Recently, a friend asked me – How do you know that rationality presents the real picture of reality? I of course had no answer but to quote David Hume who said – “we really have no rational reason to believe in objective reality but we also have no choice but to act as if it is true”. Stephen Hawking’s new book, introduces the idea of model based reality and compares human position with that of a fish in the jar that can also formulate physical laws based on how things like light behaves in the jar or how the world outside appears from the jar. These laws would of course hold true from everywhere in the jar, but the fish would have no means to realize that the physical laws of the jar model do not hold true outside the jar and thus do not present the real picture of reality. As a matter of fact, as I learn more about neural substrates of our sensory perceptions and how we seem to contrive the picture of external world in our brain, the idea that the world is the way as we see/perceive it through our sensory modalities seem not to hold true anymore. Manipulation of abstract mathematical forms does in fact appear to make predictions about the physical world that may otherwise be labeled outright outlandish but have come true upon later inquiry. Nevertheless, it can be argued that even these abstract mathematical forms (as well as testing predictions by obtaining and analyzing experimental data) are a product of our mental abstraction by their very definition. and are limited by our sensory modalities and our faculties of reasoning. Then how do we know that the world as we perceive it is any real than the one perceived by the fish in the jar?
Some critics of rationality (more often those who like to fill in the limits of our sensory and reasoning faculties with supernaturalism) like to go one step further to say that believing our own reason and rationality to present the real picture of the world is as much a leap of faith as the belief in a super natural creator. So that way, there is no inherent value to reason and rationality and we have no “truly empirical” way of deciding whether we can trust rationality for a real picture of reality or if we should evoke the God of Gaps.
So, more than 200 hundred years after Hume made the aforementioned statement, do we have any better or rational reason to pursue a rational approach of investigation and trust it with some confidence to present us a true picture of reality than just because “we have no choice but to act as if it is true”?
The answer is Yes, we do. To quote one of the Professors of philosophy at my University - “We know a lot more now than Hume did. This is manifest not only with what we take to be true, but with our extended mastery of the world insofar as we can exploit regularities present in it to our advantage. e.g. curing diseases. Now, I suppose one can challenge that we have learned anything about the conditions in which my perceptual apparatus is a reliable indicator of properties of the world, but that seems just to rehearse the global skeptical hypothesis. There is simply no way to refute a globally skeptical hypothesis when a characteristic of the hypothesis is that we couldn’t possible have any evidence that would undermine it.”
So even if we are the fish in the jar, the jar seems to be expanding with every passing moment. Thousand years ago, studying microscopic structures and actually seeing with our own eyes the basic molecular machines at work in our bodies, detecting leftover cosmic microwave radiation etc. was never in the realms of our scientific worldview but now it is! Our limited senses have been expanding exponentially largely due to the advancements in technologies like microscopes, telescopes, detectors of electromagnetic radiation in non-visible spectrum, and our knowledge of nature of chemical reactions for instance. Excitingly, study of origins of life and that of the cosmos are no longer outside the realms of this ever expanding, jar-like, Model of reality for which only local skepticism suffices. So, I would argue for continued pursuit of rational investigation even after full awareness of being the fish in the jar. Local skepticism induced by scientific review process ensures that new evidence can be used to refine our world view. But to induce a globally skeptic hypothesis to maintain that everything scientific process tells us is bogus (under allegory of cave model) – nullifies your own rationale to believe in anything and everything, including the religious ideas which do not have a shred of evidence for the statements they so boldly induce. So, in the scheme of things, its more realistic to divert attention to what can be achieved in a model based realism with local skepticism rather than just conjuring up the idea of an imaginative super natural being to fill in what we don’t currently know for that is not productive even to the fish in the jar! In other words, conjuring up such imaginative beings doesn’t help in furthering our understanding in any way at all. Moreover, those who argue for a “guiding hand” in big-bang, abiogenesis and evolution, there is no way of getting around the problem of infinite regression. For explaining the origin of life and that of the Universe, as Laplace famously said - ” I hath no need of that hypothesis, Sire!”
Well said.
Here are some other thoughts along these lines
Science uses objective examination of data to discover what is actually true, and the design of experiments to test hypotheses. Rational thinking (based on reason or logic) is not necessarily scientific thinking unless the reason or logic is firmly based on what we know to be true. Science is an investigation of nature, based on the construction of empirically verifiable theories and hypotheses.
Science is not in necessarily in conflict with religion. Science cannot prove the existence of God, and can’t prove not God. Belief in God could be a step towards accepting that there is a reality beyond one’s own experience. We do know enough about the universe to accept that it is governed by physical laws that haven’t changed for about fifteen billion years. The earth is very, very old. Evolution is the mechanism of the creation of life. Cells follow the rules of thermodynamics. If you are curious about what is real, what is true, this could be a path towards being curious about the actual world that God created. (You can still be curious if you don’t believe in God.) If you reject the large amount of data that science provides, you choose a sub-reality bubble, a fantasy. This is a form of solipsism, sub-reality solipsism. It is engaged in willingly, and is an ideology and pathology of our times.
People take comfort in religion because it gives life meaning, provides an anchor in a confusing world. A network of thoughts and a language may develop that becomes a closed system. This is destructive to understanding when such a closed system becomes so fragile that any challenge to its premises appears to make the house of cards fall down. The system thus becomes a barrier to understanding reality. It is also a profoundly effective way to manipulate people.
Science, in fact, is the discovery of reality. To objectively analyze data, one must be humble before the data, and change your opinion, reject your hypothesis if the data tell you that it is wrong.
Dawkins, when discussing how animals are all related, called the ideal forms preferred by creationists, “the dead hand of Plato.” But it’s not Plato’s fault, he merely articulated a fundamental way in which our brains work. We hold to the perfect idea, or construct, or ideology, as being more true than reality. Its not the fault of religion either, it is more a symptom of the way our brains work that religion can be twisted to justify any ideology, or eugenics, or war.
Put it this way: if science is the discovery of the natural world, and you believe that God created the natural world, then scientists are actually telling you about God’s amazing creation. (You can be awed whether or not you believe in God.) To deny reality is to say that your ideology is more impressive than God’s creation, to choose a sub-reality bubble over reality.
“…Science is not in necessarily in conflict with religion. Science cannot prove the existence of God, and can’t prove not God…”
I humbly disagree with this statement. Science can also not disprove existence of Bertrand Russel’s Tea-Pot God. That doesn’t mean that such a tea-pot god exists. Science is in conflict with religion in the sense that there is not even a shred of evidence for the God hypothesis. To the contrary, there is enormous evidence in favor of alternative “creator-less” hypotheses. Those who argue for a “guiding hand” in big-bang, abiogenesis and evolution, there is no way of getting around the problem of infinite regression.