Random Epistemologists

Humans are naturally selected (but not entirely) random epistemologists.

Epistemology is the philosophically technical term for the study of knowledge. As philosopher and head of the Critical Thinking Project at the University of Queensland, Peter Ellerton, succinctly states it's concerned with 'How do you know that?' It's not about what we think (beliefs we hold) but how we think (the methods we use to build reliable knowledge).

As it turns out, what humans regard as 'reliable' is reliably unreliable. It is a biological problem. The philosophers we can be are still, irrevocably, driven by a biology and yet we regard that as irrelevant. Think! It's as irrelevant as a hand is for holding. Should we not study the hand to see see how it operates before claiming expertise in hands? So what of thinking about things? Shall we just ignore any knowledge of how and why a brain, our own minds (!) work? Shall we be content with making up stories about it and substituting those for reality?

And a magnificent irony is that the most distrusted and often despised of all scientific theories is natural selection - the mechanism that drives the process of evolution. It is the actual explanation for why our brains are built the way they are (and not another). It explains the foundation for behavior including the way we randomly select what we feel is a reliable epistemology - blindly - and how we 'do' philosophy - principally through gut feeling. Biology produces a mind, a cognition, which feels as though evidence or reason can easily be superseded by (and we're back again) what we feel is true.

The example or thought experiment I used to explain to Peter Ellerton as to why I argued humans are random epidemiologists was simple. That was how easy it was to live for 50 odd years and not see what was evidence before my own (and everyone else's) eyes. And not only before our eyes but our children's and their children's. We give good advice randomly. I'm no philosopher but my own professions fractured approach to thinking made me particularly curious as to why it appeared to be so easy for intelligent people to think and say stupid things or for the nice people to do bad things. Why were humans almost simultaneously good and bad thinkers?

The Experiment

Out my office window is the busiest traffic intersection in Brisbane. It's small by worldly standards but just as able to crush, kill and destroy any pedestrian who would wander across randomly, haphazardly. So why did I regularly encounter people who believed wholeheartedly that they not only believed but 'knew' that what they couldn't even begin to assess (gods, ghosts or magic they prayed to, saw, interacted with, philosophised about) were real? Why did most humans  not only believe in the supernatural but state they 'knew'. Why did they routinely claim that their 'personal knowledge' was even more certain than any other type, that faith thinking or pure gut instinct was in effect the strongest of all epistemologies, the most popular (if only the least impressive) of philosophies? And why did so many who held no (religious) 'faith' (belief) also believe that there are 'many ways of building knowledge' when what I saw out my window was the very real rejection of such a method of reasoning. Even those who agreed that faith was an insufficient means by which to claim knowledge ,maintained a belief that there were 'many types of knowledge'. Did they only mean 'many beliefs'?  Were they also subscribing to 'faith thinking' (using intuition as if it was knowledge)? Was faith (and I argue a great deal of philosophy) just as philosopher Peter Boghossian suggested - pretending to know? When crossing a road there only seemed to be one accepted way of obtaining actual knowledge - empiricism. It was obvious that everyone was actively rejecting faith at the prospect of bodily harm. It seemed obviously absurd that anyone would regard the biblical definition of faith (hope or trust in things not yet seen) as being preposterously naive and dangerous advice to give anyone at any time.

We could, I said to Peter, get a thousand individuals to fill out surveys and compile exactly what appeared to be multiple ways of being able to develop legitimate knowledge about the world. This is exactly what appears to us to be the truth. It seems to confirm all the other observations - multiple religious, professional and academic traditions. Even science is one such 'approach' to gathering knowledge, so goes a common and commonly believed claim ('science' is just one 'way' of knowing (and so much easier to dismiss once that is established)). But was any of this true? Why did everyone at the corner of a busy road appear to be gathering knowledge (about when to safely cross a busy road) in almost exactly the same way - using the same (very scientific) method or epistemology? If it really was true that we can gather reliable knowledge in a variety of ways why did we not actually see that happening at the edge of the street? Why, in effect, did people not test their own faith in faith as an epistemology? Why were people not praying their way to knowledge here?

Why, if multiple ways of knowing, if multiple equally valid and reliable epistemologies, is a justified true belief in itself, do people resort to only one type whenever they feel the need to survive? (incidentally, there are 'no atheists in foxholes' out of desperation not logic). The answer is quite obvious, too obvious. Humans resort to empiricism when they accept the need to be able to develop reliable knowledge in order to benefit themselves. If we perceive (feel) that in order to gain we must discard logic, that is what we will do. Faith is nothing but confirmation bias. It helps form religious traditions but is not unique to them. It is one way of describing the behavior of our own cognition (except we are unaware that this is what we are describing). We're largely unconscious of what we are doing because all the mind requires in order to feel that it is knowledge is to feel that it is. Children very quickly develop the natural skill of lying, of deceit, as they begin to recognize that 'getting away with' things can be accomplished by simple strategies. Omission for example. They learn they can tell the story in a way that will satisfy what they need others, and themselves, to believe (and behave). They, we, learn to manipulate, negotiate, cohabitate. And in children it can be quaint. My youngest daughter was a prodigious teller of stories. She always seemed to be the first to witness animals (there were always 'babies' or a mother with them) and the last it seemed. "Where darling?!" Oh, they were there just a second ago. She saw fairies 'everywhere' and when that didn't seem sufficiently convincing the story changed to 'they always hide' (so that's why you can't see them of course). As she matured the talent for seeing what others could not, got her into trouble. After playing with the child next door that child's toys appeared in Scarlett's room. She'd stolen them?. No, she claimed. They'd been given to her, at least that's what she had recalled. Getting to the bottom of the whole story was quite difficult because, I'd argue, even she wasn't sure of what she believed. She was now so familiar with a magical epistemology, a method that could always make her reality 'work', that she couldn't recognise when she was using it or not. Her older sister wasn't the lying type. If you asked her a question she tended to answer it even if it meant getting herself into trouble. The point is that deceit is a natural skill, a naturally selected one all humans engage in whether we are aware of it or not. As the Scottish economist, philosopher and ethicist, Adam Smith explained it is "not from the benevolence" of the baker that we receive our daily bread but from his self-interest in preparing and selling it. It's only by recognizing our own gift to self deceive that we can even begin to develop a pragmatic ethic, and discard the magically pure ones we try to convince ourselves we can possess. It's for this reason that overt demonstrations of piety are often neither humble nor trustworthy. Failing to recognize that, and why, humans approach reasoning randomly leads, in adulthood, to less than stellar 'types of knowledge'.

We Are Not Biologically 'Random' 

While it's true that we are consciously random epistemologists (or rather often quite unconscious of which epistemology we are currently using) it is due to our own biology being non random. Contradiction? The vast majority of what our own minds are doing is, like any large and complex system, operating without our need to be aware of each and every step. If you've heard of the word 'reflex' before you're probably unaware of the implications of it's very existence - they're there because if you were (mostly) aware (IE non reflexively based) you (it (body)) couldn't function. We cannot be aware of the stupendously complex, literally 'mind-blowing', functions of trillions of individual cells. That we are unaware is often given over as a vacuous 'You See?!' argument for why we can claim 'knowledge' of something 'mysterious' instead of admitting an honest 'I don't know'. Natural selection tends away from needless complexity. Think it's complex? Then how on earth can you claim to understand what something 'complex' is by claiming "It's complex"? Try this thought experiment - OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) is to render a person dysfunctional, inoperative for the reason that they are trying to do only a few things 'perfectly'. A functional mind only spends the minimum time and effort on any one task and since we can learn, habituate, it becomes easier to also ignore anything that won't interfere with our day. What won't interfere? Getting hit by a car will, even a leaking tap can, but thinking you know that a god is real won't have any immediate effect on our lives. We can know if we get hit by traffic and we can know if the tap is fixed but we cannot even begin to examine the claim that what we cannot locate is true or false. We can therefore successfully navigate a day while holding false beliefs if that doesn't mean automatic injury or inconvenience. We can even cross a road employing one epistemology (empiricism) while entertaining the fiction that there are many ways of knowing things. Not bothering to look or listen to check if a car is coming can be demonstrated to be a stupid and dangerous omission but being wrong about the magical link between non-existent things won't stop it 'working' each and every time we 'cross that (magical/imaginary) bridge'. We could even conclude this - our own biology is 'smarter' than we are except it isn't. We could claim that evolution is clever and in a way it is but only due to considerable corrections following significant mistakes. The 'success' of species only appears that way as we do not go about our day being continually reminded that all individuals die and almost all species have perished. An analogy is this - we often refer to survivors as 'miracles' never thinking to notice the thousands who did not make it. We are only recognising what looks like success because we are blind to the fact that most of it is failure. Is that fatalistic? Consider this - most individuals that have existed never had the chance to reproduce but everyone alive today is part of a small line that did. There are 7 billion humans today but until very recently we struggled to stay alive or intact or fully functional long enough for that to occur.

Our own minds will not ask for permission before withdrawing a hand from a stove top. It will act 'as if' any novel sensory stimuli is a potential threat. But since it is not perfect it will also 'leap' to protect any cherished belief (threatened by other novel (and potentially dis-confirming) ideas) that has become a part of its own complex identity. This is what researchers observed on brain scans when some people were subjected to hypothetically dis-confirming information. It was perceived, by the brain, as if it was a potential physical threat. After all, the brain and the ideas it produces are physical. Give a person 'mind altering' drugs and you will observe alterations in mind function and behavior in principle in precisely the same way that any other organ and system (and it's behavior) can be altered.

We don't like to admit it (so we use deception to avoid it), but faith thinking, using pure unadulterated instinct or gut feeling and claiming it is a type (the greatest!) of wisdom or knowledge building is dangerous. Let's use it to cross a road shall we? If faith thinking is harmless, comforting illusions at the worst, then why do we not stand by the courage of our own convictions and promote that method when teaching children to cross busy roads? Why do we insist that faith thinking be regarded as virtuous when it is obvious that if employed it would lead to literal carnage in almost every sphere of life, including ethics? We do not get dressed, bank, select food or drive using faith. We look, feel and continually re-check that what we thought was happening is. We constantly employ 'tests' in order to save ourselves and those immediately around us but the drive is selfish. We do not then need entire philosophies that encourage more of it. Why do we accept faith thinking as a profound philosophical methodology when it is merely self assuring circular thinking, childish delusion? And that is the answer - we do it because our own biology propels us. Magical thinking (another label for our ability to create (imagine) from thin air causal links between feelings and reality) isn't inherently 'bad' or 'good'. It's a natural skill. It allows me to 'run' my hypothetical road crossing thought experiment. It helps me think about whether or not what I believe is reliably true. But it cannot literally do magic and if I try to argue it can I do not deserve for it to be called a robust philosophy and it is certainly not immune from a harsh criticism. The only other natural conclusion becomes transparent - it is not only selfish but immoral, the worst of ethics, to fail to teach children how their own reality functions simply to favour our own short term need to avoid discomfort.

Education is still primarily an exercise in wrote learning and indoctrination not thinking about why we think in the manner we do. We do not, for example, insist on teaching children their actual 'origin story', that they, we, are all part of a magnificent process of evolution, that we have strengths and flaws as a result of that shared history and that we are, now that we know, complete fools and the worst of philosophers to ignore it.

DS