The Mythical Metaphorical Quest for Real Knowledge of How to Relieve Suffering
Actually written AUGUST 2, 2023 -
Allegory showing the problems in choosing between realism and anti-realism.
Imagine you want to discover the most effective way for humanity to relieve widespread, sustained suffering.
Imagine also that you observe how humans inflict much suffering upon one another over disagreements about how suffering can most effectively be relieved.
So you want to get to the bottom of these misery aggravating knowledge conflicts. You want to discover how to validate knowledge and truth.
So you embark on a quest to discover how truth and knowledge can be validated. Off you go, on the mythical metaphorical quest for real knowledge, hoping it will end the wars over how best to relieve suffering.
You’ve gone several days on that road. Finally you round the side of a steep mountain and see before you a kind of shrine in the shape of a giant boulder with a shovel slightly embedded in it from the top. Surrounding the shrine is a small encampment. When you arrive there, you notice that the road splits into two departing roads. Obviously, you must decide which of these departing roads to take.
How do you know which one to take?
Apparently, this fork in the road has enough significance that a shrine and encampment has grown around it. Perhaps there’s someone here who can explain the fork so you can decide which branch to take. So you step into the shrine to seek such answers. As you enter, you notice the inscription above the door which reads “Here your spade is turned”. [<- Allusion to a comment on the foundations of philosophy made by Ludwig Wittgenstein.] Once inside, the shrine keeper greets you.
Shrine Keeper: “Welcome, my compassionate seeker of the truth’s validation. No doubt you want to know which continuing road to take. Please, have a seat. This will take some time to explain.”
As you get comfortable in the available chair, you nod to affirm the Shrine Keeper’s presumptions about your situation.
Shrine Keeper: “Unfortunately, I have bad news for you. There is no reasonable way to decide which continuing road to take. Your decision will have to be made by faith, by whim, by emotion. Reason will fail you.
“I see confusion and a bit of anger in your face. You came here because you want some ultimate incontestable arbiter of knowledge, truth, and reason; an arbiter capable of determining the truth about how humanity can best relieve suffering, and thus end the wars we fight over the issue. And now here I am, telling you no such arbiter exists. There’s no way to end the wars.
“I’ll give you a clue. Notice that you cannot validate reason itself without relying on the validity of reason. It’s logically circular and therefore unreasonable. If you want to use reason, you must accept the validity of reason on faith. There are no prior facts that, when reasonably considered, permit you to conclude that reason is valid. Your allegiance to reason is mere arbitrary faith.
“If you ever leave this place, you’ll do so either because you made a leap of faith, or you abandoned the quest and went back the way you came.
“Those tents outside are the make-shift dwellings of those who came here on the same quest as yours, but have not left, as they are still trying to find some reasonable way to decide which road to proceed on. The average stay for questers is a few months. Most eventually accept that they will choose their road on emotion driven faith and do so. The rest quit and go home. But all of them leave here without the ultimate, incontestable arbiter they hoped to find. They all despairingly face the fact that the wars will continue indefinitely. Some become dysfunctionally depressed loners. Some become narcissistic monster soldiers in the wars. Some go crazy. Some develop split personalities in a vain attempt to continue on both roads simultaneously. Some end their own lives.
“This place, this fork, is called ‘The Great Epistemic Quagmire’. This is where you must choose between the two mutually exclusive theories of truth and knowledge. The road on the right is the theory called ‘realism’. And on the left you have ‘anti-realism’. Each has their advantages and disadvantages that may provide the emotional motivation for deciding which to take. But these advantages and disadvantages will not provide any conclusive reason-based argument for choosing either.
“So I will brief you on these advantages and disadvantages. But first I want to set the terms for these advantages and disadvantages.
“You are here because you want to relieve everyone’s suffering. But what if it were also true that you are here because you want to increase everyone’s suffering? You want to build a heavenly paradise; but you also want to bring hell on earth. Could you accept this contradiction? Could you even experience yourself as both compassionate and malevolent at the same time and in the same exact respect? Take some time to try imagining what that experience could even be like. Your wish to help is nothing but your wish to harm. There is absolutely no distinction between the two; they are literally one and the same. Can you actually experience both wishes as one single integrated wish? And if you could, what actions could you undertake to bring about the simultaneous relief and aggravation of each instance of suffering? Could you act on your contradictory wish at all? I’m sure you will conclude that no, you cannot even imagine compassion and malevolence being identical, that you could not possibly experience them as identical, and that the attempt to experience them as identical will shut down the mind the more intensely it is attempted. And likewise that no action is possible that will simultaneously relieve and aggravate any instance of suffering.
“Here, then, is the advantage of realism: realism prevents your mind from shutting down by rejecting contradictions as invalid and impossible. Likewise, it preserves your ability to identify suffering and act to relieve it. And while it also happens to preserve your ability to aggravate suffering, it is still the only theory that gives you the option to relieve it.
“This of course implies the disadvantage of anti-realism. Anti-realism shuts down the mind by accepting contradictions as valid and possible. Likewise, it destroys your ability to identify suffering and act to either relieve it or aggravate it. It is cognitive nihilism. And, by depriving the mind of any cognition, it has deprived the mind of any cognitive content to have an emotion about – it is also cogno-emotional nihilism. While you can still feel compassion for a suffering person and thoughtlessly act to relieve their suffering, you can’t extend your compassion or actions to others through thought.
“Now for the advantages of anti-realism. To spite its disadvantages, anti-realism is a superficially plausible-sounding and sophisticated argument against the elitist right wing totalitarian/authoritarian fascism responsible for inflicting so much intense suffering. When such malevolent elitists recognize superiority and inferiority among living beings, it inspires them to oppress and hurt the inferior. So, by invalidating the very idea of objective truth or reality, anti-realism is a shortcut to invalidating the idea of superiority and inferiority, thus undercutting the elitists who want to oppress and hurt the inferior. But it only works to the extent you can hide or explain away anti-realism’s self-contradiction and subsequent cognitive nihilism, which indeed, anti-realists do.
“This being widely understood, anti-realism has become the overwhelming favorite among those who at least pretend to feel great compassion. And this means that if you too embrace anti-realism, your schemes for relieving suffering will be well supported by others. This is actually very important. While the foundation of your relief scheme is cognitive nihilism, your scheme as a whole still may have some common sense realistic aspects that will see fruition and actually relieve suffering simply because the entire scheme is well supported by your numerous fellow anti-realists.
“Finally, I come to the disadvantages of realism, the greatest of which, again, is implied from the advantages of anti-realism. Obviously, because realism has the at least implied support of oppressive elitist fascists, realism has an associated reputation for supporting malevolence. Consequently, you are going to have a difficult time getting support for your compassionate schemes founded on realism. You will be bombarded with anti-realist arguments against realism. You will have to answer these arguments in a compassion-affirming way. You’ll need to drive a wedge between the fact of superiority/inferiority and the associated inspiration to oppress and hurt the inferior. You will climb a mountain of intellectual trials, and do so while you are socially shunned by just about anyone who claims to feel great compassion. While you’d like to think that realism has the upper hand in terms of reason and logic, simply because it rejects contradiction, you’ll find that realism can’t be fully validated on this very point because several apparent contradictions implied by realism itself still need resolving. Resolving these apparent contradictions may lead you to some extremely bizarre conclusions that will likely draw you much ridicule, even from other realists. You may have to conclude that time and space do not exist independently of the mind, and reconcile our experience of, and discourse about, time and space with that fact. Not likely in your lifetime.
“But now I address the final logical problem that realism bears, for this final problem is the Achilles heel for realism that allows anti-realism to remain a viable contender. It is, in fact, the basis for the entire epistemic quagmire.“
The problem is, realism cannot be proven. It must be accepted, or rejected, on faith. You cannot prove realism is true (or false for that matter) without already presupposing realism is true. The presupposition is the faith. The strongest argument for realism is that our minds have no alternative to it when thinking. For our minds, this makes realism incorrigible, inescapable, undeniable, ubiquitous. Now ask yourself: does realism’s incorrigibility prove that it is true or valid? What, exactly, can logically follow from the fact of incorrigibility? Our minds can’t even think about this problem without faith in realism. This just reaffirms the incorrigibility. But does that reaffirmed incorrigibility prove anything?
“So, my dear compassionate seeker of the truth’s validation, there is the great epistemic quagmire. You will leave this place by deciding on faith whether or not realism’s incorrigibility constitutes validation, or by abandoning this quest you’re on. I wish you a satisfactory resolution.”
With that, the shrine keeper slowly retires to their quarters.
And you remain, sitting, still processing the shrine keeper’s speech. Eventually you focus on trying to answer the question of whether incorrigibility constitutes validation. Now you have truly arrived at this place, this great epistemic quagmire. As you try some tentative solutions to the problem, you feel they all presuppose something that cannot logically be presupposed.
Shit. The clock of harrowing misery is ticking. People are suffering while you sit here trying to figure this out. You hear their cries grow louder – their terror and despair press you ever harder for the right decision and right action. Choose now! Help us!
Which continuing road do you choose?
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