Rational Philosophy

On abstraction and the real world.

It’s been nearly 150 years since Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species. The NY Times reports on a new exhibition that provides insight into Darwin’s scientific life and work. We learn that Darwin, inspired by musings on the natural world around him, tested out his ideas on the plants in his garden. He cross-pollinated plants with complementary anatomical parts, for instance, and found that the hybrids were more robust than their parents.

Through his inspiration from life, experimentation with life, and abstraction from life, Darwin derived the theory of evolution, forever changing our understanding of the world we live in, and bringing scientific understanding forward in one huge leap.

My teenage daughter has the most difficulty with science and math when she’s required to apply newly learned abstract concepts to “real world” problems. I expect she’s not alone. A new study indicates that people learn abstract concepts more successfully if taught the abstract theory first rather than expecting them to learn by deduction from “real world” examples. The conclusion: “Real world” examples aren’t as effective as a thorough briefing on the equations and theories concerned.

What surprised me about this article was not the conclusion (since it seems to make common sense — Darwin spent many painstaking years deriving his theories from real world examples, and the results are only obvious because he abstracted them!) but the realization that anyone ever thought that real world examples could effectively impart complex abstract knowledge. It’s useful to tie abstract concepts back to real world examples, of course, but this step is tough and challenging because it requires the additional skills of distilling the pertinent information and understanding how to apply the appropriate theory.

Studies of language and reasoning underscore this lesson: Children who have no language for numbers can count up to three instinctively. Primates have the same skill. But with larger numbers our ability to count without language diminishes rapidly. As the article points out, language can help enormously in processing problems.

Mathematics and scientific concepts provide a rich, inclusive language that abstracts the concepts of space, time and causality: This language helps us process the abstracted workings of the real world. Without it we would be fumbling around anew with each new problem. As with anything in the real world, though, discerning and holding on to sound ideas and methods provides its own challenge. At each turn there are those who want to forge on on new paths, or turn back down old ones.

Footnote: When I wrote the back cover blurb for my book a couple of years ago I made the apparently extravagant claim that in its contribution to human understanding it was the most important book since Darwin’s The Origin of Species. This offended some people. For a while I was embarrassed to have ever claimed such a thing. But today as I read about Darwin’s methods and saw how he’d sketched out his evolutionary ideas, I felt a renewed sense of conviction that when we can understand how evolution relates to the fundamental principles of space and time we will have taken another big step forward. And I am still convinced that Life! achieves this feat.

For a rational, science-based explanation of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

Barrack Obama has been criticized for being too honest in talking about his past drug use. Unlike Bill Clinton and George Bush, Obama spoke openly about drinking and using drugs as a young person. His critics feel that too much information can be harmful to young people. Others feel that in speaking openly he did the right thing. But how can we know?

An Oprah.com article today discusses the benefits of developing an optimistic rather than pessimistic perspective on our lives. Good advice perhaps if for those who tend to be neurotic and hard on themselves. Not such good advice for those who blame everyone except themselves for their problems.

The formal field of psychology has exploded in the past half century, but as an informal area of investigation and observation it has been practised for thousands of years. For as long as we’ve been able to frame ideas and concepts, we’ve been able to wonder why we behave as we do. Psychology is insight into human motivation. Why do we do what we do. Why do we think what we think. Unfortunately, psychology too often puts an appealing layer of frosting on reality, gooey and sweet and distracting, but not very nutritious.

Without understanding the underlying principles that shape our motivations, we can’t hope to map out a solid and reliable foundation for our psychological insights. The psychological studies that get press and attention tend to focus on narrow and specific aspects of human behavior. But what is the big picture? If we want to understand motivation from first priciples, where do we begin?

We must begin, I believe, with the principles of existence. After all, psychology comes about from the application of abstract principles to human behavior. And human behavior comes about from the principles that shape evolution. And evolution comes about through the operation of the universal principle of persistence (see the meaning of life) in living things over time.

Once we accept that all human behavior derives in some way shape or form from the instinct or impulse to further the persistence of life, we have a skeletal framework upon which we can begin to build a self-consistent science of psychology.

For example, if we want to figure out whether Obama is right or wrong for being honest about his drug use, we need to understand the pros and cons of honesty as it relates to the strength of society, and we need to understand the pros and cons of admitted drug use. Honesty would seem integral to a strong society because it promotes trust and trust promotes collaboration and empathy. Admissions of drug use in and of themselves would seem to diminish taboos about drug use by our elders or those in authority, but this in turn would seem to remove one of the strongest impulses for the young person deciding whether to try drugs — the desire to rebel and be different from those in authority.

We could further flesh out this trivial inspection to include other perspectives and layers of insight, digging down into the subordinate impulses to relate them to the persistence of life. The deeper we go, the more nuanced will be our insight. And if we use the principle of persistence as our guide, we will run less risk of going astray.

Until we have a solid foundation for arriving at conclusions about people’s motivations, the science of psychology will remain messy and maleable, and pretty much useless as a vehicle for helping society move forward. But if we adopt a rational, reality-based foundation, guided by the principles of existence, we can take our understanding on a new, productive and fascinating path.

(If you want to read more, LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do to Survive further explains the origin, elaboration and application of the principle of persistence.)

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For some reason that I couldn’t quite put my finger on right away, I found Cafferty’s comment today (Judge makes a disgraceful decision) on a judge’s efforts to slow or halt a program that would require employers to fire workers with faulty social security status (illegal immigrants) distasteful. I think it was his sentiment rather than his logic that offended me, his presumption that enforcement of national law supercedes human decency and compassion, whatever the circumstance.

In another story — “Bush vetoes expansion of kids’ health insurance program” — Rep. Todd Akin, R-Missouri, supporting Bush’s veto, complains: “we’re going to provide health care to the children of illegal immigrants.”

In one section of LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do to Survive I examine the origin of the impulses that lead us toward a conservative or liberal way of thinking. It’s a spectrum of course, but the impulse toward conservative thinking seems to derive from a focus on the importance of the self (one’s right to govern one’s self, the live and let live mentality) versus the liberal impulse to value people generally and to not consider one’s own needs over and above the needs of others. I’m dramatically over-simplifying, but I hope you’ll see the point.

If we feel that national law should be put ahead of human decency, our perspective will tend toward a hard line on immigration. If we feel that the rights of human beings are more important than national concerns, then we’ll be concerned about the effects of a hard line approach on illegal immigrants. A conservative will tend to feel that we shouldn’t make exceptions when deportation of just some members of a family will break up that family. A liberal will wonder why the law must be so unfeeling.

Again, as I discuss in the book, once we have sought out the origin for these perspectives, we can consider whether either perspective is more right or better than the other. To cut to the chase, I conclude and show logically that the more liberal perspective is more enlightened and bodes better for the survival of the human species. I’m sure that a conservative would disagree, but I am also sure that he or she would be hard-pressed to defend such a position rationally and logically. Are we not all part of the human race, wherever we happen to be born?

 

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