"A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence."
- David Hume (An Enquiry Concerning Human
Understanding)
After two years of blogging, it's time to take stock. What have I been saying? Not much about self-perception, I'm afraid. Back in the fall of 2008, then-PT-news-editor Matthew Hutson sent me an email inviting me to do a blog on self-perception. I declined. But the prospect of blogging was tempting, and so I asked him to give me carte blanche to write about diverse psychological topics as long as I felt I could offer an informed opinion. Hutson did not object, and so I began with some reflections on my experience in a self-help workshop. I saw something useful in the advice the workshopper offered, but I also noticed a heavy dose of supernaturalism. I objected to this line of "help." I could not see why one would want to endorse supernatural claims to overcome natural misery. For example, why should I buy into the idea of an immortal, reincarnated soul that carries with it the moral transgressions of lives past. Some people tolerate supernatural claims because they think that although these claims may be strictly illogical, they do some good to those who believe them. I could not detect any evidence of that. Suppose you tell a mother who lost a child to cancer that the soul that inhabited her child had sinned in a previous life and that the child's suffering and death was the universe's way of dishing out just desserts. Please!
Still responding to the supernaturally inclined self-helpers, my next post took up the question of determinism, and how I have seen it misunderstood. The phrase "everything happens for a reason" is sadly ambivalent. I accept the reading "Everything happens for a cause," in the sense that everything is determined by the totality of antecedent conditions. I do not think, however, that determinism allows us to expect that everything will turn out well (for us, of course, not for the bastards down the hall). I noticed that many people do read this reading into the phrase. What seems to be a setback now may only later be understood as a necessary step towards a higher plane of perfection. Perhaps. Even the humble regression effect known from basic statistics justifies the expectation that most of the time very bad events will be followed by events that are not quite as bad. But that does not mean that there is a higher intelligence behind the scene that benevolently guides us toward the good.
A host of posts on free will followed. My message: Forget it and get on with your life. Getting on without free will has some interesting implications for your moral outlook: less guilt, less regret, less vengeance, and more compassion (even for those who think that ESP is just a dandy idea).
There is an intellectual framework that holds these ideas together: Naturalism. Naturalism maintains that we are part of nature, just like rocks and rabbits. There is nothing beyond nature within us (soul) or above us (god) that gets into the way of the causal flow of things. To me, the casual flow of things that makes up nature is what Heraclitus called the logos and what Lao-tzu called the tao. And that is quite enough. Thank you. Da-da-yenu. We don't need no dualism. We are at home in nature.
A mere paragraph on naturalism is but a grain of sand on the beach. I invite you to take a look at Thomas Clark's lucid book "Encountering naturalism: A worldview and its uses" and at the resources available on the website of the Center for Naturalism. If you disagree with what I have written in this post or if you object to the contents of the works on naturalism, take note of whether your objection comes with strong emotion. If it does, please take a little time to reflect and let your equanimity restore itself. Then, please tell us what you think.
