Knowing...

I'll tell you what I don't like. I don't like it when people try to make the other party feel dumb to bolster their arguments. I'm with Hume on this. I don't think reason can account for very much. An answer you arrive at through reason may or may not be better than one you get at through faith but whatever the case, it often has nothing to do with the Truth. Reason and Faith are for things you do not know. If you know, you would not require either of those tools. It is always a mistake to apply abstract reasoning to reality as a whole. And when it comes right down to it, it still requires a bit of faith to believe that reason will provide you with the best solution. It's not necessarily so and never can be given its very nature.

I had this conversation with someone who was a recent graduate of Berkeley's philosophy department. Either she slept through most of her classes or the program itself was seriously suspect. I couldn't believe her lack of understanding in some pretty basic modern philosophic principles. We talked about the thought exercise involving the rising of the sun the following day. Like it or not, you cannot be sure that the sun will come up the next day. Perhaps you say that the Earth revolves around the sun and that it will continue to do so. Why do you believe that? How do you know? Is it because the sun has come up every other day? Well, that's poor thinking because the fact that it has come up every other day has nothing to do with it coming up tomorrow. Believing it will is a matter of habit. Knowing is a matter of past experience. Reason and faith are for future events. It is likely that the sun will and it makes sense to live your day assuming as much but that's not the point. You are still taking it on faith, like it or not, that it's going to happen. In fact, the very act of using reason-- especially the principle of sufficient reason-- requires a first leap of faith.

I'm not particularly interested in either of these things. I'm interested in knowing-- the kind of knowing that comes from experience. When I teach my students, I expect them to take nothing on faith except the faith that they have to have in me as their instructor to do some potentially dangerous and definitely uncomfortable things. After they do what I ask, they will know. Before that, it was just a guess. They could reason all they want about how they would deal with a particular situation and what would be effective. Or they could just do it and see what actually happens.

In our society, we have taken the position of the rationalists. We think that reason is the answer for everything. It is not. A well constructed argument can never prove anything beyond the fact that it is well constructed. It has nothing to do with the Truth. Reason is inherently destructive. It's good at poking holes and discovering foolery but it's hardly creative. As I like to say, logic will give you all kinds of reasons not to do something. It takes faith to create. I know many people like this. In fact, San Francisco, with its high percentage of intelligent, well-educated people is filled with many many folks who are unhappy and contributing nothing-- certainly nothing compared to what they have been given. I have a friend who is like this. He's incredibly intelligent but in a vicious way. You can't convince him to do anything or to every push himself because he has explained away everything into nothing. His arguments are always coherent and well-thought out but his intelligence offers nothing to his community around him.

If I were to call him on this, he would give me all kinds of reasons of why this isn't the case and I would not be able to defend my position against his barrage. But even a casual observer would have to agree with me. Arguments are just words and words are ether. People make the mistake of confusing words with Ideas which do, in fact, have weight and substance.

As always, I bring this back to the martial arts. I have, throughout my life, run into many notebook warriors who could argue me to the ground about the intricacies of technique. The conversation would go like this.
"What would you do if I did this?" To my answer they would say, "What if I did..." ad infinitum.

My favorite answer to this line of questioning came from one of my instructors who answered such queries with, "You can do whatever you want. The question is, 'Can you do it?'"

And that's it, isn't it. You can't answer those kinds of questions verbally. A person can always concoct some situation I haven't had to deal with. You have to put it on the mat and that's why I love the arts. It's one of the few places where you can call somebody on their bullshit in a definitive way. You can't talk your way out of getting punched in the face. You either dealt with it effectively or you didn't. Once, when I was working with a military unit, a local instructor came out to our training and tried to challenge what I was doing. He said that my knife techniques were ineffective and that he could take my knife away without suffering any injury 10 out of 10 times. I, of course, offered to have him demonstrate and he agreed. We met in the sand pit and lined up across from each other. I asked if he was ready and when I replied that he was, I immediately drew my live blade.

He backed up immediately and started stammering. He said he wasn't going to demonstrate against a live blade. He might get hurt. I replied that I thought that he had 100% confidence in his technique. He quickly started backpedaling and left the pit saying that I had misinterpreted his words-- the final defense of any academic. What did he think we wre doing? Having a epistemological debate? I wonder if academics would be so forceful in pushing their positions if there was such a cost for being wrong?

Finally, this brings me to Senator Obama. I'm sure he know a lot more than me in quite a few areas. But it's becoming increasingly clear that he knows nothing about foreign policy. What he uses instead of a strong argument is a condescending tone which seems odd to me since he has no foreign policy experience at all. To use Kennedy and Khrushchev as an example to depend his stated position of treating with Iran and Ahmahdinejead shows that he really doesn't understand the importance of that meeting. First of all, the Cuban Missile Crisis was a direct result of that meeting and Khrushchev's reading of Kennedy as a weak man. Secondly, the Soviet Union was a country with rational leaders who had a lot to lose. The leadership of Iran has shown itself to be highly irrational and we know they are actively working towards what they believe will be Armageddon. Comparing those two situations and regarding them as similar is something a senior in high school would do. Such an opinion would get laughed out of any decent first year political science program.

Bottom line-- you either know or you don't. Reason and Faith will never replace knowing no matter how strong they are. And arrogance based on something as flawed as human reasoning? Well, that's hubris and don't we always seem to pay a cost for that?