I want to share what
I’ve come to believe the most beneficial concept I’ve applied to my studies. I
wish someone had taught me this earlier, say in the undergraduate portion of my
academic career. It may be the sort of insight that one must experience, open
mindedly, in their own time.
Avoid dichotomous
thinking. The academic world, higher thinking, has a long standing history of
separating into opposing camps that become their ‘religion’ or ‘political
party’. Nature V Nurture for example, from developmental psychology. Scholars
lose sight of their purpose, to seek truth and understanding, and become more
interested in defending their petty intellectual pride by holding to their
chosen theory like a life raft while attacking the threatening alternative. But
time and time again, almost every time, someone comes along and says both ideas
are true to a degree and the most correct understanding incorporates a blend of
both. They are both right in what they say and both wrong in what they don’t
say. The truth lies within the shades of gray. Bipolar thinking is the
hobgoblin of small minds, to paraphrase.
Let’s apply this to a
couple currently popular dichotomies under different schools, science and
philosophy.
1) Determinism V Free
Will.
Sometimes referred to as
“The great debate”, it's similar to nature vs nurture and will to come to the
same conclusion, that what happens is the result of the interplay between these
two forces. One would have you believe all of reality is already
pre-determined/ pre-existent and so nothing new can come into existence, that
all events in the future are unalterable, as were all events in the past. The
other that humans have autonomy and freedom to act based on their choices.
There is a general
scientific picture of the world that lends itself to predictability and
certainty of outcomes and hence more to determinism than any notions of freedom
or free will. Indeed in many minds, science is still associated with the
deterministic picture of the world, as it was in the nineteenth century. Modern
science, however, draws a picture that is quite different.
The world according to
nineteenth century science was, broadly, as follows. Very small particles of
matter move about in virtually empty three-dimensional space. These particles
act on one another with forces that are uniquely determined by their
positioning and velocities. The forces of interaction, in their turn, uniquely
determine, in accordance with Newton's laws, the subsequent movement of
particles. Thus each subsequent state of the world is determined, in a unique
way, by its preceding state. Determinism was an intrinsic feature of the
scientific WORLDVIEW of that time. In such a world there was no room for
freedom: it was illusory. Human beings, themselves merely aggregates of
particles, had as much freedom as wound-up watch mechanisms.
In the twentieth century
the scientific worldview underwent a radical change. It has turned out that
subatomic physics cannot be understood within the framework of the Naive
Realism of the preceding scientists. The Theory of Relativity and, especially,
Quantum Mechanics require that our worldview be based on a critical
(scientific) philosophy, according to which all our theories and mental
pictures of the world are only devices to organize and foresee our experience,
and not the images of the world as it "really" is. Thus along with
the twentieth-century's specific discoveries in the physics of the micro-world,
we should consider the emergence of a properly critical philosophy as a
scientific discovery, and as one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the
twentieth century.
We now know the notion
that ‘the world is "really" space in which small particles move along
definite trajectories’, is illusory: it is contradicted by experimental facts.
We also know that determinism, i.e. the notion that in the last analysis all
the events in the world must have specific causes, is illusory too. On the
contrary, freedom, which was banned from the science of the nineteenth century
as an illusion, became a part, if not the essence, of reality. The mechanistic
worldview saw the laws of nature as something that uniquely prescribes how
events should develop, with indeterminacy resulting only from our lack of
knowledge; contemporary science regards the laws of nature as only restrictions
imposed on a basically non-deterministic world. It is not an accident that the
most general laws of nature are conservation laws, which do not prescribe how
things must be, but only put certain restrictions or constraints upon them.
There is genuine freedom
in the world. When we observe it from the outside, it takes the form of
quantum-mechanical unpredictability; when we observe it from within, we call it
our free will. We know that the reason why our behavior is unpredictable from
the outside is that we have ultimate freedom of choice. This freedom is the
very essence of our personalities, the treasure of our lives. It is given us as
the first element of the world we come into.
Logically, the concept
of free will is primary, impossible to derive or to explain from anything else.
The concept of necessity, including the concept of a natural law, is a
derivative: we call necessary, or predetermined, those things which cannot be
changed at will, or by will. Meaning that scientifically speaking, free will
must exist, but so do events beyond the will’s influence.
2) Reality: real V illusion.
This one lends its
self to philosophical analysis as the question transcends scientific method.
The evidence of reality is self-apparent, presumed and obvious, as it’s all we
know. Thus the burden of proof lies on those who claim that everything we
experience isn't real, so that is where I will start.
An illusionist might
assert: 1. One’s experience is theirs alone and none can live in another’s
mind. 2. All one can truly and fully be certain of is that
their own consciousness exists. 3. So external entities are perceived, not
proven to exist. 4. If one only accepts what is certainly known, then it is
more logical to think everything only exists in one’s mind. Conclusion: Thus
the mind we know exists is the only possible source for these perceived
external entities. (Solipsism) An example: Schrödinger put his cat in a box
with a vial of acid, and broke the vial from the outside. He theorized that the
cat is both dead and alive. Because we cannot be sure if the cat is either
until we open the box, we must assume both. Many quantum physicist believe that
the only reason matter exists is because we focus on it. If I place a cup on a
table and look away from it, it begins to dissipate into the cosmos, and only
fully exists when I look at it. This is true on paper, because if nobody is
looking at the cup, then the only way we know it is still on the table for 100%
is if we look back at the cup.
A Realist’s response may
go something like: 1. We perceive things. 2. If we perceive things, those
perceptions are due to either external entities or an illusion. 3. Neither can
be proven. The inability to prove an entity does not disprove it. 4. If entities
exist then truth exists, as the fact of their existence is true. If truth
exists, reality exists as truth requires a reality to be true about. 5. If
illusions exist then falsehood exists, as illusions are false by definition. If
falsehood exists, reality exists as falsehood requires a reality to be false
about. Conclusion: Illusions existence is dependent upon a reality, similar to
light and dark. If light did not exist, neither would dark. If our lives are
illusions then there must be a reality underneath that illusion. Example: If
reality is an illusion of the mind, all that exists would come from that mind.
It then follows that the mind is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. Yet
the one is still subject to others (cannot control them) and learns things
previously unknown from interaction with others. These limitations of the mind
over its own creation is evidence for the ‘realness’ of others consciousness as
well as one’s own. Moreover, the fact that we successfully interact with
others, communicating with words representing ideas or things understood by
both to be the same entities is evidence that there is something external and
it must be real.
Both make strong, yet
inconclusive cases. Let’s apply this essay’s theory to an analogous query that
is easy to understand. How do we know that we all see color the same? We don’t.
It could be that red is red is red and is seen the same by all (barring
colorblindness). It could be that what one sees as red, another sees as blue,
but they both refer to the perceived color with the same word, proven by the
functionality of traffic lights. Our successful interaction with, dependence on
and learning from others all indicate that there is something real beyond our
limited perceptions. But it is also known that each individual’s interpretation
of the same events are often different (witness testimonies).
An unbiased, open
minded analysis of the evidence leads to concluding that the most logical
answer to the reality/ illusion discussion is that there are elements of both
at play. There is the color (reality), proven to exist by agreement (shared
experience) between separate individuals. But neither sees exactly the same
thing (witness testimonies), meaning both also experience illusion, as two
differing answers to a math problem can’t both be right. So, reality exists but
everyone operates under illusion via their individual perceptions. There is a
reality that is of our minds own creation due to illusion, but there is also
the ‘true’ reality that is the absolute reference point we diversely perceive.
Like investigators sorting through differing accounts of a bank robbery, when
we take into account the full picture given we can eliminate anomalies,
identify accuracies and deduce what happened.
I believe the two examples
above lend strong support to the idea that the right answer usually lies in the
shades of gray. And that the division into dichotomy is the product of
different, incomplete perceptions that need one another to expose each other’s
falsehoods and lead us to the most complete conclusion. This makes things
much messier, more complicated and more interesting. But once we accept
it, we are in a better position to learn and evolve.
Who is the strongest and
who is in the best position to understand the following situation accurately?
There are three men who decide to join the battle between the red army and the
blue. Man one chooses blue because he comes from a long line of blues; two
chooses red because they are the larger army and seem poised to win. Three
needs to understand who is in the right in order to support either. So mister
three spends time in each side’s trenches, gives both equal chance and then
stands in no man’s land, between the two groups that now see him simultaneously
as friend and foe. From there he can observe both at the same time. As with
most battles, both sides have justifiable reasons to fight. Or they wouldn't.
And both focus on the others wrong and their own right. Or they wouldn't fight. So who, of the three men is what an academic ought to be?
In closing, I implore
you to be the third. Argue, don’t fight. Debate, don’t try to be right. Seek
understanding with an open mind, but also a useful, active one that will go
where logic and evidence leads and productively contribute to the search for
knowledge and thus truth (there is no knowledge without truth). This is
how we sharpen one another and truly engage in education. This is how we
progress and evolve.
