Magic and Knowledge

A couple months ago, I was reading through the book Persuasions of the Witch's Craft by T. M. Luhrmann. I haven't yet finished it, but what I read I think does bring up interesting problems for epistemology.

Luhrmann was an anthropology student at Cambridge at the time, doing her dissertation on the practice of ritual magic in contemporary England. One of the key points which she brought up was that what she encountered was not limited to these groups; it applies to any time in which a person specializes and learns to look at the world through new lenses. It just so happens that magic makes a good test case; it is not as though magic were widely believed in our society, so everyone who enters one of these groups must undergo a pretty significant change of mind.

And most of these people entering these groups do go in with a skeptical frame of mind. This is in fact encouraged by the community, which is often made up of intellectuals and prides freedom and rigor of thought. The people who do come to believe in the efficacy of magic believe that they have rationally tested the data and that the evidence is overwhelming.

However, it is not as though these people are conducting scientific experiments. What they are doing is probably too complicated and fuzzy for such experiments, any how; magic for them is not just about, saying, making a quick buck or casting "magic missile". The results are often supposed to be influences on various matters, and sometimes large-scale influences, say on the well-being of the country as a whole. In addition, much of what goes on is about self-transformation as much as anything else; I was struck by the similarity of some of these rituals to, say, Tibetan tantrism in its imagery and use thereof.

So how do these people think that they have rationally assessed magic and found it to be defensible?

• We remember when things go really well. That one spell that had miraculous results sticks out in our minds, rather than the few that were so-so or those that had no visible results. The author talks about her experience in reading a detailed horoscope; inevitably some sections would be dead-on, and these made her want to believe the rest even though she logically knew that as a whole the horoscope did not perfectly fit her.
• There are ways in which we can fail. This may sound counterintuitive, but if things can go right, they must be able to go wrong as well. If you can't muck up a magic spell, then under what conditions does it work? Instead, people start looking for alternative ways in which the power of the spell had released itself. Luhrmann gives the example of some people who were inviting a potential business investor over, and so made everything in their house correspond to certain symbols of Jupiter (itself associated with business and worldly success), such as colors and the numbers of things around the house. Nothing happened with business, but a couple days later the person mentioned (for pretty much the only time in his life) that he was thinking about going into the priesthood. Turn out that Jupiter also symbolizes religion. Other examples were using magic for something water related, or something with watery associations, and then having the pipes burst. We can then pick out the associations and know that something was going on.
• Tied to this, the magicians start learning to look at their world by picking out different aspects, focusing on things which they never before would have noticed. If you are looking for certain things, you will start finding them; start reading your horoscope while looking for ways in which it applies to your life, and it will start applying to your life more.
• Finally, magic is hard. It's complicated and demanding. People who have been in it for a couple decades remark that they are still beginners. So, if one's first attempts do not succeed, is that any surprise? There are reasons why one does not see the results, and reasons to press on.

The issue that comes up is, are any of these ways in which people come to believe in magic any different from how we conduct ourselves in our everyday lives, where we want to believe that we rationally look at the world and assess it properly. It also comes to bear in joining up with any group, such as a religious one (or an academic one), that claims to let one rationally come to that group's conclusions.

So, what exactly is the problem here? Maybe magic works, and society at large simply doesn't realize this. I don't really see enough evidence either for or against it to make a firm decision; the problem is that competing worldviews all claim to be rational, while our ability to be rational in contingent or complex matters is (maybe totally?) conditioned by our own worldview. So, how do we really get to the truth?