More Unfashionable Observations: Perception’s Implicit Morality

In today’s More Unfashionable Observations I want to take a moment to discuss how it is that all perception, including scientific reasoning, is done with an implicit morality.

Earlier we touched on the play circuit in mammals and how it regulates fair play in rats as was discovered by Jaak Pankseep. For the rat, playing fair is just part of their embodied behavior. For the human, we can look at that embodied behavior and extract out an articulate philosophical principle, viz., one should align oneself with a mode of being such that play becomes possible across the set of all future games, never sacrificing the set of hypothetical future games for the actual game at hand.

The idea of morality at the heart of perception is something that the scientific revolution tried to do away with at the start of the 17th century. The idea being pushed was that the primitive and antiquated concept of an ethically value laden understanding universe needed to be left in the past and that a rationalist objective understanding of the world would lead to progress. The post scientific revolution world would see values and morals a part of a subjective worldview which needed to be dispensed with in order to usher in the modern world.

While it is true that this new method of studying the world allowed for the rapid expansion of technology and engineering its incorporation into the epistemological framework has crushed the meaning out of life. From the beginning, the scientific endeavor was such that the goal was to remove all subjectivity from the observation and analysis of the world. The sterility of this did wonders for our understanding of how to manipulate the physical world while, simultaneously, stripping away our humanity.

One of the main things that the scientific project and its early (and indeed current) adherents continually fail to understand is how without the moral obsession with truth in Christianity coupled with the absolute saturation of Catholicism in Europe between 500 AD and 1500 AD no scientific endeavor would be possible. The European mind spent a millennia obsessing over the idea of a transcendental and knowable truth. It is only the fully developed christian European mind that could possibly come to the scientific endeavor.

Jung explains science as being the articulated form of the dream that was alchemy. Alchemy is the attempt by man to fulfill what was seen as the unfulfilled promises of Christianity with regard to the cessation of suffering. The alchemist’s attempt to create the philosopher’s stone was the attempt to heal the suffering of the world. Jung saw that the alchemical transformation mirrored the internal transformation one goes through when they integrate the shadow into the self and become whole.

Nietzsche, however, sees a complex and nuanced origin for science which he discusses in his The Gay Science 1882 and again in his  Genealogy of Morality 1887. Nietzsche argued that in the thousand years of absolute saturation of Christianity in Europe a deep commitment to truth constituted the heart of the cognitive framework of European man. Nietzsche calls this the “will-to-truth” and says its cultivation as a cultural habit led to rigorous self-examination and discipline. It became a driving force which eventually turned inward, questioning its own Christian foundation.

There are other things Nietzsche points to regarding the molding of the European mind by Christianity making it suitable for the scientific endeavor such as the monastic tradition of knowledge preservation and ascetic scholarly habits as well as the cultural stability Christianity provided allowing for intellectual pursuit. To be simple about it, Nietzsche sees that the only way for science to develop is through the metaphysical commitment, social stability and academic habits which are the hallmark of Christianity.

The point Nietzsche is trying to drive home is that Christianity was like a man sitting on a tree branch cutting through it with a saw. The science which emerged as a consequence of the Christian world view was the same science that would cause the crisis of faith in Christianity. I think Nietzsche is correct, even if his thinking is incomplete. He mistakes the organically evolved christian principles which are  a reflection of humanity with the artificial overlay of the scientific viewpoint (which Nietzsche believed undermined its Christian foundation). This misunderstanding leads him to miss that, with time, the scientific viewpoint will collapse in on itself owing to its internal, anti-human, contradictions and that this collapse will lead to a backwards evolution to the more human and coherent Christian cognitive framework.

What I believe Nietzsche and Jung both miss is that the scientific method itself, not merely the framework that makes it possible, is a consequence of the Christian belief in a moral value laden universe and being built upon that belief while simultaneously denying its validity ensures a collapse rather than an organic synthesis. How is it possible that the objective scientific and engineering standpoints are rooted in moral value?

For this we have to go back to talking about perception. J.J. Gibson’s Ecological Approach to Visual Perception is a landmark in the understanding of how we perceive the world. The idea that was common until Gibson was that we perceive an object and then ascertain its utility. But this is just not correct.

Instead we see what Gibson calls affordances. This is to say, we see the affordant utility in an object and then infer the object. For instance, we do not see a coffee cup and then infer the idea of “vessel to drink coffee out of.” Rather, we see a vessel to drink coffee out of and then infer the idea of “coffee cup.” An ever more central conceptualization of this is that we do not see a venomous snake and then infer danger. We don’t do this even a little bit. The amount of time it would take the mind to do that would mean that the human species would simply have fallen prey to the reptiles they co-evolved with. Rather, we see “DANGER!!!!” and then later encapsulate it in a neural network and process the details and infer “venomous snake.”

The world arrays itself to us in three major categories; tools, obstacles and the irrelevant. The irrelevant is a particularly important category here because nearly everything is in it. Forgetting for the moment that over 80% of the universe is made of dark matter and dark energy which does not interact with light and as such is not available for direct observation by humans meaning that our lives is spent in less than 20% of the physical space we inhabit, there is something even more crucial going on.

The number of facts in the world is infinite. Thank about that. Every time you focus on something, think about something, decide to do something you are making a judgement that the thing you are thinking about or doing is more valuable than the infinite number of other things you could have thought about or done.

More than just the number of facts in the world, you can take any one foot square section of any spot in the world and in that one foot square find an infinite number of facts and details. How, if there are an infinite number of details in just a one foot square, can we possibly make sense of the world? The answer is simple, we ignore almost everything and that which we do not ignore we imbue with either negative or positive value. Simply, we make value judgements in order to perceive.

To begin with, everything that remains stable is irrelevant. You walk across the floor. You take for granted that solidity, stability and constancy of the floor. You don’t have to investigate the area for each step, you ignore it. What you have done is listed the importance of the floor at zero. That is subject to change if the floor shakes, explodes or is suddenly covered with snakes but so long as the floor doesn’t do anything unexpected it has absolutely no value to your conscious mind.

This is incredibly interesting because the way perception works out, the world arrays itself to you with regard to your goals. When I want to walk from one side of the room to another, so long as the floor is not shaking or filled with large holes or in danger of collapsing or on fire, I can ignore it as it is neither a tool nor an obstacle. This is important to remember when the world in which you inhabit is somehow insufficient by your own terms. If you are experiencing a world which is anathema to how you believe the world ought to be, your first step should be to re-evaluate your own values. The world is not to blame when it arrays itself according to your values and you wind up being dissatisfied with it.

Now, of course there is some measure of arbitrary distribution of miserable things. Young children get terminal cancer, people are randomly stuck by lighteneing but, and here is the important thing to remember about exceptions….no one cares about them. Really. It’s like, yeah yeah yeah there is an exception to the rule somewhere out there. It is irrelevant. No one cares. So yes, if your world is arrayed in a way you have your response ought to be, should you wish to change your world, to investigate your own values. This isn’t some new age psychological clap trap. That your world is a product of your values is absolutely a technical deifnition.

If we chart a path and there is a chair in-between where we are and where we are going it presents itself as an obstacle which needs to be dealt with and then you have to decide which manner you will deal with it. If you are not looking for a place to sit, a chair in your path manifests itself in your perception merely as something which needs to be moved or avoided which forces a choice of action on you as it presents an obstacle to your stated goal. Just walking from point a to point b already involves a value judgement on how to deal with perceived obstacles.

There is a deep Christian idea that the world you inhabit is a result of the values you have. This is why Christ says to the rich young man to get rid of all of his wealth. This is often read, poorly and naively, by people as some form of socialist critique of wealth when in reality it is a critique of misplaced values.

The wealthy young man comes to Jesus because he does not like how his life is arrayed. All we know about him is that he is unhappy with his life, he is wealthy and he is young. Jesus’ response, in essence, is “your identity is that of a wealthy person and the world has presented itself to you in a way you find disappointing (notice, it is not Jesus telling him his life is poorly lived, the young wealthy man seeks Jesus out because by his own scales his life is being poorly lived). So change that constitutive aspect of your life, your wealth, and with your value change so the world will array itself differently…and while different may not be better, it at least has a better chance of being better than the world you already find lacking.

As it turns out, this is exactly true. Our values and goals dictate our very perception.

The scientist who is about to study something is confronted with the same problem as all perceivers. He has to chose which things to look at. Forgetting that he might have to chose between one disease or another to research which will require an ethical judgement at the outset, the need to set up parameters for research and experimentation also requires narrowing the set of possible observable facts from infinite to a small and manageable number.

All perception, including that of the scientist in his role as scientist, requires a multitude of value judgements which are all dealing with a world which is arraying itself in terms of your goals.

So yes, both Nietzsche and Jung were absolutely correct with their understanding of the relationship between Europe’s Christian mind and the birth of science, but neither of them went far enough in their understanding to get to the point where all perception requires imbedded value systems and goal orientation as a precondition.

One is reminded of Robert Piercing’s famous Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance 1974 where Piercing argues that an active engagement in life is a lot like riding a motorcycle. When you want to change lanes on a motorcycle you do not steer into the other lane. Rather, you focus your eyes where you want to go and the motorcycle will follow. This may not make sense to people who have not driven a motorcycle, but Piercing is absolutely correct…both about motorcycle driving and engagement in the world.