It’s All Made Up

Turns out it’s games all the way down.

[As a reminder, all paid posts go free after one month.]

I'd like to explore how everything is basically arbitrary aside from math, scientific laws, and core morality. This is not a dystopian take. It is about what can be known versus what must be held as belief—fact versus faith.

That is not a dichotomy between the right and the wrong, the true and the false. It is a dichotomy between what we cannot deny and what we can only accept by trust. Trying to put one into the basket of the other is folly for it can never fit. And it risks self defeat both as an argument to win over the minds of others as well as a foundation for one's own faith.

Consider the analogy of listening to diehard fans of some sport that you know little about and care even less. They can explain to you the ends and outs of how it is played, what’s going on in it currently, and their thoughts/desires for what is to come. Interest much less fandom can only reach those willing to seek it out and responsive to its specific rewards. Otherwise it will pass through them like neutrinos.

Where I am heading isn’t a nihilistic approach by any means. Say what you will about this post; at least it’s an ethos.

Consider how “Yeah, but why?” is ultimately an unanswerable question.

Questioner: Why do you do [a thing that is done]?

You: Because [states a rather factual basis for the thing being done].

Questioner: Yeah, but why?

You: Because [gives support based on history or a logical progression from some establishing basis, etc.].

Questioner: Yeah, but why?

You: Because [backs up a level repeating in the same manner].

Questioner: Yeah, but why?

. . . This continues endlessly or until you ultimately reach some first-principles position that is simply a foundational assumption or truth. There is many a slip between the cup and the lip, though, when thinking we’ve backed up enough to a truth when in fact we’ve only arrived at an originating assumption. Math works back to truth (see the Peano Axioms, et al.). What football team to root for does not.

Religion

To paraphrase René Girard: “If you don’t have a real religion, you’ll end up with a more dreadful one.” Add to this David Foster Wallace: “...in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.”

Religion is on many levels made up, yet it grasps in the near dark for that which is true. This truth might be the God of the faithful, or it might be just the core of morality putting all the pageantry, ceremony, and history aside. That is for us to decide for ourselves in our journey of faith—including getting off the train at the next station whether or not we choose to board another or simply walk alone.

I'm not claiming that everything is a LARP or meaningless or of equal stature. I do believe religious beliefs and practices are attempts to get at something truly real. Some are truer than others, and I believe Roman Catholicism is the truist. To assume it is settled science would be to deny the many changes it has gone through in its evolution and will undoubtedly go through in the future.

This post isn’t just about religion by any means. It encompasses all we see around us. Religion is simply the biggest and best testing grounds for this rambling thought exercise.

In other words it is about all the made up stuff that fills our lives. It all really is just an illusion. Do not take that as a denial of reality. Rather understand it is a recognition that our reality is filled with things that are mere hints at greater (actual) truths.

The Platonic ideal of something, for example a tree, only exists with Plato (or someone choosing that philosophical starting point). The idea of the perfect form of everything is a fool’s errand. It is a useful thought process, though, in that it helps us to think of the essence behind everything from material substances and forms to ideas and abstract structures.

The purpose of something, for example why Catholics kneel at a certain point in church, only exists within the confines of Catholic practice. It is right for a Catholic to kneel, genuflect, and recite in keeping with the church’s practice. It is not wrong for a non-Catholic to abstain from such even when attending Catholic mass. It would be wrong for a non-Catholic to interfere with or simply mock such activity whether or not within the confines of a mass. One should be respectful, but respect does not require adherence nor exact duplication. It is a balancing act that can be difficult and misinterpreted, but having one’s heart in the right place counts immensely.

For example, I typically do not recite the Pledge of Allegiance when others are doing so—I’m a bit uneasy about the national anthem as well especially at sporting events (a longer post for another day). But I will stand and be respectful and hopefully not make awkward my refusal to fully comply.

Arbitrary Decisions

There is a good reason for why one drives on the right in America. This reason is both foundationally supported as well as pragmatically useful. Yet it is arbitrary nonetheless.

There is a good reason why we conduct presidential elections the way we do in America. This reason is both foundationally supported as well as pragmatically useful. Yet it too is arbitrary nonetheless. This arbitrariness is different from the arbitrariness of which side of the road we drive on but only in degree, not in type.

So there is much nuance to consider when exploring arbitrariness.

There is a point to everything that is done. Sometimes that point approaches being essentially random and completely unpredictable. Often that point has weak substantiation. Sometimes that point is extremely well-thought through, grounded, and rightfully impressive. Yet the charge of arbitrariness can always be applied to all but fundamental mathematics, physical laws of the Universe (call this physics for short), and core morality.

In the case of morality that is why I do not think it requires God. Rather belief in God as the Father and Truth of morality is an assumption. Believers typically do not like this for they wrongly infer that this means God is arbitrary. Not at all. God either is or is not. The truth of core morality can be proven. The truth that God is the source of it cannot. Hence, belief in God is always belief (or disbelief)—to claim one “believes in the Peano Axioms” ultimately makes no sense. They are essentially true. To claim “I know God is a fact or is not a fact” also ultimately makes no sense. Doing so implies an unprovable position and is a denial of free will. Notice this applies to faith on both ends of the spectrum—belief and atheism.

For me this is the importance of the statement a Catholic priest makes at each mass when he says, “This is our faith . . .” The Church is making a claim that this is true, but the Church is not claiming it is proven fact. It is claiming it is a truth of the Universe that we are accepting upon faith without ultimate proof.

An argument is valid if its conclusion follows when its premises are assumed to be true. An argument is sound when it is both valid and its premises are true. We live in a world where there are many, many valid arguments for the things we do but there is essentially no sound arguments if we look deeply enough aside from the before mentioned areas (math, physics, and core morality).

We can make a good argument for something that is certainly valid. In many cases for all practical purposes we would also agree that it is sound—for the premises are so easily accepted as true we can reasonably take them as such. However, this means that IF one disagrees with any foundational assumption, they can rightfully reject the argument.

An argument that Calvinball is inferior to Baseball relies on an arbitrary assumption(s) at its core. The premises may see obviously true to us, but they essentially are choices we have made. Baseball may in fact be closer to a Platonic ideal than is Calvinball. But my contention is the Platonic ideal is still but a grasp in the dark for something absolutely true, and we have simply chosen to define it as such in reaching any conclusions about either ball game’s superiority.

To circle back to religion by analogy, I believe that both the players of Calvinball and Baseball can get to heaven. I can believe that Baseball is the truer or even one true sport between the two without it being the case that either can be held as or proven to be in fact true. For all Christians including Catholics, the road to salvation requires Jesus Christ. Where I invite open mindedness into my own faith is by allowing for a wider understanding (truth) into what it means to accept Jesus Christ as salvation. I am humble enough to accept that I cannot fully understand what this means. I would suggest others should do so as well.

Why This Is Not Skepticism per se

At some point an objector or maybe a supporter will invoke Popper’s falsifiability standard. As Michael Huemer explains, “you probably do not agree with Popper at all -- unless you are completely out of your mind.” Falsifiability is a useful tool, but like all tools it eventually breaks down. All models are false. Some models are useful. Falsifiability is useful. It hones and clarifies our thinking and gives us a stronger basis for making claims and testing them. Yet at the extreme, nothing is unfalsifiable. All we are left with is something that is a little firmer to grasp and a little more believable. We never arrive at a definitive answer.

To be sure, I am not arguing for skepticism. I deeply agree with Michael Huemer in his post “Debunking Skepticism”:

Appearances can be revealing. A fundamental rule of rationality is to start from the assumption that things are pretty much the way they seem, unless and until you have specific reasons to doubt that.

. . .

Philosophy is the friend with a million conspiracy theories. Kant called philosophy “the queen of the sciences,” but perhaps it were better named “the Alex Jones of the sciences.” It’s not one time that philosophers came up with the idea that maybe we’re being radically deceived. It’s every goddamned time we talk about anything. At some point, rational people should just disregard everything we have to say about our radical skeptical theories.

And this too from Huemer is instructive:

Many self-described skeptics basically agree with everyone else about all the substantive matters — e.g., about what you should believe and why — but they have a semantic dispute with non-skeptics: namely, the skeptics think the word “know”, in English, has a much stricter meaning than other epistemologists think it has. I described my interpretation of “know” in sec. 1. These skeptics, however, think that to “know” something, in the ordinary English sense, requires that one have evidence that rules out, with 100% absolute certainty, every logically possible alternative to what you believe. And basically all epistemologists agree that you virtually never have such evidence.

So, what’s wrong with the skeptics’ semantic theory? Basically, I think the meanings of words are determined by their usage. Most words are used to group together certain things in the world that strike us as similar, and to distinguish them from other things that strike us as different. In the case of “knowledge”, we’re trying to group together cases like, say, my belief that I have 2 hands and mathematicians’ belief in the Pythagorean Theorem after a proof of it was discovered — and to distinguish them from cases like, say, the theory that the Earth rests on the back of a giant turtle, or the proposition that the number of atoms in the universe is even.

So the correct definition of “knowledge” should be something that captures the belief that I have 2 hands and the belief in the Pythagorean theorem, and does not include the belief that the Earth rests on the back of a turtle.

The skeptic’s definition of “knowledge” just completely and utterly fails to do that. I.e., it obviously fails to capture how “knowledge” is in fact used in English.

Where I think I’m congruent with Huemer’s position is that I am arguing there is a meaningful, ultimate distinction from what can be known as true and what must be accepted as (ultimately) faith. Gravity is independently true of our understanding of it. “Faith” in gravity to a medieval man standing on a high cliff was useful. He had a theory he did not want to try to falsify. To wit: jumping off the cliff would not have falsified it. His faith in the theory that God would save him from harm if he were to jump or bring him to eternal salvation were he to fall was ultimately (in this world) unfalsifiable as well.

One of the medieval man’s theories is in the realm of fact. The other is in the realm of faith. Both are important. And it is important that we understand and keep each within their proper realms—for the sake of advancing science and for the sake of preserving the sanctity of faith.