Scientific convention and grammatical convention

“…scientific convention decides whether an eel shall be a fish or a snake, and grammatical convention determines what experiences shall be called objects and what shall be called events or actions.” — A. Watts, in The Way of Zen, quoted in Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century by Neil Postman

A language to open the world to us

“…this change from closed to open language is also a passage from a closed to an open world, for our world — the concrete world in which we live — does not come to us as something independent of language; we do not construct a language independently and then add it on to experience; our world transpires within language. Consequently, the essential openness of the language that we have to use for the purposes of life means that the world of our experience is correspondingly open. And that the world should lie open to us is the real and concrete meaning of freedom to which we aspire.” — William Barrett, writing about Wittgenstein, in The Illusion of Technique

The case for an intangible mind or soul

In my previous post, I questioned the existence of the “heart” in the context of Christianity. I’m not talking abou the blood-pumping organ here but rather something that is more like the central desiring and imagining aspect of a human. I questioned the existence of the “heart” by excerpting a newspaper article about the experiences of a man who suffered permanent brain damage following the removal of a turmor. The details of the man’s life, before and after surgery, seemed to leave little space for the “heart” to operate without a brain (or little space for a “heart” to exist without specific brain circuits). However, I also included a link to Alvin Plantinga’s review of Thomas Nagel’s new book, which critiques “materialistic naturalism” from an atheistic perspective.

I didn’t intend to slam the door too strongly on the possibility of an intangible element of humans, only to question to quick-and-easy assumptions of Christianspeak, which is shot through, for good or ill, with the language of Platonism and Cartesian dualism.

If there’s an easily understandable counterpoint to materialistic naturalism, it appeared yesterday on the Huffington Post site, written by Kelly Bulkeley, who has a PhD in psychology and is tagged as a “psychologist of religion” and a “dream researcher.”

Bulkeley focuses part of his post on the book A Portrait of the Brain by Adam Zeman, professor of cognitive and behavioral neurology. The otherwise excellent book, in Bulkeley’s opinion, falls apart in the final chapter, when Zeman opts against mind in favor of brain. Bulkeley writes,

In the preceding paragraphs, Zeman acknowledges that philosophers like Thomas Nagel, Colin McGinn and David Chalmers have raised devastating critical questions about physicalism that he cannot refute.  Yet he decides to accept physicalism anyway, based on what he calls a “hunch,” a strong “intuition,” and something he “suspect(s)” about the crypto-religious beliefs of those who do not accept physicalism. 

Bulkeley makes some interesting points. Read his entire article here.

Where’s the ‘heart’? The brain’s role in belief, feeling, and decision-making

I remember Bishop Lawrence saying something like this: the heart desires and the will justifies. Or, maybe it was, the heart desires, the mind rationalizes, the will actualizes. Something along those lines. Desire for something comes first, rationalization/justification second, and then actualization.  

This thing called the “heart” in Christian circles — it is not the organ that pumps blood but rather an inner orientation toward something or some things. In Christianspeak, the “heart” is the most crucial part of the person, the desiring element of us, the ultimate guide underneath the surface of belief and behavior.

But that point of view seems less and less of an adequate explanation of reality. Consider the following true story from the Sydney Morning Herald:

Elliot had a small tumour cut from his cortex near the brain’s frontal lobe.  He had been a model father and husband, holding down an important management job  in a large corporation and was active in his church. But the operation changed  everything.

Elliot’s IQ stayed the same – testing in the smartest 3 per cent – but, after  surgery, he was incapable of  decision. Normal life became impossible. Routine  tasks that should take 10 minutes now took hours. Elliot endlessly deliberated  over irrelevant details: whether to use a blue or black pen, what radio station  to listen to and where to park his car. When contemplating lunch, he carefully  considered each restaurant’s menu, seating and lighting, and then drove to each  place to see how busy it was. But  Elliot still couldn’t decide where to eat.  His indecision was pathological.

Elliot was soon sacked. A series of new businesses failed and a con man  forced him into bankruptcy. His wife divorced him. The tax office began  investigating him. He moved back with his parents. As neurologist Antonio  Damasio put it: “Elliot emerged as a man with a normal intellect who was unable  to decide properly, especially when the decision involved personal or social  matters.”

But why was Elliot suddenly incapable of making good decisions? What had  happened to his brain? Damasio’s first insight occurred while talking to Elliot  about the tragic turn his life had taken. “He was always controlled,” Damasio  remembers, “always describing scenes as a dispassionate, uninvolved spectator.  Nowhere was there a sense of his own suffering, even though he was the  protagonist …  I never saw a tinge of emotion in my many hours of conversation  with him: no sadness, no impatience, no frustration.” Elliot’s friends and  family confirmed Damasio’s observations: ever since his surgery, he had seemed  strangely devoid of emotion, numb to the tragic turn his own life had taken.

Now consider the above: Elliot cannot make decisions because of something that happened in his brain, not in his “heart.” His emotions have been neutralized because of something that happened in his brain, not in his “heart.”

To make proactively good or bad moral decisions, to have good or bad feelings toward God, to decide any number of things related to expressing or living one’s faith — all of these critical elements of spirituality are no longer available to him as a result of a problem with his brain.

These observations should give any believer pause. What do you mean when you say “heart”? Could it be there’s no “ghost in the machine,” no intangible presence attached to our biological organism? Could it be our “spiritual experiences” are tricks of the brain?

If nothing else, Elliot’s story should change the language of devotional life and church communal life. “Heart” should no longer be treated as an intangible part of reality but rather as a metaphor for brain functions.

Furthermore, why are apologetics still grounded in abstract arguments rather than critical assessments of facts? Can we really look at new research without considering its implications? Can we really just make broad-brush statements about “chronological snobbery” and “materialistic naturalism” when Western Christians constantly benefit from medical and technological advances from research based in the naturalist point of view? (Even when there are reasonable, contemporary critiques of that point of view.)

Read the rest of the story about Elliot and comment below.

Persuasion cannot happen without a supporting culture

This is a little dense, but read closely. The underlying point should intrigue anyone who tries to persuade others of unseen realities.

“Metaphysical questions and beliefs are technologically barren and are therefore neither part of the analytical effort nor an element of science. As an organ of culture they are an extension of the mythical core….

“Metaphyiscal questions and beliefs reveal an aspect of human existence not revealed by scientific questions and beliefs… The idea of proof, introduced into metaphysics, arises from a confusion of two different sources of energy active in man’s conscious relation to the world: the technological and the mythical….

“Myth cannot be reached by persuasion; persuasion belongs to a different area of interpersonal communication, that is, to an area in which the criteria of technological resilience of judgments have their force….

“The sense of continuity in relation to tradition may, but need not, help mythical consciousness. There is always a reason which needs to be revealed in the permanence of myths and the inertia of conservatism. Values are transmitted only through social inheritance, that is, thanks to a radiation of authoritative tradition. The inheritance of myths is the inheritance of values which myths impose….”

– Leszek Kolakowski, in The Presence of Myth

The limits of knowledge

A healthy understanding of the limits of knowledge should not be a license to ignore or degrade knowledge.

When Blaise Pascal said, “Reason’s last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it,” he said so with strong, well-demonstrated successes in his appropriation of reason. In other words, he successfully used and synthesized knowledge.

If you can think it . . .

“Language makes thought, as much as it is made by thought. Thought inhabits language and language is its body.”

— Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Consciousness and the Acquisition of Language, translation by Hugh J. Silverman

‘A battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language’

“These are, of course, not empirical problems; they are solved, rather, by looking into the workings of our language, and that in such a way as to make us recognize those workings: in despite of an urge to misunderstand them. The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have always known. Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

Could part of Ayn Rand’s philosophy be compatible with the Judeo-Christian worldview?

Consider this passage from Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal by Ayn Rand:

“The objective theory holds that the good is an aspect of reality in relation to man — and that it must be discovered, not invented, by man. Fundamental to an objective theory of values is the question: Of value to whom and for what? An objective theory does not permit context-dropping or ‘concept-stealing’; it does not permit the separation of ‘value’ from ‘purpose,’ of the good from beneficiaries, and of man’s actions from reason.”

At least this much is interesting: “reality…must be discovered, not invented, by man” and the objective theory “does not permit the separation of ‘value’ from ‘purpose’.”

Our stories, ourselves

Updated May 21, 2012

As part of his final exam assignment, a student reflected on something I had said in a creative writing class earlier this semester.

I had said, “We are the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.”

I hadn’t spent much time elaborating, but I said it during an introduction to fiction. I said it as a way to get the class to think about the characters they create for their short stories. Where do the characters think they’ve been, where do they think they are now, and where are they going? Like real life, the facts themselves are only part of the picture. How we think about the facts matters just as much — interpretation and contextualization are subjective, individual, internal acts performed by everyone, often with little conscious awareness of the process.

In his final exam essay, the student seemed to misunderstand the context for what I had said, which led me to realize I hadn’t elaborated enough. He seemed to be saying — with handwriting that wasn’t the easiest to read — that “we are the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves” was a kind of self-deception or maybe an intentional social strategy or some kind of looney self-help slogan. But I meant it as something more basic and fundamental to our human nature, as I described above.

He was a friendly student and a good conversationalist, so I wrote him an email to clarify what I meant. I also thanked him for helping me realize I hadn’t been clear or specific enough.

The following is loosely based on the email I sent to that student, with some additions and revisions.

First, I should immediately point out (as I forgot to tell my student) that the sentence is not original. I don’t remember where I heard it first. However, cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz defined culture as “stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.”

Whenever and wherever I first had heard that phrase, I had appropriated that clause in a personal, subjective sense.

I certainly don’t think my classroom comment means that we should attempt to deceive ourselves. I did not mean that we pretend to be someone we’re not. I did not mean that we construct artifices for others’ perceptions. I did not mean that we say, “I’m Superman — if I think it, I will become it.” No, no, not at all.

What I meant was this: each person has assumptions about who he is and where he’s going. When I was a college kid, I was a depressed, guilt-ridden cloud, but I also felt pretty righteous about myself, like there were certain things I would never, ever think about doing — I had assumptions about who I was. Also as a college kid, I had certain beliefs about what the future held for me — I had assumptions about where I was going. In many cases, I’ve been proven wrong.

However, accuracy is not the point here. Humans think of their lives as stories. Each real, living person has a past he comes from (remembered in particular and subjective ways, not necessarily remembered objectively), a place we hold now (with a subjective mental and emotional context attached to that place), and a combination of beliefs and intentions directed toward our futures (a subjectively constructed set of expectations that are somewhat unique to the individual).

These individual stories have varying degrees of accuracy, but the interesting thing is that we have them, and this has utility for fiction writing.

The above view dovetails with two important factors in characterization: characters have influences and desires, or pasts and futures.

But those influences and desires, for persons real and imagined, are subjectively constructed and appropriated in memory, imagination, and expectation. Rightly or wrongly, we interpret past events and we interpret our present — and many times, we apply those interpretations to the future.

Interpretation is usually a subjective act, at least on some level. Billions of people know the World Trade Center towers came down. I interpret that as horrible. In some parts of the world, people interpret that as a good thing and a long-time-coming.

So a well-rounded character indeed is the story he tells himself about himself — and every real person also is the story he tells himself about himself. These stories aren’t so much conscious movements along an intentional plot line. Instead, they are assumptions, beliefs, and expectations that may not even be consciously acknowledged.

In this sense, a person’s narrative view of his own life is not a self-help slogan and is not a social strategy but rather something more basic, more of a default mode, like sensory perception or simply memory.

Chances are, if I told you what your future was going to be like, and my narrative of your life greatly differed from your narrative of your life, you’d get angry or annoyed — or just think I’m crazy. You’d be well within your rights to feel any number of things, even insulted!

However, sometimes, a traumatic event, a book, a counselor, or a close friend will alter some of those subjective constructions, thus opening the individual’s life to a kind of mental-and-emotion rewrite of the story — seeing the past differently, reassessing future expectations — and perhaps opening new path.

In my current Strange Days column, I write about the large number of stories in the United States right now, and how they seem to be fragmenting social and cultural cohesion.

Here’s a relevant quotation I just found (several days after I posted this entry):

“Memoir must be written because each of us must have a created version of the past. Created: that is, real, tangbile, made of the stuff of a life in place and in history. And the down side of any created thing as well: we must live with a version that attaches us to our limitations, to the inevitable subjectivity, of our points of view. We must acquiesce to our experience and our gift to transform experience into meaning and value. You tell me your story, I’ll tell you my story.” — Patricia Hampl, in her essay “Memory and Imagination”