Blog Archives

Overview of Beyond Religion by the Dalai Lama (Part 2 of 2)

8/23/2024

(Photo by Ven Tenzin Jamphel on the Dalai Lama Facebook page)

Okay, I’m back for part 2 of the Dalai Lama’s book Beyond Religion. As I covered in my last post, part 1 of this fascinating book offered a vision for “secular ethics for a whole world”, which I was inspired to read because this goal matches ProSocial World's purpose statement as well as my own views on evolutionary ethics and why evolutionary philosophy matters. Each of these sources speaks similarly about how empirical data gives us overwhelming evidence to appreciate our deep interdependence and therefore we need to be compassionate towards all beings as we try to survive and flourish together in this world. Let’s do that!

Now, in part 2 of the book, the Dalai Lama tells us how he personally strengthens his mind to work towards these goals in the face of all the obstacles that are sure to come. This mostly amounts to descriptions and tips for various methods of meditation, which is not something I know a ton about. But the evidence shows it is so beneficial, and these tips are coming from perhaps the world’s premiere expert, so I wanted to share them as succinctly as I could, with the hope that it will inspire you (and me!) to take up more of this mental training. As before, the quoted passages below all come from the 2012 UK Kindle version.

Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World by His Holiness Dalai Lama

Part II — Educating the Heart Through Training the Mind

Introduction to Part II: Starting with Oneself

(p. 101) How are we to become more compassionate, kinder, more forgiving, and more discerning in our behaviour?
(p. 102) Educating the heart takes both time and sustained effort, though I have no doubt that with sincere motivation we can all learn kindheartedness, and we can all benefit from it.

We have so many options out there to improve our minds and bodies. Yet all of these are “slaves to our passions”. So, why don’t we spend more time working on our emotions?? This is deeply brilliant. I know Buddhists have practiced this for centuries, but I’m not sure it has been “sold” this way, or always focused towards the secular ethics that the Dalai Lama is now advocating for. Before we get to the actual training, some Buddhist context is helpful.

Chapter 8 — Ethical Mindfulness in Everyday Life

(p. 103) even the most sophisticated ethical understanding, if it is not applied in daily life, is somewhat pointless.
(p. 103) regarding the question of how to put ethics into practice in everyday life, it may be helpful to consider the process as having three aspects or levels
(p. 103) As outlined in some classical Buddhist texts, these are as follows: an ethic of restraint — deliberately refraining from doing actual or potential harm to others; an ethic of virtue — actively cultivating and enhancing our positive behaviour and inner values; and an ethic of altruism — dedicating our lives, genuinely and selflessly, to the welfare of others.
(p. 106) I personally find a list of six principles from a text by the second-century Indian thinker Nagarjuna to be helpful.
(p. 106) Avoid excessive use of intoxicants. Uphold the principle of right livelihood. Ensure that one’s body, speech, and mind are nonviolent. Treat others with respect. Honour those worthy of esteem, such as parents, teachers, and those who are kind. Be kind to others.
(p. 107) we require a basic toolkit to help us in our daily effort to live ethically. In Buddhist tradition this toolkit is described in terms of three interrelated factors known as heedfulness, mindfulness, and introspective awareness
(p. 107) heedfulness, refers to adopting an overall stance of caution.
(p. 109) mindfulness is the ability to gather oneself mentally and thereby recall one’s core values and motivation.
(p. 109) Awareness…means paying attention to our own behaviour. It means honestly observing our behaviour as it is going on, and thereby bringing it under control.

I don’t see anything wrong with any of that. This is more evidence fitting with my belief that “Buddha Will Survive”, as I wrote during my series of essays on the survival of the fittest philosophers. Buddha came in at number 7 out of 60 on that list. The Dalai Lama might take Buddhism even higher now.

Next up, are two chapters about our emotions.

Chapter 9 — Dealing with Destructive Emotions

(p. 113) the greatest impediments to our individual well-being and our ability to live a spiritually fulfilling life are our own persistent propensities toward destructive or afflictive emotions.
(p. 115) in contemporary psychology the main distinction is often drawn between emotional states which, on the one hand, are pleasurable or joyful and are described as positive, and those which, on the other hand, are unpleasant or painful and are described as negative. In classical Buddhist psychology, however, the distinction is rather different. Instead, the primary distinction is not between those states which are pleasurable and those that are painful, but between those that are beneficial and those that are harmful.
(p. 117) In the context of secular ethics, this distinction between those mental states which undermine well-being — our own and that of others — and those which promote survival and well-being can be very useful, since it is directly relevant to our pursuit of happiness and an ethically sound way of life.
(p. 124) Our inner development with regard to regulating our destructive emotions calls for a two-pronged approach. On the one hand, we must seek to reduce the impact of the destructive potentials that are inherent within us; on the other, we must seek to enhance the positive qualities that also naturally exist within us. This two-pronged approach to mental training is what I consider to be the heart of genuine spiritual practice.

Chapter 10 — Cultivating Key Inner Values

(p. 137) a few of the other key human values: patience or forbearance, contentment, self-discipline, and generosity.
(p. 138) There are three aspects of patience, or forbearance, to consider: forbearance toward those who harm us, acceptance of suffering, and acceptance of reality.

I really appreciate the difference between contemporary psychology and classical Buddhist psychology. And the focus on enhancing well-being (“our own and that of others”) is brilliant to see. I would just add that the distinction between “beneficial” and “harmful” is often a difficult one because of the uncertainty over short-term and long-term consequences as well as the benefit accruing to yourself or others (which ultimately may or may not benefit you). So, it’s very hard to simply place an emotion into any one category. The ultimate judgment of each one will be very dependent on context — sometimes beneficial, sometimes harmful. Rather than looking forward into the mists of this murky future, I found it easier, and very useful, to look to the past for my own taxonomy by asking “what’s causing these emotions?” These are quibbles about how to categorize emotions, though. There doesn’t seem to be any conflict between the goals of my system and the Dalai Lama’s.

Finally, in the last chapter, we arrive at the Dalai Lama’s advice for how to work on all of this.

Chapter 11 — Meditation as Mental Cultivation

(p. 155) I would like to say a few words about cultivating mental discipline. For myself, such cultivation is an indispensable part of daily life. On the one hand, it helps reinforce my determination always to act compassionately for the well-being of others. On the other, it helps me keep in check those afflictive thoughts and emotions by which we are all assailed from time to time, and to maintain a calm mind.
(p. 155) the Sanskrit term bhavana … [and the] Tibetan equivalent gom [are] often translated into English as meditation, [but they] refer to a whole range of mental practices and not just, as many suppose, to simple methods of relaxation. The original terms imply a process of cultivating familiarity with something, whether it is a habit, a way of seeing, or a way of being.
(p. 156) [There are] “three levels of understanding,” as found in the classical Buddhist theory of mental transformation. These levels are understanding derived through hearing (or learning), understanding derived through reflection, and understanding derived through contemplative experience.
(p. 156) this progression — from first hearing or learning, to deepening one’s understanding through critical reflection, to conviction — is quite usual.

This is great! It really expanded my naïve understanding of “meditation”.

(p. 158) I engage in two main types of mental cultivation practice — discursive or analytic meditation and absorptive meditation. The first is a kind of analytic process by means of which the meditator engages in a series of reflections, while the second involves concentrating on a specific object or objective and placing one’s mind upon it as if dwelling deeply on a conclusion. I find that combining the two techniques is most beneficial.
(p. 159) The first of these two approaches corresponds to the development of mental states that are more cognitively oriented, such as understanding, while the second develops more affect-oriented mental states, such as compassion. We might refer to these two processes as “educating our mind” and “educating our heart.”

Fascinating. And I would say from personal experience that writing philosophy might qualify as an “education of the mind” exercise then. Before we get to the details of how else to do this, the Dalai Lama offers a few practical tips, which makes him seem just as human as the rest of us.

(p. 159) Mental cultivation takes time and effort and involves hard work and sustained dedication.
(p. 160) As to the specifics of practice, early morning is generally the best time of day. … you need to have had a good night’s sleep beforehand.
(p. 161) the mind will tend to be sluggish if you have eaten a lot beforehand.
(p. 161) in the early stages even ten to fifteen minutes per session is quite adequate.
(p. 161) It is also helpful to plan to practice for a few minutes several times during the day in addition to the main session.
(p. 162) sit where we will not be disturbed by noise.
(p. 162) any position that is comfortable will do

Love it. Next up, the Dalai Lama gives us details of his different practices. He didn’t lay it out like a simple formula, but I see it starting by taking us progressively through these six steps: 1) Getting Settled; 2) Affirming the Practice; 3) Strengthening Your Focus; 4) Understanding What Focus Is; 5) Really Focusing on Emotions; and 6) Returning to Your Day.

So, let’s see these steps in action.

1) Getting Settled

(p. 163) take one inhalation and one exhalation while silently counting from one to five or seven, and then repeat the process a few times. The advantage of this silent counting is that, in giving our mind a task to perform, it makes it less likely to be swept away by extraneous thoughts.
(p. 163) it can be helpful to quietly say a few words over and over. A formula such as “I let go of my afflictive emotions”
(p. 163) you may find that a whole session is taken up with exercises to calm or still the mind.

2) Affirming the Practice

(p. 164) When you have succeeded in establishing a more settled state, perhaps a few minutes into your session, you can then begin the actual work of mental cultivation.
(p. 165) One very useful exercise at the beginning of a session is to consider the benefits of practice. An immediate benefit is that practice gives us a brief respite from the often obsessive worrying, calculating, and fantasizing with which our minds are habitually occupied. This by itself is a great boon.
(p. 165) One who never engages in this kind of work has very little chance of dealing effectively with the destructive thoughts and emotions which, when they take hold of us, destroy all hope of peace of mind.
(p. 165) we should find that the benefits far outweigh any arguments in favour of not practicing. We then rest the mind on this conclusion for a short time before moving on to the next stage of the session.

3) Strengthening Your Focus

(p. 165) A more formal meditation practice is the cultivation of sustained attention through single-pointed concentration.
(p.166) Having relaxed and settled your mind, try to maintain your focus on the object. Visualize it about four feet in front of you and at the level of your eyebrows. Imagine the object to be approximately two inches in height and radiating light, so that the image is bright and clear. Also try to conceive of it as being heavy. This heaviness has the effect of preventing excitement, while the object’s brightness prevents the onset of laxity.

4) Understanding What Focus Is

(p. 167) after many, many weeks or months of persistent practice — you now try to inspect the mind itself as it holds the object in view.
(p. 167) you can start to familiarize yourself with the sort of focus that in ordinary life you may only experience when attempting to solve a particularly challenging mental problem.

5) Really Focusing on Emotions

(p. 167) when you have learned to really focus the mind, then, … you can use the whole force of your mind to focus on qualities such as compassion, patience, tolerance, and forgiveness.

6) Returning to Your Day

(p. 168) Finally, when we wish to end our session, we can do some deep breathing exercises once again so that we finish in a relaxed state of mind.

After a lifetime of working on this, the Dalai Lama next offers several pieces of advice.

(p. 168) Two qualities are essential in this kind of meditation: mental clarity and stability. Mental clarity assists you in maintaining your focus. Stability assists you in ensuring clarity by monitoring whether or not your attention remains vibrant.
(p. 168) It is through constant application of these two faculties that you can gradually learn to train your focus so that you become capable of sustaining your attention for a prolonged period of time.
(p. 168) set a forceful intention not to allow your mind to be swept away by thoughts of what might happen in the future or recollections of things that have happened in the past.
(p. 170) every now and then you will come to experience short intervals of what feels like an absence or a vacuum, when your mind has no particular content. Your first successes in this will only be fleeting. But with persistence over a long period, what begins as a glimpse can gradually be extended, and you can start to understand that the mind is like a mirror, or clear water, in which images appear and disappear without affecting the medium in which they appear.
(p. 170) Like a detached onlooker watching a spectacle, you will learn how to see your thoughts for what they are, namely constructs of your mind. So many of our problems arise because, in our naive untrained state, we confuse our thoughts with actual reality. We seize on the content of our thoughts as real and build our entire perception and response to reality on it.

As your practice gets more advanced, the Dalai Lama offers 4 more options for what you might work on. I see these as options for step 5 above, so I’ll label them that way. They are: 5a) Compassion and Loving-Kindness; 5b) Equanimity; 5c) More Equanimity; and 5d) Positive Imitation.

Again, let’s see these in action.

5a) Compassion and Loving-Kindness

(p. 170) Another very beneficial class of practices involves cultivating positive mental qualities, such as compassion and loving-kindness.
(p. 170) begin with a preliminary breathing exercise to relax and settle the mind.
(p. 171) when you are struggling with your attitude or feelings toward a person with whom you have difficulty. First, bring that person into your mind, conjuring up a vivid image so that you almost feel his or her presence. Next, start to contemplate the fact that he or she also has hopes and dreams, feels joy when things go well and feels sadness when they do not.
(p. 171) try to feel connected with the person and cultivate the wish that he or she achieve happiness.
(p. 171) saying something like “May you be free of suffering and its causes. May you attain happiness and peace.” Then rest your mind in this state of compassion.
(p. 171) this way of cultivating compassion primarily involves a discursive process, but every now and then it is also good to rest the mind in a state of absorption, somewhat in the fashion of bringing home a concluding point in the course of an argument.

5b) Equanimity

(p. 171) equanimity is a state of mind where one relates to others in a way that is free of prejudice rooted in the afflictions of excessive attraction or aversion.
(p. 172) begin by relaxing and settling the mind through a breathing exercise and then proceed as follows. Call up an image of a small group of people you like, such as some of your close friends and relatives. Establish this image in as much detail and with as much verisimilitude as you can. Then add an image next to it of a group of people toward whom you feel indifferent, such as people you see at work or out shopping but do not know well. Again, try to make this image as real and detailed as possible. Finally, call up a third image, this one of a group of people you dislike, or with whom you are in conflict, or whose views you strongly disagree with, and again establish it as clearly and in as much detail as you can. Having created images of these three groups of people in your mind, you then allow your normal reactions toward them to arise. Notice your thoughts and feelings toward each group in turn. You will find that your natural tendency is to feel attachment toward the first, indifference toward the second, and hostility toward the third. Recognizing this, you next turn to examining your own mind and considering how each of these three responses affects you. You will find that your feelings toward members of the first group are pleasurable, inspiring a certain confidence and strength coupled with a desire to alleviate or prevent their suffering. Toward the second group, you will notice that your feelings do not excite you or inspire any particular thoughts of concern at all. Toward the third group, however, the feelings you have will excite your mind in negative directions. The next step is to engage in contemplation, using your critical faculty. The people we consider our enemies today may not remain so, and this is also true of our friends. Furthermore, sometimes our feelings toward friends, such as attachment, can lead to problems for us, while sometimes our interactions with enemies can benefit us, perhaps by making us stronger and more alert. Contemplating such complexities can lead you to reflect on the futility of relating to others in an extreme manner
(p. 174) Over time, the aim is to be able to relate to others, not as friends or foes according to your divisive classification of them, but as fellow human beings whose fundamental equality with yourself you recognize.

5c) More Equanimity

(p. 174) for the second form of equanimity practice, … The key points are two simple truths: that just as I myself have an instinctive and legitimate desire to be happy and to avoid suffering, so do all other people; and that just as I have the right to fulfil these innate aspirations, so do they.
(p. 174) over the course of weeks, months, and even years, we will gradually find that we are able to generate true inner equanimity based on a profound recognition of humanity’s shared, innate aspiration to happiness and dislike of suffering.

5d) Positive Imitation

(p. 174) Another exercise which can be very helpful in cultivating beneficial states of mind is a discursive practice taking as its object the good example of a person we greatly admire.
(p. 175) the idea is to train ourselves to act, in our daily lives, as the person we admire would act
(p. 176) Having chosen which afflictive emotion or attitude you will address first, you begin as described earlier, relaxing the mind with a breathing exercise. Then you are ready to start the actual practice.
(p. 176) First, reflect on the destructive effects of the mental state you have selected.
(p. 176) This contemplation of the destructive nature of these mental states needs to be sufficiently deep that over time your basic stance toward such states becomes one of caution and vigilance.
(p. 177) Once you are convinced of the destructive nature of these afflictions, you then move on to the next stage of meditation. This involves developing a greater awareness of the mental states themselves, particularly of their onset.
(p. 177) The third stage of this mental cultivation practice for dealing with afflictive mental states is to apply the relevant antidotes to them: for example, forbearance to counter anger, loving-kindness to counter hatred, contemplation of an object’s imperfections to counter greed or craving for that object.
(p. 177) In all three stages of this practice it is important, as suggested earlier, to combine discursive, analytic processes with resting your mind in single-pointed absorption on the concluding points. This combination allows the effects of your practice to seep deeply into your mind so that it begins to have a real impact in your everyday life.

After giving all of these options for a deeper meditation practice, the Dalai Lama offers some more advice about dealing with things you may also encounter there.

(p. 178) there are two principal obstacles to good practice. One is distraction, while the other is laxity or what we can call “mental sinking.”
(p. 178) Sometimes it will be enough to recollect our purpose in undertaking this mental cultivation. At other times, we may have to leave off whatever we are trying to practice and move on to some other exercise. Or we may do a short breathing exercise, or repeat a few words suitable to the occasion. This may be as simple as saying, “I let go of my distraction,” slowly and deliberately a few times. But sometimes we may need to break off the session and walk around the room for a few minutes.
(p. 178) laxity or mental sinking, is what happens when the mind becomes too relaxed. We succeed in withdrawing from our habitual preoccupations and manage to free the mind from distractions, but then, because our energy is low or we are not alert enough, the mind sinks and we become, as it were, “spaced out.”
(p. 179) A short, brisk walk may be an effective remedy, or a few moments spent visualizing a bright light. For those with religious inclinations, briefly considering the surpassing qualities of some figure in their religious tradition may help. Another remedy is to imagine our consciousness springing up into space.

To finish up, the Dalai Lama offered some brief reflections on the value of all of this.

(p. 180) what we are talking about here is not suppressing negative thoughts and emotions. Instead, we must learn to recognize them for what they are and replace them with more positive states of mind. And we do this not only to achieve self-mastery but also because attaining this kind of control over our minds puts us in a much better position to compassionately benefit others.
(p. 182) What we want is a moderate, steady light which enables us to see the objects around us clearly. Thus when we develop some degree of control over our minds we are more able to take events, whether they are positive or negative, in our stride.
(p. 182) What good practice really requires is a constant stream of effort: a sustained, persistent approach based on long-term commitment. For this reason, practicing properly, even for a short period of time, is the best way.

Afterword

(p. 185) when each of us learns to appreciate the critical importance of ethics and makes inner values like compassion and patience an integral part of our basic outlook on life, the effects will be far-reaching.

So, to recap, meditation is great! Of all the books, podcasts, apps, and seminars about meditation that I have been exposed to, this one was by far the most helpful and far-reaching. It is much more than just the emptying of the mind or the building of focus that I have mostly learned about before. Yet it is simple! In its explanation, anyway. I’m sure the experience and effort will be more difficult. But I plan to work on these steps over the years ahead. 10 to 15 minutes at a time.

1) Getting Settled
2) Affirming the Practice
3) Strengthening Your Focus
4) Understanding What Focus Is
5) Really Focusing on Emotions
     5a) Compassion and Loving-Kindness
     5b) Equanimity
     5c) More Equanimity
     5d) Positive Imitation
6) Returning to Your Day

I hope you found this as interesting as I did and are inspired to work on this too. My post here shared a lot of quotes to get you going, but you should really buy the book to capture the full depth of the Dalai Lama’s thoughts and emotions here. I’ll just finish with this quote from the man who caddied for the 13th incarnation of the Dalai Lama.

"Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.”

Nice indeed. Maybe we can all hope for that with some effort. 😁

1 Comment

Overview of Beyond Religion by the Dalai Lama (Part 1 of 2)

8/16/2024

1 Comment

(Photo by Ven Tenzin Jamphel on the Dalai Lama Facebook page)

Beyond Religion. Sounds like my kind of book! But even though it offers “A New Vision of Secular Ethics” (the title for Part 1 of the book), it was written by a man who goes by “his holiness.” The subtitle states it was written “for a whole world”, but the Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, an offshoot of one of the world’s major religions, practiced by a relatively small number of people in a mountainous enclave that has been in exile since the People’s Republic of China annexed it in 1951. Like a koan, this book appears to be a manifestation of “the identity of opposites.” In fact, I wish it had received the opposite title. Something like Before Religion or Up to Religion would have been more accurate in my opinion. But I’ll explain why at the end of this review.

I actually came across this book via my work with David Sloan Wilson and ProSocial World. On every page of ProSocial’s website, its “Purpose Statement” says it wants to “Consciously evolve a world that works for all.” I always liked this because it is deeply aligned with my view of Evolutionary Ethics and Why Evolutionary Philosophy Matters. But it turns out this is also highly aligned with the Dalai Lama’s message. And that is no accident! Beyond Religion was published in 2012. According to ProSocial’s 2022 Annual Report, their history “began in 2011 as an initiative of the Evolution Institute and spun off to become its own nonprofit organization in 2020.” And during that incubation time, on October 30th 2019, ProSocial co-founder David Sloan Wilson took part in a conversation with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India about this “whole world ethic.”

Part of this alignment comes from evolutionary thinkers arriving at the same conclusion from different locations. And part of this is me being deeply influenced by David Sloan Wilson’s work. But with the Dalai Lama too? That was unexpected so I wanted to dive into this book to see how strong the links really are. And what I found was so good I just had to share it here.

Beyond Religion is a short book — the Kindle version has only 189 pages. But it is split into two parts that are so distinct, yet equally important, that I thought my review should reflect this too. Part 2 is about the Dalai Lama’s meditation practice, which by itself is worth the price of the book (and much more!). So, I’ll write about that next. But Part 1 is all about secular ethics, so I’ll cover that first. As usual for these reviews of mine, I’ll share some important passages from the book and just comment on them as we go along. The quoted passages below all come from the 2012 UK Kindle version.

Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World by His Holiness Dalai Lama

Table of Contents: Cover; About the Book; About the Author; Title Page; Introduction; Part I A New Vision of Secular Ethics; 1. Rethinking Secularism; 2. Our Common Humanity; 3. The Quest for Happiness; 4. Compassion, the Foundation of Well-Being; 5. Compassion and the Question of Justice; 6. The Role of Discernment; 7. Ethics in Our Shared World; Part II Educating the Heart Through Training the Mind; Introduction: Starting with Oneself; 8. Ethical Mindfulness in Everyday Life; 9. Dealing with Destructive Emotions; 10. Cultivating Key Inner Values; 11. Meditation as Mental Cultivation; Afterword

About the Book

(p. 2) [It] may seem extraordinary to hear one of the world’s best-known spiritual leaders argue that we need to move beyond the dictates of faith, but in this ground-breaking book that is exactly what the Dalai Lama suggests.
(p. 2) the Dalai Lama contends that we will not change the world just by praying: we need to turn to ethics if we are to succeed in sustaining and improving human life on this planet.
(p. 2) the Dalai Lama is clear that faith without reason can be harmful, leading to fundamentalism.
(p. 2) His Holiness reveals that another way is possible: to meet the future, we must marry compassion with reason and create a system of secular ethics that can unite us, whatever our beliefs.

Amen and hallelujah! But I wonder how many people who have turned to Buddhism are receptive to this message. And I wonder how many secular thinkers know the Dalai Lama is saying this. This is an incredibly brave book, but I fear it could fall on deaf ears all around the world.

Introduction

(p. 2) what is it that we lack? The fundamental problem, I believe, is that at every level we are giving too much attention to the external, material aspects of life while neglecting moral ethics and inner values. By inner values I mean the qualities that we all appreciate in others, and toward which we all have a natural instinct, bequeathed by our biological nature as animals that survive and thrive only in an environment of concern, affection, and warmheartedness — or in a single word, compassion. The essence of compassion is a desire to alleviate the suffering of others and to promote their well-being. This is the spiritual principle from which all other positive inner values emerge.

This message about the virtue of compassion is central to the book and will be discussed later. Here, though, I would like to highlight the ultimate consequence that the Dalai Lama mentions in passing — “our biological nature as animals that survive and thrive.” Perhaps it is in the nature of a Buddhist to not focus on striving towards something, but science can give us all the guidance we need about this goal, if only we would all agree to it. And knowing this goal is essential to best “alleviate suffering and promote well-being” since avoiding all harm is impossible.

(p. 2) we will never solve our problems simply by instituting new laws and regulations. Ultimately, the source of our problems lies at the level of the individual. If people lack moral values and integrity, no system of laws and regulations will be adequate. So long as people give priority to material values, then injustice, corruption, inequity, intolerance, and greed — all the outward manifestations of neglect of inner values — will persist.

This is exactly why atheism alone won’t work. And why the Humanist movement’s shyness about developing an ideology or prescriptive worldview is a missed opportunity.

(p. 2) Science, for all the benefits it has brought to our external world, has not yet provided scientific grounding for the development of the foundations of personal integrity.

This is no longer the case. Just to take a few obvious examples, the shift in evolutionary studies from competition to cooperation as a driving force for the survival of life, and the focus on thriving in the fields of positive psychology and ecology could all provide necessary details about how personal integrity can lead life towards the ultimate goal mentioned above. We just need to spell this all out.

(p. 2) any religion-based answer to the problem of our neglect of inner values can never be universal, and so will be inadequate. What we need today is an approach to ethics which makes no recourse to religion and can be equally acceptable to those with faith and those without: a secular ethics.

Agreed! And I still think our universally-shared evolutionary history is the best source for this approach to ethics.

(p. 2) I am of the firm opinion that we have within our grasp a way, and a means, to ground inner values without contradicting any religion and yet, crucially, without depending on religion.

So, this may be correct for the Buddhist’s emphasis on inner values. Highlighting compassion would not contradict any religion that I know of. But stating an end goal — is it surviving and thriving here on Earth or an afterlife of heavenly paradise? — does cause conflict. And I don’t believe you can fully express the inner values without having an end goal in mind.

(p. 2) I should make it clear that my intention is not to dictate moral values. Doing that would be of no benefit. To try to impose moral principles from outside, to impose them, as it were, by command, can never be effective. Instead, I call for each of us to come to our own understanding of the importance of inner values. For it is these inner values which are the source of both an ethically harmonious world and the individual peace of mind, confidence, and happiness we all seek.

Imposing moral rules doesn’t work. But clearly stating the moral guides and the reasons for them could work to gather cooperators together who agree with them. I’ve never seen how Buddhism’s great emphasis on inner values could be enough. To me, they are necessary (and we will develop them in Part 2), but not sufficient.

Part I — A New Vision of Secular Ethics
Chapter 1 — Rethinking Secularism

(p. 5) I am pleased by recent developments in scientific methodology in these areas, in which the traditional scientific principle of objective third-person verifiability is now being expanded to include the domain of subjective experience.

Yep. The cognitive revolution of the 1950’s is a great example of this happening during the Dalai Lama’s lifetime.

(p. 5) have also had a longstanding interest in what scientific basis might be found for understanding the effects of contemplative practice and the deliberate cultivation of qualities such as compassion, loving-kindness, attention, and a calm mind. I have always felt that if science could show such practices to be both possible and beneficial, then perhaps they could even be promoted through mainstream education.

Bringing mindfulness to schools is happening as we speak.

(p. 5) there is now a reasonably substantial body of evidence in evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and other fields suggesting that, even from the most rigorous scientific perspective, unselfishness and concern for others are not only in our own interests but also, in a sense, innate to our biological nature.

Yes, but selfishness is also “innate to our biological nature.” The trick is to argue when and why to use each one. And that takes a goal to guide us.

(p. 6) for some people, in particular for some Christian and Muslim brothers and sisters, my use of the word “secular” raises difficulties. To some, the very word suggests a firm rejection of, or even hostility toward, religion. It may seem to them that, in using this word, I am advocating the exclusion of religion from ethical systems, or even from all areas of public life. This is not at all what I have in mind.
(p. 6) In Indian usage, “secular,” far from implying antagonism toward religion or toward people of faith, actually implies a profound respect for and tolerance toward all religions. It also implies an inclusive and impartial attitude which includes nonbelievers.

It would be great if everyone could adopt this inclusive and impartial attitude, but it just doesn’t seem attainable given the epistemological positions of many religions. More on this later.

(p. 9) dating from the reign of Emperor Ashoka in the third century BCE. One inscription contains the exhortation to “honour another’s religion, for doing so strengthens both one’s own and that of the other.”
(p. 11) Two of the most important ideas I share wherever I travel — the principles of nonviolence and interreligious harmony — are both drawn from ancient Indian heritage.

Once again, this is great, until disagreements about truths and goals occur. Nonviolence and harmony do not provide guides for answers to intractable disagreements.

(p. 12) I should acknowledge that there are some who, though sympathetic to my explanation of secularism in Indian terms, still question the viability of detaching ethics from religion in this way. The mistrust of attempts to separate the two is so strong among some followers of theistic traditions that I have been cautioned, on some occasions, not to use the word “secular” when speaking about ethics in public.
(p. 13) For those whose religious belief is so closely tied to ethical practice, it is hard to conceive of one without the other. For those who believe that truth requires God, God alone can make ethics binding.
(p. 13) I do not agree that ethics requires grounding in religious concepts or faith. Instead, I firmly believe that ethics can also emerge simply as a natural and rational response to our very humanity and our common human condition.

Wow. These passages could have been written by any of the “four horsemen of the non-apocalypse.”

(p. 14) The systems of belief with which the world’s religions ground and support inner values can, generally speaking, be grouped into two categories.
(p. 14) On the one hand are the theistic religions, which include Hinduism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In these traditions, ethics is ultimately grounded in some understanding of God — as a creator and as the absolute ground of all that is.
(p. 14) since God is infinite love or infinite compassion, loving others is part of loving and serving God.
(p. 14) there is the belief that after death we will face divine judgment, and this provides a further strong incentive for behaving with restraint and due caution
(p. 15) On the other hand, in the non-theistic religions, such as Buddhism, Jainism, and a branch of the ancient Indian Samkhya school, there is no belief in a divine creator. Instead, there is the core principle of causality, while the universe is regarded as beginningless.
(p. 15) [These] religions instead ground ethics in the idea of karma. The Sanskrit word karma simply means “action.” So when we talk about our karma, we are referring to all our intentional acts of body, speech, and mind, and when we talk about the fruits of our karma, we are talking about the consequences of these acts.
(p. 15) When combined with the idea of rebirth and successive lives, this understanding becomes a powerful basis for ethics and the cultivation of inner values.
(p. 15) All religions, therefore, to some extent, ground the cultivation of inner values and ethical awareness in some kind of metaphysical (that is, not empirically demonstrable) understanding of the world and of life after death.

Yes. And these metaphysical stances are blockades to universal agreement wherever they become hardened.

(p. 16) I do not think that religion is indispensable to the spiritual life.
(p. 16) Today, in a scientific age in which religion strikes many as meaningless, what basis for such values is left to us? How can we find a way of motivating ourselves ethically without recourse to traditional beliefs?
(p. 16) although humans can manage without religion, they cannot manage without inner values.
(p. 16) As I see it, spirituality has two dimensions. The first dimension, that of basic spiritual well-being — by which I mean inner mental and emotional strength and balance — does not depend on religion but comes from our innate human nature as beings with a natural disposition toward compassion, kindness, and caring for others. The second dimension is what may be considered religion-based spirituality, which is acquired from our upbringing and culture and is tied to particular beliefs and practices.
(p. 17) The difference between the two is something like the difference between water and tea. Ethics and inner values without religious content are like water, something we need every day for health and survival. Ethics and inner values based in a religious context are more like tea. The tea we drink is mostly composed of water, but it also contains some other ingredients — tea leaves, spices, perhaps some sugar or, at least in Tibet, salt — and this makes it more nutritious and sustaining and something we want every day. But however the tea is prepared, the primary ingredient is always water. While we can live without tea, we can’t live without water.

What an interesting metaphor! We non-religious types need to develop our tea.

(p. 18) there are some who believe, at one end of the spectrum, that we are by nature fundamentally violent, aggressive, and competitive; while others, at the other end, take the view that we are predominantly disposed toward gentleness and love.
(p. 18) if we view human nature as dominated by destructive tendencies, our ethics will most likely be grounded in something outside ourselves.
(p. 18) If, however, we view human nature as predominantly oriented toward kindness and the desire for a peaceful life, then we can consider ethics an entirely natural and rational means for pursuing our innate potential.

Yes. And we now know that humans are both of these. And for good reason. The signature adaptation of the human species may be cooperation. But the science around prosociality shows that cooperation requires special conditions, including regulation towards shared goals using graduated responses to both helpful AND harmful behaviors. In other words, we need to be kind. And sometimes we need to be cruel to be kind. And it takes wisdom to know the difference between these situations.

(p. 19) I believe that an inclusive approach to secular ethics, one with the potential to be universally accepted, requires recognition of only two basic principles.
(p. 19) The first principle is the recognition of our shared humanity and our shared aspiration to happiness and the avoidance of suffering; the second is the understanding of interdependence as a key feature of human reality, including our biological reality as social animals. From these two principles we can learn to appreciate the inextricable connection between our own well-being and that of others, and we can develop a genuine concern for others’ welfare. Together, I believe, they constitute an adequate basis for establishing ethical awareness and the cultivation of inner values.

That is an argument that is perfect in sync with evolutionary philosophy. And this continues in the next few chapters.

Chapter 2 — Our Common Humanity

(p. 21) in any attempt to develop a genuinely universal approach to ethics, [we have] to have a clear understanding of what unites us all, namely our common humanity.
(p. 26) Since we are social animals — that is, since our survival and flourishing depend on being part of a group or community — our capacity for empathy has profound implications for our pursuit of happiness and well-being.

This is almost word-for-word what Humanists UK says when they teach ethics.

Chapter 3 — The Quest for Happiness

(p. 31) A human being survives only with hope, and hope by definition implies the thought of something better. As I see it, our very survival depends on some idea of future happiness.
(p. 31) Happiness is a rather general term, so there is potential for misunderstanding. For example, it should be made clear that in this book’s secular context, we are not talking about religious conceptions of ultimate happiness, but rather the simple joy or happiness we all understand in an ordinary or everyday sense.
(p. 31) what are the sources of human happiness? Three factors immediately suggest themselves which, I think most people will agree, contribute significantly to human well-being, namely wealth or prosperity; health; and friendship or companionship.
(p. 40) there are also other crucial factors which greatly contribute to our level of genuine happiness and joy. Recent scientific research suggests that chief among these are a sense of purpose which transcends narrow self-interest and a feeling of being connected with others or of belonging to a community. The root of both of these, I believe, is compassion or warmheartedness

The positive psychology literature is overflowing with scientific books about this topic. (See here, here, here, or here.) I’ve read many of these and listened to podcasts with the authors of many, many more. Unfortunately, this short chapter by the Dalai Lama is completely lacking in actual references to this field, but it does help to see his simple, straightforward thinking as well as the link to compassion, which is the subject of the next two chapters.

Chapter 4 — Compassion, the Foundation of Well-Being

(p. 41) Without another’s loving care, none of us would have lived more than a few days. As a result of this intense need for others in our early development, a disposition toward affection is a part of our biology. This is a characteristic we share with many other mammals, and also birds
(p. 48) What is important is that when pursuing our own self-interest we should be “wise selfish” and not “foolish selfish.” Being foolish selfish means pursuing our own interests in a narrow, shortsighted way. Being wise selfish means taking a broader view and recognizing that our own long-term individual interest lies in the welfare of everyone.
(p. 50) While compassion at the biological level can be unconditional, like the mother’s love for her baby, it is also biased and limited in scope. Nevertheless, it is of the utmost importance, because it is the seed from which unbiased compassion can grow. We can take our innate capacity for warmheartedness and, using our intelligence and conviction, expand it.
(p. 52) universal compassion is not rooted in any self-regarding element, but rather in the simple awareness that all others are human beings who, just like oneself, aspire to happiness and shun suffering.
(p. 53) My old friend Professor Paul Ekman, a pioneer in the science of emotion, once told me that even Charles Darwin, the father of modern evolutionary theory, believed that “the love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.”
(p. 55) since universal compassion involves gradually expanding one’s circle of concern until it finally embraces the whole of humanity, it needs constant cultivation.
(p. 56) religion is not necessary for cultivating compassion. In fact, secular techniques for compassion training are already in use, and their effectiveness has even been scientifically demonstrated.

It’s striking to me how much this mimics Peter Singer’s book The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress, which I tried to take to its logical ethical conclusion by considering the evolutionary story of all of the life that has ever been or ever will be. I’m really looking forward to spending some more time in Part 2 of Beyond Religion to learn about ways to cultivate this compassion. But first, are there limits to this compassion?

Chapter 5 — Compassion and the Question of Justice

(p. 57) For many, it seems, there is a conflict between the principle of compassion, which implies forgiveness, and the exercise of justice, which requires punishment for wrongdoing. As they see it, the principle of justice or fairness, rather than that of compassion, must underpin any humanistic approach to ethics.
(p. 58) compassion by no means implies surrender in the face of wrongdoing or injustice.
(p. 61) From a secular point of view, without such beliefs in punishment and reward in the afterlife, we must ask ourselves what punishment is really about. Is it about retribution and revenge — about making wrongdoers suffer as an end in itself? Or is it more about preventing further wrongdoing? To my mind, the purpose of punishment is not to exact suffering as an end in itself. Rather, the suffering inflicted by punishment should have a higher purpose, namely to discourage the wrongdoer from repeating the offense and to deter others from committing similar acts. Punishment is, therefore, not about retribution but about deterrence.

This is roughly the same conclusion reached by Dan Dennett and Greg Caruso in their book debating free will, determinism, and “just desert”. We’re aligned once again! But what about the final subject of Part 1 of Beyond Religion — ethics — which is covered in the next two chapters?

Chapter 6 — The Role of Discernment

(p. 73) While intention is the first and most important factor in guaranteeing that our behaviour is ethical, we also need discernment to ensure that the choices we make are realistic and that our good intentions do not go to waste.
(p. 74) For those occasions when we do not have time to work things out in detail, it is useful to have internalized general rules to guide our actions.
(p. 80) we will never know all the causes that have given rise to any situation. Nor can we foresee all the consequences of our actions. There is always bound to be some element of uncertainty. It is important to acknowledge this, but it should not worry us. Still less should it make us despair of the value of rational assessment. Instead it should temper our actions with proper humility and caution.
(p. 80) This uncertainty is another reason why ethics must be grounded at the level of motivation, as I have said, rather than purely on consideration of consequences.

In my paper on “Rebuilding the Harm Principle”, I say something similar about how to integrate consequentialism and virtue ethics. (I also add in the third of the three major camps of moral ethics, deontology.) Bravo!

Chapter 7 — Ethics in Our Shared World

(p. 84) people are making a convenient distinction between ethics on the personal level and ethics on the wider social level. To me, such attitudes are fundamentally flawed, as they overlook the interdependence of our world.
(p. 88) Disarmament is compassion in practice. What is required, therefore, is both inner disarmament, at the level of our individual hatred, prejudice, and intolerance, and outer disarmament, at the level of nations and states.
(p. 91) On the issue of economic inequality, I consider myself at least half Marxist. When it comes to creating wealth and thereby improving people’s material conditions, capitalism is without doubt very effective, but capitalism is clearly inadequate as any kind of social ideal, since it is only motivated by profit, without any ethical principle guiding it.
(p. 92) I told [a very wealthy couple], having made your money as capitalists, you should spend it as socialists!

This chapter actually consists of several short sections about technology, war, the environment, economics, science, education, and perseverance, but these four quotes are enough to show we’re basically aligned again. All of the points being made are simply a natural extension of the principle of flourishing in an interdependent world. The fact that this secular ethics is coming from the Dalai Lama rather than a typical atheist is completely remarkable. It’s a perfect example of what Cass Sunstein called a “surprising validator”. And it gives me great hope.

This marks the end of a fairly long overview of just the first half of this book, but I do hope it sparks an interest to read the whole thing and to share it widely with people who might be receptive to this message. As I said at the start, I only wish the title of this book had been flipped. Here’s why. In David Sloan Wilson’s autobiography, he wrote this about the Dalai Lama:

A quote of his is framed on my wall: “To defy the authority of empirical evidence is to disqualify oneself as someone worthy of critical debate in a dialogue.”

This is an enormously important statement about epistemology that wasn’t covered in Beyond Religion. I entirely agree with the authority of empiricism and with the empiricists’ arguments that all of our knowledge comes from this source. But we are also crucially inspired by our beliefs, hopes, imagination, hypotheses, or faith about what might be in the realm of the unknown. If life had only ever acted on what was empirically known, it would never have progressed at all. I will have more to say about this in an upcoming paper about the evolution of knowledge, but the important thing to say here is that perhaps this message about secular ethics would be easier to accept if it was advertised as being confined to the empirical world, as being confined to the evidence that we can all agree upon.

Beyond that realm, some of us may be inspired by various visions of earthly utopias. Some of us may be inspired by various visions of heavenly paradise. Trials and errors will show us which of these prove to be more accurate and/or effective. But, to put a spin on the Dalai Lama’s book title, these are “beyond secularism”. That doesn’t make them better or more important. Just literally out of reach. This isn’t the same thing as S.J. Gould’s non-overlapping magisteria since religions have typically tried to make claims about the empirical world. But if religions were prepared to retreat from any disproven ideas, then empirical secularism could become what we all agree to. Beyond that, you can believe what you want to believe, as long as it doesn’t “defy the authority of empirical evidence.” I’m sure that suggestion would still face pockets of fierce resistance, but maybe it would be a more comforting way to approach this attempt to create an ethics for the whole world. What do you think?

1 Comment

Review of Truth & Generosity by Weiner & Forsee

8/1/2024

5 Comments

I’m currently working on a big paper on the evolution of knowledge and during my research for that I came across an obscure but interesting little book that I wanted to share. It’s called Truth & Generosity: How Truth Makes Language Possible by Neal Weiner and Tina Lee Forsee. (T&G by W&F from here on out.) According to the Amazon description:

It doesn't matter whether you're conservative or liberal, religious or skeptical, the very fact you are able to understand the words you're reading right now—that we are all able to communicate with each other using language—means we must share a vast body of beliefs. While language may shape the way we think about the world to some small extent, it makes much more sense to say truth shapes language to a very large extent. That’s the central argument of this book:

Truth is the condition that makes language possible.

Tina was my way to finding this book. She’s the fascinating writer behind several projects that would definitely be of interest to anyone reading my site. In T&G, she is described as having “published her debut novel, A Footnote to Plato, in 2023 (Wipf and Stock). She is an Associate Acquisitions Editor at After Dinner Conversation, a magazine dedicated to philosophical short stories. tinaforsee.com.” Her website has links to a couple of Substack newsletters she runs, including her personal one Philosophy and Fiction (subjects I love!) where she recently posted about every chapter of T&G. After I finish my review here, I am definitely going to go engage in the conversations there about this book.

(Also, you should know that her book A Footnote to Plato is an excellent addition to the canon of campus novels. It’s like a mashup of Philip Roth, Jonathan Franzen, and Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. Definitely check it out if that subject is of interest to you.)

While Tina’s solo works are great, T&G is a co-production that has an interesting origin story. This is best explained by quoting from the foreward that Tina wrote.

My husband wrote the first draft of this manuscript nearly twenty years ago while he was still teaching at Marlboro College. He retired shortly after, and I suppose at that time he was perfectly happy to stuff the manuscript in a drawer and get back to it someday. … I’ve always felt the book needed to be published, but I also knew how much work that would require. Back then, I didn’t even know where to begin. Time passed. Neal is now 81 years old. The last thing he wants to do is spend his retirement years going through the academic publishing process, so I offered to publish it for him.

I understand if you’re skeptical of such ventures, but I hope you’ll make an exception in this case. After all, Neal has paid his dues. He went to prestigious universities and taught philosophy at Marlboro College for nearly forty years. He has published academic works, but he has also seen commercial success and has even appeared on Good Morning America. There’s his ‘social proof’. Make of it what you will.

So, yeah, that’s why I called this an “obscure” book. But it’s only 113 pages, and since Neal and Tina’s styles are both very clear and jargon free it is an especially quick read that is easily worth your time. Before we dive in, I thought I should quickly share some of my own positions on the relevant subjects so you know where I am coming from.

On my website’s page for epistemology, I wrote, “In summary, Plato laid down the most influential definition of knowledge as ‘justified, true, belief.’ But this has proven to be untenable and I propose that it ought to be replaced with an understanding that knowledge can only ever be justified beliefs that are currently surviving our best tests.” Also on that page, I have links to my three most important essays on this subject so far — Knowledge Cannot be Justified True Belief; Evolving Our Trust in Science; and The Bayesian Balance — as well links to four other epistemology books that I have reviewed in this website — Kindly Inquisitors; Knowledge and Its Limits; How to Talk to a Science Denier; and Mental Immunity (Part 1 and Part 2).

Finally, I think an important concept for this discussion is the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Truth, which has these important descriptions for the term as it is often used in philosophy:

There are two commonly accepted constraints on truth and falsehood: 1) Every proposition is true or false. [Law of the Excluded Middle.]; and 2) No proposition is both true and false. [Law of Non-contradiction.] These constraints require that every proposition has exactly one truth-value. Although the point is controversial, most philosophers add the further constraint that a proposition never changes its truth-value in space or time.

Okay, with that (very) brief background on knowledge and truth out of the way, let’s dig into T&G. Rather than write a full review, I’ll just share some of the passages I highlighted and react to them along the way. All page numbers are from the 2023 Kindle edition.

Truth & Generosity: How Truth Makes Language Possible by Weiner & Forsee

Table of Contents
PART I: The Principle of Generosity
CHAPTER 1: The Principle of Generosity
CHAPTER 2: Violations of the Principle of Generosity
CHAPTER 3: The Poetry of Ordinary Language
CHAPTER 4: What Language is Not
CHAPTER 5: Etymology and Truth
CHAPTER 6: Social Influences on Semantic Change
PART II: Generosity and Shared Belief
CHAPTER 7: Politics and Relativism
CHAPTER 8: Trust and Doubt
CHAPTER 9: The Origin of Language
CHAPTER 10: Radical Interpretation
CHAPTER 11: How We Recognize Language as Language
PART III: Generosity and Truth
CHAPTER 12: The Body of Truth
CHAPTER 13: The Heart of Truth
CHAPTER 14: Generosity Beyond the Sentence
CHAPTER 15: The Interpretive Ideal
CHAPTER 16: Interpreting the World Through Generosity

This table of contents excited me! We begin with PART I: The Principle of Generosity.

(p.2) The very fact that we can communicate with each other and translate other languages into our own means there must be a vast body of belief we all share—a body of belief which, taken on the whole, must be true. To put it in a snappier way: Truth is the condition that makes language possible.

As I shared above, this is the central argument of the book. W&F introduce this right from the start, which I appreciate, but I could have used a bit more background. Although the word “truth” is in the title of the book, and it is used 101 times in 113 pages (according to my Kindle search), I didn’t find a clear philosophical definition of the way they are using the term. In the IEP entry for Truth that I mentioned above, there are sections for the correspondence theory, the semantic theory, the coherence theory, pragmatic theories, and deflationary theories of truth, each of which have several subsections. This is a highly discussed term in philosophy! And without a lot of agreement. So, it would have helped me to know where W&F stand. But let’s adopt this book’s other main term — generosity — and see if their language will eventually demonstrate what they mean over the course of the book.

(p.2) This is not to say every single opinion must be true; after all, surely some of the beliefs we hold contradict each other. And I certainly don’t mean we should blindly embrace the status quo either. What I mean is, ordinary opinion, on the whole, has things basically right, and a sensitive and careful distillation of what is presented there is the best approach to seeking truth.

This is a telling caveat to the declaration in the first quote (“a body of belief which, taken on the whole, must be true”). According to the three constraints on truth that I listed above — excluded middle, non-contradiction, and universality — the way philosophers use “truth” is very much as a black and white term. But by using and emphasizing words such as “on the whole” and “basically”, W&F seem to allow for a fuzzier, blurrier, folk usage of the word truth. “Must be true” has transformed into “basically right”. That’s not exactly what epistemologists have been fighting over, but it can still help the “approach to seeking truth.”

(p.2) Some of what I have to say will be drawn from Donald Davidson’s work, which stretches back to the early sixties and has won great respect in academic philosophy.
(p.25) [Davidson] argues that the truth of a sentence comes first and the meanings of its words are adjusted to make this truth possible.

Ok, what does that mean?

(p. 26) Suppose an auto mechanic from the rural south currently living in New England tells me that to deal with my car problem, I’ll need an auto holler. … I realize he is using the word-sound holler as I would use the word-sound hauler, and from that point on everything proceeds smoothly. … The initial confusion does not get straightened out by anyone’s explaining to me the conventions of the Southern dialect. Instead, I presupposed the truth of the mechanic’s speech—in other words, I assumed the mechanic was quite aware that yelling at my car would not solve a thing …The point is, the truth of the sentence came first, the word and its meaning came second. I can be sure then that for me, the word did not get its meaning by convention, but by generous interpretation of its usage in accordance with my beliefs about the world.

This is an extremely helpful example, demonstrating both truth and generosity in action. In other words, W&F are saying that in order to communicate at all we must begin by being generous and assume the good intentions of the mechanic to speak the truth. That’s great, but it doesn’t address the traditional problems of knowledge where skeptical arguments (e.g. evil demons, Gettier cases, or the Matrix) imply that these good intentions may not be enough. How can we ever know we are really talking about the same thing?

(p.27) meaning is plastic and takes its shape by conforming to the contours of a presumed shared reality.

This, to me, is a key move of the book that isn’t highlighted enough. In my own work, I’ve called this “presumed shared reality” our first assumption or our first hypothesis. Donald Campbell, who coined the term evolutionary epistemology, called this “hypothetical realism”. Once that stance is taken, all communication and knowledge-seeking can proceed as basically a test of this presumption. But how can we ever know if our meanings actually do conform to these contours?

(p.33) novel usage puts the word under a kind of truth stress so that it must change meaning to relieve that stress. If for whatever reason the untrue way of speaking becomes widespread and the process is allowed to reach its logical completion, then whatever is strictly speaking not true or not believable about the novel usage is eliminated by a shift in meaning. At this point, an ironic sort of miracle occurs: the meaning of the word adjusts on a grand scale to make the untruth true

This is a lovely demonstration of how knowledge and language evolve. But it does not show how we could ever hope to attain the very strict status of “truth” as laid out in the philosophical definitions above. Claiming we can become “on the whole” “basically right” is an important counter to nihilistic relativism, but that is not strictly “true”. I would happily just admit that as part of my own larger project of evolutionary epistemology. But for W&F, I think is too easy for skeptics to poke holes in their language.

(p.43) the principle of generosity underlies all communication whatsoever and thereby guarantees the unified, public character of anything worth calling a world.

After my review of Naomi Oreskes’ book Why Trust Science?, I’ve been using her term “consensus” to describe this “unified, public character” but I love how this principle of generosity describes an important aspect of the cooperation we rely upon to reach this consensus. Perhaps the other side of that would be a “principle of stinginess” to describe the competition that uses disagreements to whittle away at any differences in our consensus. But this ends the discussion of Part I: The Principle of Generosity, so the topic shifts now. On to PART II: Generosity and Shared Belief.

(p.44) It took a long time, roughly from 1776 to 1976, for political equality (equality of political rights) to turn into first social equality (equality of income or opportunity) and then epistemic equality (relativism), but it happened.
(p.45) There was and still is real oppression, both political and epistemological, but the blind worship of equality comes at the cost of the distinction between knowledge and opinion.
(p.45) Relativism speaks to the demand for an egalitarian society. The question is how to retain its democratic virtues without its nihilistic vice.
(p.52) Relativism makes the unity of being a mere appearance while preserving the diversity of opinion. What I propose is the reverse: to make diversity of opinion the appearance and preserve the unity of being.

This is a fascinating analysis of the spread of individualism from politics to economics to epistemology. I’ll leave the political-economic discussion for another day, but in epistemological relativism the control of knowledge, which has slid down from powerful groups and elites to the common individual, still has one more step to take. As I shared in my overview of Kindly Inquisitors by Jonathan Rauch (a title that sounds like it also advocates for generosity), the liberal system of inquisition has two foundational principles — no one gets final say, and no one has personal authority. In other words, the power to decide what is accepted as knowledge drops not to any one individual, but it actually resides in zero people! Not with kings, queens, or aristocracies. Not with popes, ayatollahs, or religious councils. Not with professors, philosophers, scientists, or academic councils. Not with western white men, eastern gurus, or indigenous wisdom councils. And certainly not with billionaire tech bros. The best production of knowledge is now governed by an inanimate process — the scientific method, broadly construed — whose practices we can all continue to shape as well. I call it “the epistemological power paradox” that as the power of individuals to determine knowledge dropped to zero with the discovery of this method, the power of that knowledge actually grew to its highest point. That, to me, is how we retain knowledge’s democratic virtues without its nihilistic vice. That is how a diversity of opinions can actually be shaped into consensus about the (presumed) unity of being.

The next sections of the book take us through a bit of theorizing about the origins of language. At first, this feels like a sidetrack from the main theme of the book, but the link does quickly become apparent.

(p.54) Throughout the 19th century, debates on the origin of speech had become so contentious that, as contemporary writers are usually quick to point out, in 1866 and 1911, the Linguistic Society of Paris banned all papers on the subject.
(p.56) In our thought experiment we eliminate the possibility of misusing established meaning because there is no established meaning. In ur-sentences, there is absolutely nothing available to give meaning to words except the very objects described. In other words, our thought experiment takes us to the very bedrock of truth.

I would not put it that way and don’t really understand how W&F could make such a claim. These ur-sentences are still based on our perceptions and perceptions are fallible. To put it as Kant would say, there is still a difference between the phenomena and the noumena.

(p.56) The vast majority of those who have given the matter serious thought have favored the idea that the first utterance must have been a sentence rather than a word.
(p.57) the most persuasive reason is obvious and not technical at all: Words only function in sentences. They are good for declaring, commanding, promising, begging, asking, wishing, warning, and so on, but they can perform these roles only in sentences
(p.57) Sentences, at least as they are usually defined, are complete thoughts. The implication is that anything less than a sentence—a word, phrase, or syllable—is a fragment of a thought.
(p.58) In an inquiry into natural language’s origin and evolution, however, to suppose words could arise independent of sentences is rather like supposing bodily organs could arise apart from the body to which they belong.

But organs (sorta) did arise prior to bodies! Not the fully finished organs that we see today, but the discrete functional elements of protists (e.g. photosynthetic energy production, flagellate movement, parasitic consumption, stalked reproductive spores) evolved separately before combining in a Major Evolutionary Transition to create multicellular life. I think W&F’s argument here could be turned on its head. How could bodies have evolved without the organs being out there to comprise them? Evolution of complexity requires simple steps along the way that each give an evolutionary advantage. Turning back to the evolution of language, perhaps the definitions of “words” and “sentences” need to be thought of more flexibly so we can imagine their simplest protist versions way back at the beginning of their journey towards today’s linguistic complexity.

(p.61) It is surely not the case that language began with the naming of things followed by a synthesis of names into sentences, sentences which may or may not have been true. For reasons we have already discussed, it is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine how language could have come about by such a process. It is even more difficult to imagine truth limping behind the first sentences; the first utterance could not have been false.
(p.61) Without established usage, there is simply no way to bespeak things other than they really are. In other words, in order for the first utterance to count as language, it had to be infallible.

Did you catch Dennett’s alarm bell for a weak argument there? (The use of “surely.”) I don’t see how “the first utterance” might not have been mistaken or illusory and therefore false. Again, I could really use W&F’s definition of true here because maybe they mean something different. Which theory of truth are they using? Does it need to be universally true? Because that would be far too high a bar to clear. Other animals have been observed shouting false warning calls so they can obtain the foods left behind by their fellow creatures after they run for cover. So that lying is an example of at least some false communication happening before human language even began.

(p.62) We are supposing this to be the birth of public language, so one way or another the semantics had to become shared by the entire community. This means that public language depends on the whole community taking these ur-sentences as true.
(p.62) Suppose FLABEH meant, Run! A mammoth is coming! Someone might have mistakenly screamed it after hearing a loud crashing noise on a very dark night. But that would be a case in which the bespoken object was absent, which absence is precisely what makes the falsehood possible. This sort of error could not have been normal. If it had been, the result would have been either semantic change or the destruction of referential usefulness for the incipient language.

So, not each and every utterance is true. But the generally accepted usages that arise must hone toward truth after many, many iterations. This is exactly the same process that is used today. But it does not start from some bedrock of truth. It starts with a guess and proceeds in a Bayesian fashion from there towards consensus.

(p.64) Only one conclusion is possible: We have not left the epistemic Eden; we are as infallible as our forbears. Within a certain limited range, we, too, cannot be wrong.
(p.64) But we can be wrong!—you may be thinking. If this conclusion seems shocking, let us not forget that the infallibility I am talking about applies only to the description of objects directly experienced, while they are experienced, and this should not be confused with other types of assertion.

Ah hah. So perhaps W&F are accepting the line of argument, leading from Descartes, about “self-knowledge” being especially secure. But this is easily refuted. Our “direct experience” is just not infallible.

That closes Part II about the origins of language giving us reasons to believe we speak truth. I found this section very unpersuasive, but let’s proceed to the conclusion of the book with PART III: Generosity and Truth.

(p.78) the shared beliefs we are talking about are not merely widespread agreement—they form an absolutely necessary agreement that is the condition for the possibility of recognizing language and intelligence as such. Such beliefs are not merely uncontested or not contradicted; they are not, as a mass, contradictable. Thus the indispensable body of belief may be undefined, but it is on the whole and for all practical purposes, infallible. Which is to say, to contradict them in their entirety and in their very possibility is to contradict oneself. And so for us, the undefined body of belief must be taken, on the whole, as true.
(p.80) What I wish to borrow from Quine is the general idea of a gradient of confidence and stability based on the degree of upset caused by the abandonment of a given belief. Quine's system measures beliefs by their logical connectedness to other beliefs, but ours measures them by how dispensable they are for interpretation.
(p.81) Thus it seems plausible to imagine a slowly evolving mass with some of its propositions stable enough as individuals to be candidates for eternity, others locked into groups that are either rigid or elastic, and still others that live alone, so to speak, and as individuals are relatively changeable. … To put it another way, you can sometimes change your mind about certain propositions, but you can’t change your mind about all contingent propositions, or even a great many of them, all at once.

I loved seeing this reference to “a slowly evolving mass.” That is the right process, and we do end up with a huge, interconnected network of stable propositions. We just don’t need to start with “truth” to arrive there. And the history of skeptical arguments show we shouldn’t ever expect to arrive at a finishing line either.

(p.82) when a belief cannot be dispensed with, what can we call it but true?

Looking at the thesaurus for synonyms of “correct” we can could call it right, accurate, veracious, unerring, faithful, faultless, flawless, or error-free. We could call it widely accepted, a proven fact, or a justified belief currently surviving our best rational tests. But according to the strict philosophical definition of truth set out above (passing the tests for excluded middle, non-contradiction, and universality), these indispensable beliefs are not known to be “true”. That powerful term should not be bandied about too casually. It cheapens the philosophical ideal. And calling something true sets us up to fail to see new information. I would much prefer to treat truth with the reverence it deserves. When I’m speaking and writing carefully, I try to only use the term “true” for the abstract philosophical concept of perfect knowledge that we can seemingly never actually achieve. True is a future goal. Not a currently reached destination or designation. That, to me, helps enormously for keeping our knowledge evolving in the right direction.

(p.82) Theories such as coherence and correspondence are like species of truth, but none can be a satisfactory definition of truth (or of being or goodness, for that matter). Reductionisms such as materialism, idealism, and hedonism make the same mistake. Definition must stop somewhere, and, logically, it must surrender at both the top and bottom of the conceptual mountain.

I honestly am not sure what this means, but it might explain why W&F don’t take the time to declare their preferred definition of truth. Maybe I would agree that definitions cannot capture everything, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t useful to keep working on them. Definitions are like all knowledge in that way. I don’t think of them as having a solid bottom and top but rather as an ever-expanding light exploring the darkness of our ignorance that was once total and complete when life first arose.

(p.86) Meaning depends on context, and context is a series of ever-more-encompassing wholes. The word-sentence relationship is but one part of the series. Below it are the mere sounds—prefixes and suffixes, for example—which have the word they belong to as their context (consider: ing means different things in bring and chopping). Above this stretches a long sequence of ever-larger wholes in which the same sentence can have more or less plausible alternative meanings. First the paragraph, then the chapter, the section, the book, the author’s other works, the author’s life during that period, the totality of the author’s works, the totality of the author’s life, the library in which the works are stored, the culture of which the library is but a single institution, and the sweep of world history in which that culture is but a small part, not to mention the universe itself.

This is a great evolutionary view of knowledge along a continuous spectrum! I hope to publish more on this soon.

(p.88) The conclusion we can draw from this is that the assumed sense of an entire work adjudicates between alternative or competing meanings of its components,
(p.93) The truest interpretation is, all else being equal, the one that best fits the parts into a coherent whole. To the extent that we cannot make them fit, we cannot understand the work.

This has echoes of the famous Wilfred Sellars quote, “The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term.” It is also reflected in my definition of knowledge as justified beliefs currently surviving our best rational tests.

(p.99) As a regulative principle, the principle of generosity amounts to a presupposition of what it means to make sense running alongside the principle of sufficient reason: things must be assumed to make sense. To put it another way, we cannot make an earnest attempt to interpret anything while at the same time assuming it makes no sense.
(p.106) Thus we arrive at the sheer, bare form of understanding from which all concrete belief depends. Perhaps it can only be called a kind of faith in the comprehensibility of the world.

Or, to avoid using religious terms, and instead preferring to draw on the scientific method as the best way yet discovered to gain knowledge, we could call this “comprehensibility of the world” our first hypothesis. And after all of the evidence that has rolled in to support this idea, it is no longer a leap of faith to believe in it.

Despite some qualms about the middle section of the book, and with its general usage of the word truth, I thoroughly enjoyed Truth and Generosity. Tina Lee Forsee should be commended for rescuing it from Neal Weiner’s archives and sharing it widely. I look froward to using some of its arguments in my own efforts to help us understand truth and knowledge better. And I’m sure I’ll need a plea for generosity when I do.

5 Comments

Overview of Beyond Religion by the Dalai Lama (Part 2 of 2)

Overview of Beyond Religion by the Dalai Lama (Part 1 of 2)

Review of Truth & Generosity by Weiner & Forsee

Subscribe to Help Shape This Evolution

Blog Philosophy

Archives