B: A Reasonable Argument

Debating reason is an extremely difficult matter, because reason itself is the primary tool of debate.  Certainly there are other weapons in the arsenal of the persuasive argument, but reason is the only one that can declare itself openly.  If people find themselves convinced, they usually like to believe that it was the logic and the facts of the argument that swayed their opinion.  The emotional element of a persuasive argument is considered almost deceptive, something you have to set aside to get at the meat of the matter, something that you can't let yourself be “tricked" by.

So how do you engage someone in a debate who declares themselves an opponent of reason?  Do you see who can pick up the biggest stick and hit the other the hardest over the head with it?  Trying to construct a persuasive argument that reason is flawed is a paradox of inconsistency.  Trying to construct a persuasive argument that reason is valid is a paradox of consistency, circular reasoning at its finest and not liable to be very impressive to your opponent who has already declared that they refuse to be caught in the loop.  It's a bit of an impasse.  It's a sword fight to settle the practicality of drawing swords.

And yet, if you believe as I do, that reason is in fine working order, that it is our best means of understanding life and the universe, that our very survival depends on its reliability, then you have to do your best to overcome this impasse.  Otherwise, you're left with no other option but walking away and turning your back as the reputation of the human mind continues to be abused.  You have to make your case, and just hope that the opposition doesn't completely refuse to listen.  Meanwhile the opposition is in the same predicament.  How can they convince someone to see beyond reason who won't consider anything other than logical reasons for doing so?

Well, in the interest of overcoming this impasse, let's consider my hypothetical opponent's position for a moment.  This questioning of reason's reliability usually begins with a questioning of the reliability of our senses and the fidelity of our perceptions with “actual" reality.  This questioning can go to the extreme of suggesting that everything we think of reality is a wholesale illusion, or it can simply suggest that our perception is very slightly and subtly out of phase with reality in some manner or another.

On strictly philosophical grounds, I have to concede the possibility that this could be true.  It has been common knowledge for millennia that there are limitations to what we can know as absolute fact.  It's possible that my whole life is nothing but the dream of a giant arachnid slumbering away in a mucus-dripping hive.  Nearly anything is possible.  But is it likely?  Who's to say?  If it's true, then I suppose it's very likely.  However, I would say that the burden of proof would be on the person making such a claim.  There are millions upon millions of possible scenarios of what our “true" reality might be, scenarios that surpass even the limits of human imagination, things we couldn't possibly even conceive of.  But unless some sort of evidence is presented in favor of a particular scenario, I see no reason to entertain it beyond its odd curiosity.  Of course, it's also possible that this “true" reality provides us with no evidence of its existence.  It's possible that that the truth lies beyond an impenetrable wall.

In such a case though, there would be no discernible difference between an illusion that seamlessly and perfectly presents itself to us as fact and a reality that is indeed a fact.  You could speculate about the possibility as an idle, intellectual pastime, but ultimately it goes nowhere.  The real question comes down to how you're going to live your life.  Are you going to dwell on the remote possibility that there is some unpierceable veil that doesn't reveal even the slightest wrinkle in its folds, or are you going to engage the world as it is given to human perception?  Are you going to proceed on the assumption that this world is a fact and try your best to survive and prosper in it, or are going to drop down the dark, infinite rabbit hole of “what if"?

Rabbit holes have their intrigue and their purpose; I'll give you that.  I even hope that we'll be able explore a few down the line here, what they are and why they exist.  But I would caution you not to get lost in them.  It's a long, long way to the bottom.

But let's return to our opponent, who has their own agenda for planting this tiny, little seed of doubt.  Once this seed is planted, they begin to cultivate it.  Whether the illusion they suggest is on a major or minor scale, they proceed to speculate that reason is bound within the confines of this illusion.  Reason is part of the system.  Reason, they suggest, is like a vehicle that can take you anywhere you want to go along a two dimensional horizon, but it tricks us.  It reinforces our faith in the illusion.  If only we could only let go of the grip reason and logic holds over our perception, they lament, we could see that what we think of as reality is merely a thin sheet of paper floating in a vast universe of three dimensional space.

In light of this, the strategy with which I plan to proceed is two fold.  1.) I plan to explore the advantages of relying on reason in the world as it is given to us.  2.) I plan to show how reason would still be a serviceable vehicle in this “three-dimensional" reality, should it be revealed to us.  I hope to show that reason is more adaptable and versatile then we might think.  I hope to show that we don't necessarily need to think of reason as something that holds us back and keeps us imprisoned and blind.  On the contrary, I hope to show that it is a liberator.  I hope to show that we don't need to think of reason as something that frustrates our heart's desires, but instead that it is the only hope we have for achieving them.  I hope to show that we can pursue truth to its very limits, we can go beyond the page if there's anything out there, and we don't need to leave our reason behind.  In fact, I hope to show that reason can take us there.

V: Introduction to Paradoxland

Though it looks like a blog, it isn't. It's the manuscript of a book!

Vincent's posts are arbitrarily set in January 2000, and Bryan's in February 2000.

1 post = 1 (provisional) chapter (of a manuscript of a possible book). Posts will be continuously edited. Comments will summarise changes made. Date & time of comment will automatically indicate the date and time changes made.

We are really using Blogger as a platform for a special form of Wiki:

A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. (Source: Wikipedia)

V: Birth of a paradox

In this, I propose to explain that it is only very recently that mankind has had scientifically verifiable explanations for things. Every time it has happened, religion has been shaken, because religion (I mean in Europe) was once the source of most explanations for everything--apart from the Greek philosophers, whose texts were lost during the Dark Ages. When they were rediscovered, the Renaissance happened. Plato was OK, his ideas blended easily with Christianity. But Aristotle was a bit difficult. Thomas Aquinas spent his lifetime reconciling his stuff with Christian doctrine, and was sainted for it. The Church was the source of all learning, the gatekeeper at the door of all deep thought.

So for example Galileo's astronomical ideas put him in personal danger because the Catholic Church felt its infallibility and authority threatened.

Then there were great advances in science & technology in the seventeenth & eighteenth centuries, what with Isaac Newton and all sorts of inventions, machines, navigation aids etc. In 17-something, there was the Lisbon earthquake, which shook not only the town but people's faith etc etc. So Voltaire wrote Candide and questioned the authority of the Church, and we had the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, with many intellectuals admitting to being atheists without fear of the Inquisition, torture or burning at the stake.

Then in the nineteenth century, we have Darwin (not to mention Marx, Nietzsche, Freud) - all in their own ways providing explanations or in other ways challenging traditional Christian ideas.

But - through all of this, Christianity survived, weakened but still kicking. People still found a use for it.

That's my point, really. If people still find a use for it, let them.

There are parallel developments in the theory and practice and medicine: Galen, Hippocrates and Aristotle (I'd have to check which order they came in), Harvey (function of heart & circulation of the blood), Lister, Pasteur ... Watson & Crick (DNA). Now we have not just antibiotics but all kinds of effective drugs, plus DNA manipulation.

Suddenly, after so many thousand years, there is evidence-based medicine, whose advocates hope, pray and arrogantly demand that all other forms of traditional medicine shrivel and die---quick.

This is regardless of the fact that the new medicine can't fix many of the most wide-ranging ills of modern man: depression & chronic fatigue syndrome for example. Its mind-body model is plain wrong. Bodies are treated as machines.

Why do alternative therapies, like religions, survive, when the study of evidence finds no merit in homoeopathy or prayer? The rationalist explanation, if I am not mistaken, is that people are stupid. This is possibly my main objection to the rationalist train of thought.

For I am one of the people. I don't consider myself stupid. I see certain uses for religion, which I shall enumerate in due course. I respect 'orthodox' medicine, with reservations, but also 'alternative' medicine, at any rate in theory.

There is that in us which wants a clean tidy job, which says that once the enemy is wiped out, there will be peace. This attitude is one of the main reasons why there is not peace.

I find within myself both reason and unreason. I find exactly the same situation in the world, and suspect that we won't get any nearer than this to that mythical thing called Truth (which I for one don't believe in).

What if the victor can never slay the vanquished? What if the opposites can never blend into a hybrid or compromise? What if our imagination is never able to accept the reality we see? What if our instinct yearns for an all-wise, all-knowing, all-powerful Father of All, with no evidence, no reality to match our dream?

This is Paradox, where we can map the problem, but probably never solve it.