Belief is more trouble than its worth. Belief is a mental state, it is confidence in the truth of something. There are good reasons for this confidence, and poor ones, but in either case, I ask what is this confidence worth? What is wrong with being unconfident about what's true? Do we really need certainty over just a best guess? Many tote that lack of belief makes us unable to act? But this seems to be a separate question. I can make what I judge to be the best decision with the information at hand without having to believe that it was the best decision. It may give me peace of mind to believe, a type of self-re-assurance, but again this calm is not worth the price; it makes fanaticism, both large and small, too easy.
The spiritual -- and I purposely distinguish that from religious -- form of belief has a valid argument. Belief -- or more accurately, faith -- becomes a means of mental transformation. Many, if not all, spiritual traditions teach some form of the power of thoughts over our conditions. Belief becomes a tool by which to transform negative thoughts without skepticism as to whether positive thoughts are "more true." By virtue of believing positive thoughts, positivity will manifest. But again, it seems we could practice positive thinking without belief; we only use belief in positive thoughts toward positive thinking because before we can get out of our habit of believing period, we need to change the object of our belief toward something more desirable. This parallels closely with the Buddhist science of karma, in which first one tries to build good karma, but eventually uses karma to undo karma itself entirely and reach nirvana. Furthermore, it shows that if the act of believing differently can change reality, then spiritual belief is not really belief, i.e. if we may practice believing to change our circumstance, this very fact means that believing with the idea that something in the world is true apart from the belief itself is untenable.
True spiritual belief, then, is not really belief, a fixated mental idea, but a process, a practice, and devotional. It can be applied beyond positive thinking, and I think is most appropriate when we speak of belief in God. The spiritual belief in God, or more properly devotion to God, is evolved in that it puts aside the question of some truth-value about God's existence and seeks to know God intimately, not as an object of study, what non-spiritual belief necessitates. To believe in God's existence is to limit God, but to abandon knowledge of God, to abandon belief, is to meet God face-to-face. It is no wonder that Krishna in the Gita puts devotion to God over wisdom of God, and why the zen koan states, "When you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha."
At this juncture, someone could pose the argument, "But you yourself believe in the illegitimacy of belief; you can't escape belief." This retort has more to do with our habit of believing and understanding others in terms of beliefs than with some necessity about statement making. We can have a best guess on truth, without being arrogant to say enough that we believe it. Belief is arrogant much like the final court case in a long list of appeals: the evidence is all in, the decision is made, there is no more re-opening of the case. But reality just doesn't work this way. If we really want to understand truth, we have to see it as an open-ended, verdictless court case with new exhibits constantly submitted.
Maybe I've pigeon-holed belief, set up a straw-man version of the term. Can't we have beliefs that are always open to revision? Maybe, but then what work is the term "belief" doing? A better term might be "theory," and there is a reason why theories are talked about in science in place of beliefs, though I think science is equally guilty of some arrogant beliefs. I also don't think we need to exculpate "belief" from the english vocabulary either. They are plenty of times we collogquial use "belief" to mean the same thing as "my best guess." Again, an ordinary-usage argument may state, acknowledging the common use of "belief," I'm attacking a rarely used notion of the term. I guess on that question we all have to introspect, but I suspect that if many of us look at how belief functions in our lives, we'll find curmudgeon ideas recluse in our minds, irreverent to bangings on their door, whose persistence we exploit to help us keep confidence in a stable world. My love, Kelli, once told me I should try to stand next to the swing then always ride it, which I think is beautiful advice, and belief to me is the denial that the swing is moving at all. Belief puts our need for confidence in our best guesses over the importance of keeping those guesses under scrutiny. Whether that's true or not for you is your own best guess.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Sunday, January 9, 2011
You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Dick
I saw this on Discovery a long time ago and for some reason thought of it recently. It was about relating mate fidelity to testicle size. Gorillas, ironically, have the least effective homunculous factory in the ape family. Chimps, stranger still, are the most bulbous. Human men fall somewhere in the middle. Gorillas are also the loyalest of mates, and chimps the least, "monogamy" non-existent in their vocublary -- and anything else for that matter, well not counting sign language, wait that's gorillas. Going on, Gorillas then, who recruit less little-versions of themselves with them for a rump in the jungle then chimps, must be able to have multiple sessions with one partner to ensure pregnancy, while the chimp is a one shot champ. The argument goes that human males desire monogomy but are prone to infidelity because, having a median soldier count, they can sometimes sack -- pun intended -- the city in one raid, but need diplomacy, in the form of gifts, flowers, and displays of wealth, to gaurantee entry into the city walls. (I may have failed on two accounts here, 1) being funny and 2) explaining this well. The analogy makes this sound like it's about the effectiveness of persistent wooing vs. one-night stands to get to bed, when really the point is partners have sex -- yes, let's put aside the euphimisms for a moment -- more often than singles with multiple partners, thus increasing the chance of fertilization. The mid-sized human is just big enough to get it done in one try sometimes, but needs something stable as a guarantee.)
Now there seem to be some problems with the soundness of the argument itself, which isn't my main issue in writing about it, I'm more concerned about what it implies, but I think it's worth discussing. Firstly, there seems something fishy -- no pun intended, no really -- about its statistical assumptions. All things being equal, chance of fertilization has nothing to do with the diversity of partners; it doesn't matter if you have sex 1,000 times with one partner or sex once with 1,000 different people, chances of fertilization is the same, just like the danger is equal playing russian roulet twice with one revolver or two different guns. Assuming that both apes can have sex as often as they want, neither the chimps promiscuity nor the gorilla's monogamy alone is advantageous.
But let's get back to realities from statistical ideals, 1) it is most likely across most species coupled males have sex more often then their bachelor cousins and 2) commitment to a partner undermines a male's ability to produce progeny during his mate's pregnancy. The argument could be made then a chimp's more generous delivery produced no natural selection for chimp monogamy. While similarly behaving bachelor gorillas were selected against because of less potent jungle juice (I'm running out of slang here), monogamous gorillas had sex more and hence more had progeny, but with the cost of not being able to sauce the pan with a bun already in the oven. But again, this has nothing to do with oversized loads. Because chimps and gorillas can't -- or at least don't -- inter-mate, the pressure of natural selection in terms of fertilization is a competition within the species, not between them. That means, whatever is the most advantageous stategy, regardless of sperm count, should win out.
In other words, if the pro of more sex within a couple outweighs the cost of a 9-month loss of nookie, then that strategy should prevail within the species whether or not the fertility between them differs. Which copulation strategy will produce the most progeny is independent from sperm count; a higher sperm count will always lead to more children for any strategy, but no strategy will have an inverse relationship to sperm count. It seems then that the best strategy, in either species, would be to stay with one mate until she is pregnant, or it is clear that she can't get pregnant, and move on -- and way back in the day that seemed to be the case in some ancient cultures, though, as I'll explain later, if there is any actual connection between these practices' effectiveness and their existence, we have thankfully moved beyond them.
Secondly, the process of describing each structure of the organism as arriving from natural selection is, not just overused, but often just false (cf. The Dialectic Biologist, Levins and Lewontin). Take the vestigle organ: the appendix does not function in the body as some evolutionary optimum; it's neutral selection value has let it trail on (literally) for thousands of years, shrinking without selection's refinement. It is very possible that gorillas developed monogamy for completely different reasons -- perhaps the need of a male's presence to protect off spring -- which in turn made larger cojones vestigial. This is actually the negative version of the argument being critiqued; instead of the sperm count causing x, x causes the sperm count. While difference in sperm count should not effect selection of the most effective copulation strategy, selection for the most effective copulation strategy can render high sperm count less important! So maybe the discovery of monogamy is actually the cutting edge of copulation evolution, rendering over-powered testes passé -- the proverbial cannon downgrades with only the love bug to swat.
However -- though I've severely digressed -- it is the application of evolutionary history to either support or dissuade social practices that I take issue with. Whether intended or not, describing the impulse to cheat as some evolutionarily crafted mechanism to insure we pass on our seed just gives a group of already irresponsible men excuses they don't deserve. And for no good reason. What we used to do has nothing to do with what we should, I'm not saying anything new, just look up "naturalistic fallacy" -- spelled with an "f" not a "ph." When these arguments appeal to nature to extenuate moral failures, implicitly in this case, they aren't really taking about "what we do naturally" because, as an explanation, that would be a truism, like saying, "I cheat because I cheated." Nor can it be, "there are inherent impulses in us that cause us to do wrong" because it is equally guilty of the same truism. The appeal to nature really means something like, "there is something installed in us before birth as the result of million of years of evolution which helped us survive and still operates on us now." That may be true, but, again, there's no reason to hold those instincts in any more reverence than our societal structures against them. Humans I think are at the bottom of the endangered species list, so nix on the survival need. Are they mitigating because they predate thought? Old isn't better or more fundamental for any reason in particular. So although this appeal sounds sexy, really it doesn't make our instincts any more holy then any other product our circumstance of being human, of which the need for monogamy is a part. In essence, appealing to ball size as an excuse for infidelity is no better than explaining, "I wanted to get laid."
The Discovery show seemed to give reason to feel better about having cheated or the impulse to cheat: "my nuts made me do it." But when you really look at the reason, besides the reasoning being flawed, it sounds as silly as, "well, monkeys do it." There may be some explanatory power in the theory -- again, despite what I see as flaws -- as to why we may have instincts against the moral imperatives of our culture. But the attractiveness of these explanations, especially in talking about the "natural" human, is rarely in what they can explain about instincts, but what instincts can excuse in our behavior, an outlook which is not only false, but dangerous.
Now there seem to be some problems with the soundness of the argument itself, which isn't my main issue in writing about it, I'm more concerned about what it implies, but I think it's worth discussing. Firstly, there seems something fishy -- no pun intended, no really -- about its statistical assumptions. All things being equal, chance of fertilization has nothing to do with the diversity of partners; it doesn't matter if you have sex 1,000 times with one partner or sex once with 1,000 different people, chances of fertilization is the same, just like the danger is equal playing russian roulet twice with one revolver or two different guns. Assuming that both apes can have sex as often as they want, neither the chimps promiscuity nor the gorilla's monogamy alone is advantageous.
But let's get back to realities from statistical ideals, 1) it is most likely across most species coupled males have sex more often then their bachelor cousins and 2) commitment to a partner undermines a male's ability to produce progeny during his mate's pregnancy. The argument could be made then a chimp's more generous delivery produced no natural selection for chimp monogamy. While similarly behaving bachelor gorillas were selected against because of less potent jungle juice (I'm running out of slang here), monogamous gorillas had sex more and hence more had progeny, but with the cost of not being able to sauce the pan with a bun already in the oven. But again, this has nothing to do with oversized loads. Because chimps and gorillas can't -- or at least don't -- inter-mate, the pressure of natural selection in terms of fertilization is a competition within the species, not between them. That means, whatever is the most advantageous stategy, regardless of sperm count, should win out.
In other words, if the pro of more sex within a couple outweighs the cost of a 9-month loss of nookie, then that strategy should prevail within the species whether or not the fertility between them differs. Which copulation strategy will produce the most progeny is independent from sperm count; a higher sperm count will always lead to more children for any strategy, but no strategy will have an inverse relationship to sperm count. It seems then that the best strategy, in either species, would be to stay with one mate until she is pregnant, or it is clear that she can't get pregnant, and move on -- and way back in the day that seemed to be the case in some ancient cultures, though, as I'll explain later, if there is any actual connection between these practices' effectiveness and their existence, we have thankfully moved beyond them.
Secondly, the process of describing each structure of the organism as arriving from natural selection is, not just overused, but often just false (cf. The Dialectic Biologist, Levins and Lewontin). Take the vestigle organ: the appendix does not function in the body as some evolutionary optimum; it's neutral selection value has let it trail on (literally) for thousands of years, shrinking without selection's refinement. It is very possible that gorillas developed monogamy for completely different reasons -- perhaps the need of a male's presence to protect off spring -- which in turn made larger cojones vestigial. This is actually the negative version of the argument being critiqued; instead of the sperm count causing x, x causes the sperm count. While difference in sperm count should not effect selection of the most effective copulation strategy, selection for the most effective copulation strategy can render high sperm count less important! So maybe the discovery of monogamy is actually the cutting edge of copulation evolution, rendering over-powered testes passé -- the proverbial cannon downgrades with only the love bug to swat.
However -- though I've severely digressed -- it is the application of evolutionary history to either support or dissuade social practices that I take issue with. Whether intended or not, describing the impulse to cheat as some evolutionarily crafted mechanism to insure we pass on our seed just gives a group of already irresponsible men excuses they don't deserve. And for no good reason. What we used to do has nothing to do with what we should, I'm not saying anything new, just look up "naturalistic fallacy" -- spelled with an "f" not a "ph." When these arguments appeal to nature to extenuate moral failures, implicitly in this case, they aren't really taking about "what we do naturally" because, as an explanation, that would be a truism, like saying, "I cheat because I cheated." Nor can it be, "there are inherent impulses in us that cause us to do wrong" because it is equally guilty of the same truism. The appeal to nature really means something like, "there is something installed in us before birth as the result of million of years of evolution which helped us survive and still operates on us now." That may be true, but, again, there's no reason to hold those instincts in any more reverence than our societal structures against them. Humans I think are at the bottom of the endangered species list, so nix on the survival need. Are they mitigating because they predate thought? Old isn't better or more fundamental for any reason in particular. So although this appeal sounds sexy, really it doesn't make our instincts any more holy then any other product our circumstance of being human, of which the need for monogamy is a part. In essence, appealing to ball size as an excuse for infidelity is no better than explaining, "I wanted to get laid."
The Discovery show seemed to give reason to feel better about having cheated or the impulse to cheat: "my nuts made me do it." But when you really look at the reason, besides the reasoning being flawed, it sounds as silly as, "well, monkeys do it." There may be some explanatory power in the theory -- again, despite what I see as flaws -- as to why we may have instincts against the moral imperatives of our culture. But the attractiveness of these explanations, especially in talking about the "natural" human, is rarely in what they can explain about instincts, but what instincts can excuse in our behavior, an outlook which is not only false, but dangerous.
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