Eight Theses

Thesis One

I want to say that “core convictions” – our religious or metaphysical matrix (Zusammenhang) of core ideas and beliefs – are not falsifiable by a fact of the matter or any intersubjectively verifiable evidence. If they were, they could not do their job.

 

Thesis Two

Core convictions can be expressed as dogmatic or axiomatic definitions or true state-of-affairs (Sachverhalte). Statements like “sadistic cruelty is evil” and “Treachery against your fellows is evil” can be generalized into statements like

·        “Evil acts are soul-destroying acts. ”

·        “Soul-destroying acts are those acts that violate what is good (including bonds to fellow human beings.”

·        “Soul-destroying acts are absolutely never to be committed.”

Such statements that function as core convictions – I could spend hours trying to list all mine and systematizing them – do not function like standard premises in an argument that can be questioned as to truth or falsity. They are experienced as self-evident truths, experienced as discovered, not invented or constructed.

 

Thesis Three

The organ of understanding is not the cold intellect but the heart aided (or distorted) by the intellect. Without the possibility and intelligibility of deep remorse (Oh my God, what have I done!) and people loving one another (e.g. parental love), for instance, the self-evident moral convictions mentioned above would remain in the dark, unintelligible. Thus core convictions are not usually affected by intellectual reasoning alone. They are deeply ingrained in people’s lives, in forms of life – thus in habitual ways of feeling, thinking, and responding learned over time.

 

Thesis Four

Core convictions always include moral absolutes. The proposition that all moral beliefs are subjective or culturally relative and thus lack absolute validity itself expressed an absolute belief system, claiming to debunk all other known networks of core ideas and beliefs. Such ideas and beliefs cannot be justified because all justification presupposes them.  "If nothing is morally self-evident, nothing can be proved to be moral or immoral," to quote C. S. Lewis, summing up this thesis.

 

Thesis Five

A quasi-factual belief can function as a metaphysical conviction, though that usually turns out badly. Either the belief is plausibly true but subject to continual checking, which undermines its power to serve as a self-evident conviction. Or the belief is not true – perhaps a lie – and thus requires a protective bubble around it as well as an echo chamber. Since much of our fact-based and thus in principle falsifiable knowledge of the world stems not from personal observation or knowledge but from different trusted authorities (without which no community could function), maintaining the lie-functioning-as-core-conviction requires an echo chamber to repeat and reinforce the lie as well as to discredit all the authorities (e.g. science, journalism, the courts, law enforcement, neighborly communication) that call the lie into question. Trump’s big lie is only a recent manifestation of this phenomenon (though social media allows for an exponential increase in the power of the echo chamber). But the worldwide Jewish conspiracy of the Nazis or the sick conspiracy conspiracies of the fools in the so-called QAnon movement are further examples of how factually substantial beliefs as metaphysically defining core beliefs can be soul-destroying. Others are not as obvious. Beliefs like ‘A woman (ceteris paribus) has the natural vocation of nurturing children at home’ or ‘Sex is a social construct’ are often vague between prescriptive norms and factual statements.

 

Thesis Six

No religious or metaphysical idea or belief alone can do the job. They can only do the work of making sense of a person’s life or a community’s life (however darkly or distortedly) as part of a loosely interconnected semantic “ecosystem” or network [Zusammenhang in Dilthey’s use of that word.] Here is a picture of what I have in mind.

 

No religious or metaphysical meaning-ecosystem is logically compatible with a scientific theory or explanation (I think these terms are often synonymous).

Thesis Seven

There is a never-to-be resolved tension between our morality, our finitude, and our fallibility on the one hand, and our inescapable need for absolutes on the other. But it is a mistake to infer from the non-scientific nature of core beliefs that reason should not play a role because they lack all foundations in the end. The form reason takes for the finite and fallible is hermeneutic. I picture Being as an infinite text of which we are a part; we - conscious characters in the text - read and translate from our limited position. So our understandings reflect this position and who we are. And to paraphrase Lichtenberg: if an fool looks into a mirror, no wise man is going to look back. Readings of the text of Being depend on the quality of the mind and heart of the reader. That is not a very democratic image, but I stand by it. 

Thesis Eight

Religious and metaphysical meaning-ecologies are not immune to criticism. They can be internally contradictory. They can fail to make sense of life to the most lucid, well-meaning people. They can contradict known facts or secure knowledge to such an extent that they need an air-tight epistemological bubble with loud echo chamber to suppress the contradiction. This kind of criticism is what philosophy does.

 

of Key Terms

[I tend to use words in a sense only known to myself, so I had better identify those words.]

 

An idea or a concept is an interpretation of a phenomenon that can be expressed by a word or a phrase. A definition is a placeholder for a more extensive interpretation. Art, human life, reality, cause, evidence, morality, person, man, woman, child, family, sex, and God are examples. People have different ideas about such phenomena, with areas of overlap and difference. Such ideas typically signify only as part of a meaning-ecosystem.

 

My term meaning-ecosystem is a metaphor I chose because just as a disturbance of one part of an ecosystem can cause dramatic imbalances in the rest of the ecosystem even leading to collapse, so a disturbance in the network of ideas and beliefs can destabilize the entire network. If a southern Baptist can no longer believe that the Bible is the direct word of God and their interpretation is the clear, undisputed interpretation, then their entire religious beliefs can collapse.

 

Religious and non-religious metaphysical beliefs aim to explain the nature of reality and existence, answering fundamental questions about life, the universe, and human existence. They offer frameworks for understanding the meaning and purpose of life, shaping personal and collective values, and guiding principles. Both types of beliefs often involve concepts that go beyond immediate empirical observation and indeed organize and interpret empirical reality. They are the ideas and beliefs that help individuals understand their place in the broader context of existence.

   While religious beliefs are based on sacred texts, divine revelations, traditions, and the authority of religious institutions or figures, non-religious metaphysical beliefs are derived partly from personal reflection and scientific understanding, but also significantly from cultural narratives and ideologies. Religious beliefs are often oriented toward spiritual salvation, worship, and adherence to divine commandments, usually having a communal and devotional aspect. In contrast, non-religious metaphysical beliefs are oriented toward personal understanding, self-improvement, and making sense of life experiences, and are often more individualistic and practical.

    Validation of religious beliefs comes through faith, spiritual experiences, and conformity to tradition, whereas non-religious metaphysical beliefs rely on personal insight, logical coherence, empirical evidence (when applicable), and cultural acceptance. Religious beliefs typically involve narratives about deities, creation, moral laws, and the afterlife, while non-religious metaphysical beliefs focus on concepts such as the nature of consciousness, the meaning of life, human potential, and the interconnectedness of all things without necessarily involving supernatural entities. Religious beliefs are practiced within a community with shared rituals, symbols, and ceremonies, whereas non-religious metaphysical beliefs can be more individualized, though they may also be shared in philosophical or spiritual groups and through cultural practices. Both types of beliefs serve to make sense of the world and people's lives, providing essential frameworks for understanding existence, meaning, and purpose.

 

Scientific practice or attitude. That is, it is not consistent with the following essential features of the scientific practice:

·        Nothing accepted on authority

·        Data-based explanation: no beliefs not justified by the data

·        Intersubjective verifiability of all data/evidence

·        Agreement in description (‘reliability’)

·        Precision in description

·        Knowledge in the form of law-like generalizations (e.g. An object at rest stays at rest unless a force acts on it.) that are in principle open to being tested and falsified

·        Public review of all results by the scientific community

·        All scientific knowledge is incomplete and tentative, subject to qualification or correction

None of this applies to religious or metaphysical beliefs.

 

Soul-destroying acts are acts that make a person objectively unlovable, acts that if the person could see themselves clearly would lead to the thought: ‘Better never to have been born.’ (I don’t presuppose anything metaphysical about an immaterial soul or a life after death with this expression.)

 

An epistemological bubble is “an informational network from which relevant voices have been excluded by omission.” In other words, a space in which a belief system is protected from any thought – true or false – that might cause doubt. Bubbles create the illusion that everyone thinks the way we do even when they don’t. They live by concealing issues from view. An example: you will never see a major broadcasting company in America thematize the destructive impact of corporate capitalism on so many aspects of life, from the destruction of rural America (farmers and the small towns that used to support them) to the destruction of the land (e.g. in strip mining) to the undermining of the manufacturing base – and the working class –  during the “globalization” phase of capitalism to the influence of corporations in writing the rules we live by, to the concentration of wealth at the top and the pressures on working people as a result of this. More recently, Fox News has created a still smaller bubble by excluding not only those kinds of things but also anything that would cause its MAGA viewers to question the fantasy world created by their reality show host leader, a crazy little bubble in which truth plays no role at all. The other corporate media were bubble creators, but within their bubbles, there were still standards of factual reporting; they couldn’t just make stuff up; there was also a limited space for critical journalism.  (Fox News did have to pay over 800 million in defamation damages promoting the election lie; so not completely free to make stuff up.)

 

More worrying than the bubbles are echo chambers since access to new information and ideas can puncture a bubble. An echo chamber is “a social structure from which other relevant voices have been actively discredited.”  In other words, any argument or factual evidence that might make someone doubt the bubble must – by definition – come from a corrupt source and thus are worthy only of being mocked, not taken seriously. You can identify an echo chamber with a simple question: Does a community's belief system actively undermine the trustworthiness of any outsiders who don't subscribe to its central dogmas? There is no doubt that right-wing Israelis and those Muslims who refuse on principle to coexist with a Jewish homeland are deeply entrenched in echo chambers, and the violence is a result. Much easier for most people to live in a consoling fantasy with ultra-violence than to look at the world and themselves truthfully, impersonally in a way; to see others as real is a lot of work.

[source on epistemological bubbles and echo chambers: Nguyen, C. Thi, "Echo Chambers and Epistemic Bubbles". Episteme. 17 (2): 141–161]