(Find Part I of this series here.)
When I introduce students to my class, I tell them that I intend to brainwash them.
In fact, that’s softpeddling a bit. I intend to rewire not only their brains but also their souls: their intuitions and values and desires.
Since time immemorial, humans have been depicted as having a unique duality: emotional and rational; intellectual and visceral. Jonathan Haidt explains this as a duality between an elephant and a rider as follows.
I love Haidt's work, and owe much of my interest in (and understanding of) psychology to him. Similarly, I am strongly in the pro-rationalist camp: I read Slate Star Codex back in the day, I follow Less Wrong now, and I love nothing more than to find my intuitions overturned by cold, hard data. I am a rationalist’s rationalist.
And yet, I feel that the rationalist model is only an intermediate improvement. I am reminded of what C.S. Lewis said about youth exposed to propaganda, and the typical response:
"They see the world around them swayed by emotional propaganda... and they conclude that the best thing they can do is to fortify the minds of young people against emotion. My own experience as a teacher tells an opposite tale. For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head." (Emphasis mine.)
The rationalist response to the elephant-and-rider problem is to weaken the elephant and exalt the rider. I find that solution lacking.
I'm a math teacher. I would sometimes ask students "bigger, or smaller?" Then I would shout "addition!" They'd yell "bigger!" How about subtraction? "Smaller!" Multiplication? "Bigger!" And so on. They have carefully-honed intuitions that are correct and precise--through third grade. Then everything falls apart. What about subtracting negative numbers? What about multiplying fractions? They don’t merely need new algorithms, they need new intuitions as much as higher resolution thought patterns. and higher quality emotional patterns, and those patterns are my job as a teacher to inculcate.
The elephant does not need less attention, he needs more. Lewis goes on:
In battle it is not syllogisms (logical arguments) that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of the bombardment.The crudest sentimentalism … about a flag or a country or a regiment will be of more use.
It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous. Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite skeptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not cheat’, than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers.
Lewis and Haidt agree that man is composed in two parts--but where Haidt seems to imply that strong riders solve all problems, Lewis rebuffs him: the underdevelopment of the heart (or the overdevelopment of the intellect) is no answer! The symbol of the two centers of cognition are the head (the rational rider) and the heart (the emotive elephant). (It’s worth noting that they are only symbolic: our heart does not create emotion, but our brain.) In Lewis’ telling, there is a mediator between head and heart: The chest. Lewis laments that we are building a world of men with no chests:
"...By (man's) intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal. The operation of The Green Book (a book promoting relativism) and its kind is to produce what may be called Men without Chests.… A persevering devotion to truth, a nice sense of intellectual honour, cannot be long maintained without the aid of a sentiment... It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks them out. Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so."
I believe as Lewis did that we must both strengthen and better train the emotional core of man.
"And all the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more ‘drive’, or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or ‘creativity’. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.1"
My intention is to plant within you the seed of skepticism that may bloom in years to come into something more glorious.
But when we speak of skepticism, what is it? What is it not? In what contexts is it useful? And perhaps most importantly, is it good and right for people of faith to be skeptics?
I am selling skepticism like a vendor in the street market, and I will not have you buying from someone else and coming to me for a refund. As such, I’d like to begin with a little brand differentiation. Let’s talk about what the holy art of skepticism is not.
Punctuational Worship
Let’s begin with two quotations, best understood in tandem.
First, from David Foster Wallace:
“There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.”
David Foster Wallace
Second, Nietzche speaks of the agnostics who
“worship the question mark itself as if it is their God.”
The original skeptics were a Greek school of thought who—at their most radical—posited that we can know nothing exceptthat we can know nothing. Pyrrho himself may not have believed such nonsense, yet the school of thought was still named after him. There are, even today, some who happily quench conscience by appealing to philosophical gewgaws—what Elder Maxwell called “using intellectual reservations to cover behavior lapses.”
They have a point. How do you know that you’re not living in The Matrix, after all?
Imagine someone says that they struggle to bear testimony because, after all, he does not know for certain. Let’s call him Thomas. He goes on, “I don’t know that the church is true, I only strongly, strongly suspect it. I have no proof, only evidence.” On further interrogation, he admits that he cannot disprove that we live in a simulation, and even states that he cannot say for certain whether the sun would rise the next day—because of the infinitesimal chance of spontaneous supernova.
Remember Thomas. We will come back to him.
The responses to the Pyrhonnists are twofold: first, those simulated bills aren’t going to pay themselves. You’ve got to live in this maybe-manufactured world, or you will feel maybe-manufactured-but-awfully-realistic-consequences. This is pragmatism: you may never be able to prove existence or reality or The Matrix, but it won’t change that you’ve got work to do.
I love a good philosophical bauble as much as the next man, but if you so invest your morality into it that you leave your highest responsibilities over it, you stand guilty of infidelity of a disastrous sort. Your theoretical justifications are the attractions and allure of a night with a courtesan—and the shame and emptiness of the morning after.
Trust me. Ask Raskolnikov.
You are not so clever as you think. I’ve heard that in ancient times, school was leisure. First, you got your work done: shelter, food, civic duty. Then, if time permitted, you could go argue with Socrates. I love learning and the life of the mind—but like anything, it can become all frosting and no cake; it can sour, left to itself, and quickly turn rancid. Never become so enthused with the frivolities of philosophy that you begin to take them more seriously than a neighbor in need, or a family to be raised.
The other response to the radical pyrrhonists is that all the evidence—piles and piles of it—suggests that reality is real, not illusory.
You have a blindspot, but despite it you see.
In court, you never prove things absolutely—or we would never have a conviction. We muster evidence sufficient for the requisite standard: the ‘preponderance of the evidence,’ perhaps, or ‘evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.’
Note: beyond a reasonable doubt implies that there are unreasonable doubts. You would do well to evict them from your head. We speak of a “healthy dose” of skepticism. Consider the implication of an “unhealthy dose of skepticism.”
Practicality and proof, those are the responses to the pyrrhonists.
The other day, my seven-year-old came to sit on my lap. I held him close. It was a tender moment, spontaneous and precious. I did not ever wonder to myself whether he was real. I did not ask idiotic questions about brains-in-a-jar or The Matrix or whether he was just an apparition, because I was busy hugging my boy.
And suddenly the simulation is not just absurd but immoral—and the idea of truth is not scary at all. The answer to the intellectual uncertainty that is a condition of life is the moral certainty that is born within every member of mankind. There really is such a thing as truth–and I can apprehend it. I can’t prove it. But I can know it. I can know with moral certainty what I cannot prove with intellectual purity: that I have obligations to my son. That I must serve my neighbor. That religion or not, I have obligations to decency and integrity.
Imagine explaining to God, at the judgment bar, that I’d been a garbage father, a mediocre ward member, and a so-so husband because, hey, after all, I wasn’t totally positive that life was even, like, real, you know?
How was I to know that my boy was real, and not a part of the simulation?
I suspect that Father will not be amused. He certainly won’t be impressed.
And so, what of Thomas—who cannot say whether the gospel is true, or whether the sun will rise?
My dude. Stand at the pulpit, and say “I know—like I know the sun will rise tomorrow—that the gospel is true!”
There Are Two Errors
Some define skepticism as, basically, “a high bar.” Should you buy the product on the TV? Only if the evidence is good. Should you marry the girl? Only if you’re really sure. Should you go to grad school? Only if they pay you a very big scholarship.
I’m more sympathetic to this view, and if that’s how you run with things it will be better than nothing.
But there’s a problem. If you set the bar too high, you won’t buy the thing, you won’t marry the girl, you won’t go to grad school, and none of those are super great outcomes either.
Imagine: I say “be skeptical!” You believe me. You set the bar really really high. In fact, you set all bars really high. You decide you won’t accept anything unless the evidence is bulletproof. You don’t buy snake oil, but you don’t buy vegetable oil either. You’re doubting Thomas: you don’t believe anything without perfect evidence, and that means you end up passing up on lots of true things. You quickly turn into a philosophy dudebro who can’t shut up about The Matrix and The Truman Show, how we’re living in a simulation—who rattles on about some allegory in a cave and is very erudite and intelligent and never buys snake oil and also has no friends.
On the other hand, you can set a very low bar and buy Melaleuca.
There’s a t-shirt that I love that reads “no solutions, only tradeoffs.” Probably sold by an economist. They love stuff like that. I’ve noticed that I don’t get angry when people disagree with me, but I see red when they don’t understand the downside of their position—or the upside of mine. Increase the minimum wage? Fine—but it may decrease employment. Increase the number of required classes for graduation from college? Fine, but understand that a fifth year costs money for students and delays their employment. You believe that every school should teach music? Grand—but those music teachers will compete against community violin lessons. Have whatever position you want, but please, I beg you, measure the tradeoffs.
And this is the lesson of type I and type II errors: there are two kinds of errors. You can accept more propositions and accept a few falsehoods, or you can reject more propositions and also reject more truths!
There is no “right” place to set the bar. The lower you put it, the better the chance you accept as true a bunch of nonsense. The higher you put it, the more the chance that you go through life with no beliefs whatsoever.
High bar is good, but wisdom is better. Context matters. You should set a low bar for a date, and a very high bar for marriage. (This is the philosophy of NATO dating: Not Attached To Outcomes, and honestly, I’m a fan. Just go on dates. Don’t set a high bar. Just ask. You’ll survive, homeboy. Just go on more dates!) Marriage is somewhat different. Set a higher bar. This is important, so do it right.
And by the way, recognize that ultimately marriage is a grand gamble: do your homework, but we call it taking the plunge for a reason. It wouldn’t be joyous if it didn’t come with a little terror.
And the grandest bet of all is about truth itself.
Do you desire truth? Long for it? Yearn for it?
Be warned. Too many today preach the high-bar definition of truth, ignoring the perils of going through life with little to believe in—no story, no narrative, no truth beyond what is verifiable. If you are praying about your testimony, and you set the bar at “I will not believe until I see,” then you run the risk of going through absolutely certain—of precious little. Do you desire truth—or do you worship at the altar of certainty? That safe feeling that comes when you know that what you know is firm and reliable and will never shift under your feet?
And, yet, if you set the bar too low, you will never be able to muster moral conviction when the time comes that the grandest of all bets is called—when life gets hard, your ideas get tested, and the trite truisms are burned away as dross in the fire. Life is no good if you have no beliefs. And your beliefs will do you no good if there isn’t sufficient gold amid the dross to keep you going when things are hard.
And the game is hard. That is what makes it worth playing. The joy of the game is the terror of the challenge.
Best face it head-on.
Finally to Skepticism
And so, if skepticism is not this, that, or the other, finally at the end of the day, what is it?
Miguel de Unamuno puts it well:
“Skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found.”
Miguel de Unamuno, "Essays and Soliloquies," 1924
Why spend so much time on what skepticism isn’t? I want you to have in your head a stark difference between learners, the questioners, the truth-seekers, the earnest inquisitors, and the seekers on the one hand, and on the other the pettifoggers, the gainsayers, the knee-jerkers, the specious interlocutors, the cavilers, the faultfinders, and the whole assemblage of pickers of nits.
I am not initiating you into the rites of the question-mark worshippers.
You know the kind of which I speak.
There’s the internet brand—the intellectual troll who doesn’t care what you argue, just wants to argue. Then there’s the Sunday school brand who doesn’t care about the lesson or faith or their neighbor, but can’t pass up the chance to show off about how X or Y is actually just a faith-promoting rumor. These are the people who gather a social media following for consistently shooting down bad ideas but never have the courage to stake their reputation on propping up good and right ones.
The original meaning of skepticism has something to do with “inquirer.” I don’t have much use for the etymological fallacy, but I quite like this definition. It is about inquiring, knocking, seeking, and asking.
Dr. Ed Gantt is a friend of mine. Said he:
Embracing doubt simply because something or someone can be doubted is not really thinking, though it far too often passes for such in our world these days. Rather, such doubting is really just intellectual laziness masquerading as critical thinking, and, as such, it demands far, far too little of us, either in mind or spirit.
I have called my kind of skepticism a holy art. I do not say so lightly. Dr. Gantt continues, on the theme of Christian thought:
Engaging in the strenuous work of genuinely and honestly probing of one’s beliefs and ideas by critically reflecting on the presuppositions of those questions, while at the same time seriously entertaining the possibility that there might be more, even far more, to the Christian worldview than might have previously been supposed, is the essence of what I mean here by thinking. As Robert Louis Wilken also wrote, whether in the vise-grip of doubt or comfortably confident, “For Christians, thinking is part of believing.”
When I speak of skepticism, I mean the art of the seeker, the inquirer, the investigator. But here let me differentiate clearly: it is not the trade of the doubter, the cynic, nor the naysayer. Skepticism’s etymology is not about negativity but about the pursuit of truth. To be a skeptic means to be an investigator, a thinker—perhaps most simply, a seeker.
A skeptic must be one who worships Truth itself.
Find part III of this series at the link. Part IV is here.