The Death of Objective Reality Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

Those of us who take the time to at least scan the news sources available will have learned that objective reality has been thrown into doubt.  Those who scan more thoroughly will have learned, also, that it has supposedly been thrown into doubt by an experiment made upon photons, based on a thought experiment created by a physicist named Wigner, and called "Wigner's Friend."  Well, someone who is not Wigner and someone who is not Wigner's friend (and presumably others) decided to depart from the world of thought and thereby managed to cast doubt upon objective reality.  Or did they??

I'm quite ignorant of quantum physics and I suspect many others, including some of those who wrote the articles which proclaim that there is no objective reality on which we may rely, or fondly believe exists, due to this experiment.  Nonetheless, I suspect that right now, at least, there isn't much to worry about.

Clearly, much depends on what we mean by "objective reality."  If it consists of the (observation?) of the behavior of photons under the circumstances of the experiment, that is one thing.  If, instead, what is called "objective reality" is the world in which we strive, and fail, and succeed, and build, and design, and work, and play, and eat, and drink, and take vacations, and watch the caperings of our fellows and those others that we encounter day by day and hour by hour, that is another.

What little I know of quantum physics is that it is almost mystifyingly different from the "macro" world in various respects.  So for me, at least, it comes as no surprise that in this particular experiment, the someone who isn't Wigner and the someone who isn't Wigner's friend "observed" different things about the photons in question; even "irreconcilable" differences (on which many a divorce is based).  Things certainly are wacky among those photons, and we've apparently recognized that for quite some time.  Why assume that what takes place among photons will alter in any significant sense the reality in which we live?  It certainly hasn't done so until now.

However, life goes on, as it has for many, many years.  And, unless you're wedded to the conception of "objective reality" as being immutable, eternal and absolute, you've come to recognize that we poor creatures live in a world of probability, and make judgments and decisions based on generally, if not absolutely, reliable "facts" about who or what we interact with, successfully.  We can predict what will take place in most cases, "to a reasonable degree of (insert word like "engineering" or "medical" as we lawyers must have it) probability."  And you've also come to know that we manage to get things done although our knowledge is not absolute.  It's to be hoped that you've even come to recognize that you are a part of objective reality, not something distinct from it, and that because of that it isn't something separate and distinct from you, but that you're included in it.  Reality is objective enough.

It may be that we humans, having evolved in a "macro" world, lack what's needed to fully understand the quantum world.  Perhaps we simply don't yet know enough about the quantum world to explain the outcome of this experiment.  Perhaps there are multiple, alternate universes.

"The universe is change."  So said Marcus Aurelius, long ago.  Maybe this experiment will change the world in some way yet unknown.  But I doubt it will fundamentally change the reality in which we live unless we somehow undermine that reality, or someone or something else does.  Until then, reality will remain objective enough., for and with us.

The Sublimely Silly

The discouraging state of our politics has led me to ignore this blog for a bit, but I feel inspired, in a way, by a book I've been reading.  It's by Richard Wolin and is entitled The Seduction of Unreason (yes, the title is elongated by use of a colon as are so many other titles of so many other books, but this annoys me so I refuse to include the explanation which is apparently required, by some).  The book reviews the astounding group of intellectuals living in continental Europe in the 20th century who admired fascism.

I've expressed dissatisfaction with various Continental philosophers and intellectuals in the past, so I confess that a book like this is bound to appeal to me as it is bound to enrage others.  The Enlightenment had its faults, no doubt, but it is staggering to review the lengths to which those who came to loath it were willing to go to deride it not only in their writings but in their lives.

Somehow, the wise came to believe not that reason and science could be, and was, misunderstood and misused.  That would seem to be clear enough to those having common sense.  Instead, they came to believe that reason and science were wrong, or perverse.  The revolt against the Enlightenment, or the Counter-Enlightenment as it's called in this work, was a revolt, it seems to me, against thinking.  Against intelligence.  Against problem-solving.  Against studying a situation, weighing options, and making an informed decision.

And so the intellectuals of Europe came to promulgate the view that it was not only appropriate but necessary that human beings stop thinking.  Only by doing so could we truly live.  We should let our emotions run rampant, war against one another, return to what the wise apparently felt we were in pagan times.  I'm not sure why it was thought that we were spectacularly irrational in pre-Christian times, though one can understand that Christianity could be perceived as stunting us.  Perhaps intellectuals of the time thought all pagans were followers of Dionysus as portrayed by Nietzsche in his wildest dreams; all Dionysus and no Apollo.  Or were all warriors.  Perhaps they thought all were ecstatic initiates of the mystery religions, or what they thought were the mystery religions at the time.

Perhaps they forgot, or chose to ignore, the very rational philosophers of antiquity.

For whatever reason, they did and said some very silly things.  Some even practiced animal sacrifice, and dreamed even of sacrificing humans.  They became mystics.  They thought in fact that mysticism is what we truly want, especially when acting en masse.  Thus the appeal of such as Hitler in their eyes.  They believed, I think, that people wanted to be told what to do by some seemingly super-human leader who personified the mythic characteristics or particular races and nations.

It was an amazing rejection of thought, an acceptance and glorification of thoughtlessness.  Critical thinking was discouraged, even condemned.

Some of this is still with us today, of course.  And though I may exaggerate, what are we to make of the learned who so completely abandoned rational discourse and analysis as to render them inhuman and immoral?  It seems to me a kind of betrayal, a surrender of our heritage resulting from an ignorance of our ancient past in the West, and the embrace of a barbarism already overcome.

Worse, it renders judgment impossible and undesirable.  Absolved of the responsibility to judge correctly, we're not accountable for what we decide to do.  I can't help but wonder how anyone with a sense of self-respect could accept a view of human existence which is so childish; which makes children of us all.

Absence of Honor

I find that the word "honor" is difficult to define.  A review of dictionary definitions will establish that it has various meanings depending, of course, on its use in a sentence.  It may be used as a noun or a verb.  But even limiting definition to the use of the word as a noun doesn't promote much in the way of clarity. Here, I mean by it a quality; a personal quality.  A quality which clearly is not possessed by any prominent person in our sad age.  I hope it's possessed by some of us nonetheless.

H.L. Mencken wrote that honor is simply the morality of the superior man.  Mencken had a tendency to speak of men (and people in general I would think) as superior or inferior.  Certainly certain of us are superior in certain respects from others, but I'm not inclined to follow The Sage of Baltimore in making such a classification.  More specifically, he also wrote something to the effect that the difference between a moral man and an honorable one is that the honorable man will regret a discreditable act even when it works and he is not caught.  This doesn't say much for the honor of the moral man, which I suppose was Mencken's point.

Mencken's honorable man possesses something akin to what I try to refer to as "honor" in this post.  It is an expectation one has of oneself, not of others.  That expectation is that I, or you, will act honorably at all costs.  In other words, that I, or you, will do certain things, and not do other things, regardless of the circumstances, not primarily because it is moral to do or not to do a certain thing, but primarily out of self-respect or self-regard.  Because we have honor or a sense of honor, we would lose respect for ourselves if we do something dishonorable or fail to do something honorable.  We would hold ourselves in contempt, regardless of whether others do so.

I feel some discomfort with this definition as it seems to resemble what some have purported to be saying when referring to someone as a "gentleman" (as opposed to a "bounder" I suppose, or a "cad").
And I'm afraid the knight of chivalry comes to mind as well, prating about his "sacred honor."  In addition, "honor" is often used in reference to the military, e.g. "Duty, Honor, Country."  Also, God help me, I can't help of thinking of the Star Trek character Worf (sp?) gravely saying of someone that "he has no honor."

Even so, "honor" as I speak of it here is adherence to a code of conduct for its own sake and for one's own sake.  Synonyms would be "integrity" and "dignity" and in the Roman sense gravitas.  Naturally, the code of conduct must be worthy of honor (here used as a verb), but curiously, it seems to me, we tend to admire those whose honor compels them to act or not act in a particular way even when the code they adhere to is unworthy.  We all know the phrase "honor among thieves."  What makes a thief honorable would be adherence to the thief's code, for its own sake and for his/her own sake.

Try to think of any prominent public figure who is a person of honor in that sense; who has honor or is honorable.  I know of nobody I would consider honorable, but know of many I think are without honor.  Of particular note are our politicians.  They're craven, venal, duplicitous, and seem to compete with each other in being dishonorable.  There is it seems no limit to what they are willing to do to retain their positions and better them if possible.  They're anything but honorable, and sometimes boast of being dishonorable.  Among them, dishonorable conduct appears to be admirable.

The absence of honor in our time may be attributable to lack of a moral code; lack of a real moral code one would have to say, as it's the case with our politicians, especially those of the right, that they persistently claim to be good Christians--a laughable conceit given their behavior.  Pharisees they may be, but nothing more.  Or it may be do to something more surprising, or at least I think so.

I think that as a rule, self-respect is not a concern among us, and especially for those of us that are public figures for one reason or another.  It isn't merely that we're indifferent to what others think of us, it's that we don't much care what we do except at a superficial level.  Expedience is what concerns us, and if what we do is expedient that is all that matters.  That what is expedient may be dishonorable is not an issue.

Like Werner von Braun in the Tom Lehrer song, our allegiance is ruled by expedience.  It makes our age a very petty, very sleazy time, very grubby time, remarkable in that sense but no other.  It's no surprise then that our leaders are variously petty, sleazy and grubby.

There are Monsters, and then there are Monsters

Now and then, and in any case too often, I find myself drawn to discussions, of a sort, concerning Heidegger in a philosophy forum I frequent.  I don't think I can say I'm irresistibly drawn to such discussions, as I've managed to avoid some of them.  In this particular case someone asked for assistance in understanding a paragraph from Being and Time.  I found the paragraph so obscurely written, so crammed with what seemed to be jargon, that I succumbed to the unworthy desire to mock it.  This led one helpful poster to provide what I think must be called a translation...a surprising one to me as it seemed only vaguely related to the topic apparently being addressed in the paragraph in question.  Having helped me, though, the poster then scolded me, saying that I should learn the meaning of the vocabulary used by Heidegger if I wished to criticize him.

I personally think that a person should not have to learn the meaning of special words in order to read and understand a philosopher's work, or that of anyone else for that matter.   I think philosophical and most other points can be made without recourse to arcane language.  There should be no code one is required to discover (the "Heidegger Code"?) before the meaning is revealed.  Be that as it may, though, this post is inspired by a statement made by another poster after the word "Nazi" was brought up (I wasn't the first to do so).  That statement was to the effect that in assessing (with admiration, it apparently goes without saying)  Heidegger's philosophy we shouldn't get "bogged down" in the fact the man was an absolute monster.

This statement interests me, and not just because it acknowledges Heidegger was a monster.  Most of his apologists admit, as they must, that he was a member of the Nazi party.  Most know of the speeches he made in support of National Socialism and Hitler.  Most know, or should know, that he was a party member until the end of the war, that he never criticized the Nazis, or Hitler; that he never mentioned the Holocaust; that he never expressed regret for being a member of the party.  It's no longer possible to maintain he was not an anti-Semite after the publication of the Black Notebooks and his letters to his brother.  It's increasingly difficult for an apologist to maintain, reasonably, that Heidegger was not an enthusiastic Nazi, though some try to do so still.

So, instead, one hears from apologists that it doesn't matter.

I find the statement interesting because it speaks to the title of this post.  When we say someone is a monster, what do we mean?  Does someone who is a monster cease being a monster in some circumstances?  If Heidegger (or someone else considered a monster) was a monster, was he a monster when "doing" philosophy (or something else considered worthwhile)?  Does/should it matter if a monster does something worthwhile--does/should it make the person less of a monster?  Or, is a monster still a monster when doing something admirable, but that fact does not reduce the merit of what was done?  If that's the case, do we admire the monster or what the monster did?

The picture at the beginning of this post is an illustration used in the 1831 edition of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein.  It doesn't depict the monster as most of us know him.  Men, women, children can be monsters, but they need not be evidently a monster, a monster by appearance.

Do we, can we, say of someone "he/she is a monster, but a great philosopher/artist"?  When it comes to art, I don't think we usually distinguish between the creator and the created in any definite or significant sense when we understand that the act of creation was intended, and admire what was created, nor do I think it reasonable to do so.  We admire an artist who creates a great work of art because he/she creates it.  Nobody but the artist could so; the work of art is essentially a product of the artist as a person.  It isn't the work of just a part of the artist, i.e. the good part.

Nor do I think we make such a distinction in the case of a philosopher whose philosophy we admire.  If we admire Heidegger's philosophy, we admire Heidegger as well, for the same reason as we admire the artist.  Only Heidegger could write his philosophy, and Heidegger is a person.  But, we can't intelligibly say that we admire Heidegger the philosopher, not Heidegger the Nazi, as they're the same person.  Heidegger intended to be a Nazi and intended to write philosophy.

Say that's the case.  Can we nonetheless say the work of art/philosophical work can be considered apart from the artist/philosopher?  Can we say the fact Heidegger was a Nazi isn't important to his philosophy, or that we cannot or need not get "bogged down" in the fact he was a Nazi in reading or assessing his philosophy?  Well, I don't think we can deny or explain away the fact that if we admire Heidegger's work, we admire what the Nazi did and thought; we admire the Nazi's philosophy.  That Nazi sure was a hell of a philosopher.

Some have argued that Heidegger's philosophy encouraged or justified, or led to, Nazism.  What I've read of him indicates to me that he believed in the superiority and special destiny of the German language and people and did so for quasi-mystical, quasi-philosophical reasons, and this oddness is found in Nazism and other "isms" based in German romanticism.  But as to his ontology, his metaphysics, I will probably never know.  I'm not keen to learn, or discover, or decipher the Heidegger Code. 

Intolerance, Exclusivity and the Heirs of Abraham

A thread on a forum I frequent has motivated me to wonder something about the so-called Abrahamic religions, i.e. those which look back to the patriarch Abraham as a founder, directly or indirectly.  What I wonder about them may strike some as disturbing or even blasphemous.  I wonder whether there is anything peculiarly good about them; whether, in other words, they in themselves contain or preach anything good, that hasn't as it were been borrowed or assimilated in the course of their histories from elsewhere.

Above is a picture in stained glass, I think, depicting Abraham about to sacrifice his son in accordance with the will of his God.  I sometimes think of the God of the Old Testament as a kind of colossal, unsleeping cat, toying with his creation as a cat would a mouse.  A cat without a cat's usual charm and grace, though, and without its vast capacity to sleep, and doing no harm by doing so.  Whether urging the chosen people to destroy the Canaanites and take their land, laying waste to entire cities, flooding the world, or playing torturous games with Abraham and Job, he's perpetually doing something to us.  He seemingly made us to be the objects of his whims.

A particular belief in a particular God has been the cause of much violence and many wars, it's true.  But was it so, is it so, when one of the Abrahamic religions is not involved?  As far as I know, the pagans of the ancient Mediterranean didn't war against each other because one group worshipped Isis and one Mithras, for example.  Tolerance of religious beliefs was characteristic of the Greco-Roman world, except, of course, when it came to the Jews and Christians.

Greeks and Jews we know rioted against each other in Alexandria.  Roman suppression of the Jews in the two "Jewish wars" was ruthless.  The Roman state, periodically and with varying degrees of seriousness, persecuted Christians, but with nowhere near the seriousness depicted by Hollywood and others.  But violence against Jews and Christians was not motivated by the fact that they believed in Yahweh or Jesus as opposed to one or several of the pagan gods.  It was motivated by the fact that they believed themselves to be exclusively in possession of that which is right and good by virtue of the fact they worshipped their particular god and refused to recognize as right and good and indeed despised anything they did not think right and good--including pagans, the Roman state, and pagan institutions.  They were considered anti-social, as they were against pagan society and culture.  They appeared to subvert society, traditional religion and the government.

Jews and Christians were exclusive, sometimes militantly so, and intolerant.  Once Rome became a Christian Empire, it persecuted pagans far more relentlessly and effectively that the pagan empire persecuted Christians.  Islam, once founded, was similarly exclusive and intolerant, and engaged in great conquests in the name of its God.  Christianity was an imperial force as well.  All over the world, people were "saved" by being made Christian.

There are works of art inspired by religion, and they can be said to be goods peculiar to particular religious beliefs.  What of wisdom or ethics can be said to have resulted only by virtue of the Abrahamic religions, however? 

I would say nothing, not really.  All that was or could be said on those topics was said before Christianity or Islam existed, and developed independent of Judaism, primarily due to the ancient Greeks.  If one discounts unsubstantiated claims such as Plato or Solon got lessons from Moses, there's nothing to indicate the Greeks were influenced by Judaism in any significant respect.  That Christianity borrowed extensively from pagan philosophy is clear.

It's often claimed that Christianity brought with it the idea of love, something said to be absent from paganism.  Readers of Plato's Symposium might find that surprising.  But Christian love has much more often than not merely been given lip service.  If there was such a teaching, it's been ignored as a practical matter.  And arguably, the love touted by Christianity has never been capable of realization.  One simply does not love everyone.  Respect and dignity were accorded to all by the pagan philosophers; a much more achievable goal.

Well, that's what wondering can do.  But what can be expected from religions which hold themselves out to be the only way to God, the only way to worship God, but conflict in the name of God until all believe the same?