Into the Mandala

I am neither atheist nor evangelist.

It seems to me that we exist and interact in an ongoing sea of contradictions and uncertainties, to which logic and science certainly do not have all the answers. But the faith in absolutes required by religions is beyond me at this point. I must live with “beliefs” rather than “knowing”, intuitive feelings rather than a complete worldview. And still, sometimes, those dark nights of the soul which seem to last forever.

Philosophy provides a reasoned insight that we cannot arrive at any conclusive proof of an objective external reality; everything is dependent on sense data (empirical, or findings by observation), or perceptions which can be shown to be false or self-contradicting. No experience or perception can be unmediated by our senses, individual or collective. Yet although we cannot avoid sense data, we should at least acknowledge it as having a central place in any working concept of reality... that working concept being the basis for our ability to deal effectively with the perceptions that appear to come from outside - people, the environment, sounds, and so on.

Moreover, we have to acknowledge that our perceptions are so vivid and meaningful in their effect upon us that they have inherent value, despite any abstract logical failings. And not only do they have value, they have such resonance - the comforting touch of a friend, hearing the words of a poet or being taken on a musical journey, making love, feeling the soul rise to the surface through the touch of lips and limbs, dancing, the warmth and solace of sleep, the beautiful aromas and flavours of good food, the quality of sunsets, or even of windswept, cloudy days where grey light falls softly like rain...

All these things are "real" in any human sense of the word; and perhaps, if we accept the semantic flaw, or at least acknowledge that under rigorous examination it is all subjective - perhaps with that we can embrace our fragile, unproven reality more fiercely and with more pathos. It may be a nothing, a foolish fancy, but it is also the flame that draws millions of souls like moths along an infinite series of journeys, in the end it is all we have until the mysterious gate at journey's end, which we meet, ultimately, alone. So until then, let's make noise, sound and fury... signifying nothing - yes, perhaps... but also signifying everything.

This has been a great philosophical question in the Western tradition since Plato; that we are no more than our senses, and yet our senses do not express the truth of us... we intuitively and rationally conceive of the greater-than, the unseen, the timeless and infinite, yet our senses are explicit, precise, and our dependence upon sense data is complete. The first questioning of western Christianity through philosophy brought us to this duality... between what consciousness is (or might be, or might hint at), and what the 'outside' is, its physicality, sensuality and mortality. It brought us the keenest alone-ness and alienation; 'angst' is a nice term for a particular western, sophisticated kind of dualism; helpless and trapped within a self-defining consciousness, but somehow aware of and clutching at moral imperatives.

Rampant empiricists might say these are 'accidential' or 'coincidental' by-products of a genetic will to survive (the so-called selfish gene) suffused with an ever-increasing collective memory, but the logic falls down; why isn't our concept of (im)mortality or infinity one that encompasses a consciousless DNA - why is it such an expression of individuality and ego? The "altruism" of human beings is both less consistent and utterly different from the dogged self-sacrifice of ants protecting the queen or going about their business; we do not submit ourselves willingly to recycling in some pulpy genetic seedbed.

Why would such a contrast - a dissonance, even - between what we can conceive of , and what we know, exist? If it is genetic, or evolutionary, surely it is the most unhelpful and hindering kind of consciousness we could have... it lies beneath our killing, our genocide and suicide - it is contrary.

The western philosophical tradition brought the psyche to an uneasy non-equilibrium between body and mind, soul and mind, body and soul; the only rational existence being thought, our bodies dwindled and our senses were merely deceivers; empiricism - our attempt to see through the gauze - became simply the servant of science, rather than inherently scientific... and it still is.

What kind of being invents and, intuitively, collectively 'understands' a concept like truth, when within the concept are the seeds of its own destruction? The search for, and intense scrutiny of, the elusive essence of anything with all the logical and empirical tools at our disposal has led us down countless blind alleys... including the injustice and hypocrisy associated with organised religion.

Neitzche was trying, I think, to reassert the most consistent essence of self, by tearing down all the external, fabricated, systems and commonalities that gave this duality its self-destructive tension. Let us not say that the self, the consciousness, is small and powerless, let us make it all that there needs to be, acknowledge and revel in its potential for wholeness... let's go all the way and make all systems, imperatives, in fact all 'others' crumble before the immensity of self; but Neitzche asserted that, to do this, one had to know oneself, and be utterly true to one's knowledge of self, without hesitation or consideration, ego without ego.

Yet, Neitzche's own observations challenged this idea - somehow, there was a 'common herd' which he despised, there were those who could not be supermen, this completeness was somehow only accessible to a few... and women were the great primal manipulators, a race of 'other' beings who could mystify and muddle even the greatest. You can see why Freud found him so fascinating. Now, if the self is its own end, and its expression in action the ultimate achievement, how could this only apply to some - if there is no divine design, if the 'will to power' gives the superman access to a purely finite resource, what happens to the superman who arrives late? Yet Neitzche was, at least, a lyrical and rhythmical writer; this is why his words continue to have such resonance.  And there is something in his appeal to 'live life to the fullest'.

Objectivity : The Small Print

Returning to the search for objective truth - at its most abstract level, the question is ultimately whether we can accept empirical evidence and draw absolute conclusions from that; empirical evidence (such as carbon-dated remains, geological data and so on) is the central strand to all reputable scientific hypotheses such as evolution theory, gravity and so on. It is on the basis of empirical evidence and corroborative observations (ie. laboratory tests) that statements about what or how things happen can be made.

Empirical ‘facts’ have therefore always been the basis for assumptions about nature, and for asserting the uniformity of nature; for example, if a ball is always seen to bounce a certain height when dropped from a certain distance, and larger or smaller objects are observed to bounce in a similar fashion according to relative mass, velocity and so on - these observations (and calculations arising from them) are not only the foundations of Newtonian physics, but also give rise to the assumption that these laws are uniform, in other words universally applicable. Empiricism as the primary method of inquiry suggests that because we consistently observe the same results from the same set of circumstances, it not only allows us to make a statement about that result, but to assume that the result is inevitable given the circumstances - ie. that the nature we observe is uniform.

There is an obvious basis for skepticism here… in that the quality of empirical observations is dependent upon the tools of inquiry; using the eye to measure the movements of the stars is not as accurate as a telescope, for example… and therefore the statements about results and nature are subject to value judgements about those empirical observations.

However, one of the most effective philosophical refutations of empiricism (as anything more than retrospective observation) was succinctly put forward by Hume, in which the issue of causality is addressed very specifically. In summary, this argument begins from the perspective that all our conceptions of ‘order’, or of laws of nature, are dependent upon accepting that there are causal connections between events. The notion of ‘cause-and-effect’ seems quite self-evident. But causal connection is not something that in itself we can actually ever observe. "We may say that Event A causes Event B, but when we examine the situation we find that what we actually observe is Event A followed by Event B. There is not some third entity between them, a causal link, which we can also observe. It does not save the situation to say : ‘We know that Event A is the cause of Event B because B always and invariably follows A.’ Day always and invariably follows night, and night always and invariably follows day, but neither is the cause of the other. Invariant conjunction, though it is all we observe, is not the same thing as causal connection … There is no way in which it could be validated by logic either, since it is an empirical and not a logical concept … It actually purports to tell us how specific material events are related to each other in the real world, yet it is not derived from, nor can it be validated by , observation of that world " (I’m directly quoting Bryan Magee who has summarised this reasoning far better than I could).

To explain causal connection in terms of a uniformity of nature is therefore unproven and unprovable - for example : when we have seen a ball fall and bounce (repeatedly, say) do we know that the ball will always bounce? Or even that it is very likely to bounce? We could only ‘know’ that it would bounce if we assert that nature is uniform, in that the same causes always give rise to the same effects - and there is no empirical or other evidence that allows us to say that the same causes always have the same effects. We end up with a kind of circular or tautological axiom, that cause and effect can be assumed because of observations that we assume to be demonstrations of cause and effect - there is no (external) validating evidence. And if we merely ‘expect’ rather than ‘know’, we are asserting a judgement of probability which is itself based on observation of an unproved causality; there is no way in which our past experience demonstrates what our future experience is going to be like … any number of variables could reasonably alter our future experience.

This is quite a difficult piece of reasoning (for me, anyway), and one that seems fairly negative at first reading; not just that empiricism and the grand castles of scientific certainties are shown to be merely artificial and meaningless attempts at understanding, but also, that something as intuitive and central to living as causality is, is without foundation either in reason or observation. Without being able to call on the concept of causality, how can we actually live?

Hume acknowledged this, and felt that there was something in our minds that "compels us to believe that some things are necessarily connected with other things even though all our experience is of disconnected perceptions … we never directly experience any kind of causal link", something like a tendency or ability to form habits, habits of thinking. We can shut our eyes and assume comfortably that the objects we saw before doing so will still be there when we open them, we go to sleep and assume that we are still the same person when we awaken. So in the end, Hume's focus was on examining the self and identity, looking into the mind. Any things which fall outside the experience of our minds, such as causality or statements about universal laws of nature, are not meaningful.

Finally, Hume even tells us that if we follow philosophical argument to its final point we shall end up with the total extinction of belief and evidence. Given his time (the mid-eighteenth century) this is a particularly radical yet prescient point of view, when one looks at the subsequent development and fragmentation of philosophy.

the Cosmos to the Microcosm

These are simply my thoughts, not assertions. They merely represent some of the methodology and reference points of personal reasoning. Each moment is one of potentially infinite immortality. And therefore one of hope.

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