So much of what we believe we know is based on what we have been told. You believe you know
how time works, how other people think and feel, what the events of human history were,
what’s inside your body and how it works, where the Earth is and how it moves, what the universe
is and what particles comprise it, and so on. Unless you are an expert in any of these areas,
and likely even still, your knowledge of these sorts of things is based not on direct observation
but on what you have been told by other people; what has been explained to you through reason.
When ideas and beliefs are not readily testable within the purview of our expertise or individual
abilities, we reasonably turn to authority figures as a means of forming, understanding,
and defending them. But how trustworthy is what we’ve been told? How trustworthy are we
in properly selecting who and what we listen to? And how trustworthy is reason in general?
Throughout human history, primarily in the realm of ideas and beliefs,
but still often in the realm of tangible and practical issues, one of the few,
rare truths that seems to have endured is the fact that we are consistently very wrong.
The authority figures and experts who line human history, individuals who had the credibility
and respect of their time, are now mostly seen and described as smart for their time.
What else is this notion, smart for their time, if not a premonition of the ignorance of our own?
In an effort to choose good authority figures and experts, we likely consider and listen to
individuals with good track records. Afterall, the more often someone has been correct and
validated by culture about a particular subject matter, the more likely they will continue to
be. But if we consider their track record as a member of humanity, not limited to the course
of their individual lifetime, but considered against the course of humanity’s lifetime,
their track record, like everyone else’s, is almost certainly destined to be a losing one.
In Peru in the middle of the 1400s, there was what is believed to be the largest known
child sacrifice in the world, with about 140 children and more than 200 animals killed.
The reason: attempting to appease the gods in response to unusually bad weather.
In Europe in the 17th century, just a few hundred years ago, it was widely believed that the earth
was the center of the universe and everything else revolved around it. When the now famous astronomer
Galileo Galilei published work that showed that, instead, the sun was the center of the universe,
and the earth revolved around the sun, which we, of course, now know the latter to be the true,
the Roman inquisition banned his work and the arguments he put forth, and eventually, tried and
found Galileo vehemently suspect of heresy. Others who came before and around his time with similar,
now believed to be true ideas were even put to death. In the late 19th century, little more
than a hundred years ago, doctors used what are now schedule 1 narcotics to treat common cold
symptoms in children. Also around this time, doctors believed it was foolish to wash their
hands before delivering babies or during other medical procedures. Only eighty years ago,
it was believed that cigarettes posed no health dangers. Still to this day, and thousands of years
back, across the globe, humans have believed and sill believe that the trade of other humans for
the nonconsensual exploitation of their labor is morally permissible. And the list goes on,
forward and back. This Earth is not merely a cemetery of people that once were,
but also a cemetery of ideas and beliefs once held to be true but are no longer.
To perhaps help illuminate how problems within human reasoning and argumentation can arise,
consider the following syllogism: 1. Flowers are beautiful.
2. A lilac is a flower. 3. Therefore, lilacs are beautiful.
The reasoning in this example is valid, and so, the conclusion also appears to
be valid. But it is not. The premise begs the question. It postulates a conclusion
that is not sufficiently argued for and cannot be sufficiently argued for in objective terms.
Although it is very common to think that flowers are beautiful, whether or not all flowers
are beautiful is subjective; it is a belief that cannot be proven or disproven. And so,
this syllogism is fallacious, and it always will be. And yet, it sounds very reasonable.
Arguably, the realm of philosophy, politics, morality, sociology, spirituality, and meaning
in general–areas in which we cannot fully prove or disprove things because they cannot be tested
at sufficient scale, we cannot reach inaccessible information needed, and we cannot know of all the
possible consequences or alternatives–these realms are seemingly fields filled with these sorts of
problems. Most if not all ideas and arguments in these realms are and must be based on some sort
of subjective presumptions based off personal experiences and vantage points of the world,
not rigid, objective knowledge. And thus, notions of what is right and wrong, good and bad,
best and worst, like flowers being beautiful or styles and dialects being in fashion,
these things can change as the zeitgeist of culture changes through time and space.
In their book, The Enigma of Reason, cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber
hypothesize that the ability to reason evolved in humans not to make better decisions or be more
accurate about facts, but to socialize better; to better provide explanations to others about
who we are, what we do, and why we do what we do in order to improve social standing and social
cohesion. And so, reason, in this framework, works as a way of making intuitions and ideas the
most shareable and defendable, not necessarily the best or most objective. Mercier and Sperber write:
"Reason improves our social standing rather than leading us to intrinsically better decisions. And
even when it leads us to better decisions, it’s mostly because we happen to be in a community that
favors the right type of decisions on the issue . . . But there is a potential for tension between
the lazy justification provided by socially recognized “good reasons” and an individual
effort to better understand and evaluate these reasons, to acquire some expertise oneself."
Upon our birth, we were all given a body, a mind, a genetic makeup, a pair of parents (present or
not), and a collection of circumstances. We did not choose any of these things, but fairly soon,
these factors fan out and developed into our worldview. This worldview influences
us to choose and believe things, which we then associate with our identity. From here, however,
we often wield reason not as a method of moving toward truth and out of the
default beliefs disposed onto us, but rather, a method of defending and proving these beliefs;
we attempt to prove that what we have come to find ourselves believing was arrived at fairly,
intellectually, and rationally; that the flowers must be beautiful objectively.
The world is far more complicated, unclear, and unknown than most of us admit, let alone know.
There are perceptual tricks, psychological motivators, and logical fallacies that drench our
minds and spew out of our mouths. It is unclear if we are ever right in any real sense at all,
let alone as often as we think. No one knows the unforeseeable consequences of things,
and no one knows the unknowable, the untestable, or the unprovable. And so,
a blaringly obvious question that emerges is why do so many people act as if they do? Moreover,
why are so many people who act as if they do in important positions in the world? Why do
we simultaneously act like and trust others that act like we are not a species who has historically
always been wrong about nearly everything, still wielding the same dull weapons of mind and reason?
Of course, this is not to say that nothing can be true in physical terms,
that nothing can be improved or made more accurate through the scientific method, and that we can’t
arrive at mutually useful subjective truths that have immense social value. Ultimately,
there is nothing wrong with having opinions and beliefs. And there is nothing wrong with
arguing for and defending those opinions and beliefs. But if there is not some large base of
skepticism wedged at the bottom of them–the same sort of skepticism we likely apply to others when
we listen to their beliefs and opinions–we have assumed the following: we are somehow special;
that our rationality is somehow always superior in all these cases with all these other people;
that we do not possess the same propensity toward the erroneous nature of presumptions,
of biases, and of faulty reasoning that everyone we disagree with does.
What is more likely: we, and the people who agree with us, are the only rational and
right ones in history, or we, just like everyone else, are probably wrong—in at least some sense?
The history of humanity is a series of failures on a seemingly never-ending path toward unattainable
absolute truth. We are no different. We are each infinitesimal appendages attached to this body
of ignorance, stricken by our own ignorance and limited to where we reside on this body.
Arguably, the best way to be the most right the most often is to assume that
you are probably always some amount wrong. Afterall, if reason is potentially a tool
evolved out of the need to better socialize, then perhaps we can and should, if we agree,
use our reasoning to reduce the intensity with which we wield reason.
In other words, perhaps we should use reason to realize the limits of reason;
to realize that the plights of us are in others and the ignorance of other is in us; to realize
that we should try to be right less and curious more; and finally, to realize that the perquisite
of the powers of reasoning is the responsibility of empathy, compassion, and humility.