The Heart has its Reasons

Spinoza's Solitude and New Jerusalem (see two blogs ago) raised the issue of sacrificing the truth and the search for truth through reason for the sake of love, e.g. Esther in Solitude; Clara in Jerusalem, and of course Rabbi Mortera, and the Jewish community abandoned by not compromising with a desire to know.

Spinoza's contemporary, Blaise Pascal, though a devotee of mathematics and science, remained a believing Catholic even in the face of (or maybe because of?) inquisition and disapproval. He introduced a new dualism: "The heart has its reasons that the mind knows not thereof," he said. No, religious beliefs are not scientific. They must be accepted by faith. Nevertheless, religious beliefs cannot be disproved (which of course makes them unscientific according to Karl Popper) and are still reasonable in the way of love.

With Pascal, love of and by God and love of neighbor are not rational in the scientific sense. And there is a whole realm of reality that cannot be accessed through intellectual reason. The heart has its own reasons apart from intellect. Otherwise we take the wonder, the mystery, the feeling out of life. "There are more things on heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

I think Pascal's thoughts lead to an anti-science that rationalizes untruth. It furthers religion as the "god of the gaps." It also demeans poetry and mysticism by making it a sort of elitist enterprise. It separates the imagination from thought and critical reflection from belief.

Methinks that the dualism of mind and heart, like the dualism of soul and body and the dualism of nature and super-nature, is a false dualism--a fallacy that can be explained by neuroscience. In the human activity of adapting to the environment through the artifacts of imagination (images and symbols), these is an experience of self, distinct from one's artifacts, in upon with others and the world. We call this consciousness. It is there unreflected upon in the focus on objects in the world.

This feeling is not separate from symbolic activity or thinking or reason but a ground or contextual sense in the process. Here is the "reason of the heart," the feeling of being whole, the sense of transcending the senses, the wonder of mystery, the faith that surpasses beliefs, the magical part of reality.

Yes, the rigid intellectual can neglect the wonder of his faith and activity by being so captured in objects and facts "out there." He can get lost in the formalism of his mathematics and so be unmindful of the informalism of his imagination. He can neglect the artistic dimension of science and all human knowledge. He can literalize the metaphor. But I know no seekers for truth through science that neglect the wonder and the mysterious and the poetic. Just read Dawkins: The Magic of Reality.  Deutsch's: Beginning of Infinity.

In an integral humanity, there is no mind without heart, no faith without reason, no truth without quest, no reason without love.

Big Issues

Here are some issues with which to test any ethical model or theory of justice, good, truth, and unity.  Please add others or refine these.

1.  Human immortality.  So you've just turned 85 and your body is wearing out.  Through stem cell regeneration you have already developed a new kidney.  Your knees have already been replaced. You have had a heart by-pass.  But arthritis, colonitus, enlarged prostate, and, yes, forgetfulness still holds you back.  Time for a new body! Just like in Avatar, one has been prepared for you that is 20 years old. By reverse engineering your brain into the new body, you have it. Your sense of self, your consciousness, your memory are all there. Can it be done?  Probably.  When?  Perhaps by 2040.  Death pushed back perhaps indefinitely.

Should it be done? Should it be done for just those who can afford it? What will this mean to civilization if old people don't die but become young again with all their values, beliefs, prejudices? Are their criteria for selection? Who decides? What are the standards for deciding all these questions?

2.  AI.   Robotics have progressed to such a stage that we can manufacture robots with self-sustaining, self-correcting, progressively learning programs that can interact creatively with humans and other robots through language and other symbols and can adapt to and with the world through artifacts.  They have passed the Turing test for artificial intelligence.

Should we go ahead and make them?  Should we implant rules Isaac Asimov style?  Should they be afforded certain rights and responsibilities?  On what standards do we answer these questions?

3.  Sexual Morality.  Moralities, some conflicting, some compatible, regarding abortion, the right of women to terminate a pregnancy, and certain sexual practices challenge public policy.

• One morality says that at the moment a sperm penetrates an egg a soul is infused from outside and the embryo has a human essence so that terminating the pregnancy or destroying stem cells from a fetus would be killing a human being and so should never be done even to save the life of the mother because even a good end does not justify an evil means. 
• Another morality values the embryo as a human being in potentia so that terminating the pregnancy would be killing a human being at least potentially and so should not be done excepting for grave reasons (e.g. rape, incest, death of mother).  
• Another morality values female eggs and male sperm as human beings in potentia even when they are not united to form an embryo and therefore forbids contraception, male masturbation, homosexuality, and any sexual conduct that does not lead to at least the possibility of child birth.
• Another morality would value the life and well being of the mother and, not acknowledging the fetus as yet human until after birth, would allow her to make the decision as to her own well-being.  
• Another morality values life as human only if it has the capacity for human life, namely the ability to interact with other humans.  Stem cells from an aborted fetus, a fetus without a brain or a brain so damaged that it could never interact with others, are not human and are not capable of being human and so might be destroyed for any reason.  
• Another morality values life as human only when the organism has the capacity to be human, e.g. has developed the capacity to interact with others through language or other symbols capable of achieving human life, is not yet human and so does not have human rights.  But the parents do have rights to life and those must be protected without violence. 
• Another morality says that all physical intervention (any surgery or radical medical procedure) should be a last resort and not used excepting for good reasons, e.g. continuing health and development of human persons.  
• Another morality values all life and says that no living organism should be destroyed excepting for good reasons, e.g. continuing the general health and development of life on the planet.  

Does the public have the responsibility to protect what may become human or what is already considered by many as human life?  Does the public have the responsibility for the full human development of the person after birth, especially if the public requires the birth?


4.  Synthetic Biology.  Biology is progressing rapidly by understanding the fundamental building blocks of DNA.  Conjecture and experimentation (scientific method) with living beings and with the chemistry that is fundamental to life are the primary means of advancement.  Cloning is being used to understand the workings of DNA and natural selection in evolution.  Stem cell research provides understanding on the development of body parts.  Neuroscience is discovering the workings of animal and human brains through experimentation.

How far do we go?  Where are the limit if there are any?


More issues to come:

5.  Distributive Justice: wealth, poverty, taxes, market economy.  (Dialogue with Rawls, Sen, Dworkin, Michels.)

6.  Religion and the State: a shifting arrangement, role of civil versus denominational religion, religion and the development of publics.  (Bellah, Murray, Arendt)

7.  Crime/Punishment and Free Will.  How to think and act regarding punishment.  (Gazzaniga, Pinker)

8.  International Law, Morality, Ethics.  Globalism beyond economics, public and private, reaching beyond the old nationalism.  (Sachs, Dworkin)

9.  Civil Discourse, possibilities and remedies for civility, ideology and ethics.

10.  Global Urbanization, development of publics and democratic social change.

11.  Eco-Justice, problem solving planet health and human health on the planet.  climate change and all that.

12.  Liesure and Innovation.  changing nature of work and remuneration,

13.

14.

Spinoza as Role Model

The DC Jewish Community Center is hosting a Spinozafest.  Two weeks ago Bernie and I saw a new drama in formation called Spinoza's Solitude.  It was a wonderful experience because after the play, we the audience discussed and actually made suggestions for improving the drama.

Last week we saw New Jerusalem: The Interrogation of Baruch Spinoza.  On April 1, after an all day discussion (a "Spinozium"), the congregations (attendees of the play) will be asked to vote on whether the herem, the excommunication and banishment of Baruch de Spinoza should be reversed. We will be out of town for the Spinozium so we were able to vote by absentee ballot.

What a courageous, enlightened activity on the part of the Washington DC Jewish Community.  Would the Catholic Church or even a local parish be willing to do the same for the inquisition and burning at the stake of Giordano Bruno?  I think not.

All this has me reading Spinoza, especially his Ethics, anew.  And I find this 17th century "free thinker" so totally relevant for today.  I think that as Spinoza and Bruno were at the birth-pangs of the Enlightenment assisting culture (including religion and art) appreciate reason, especially scientific method, and embrace modernity.  So we do well to consult them near the end of the old Enlightenment and into the new, from modernity and into post-modernity.

They follow in the path of many who were considered heretics, atheists, immoral corrupters of youth.  They in fact exemplify the faith that exceeds inherited and easy beliefs.  They took on the culture and religion of their day and were poisoned, crucified, banished, or burnt as a result.  And yet they were happy persons unlike their detractors and judges.  They were able to be secure in the truth--not the easy truth of the already-said, but the truth as emerging in their quest.

I was especially struck by the portrayal of Spinoza in New Jerusalem. He is excited to explore wherever it might lead him.  He follows his conscience even when it hurts him.  He is very happy even in pain because he is enjoying his quest.  He accepts and values doubt, ready to question all that he previously thought or learned.  He is willing to be corrected and even judged, and is ready to correct but never judges a persons moral worth.  He is avid to learn from the rabbi and elders, but also avid to question and surpass them.  He exemplifies a seeker open to new ideas and evidence.

Spinoza was precursor of the modern man who looked for nature's unchanging laws, scientific ideas to replace religious tales, an Absolute God or Necessary Substance ultimately accessible through reason.

But I think he is also a model in the new post-modern age of the new Enlightenment in which Einsteinian relativity has surpassed Newtonian necessity, quantum indeterminacy has surpassed classical determinacy, evolutionary emergence and selection has surpassed architectonic design.  He is a person that can accept ambiguity without cynicism, complexity without insecurity, irony without fear, criticism without anxiety, and meaning without righteousness.

Baruch, be my guide to the new Enlightenment!

Universal

Why like Dworkin's hedgehog am I centering on a UNIVERSAL ethic?

• Because we are now a global species though still with tribal instincts and multiple moralities.  
• Because our diverse culturally-based religions are sanctifying destructive behaviors.
• Because we face enormous challenges to and opportunities for the future of our species.
• Because we need a foundation for international as well as local politics, law, and civilization.  

How can we develop an ethic that is acceptable to everyone?

• By creating a theory or model for moral reality that connects to the theory of all reality.
• By using a foundation for this theory that is accessible to all.
• By testing this theory for accuracy and continued refinement.
• By offering this theory in diverse, culturally appropriate symbolic expressions.

What is the structure for a universal ethic and how is it discovered?

• The foundation for this ethic is humanity itself.
• The structure is human being as it is aware of itself in action, not as it is expressed.
• Ethics is critical reflection on and interpretation of the symbolic expressions of humanity towards understanding the foundation and structure of a universal ethic.  
• Ethics as a branch of philosophy, using the method and findings of science, aims for the unity of physical and moral reality, i.e. truth and value, and presents its theory for a universal ethic to the human community for continuing reflection, critique, and interpretation. 

How does such an ethics proceed?

• Ethics starts by reflecting on itself and articulating its mission and method including a faith in the unity of truth and value in the universe.
• Ethics reviews the work of others who have developed ethical theories.
• Ethics studies the latest findings of science in regards human behavior.
• Ethics immerses itself in diverse cultures and their literary and other symbolic expressions.
• Ethics imagines a model by which human behavior and being can be understood in all its forms and contribute to the understanding of the unity of truth and value in all reality.
• Ethics articulates the model and presents it to the community for critique.
• Ethics explains and refines the model in the light of experience.

What are consequences of ethics?

• More thoughtful political discourse.
• Basis for policy and legal interpretation.
• Commitment to living well by doing good. i.e. personal happiness through social service.
• Principles and rules for community building.
• Critique of culture, including history, religion, art and other symbolic expressions.
• Faith and optimism in the human enterprise towards truth beyond superstition, universal love beyond tribal narrowness.
• Standards for dealing with crises (choices) in the human enterprise.
• Honing of the human ability to interpret respectfully, think freely, speak openly, and act in concert.
• Respect for past learning and openness to future progress.

Hedgehog Justice

I am pleased to announce that I have a new mentor.

Ronald Dworkin, Professor of Law and Philosophy, with accomplishments, honors, writings too numerous to mention here, has written his culminating opus:  Justice for Hedgehogs.  I am thankful to Pat Amer for introducing me to him.  

While the book is on order, I read Professor Dworkins summary of it and also in introduction to it at a symposium on it prior to publication and many other articles that he wrote.  I just sent off a letter to him with five points of conversation (and maybe conversion) and a personal note.  I wrote not to evaluate his work (I would never presume to do that), but to evaluate my own.  The five points were: definitions (ethics and morality), method (interpretive), principles (dual standards), ideal (original auction), and human nature. To which I think it all comes down.

On that latter I wrote:

In your efforts to avoid metaphysics and religious dogmatism, you say your dual principles portrayed by the imaginative auctions are substantive—not true by definition or by laws of nature.   Like Socrates, you ask your students to simply examine themselves to find them.  I agree.  

Yet, I think they are substantive because they derive from human nature as I think you do also.   You speak of the “test of conviction.”  You “appeal to Kant to say that you must accept that which makes these principles true for you is your humanity: the fact that you have a life to lead and death to face.”  I submit that that “humanity” is finally the foundation for your principles.  And it is in my reflection on and model for human existence, aided by many mentors, where I locate my theory of truth, good, justice, and unity.  “Dignity” is your formula. “Integrity” is mine. 

You want to avoid “scientism” in ethics as well as heed Hume’s value-from-fact warning and Moore’s “naturalistic fallacy,” as do I.  And here is where you will probably disagree with me and will perhaps set me straight: 

I think we can develop an elegant model for the structure of human existence that can be falsified using the latest in biology, evolutionary psychology, and neuroscience.  I also think that the structure of human existence is available implicitly and universally in every conscious human act; and that as a dynamic, developing, multi-tension structure is a “fact” that gives rise to an “ought.” 

I also argue that moral truth and physical truth are not separate but part of our progressive, though fallible, achievement of reality.  Therefore our ethics and our physics are dimensions of one great human enterprise, executed in community through imaginative formation of ideas refined and affirmed through experience.  I argue that the holy grail of a grand unified field theory has an ethical dimension.  I push therefore not just for a unity in value, but a unity in truth as well.

Am I looking in vain for a non-existent Archimedes fulcrum?

Would you say that I am on a fool’s errand?

Sub specie aeternitatis

"From the perspective of eternity"--a phrase Spinoza used in his Ethics. 


It can mean a lot of things:  Objectivity: Backing up from the emotion of the immediate and considering an event reasonably with detachment.  Humor: Standing on the mountaintop and laughing at our small, silly concerns.  Humility: Realizing that our time and place are a pittance in cosmic time and space.  Irony: Recognizing that what we say and do is so relative, so temporal, so tiny, so insignificant.

But it can also mean: Substance: being a part of Nature and Reality. Meaning:  searching for the explanation of all that is.  Importance: experiencing a relationship to everyone and everything.  Ultimacy: recognizing that everything we do is a moment in the unfolding of the Universe.

What a privilege and gift that we who are living have the ability to experience the NOW.  It is in this PRESENCE that we are in-touch with all that is past and all that is to come, all that is within and all that is outside, all that is personal and all that is communal, all that is real and all that is ideal.  We are the BEGINNING of eternity, infinity, universality in our awareness of ourselves connected to all.  Though at an infinitesimal point of time and space, our QUESTION embraces the universe.


Living the good life and treating all others well is finally life and action sub specie aeternitatis.

Global Ethic from World Religions

Following up on previous posts. . . .

Friend Bob Toth in response to my blog reminded me of the effort spearheaded by Hans Kung, Catholic and Ecumenical Theologian, to organize world religious leaders into a Parliament and articulate a global ethic.  It is a great effort and formulation that is hopefully constituting a global "civil religion" and informing a transnational polity.

Here are the links:      http://www.parliamentofreligions.org/_includes/FCKcontent/File/TowardsAGlobalEthic.pdf 

http://www.parliamentofreligions.org/_includes/FCKcontent/File/CalltoGuidingInstitutions.pdf

Religion and Politics Again

Religion is important to and cannot be separated from American politics. (You never thought I would say that, right?)

Spinoza, my newest mentor, says that religion is the extension of ethics.  He teaches that the intellectual love of God, whom he identifies with Nature not just as an object (natura naturata) but also as an subject (natura naturans), as the highest responsibility of humanity.  This I think relates well to the notion of God as Universal Love (John) and as the objective of the "unrestricted desire to know" (Lonergan) and the tenet that human knowing is the "beginning of infinity" (Deutsch).  But Spinoza's religion would be totally devoid of "superstition" including miracles, supernatural beings and events, holy writs, which turn people away from their responsibility to use reason. He was the first to use historical criticism of the Bible and to demythologize theology.

Aristotle and disciples say that politics is the extension of ethics since the personal flows into the communal and individual behavior is developed and shaped with others in the republic.

Therefore, I say ethics, right thinking and action arising from our common humanity, is both religious and political.

Old man that I am becoming, I remember President Eisenhower counseling all Americans to participate in a religion whatever one. Many of our priests ridiculed this because of course Roman Catholicism is the true religion.

But Ike was acknowledging what many thinkers then had observed: 1) that there is an American civil religion with its beliefs, rituals, and symbols through which all citizens became one nation, and 2) that the religious denominations were avenues into that civil religion, especially Protestant, Catholic, Jew (the name of Will Herberg's important study), but also Unitarian, Universalist, and Humanist associations.

I think that what is happening today is that the American civil religion is under great stress for a number of reasons:
1) a tension within the denominations due to theological/liturgical reforms (that terrible John XXIII!), the movement towards rights of "people of color,"immigrants, women, gay and lesbian, and the new transnationalism;
2) the 60s and 70s critique of idolatry in the civil religion; e.g. burning of the flag and other holy symbols, questioning of long held beliefs related to rights and the role of government, secularization of rituals (e.g. Christmas, Presidents' Day, and especially war) and addition of new ones (e.g. MLK Day);
3) new influential denominations arising that are not Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish; e.g. Mormonism, Islam, New Age; and
4) divisions, economic and cultural, more starkly defined because of mass communications.

So I think we are in the throes of a developing new civil religion; that is, we are a culture refining its principles.  There are those of us (usually older) who want to go back to that "old time religion which was good enough for you and me" and there are those of us who want to push on to the totally rational and secularized "new world order."

In Biblical studies we learned how the twelve tribes of Israel became one nation by pulling together all their diverse traditions including the stories of their different gods into one story and one god.  Their story is not very coherent or consistent, and admits of many interpretations, as any objective study of the scriptures will tell you.  But it was apparently good enough for a time which was pre-philosophical and more so pre-enlightenment or scientific.

The constant struggle for the Israelites remains with us today as we continually try to become one people: avoiding both idolatry and iconoclasm in our story.  Idolatry is making our beliefs, rituals, and symbols divine or absolute; it is a claim of eternity and infinity for human products.  Iconoclasm is throwing out the baby with the bath by rejecting the importance of symbols, rituals, and beliefs for transcending to infinity.

So while there needs to be a strict separation of the institutions of religion (church, mosque, temple and its products) from the institutions of state (government and its products), there really can be no separation of religion and politics.  The polity is made up of people's stories.

Can we share our stories?  The stories of the little town of Oklahoma portrayed by the Post yesterday or of the Amish community recently portrayed by PBS just trying to keep their values; and the stories of us Takoma Parkers, loving our liberal, urban, racially-mixed, sexual-orientation-diverse, secular-humanist, energy-efficient, higher-taxed-for-better-services community. And all the stories of communities around and in between.  Can we do it without name calling and demonization?  Can we do it with respect?

I hope so.  I have faith that we can.  I have a faith in humanity and its potential for eternity and infinity.

Conservativism

Conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart dies at 43

These were the headlines at CNN.  And it set off a wave of wild internet comments attacking him and then others attacking the attackers as "typical liberals gloating over someone's death."  

I think it is very sad that 1) people would attack a person who just died (they did the same to Ted Kennedy it was pointed out), and 2) CNN called Breitbart a "conservative"--which keeps setting up this ideological stereotyping.  

Breitbart was NOT a conservative--at least not in the strong American Conservative tradition of Alexander Hamilton, Robert Taft, Dwight Eisenhower, Reinhold Neibuhr, Russell Kirk, John Kekes, WF Buckley, David Brooks, and to some extent George Will.  

My father was a Republican and a strong defender of conservative values (free enterprise, local self-determination, fair wages, social contracts).  He was also a strong social justice minded Catholic and the first plant manager in GM to put black persons in higher management positions and led the process in Cleveland to segregate schools peacefully after the Courts ruled. 

American Conservatives are positive.  They are for, not against.  Far from being antiscientific, they are a thoughtful and happy lot who value rational problem-solving over rash quick-fix actions.  They do not stereotype or demonize liberals and actually claim their own liberal roots in economy, education, and especially political decision-making.  They represent an important corrective in American politics to ensure that government does not dominate private decision-making while at the same time assuring safety and fairness.  They point out collateral damage or unintended side-effects that might occur if government over asserts itself at home or abroad.  They are often a check on military action and actions that discourage initiatives.  They promote caution when radicals of left and right are often pushing quick or unilateral action.  They warn against populism  of the left and the right, (the KKK Southern Democrats and the John Bircher/ McCarthyites), but always in the name of a pragmatic and rational plan for the future.  

Breitbart was not a conservative in this tradition.  Nor do I think that the people who are now dominating the Republican Party are conservatives.  

I want to start a project to restore true American Conservatism by going back to the masters and showing what that tradition is and how important it is to American progress.  Anyone want to help?

We strongly need a Conservative party in the US today.  I was hoping that Mitt Romney might lead such an effort.  But. . . .

We have enough swaggering hit-men out to shoot down "liberals" and "moderates" and "Rinos" by calling them names or sending out scurrilous information and so appealing to what is worst in American citizens.