Does Seeking Truth Lead to Understanding?

The second idea I wanted to jot down while I remember it is this: Does truth-seeking always lead to the truth? I've been thinking through a counter-example recently, in which seeking an accurate assessment of the world in the short-term hinders long-term understanding, and I think it raises interesting questions.

I've been taking up dancing. First, I started with east coast swing about three months ago. Now, I hadn't really danced at all before this, so I was blissfully ignorant of how bad I was when I started. Because I didn't realize this, I was better able to be confident, to keep going through mistakes, and to actually learn and understand the dance better. By contrast, once I started understanding what I was doing, and also when I started taking up blues dancing, I have found it harder to progress because of a more accurate assessment of where I am.

So it seems that, by understanding where I am currently better, I have trouble progressing in the understanding of this particular art form. Seeking the truth prevents me from reaching the truth, as it were. As a friend pointed out to me, William James seems to have a similar example: If I have to jump over a precipice, and I believe that I can make it, this belief changes the world. My confidence that I can make the jump helps me actually make the jump, while a lack of belief may keep me from doing so.

I think that the situation that I raise is different from James' in an important way, though. Once you jump over the precipice, you are done. In dancing, by contrast, I have danced many dances and have had the opportunity to see my ability. It is not merely a matter of having confidence, but of inaccurately assessing my current state which helps me to improve, of at least ignoring bad dances if not telling myself they were good. Now, too much inaccuracy also hurts; we can all think of truly inept people who cannot assess themselves at all in their given fields. But too much accuracy also keeps one from moving forward.

Perhaps one could say that I am equivocating on "truth". An accurate assessment of where I am right now is what is true, whereas it is merely a matter of practical concerns and my desires as to whether or not I reach my goals. So truth may not be practical, and not merely for Machiavellian reasons. This would still be an interesting question, though: is a short-term disregard for truth a prerequisite for attaining certain worthwhile ends? Is it a worthwhile means to such ends?

But there is also the problem that there is a certain sort of understanding involved, which I can only get if I put aside the concern for truth to an extent. Seeking understanding now gets in the way of it later. If we truly want to understand, there are some things it may be better to not understand. Although, how can we know what these are, until we're on the other side of matters?

And with that, I'm off to become a hermit for a couple months. Feel free to leave comments, I'll probably check occasionally, but I'll only be responding at best once a week.

Philosophy and Search Algorithms

I'm at Madison now, ready to officially start my immersive Arabic program tomorrow. Or rather, not ready, but being pushed off the cliff anyhow. So I have a couple ideas that I want to get out before I am unable to use English or be around large amounts of English-speakers for two months (mercifully I have Friday nights off, at least, but I don't plan on writing philosophy then). First, I've been thinking that philosophy (and truth-seeking in general) is a lot like computer search algorithms, and that the analogy can help us to understand the place of the history of philosophy.

One can use simple search algorithms, called hill-climbing algorithms. The point is simple: you look everywhere around your current position, and you find the direction that takes you higher (where what counts as "higher" depends on what you are searching for; in this case, perhaps it is what is more rational/coherent/explanatory/pragmatic/all of the above). You take this step, and you repeat the procedure until you find a maximum.

It's nice, it's simple, it gets some results, but the problem with the hill-climbing algorithm is the same as with many thinkers: if you only look from within your own position, you are as likely as not only going to find a local maximum. That is, you found your own little hill in the search-space, but it is quite possible that you are surrounded by the Himalayas. Or plains, for that matter. The fact that you found a local maximum has absolutely nothing to do with the surrounding terrain. That's the problem with "faith seeking understanding": if you start with some ground that you refuse to question, you may get interesting results, but that says absolutely nothing whatsoever about what is ultimately true.

One solution to the problem with the basic hill-climbing algorithm is to start searching at multiple points. There's still no guarantee of finding a global maximum, the absolutely highest point present on the search-space, but one increases ones chances greatly. Even if one doesn't find the highest point, one at least has multiple local maxima to compare. One has a better chance of finding oneself to be in the Himalayas, even if one doesn't find Mt Everest.

Similarly, in philosophy, studying multiple styles of philosophy and assorted thinkers is necessary, not to find the global maximum (the absolute truth), but at least to have different local maxima at hand. Such an endeavor must be done sympathetically, though; if one can't actually see the world through the eyes of different thinkers, then one has not actually searched through the world with them.

One type of search algorithm that enables one to search multiple points is the genetic algorithm. One starts a pool of strings encoded with information. They are tested via a fitness function, and the fittest are allowed to pass on to the next generation. Further, the fittest strings are also mixed up to create new strings with information taken from multiple old strings, thereby enabling change to occur so that new areas on the search space can be explored.

This is how I think that the history of philosophy can work. There is (1) progress, which (2) needs what was done in the past and (3) which doesn't necessarily lead to "the truth" (since we can't necessarily know when we've actually hit a global maximum). We take the "memes" given by other philosophers, ancient and contemporary, and we remix them in our own persons. Some combinations will prove fitter than others, and there can be overall progress. Nevertheless, we never get rid of the past, since it is part of our own intellectual makeup and is a constant source of ideas to stimulate our own searches. Also, the diversity of philosophies is what enables the search to continue and possibly hit better and better local maxima. It isn't about getting it right once and for all, but rather it is about participating in the communal effort for truth as it gradually improves over time.

The Status of Religious Experience

Does religious experience (whatever you may count that to be) indicate anything about the world, or not? I've been thinking that, before we can answer this question in any way, we need to be clear on what is being asked. There are at least three different questions: (1) does r.e. point to anything real? (2) can r.e. be reduced to anything else? and (3) can r.e. be translated into anything else?

The first question is whether r.e. gives evidence for anything real. Does it indicate something about the world as it is? It seems that the answer to this question is clearly yes. Even if religions are merely about wish-fulfillment and social cohesion, then they are still concerned with features of us as psychological and sociological beings. We actually have to deal with our minds and our societies as structures of the world given to us, and so they are real. If r.e. is anything more, then it is all the more real.

The second question is whether r.e. is reducible to any other field of experience. R.e. may indicate something real, but this reality may be merely psychological features of experience. I would argue that r.e. is not merely reducible to these other areas of experience, although this may not be quite as clear as my answer to the first question. What is experienced in r.e. is experienced in a different way than anything in any other area of experience. The religious believer is not experiencing exactly the same thing as the psychologist or the sociologist. At very least, the religious believer is concerned with the phenomena as presently experienced, while psychology and sociology are concerned with the phenomena as caused and related to factors of mind and society. The perspectives are different.

I don't regard that as necessarily saying too much, though; I'm highly resistant to reducing any area of experience to any other. Even if there is a sense in which chemical laws are reducible to physical laws, the way we experience chemistry is not merely the way in which we experience physics, and so as domains of human experience the one is not reducible to the other. So to say that r.e. is not reducible to psychology or sociology does not mean that r.e. gives evidence for what the religious believer wants, but merely that it has its own legitimate field of empirical inquiry.

So there needs to be a third question: is r.e. translatable into another field of experience? While chemistry may not be reducible to physics as a domain of human experience, there is a sense in which it seems that chemical laws are shorthand for physical laws (something I'll assume for the time being for the sake of illustration). Statements about chemistry can be translated into physics, although not all statements about physics can be translated into chemistry; therefore, we consider physics to to more basic. So the real question about r.e. is whether it is translatable into any other area of experience. Can religious statements be translated into psychological and sociological statements? Can the reverse be done? Does r.e. have something of its own, fundamentally distinct from anything presented anywhere else?

I'm not sure how to answer this last question. I'm also unclear on whether analyzing the experience itself could tell us anything one way or another. On the one hand, it seems perfectly coherent to say that, no matter what the believer experiences, her account of her experience could be completely false and self-delusional as well as brought about by perfectly natural causes. This explanation may or may not be true, but there seems to be nothing impossible about this hypothesis (and in many cases, I admit that it seems quite plausible). On the other hand, I do want to preserve the uniqueness of all experience, and there does seem to be something qualitatively different about r.e., some peculiar stance in relation to the mystery of being that sets it apart. This is in part due to phenomenological concerns (from looking at the experience) and in part due to metaphysical concerns (from reasoning about the world). So for the time being, my hunch is to say that r.e. is untranslatable, though this still does not entail that it means what people think it means. Looking at the experience itself may give grounds for establishing its uniqueness, but cannot in itself tell us how that experience relates to other aspects of our experience.

Teaching Phil 1001

I'm not sure yet what I'll be teaching next semester, but I need to start planning out some course ideas since I won't be able to do much work on it for a couple months coming up. So, here's some preliminary ideas of have for how to structure a course on "Philosophy of Human Nature," and feedback would be appreciated.

There are two threads running through the course. One is the subject matter: the notion of the self. What is the self? Is there any actually existing self? Am I primarily an individual shaped by my circumstances, or primarily a human being with rationality/freedom/whatever else that might entail? How does my identity relate to society? And stuff like that.

The other thread is the overall structure of the course (the formal cause, as it were). One of the problems in teaching an introduction to philosophy is that the students get overwhelmed by the number of views, and lapse into relativism, skepticism, or dogmatism to cope, or simply declare that it is all opinion. So I want to structure the course around the development of different notions of the self in order to show how we work through philosophical problems and the tools we have at hand for dealing with differences.

The current structure of the course would then be the following: I will look at three different traditions. The first will be the Platonic tradition: Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine (and despite differences, Aristotle is sufficiently responding to Plato to be placed within the Platonic tradition as far as I am concerned). This tradition largely sees the individual as an individual, rational substance, with will brought in with Augustine. The second will be the Chinese tradition: Confucius, Daoism, and Neo-Confucianism. This tradition focuses more on social forces, tradition, and ritual, whether the particular thinkers are for them, against them, or synthesizing these different aspects. The third will be Buddhism: Siddhartha Gautama, either Madhyamika or Yogacara, and Zen. This tradition does away with the idea of a subsistent self. (So there is individual-self, social/natural-self, and non-self). A final section will deal with how we can start to interrelate the different traditions from our own standpoint.

Since I am focusing on a specific topic, I think that the number of thinkers should be manageable. My misgivings are twofold: I am not including any early modern thinkers (largely because, while they are historically important, I just don't find them interesting other than as a bridge between the scholastics and the German idealists) or existentialists (who would normally be considered to be somewhat important on issues of selfhood). Also, it will be heavy on "Eastern" thought, including things that students will not necessarily encounter in their other courses, which might make it a poor introduction to philosophy in general. However, I think that the different thinkers and movements which I am presenting do bring up really interesting and relevant issues and so are good from a topical point of view.

Any thoughts?