Doubt is rather a constant thread of thought, occasionally featuring operationally, occasionally topically. Recently the issue of true certainty has been occupying me on a personal level, and almost inevitably the corollary has arisen in conversation with peers (notably here). I think that before reading on, it would be valuable, though not essential, to read that and watch this.
I begin with a premise (framed as a question) leading from those pieces - I wonder if there are doubts in the realm of thought which is supposed to belong to the right brain, the immediate and total awareness of sensory perception without reference to the self or identity?
It kind of implies that doubt is itself a construct of (the evolutionary trait of) identity. An evolutionary psychologist might therefore say that we doubt because certainty is self-defeating as a fitness function in a natural selection competition. And I suppose that this is pretty tautological, when you think about it. The certain are slower to adapt, to bend to outside forces and shape their habits to changing needs. Its intuitive, anyway, you don't need to posit evolutionary reasons to see that doubt (and fear) are useful in the day to day.
Now how far can we push doubt, and does it serve any purpose to do so, other than fueling madness and occasionally allowing wisdom to be obtained therein? Could doubt be a mechanism by which the brain circumvents its own filtering of right-side sensory overload?
The consciousness has massive input, because the senses are quite wide-band. But the left brain, the 'me', has limited attention, because to store and sort everything would take too long. Maybe doubt prevents the left brain from filtering too predictably, from cutting the same type of data out of the sensory input every time. In other words, if there was no doubt, we would never see anything novel at all.
Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams both played with this idea of sensory editing. In Pratchett's Reaper Man, Death takes a holiday, but instead of seizing a recently deceased body, he just arrives in the rural getaway of choice looking like himself, dressed in overalls. Because they cannot sufficiently doubt their own concept of reality, nobody can see him as he really is, they simply see a rather tall, gaunt man. Only a small child can see him as he really is. Only one without certainty knows that Death is among them - is this a Pratchett version of a moral tale?
Perhaps it's worthwhile considering the experience of taking hallucinogens. So many of the commenters on the video I've linked to above claimed to have experienced a similar left-brain disconnect, when they took LSD. I wouldn't call it exactly the same experience (although everyone has different experiences) but there are similarities. The mind becomes far more localised, open, sponge-like and undiscriminating. The connection with the self is attenuated. Some people have had a complete out-of-body experience, though I don't think I have (memory is hazy with these things :D). What can we say about the larger implications of moving away from the discriminant faculties of the left-brain?
For one thing, this is a helpless beast. A person on hallucinogens for the first time is like a baby, needing a totally unthreatening environment and possibly care and guidance. Bill Hicks said anyone who thinks they can fly when on drugs and then jumps out a 10 storey window is a moron - baby birds don't do it that way! And yet nobody who wasn't on drugs ever failed to heed their doubts that they could, in fact, fly (except in Douglas Adams books, where it seems completely logical to throw oneself at the ground and miss).
For people that are habitual hallucinogen users, personality may not change at all, but if it does it often seems to involve an erosion of healthy doubt. Belief in 12 foot lizards abounds. An increase in absurd doubts may also result, as the fabric of both objective and inter-personal reality comes under question. I haven't studied the long term effects of drugs objectively, so I must say this comes completely from personal observation.
For another thing, the left-brain, the identity vector or the self is not quiescent. It can jump into the trip at any time, noting the thoughts of the consciousness and trying to relate, categorise and classify - to understand, in fact, which is its natural task. If you happen to notice this happening while you're tripping, a recursive self-recognition cycle can build up, as the brain watches itself think about itself think about itself think...It can get to be a bad trip! Another personal observation, this one from inside the experience.
What purpose these postcards from the edge? Just to note that functioning of the [input->filter->process->store] pipeline of the consciousness is a powerful part of being conscious, and I don't think it appreciates being derailed.
Perhaps this is because, as the consciousness lifts outward and settles into the moment, the identity of the self comes face to face with itself - it's forced to try to grasp what it is, in totality and separate from any simple definitions or concepts of a personal nature (anyone who's gone or going off the rails in a solipsist existential sense may feel recognition). The problem with this is that the self is a construct designed for defining, creating relational concepts and so on. Can identity really grasp itself, can the tool of understanding act upon the tool?
What is doubt? Could it be the action of the self, which separates itself from everything else, and thus cannot truly know anything else? If we exist as processes rather than fixed entities, then may not be unreasonable to think of the active element of our selves as a process too - the process of doubt, uncertainty, the knowing of things and the letting go of this knowledge.Disclaimer: I feel its important to note how unsatisfactory I find my own blog-mounted theorising - like moulding a diamond out of clay instead of cutting it from a rock [if the analogy makes no sense, Kant has been described as a master diamond cutter]. Now, my mother is a potter, I'm not putting down clay - but if you mould a solid lump of it, chances are when it is fired it will explode. Thats the source of some unease.
9 comments:
May I just say that that's the best disclaimer I've ever seen. "Way of the Exploding Clay!" :D
"An evolutionary psychologist might therefore say that we doubt because certainty is self-defeating as a fitness function in a natural selection competition. And I suppose that this is pretty tautological, when you think about it."
Like most evolutionary psychology! >:)
(I'm mean to the evolutionary psychologists, because someone has to point to the modern phrenologists and laugh.)
Seriously, just because you can devise a teleological explanation in terms of "fitness" doesn't make it true or even testable. The teleological explanation in terms of God in these instances is just as scientifically valid most of the time, and that should be a warning sign! (I covered this before).
Modern science is generally about testable propositions and robust theories - evolutionary psychology seems to be about playing teleological games. Some genuine psychology might well come out of it from time to time, but making up stories about fitness and so forth is metaphysical storytelling wrapped up in scientific clothing. It can be fun, but most of the time it barely qualifies as science.
Never forget Steven Jay Gould's warning that we cannot tell which elements of an organism are the product of selective pressures and which are side-effects. This inability to unfold historical causes makes most (but not all) evolutionary psychology highly suspect.
The evolutionary process is indeed ratcheted, but it is also by definition *noisy*. Separating signal from noise is not simply a matter of telling a story about a feature in Darwinian terms. Modern scientific standards require more than this.
Moving on...
What is doubt? Do you mean, in the substructure of the brain? Are you asking: what can be understood, in terms of our modern scientific paradigms, as doubt?
Doubt, I would wager, is the failure of a mental pattern to trip the neural connections into a definite pattern (at least in these terms). It is the hazy soup of intuitions and impressions that push in many directions, but refuse to resolve into one single response.
Doubt, on this view, is the state one finds oneself in before making a decision - or more precisely, the states one finds oneself in when making a decision is difficult, because the contravening forces match or almost match the acting forces.
Doubt, therefore, on this view is a paralysing mental balance. Meditation might stimulate doubt, in this sense - since it eliminates conscious thought... hadn't thought of those being related before.
Must dash! Sorry for wasting most of this comment bitching at the Evolutionary Psychology crowd. ;)
yeah, I've got a doubt about your post too :)
Chris' definition of doubt perfectly fits with how I feel when I doubt: paralysed.
When you write: "What is doubt? Could it be the action of the self, which separates itself from everything else, and thus cannot truly know anything else?" would that mean that what we dont doubt about belong to or is integrated to the self?
I'm not quitte sure (I even doubt :p) that it was the notion of doubt that you wanted to discuss: to me, the word "truly" shouldnt have apeared in a definition of doubt.You can be dead certain of a perfectly false fact. I feel that your post has a taste of "I can't put my finger on it but there's something there".
(hope I understood correctly what you wrote and that I'm not making the conversation go backward..)
It's a good Way - you can labour for months on a piece, and then in one cataclysmic moment, for one minor flaw, the whole thing explodes. So you wait till everything cools, assess the damage, and start again. At least, thats the pottery - the analogy with thought can hold if you treat it loosely.
I agree evolutionary psychology is bunk. I mean, its not bad, because the process of telling the story can educate about detail and allow dissemination of concepts. But hardly scientific. Which is why I tried to make it sound like I was standing to the side of the field.
As to what is doubt, {Chris & Lisa} the two of you have described an aspect I think I agree with, but is a more low-level operational description than I was going for. I would hope to fold the two together, were I to keep expanding on the 'definition' (and I'm wary of using the term 'definition', but not sure if 'discussion' is an apt term - for personal reasons, I'd like to use kata as 1) a stand-in for memes with less baggage, and 2) to describe indefinable concepts that change from thinker to thinker...but I don't think anyone who doesn't do martial arts or tea ceremonies would understand).
So what did I mean by doubt?
I think I'm trying to drive for an understanding of what processes of consciousness (not neurology, and not psychology) actually underwrite the left and right brain parts of the overall sentient entity that is a mind. Of course this is all 'something I can't quite put my finger on', that's why it's in a blog and not a scientific journal! :D
So the idea of being a separate identity is (apparently) a left brain thing, and depends on the formation and retention, classification and categorisation of concepts, 'facts' and beliefs. However, these things all imply doubt, for we can never know their truth. So there is a basic underlying principle behind the 'turned-on', self-aware, and separate part of consciousness...because even though it must know and believe all sorts of things in order to exist, it can never really hold them as True - its truth can always be attacked, undermined, or persuaded. Thus I am wondering if the active principle of this self-oriented part of consciousness can be referred to as doubt, because it seems to be filtering the inarguable part of consciousness coming in from sensory perception through the right brain. This filtering can only happen one way, on a scale of doubt, because it's starting from a position of complete certainty. Hence the term doubt.
Now it doesn't need to be called doubt, and given the reaction in the two comments above, I would hesitate to continue with this terminology. But it only needs to get the point across, then you can call it what you want.
The corollary of all this is what can be known to be true...and this seems a right brain concern, in that Bolte-Taylor's description of living in her right brain seems to conform to the experience of enlightenment, where the only truth is Oneness. And in accounts of those experiences, Oneness is often called love. I was thinking of writing a piece on this certainty, non-selfhood, and oneness, and using love as the term for the active principle. Love is also a loaded term though.
Anybody who can actually see where I may be going, language suggestions are welcome!
Oh and again I must say, I've used the left and right brain terminology liberally, with no authority to do so. Again, it's not really necessary to take this literally. I'm trying to look at the dichotomy of the consciousness, one that seems very very plausible on the face of thousands of years of received wisdom. So it could well reside in the brain in a far more subtle way, as a programmer I would expect no less!
This is a tough nut to crack...in fact, I would say an impossible nut to crack for the very reasons you have mentioned. Language is a left brain process, and so can never sufficiently express the right brains "oneness" (I use this term like Ben, for want of another!).
Many anthropologists suggest that language somehow plays an integral part with self awareness , being born around the same time both in humans as individuals and the human family. Many things stem from this, art, etc. Many artists wish to become immortal through their art (stick with me on this point, it may make more sense as you read on). Probably why the buddhist monks who paint pictures in sand always wipe them away when they finish.
I think this goes back to earlier points I have attempted to make long ago in my own journey. Our most ancient creation myths all describe the building of towers, structures or monuments to this left brain activity, to the self. In a futile attempt to save us from the inevitability of death, perhaps. To make a "name" for ourselves. As Ben put it once, to codify self into the natural universe in some permanent way.
Like Saurons great tower with the all pervasive "I" or "ego" at its head. It wanted to posses the creation, become dominant over it and in doing so began to destroy it.
From the right hemispheres perspective the left side is the great tower of babel. For the right side there need not be any meaning, just timeless joyful experience. The left side looks upon this, sees it is good and then attempts to grasp at it in an attempt to hold it, classify it, understand it...and most importantly take possession of it(probably out of a fear of death and loss).
As Blake put it:
"He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise."
How does this fit into doubt?
The left brain will always be in doubt. It creates the maps of the territory (the right brain), but the map will never be the territory. When one realises this, that the left brain can never express Truth, one can find oneself in a constant state of doubt, what is real? is everything is pointless? why do anything? why am I doing this?
As Lisa says, doubt is paralysing. It is death. If doubt and fear are to be equated then it is fair to quote Dune (once again)
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
--- Frank Herbert, Dune - Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear
(I used to mumble that before giving presentations).
Since, as has been mentioned, we cannot hold onto any ideology the left brain can give us, are we doomed to despair? Well, there is one alternative, and that is faith. For the left brain and ego it is a tough pill to swallow, and it battles constantly with my need for scientific empiricism.
Oscar Wilde said "Skepticism is the beginning of Faith" and I tend to agree with him. No one can exist in a state of doubt just as the left brain can never categorise the right brain once and for all. At some point all of us take the universe at face value and then sit back and attempt to enjoy the ride.
When I have discussed this with Ben, it always leads me onto the next question :) and I think he knows what it is, I have tried to put it to him before. I don't think I will bother now though and just sit back and start trying to enjoy the ride again :D All I can say is, I suppose...faith with reason is better than faith alone. The reason is up for discussion!
I like this description Kris, I think we're on the same page...although we may be heading in different directions!
Unfortunately, I'm awash with possibilities as to what your next question is, and uncertain of any of them. Do tell!
Interesting stuff...
I agree that even scientific metaphysics serves a useful purpose - I just wish it carried an appropriate warning label, as some people these days make the same mistake with things presented as science as they used to make with religious doctrine. ;)
I feel your blog is the perfect place to explore this kind of stuff - I know I like having somewhere where I can discuss stuff without the rigour of a scientific paper.
I don't have much to add, but I continue to mull... ;)
Best wishes!
"I just wish it carried an appropriate warning label, as some people these days make the same mistake with things presented as science as they used to make with religious doctrine"
Used to make!? Well...
And for the entire phenomenon, be it religious or scientifically inspired - education, education, education!
If people knew how flimsy most science is, they'd have a harder time evangelising it!
Lisa: I thought again about your comment, and the feeling of paralysis when in doubt. It seems to me that this fits the idea I'm espousing quite well. All you need to do is consider the active principle for separating the self from its surrounding, not just as a continuous function, but as a recursive one. In other words, it doesn't just act in the moment, sub-consciously, but in concert with memory and self-reflection.
Language suggestion: what about using the term of judgement instead of doubt to reffer to the active principle of the self-oriented part of conciousness? The left brain would be judging what "fits" into the frame of what it is already and what doesnt according to a critrion that wouldnt be "true or false" but "fitting/acceptable or not with its principles". This principles having been built by its environment (culture, family..) and then, when mature enough, by its own choices (or as you put it: "in concert with memory and self-relfection"). Thus it would be more like weighing the input on scales than graduating it on a scale. Hence a paralysis when there is as much pros and cons that is as much weight on both sides of the scales.
Putting the problem that way seems to move the focus on How do the self is built at the very beginning? What primitive filters does a baby have? (Does he have any?)
Firstly, judgement is probably just as good as doubt, although to me it connotes conscious reflection.
"Thus it would be more like weighing the input on scales than graduating it on a scale. Hence a paralysis when there is as much pros and cons that is as much weight on both sides of the scales."
One must be careful to separate the levels of thought to which one is referring. The input I'm talking about has no pros or cons, merely levels of familiarity and interpretability, because it's not reaching the level of conscious thought. Once the input from the senses reaches the consciousness, it becomes in a sense 'your' information. Your brain has filtered out so much data that it did not regard as important, and what comes to your conscious self is thus already biased, or one step removed from truth.
I see this as a problem in applying the idea of judgement, which is proactive thought, to an overarching principle of [possibly aesthetic] discrimination that mediates between left and right brain. Doubt seemed more unbiased.
However, this is all with the purpose of floating an idea about and looking for echoes. The echoes are unlikely to be undistorted. Therefore, your concept of the idea, your version of the model I'm proposing, is your truth (not to be thought of as TRUTH). And if judgement describes it better, then that is what it is!
"What primitive filters does a baby have?"
A great question! A lot of people have asked this before, most of whom I haven't read. Kant is one. Do we have a priori concepts?
I have no idea what we start off with (maybe that is where the answers lie). But I would bet that we develop a dual identity (me, the rest of the world) naturally and necessarily. It is evolutionarily too disadvantageous otherwise, I'd think. Stripey things with sharp teeth need to be categorised as 'other', then 'danger', if the naked ape wants to survive to conquer the world.
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