Jerry Brown asked whether I have any views on Occasionalism. I confess that is not something to which I have given much thought (or perhaps I should say, to which God has given much thought through me) but a little reflection suggests that if taken seriously, it is a very strange view.
Let us suppose that it took me one second to dictate the
phrase “Blogs are weird.” There are 1 billion nanoseconds in a second. That
means that during the time I was dictating that three word sentence, God
created the universe anew 1 billion times. Each time He did this (God
apparently likes to be referred to as masculine and since He is all in all, I
think we should play along) He created the universe ex nihilo, unconstrained by anything He had done previously, such
as beginning through me the dictation of the three word sentence. But of course
between any two nanoseconds there is on this theory a timeless eternity that
could in principle be filled by an infinity of worlds.
Well, you get the idea. Someone might claim to be comforted
by this thought but of course that would simply be a misleading shorthand way
of saying that God comforts Himself by this thought, for there is nothing but
God and God is all in all and so forth and so on.
Now one might ask, if one has not been paying attention, why
someone who believes this would bother to write it in the comments section of a blog, but once again that would be a fundamental mistake because it is God who
is writing in the comments section on His own blog (and of course it is also
God who, through me, is mistakingly thinking that this is my blog.)
There are, we are told, one and ½ billion people who believe
this, to whom can be added the more than 1 ½ billion who believe the Christian
story and all those other folks with their religious beliefs. Or rather, we are
to suppose, God is endlessly, uncountably infinitely many times, creating a new
a world that is simply Himself writ small in which for his own incomprehensible
amusement he chooses to contemplate himself in various ways through these
various people.
On an entirely different matter not quite at the same
elevated level, our little cat, Chloe, is settling in quite nicely and after
one day of picking at the food we put out is now eating us out of house and
home. In these difficult times, it is good to find so simple a pleasure, or, to
quote Pooh Bah, an innocent source of merriment.
28 comments:
Occasionalism and compatibilism are metaphysical (conceptual) models found in various philosophical traditions, East and West. While they have been put forward and debated by philosophers around the world as explanations, it is the mystics that offer the most comprehensive conceptual models that they claim are descriptive, based on supra-mental cognition. The discussion is based on part by Ahmed's quoting the Emerson' rendering of the Bhagavad Gita, which is nice poetically but it is not a scholarly translation either. In my view the Gita is the supreme expression of perennial wisdom in summary form. Shankara wrote a commentary on it that has been translated into English.
Shankara's advaita vedanta and Ibn 'Arabi's wahdat al-wujud ("unity of being") are expressions of the absolute unity of being aka unqualified non-dualism, which are recognized in their respective traditions as reports based on experience.
An obstacle to accessing both is language. Shankara wrote in Sanskrit and Al-'Arabi in Arabic but to properly approach them requires knowledge of those languages, since translations are only approximations and necessarily are based on the translator's interpretation.
The best contemporary conceptual model in English that I am aware of is Meher Baba's God Speaks (1955, 2/e 1973, 1997 reprint), which gives the comprehensive model and related literature elaborating on it. Meher Baba confirms Shankara and Ibn 'Arabi (and others that have reportedly attained "perfection"). God Speaks can be downloaded freely on the Internet. If you are interested in such questions as occasionalism and compatibilism, I suggest taking a look at it. It is a comprehensive picture of reality by someone that claims to have realized it experientially.
If you think that perennial wisdom is just a curiosity or a waste of time, forget about it. It is not based on philosophical argument. But f you think that perennial wisdom is the apex of knowledge or are even curious about it, go for it.
But even if one rejects perennial wisdom and the type of experience it is purportedly based on, I don't think that one can adequate approach such questions as occasionalism and compatibilism without being aware of how this sort of matter is treated by those who purport to know immediately, even though they must express themselves mediately through concepts to be understood.
Some reactions:
I did laugh, multiple times, but on reflection, I'm not exactly sure why I laughed. (More on that in a moment.) Assuming it's coherent, occasionalism does indeed offer a "very strange" picture of how the world might be. But I always go back to this bit from Bryan Magee, who was one of the writers who introduced me to philosophy - and whom you once described as a "dork," haha - nNot unfairly, I suppose...
The world is a very odd place, so the truth about it is pretty well bound to be odd, too. Bertrand Russel wrote in The Problems of Philosophy: "The truth about physical objects must be strange. It may be unattainable, but if any philosopher believes that he has attained it, the fact that what he offers as the truth is strange ought not to be made a ground of objection to his opinion." I agree very strongly with that.
Don't get me wrong - this doesn't mean that the pursuit of philosophical truth is a contest to see who can out-strange everyone else; it just means that strangeness would have to be necessary but not sufficient for philosophical truth. Unless one prefers to live in a world of "common sense," that is. ;)
Back to laughter. When I think about it, I'm really not that sure what the deeper significance of laughter would be, from the philosophical or psychological standpoint; I've read of some theories and intelligent guesses, but not at all extensively. "LOL" can mean, among other things, "that's preposterous" as well as "that's an important truth that we'd ordinarily hesitate to express."
What is even more amazing is that according to Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity, how long it takes you, or anyone else, to write the three-letter sentence “Blogs are weird,” will vary depending on how fast you are moving when you perform the action (assuming there is such a thing as motion, which Einstein did believe existed). The faster you move, the less time it takes to perform an action, because with increased speed time slows down. This does not mean that time only appears to slow down – it actually does slow down. This has been proved by synchronizing atomic clocks and placing one of the clocks on a jet plane, which takes off and flies at high speed for a given interval of time. Upon returning to the location from which it departed, e.g., one hour according to the clock which stayed at the location of departure, the atomic clock that was on the jet plane will have a time that is several nanoseconds less than the clock which stayed at the location of departure.
So, applying the Theory of Special Relativity to occasionalism, God recreates the universe anew in every nanosecond, the durations of which vary depending on the speeds at which the actions are being performed.
Another error:
"three-word sentence"
Isn't it just as absurd to think that 'the laws of nature' caused nano second by nano second the universe to spurt and putter forward? If God is absurd, isn't Quantum Mechanics almost as absurd?
Some would say, though not me, that Marxism is as much religious faith as social science and that it has more in common with occasionalism than physics.
It too is an occasionalism: the answer to every social problem, or occasion, is 'collective ownership of the means of production'
I do suspect God believes in Quantum Mechanics more than he believes in Marxism.
I wonder whether reality is as simple as things seem on your morning constitutional
Howie,
As mind boggling is Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity is, his General Theory of Relativity, which integrates space and time to explain gravity, is even more astounding – and also been proved via astronomical observations.
But it gets even stranger when dealing with quantum mechanics. Richard Feynman, an expert on quantum mechanics, once stated if anyone claims they understand quantum mechanics, they are lying. One example. There is a phenomenon in quantum mechanics called “entanglement.” According to entanglement, subatomic particles located at different places in the universe somehow “communicate” with each other – and they do so at speeds faster than the speed of light – which is supposed to be impossible. Einstein rejected entanglement, calling it “spooky action at a distance.” (I may get the next part wrong, so the quantum mechanic mayvens who read this blog, please forgive – and then correct – me.) This gave rise to a famous dispute between Einstein and Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, on the one hand, and Niel Bohrs on the other. Then, in 1964, an Irish mathematician/physicist named John Bell published a paper in which he offered a mathematical analysis which, if implemented by experiment, would prove which of the two sides was correct. His analysis is referred to as Bell’s Theorem, and it is as complicated as the proof for Gödel’s Inconsistency Theorem. Well, guess what, Bell’s Theorem has been put to experimental tests numerous times, and the experimental results prove that Einstein was wrong, and that entanglement does exist.
For those interested in quantum mechanics viewed from the perspective of mysticism, I recommend “Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” by Robert Pirsig.
My aged mind is playing tricks on me again.
“Zen and The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance” has absolutely nothing to do with quantum mechanics. It is a good book though, in which the author, a philosophy professor, discusses the romantic and analytic approaches to life.
The book I meant to recommend is “The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics.”
“Zen and The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance” has absolutely nothing to do with quantum mechanics. It is a good book though, in which the author, a philosophy professor, discusses the romantic and analytic approaches to life.
Moreover, it is a (philosophical) novel, which makes it an interesting read. I once assigned it as required reading for discussion in a Phil 101 course I taught that went down very well.
re: Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
The fundamental idea of the MWI, going back to Everett 1957, is that there are myriads of worlds in the Universe in addition to the world we are aware of. In particular, every time a quantum experiment with different possible outcomes is performed, all outcomes are obtained, each in a different newly created world, even if we are only aware of the world with the outcome we have seen. The reader can split the world right now using this interactive quantum world splitter. The creation of worlds takes place everywhere, not just in physics laboratories, for example, the explosion of a star during a supernova.
"newly created world"... So in theory, by flicking a switch on a quantum experiment, one can create many new worlds.
Of course, it's just a theory, but it's interesting to note that serious people with lots of letters after their names are teaching this stuff in universities.
Physics is weird that way.
Thanks for the reply Professor. I was wondering what an avowed atheist might think about this matter. Of course God may have caused you to be an atheist in the first place but this gets too speculative too quickly.
Glad the cat is happy.
"Glad the cat is happy."
Picture, please!
Further to my comment on quantum theory,
It has been noted that Al-Ghazali's theory of physical reality anticipates some of the core principles of contemporary quantum physics (also known as quantum mechanics) by almost a millenium. In her 1993 paper, Causality Then and Now: Al Ghazali and Quantum Theory, the scholar Karen Harding stated:
"The extent of the commonalities is striking. For example, both deny that the regularities in the behavior of objects should be attributed to the existence of causal laws. Further, they agree that events in the world ate not strictly predictable. Both accept the idea that unexpected, unpredictable things can and do occur. According to al Ghazali's explanation, God is omnipotent and involved in the world at every moment and can, therefore, cause anything to happen. The Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum theory says that it is impossible to predict the exact behavior of an object based on physical laws. As a result, while one might expect a lead ball to fall when it is dropped, there is a definite possibility that the ball will rise instead."
Karen Harding concludes:
"Although separated by culture and by nearly ten centuries, the similarities between al-Ghazali and the Copenhagen Interpretation are remarkable. In both cases, and contrary to common sense, objects are viewed as having no inherent properties and no independent existence. In order for an object to exist, it must be brought into being either by God (a1 Ghazili) or by an observer (the Copenhagen Interpretation).
In addition, the world is not entirely predictable. For al-Ghazali, God has the ability to make anything happen whenever He chooses. In general, the world functions in a predictable manner, but a miraculous event can occur at any moment. All it takes for a miracle to occur is for God to not follow His "custom." The quantum world is very similar. Lead balls fall when released because the probability of their behaving in that way is very high. It is, however, very possible that the lead ball may "miraculously" rise rather than fall when released. Although the probability of such an event is very small, such an event is, nonetheless, still possible.
Both al-Ghazali in the eleventh century and quantum theory in the twentieth century imply that the world is very different from what common sense would lead one to believe. The appearance of objects is deceiving. Objects do not have an independent existence, as one has come to expect. Objects created each moment, either by God or by an act of observation. Furthermore, it is not possible, even in principle, to predict the exact behavior of objects, but only the probability of occurrences. Such a view of the physical world is, then, both new and old."
Here's a link to Karen Harding's paper (pdf file): Causality Then and Now: Al Ghazali and Quantum Theory
here's a picture
Ahmed,
You, along with Prof. Harding, are totally distorting the implications of quantum mechanics and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in two major respects:
1. The probabilistic model of quantum mechanics and Everett’s multiple worlds theory applies on the sub-atomic level. It does not apply on the macro level and does not entail that making predictions about physical events on the macro level is impossible.
2. Quantum mechanics applies to inanimate, sub-atomic particles. It does not apply to questions of human behavior and personal responsibility for human actions. Whether a person may develop cancer and end up dying from it is not the result of human actions which implicate personal responsibility. Claiming, on the other hand, that the uncertainty of quantum mechanics applies to human behavior such that personal responsibility for one’s actions does not exist because all events on the macro level are caused by Allah, who decides when, where and how we will all die, so that the terrorists who killed 3,000 people on 9/11 were merely doing Allah’s will has absolutely no justification in the theory of quantum mechanics.
Post-script
Ahmed, the article which you refer to by Karen Harding is not even published in a peer reviewed journal.
I was wondering what an avowed atheist might think about this matter.
From the POV of perennial wisdom it is unnecessary to bring "God" into it. Buddhist conceptual models are non-theistic, for example, and Buddhism can be viewed as an example of the negative way (via negativa) in contrast to the affirmative way (via affirmativa). The via negativa has been a venerable position in Christian mystical theology.
The same/similar reality can be represented using different conceptual models. Historically, these models tend to be cultural. The East is quite different from the West but the underlying meta-model is the same or at least similar, being based on nonduality (absolute unity of being).
The "mystical" traditions of the West — Kabbalah, Sufism, Christian mysticism and Western esotericism are heavily influenced by Western culture, which is combination of the ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek cultures, so they tend to be characterized by God-talk. On the other hand, the mystical traditions of the East, notably Vedanta, Buddhism and Taoism, show little to none of such influence, although there are also strong theistic traditions in the East as well.
So one can choose among different types of conceptual model, some of which are theistic and some not. See, for example, Reza Shah-Kazemi, Paths to Transcendence: According to Shankara, Ibn Arabi & Meister Eckhart.
An interesting counterpart to metaphysical and epistemological nondualism in Western philosophy can be found in neutral monism. See the the entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for an overview.
BTW, this has been a hot topic in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and theoretical physics from some decades now. At lot of people are viewing reductionism as a dead end.
Tom- I can only pretend to be smart for short times so you will have to dumb that down a lot if you expect me to understand it.
But I think 'perennial wisdom' seems pretty good although I doubt I will achieve it.
DDA,
...applies on the sub-atomic level. It does not apply on the macro level and does not entail that making predictions about physical events on the macro level is impossible.
First a bio:
Thomas Warren Campbell (December 9, 1944) is a physicist, lecturer, and author of the My Big T.O.E. (Theory of Everything) trilogy, a work that claims to unify general relativity, quantum mechanics, and metaphysics along with the origins of consciousness.
The following comment on Tom's forum refers to a video that I remember watching:
In one of Tom's videos, he makes the claim that the double slit experiment could theoretically work with macroscopic objects ("toaster ovens"), but that it was totally impractical to scale up.
His videos are long, and he has a lot of them, so I don't remember which video it was, otherwise, I would provide a link.
Tom, just a quibble perhaps, but there was considerable east - west exchange (ideas as well as goods) along the Silk Road back in the day. The manuscripts from the Dunhuang caves have been very interesting. There were Christian, Jewish and other communities in various places in Central Asia. Quite a bit of syncretism.
I can only pretend to be smart for short times so you will have to dumb that down a lot if you expect me to understand it.
I wish I could do that in a comments thread but it requires too much background to do in a general way. Ordinarily, I would try to determine a person's background along with the their angle of interest. Then, I would recommend some things to read to get started.
IN the first place, everyone operates in terms of a conceptual model, much of which is tacit and acquired culturally. This model is based on assumptions, some of which involve criteria like values. Most people are unaware of this and take their conceptual model to be "reality." But a few curious folks attempt to get a grip on it.
To do this it is enormously helpful to educate oneself about conceptual modeling and alternative models. This is basically the history of global philosophy from ancient times.
Then one can identity the enduring questions that are at the basis of this, like what is (ancient philosophy), what can we know about what is (modern philosophy) and what can we say about what is meaningfully (analytic philosophy).
Then maybe one is fascinated by the reports of the world's mystics and masters, saint and sages, and poets and prophets that point beyond the confines of the purely rational and empirical approaches to knowledge about reality.
This is where the models get interesting. The difficulty of perennial wisdom though is the assumption that supra-mental cognition that imparts "privileged" knowledge is possible. If one accepts that as a hypothesis to be be confirmed in experience, then one set about following the instructions of those who purported know.
This is no small matter but requires a lifetime of commitment.
just a quibble perhaps, but there was considerable east - west exchange (ideas as well as goods) along the Silk Road back in the day. The manuscripts from the Dunhuang caves have been very interesting. There were Christian, Jewish and other communities in various places in Central Asia. Quite a bit of syncretism.
Yes, good observation. This is an issue in the study of perennial wisdom. Can the body of perennial wisdom be accounted for by diffusion? The problem with this view is that PW is found worldwide from time immemorial even among so-called primitive people, such as the Native Americans.
Secondly, the other possibility is that this capacity is of the nature of human consciousness so diffusion is not the only possibility. Even if diffusion is responsible for some of it, it is possible to develop at least some of this experience through the methods that have been taught as the practical aspect of perennial wisdom.
The bottom line difficultly is showing that one's experience, which is undeniable, is actually what one takes it to be ontologically and epistemologically, since interpretation is required. This is also somewhat complicated and there has been debate and controversy over it for millennia, even within perennial wisdom, let alone from those who criticize it from without. Some people maybe deluded and others posing, for example. In addition, there are different levels of attainment and the testimony from different levels is different.
Tom Hickey,
A Freudian might say that perennial wisdom may be part of an "archaic heritage" (or an individual's phylogenetic acquisition) that resides in all humans. He argues that not all experiences of the Ego are lost at the death of the individual. if the same or similar experiences are repeated throughout successive generations then the knowledge derived from these experiences may become part of the id, which is inheritable.
Fred has an interesting discussion of this in The Ego and the Id. The archaic heritage of humans would appear to have some implications for the questions you mention in your post regarding the acquisition and transmission of perennial wisdom.
@Christopher J. Mulvaney, Ph.D.
This is a good point and fits with perennial wisdom, albeit with a different less comprehensive model. The id can be viewed a somewhat correlative with the deep memory that stores latent impressions that continue over lifetimes, generating veils that obscure the true nature of the person. The point of PW is to thin and finally remove these veils, similar to but very different from the objective of psychoanalysis.
Freud himself missed the boat on this, it seems. Based on his assumptions, Freud rejected consideration of "the oceanic experience" reported by Ramakrishna when his attention was called to it by his friend Roman Rolland (see below). Freud's protégé, Carl Jung, treated this in depth from what he considered a scientific viewpoint. His work influenced the development of transpersonal psychology, along with Roberto Assagioli, Abraham Maslow. Transpersonal psych is now attempting an integration of traditional wisdom with contemporary science.
>Significantly and presciently, Rolland also shared a warm and illuminating correspondence with Freud. Rolland sent Freud his biographies of both Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, asking for Freud's analysis of the mystic's "oceanic feeling" described by Rolland in Ramakrishna's biography.27 This correspondence was to have far-reaching consequences, for it was Rolland who brought to Freud's attention the forever-famous "oceanic feeling." Marianna Torgovnick writes:
Romain Rolland wrote a book whose implications staggered Sigmund Freud and shook ... Freud's belief in the inevitability and rightness of civilization. . . . Rolland believed that the experience of dissolved boundaries and the interpenetration of the self with the cosmos is a universal spiritual experience. His model was the life of Ramakrishna, in which the Hindu saint describes himself several times as being like salt dissolved in the great ocean of the universe. (11)
Since that landmark correspondence, this "oceanic feeling" has been an unending source of debate concerning the nature of mystical experience. It is worth remembering that not only did Rolland coin the term, but he also found the oceanic feeling to be, as he wrote Freud, "a source of vital renewal" (1990, 87). For Freud and many others, however, the "oceanic feeling" was a threat to the mature, civilized man. Escaping the norms of controlled behavior in search of the oceanic experience was viewed by Freud as infantile regression (we can connect the dots to the Orientalist view of India being inhabited by irresponsible children). Importantly, Freud further believed that an individual's desire to merge into the cosmic was associated with the death wish. Freud's views will linger with us as we analyze the development of Ramakrishna studies through the twentieth century.
Freud took eighteen months to answer Rolland's letter and his response is telling: "Your letter ... containing your remarks about a feeling you describe as 'oceanic' has left me no peace" (Freud, 388). Freud wrestled with its implications in his landmark work Civilization and Its Discontents, a copy of which he sent to Rolland. Despite their warm and intriguing correspondence, in the end Rolland found psychoanalysis fascinating but ultimately deficient when it came to understanding mystical experience.28 Freud, in his turn, wrote Rolland: "To me mysticism is just as closed a book as music. . . . And yet it is easier for you than for us to read the human soul!" (389).
http://www.interpretingramakrishna.com/Chapter1.html
It's not Pooh-Bah, it's the Mikado.
My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time
To let the punishment fit the crime
The punishment fit the crime
And make each prisoner pent
Unwillingly represent
A sources of innocent merriment!
Of innocent merriment!
(I sang this on stage at Agassiz Theater 51 years ago.)
I'm thinking of your cat Chloe remembering the one I inherited when my parents moved to a condo many years ago. This cat was named Sam and he was probably at least half feral to begin with. He had an annoying tendency to suddenly bite people who were sleeping. If you have ever been bitten by a cat you will know that they have needle like teeth that penetrate your skin, well, just like needles. It isn't pleasant.
The last time Sam bit me I reacted by immediately throwing him at least 15 feet through the air. Which though he landed on his feet, he otherwise didn't seem to appreciate. At that time I did not stop to think if Sam was acting on his own volition or if perhaps God was working through him to cause him to bite me. In any event, Sam did not bite me again and we had a peaceful co-existence for several more years.
I am not recommending my cat training techniques- and hopefully you will not need to use them.
Our main problem at the moment is that Chloe is eating us out of house and home! She is a delight and if I can persuade her that 4 AM is not an appropriate time to wake me up to play, all will be well.
if I can persuade her that 4 AM is not an appropriate time to wake me up to play, all will be well.
Difficult, since cats know that they are God (or at least behave like it).
Jerry, if he didn't seriously bite (ears down and teeth going deep) he was playing. Many cats don't get the difference between cat skin and human skin. A real bite can be serious (personal experience). When Marley play bites, I hiss and he gets it.
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