CERTAINTY AND OBJECTIVITY

I have often remarked upon our analytic penchant in the modern era to reduce things to basic elements.  We do so not without reason.  Breaking down physical objects, phenomena, and systems into their bits and pieces has yielded a great deal of knowledge about our world.  We begin to learn why the order we perceive in the universe is not illusion but real by busting matter into atoms, molecules, and cells.  With this method of reduction we have built the sciences of physics, chemistry, and biology.  This has been a boon.  We know fundamental truths about our world with a great deal more certainty than we did before the advent of modern science.

But not everything about our world is explicable through science.  Moreover, not everything in science is knowable through methods of reduction.  Even so, we are seduced by the scientific certainty that reductionism has brought forth where it has succeeded, and so we desire to use it everywhere in the quest for the truth.  Like the man with a hammer who sees everything as a nail, we of the Age of Science tend to see every problem as a subject whose components have been inadequately analyzed.  All we need to do is take that subject and break it down into its basic elements, and we will learn the solution to the problem.  That’s fine, so long as it is so reducible.

Not everything is.  The physical realm of our world – the stuff of matter and energy – is, but not the mental realm.  For instance, a person’s mind, consciousness, and will either exist or don't exist.  Either they are or aren't.  They cannot be broken down into basic bits of mentality.  They are indivisible.  They are characterized by simplicity.  Yes, they have properties, but not components.  Either they each exist as a whole or exist not at all.  Therefore, these things do not submit to reduction to obtain the certainty of analytical knowledge about them.  They are not even reducible to measurement.  There is nothing to count, weigh, or quantify.  They simply are and so knowable only in their elusive entirety.

Furthermore, the mind, consciousness, and will do not submit, as matter and energy do, to deterministic laws of nature.  In other words, even as wholes they are not reducible to their causes and effects with relationships that can be defined with the mathematical certainty of physical laws like Newton’s F = ma or Einstein’s E = mc^2.  That doesn’t mean in absence of such certainty we cannot know things about the mind from its effects, like ideas.  Indeed, what we can know, we know objectively if not certainly.  While the certain entails the objective, the converse is not true.  For this reason certainty is to be prized, but it is not always possible.  However, knowledge that is less than certain is no less objective.  In fact, even though certainty absolutely requires objectivity, objectivity is completely independent of certainty.  What is true is objectively true whether or not we are certain of it .

This is important to understand when we seek knowledge that inherently will not be certain – that is, scientifically or mathematically certain.  Only knowledge of the physical realm of our world can be so, yet the mental realm is just as fundamental to our existence.  From it flows the complex of moral principles that inform aesthetics, ethics, and politics and make possible human happiness.  No small thing in our lives.  So it is a serious error to dismiss knowledge of the mental realm as mere belief, opinion, or superstition – that is, unobjective – because that knowledge lacks the certainty of science.  We must not deny ourselves knowledge of the truth because it is uncertain.  Doing so takes us down the path to the subjectivist swamps of utilitarianism, skepticism, and post-modernism in which rots the fabric of tradition and custom that embody the objective principles of morality.  In that quagmire we are left with our naked self to either learn through hard experience to resist our base impulses by rediscovering those principles or drown in purposeless carnality and cant.

Likewise, it is a serious error to claim certainty of knowledge of the mental realm that is not possible.  This would seem obvious.  Nevertheless, we do it repeatedly with our modern enthusiasm for reductionism.  We inappropriately apply the analytical methods of studying the physical realm to the mental realm in the false belief that we can understand the whole from parts that do not exist.  We then proceed to build edifices of rationalism and ideology upon the fantasy foundations of those non-existent parts.  For example, Marx preached that the mind was reducible to economic calculations in the pursuit of material gain.  Upon that foundation he devised the political doctrine of communism to harness those supposed basic elements of the mind to direct people to establish a utopian society.  Of course, the mind is not just an economic calculator, which is why people did not naturally create the workers’ paradise when totalitarian dictators put communism into action.  Instead they died.

So it serves us well to not confuse certainty with objectivity and to value objectivity even when certainty is not possible.  Some may not care for the humility before the truth that this understanding of knowledge cultivates, but it is good to keep in mind the paradox of this humility.  Knowing that the human mind is finite and so what one can know with certainty is limited is itself a profound piece of certain knowledge that enables one to understand more.

Comments

[doctor(logic)]

Bill,

This just sounds like dogma to me.

You seem to be saying that things are objective when you feel that they are objective.

Ironically, you assail skepticism, which is odd considering that this is exactly what philosophy is about. We have a bunch of beliefs before we start doing philosophical analysis. Our task is to see which of those beliefs are justified, i.e., to be skeptics about our own beliefs. And I mean all of our beliefs. We may find that some of our beliefs cannot be sacrificed, but they have to be questioned.

Finally, your claim about minds not being reducible is outright false. It's a denial of neuroscience. Do you also deny that Niagara Falls is made of H2O because physicists have yet to do a quantum simulation of 10^30 water atoms that produces Niagara's beauty? No. Yet we know that neural networks have true computing capacity, that they classify just like humans do, that there is a part of the brain for every function and so on. Just because we cannot yet simulate a brain made of neurons doesn't mean the mind isn't matter.

Now, what would have lent credence to your thesis? Finding that the brain is composed of fat cells would be one thing. Finding that the brain had no information storage structure would be another. Or finding that no mind function could be traced to any particular location in the brain. Or finding that drugs and surgery had no effect on personality.

But you know that none of these things are true. The mind is a biochemical machine. That's the objective fact.

[Bill]

Hello, Doctor Logic.

Come now. Who's being dogmatic? The mind is not matter in motion. If so, then consciousness, volition, and knowledge are an illusion, which still prompts the question of how it is that we can EXPERIENCE that illusion. There's more to the universe than matter, of which mind is merely a particular species of it.

As it happens, during the past week I discussed this issue on Bill Vallicella's blog "The Maverick Philosopher". Here's the link: http://maverickphilosopher.powerblogs.com/posts/1176520983.shtml

Regards, Bill