Believing 10/28/17

My policy is not to believe anything. 

That may be hard to grasp, and it was for me when someone asked, "Do you believe in love?" But I respond, "Love is better than hate, and I hope love never fails. However, in civic morality, appreciation is more important than love." It is less challenging to say, "Love conquers everything but religion," or "Having-sex defeats making-love continually," or "Empathy can't persist without forgiveness," or "Honesty is insufficient and 'my truth' may be honest." I really can't think of any other tough calls, though.  Hope is eternal , but I need to appreciate before I can either respect or love.

Since posting this, I completed Michael Polanyi's book, Personal Knowledge, 1958, and think he thoroughly considered my trust and commitment, which he refers to as "objectivity" as opposed to "subjectivity." I think on Page 324 of 405, he made it plain to me that his faith is in his Christian God. Whether or not that means he holds that Jesus created everything, as Agathon may have claimed when he described Eros, remains to be discovered. Regardless, Polanyi has already refuted my disclaimer about "belief," not recognizing that I accept his God for him and would not change it because I could be wrong. Thus, while my trust and commitment is to the-objective-truth, I do not claim to believe: I admit to myself that I could be erroneous to hold my trust and commitment, yet I do. I am grateful to Ed Smith (died?) for suggesting that I read Polanyi's book.

Polanyi died in 1976, and I saw no indication he had read Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Divinity School Address," 1838, at Harvard Divinity School (DSA). It is American underground literature, but should be required reading throughout the world. The lecture banned Emerson for thirty years, because therein he claimed Jesus was a man whose message was profaned when Christianity made him a divinity. Jesus' message, in Emerson's mind, was, "You exist to perfect yourself, low as you may now be." Some of us who have read DSA no longer think we were born in error. The potential for perfection is a good ideal, and practicing fidelity to-the-objective-truth may create the path to perfection. 

Post a challenge, please (excluding Pascal's wager or 2+2 can be 5). Attention in Greece in 2015 prompted this revision and is appreciated. Also, Descartes's idea "I think: therefore I am," does not address the-objective-truth. 


Copyright©2014 by Phillip R. Beaver. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted for the publication of all or portions of this paper as long as this complete copyright notice is included. Revised 10/28/2017

Why Our Example Is Not to Ever Lie 7/13/2017

One Process for Understanding Both Physical Laws and Ethical Laws[i]

Humankind employs a process for understanding, which applies in both physics and ethics. Both humankind and each person seek comprehension of relations which are thought to exist independently from the researcher. For examples, extraterrestrial life either exists or not, regardless of humankind’s apprehensions, and mutual appreciation is more satisfying than hate, regardless of the culture.

In physics, statements of comprehension may be cosmic discoveries, for example, that the universe seems expanding. There are equations, as in elementary mathematics:  2+2 = 4. In physics, 2 apples plus 2 oranges equals 4 fruit. Contrary statements, like 2+2 = 5 (2 = 3), occur in art or games. For example, to metaphorically express the illusion that team effort exceeds the sum of members’ contributions. The facts of physics contradict the metaphor, yet humans empower each other.

Comprehension is not “supposed to” apply in the intellectual world or social world, such as ethics, but does. For example, consider the conflicting 1+1 = 1 that is common in competition for dominant opinion, as in my God plus your God = my God. In other words one party’s part of the summation is zero: 1 = 0. Together we consider: Is your God our God? But we recall that we each have unique views of our differing traditions or associations or privacy, yet appreciate each other as we are. We agree that 1+1 = 2 or 1 = 1. On the other hand, the Dali Lama, I think erroneously, said,

The law of action and reaction is not exclusively for physics. It is also of human relations.
If I act with goodness, I will receive goodness. If I act with evil, I will get evil.[ii]

However, in human relations, reciprocity often fails; the Dali himself is a forced exile. Thus, comprehensions have a common characteristic: each comprehension is true, false or uncertain; adequate, inadequate or unknown. In other words, each understanding may be expressed, either true or false or no one knows. Because we appreciate each other despite our differing usage of “God,” we are willing to collaborate to understand the-objective-truth.[iii] Yet, even as we admit that some things we do not know, we each maintain our hopes about our God or none.

The process for understanding has a further characteristic. The noble work toward comprehension does not express emotions. For the researcher, there is only being, but no wishing; no praising; no agenda; no ideology; no pride; no contradiction; no goal beyond comprehension. Each individual who seeks understanding perseveringly rejects coercion from anyone, yet also behaves so as to not coerce anyone. When we recognize self-persuasion, we stop; we strive to discover self-contradiction and eliminate it. Guided by understanding, we need not respond to doctrine, like, “’Thou shalt not lie.’”

Yet, we do not feel at all that it is meaningless to ask such questions as: Why should we not lie? We feel that such questions are meaningful because in all ethical considerations some premises are tacitly taken for granted.  We then feel satisfied when we succeed in tracing back the ethical directive in question to these basic premises. In the case of lying this might perhaps be done like this: Lying destroys confidence in the statements of other people. Without such confidence, collaboration is made impossible or at least difficult. For example, after the lie, the liar may fear future dialogue with the deceived party, who, in turn, may sense the liar’s apprehension. Or, judging from his own behavior, the liar may suspect the deceived party is also a liar. Collaboration, however, is essential to make human life possible, even worthy of appreciation. Thus, our commitment, we shall not lie, has been traced back to the demands: Human life shall be preserved and pain and sorrow shall be lessened as much as possible. The just person gravitates toward personal autonomy and collaborative autonomy yet complete integrity; rejects fear, and embraces empathy for other persons and self. Liars separate themselves from a willing people.

Thus, it seems the process for understanding can apply to ethics. Quoting Einstein, “Ethical directives can be made rational and coherent by logical thinking and empirical knowledge. If we can agree on some fundamental ethical propositions, then other propositions can be derived from them, provided that the original premises are stated with sufficient precision.” For example, persons expect appreciation to overcome hatred. “Such ethical premises play a similar role in ethics, to that played by axioms in mathematics.”

“But what is the origin of such ethical axioms? Are they arbitrary? Are they based on mere authority? Do they stem from [humankind’s experiences], and are they conditioned by such experiences?”

“For pure logic all axioms seem arbitrary, including the axioms of ethics. But they are by no means arbitrary from a psychological and genetic point of view. They are derived from our inborn tendencies to avoid pain and annihilation and from the accumulated . . . reaction[s] of individuals to the behavior[s] of their neighbors.” Just as physics exists and can only be discovered, ethics exists and can only be discovered. Just as physics may be vainly denied, ethics may be unjustly denied.

“It is the privilege of [humankind’s] ethical genius . . . to advance ethical axioms which are so comprehensive and so well founded that [persons accept] them as grounded in the vast mass of their individual . . . experiences,” the accumulation of experiences from more than 100 billion lives over some two million years. For an individual to learn ethics is a daunting quest, because humans are born totally uniformed. Nevertheless, each person, after becoming basically informed, has the potential to enjoy some sixty years to psychologically mature and to help fulfill and expand the ethical axioms of humankind. The gift of life presents the opportunity and potentials for joy.

“Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from” the physical axioms. [Understanding] is what stands the test of experience” and approaches the-objective-truth.

Addendum

Perhaps Einstein’s discussion was for a cooperative audience, in which case even “white lies” merely prolong the inevitable submission to the-objective-truth. The cancer patient’s question, “Am I going to die,” may be answerable, for example, “We’re going to do everything we can to prevent it,” or, “In time, yes, but we are going to work toward keeping you alive.” Even a child’s innocence can be transitioned without mendacity. For example, a child wise enough to ask if Santa is real gains confidence to hear something like, “Yes: Santa is a metaphor--an annual reminder for each person to maintain good will toward all people.”

The need to deceive the enemy is obvious. However, the deceit must be carefully crafted and executed; obvious deviations from established principles will be accepted by only the most uninformed or gullible person. Gullibility is a deadly error left out of the seven deadly sins, for self-evident reasons; a good shield is humility.

Copyright:  July 12, 2012. Phillip R. Beaver, revised July 13, 2017.  Copy only with permission. (Adapted from Albert Einstein: Out of My Later Years, pp. 114-115)

---

[i] Adapting Albert Einstein’s 1941 speech, “The Laws of Science and The Laws of Ethics.” Starting at samharris.org/blog/item/my-friend-einstein/, but corrected to the referenced book. I am not careful with quotation marks, especially in the early part of the essay.

[ii] stateofweb.blogspot.com/ page 18 or facebook.com/TempleOfThePeople/posts/365809766825867 .

[iii] The-objective-truth, both the undiscovered and the understood, exists and can only be discovered by humankind. Human actions may influence events, but the consequences conform to the-objective-truth.