The Error in Russell’s Teapot 26 November 2006
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The philosopher Bertrand Russell has a famous argument called “Russell’s teapot” which is related to the maxim: “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” i.e., the lack of evidence for something does not prove that it does not exist. When the belief in God is attacked on the basis that there is no evidence for God, believers sometimes respond with this maxim. Russell, however, argued that, in the absence of evidence, the burden of proof rests on the person asserting existence (e.g, of God) rather than the person denying existence (e.g., of God). Russell used the following example to argue his point: Consider the claim that there is a teapot in orbit around the sun, so far away that no telescope can detect it. It is clearly more reasonable, he argued, to suppose that such a teapot does not exist than to suppose that it does exist. Russell used this argument to conclude that, absent any evidence, it is more reasonable to believe God does not exist than to believe God does exist.
Russell’s argument is often cited as if it were an established truth that settles the issue once and for all. However, I think there are some serious problems with Russell’s argument. In fact, I think it is invalid. First, teapots are not analogous to God: Absence of physical evidence for a physical existent is not comparable to absence of physical evidence for a metaphysical existent. Another problem with Russell’s argument is that his choice of the teapot as an example biased his conclusion. By picking another example, we can arrive at the opposite conclusion: Consider the interior of the sun. Just like the teapot, we can not see the interior of the sun with our telescopes. Yet, we would normally consider it more reasonable to suppose that the interior of the sun exists than to suppose it does not. So, in this case, the burden of proof would rest with the person who would deny that the interior of the sun exists. Thus, Russell’s argument only appears true since he deliberately picked an example of something that is ridiculous to suppose would exist.
The upshot is that Russell’s argument can not be relied upon as a general justification for asserting that, absent evidence for X, it is more reasonable to deny existence of X rather than asserting the existence of X. But this doesn’t imply the opposite, that it is more reasonable to assert the existence of X. All else being equal, absent any evidence, both existence and non-existence stand on the same footing. Based on logic alone, we don’t know enough to assert or deny the existence of anything.
The reasonableness of a belief in the existence or non-existence of X depends on the worldview we take for granted and how X fits into that worldview. Thus, the existence of the center of the sun is reasonable within a scientific worldview since it makes it more coherent and consistent, while the existence of a teapot in orbit does not. This observation makes it clear that what is reasonable is dependent upon the worldview that is taken for granted. As the worldview changes, so will the judgements about what is and is not reasonable to suppose exists without evidence. For example, in the traditional chinese worldview, it is perfectly reasonable to believe in the existence of chi, but in a materialist worldview it is not so reasonable. Neither the existence or non-existence of chi is reasonable independent of a worldview. We have to first make assumptions about our worldview to make such claims of reasonableness.
So, the existence of certain facts about the world is not so black-and-white as it might appear. Or, to put it another way, if they do appear black-and-white to us, then that’s a sure sign that there are some hidden assumptions at work in us that we are not seeing. In one worldview, it may not be reasonable to believe in a certain type of God. But that does not mean that there is not another worldview in which it is reasonable. Reason, after all, depends completely on the assumptions we start with, and reason alone can not choose those assumptions for us. Our discomfort with this fundamental existential ambiguity is one factor that I suspect drives us to cling so much to our way of seeing things, and fight against others who believe otherwise.
Compassion and Morality in Technology and Science 5 November 2006
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Technology is an amplification of human power. Whether we’re talking about spears and fire or nuclear engergy and genetic engineering, technology increases our ability to influence ourselves and our environment. Thus, the more powerful our technology becomes, the greater the need for us to be aware of the consequences of our actions, and the more important it is that we be aware of the motives for our actions. Wisdom and compassion are in greatest need when our power is greatest.
Although the exponential development of technology in the past hundred years has increased the importance of morality, the fundamental issue is the same: How do we determine, individually and collectively, what is right from wrong? The answer is simple in principle, but often challenging in practice: Our action is bad insofar as it arises from selfishness, greed, or hatred, motivated by a will to act for oneself without regard for the whole. Conversely, our action is good insofar as it arises from selfless love and compassion, motivated by a will to act for the good of the whole. And the goodness will be more effectively manifested the more we have an understanding of the consequences of our actions. Compassion is crippled without wisdom.
The converse is also true: wisdom is crippled without compassion. What we do not care about we ignore, and what we ignore limits our understanding. An open heart and open mind go hand-in-hand. Science and morality are not independent or opposed realms of fact vs. value. Openness is as essential to the development of wisdom and understanding as it is to the development of love and compassion. Closing the mind limits the capacity for manifesting compassion just as closing the heart limits the capacity for knowing.
The implication is clear: the fullest development of science and the fullest development of morality are not opposed, but necessarily imply each other. And it is critical in this period of history that we manifest this integral vision.
Integral Ontology 4 November 2006
Posted by integralscience in Philosophy.9 comments
An ontology is an account of being, of reality. An ontology, in short, determines what is and is not real. For example, a materialist ontology assumes that matter is fundamentally real, while things like consciousness do not have any reality of their own. Consciousness is a mere function of matter (at best) or delusion (at worst). A spiritual ontology, on the other hand, might take the opposite view: consciousness is fundamentally real, while things like matter do not have any reality of their own. Matter is a mere function of consciousness (at best) or delusion (at worst).
How can we integrate such contradictory accounts of reality? This depends, in part, on what we mean by “integrate”. To include both accounts as complementary perspectives in some meta-system is a partial integration at best, and is not so difficult. A genuine integration, though, must go further than mere collection and correlation. It must transcend these apparent contradictions and divisions in a deeper vision of wholeness. The task of true integration is not putting the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle back together. It is attaining that seemless vision of the original landscape, before the photograph was taken and cut into pieces.
Any ontology that posits “things” that exist has an implicit metaphysics. Now, in Western philosophy there has been a well known critique of metaphysical realities. But this critique, if applied consistently, applies just as equally to physical realities as to metaphysical realities. Thus, a “post-metaphysical” understanding must also be equally “post-physical”. The sword of criticism cuts both ways. In other words, the physical world is no less speculative than any metaphysical world. This materialist bias can be exposed by sufficiently profound critical insight.
At a more profound level, the very notion of a perspective or view of reality presupposes a structure or filter of some kind, something that passes through this filter, and something that sees the result of that filtering. Insofar as we take this perspectival view as given, we have adopted a “perspectival metaphysics” that is no less a metaphysics than materialism, idealism, or any other metaphysical stance. There is no metaphysics that escapes critical insight. There is no place to stand, no ground beneath our feet.
The deepest root of all ontologies, paradoxically, is no ontology at all. To even talk of an ontology presupposes an ontology. But prior to these accounts of reality is reality before any account of it. The Tao that can be told is not the true Tao. Here is revealed the ineffable, trans-ontological reality that, by nature, integrates all accounts of itself because these accounts are itself.
A Genuine Integration of Science and Spirit 4 November 2006
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The conflict between science and religion in Western culture has its historical roots a few hundred years ago in the division of reality into material and spiritual halves. Science was given authority over the material world while religion retained authority over spiritual and moral issues. Since reality is a single whole, this artificial division of reality has inevitably resulted in various conflicts. In response, there have been numerous attempts at reconciliation and integration. Most of these attempts, however, are inadequate because they do not heal the fundamental schism at a sufficiently deep level. They are not truly integral because they merely present the scientific and spiritual perspectives as complementary or somehow correlated without providing a deeper integral vision from which both are seen as aspects of a single whole. One sign of the incompleteness of such partial integrations is the continued presence of various misconceptions and false dichotomies that are artifacts of the original presupposed division.
One such misconception is the fact/value distinction: science deals with physical facts, while religion deals with spiritual values. Science, we are told, tells us which facts are true, while religion tells us which values are good. This distinction, however, is a false dichotomy. When science makes a statement of fact, this necessarily impacts what is valuable, since we value what is true and genuine and not what is false or fake. Conversely, what we value has an impact on what we determine to be the facts, because there is freedom in how we interpret the facts, and our values color our interpretive choices. And in religion, facts are no less essential than values. God, Buddha nature, Brahman or the Tao are not just the supreme value but also the ultimate fact, reality and truth. And knowledge of this truth brings salvation or liberation. So, there is no real separation of facts and values in either religion or science. Any integration of science and religion is incomplete if it maintains this false dichotomy between the two.
Another misconception of partial integrations of science and religion is that they maintain the false dichotomy that science deals with the outer, material world, while religion deals with the inner, spiritual world. This dichotomy ignores the fact that scientific theories are shaped not only by perceptions of the outer world but also by aesthetic values (e.g., beauty, elegance, simplicity and coherence) that are not objective or outer facts of the world. The ultimate object of scientific knowledge is not just any theory of the external world but an elegant and beautiful theory of the world’s order and harmony. And for the religious contemplative, their concern is not limited to insights into the inner world. The scope of contemplative inquiry includes both inner and outer objects. In fact, the ultimate goal of the spiritual seeker is to recognize that there is no real distinction between inner and outer, self and other. It is thus a distortion of the true nature of both religion and science to maintain that one deals with the internal world of insights and the other with the external world of sensory phenomena.
Once these false dichotomies are clearly seen, a deeper harmony between science and religion is revealed. The Good and True are not genuinely integrated by pasting together pieces of reality that have been segregated into different quadrants of reality. True integration must see them as aspects of the One. At the deepest level of reality, both outer and inner, fact and value, are a single whole. Genuine integration takes place at this deep level, by seeing the true unity prior to division, not by taking false dichotomies for granted then piecing together the fragments.
What is Genuinely Integral? 4 November 2006
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The contemporary “integral movement” has spawned everything from “integral energy” to “integral naked”. It seems that “integral this” or “integral that” is all the fad, replacing “quantum” as the buzzword of choice. But what do we really mean when we say something is “integral”? The word “integral” originally comes from the Latin, and literally means “intact” or “untouched”. In other words, to be integral is to be unbroken and whole. Similarly, a number that has not been fractured (into a “fraction”) is called a whole number, an “integer”.
Something genuinely integral is primarily a unified whole, and only secondarily composed of parts. A whole is not a mere collection of connected parts, but a unity that can (if we choose) be viewed as having certain distinguishable aspects. A true integration, then, is not the result of merely collecting, categorizing, and correlating different parts. It is a vision that sees deeper than the divisions to a prior purity of wholeness.
The history of physics contains some valuable examples of true integration. Einstein’s unification of matter and energy is an excellent example. According to Einstein’s theory, matter and energy are not distinct substances that are converted into each other, but are different manifestations of a single matter-energy essence. Only with this deeper integral vision is there a real understanding of why or how matter and energy are related or appear to transform into each other: they are actually two aspects of the same thing.
A similar example of integration can be seen in Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism. Originally, electricity and magnetism were seen as two distinct force of nature. There were some known correlations between them, and it was acknowledged that both forces needed to be included in a complete picture, but that was not a true integration. The two forces were still viewed as fundamentally distinct. Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism, however, changed everything. He provided a genuine integration in which these two forces were recognized as different aspects of a single unified force of electromagnetism. The dichotomy between electric force and magnetic force was recognized to be false, an artifact of our superficial understanding. With the deeper understanding provided by Maxwell’s theory, we can still distinguish electric and magnetic aspects of the electromagnetic force, but we see them as aspects of one force, not as two forces that are being correlated.
An understanding that merely includes different parts of reality, combining and correlating them, is just a first step toward integration. A genuinely integral vision goes deeper, to transcend the very distinction between the parts, to reveal a unity that is truly integral and whole.
Integral Epistemology 4 November 2006
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Science, as it is normally thought of, is epistemologically limited, i.e., the source of its data is limited to what can be experienced by perception. A more integral science also admits data from conception (e.g., as in mathematical science) and spiritual insight (e.g., as in contemplative science). A true integration of these three experiential modes, however, is not accomplished by merely asserting that all three must be considered. A genuine integration must show how perception, conception, and introception (as Wolff calls the spiritual faculty) are three aspects of deeper whole.
Sufficiently profound insight clearly reveals that perception is never “raw perception” but is always mixed with a conceptual framework. The visual perception of a rock, for example, involves a mental activity that distinguishes the visual field into a portion that corresponds to the rock and a portion that does not. This conceptual aspect of perceptual experience is normally unconscious, and thus gives rise to the mistaken sense that these objects of perception are simply given to us, without any conceptual contribution on our side. Thus they might seem like “raw perception” when they are not.
When the conceptual component of perception is clearly discriminated, and the mind becomes still, then one comes closer to an experience of “raw perception”. There can be awareness of the visual perceptual field, for example, without the mental overlay that distinguishes the “rock” from the rest of the visual field. At an even deeper level, there can be awareness without the mental overlay that distinguishes perceptual phenomena from mental phenomena. A thought arising and passing and a sound arising and passing are not experienced as different kinds of phenomena. They are both simply phenomena, without any inherent distinction between “conceptual” and “perceptual”. It is at this level of depth where the conceptual and perceptual modes of knowledge are truly integrated, genuinely whole. This is the real beginning of a more integral epistemology.
At these deeper levels, there are still subtle conceptual overlays that provide a structure to knowledge. There may still be a subtle sense of a knower or experiencer of a world of phenomena, a sense of a timeless knower of a changing world of form. This subtle dualistic framework is the foundation for all derivative perspectives and ways of knowing. Prior to this, however, is the true trans-perspectival integration.
At an even deeper level, integration with the nondual contemplative mode of knowledge (introception) is also revealed. Introception is an immediate knowledge that is prior to the distinction between subject and object. It is not an experience of any knower, not a perspective from any point of view. It is prior to space and time. It is pure awareness itself, which is a knowingness inherently present everywhere. For example, even though there may be a sense of these words being objects known by a subject, that subject-object overlay is not required by awareness itself. There is still awareness inherently present in the periphery of the visual field surrounding these words, regardless of whether or not objects are distinguished there or not. And the quality of immediate knowingness that is inherent to this awareness is at the basis of all forms of knowledge. The very distinction between perceptual, conceptual, and introceptual forms of knowledge is itself an overlay of this pure, integral awareness. This complete and utterly simple knowingness permeates and is the root all other forms of knowledge. Here is the ground of all knowing, the genuinely integral epistemology.
