collected writings

Faith in Observation and the Nature of Truth

The role of the observer in science is both supremely important and overwhelmingly critical. The observer has really come into its own through the science of the twentieth century; dominating physics - the traditional and classical "hard" science - once objective, now subjective just as is anthropology or psychology. This historical progression is neatly summed up in Michael Frayn's Copenhagen :

We put man back at the center of the universe. Throughout history we keep finding ourselves displaced...to the periphery of things. First...a mere adjunct of God's unknowable purposes...th[en] we're pushed aside again by the products of our own reasoning!...Until we come to the beginning of the twentieth century, and we're suddenly forced to rise from our knees again...[Einstein] shows that measurement - measurement, on which the whole possibility of science depends - measurement is not an impersonal event that occurs with impartial universality...it's a human act .

The character of physicist Niels Bohr then goes on to describe how Einstein's thinking led his colleagues to develop the modern theories of indeterminism and uncertainty, in which "...the universe only exists as a series of approximations. Only within the limits determined by our relationship with it. Only through the understanding lodged inside the human head."

I think this is brilliant prose, and I completely agree with the optimistic tone that the passage carries. I fully believe that the observer is what makes science possible. Without the observer, there can be no observations. I reject a platonic worldview where we are only observing reflections of Truth, reflections of a reality that would exist whether or not we exist. On the contrary, I think that without the observer, without the participant, nothing would exist. This argument is echoed in the Strong Anthropic Principle, although I think that the universe exists because we see it, rather than the universe existing and consequently so then must we.

Observations make up the base of science, and they have been there since science was created from the logical processes of Aristotle. During the scholasticism of the Middle Ages, observations were decentralized, but even until they were restored to their central importance by the Scientific Revolution of the 16 th and 17 th centuries, they never disappeared. They make up the data and the empiricism of modern science. Without observations, and therefore without the observer, science would not be possible.

Of course, this is a relatively straightforward understanding, something that would be found at the beginning of any popularized science book, or in the introduction of most science textbooks. Something Carl Sagan would have discussed in Cosmos . I am interested in the why : Why can we observe things? Why do things exist to observe in the first place? Why, when we see phenomena, do we infer that there must be a before and an after? Why are we able to make connections between different observations?

These are difficult questions, and I think very relevant to the Origins class because of their importance in science. If observations were impossible to make, or if it were impossible to share them among others, science would also be impossible. The universe is rational...and therefore observers are possible (although keep in mind that I feel that the visa versa of this statement is more true.) I have yet to find answers for these questions, and I think that even if we can or will be able to answer the how we may never know the why . The ability to make observations is fully a priori knowledge in that it must be possible for other knowledge to occur.

I can never prove that what I am observing exists outside of the constructs of my mind, because the mind filters all the senses and always creates just as much as it observes. An interesting case study of this is called blindsight, in which patients with damage to their primary visual cortex loose the consciousness of sight . The patient will insist they are blind, and yet will be able to find their way around unfamiliar settings, and respond to purely visual stimuli . Other similar conditions exist where patients suffering from hysterical deafness will respond to the cry of a child, or those born with an extraordinarily magnetic sense of direction that, when blindfolded and lost, can easily find their way home. In all these cases, the mind filters the observational input. In addition to being a challenge to behaviorism in claiming that there is a very important connection between consciousness and the seemingly "unconscious" behavioral responses, cases like blindsight act as a nail in the coffin of the objective-worldview.

The mind is a very subjective piece of matter through which all observations are filtered. The nihilist and pragmatist in me believes that only things that can be fully known, understood, or reasoned can exist, but this belief is confounded by the apparent complete lack of an objective truth in the face of an active mind. It is impossible to speak of the why concerning the mind and the nature of observation because such a question would at best still be filtered through the very mind we hope to comprehend.

Given this, I think it is evident that our ability to observe (the why , at least) boils down to a question of faith, a faith that all of science is founded on. Faith is a word that is normally reserved for religion, used when talking about things that cannot be proven...not a word usually reserved for science. However, like the postulates of geometry and the a priori knowledge of epistemology, the faith in observation at the heart of science is not going away, nor could it hope to be separated from the scientific method. However, the scientific method does supplement the fallible human senses, exactly as Francis Bacon intended. His methodology gives us a structure with which we can compare and share our observations, and trust that the data other people observe is what we would see as well (although still keeping the conclusions we draw from the observations a more personal thing and more open to disagreement.)

Functionally, this works out like the probability and normal curve exercises that we did for our presentation. In summation, the observations every individual makes are completely subjective, a personal truth, but when a large enough group is sampled, the truths fall into a curve, where it is reasonable to assume the highest point is the Truth. The bulk of the remainder of my paper will attempt to understand if this Truth can only be considered a scientific truth stemming from scientific observations, or if this same probabilistic method can produce truth from all areas of thought; art and religion in particular. In essence, what is truth?

Observation is the faith of science, the theory upon which science is made possible. What Tony postulated during our presentation is essentially the reverse of this statement; that faith is an observation. He spoke of the faith that exists in religious experience, but I think the observation of faith can include a large amount of human experiences, such as the appreciation of beauty or of art, or from any synthesis of emotion such as love, jealously, or hatred that seems to be emergent in the human psyche and above "base" responses to stimuli. I agree...mostly. Just as observation is the faith of science, faith is the observation of religion. However, Tony then went on to say that those faith experiences could be considered a 6 th sense, something beyond but equal to the Aristotelian five. I disagree. Faith and emotional responses are products of the mind, not of the external world.

In cinema, there has never been any doubt that the audience responds differently accordingly depending on the emotional synthesis created by the audience, not the film itself. A film alone is a length of celluloid or tape. It has no inherent emotional content, only what the spectator adds. This was first understood systematically by the Russians, primarily Lev Kuleshov, a pioneering father of film editing as we know it today. The famous Kuleshov effect, an interesting psychological experiment, demonstrates how much emotion the audience projects on a piece of art. Kuleshov created a short film in which a close up of a famous actor was juxtaposed (preceding, in this case) with three different images - a bowl of soup, a dead woman in a coffin, and a girl playing with a toy bear . Audience members reported the actor as feeling hunger, sorrow and joy respectively, even though the image of the actor was exactly the same across all three. The different shots acquire their meaning only from their relation to other shots and how we come to understand these relationships...exactly what the Bohr character in Copenhagen spoke of.

Therefore, it is important to keep in mind (no pun intended) that the constructs of the mind are exactly that...constructs. As anyone who has been moved by a film, a piece of art, or a religious service can attest to, it is still a very powerful experience, but it is not based purely on data the way that the 5 senses are under the scientific method. As each individual has a different mind and a different set of filters, a methodology is needed to create some sort of common language that everyone can speak and share. I would argue that with any religious or emotional response, this methodology is missing and consequentially there is no "language" with which we can communicate these experiences unless they are translated in a common spoken or written language. In the process of translation, something is always lost .

Of course, we can talk about when we cried, or what made us fear, but in translating these emotions into the spoken language the intention changes. In fact, only when such an experience is translated back to the subjective is the emotion regained. Thus, if a painting makes me feel cold and blue, a more accurate way to describe my emotions to another human would be to create another piece of art intending to make others cold and blue rather than simply to talk about my experience using everyday language.

The problem is, in religion, that there is no way to retransmit the emotions that people attribute to a god or creator (love, awe, etc.) because we are unable to reconstruct a truly divine presence in ourselves. To pass on art-inspired emotions through art makes us artists, but to pass on religious-inspired emotions would make us gods. I would argue that the production of all forms of art, from the very beginning, stems from either a literal or figurative quest for immortality; the desire to create something permanent or to affect others, to record accomplishments and life. This same passion for immortality inspires religious devotion, but to communicate it through a further religious experience would be impossible because it would be a man-made construct, and not something wholly-other . Religious faith is therefore a completely subjective and internal experience.

It also is difficult to speak about religious faith using the model of probabilistic truth mentioned earlier. It might be possible to create a normal curve of religious beliefs and take the highest point as the Truth, but keep in mind that many of these beliefs are associated with second hand experiences, the transmission that I spoke of earlier, and such experiences cannot be regarded as God, only as our understanding of God. Thus, using probability it would be possible to create a Truth regarding how humans perceive God, but this would speak nothing about the Truth of God.

Observation as a faith and faith as an observation are two mutually exclusive methods of understanding the world around us. If they are put together, we are thrown into an infinite loop, as there is no solid foundation upon which to build logic. Indeed, this is true of all thought...the best and most necessary room for faith is at the base, the leaps of faith that make further thought possible. After that point, thought is just a matter of logical progression. I have no reason to think that God would need any faith beyond faith in God alone, faith in the existence of God. God would have to be supremely rational and would not need faith beyond a priori theology.

Miracles would not be leaps of faith, but logical progressions. I fully believe that for a God to exist and exact worship or respect from God's creations, God would create a fully rational world. Such a world would not need miracles or any more than a single leap of faith to experience God. In my mind, miracles are proofs against the existence of God because of their irrationality and because they require constant and new leaps of faith. I completely reject any model of God, as does Kenneth Miller, of God-the-Charlatan , any God that would create irrational behavior, something that when considered as a probabilistic Truth would be irrational. To do so would be a trick, a conscious [sic] illusion on the part of God.

In my view the model of probabilistic Truth offered earlier can only be applied to science, because only with science can the subjective and often distorted observation and mind processes be supplemented with a methodology that speaks the same direct language as the observations. Science is the best method we have to understand observations, to understand our relationships to them and through the understanding lodged in the human mind. It is the only way that we can come close the existence of a universal Truth. However, there are many subjects that science will never be able to broach, and will be unable to create any Truths. Are we then to accept that Truth can only exist where science can find it; otherwise is there no Truth?

At the conclusion of our presentation we queried the class as to the definition and nature of Truth and truths. Truth (with a capital T) is one of those elusive things that is difficult to nail down precisely, like complexity or life. However, I think that the preceding arguments can point to a more clear understanding of what I view as Truth. There are two options. The first being if there is a Truth, then it is entirely personal, because even objective observations of the natural world are processed in the mind and are therefore altered until they become subjective. Truth is personal, and there can be no hope for a universal Truth, excepting when two personal Truths are coincidentally the same. The other option is that Truth can be communicated via a translation process like the scientific method in science or the creation of more art in the artistic process. In this case, there is no Truth, only individual truths that can be freely shared and expressed, but are limited by their relativism and again, the subjective experience of the observer.

It seems to me that both options speak of the irrationality of an objective Truth, because such a Truth would be "perverted" by the constructs of the mind, and wholly incommunicable to boot. Personally I like the idea of a personal Truth, rather than subjective truths, because of the ramifications: I can create Truth from the sheer power of my mental processes; it makes me god. As a god who knows the Truth I can control my destiny and be confident in my decisions and future. And I think I could get use to that.