Metaphysical reflections....
According to David Hume, there is no self. This fact, that he could find no empirical evidence for the existence of "himself," led him to propose his Bundle Theory[1]. Hume was a skeptic, an empiricist, and is also believed to have been an atheist [2].
I have been thinking for a long time about Hume's problem. I was so offended by his allegation that I did not exist. I could not get it out of my head! Recently though, I feel that I have had a break through. Not just in regards to Hume, but also in regards to understanding my own thoughts on how I know myself and how I know God.
A friend and I had a debate last week about Pascal's Wager [3]. In the course of our discussion, we began to touch on the issue of a lack of empirical evidence for the existence of God. He firmly asserted that he saw no reason to believe what there is no evidence for. As a former atheist, I completely understand his perplexity. Ironically, my friend adamantly declared MATH was something he could put his money on! Not some God for which no evidence could be found!
I began to reflect on my readings in Modern Philosophy and the distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge [4]. For an empiricists, like my friend (Although, I do not think he is an atheist.) Hume, and an ever increasing number of other people in this age of Materialism, the only evidence for anything is rooted in our senses. However, even someone as rigorous as Hume allowed mathematics to squeak by as the only a priori knowledge. Reminded of this, I brought the epistemological distinct to the attention of my friend, and tried to lead him to see that not all knowledge is rooted in the senses.
Ultimately, I replied to my friend that a spectrum of evidence limited to the senses was insufficient to deal with the question of God. Just as it is when dealing with the self. Oddly enough, God seems easier to write off than the self when evidence is in question, but taken to the extreme, empiricism will eradicate both. I am not sure that my friend had ever considered that he could have knowledge without experience, as I had not (Thus, my atheism.) until I began to study philosophy.
The pure concept. Math. God. The self. This body of knowledge could possibly be the most fundamental that we posses. But...in order to get to this knowledge, we must move away from our senses and into our minds. Ignorance of our ability to arrive at knowledge without the senses is like a fisherman losing his rod and reel. Not only do we lose the ability to know God, we lose the ability to know our selves, and maybe even our ability to make 2+2=4. We lose the ability to "sustain" ourselves. To quote another friend, to take away our a priori knowledge is equivalent to giving ourselves a lobotomy.
Einstein arrived at his Theory of Relativity through conceptual thought. He used his mind to move beyond what his body could ever experience. This allowed him to produce a pure concept, math so beautiful and elegant, Einstein could not imagine it to be wrong, but it has taken decades (and in some instances nearly a century) for the empirical evidence to catch up with him [5].
Like Einstein's math, do we have to find God with our minds before we can find him with our senses? Theists and Deists, like Einstein, see existence as evidence for God [6]. But what came first? Do they know God as a pure concept, then see God reflected in the world? Or do their senses convince their minds that God is real? Where does the proof of God really lie?
I have come to the conclusion that searching for the proof of God through our senses is futile. I don't think God can live in the world of our senses until he lives in our minds as that pure concept. A pure concept as necessary to the existence of all things as the pure concept of my self is to my existence.
I dedicate this post to Pythagoras, who found God in math, and to my friend, who says math is something he can rely on to be "real."
1. http://www.philosophyofmind.info/bundletheory.html
2. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-religion/#1
3. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/
4. http://www.iep.utm.edu/apriori/
5. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,828570,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/apr/15/spaceexploration.universe
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/3322/einsteins-theory-proven-21st-century-test
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solar-sails-einstein-experiment-100726.html
6. http://www.einsteinandreligion.com/
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
very thought provoking, and I have discussed your essay with friends for some time. I have a question as to the analogy between Math and God. I accept that both God and Math do not hinges on people's sensation about them, but how can we "really" know the pure concept of God entails the existence of God? The example of Einstein tells us that even if the truth of Relativity Theory has nothing to do with later empirical demonstration,it has to be empirically demonstrated by people to be true----or no one can tell or judge. I wonder if any arbitrary concept such as the never-land or a round square can be "real", given "a pure concept of sth is necessary to the existence of sth".
ReplyDeleteMust be a great friend hehehee
ReplyDeleteLily!! I have been thinking about you!!
ReplyDeleteI will refer back to Kant’s apperception of the self for this. The apperception of the self is necessary for any experience to take place. If the pure categories of the self did not exist, neither would any of our experience. But the apperception of the self has no dependence on experience. We need it to know ourselves and our experience. Kant calls it both transcendentally ideal and empirically real. He uses Space as one example for this. I wrote a brief essay on this topic and here is a quote from it, “How can space be both something that exists only in the mind, independent of experience (transcendentally ideal), yet also be described as possessing empirical reality, that is, the result of experience?” I think the God is very much like this. We begin with a pure conception, an intuition if you will, and through that concept we frame our experience of reality. If we lack the concept, we lack the experiential ability. Without a pure concept of God, we cannot see God as existing in the world. Just like if we did not have the transcendental concept of Space in our minds, we would not experience it in the external world. These concepts are what create our perceptions of the existing world. I think if we can identify the pure concept of God, we can also find it empirically.
Lily, I also posted my Kant essay, but I don't know if it will help clarify anything :P I do think a pure concept of God can be considered in these terms though. Unlike that of Space, I think the concept of God is more elusive for some of us...
ReplyDelete