PHILOSOPHICAL UNDERPINNINGS , Part II

By

Karl H. Puechl

May 22, 1988

In my previous talk about philosophical underpinnings, I introduced two seemingly different topics; I deplored thinking that does not look beneath the surface and I asked the pertinent question, "what makes human beings tick?". Relative to the latter, I postulated that man thinks up delusions or, psychologists would say, defense mechanisms that allow him to live with his apparent personal condition; that his life has no particular meaning and that death is inevitable and final. These two trains of thought will merge as I, more rigorously, develop a philosophical position. To do this, we must go far back in time.

In the early day of pre-history, man began to recognize his own individuality. As a consequence, he also began to classify things. I like these berries; those taste sour and make me feel sick. These people, members of my clan, are my friends; those people may be my enemies. These stones are good for making spearheads; those do not cleave properly. These animals can be domesticated; those cannot.

When one considers the myriad empirical data that had to be discovered, sorted out, assimilated, and passed on through the ages, one can readily appreciate the nicety of classification as a mnemonic tool. Throughout his existence, man has classified almost everything. We classify all matter into the living and the dead. We classify things by hierarchy: living things by phylum, genus, species, etc. This is done to better understand their structure, habits, relationships, and their place in the evolutionary scheme of things. We classify people by races. We classify human features; we classify human natures. We classify philosophies. We classify art and music. Is there anything that we do not classify? What do these divisions into classes really mean?---absolutely nothing, except that classification allows us to more easily remember, to better focus our thoughts, and to more appropriately describe things with a frugality of words.

The ancient Greeks, who devoted considerable time and effort to the contemplation of abstractions must have been overwhelmed by the power of classification. As a consequence, most of their philosophies gave emphasis to distinctions rather than to similarities. Weston LaBarre in his book on the origins of religion entitled, "THE GHOST DANCE" describes the philosophical situation quite well when he states that "Mere Greek categories became cosmic Universals". Using mathematical terminology, the later Greek philosophies, especially those propounded by Plato and Aristotle, tended to differentiate rather than integrate. Perhaps, with man's limited scientific understanding at that time, differentiation was required in order to gain some meaningful comprehension of each small facet of nature.

With this emphasis on distinctions, on artificial cleavages, the Greeks attempted to gain some understanding of man's condition and his relationships in the cosmos. Accordingly, they separated mind from matter, the living from the dead, the earth and the heavens, and both heaven and hell from the earth. All these divisions had enormous consequences for the future development and, at times, stifling of Western civilization.

Because of the mind/matter separation, the Greeks, starting from reasonable, and even not so reasonable, premises performed elaborate "gedanken" experiments in order to find some meaning for man's existence and the nature of the universe. It was inconceivable to them that their mental constructs could be validated or invalidated by observation of the physical universe. Since mind and matter were completely different, how could one be used to shed light on the other? Roger Bacon was the heretic who finally began the arduous process of mending the artificial cleavage between mind and matter. Observation and experimentation were finally recognized as being handmaidens to mental theorizing. However, the fences are, even now, not yet completely mended.

This can be illustrated by contemplation of the "scientific method" that is universally taught in our schools. All of us have been taught that observations are first made and that the data are then classified and organized. Following such organization, the scientist notes some trends and thereby is able to postulate a working hypothesis. He then performs additional experiments and if these new data support his hypothesis, we then have a new principle or scientific law. This is hogwash! There would be little scientific progress if this routine were followed. The problem with this supposed scientific method is that it is presented as if observation and theorizing are undertaken separately and in series; i.e., undertaken as if mind and matter were incompatible entities. Data taken before there is a working hypothesis is usually useless; developing a working hypothesis without considering some data, is also a sterile exercise. Developing mental constructs and making observations must go hand-in-hand; a scientist who still believes in artificial cleavages will make no significant contribution. Let me try to explain this by giving an example that is somewhat familiar. Let's consider Galileo just before he postulated the thesis that all objects, under the force of gravity, will fall at the same rate independent of their mass, size, density or any other characteristic. Let's suppose that Galileo simply wondered if certain physical characteristics of objects would affect the way their fall would be influenced by gravity. Let's further assume that he decided to satisfy his curiosity by dropping things off the tower of Pisa; i.e., that he decided to initiate the scientific method as I just described. Without much effort, he could have generated a wealth of data regarding the time it took falling objects to hit the ground. These data would have shown that small dense objects travel fast; that light thin objects, like slabs of balsa wood, take relatively long; that spit falls fast or slowly depending upon many factors; that hardly any two objects fall at the same rate of speed; that even the same object, when repeatedly dropped, does not always fall in the same manner. Had Galileo first done these experiments. and then attempted to organize the resulting data, he would have been defeated by the randomness and apparent inconsistencies. He could never have arrived at his working hypothesis. He arrived at his working hypothesis not by closely examining data, but by being concerned with a seemingly unrelated phenomenon---the motion of the planets in the solar system. Through contemplation of their stable and repetitive motion, he awoke one morning with the thought that such would not be possible unless all objects, under a gravitational force, dropped at the same rate of speed. With this working hypothesis, he then realized that frictional retardation by air would affect any experimental results and, therefore, that meaningful determination could be made only by controlling air movement and atmospheric pressure. Without control of these variables, all observable data would be meaningless. Galileo did not use the standard textbook scientific method to arrive at his gravitational law---he used the only method that has so far proved to be successful---he saw a correlation between two heretofore unrelated phenomena and his hypothesis was, in effect, a synthesis or an integration. Observable phenomena, unless extremely simple, can never be properly interpreted without there first being a working hypothesis that allows definition of the variables that must be controlled in order to have the observations make sense. Observation is of little scientific value unless there is an a priori marriage between theory and experimentation; mind and matter must be recognized as being unified from the start. Without such integration for control of variables, we can be led down the road to believe is UFO's, ESP, prior life, or even in supernatural intervention and miracles.

Other major divisions, considered inviolate by the Greeks, influenced philosophy and religion. The Greek philosophies, with emphasis on the artificial divisions, eventually culminated in Catholicism and most derivative Western religions. While these philosophies and theologies probably helped man to delude himself into thinking he was important to the universe and had a measure of personal immortality, the artificial cleavages, which were held to be almost sacred, had some nasty consequences such as the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, other holy wars, censorship and book-burning, and general intolerance towards new ideas.

Today, we are in an era when our accepted delusions should probably be changed, but we are still, to a large extent, hampered by our belief that the artificial cleavages defined by classification have something to do with reality. These cleavages still influence the way we look at life. To many of us, heredity is separated from environment; emotions are separated from reason; the black man is separated from the white man; the rich from the poor; labor from capital; and so on and so on.

All this is changing. Evolution has already drawn closer, the past and the future. Biology and chemistry now recognize no clear division between living cells and a dead chemical. Psychology is showing that heaven and hell are all intertwined here on earth. Biochemists are finding ways to alter the DNA molecule and thereby to modify heredity through environment, which, in fact, makes this particular sentence meaningless.

The consequences of the disappearance of artificial boundaries will be enormous! We are already seeing practical effects of some of this change---witness the trend towards integration of the races; man's developing view of being at one with, rather than conquering, nature; industry's growing interest in social issues; organized labor's awakening concern for survival of the corporation; the equalization of opportunity for the sexes; etc. The consequences of the disappearance of artificial cleavages brought about by classification could be so great that the twenty-first century may go down in history as being the Age of Popular Integration. I use the word "popular" because the concept of integration or reunification will have negligible impact unless the associated integrated constructs diffuse throughout society.

Let's now examine, in some detail, how a more integrated view of nature may alter the way in which man perceives his individuality, and some of the practical consequences. Man's recognition of his individuality rapidly led to classification, divisiveness and estrangement. Having gone through this cycle, can man now, through reunification, alter his concept of individuality? More broadly, can man now alter some of the delusions that have given, comfortable but erroneous, meaning to his existence? Let's start this mental exercise by first addressing the question, "who am I?".

How many times during the course of your life have you asked yourself the question "who am I?", and have each time come up with a slightly different answer? If a stranger had asked your mother who you are, what do you think would have been her reply? How would this reply differ from one given by your husband or your wife, your children, your neighbors or your friends, your boss or your coworkers? To be more specific and somewhat personal, do we perceive Phil to be the same person perceived by his former teaching colleagues, or school administrators, or his students?

Some years ago I had an experience that started me asking myself the question, "who am I?". I had been working about two years when my supervisor decided to leave his job. He had further decided that he wanted to do this job-looking "the right way", so he read a book on how to go about this process. In this book, the authors presented a questionnaire which they suggested that the applicant have filled out by his associates. Presumably, from the answers, the applicant would be able to obtain a reliable profile of himself, his capabilities, his likes and his dislikes, his strengths and his weaknesses. Since I was working for this man at the time, he gave me the questionnaire to fill out. The questionnaire started out with the phrase, "For the man that John Doe is, is his" and now it listed a whole series of characteristics and you were asked to fill in whether you thought the man was below average, average, above average, or exceptional. So I filled out the questionnaire which looked something like this: For the man that John Doe is, is his ability (below average, average, above average, or exceptional), is his integrity, is his patriotism, is his scientific intuition, is his emotional stability, is his common sense, and so on for about six pages. After I brought the completed questionnaire back to the office and gave it to my supervisor, he was very pleased that I had taken the time to fill in this questionnaire, which many colleagues in our scientific circle probably considered to be "hogwash". The next day he made no comment so I asked him outright what he thought of my answers. To my complete surprise he said disgruntingly, "You goddamn geniuses are all alike". His answer, which was obviously not given in a friendly tone, caught me completely off-guard. I had high respect for this man, for his abilities, for him as an individual, for him as a friend; and yet apparently he had misinterpreted my answers, or perhaps we had each interpreted the questions differently. At the time, his reaction set me to thinking, but I could not resolve the dilemma as to why the difference between my feelings towards this man and my answers on the questionnaire. It was not until many years later, presumably after my subconscious had really had time to do its work, that I came up with the obvious resolution.

With my upbringing and education, I had apparently interpreted the first phrase of the questionnaire "For the man that John Doe is" in the only manner in which I was capable of interpreting it; namely, "for a man with John Doe's intelligence". Quite obviously then, since I considered him far above an ordinary man, for a man with his intelligence I expected much more than mediocrity, hence my ratings of him were primarily average.

What this has taught me is that people generally identify other people in terms of one or a small number of discrete characteristics and that elaborations or descriptions are built around using the base attributes as norms. In asking for a description of himself by the use of this questionnaire, my friend had made the mistake of asking people all of similar background, his coworkers, and hence they probably all assessed him in terms of his intelligence. If he had given the questionnaire to a broader spectrum of people---to his neighbors, to the milkman, to his other community associates, then he may have had a chance of obtaining a meaningful composite picture. It is interesting that through the use of this questionnaire, I discovered much more about myself than he did about himself.

At his point, I could delve into a major side-issue concerning what we expect people to be because of their particular stations in life. I will not go into his deeply since it will get me off the main track; however, I would like to mention it briefly. Because we have had associations with different people who have the same station in life, we have been able to associate certain characteristics with this station and thereby we expect certain behavior. We could certainly complete the above questionnaire if an individual's particular accomplishment were used a base attribute. One could certainly say; "For the accomplished pianist that he is, John Doe has average intelligence, above average ambition, above average self-discipline, etc." The answers given to such a questionnaire would be expected to be relatively uniform. They would, perhaps be even more uniform if we listed our expectations for a Nobel Prize winner. As another example, for the President of the United States all of us expect certain behavior relative to a norm; at least, I believe we did, until Ronald Reagan came along; now we probably believe that anybody can be President and it really doesn't matter. For an accomplished artist, we expect certain behavior. In fact, for an artist we are willing to tolerate behavior patterns that are not normally acceptable within the community.

What happens when we attempt to use a physical characteristic as a basis for completing the questionnaire? Can we say: For a person with red cheeks, Jane Doe has above average ambition and below average loyalty? If this sounds silly, why do many of us insist on using racial coloring, also a physical characteristic, as a basic attribute? We cannot deny that we have been conditioned to expect certain behavior patterns from a white man and we do not necessarily expect the same behavior patterns from a black man. In fact, if it were possible, it would be interesting to have the same person fill out the questionnaire on two people who are exactly identical in all characteristics except with one individual being white and the other one black. I am certain that if this could be done, almost every person in the U. S.' including blacks, would give the black man a much higher rating on the question- naire than the white man; this being because we have been conditioned not to expect as much from a black man as from a white man---not to expect as much because of a physical characteristic.

Getting back to the question, "Who am I". From what I have already said, can't we perhaps tentatively conclude that we are the impressions we make on others.? The next question then is "how do we impress people?" and further, "what impresses people?" Besides our own actions and accomplishments, does not money impress people?---do not all material belongings impress people? If someone asked your neighbor who you are, might he not answer, "Oh, he's the rich guy that lives around the corner and owns a Cadillac" or "he's a salesman; the pot-bellied guy with the cute wife". Are we not ourselves plus all our acquired possessions and characteristics? Or more precisely, are we not the totality of impressions we make on others through our actions, accomplishments and all our acquired possessions and characteristics?

Consider, "what is a new-born baby?" Consider further in any manner you like, "what is this same individual as an adult?' Is not the difference between the two determined by acquired characteristics. A baby learns how to walk; it learns how to smile; it learns how to laugh; it learns how to comprehend; it learns how to talk; it learns how to use its knife and fork; it learns how to play with its toys. These are all acquired characteristics. Is learning how to use tools significantly different from learning how to use one's own limbs? When a man learns how to drive a car, is this really different from a baby learning how to walk? Relative to the man, is his car, in essence, different from his legs?

Are we then not just our bodies and our thoughts but also all extensions of ourselves? Law has long recognized this concept. Why should not philosophy and psychology and ethics?

Thinking about this recently, I thought of an example which might very well occur in the near-future since large-memory computers are now becoming familiar household products. It is no coincidence that for popular appeal, these are called "personal" computers. Already, PC users are beginning to place as much information as possible into computer memory so that it can be readily recalled at some future date. After educating a computer for many years and relying heavily on its memory for making all kinds of decisions throughout these years, what would happen to an individual that placed such reliance on his computer if the computer, or at least its memory, were suddenly destroyed? Without a doubt, I am certain that the individual would become mentally unhinged? I can just feel the consequences of this event! It would be the same as losing your own memory and, what is worse, realizing with full intelligence that your memory had been lost. The frustration would be unbearable. Would such an educated computer then not be as much a part of you as is your own brain? Mental frustration and incapacity can result from the loss of tools and possessions that we are accustomed to having, in no lesser degree than can result from the loss of our body functions. As a more concrete example, consider the Wall Street suicides after the 1929 crash. We are indeed the totality of

impressions we make on others through the totality of our acquired characteristics and possessions.

What can be the consequences of this integrated view of individuality on our behavior, on our associations with other individuals, and on our outlook towards life? For example, does not now the Golden Rule become a much more understandable and selfish ethic---instead of doing unto others, you are always doing unto your expanded self; therefore, the Golden Rule simply says, "be good to your expanded self".

With this more integrated view of individuality, society is not an aggregation of discrete individuals, rather it is a mosaic of overlapping regions; a much more cohesive and interdependent entity. If society accepts this more integrated and broadened view of individuality, might there not be more cooperation between peoples, a lessening of strain, and a lowering of the probability for war?

While these are conceivable practical consequences of an integrated philosophy, one can also ask if the concept can be extrapolated and applied to modification of man's delusions? Through this integrated view, does an individual's life appear to have greater meaning---can an individual, consequently, perceive a measure of immortality without having to resort to supernatural wishful thinking? I'll delve into this aspect of the integrated philosophy in a future talk.