I perceive myself as a self- aware being capable of choice. I am surer of that than of the evidence of my senses, which seem to me less reliable. I also perceive myself as circumstanced in a world which is not- me, since it is recalcitrant, and inherently limits my choices. My "empirical self" seems to be constructed out of the interaction between myself and the world, or experience. The primary locus of experience is my body, particularly the senses and the place where they are processed (the brain). I perceive my body as "belonging to me", but not me. That part of the "empirical self" which I perceive as being me is called the personality, and is the primary locus of interaction between myself and the world.
I encounter beings with bodies, like mine, and interact with them. They appear to have personalities. Some of these personalities seem primitive and problematic, merely reactive rather than reflective, and so I enter into relationship with them ambiguously. Such are the higher order animals, especially those domesticated as pets, like cats and dogs. Some, though, are capable of speech, and clearly reflective, able to evaluate experience and make plans, much as I do. Given that they seem to have fully developed personalities with which I can enter into close relationship, I assume that they, like me, have "selves" underlying their empirical selves. I perceive all of us as persons.
One of the characteristics of persons is that they seek to understand the world around them, limited by their resources. They also seek to devise ways of improving their lot through the application of whatever knowledge they have culled. But beyond that, they evaluate the world around them. They introduce ideas of beauty and goodness, and treat them as qualities one can discern in things, as important ways of ordering experience. In fact, attempting to discern value seems central to what it means to be a fully developed person.
Our ideas of beauty and goodness arise from our affects, and the responses that we have to things. Certain things seem worthy of aesthetic contemplation, otherwise useless, and we call them beautiful. Certain things, or actions, seem worthy of admiration and praise, and we call them good. The perception of things as beautiful or good precedes choice and acculturation, and are spontaneous responses upon which acculturation and choice depend.
We care about those things that arouse our admiration, whether aesthetic or moral, and feel called upon to cultivate them or defend them. Love arises from the sentiment of admiration, and those things we do not love directly, we love for the sake of something we value, as when we cherish keepsakes.
Love seems to be as central to the development of a fully formed person as the urge to understand things.......
Experience shows us that reason is efficacious, in the long run. We accumulate facts, refine hypotheses, develop theories, and gradually know more about the world, and show it by being able to infer an unknown from a known, for later confirmation, or by employing our understanding to construct ever more refined "tools for living".
Is evaluation equally efficacious? Can we make progress in being able to discriminate about beauty and goodness? Are beauty and goodness in some sense qualities inhering in things, about which we can be more or less accurate?
When we talk about the color blue, we are referring to something which has a basis in the object, but is only experienced "as such" within the framework of our sensory apparatus. It has what one might call a subjective element, and yet it is grounded in the way we are constructed to experience certain things.
In the same way, beauty seems to be a quality belonging to objects as we experience them. It is a commonplace of connoisseurship that greater experience with art tends towards a convergence of taste, even if disagreement still remains. Taste is not subject to definitive criteria, and yet it seems to be capable of refinement and even meaningful discussion.
Is the perception of goodness also a matter of experience and reflection, and also a response to objective features as experienced by creatures such as we?
We are capable of recognizing that certain things are supposed to be such- and- such, although individuals may not conform to the pattern. We develop notions of what a sapling is supposed to become, or what constitutes health and well- being for a human. Our ideas of goodness and badness, in the end, strive to reflect this elementary "normativity": something is wrong with the tree that will not produce leaves, something is wrong with the person who is unable to walk. Generally, we find such notions useful in perceiving and correcting problems.
In the same way, we get an idea of what persons should be, both minimally and ideally, both as individuals and in relation to others. Just as our notion of "health" helps us to identify problems and solve them, or to know what to aim at in seeking to exceed ordinary expectations (as do athletes), so our notion of "character" enables us to judge personal deficiencies, and to recognize exceptional qualities.
Similarly, we have an idea of how persons of character are supposed to behave, and of what we aim at as a society. Just as our notion of health has improved over the centuries, as well as how to best secure it, so we have developed more accurate ideas about character, behavior, and the good society.
Finally, we would seem to fulfill ourselves by acquiring knowledge, developing our tastes, and building our characters. In the world that we actually experience, there are persons seeking fulfillment, both as individuals and in relationships. There is beauty, and we can learn to perceive it more clearly. There is goodness, and we can aspire to becoming better as persons and societies. There is truth, and we can seek to understand something of the world.
This world contrasts with the world of "matter in motion", where persons are merely automata, where beauty is solely in the eye of the beholder, and where goodness is a matter of choice, or grounded in evolutionary exigencies. The reason that most people, in most places, at most times, believe in God or the gods, is that it makes sense, based upon the human world, a world is altogether surer and better founded than the inhuman one speculated upon by scientism.
The idea that there has to be more than matter in incidental configurations, that there is purpose and beauty in things, is the base line, elementary insight. Just as we have developed our sense of beauty and idea of goodness, we have developed our ideas of God. The monotheistic religions penetrated and conquered most paganisms. Hinduism was more resilient because it has a quasi- monotheistic theology, in the idea of Brahm as the aboriginal source of things. Buddhism has similarly developed an idea of the Dharma as guiding all things, similar to the Stoic idea of the Logos.
The bottom line, then, is that in the world of human experience, acknowledgment of some sort of Deity makes sense....... |
