper’s findings. I note from personal experience, though, that it’s possible to enter the transcendent states normally associated with religious experience via meditation, without ascribing those states to any supernatural entity.
Perhaps you failed to get it. My whole point was to express my deep skepticism that there is such a thing as the faculty of reason.
I wrote a book on that subject (keith read it in about seven minutes, so I guess it’s a page-turner 🙂 ).
I’m curious to hear what FMM would say about this claim though. I take it that some religious people hold that to the extent that the state does not in some sense point to a supernatural entity, it simply is not the same experience the religious person has, whether apparently “transcendent” or not.
I agree, I was talking about his “conscious” knowledge.
We all know things below the surface that we don’t factor into particular decisions. In this particular case the mustard in the fridge did not “come to mind” while he was making the decision
Also
At times people will consciously ignore what they know in an effort to trick themselves that they are behaving rationally while believing contradictory things .
The question is how long can they keep it up
peace