What Am I Doing?

I consider my a "philosopher in training," among other things.  So I often ask myself what is philosophy.

If I were writing for Wikipedia or the Journal of Philosophy, I might answer by interviewing philosophers, by getting descriptions from the various schools and departments of philosophy, or by examining statements or best practices of the great philosophers of history. But I'm writing for myself after many years of studying and doing philosophy. Like Dewey's Pedagogic Creed, I just want to sum up what I believe philosophy is and should be.

For me philosophy is systemic critical inquiry.

Inquiry:   As Aristotle said, philosophy begins with wonder.  It is an ongoing enterprise of asking what and why.  Philosophy uses the method of science to achieve knowledge, namely, experience, insight and hypothesis, and verification through experiment and peer review. Philosophy does not supplant or overrule science; it builds on and furthers science by integrating, classifying, and critiquing science.

Critical inquiry: As Kant said, philosophy is questioning the conditions for the possibilities of all human activities, including science, for example by reflecting on the methods, directions, and complementarities of science, art, religion, and ordinary language. As critical inquiry it continually challenges the dogmas and conventional beliefs of all our enterprises. I see much philosophy being done today not just by academic philosophers but by literary and art critics, science writers, and journalists.

Systemic critical inquiry: As Dewey said, philosophy is critically inquiring into the whole human endeavor and its results. It considers the holistic context. It proposes trends and categories within which human activities take place. It identifies the worldview of our era and of the ones preceding us, the paradigms within which our symbols, beliefs, formulas, and expressions take meaning. It raises questions concerning the direction of humanity in the universe.

Philosophy uses, supports, and maintains reason in human affairs.  It does not displace or denigrate the emotions which are often the stimulus for our actions.  Indeed it carries its own passion for life, beauty, justice, and meaning.  But it does temper and modify emotion and passion so that it continues us on our way to further life, beauty, justice, and meaning.

The Love of Naming

I just finished reading Terrence Beacon’s excellent book: The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain.  It summarized, critiqued, and pushed forward all that I have been studying for 50 years in philosophy and science. 

This reflection (I have so many after my reading) is more personal and theological. 

___________________________

Please do not believe in things or person or entities or gods or causes or concepts or words or doctrines.  Just know them for who and what they are.

Realize that we give existence to all of them.

I exist through you and you through me.  When you sculpt my image and say my name, I exist.  We are existence and all that is exists through us—including nations and heroes, religions and gods, arts and beauty, sciences and truth, our worlds and our very selves.  

Naming confers existence.  When our bodies acquired the ability to name, we achieved existence along with the cosmos.  Indeed, in the beginning was the Word.

Not that there was no before-existence; there was matter and energy and light and life.  But they did not stand out as beings, entities, persons, and forces until we had the wondrous power to name them and each other. 

Such a wholly, holy power is the ability to name.  Naming creates and destroys.  It creates us when we acknowledge the power humbly with respect.  It destroys us when we use the power arrogantly unaware of its limits. 

Loving is giving me name as a person, autonomous and interdependent, with the power to name.  Your naming agrees to be limited by my naming.  We choose to name our world and each other together. 

Violence annihilates in me and in others the power to name.   Since our power to name is interdependent, destroying in others the power to name results in the destruction of the power to name in our selves. 

God is Love.  We who live in love live in God and God in us.  Love is no supernatural entity out there apart.  Love is the transcending act of us being named and naming. 

My Love, I am not, nor can I be, a person without your giving me name and so recognizing me standing apart from everything else in the cosmos.   You give me my being in the cosmos, in memory, in place, in relation with all others.  This is the reason you are my goddess, my creatrix, my grace, the one who shapes my image, the one who calls my name and grants me the power to name you. 

The Religious Instinct

Last night we experienced the Black Nativity at H Street Playhouse.

Gospel and Soul at its height.  We are still floating with the music, the dance, the energy.  Thanks, Langston Hughes.  Thanks, Theater Alliance.  Thanks, great cast, all of whom we met afterwords.  What an angel you are! I told the woman who played Gabriel.  I believe, I told a lead of one of the spirituals.  And Joseph and Mary, Alvin Ailey would be so proud.

How so very important is the gospel to the African American community with its salvation and liberation message as well as its code for abolition and civil rights!  But also its ability to make people feel good about themselves even in oppressive situations.  Maybe an opium, as Marx said, but one needed for survival.  Yes, what a friend we have in Jesus!  Yes, God gives us all we need.

Even as a non-theist and non-Christian, I acknowledge and experience that good news with great relish and appreciation.

As an avid reader and thinker in philosophy and science, I cannot but accept that there is indeed a "religious instinct" in most of us -- throughout our species across the boundaries of culture.  "Ab esse ad posse valet allatio," assert the scholastics.  From the existence of religion in all its manifestations, we can argue to a potentiality (e.g. instinct) for it.

But where does it come from, the philosopher of science in me asks.

Yale Professor Paul Bloom has demonstrated that in child development and the dawn of the "theory of mind" and the firing of "mirror neurons," i.e. a sense of other selves with feelings and awareness, these attributes are sometimes attributed to events and inanimate objects.  Thus a sense of supernatural entities develops often interpreted through the stories of the child's culture.  This is the "accidental" foundation for gods and religion.

Neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga, Director of the Sage Center at UC Santa Barbara, points to the evolution-selected "interpreter" of the brain's left hemisphere that is wired to find explanations and put order in the chaos of the emergent possibilities of the universe.  And so we affirm a First Cause, an original Logos, a Designer, or some Power beyond nature to make sense of it all including us.

I incorporate both of these in a theory of perception or consciousness from which develops a sense of self inextricably connected to others and to objects in the world in relation to a history and a future.  It is a dynamic, emerging, transient sense that can be properly labeled as a sense of transcendence--in the here and now, but continually passing beyond it in our developing communication with others.  This dynamism is the power of language, science, art, and, yes, culture and religion.  It is Aristotle's "wonder," Lonergan's "unrestricted desire to know," Frankel's "search for meaning," Bergson's "élan vital," Otto's "idea of the holy," Hegel's "dialectic," Neitche's "will to power, "Tillich's "ultimate concern," Dewey's "quest for unity" and "religious attitude."

The fallacy of course is to identify this dynamism of human being with any thing, person, cause, narrative, or entity.  From this fallacy comes the illusion of the absolute and delusion of the perfect that closes the book, stops revelation, and destroys the dynamism.

The dynamism of the human mind or soul is a wonder indeed and the source of many wonders in science, religion, civilization, and love and art--including the wonder of the Black Nativity and the wonderful story it sings and dances.

Faith and Science

Headlines in the Washington Post (Health and Science Section):  Einstein, the sky is falling! Or not.

Joel Achenbach wrote an excellent article on the excitement and turmoil in the scientic community regarding the finding of a particle that may be faster than light.

These findings could undermine our present worldview and doctrine on the origins and workings of the universe now so dependent on Einstein's verified theory of the constant speed of light.  But whether these findings, now subject to rigorous testing, turn out to be so or not, the whole episode demonstrates the superiority of science and its method.

Scientists, professionals and we amateurs (remember: "amateur" means lover of ____), who are open to and even excited by the possibility of the overturn of scientific doctrine, demonstrate a faith in the "unseen" that outstrips any religion.  This is a faith that is not identified with its beliefs, doctrines, dogmas, rituals.  It is an openness to wonder more than I have seen in any god-talking preacher or politician who claims to be a believer.

They who cater to and therefore reinforce old beliefs based on some ancient book or authority or private untestable revelation are the real "unbelievers." They who would stop or turn back human imagination and understanding by their "true beliefs" destroy the wonder, mystery, and, yes, holy in humanity and the universe.

Zen and Faith

Last Sunday our senior minister told the story of comparative religions specialist, Huston Smith, who told the story of his 30 days with a Zen Roshi in Japan.  He found it almost impossible to sit in meditation for 12 hours a day and when he would have his daily meeting with Roshi, he always got the koan wrong.  At the end of the 30 days at his last meeting with the Roshi, he complained about his lack of learning about Zen.  The Roshi said:  “Oh the meaning of Zen.  It is simple.  It just means total gratitude for all that has come, total service to all that is now, and total responsibility for all that is to come.  And I am grateful that you were here.”

That not only is Zen; it is the essence of faith—whether religious or secular.  It is what St Paul talked about in his “faith, hope, and love—but the great of these is love.”  Faith situates us in the past, tradition; and acknowledges that we are all who came before us.  Hope orients us to the future:  the world as it could and should be.  And love commits us to all to which and to whom we are not related.  Faith as gratitude.  Hope as responsibility. Love as service. 

But they are all one in the fullness of existence—our being now, our being here, our being with, our being whole.  In other words, total presence in memory, in consciousness, in relationships—all integrated in the whole. 

I am my memory, my place, and my relationships.  So as I age and my memory starts to slip, as I begin to lose position in the world, as my relationships get smaller and fuzzier, and I become more scattered, I realize that I am indeed on a trajectory from being to nothingness.

Then I remember the words of my own Zen Roshi when we lived in Hawaii.  “Let your ego shrink,” he said, “to nothingness.  Or let it expand to embrace the cosmos.  It is the same.”

So as I let go of my memory, my position, my loved ones, my consciousness, and my whole self, I begin to enter and embrace the cosmos.  I start here, now, and with you in total gratitude, service, and responsibility.

Catholic Social Teaching (again)

The biggest problem I have with the Roman Catholic Church is that it does not apply its tradition in social justice teaching to its own institution. I say this as a way to compliment the Church through its Pontifical Council on Peace and Justice in its latest restatement of that marvelous tradition.

Apparently people on left and right are energized by this statement: TOWARDS REFORMING THE INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL AND MONETARY SYSTEMS IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBAL PUBLIC AUTHORITY. 

Long title--but the message is not new or radical and is very consistent with the Catholic tradition.  It condemns liberalism (which means worship at the altar of the free-market).  It also decries the growing inequality, an equality that was just documented by the US Congressional Budget Office.  It asserts ethics in technology, politics over economics (much as the anti-totalitarian Hannah Arendt did in her writings).  This does not mean making government bigger or lesser.  It does mean putting the public interest ahead of private profit.  And it means making sure that government serves the public interest over private profit.  And a global Church would definitely see that as a global interest--and so call for global institutions to facilitate this.

I read the review of this statement by George Weigel (The Catholic Difference) or by the National Review and I wonder if they read the document.  I know they do not agree with the well-researched and Catholic theology based 1986 letter "Economic Justice for All" by the US Bishops because it did not sync with their neo-liberal values.  But this recent statement is certainly in sync with that letter as well.  

Disagree with Catholic teaching from officials, theologians, and pastors.  I sure do.  But I do very much appreciate the social justice teaching of the Church.

(A compendium of that teaching can be found here.)

Integrity over Authenticity

A recent NYT blog "Authentic, get Real!" by Stephanie Ferguson quotes many political candidates advertising their "authenticity" and notes how important it is that they play that role to the hilt.  Voters want to see candidates believing what they are saying or at least coming across that way.

Kurt Goldstein and Rollo May were the psychologists who introduced me to the "social construction of the self" and the notion of "roles" that the human person takes on in self-development.  I learned from them and then from many others that there is no "authentic self" (pace Sartre) or real "thine own self" to be true to (pace Shakespeare).

The human self develops or, some would say, creates itself through interaction with other people--in response to parents and siblings, in play, in school, in work, and especially in speech and listening.  The developing person assumes, sometimes to accept and other times to reject, various roles in diverse situations.

The self is not an eternal soul that always existed and will always exist in some Platonic or other type of heaven.  (You can accept such supernatural entities if your religious beliefs demand it--but don't identify them with the self.)  "I am my body" with all its complexity including evolved and evolving consciousness as Catholic Philosopher Gabriel Marcel asserted against Descartes.

The self is the conscious organism learning to adapt or to adapt to its natural and social environment through time.

Therefore, I would argue against a principle of ethics like: "be authentic" or even "be sincere."  (Though I might urge some politicians to "get real")

I think that integrity is much more important than authenticity or sincerity.  A good friend who recently died, John Rohr, used to say.  "Sincerity is one step away from vice and probably across the line."  John and I used to argue a lot at the University of Chicago where he was getting a degree in Political Science and I in Social Ethics, he from the right, me from the left.  He did not put sincerity or principled very high in his list of virtues.  On that we totally agreed.

Political figures are often accused of "flip-flopping" and are loath to show any inconsistency.  But is the inconsistency a result of honest learning and change of judgment based on new evidence?  Consistent and immutable principles and judgments are the bane of politics and the closure of public space.

Integrity means "whole" from which "health" comes.  Integrity is the interconnection of all the parts.   It is resolution of all competing tensions.  A person with integrity is one who "has it together."  If you encounter a person with integrity, you meet everything that's there, you get what you see, you are in touch with the whole person.  Integrity also means complexity, pulling together many facets.  A person who relies on simple slogans or wages war with bumper-sticker sayings may hold fast to what he is saying, may be principled and authentic--but has little integrity as far as I am concerned.

I suppose when people say that a person is the real thing that's what they mean.  Sure she has facades, plays different roles, communicates differently to different audiences, changes opinions, makes mistakes, but she is willing to learn, is not an ideologue, and acknowledges her changes and differences and mistakes.   That is a person with integrity.

A Political Myers-Briggs

"Why can't we all just get along?"

Our politics have become brutal.  And our body politic is suffering.

Anger can be a great motivator if it leads to taking responsibility and collective action.  But when it just blames and calls names (stupid, hitler, traitor, fascist, communist, racist, class warrior, enemy of the people, elitist, greedy), it reverts to cynicism which is the loss of collective power and an invitation to nihilism and even violence.

Unfortunately those who have tried to compromise, to stop the blame-game and get something done, are considered weak, losers, and unrealistic.  Sad.

As an old organizer, who accepts that people are motivated by economic self-interest, community recognition, cultural values, and spiritual meaning, I am searching for a tool that might contribute to the reestablishing of our commons, our citizenship, and our country.  I am exploring the Myers-Briggs personality indicator which has been so useful to me when I directed or managed small and large organizations.

The Myers-Briggs tool and its derivatives, especially when facilitated by a competent third party specialist, promotes team work in a family or work setting.   It helps all members of the group understand their own and each other's acquired preferences in seeing and judging the world without any negativity and in fact with lots of affirmation for how differences contribute to the whole team, company, project.

The tool starts with a self-test in which the participants answer and then score a series of questions that ascertain whether they 1) process more interiorly or exteriorly (Introvert/Extravert), 2) focus more on facts or on vision (Sensing/Intuiting), 3) value more feelings or intellectual coherence (Feeling/Thinking), 4) are quick to make a decision or are more prone to keep looking at the evidence (Perceiving/Judging).  The participant considers the results and the description of the personality to which these results point to see if the shoe fits.  Then the participant shares the results with others to discuss what this means for the team or the family or the company.

There are no pure types, but all of us find ourselves somewhere along the continuum of these four polarities.  There is no right or wrong here just understanding.  This is not in any sense a "fix" of a personality type--again just an understanding of oneself and others in this here and now.

For example I found that I tend to process things out loud (high E) even well before any decision.  I learned that when I was the director of an organization, I needed to warn subordinates so that they would not take what I was saying as what I really thought or wanted.  Also when I was director of a small planning organization, I realized that I had surrounded myself with big-picture visionaries (NTs), and I needed to value and add to the concrete, data-based SPs.  Myers-Briggs, while based on Jungian insights into human personality, is merely a tool.  If it works to foster cooperation, great!  If not, try another tool that has been developed to assist self-understanding and teamwork.

Now can we divise a similar tool for our body politic?

Perhaps, but with a few adjustments.  Here are the four polarities I propose.  They are based on the four motivators of human behavior I mentioned above.

1.  Related to economic interests:  Free market/Social responsibility

Are you more interested in an unrestricted marketplace where you need not look over your shoulder or consider implications or in how your producing and consuming is affecting others and society as a whole?

2.  Related to cultural values:  Relational/Traditional

Do you have fixed values that apply to human nature and tradition or are your values more relative to the time, the situation, the persons, the consequences.

3.  Related to affiliation in governance:  Executive strength/Community consensus

Are you more inclined to have a strong leader with institutions of authority or to have broad emerging leadership among changing institutions?

4.  Related to philosophy: Pragmatic materialist/Idealistic spiritualist

Do you find meaning in day to day concrete process of living and acting or do you find meaning in a more idealized past or yet-to-come time and place?


As in Myers-Briggs, I state the polarities without any negative judgment as ranges of political personality or, better, public character.  None of them are either-or.  Yes, pushed to extremes or "pure types" there might be some negativity inferred--again depending on your perspective and your own relative place along the continuum.

I think they can be applied to public officials, candidates for public office, to parties, to citizens, to advocacy or special interest groups, to political commentators, to lobbyists, to polls and pollsters, to communities and maybe even nations.  But again this is not a "fix." People and publics do change.

I am developing the test that could be used to ascertain the style or type or public character of a person, group, or community.  I want to propose it as a way to diminish accusation, blame, and name calling and inform citizens as to the style of themselves and of candidates so they can make a more informed decision based on what they judge to be best for the community or nation or public at this time and place.

But perhaps that exposes my own preferences and public character. So let me come to terms with that so that I can reduce the influence of my biases in developing the tool.

Without yet taking my undeveloped test, I would guess that I am an SRCP, i.e. stress social responsibility over free market, relationality over tradition, community consensus over strong leadership, pragmatic materialism over spiritual ideals.  I know I tend to be a social democrat ("socialist") economically, culturally a "libertarian" not caring about sexual orientation, methods of birth control, free sex, religious principles, politically a "republican" promoting interdependent publics over mass democracy, and a progressive "pragmatist" eschewing religious or philosophical doctrines that claim the truth or any absolute.

But that's me.  In a republic, it is important that I recognize that my qualities are also limitations and I need around me others who are less like me.  For example, when I was teaching high school, I remember going into the families of students who were more authoritarian or rigid (the child had to address the father as "sir") or more tolerant or loose (the child could argue with the father).  Both worked well.  Both produced well-adjusted creative children.  Indeed both had limits as well as freedom; indeed as the Philosopher said you cannot have one without the other.  Both were evidences of love and respect.

So I do need people who listen and respect my preferences but also who challenge them.  At times and places I need to accept deregulation of the market.  At times and places, we should be less tolerant of certain behaviors like pornography that is often not victimless.  At times and places, our community needs a stronger executive less prone to populism, polls, and interest groups.  At times and places, I do admire those who are intending an ideal future or take ideals from the classics.

And certainly our body politic needs a balance-in-tension without going to the extremes of free-for-all marketeering or top-down controlled economy, libertine or state imposed culture, dictatorial or anarchic governance, one-dimensional or fantasy philosophy.  Perhaps a political Myers-Briggs could be a tool to promote this balance-in-tension.

I am hoping that with such a Public Character Tool (I'll try to come up with a better name), we can foster a better public space and return power ("the ability to act in concert") to all of us.

To be continued.

Returning Ahead

Today I start a new regime.

Now retired and settled in Takoma Park, MD, each morning I will run or bike and then write.  My focus will be the "New Ethics" which I have already studied and treated extensively.  My writing will consist in dialogues with old and new authors, reflections on events, responses to readers (real and fictitious), or just big and little thoughts that arrive in my morning meditations.  I write primarily for me--to hone my thinking and writing skills; but I welcome anyone to overhear the conversation I am having with myself and insert herself in that conversation.

Here are some ideas I want to discuss:

The myth of authenticity.
The care of self--a dialogue with Michel Foucault.
Truth in Politics.
Res Urbana and Civil Society.
Ethics over religion--a dialogue with Richard Dawkins.
A Political Myers-Briggs: why some of us are far right or left out?
Ethics and Consumer Morality--a dialogue with Zygmunt Bauman
Singularity, Empathy, and Promised Land--a dialogue with Jeremy Rifkin and Ray Kurzweil
Language, Consciousness and Conscience--what neuropsychology has to say about ethics.
Enemies and Friends--what evolutionary anthropology has to say about ethics.
Is there an American Ethic--a dialogue with John Dewey and Richard Rorty?