Who is rational?

                                                           Geoffrey Warnock 1923-1995

 

     A passage from the analytic philosophy Geoffrey Warnock – which could have been from Bertrand Russell as well, sums up the most forceful argument against everything I believe:

 

To be clear-headed rather than confused; lucid rather than obscure; rational rather than otherwise; and to be neither more, nor less, sure of things than is justifiable by argument or evidence. That is worth trying for.

 

The being clear-headed rather than confused and lucid rather than obscure I affirm, unconditionally. Being ‘rational’ is fine, though depending on what you mean by that term I think it is over-rated. My focus here is on the last norm: being “neither more, nor less, sure of things than is justifiable by argument or evidence.” That is a definition of much of philosophy for a long time now. It implies the divorce between philosophy and theology. It implies the divorce between philosophy and literature (poetry, all art). It moves philosophy closer to math and science.

     If I believed only what is justifiable by argument or evidence, I must understand all these terms. I can affirm the value statement, but only if I can understand the terms in a way that makes most sense to me. I assume Warnock would not share my understanding. By ‘evidence’ he surely means ‘facts’ that all people, Christian, Muslim, or Jew; naturalist, Buddhist, or Hindu – anybody in their right mind – that all people must be able to affirm. That rules out the sources of most people’s core beliefs in trust, authority, personal experience, conceptual understandings, attitudes towards the world, loves, and so on. It’s like our beliefs are on trial; only “objective” evidence can be admitted in a court of Reason. I am not sure how ‘value’ fits in. Our ethical judgments rely on emotion-laden judgments – through our emotions we learn what is important, evil, or good. Perhaps if all agreed on values, no issue would arise. Presumably, if different value judgments were involved, we would be called on to support them with ‘facts.’ As for argument, would everyone have to agree the argument is sound for me to be justified in embracing the conclusion? When do we know the argument is sound: 1) then all the terms are clear and agreed on; 2) when the premises are factually or logically true; 3) when the conclusion follows logically. You can see that this model of reason fits in well with math, science, courts – and any practice that involves purely factual or mathematical reasoning. I assume that gardeners the world round, however different otherwise, are bound by the realities of soil and plant biology, whoever they are, whatever they believe. Disagreements about what tomatoes thrive where and under what conditions can be worked out independent of the gardener’s religion or worldview. This is admittedly a simple picture, but I assume well known to you.

     So what am I justified in believing, according to this model of reason? Certainly not in fairies, Santa Claus, angels, or God. No empirical evidence exists for any of them. Well, as I child I did see with my own eyes Santa’s bag and boots in the living room. Despite the eye witness testimony, my audience of rational people would doubt what I saw since they have decided in advance that Santa cannot exist. Why? As an invented figure, it would be absurd to look for empirical evidence. What I saw was obviously a hallucination. I agree. Some logical arguments seem to at least create doubt about the rationality of excluding the possibility that God exists. That seems a thin justification, since such ‘proofs’ have only seemed intelligible to those who already bring their faith to thinking about the proof. Of course, people don’t have faith in God because of a rational proof. People trust revelation, scripture, their experience of people who have lived authoritative lives. Their faith is supported by prayer and perhaps poetry or painting. Their faith conditions their attitude toward life – seeing the empirical world in light of a certain image like ‘Creation through love.’ The meaning and significance of their lives – their love of family, of the land they live on, etc.  – makes sense within the language (conceptualizations) and practices formed within this attitude. I could go on. The point: none of this justifies their beliefs within the demand to be no surer of things than the factual and logical evidence supports.

   What would be left of most people’s belief system? Not much. Hamlet exclaims to Horatio: ‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy!’ Wait, Warnock would say. Can you justify that? If we accept Warnock’s model or reason as the one neutral and best method to get to truth, we will find that we are not justified in believing there are more things – though for all we know, there just might be! We would be justified in believing only that there are exactly those things that we do know through our science and logical philosophy – or perhaps even fewer things, since many experiences may be reduced to more simple ones. Warnock and philosophers like him would have no problem with this. Indeed, they would say: this is what is rational to believe. Anything more than what is known in our science and analytical philosophy, well, it’s like believing in fairies. The method determines in advance what it is rational to believe. If we define ‘marriage’ as a union between man and woman, then in advance a lesbian marriage is not really a ‘marriage.’ I think: we must let reality itself test our method, test the concepts of ‘reason’ that informs our method.

    I love my children. If my love is not purely sentimental, if my love is fitting to the thing (or person) loved, then my children are inherently loveable. It would be irrational to love something – love including at bottom the judgment ‘wonderful that they exist! – that had no value whatsoever. If the universe is an indifferent mix of matter and force without meaning or purpose – a view of the universe that seems compatible with what science reveals it to be – then all love is sentimental: a subjective projection of goodness onto a blank (valueless) screen. What objective evidence do I have that they are intrinsically loveable? None. Just the common experience of mankind. But, of course, common experience like personal experiences could be wrong! Just because most of us experience our children in such a way is not proof that such an experience is rational! Show me some evidence that your children are loveable. Show me some evidence that Bach’s music is wonderful. Show me some evidence that the waterfall is sublime. Show me some evidence that I should affirm life and the world rather than wish it undone.

    Either most of what makes life meaningful is unjustified or the criteria of justification make no sense. I am not sure you can resolve this definitively – certainly not by presupposing the very picture of reason that I believe to be the problem. The picture of reason is too narrow. Theoretical folk rip out a form of reasoning from areas of life in which it works fine, and make it absolute, hold it up as it were to all of life from the outside as definitive and beyond challenge. Why? Why do people usually try to make a conception immune from the test of experience? Why make the concept of ‘marriage’ necessarily a union between man and woman only? To protect a belief system to which one is committed. The making absolute of the simple picture of reason sketched by Warnock promotes the Enlightenment / naturalist rejection of myth and religion. It makes the Enlightenment safe.

    It is the common experience of humanity – admittedly, not perfectly stable – to which models of reason must be referred, and not the other way around. Of course, the loss of this common sense – reaching down very deep, even to the conceptions of babies – that make ‘theoretical’ impositions attractive. This and the fear of opening up to a reality that transcends our ability to conceptualize it in any logically definitive way.