CHAPTER TWO -- C

Arthur M. Jackson

Copyright 2001, 2002, 2003, 2006

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PART TWO: Human Beings Are the Ultimate Reference System (HBAURS) living immersed within a universe where reality is the objective reference system.

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Throughout history people have believed that there is something absolute, or ultimate that exists independent of themselves that would make their life meaningful. The foregoing position implies or depends on an Ultimate Reference System that could be used as a criterion to measure and evaluate human life and human behavior. However, more thought and experience makes it clear that human beings themselves are the source of meaning and value. They are as near as we can get to an Ultimate Reference System. Therefore, I take the position that Human Beings Are the Ultimate Reference System defining meaning. (My concept of "reference system" includes what Einstein means by "a frame of reference.")

The foregoing means that it is the human species itself that provides the framework within which meaning of human life must be interpreted. And for each person this makes the answer to this question dependent upon empirical study and evidence.

Because this concept stands in opposition to most of what we have been taught, it is easy to be confused by what it means. Some readers interpret it to mean that I am saying there is no way to use reality as a reference. To help reduce the likelyhood that anyone interprets HBAURS in the foregoing way I would like to present another concept which I hope will clarify matters. This is Reality As the Objective Reference System (RAORS). I take reality to be everything that exists -- chairs, cars, rivers, atoms, eclipses, stars, black matter and black energy, and of course all living things including humanity.

However, the foregoing is talking about existence, not meaning. The only meaning associated with the existence of a chair, star, or living thing is one applied by human beings. If we say a star or an elephant has it’s own meaning we are the ones deciding this not the star, or the elephant. If there are alien life forms capable of using symbolic language they would provide their own reference system which we might or might not be capable of comprehending. Therefore, discussing the meaning of anything that exists is talking about human nature, perception, and interpretations. As a result of this whatever meaning we assign is subject to change as we study and get to better understand our own nature and the rest of the universe in general.

I do not in any sense feel that there is "no way to use reality as a reference." Obviously, reality is the main resource for our efforts to understand and to correct our errors. But reality is not the Ultimate Reference System for many reasons. One, as discussed later is that we can't directly access reality, but only know it through experience and thought so it cannot be our Ultimate Reference System. Another is that our knowledge of reality changes as we learn more and more. But we must make all of our choices based on our current understanding. All of our motivations and knowledge are tied to what is known today. For these reasons Human Beings Are the Ultimate Reference System -- because we live our full life making choices and plans with the Reference System current knowledge makes available to us. It doesn't matter to us that five generations in the future society's understanding of reality may totally change the way people live and the goals they pursue. Our life has limits. It exists only now. The future is just an unknown, and our only tie to it is our own individual life and our relatedness to our humanity.

Because science allows us to better utilize our language ability we are getting better and better approximations to reality (at least in so far as it can be used to improve the quality of human living). But again, all of our interpretations are based on our current understanding of reality -- not on what reality truly is.

[p. 2]

Some individuals have interpreted HBAURS such that they fear it would convince persons to be satisfied with their current understanding of reality and overlook the need to compare all conclusions, ideas, assumptions, thoughts, etc. to Reality As the Objective Reference System.

I take things to be just the opposite. Since HBAURS requires us to focus on quality of life, there then becomes a driving need to learn more and more about everything that exists. Every aspect of our life depends on understanding reality including the reality of ignorance, disease, hunger, and how our bodies work. This would require that in so far as possible every person's ability would be as fully developed as possible and utilized in this process. But not just to learn, also to apply our knowledge because for a Science of Ethics that's what knowledge is for.

However, beyond the above issues I think there is another reason why some persons exploring Science of Ethics are very uncomfortable with the HBAURS concept. I think the core of this resistance is that it reminds them of the dreaded anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism that their mothers warned them about.

With the foregoing ideas in mind, let us explore anthropomorphism and anthropocentric in more depth. According to my WEBSTER'S NEW COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY these terms mean the below things.

ANTHROPOCENTRIC: 1. Assuming human beings as the center or ultimate end. 2. Interpreting natural processes or phenomena such as animal instincts, in terms of humanity or the human mind.

ANTHROPOMORPHISM: Representation or conception of God, or of a god, with human attributes; also, ascription of human characteristics to things not human.

It seems to me that HBAURS is just the opposite of Anthropocentric/Anthropomorphism. Those concepts are based on the view that human beings have a special place in the universe deliberately assigned to them by the universe. HBAURS is based on the view that there are no privileged frames of reference in the universe. It is for this reason that humanity is limited by its own perspective from which it must stand as the ultimate interpreter of the universe. As indicated below this would not change even if we made contact with a more knowledgeable, wiser species from elsewhere in the universe. We would have to process their ideas and wisdom in order to apply it which would still leave Human Beings as the Ultimate Reference System.

Some persons are bothered that my "ultimate" isn't the ULTIMATE they are used to thinking of. God as the supreme ruler, maker of humanity and the universe, definer of right and wrong, etc. -- this is ULTIMATE. I have heard various religious persons express the idea that without God there would be no reason to live. Science's model of objective reality -- Laws of the universe as firmly fixed and infinite in time and space as the mind can conceive -- this is ULTIMATE. Some people are even willing to take the smooth functioning of Earth's ecosystem as an adequate ULTIMATE. But the individual human life! The perpetuation of our species! What kind of ULTIMATE is that?

The reality is that our individual life is as ULTIMATE as it gets! The idea some people have to see their life as extending to infinity after death seems to me to come out of the human weakness to use symbolic language to take Platonic symbols as having objective rather than subjective existence.

[p. 3]

My thesis is simple. The ideas we have been taught about ULTIMATE are as erroneous as most of the other basic ideas we have been taught. The "ultimate" we can reach is to develop ourselves as fully as possible (to achieve a Sustainable Belief that our Life Has Meaning) which includes using our accomplishments to help all other people attain a similar state now and into the future. And to do our best to ensure that humanity will prevail and maintain this vision. This is the desirable role of each individual human being when they are guided by their "wisdom" potential. This is the step that is now possible for human beings to take. And, any who are able to help make it happen would become the greatest heroes humanity has ever produced. In Joseph Campbell's words, this is the "hero's journey."[ 17]

If Human Beings Are the Ultimate Reference System what does ultimate mean in this context? Wouldn't subjective be more accurate?

I am using ultimate in the sense, "beyond which it is impossible to proceed [at this moment]." The reason it is impossible to proceed beyond human beings is not because we cannot learn more about the universe. History shows us that there is more to learn about the universe than we can even imagine at any given time.

It is impossible to proceed beyond human understanding because we are the observers. It is only what we can observe and interpret at this moment that defines our current limits. As we learn more -- were we to evolve and change -- the same principle would still be true. Until something impacts us we can't take it into account and be aware of it, understand how it affects our ideas about the universe, and how it might be used to improve the quality of human life. However, we can use what we now know to guide us to better understand the universe we live in.

It is not because the universe is affected by our observations, or depends in any way on them -- in spite of the contrary speculations of the Anthropic Principle and some who use the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. Rather it is because we depend on our observations and inferences for whatever we know or believe about the universe. To think the universe is the reference system makes it easier to ignore the fact that every observation has more ignorance than information associated with it. The ignorance comes out of how we make observations, the knowledge and experience we bring to the observation, etc.

It doesn't matter that everything else -- all matter and all life -- would have its own reference system (i.e., be its own reference system). But, rather, because we are stuck in ours. We can learn, expand, correct, improve, etc. our reference system so it may move closer to "objective reality." But regardless of the foregoing, we observe only from our frame of reference no matter how well or badly that frame of reference takes into account everything else in the universe. Even though our ignorance of what is unknown to us may kill us or otherwise effect us, until that happens we can't take it into account. Therefore, our reference system is ultimate for us. And, that is the most ultimate we can achieve.

[p. 4]

I believe the ancient Greek sophist, Protagoras (c. 481 - 411 BCE), was making this point when he said, "Humanity is the measure of all things, of things that are that they are, and of things that are not that they are not." This position does not deny that there is a real world out there, nor that we are part of that real world. It means that things do not have value in terms of some absolute reference system. The only value we can be aware of is the value we provide. It means that the well being of human beings is the essential measure relative to everything. And of course value and well being here as in all other elements of a Science of Ethics means in terms of the most complete and long term measures possible. However, human interpretations of necessity come out of a position of ignorance. Our ways of understanding can only deal with discrete segments of the universe since we have no tools that allow us to understand it fully, and completely. In fact scientific study can only begin once we become aware of some part of the universe and find tools to subject that area to adequate study. But this study is always a work in progress and any conclusions are tentative, and subject to change with more information.

Because we are and must always be ignorant of what the universe is really like we must stop thinking that our primary goal is to understand the universe. Our goal must be to use whatever knowledge we have to improve the quality of human living. Obviously, we must learn everything we can about how the universe works in order to do this. But it is the application of this knowledge that gives it value. This doesn't mean that scientists should only work on "practical" problems. Essential answers surely will continue to come from those striving to understand how things work, things that don't seem to have any possible useful benefit. Study of the history of science must lead us to believe that these efforts will provide bountiful dividends -- when their results are applied. However, thoughtful persons should not miss the point that current human potential is only possible because scientists over at least the past 400 years have studied, pondered, and experimented based on questions that on the surface had no value to human life and well being. This situation can only become more true in the future as we enter realms that from the outside look almost like science fiction.

"Interpreter" as I am using it focuses on the point that human beings are effected by taste, touch, light, smell, and sound, but we have to process (interpret) those stimuli to "make sense" of them. Human beings must interpret everything and regardless of whatever interpretation any other reference system makes we still have to make our own interpretation. If we become able to communicate with other intelligent beings, or when we develop conscious artificial life -- we will find that their reference systems are different from ours and we will still have to interpret all of our interactions with them.

Careful, open-minded analysis and study demonstrate that thinking is not promoted when we take an interpreter to have powers to see the ultimate. In addition it is not meaningful to propose reference systems more ultimate than human beings either in religion or science.[7] There can be no point outside of human beings themselves that can be used as an Ultimate Reference System. Any line of thought aimed at demonstrating an Ultimate Reference System outside of human beings fails. Any concept pursued to its essential implications inevitably leads one to recognize the foregoing. Human beings are the observers, recorders, measurers, valuers, etc. Everything must be interpreted by human beings. Everything must be filtered through their sense organs and mental processes. Persons who claim a direct contact with reality (including Ultimate Reality) cannot be distinguished in any way from liars, psychotics, and/or persons who are erroneously interpreting their mental processes. So these persons like everyone else must have their truth claims judged on the basis of standards that apply to faith arguments. See FOURTH WAY OF WISDOM. [18]

All serious thought must at some point confront this issue. Philosophers have from early times attempted to get at the core of this issue through dividing studies into ontology and epistemology. In my mind the concept "human beings are the ultimate reference system" shows us that the distinction between ontology and epistemology is the distinction between conjecture and experience. Since ontology is supposed to be about the study of the fundamental nature of reality, and epistemology about our knowledge of that reality, we start by using our knowledge to examine our ignorance -- what we don't know (i.e., the fundamental nature of reality). The fundamental nature of the universe (reality) is unknowable -- hidden in ignorance -- so we can only make conjectures about it. What we take it to be at any given time depends upon our knowledge. Therefore, we reflect that knowledge back upon the universe and primarily see expanding versions of what we already know. Of course when science is working there is always some awareness of the deviation between what we think we know and what we observe.

As our knowledge grows we recognize the conflicts between our conjectures and observations and change what we take the fundamental nature of reality to be. But again we are looking at the interpretation of our knowledge that we have imposed on that unknown universe to see something about "the fundamental nature of reality."

[p. 5]

But from a practical standpoint what are we really discussing when we say Human Beings Are the Ultimate Reference System? How can we deal with the matter that each person is a unique reference system, yet when we discuss human beings as the ultimate reference system we are thinking about human beings in general? One way to approach this matter may be to use as a model some ideas Robert Plutchik discusses. He has a similar concern in naming emotions: "...[An] important point might be made about the problem of naming emotion compounds. This is a problem almost identical with that faced by the international conference which set out in 1931 to develop a system for the numerical specification of what a color looks like to the ordinary man or woman under a given set of conditions. Since there are certain differences in the reaction of individual observers, even after people with abnormal color vision have been eliminated, it was necessary to define a color match that would be acceptable to an average observer. This was done by defining how a 'standard observer' sees any particular color. The average data from a small number of selected observers provided an imaginary standard observer and all results reported in the CIE [Commission Internationale De L'Eclairage; i.e., International Commission on Illumination] system are adjusted so as to satisfy the requirements of this standard observer. This is a system that has worked very well since 1931. Perhaps a similar system may be developed for the psychology of emotions." [19]

Perhaps the CIE system discussed above could also serve as a model for the concept, "Human Beings Are the Ultimate Reference System." With proper efforts it might be possible to define a "standard observer" as the reference system that projects, observes, interprets the universe and serves as the reference system used by an Enlightened Person. This point of view is based on the assumption that in the ways that are most important, all human beings are the same. And, of course, this assumption conflicts with current beliefs about the nature of human beings.

Another issue that relates to reference systems is the "laws of science." Julian Huxley reminds us that, "The laws of nature did not exist as such before individuals began scientific investigations: what existed was the welter of natural events, and the laws of nature are constructions of human thought which attempt to give comprehensible general formulations of how those events operate. Similarly gods did not exist as such before people built up theistic religious systems: what existed was the clash of natural forces, physical and spiritual, including those of the human mind, and the gods are attempts to give a comprehensible formulation of these forces of destiny."[20]

An additional area that involves reference systems is cause and effect. Traditionally, cause and effect have been fundamental concepts in Western thinking, but its meaning was significantly altered by mechanistic science. As Holmes Rolston [21] explains, "The medieval world had inherited its science and metaphysics from the Greeks and its religion from the Hebrews. Thomist philosophy coherently fused all three, employing Aristotle's four 'causes,' or explanatory factors in understanding a thing: (1) the material cause, matter, the stuff of which a thing is made, (2) the efficient cause, the affecting, mobile operating force that produces changes, (3) the formal cause, the plan or structure inlaid into a thing, (4) the final cause, a goal, the end state toward which a thing is drawn. The two earlier causes look backward to ask about generating antecedents. They look for a compositional substrate that has been pushed into its present conformation. Explanation is thus in terms of physical origins. The latter pair of 'causes' look forward to ask about plans, a will-be, a will-to-be, and a pull onward. The former pair feature the objective side of reality, while the latter suggest a working at ends, rationality, intention, and, at length, subjectivity. In the medieval account, the first pair are secondary, necessary but insufficient for understanding. Explanation must subsequently be completed by setting forth the primary components that account for why things and events are what they are. Explanation is in terms of significant endings."

[p. 6]

Rolston continues, "In terms of...[previous discussions], we can say that formal and final 'causes' tend to inquire into meanings and belong more to religion than to science, at least to physical science. In contemporary usage in science (though not in history), we would not refer to goals or plans as 'causes,' except somewhat awkwardly, because in strict science, at least since David Hume, we restrict the term 'cause' to material and efficient causes. The scientific revolution programmatically repudiate formal and final categories for understanding and did not base understanding and prediction on teleological factors, but on material and energetic propellants. Jacques Loeb a physiologist, finds such explanation the key to all knowledge: 'What progress humanity has made, not only in physical welfare but also in the conquest of superstition and hatred, and in the formation of a correct view of life, it owes directly or indirectly to mechanistic science.'"

"This revolution in explanatory strategy can be diagrammed, perhaps oversimply, ...[as done below].

THE MEDIEVAL VIEW ....................... THE NEWTONIAN VIEW

Secondary explanations .............................. Secondary explanations
1 Material cause ............................................. 3 Organic plan
2 Efficient cause ............................................. 4 Intended goals

Primary explanations .................................... Primary explanations
3 Formal cause .................................................. 1 Matter
4 Final cause ...................................................... 2 Motion"

"In our century we are in another scientific revolution. The natural world, when looked at more closely, has defeated or shown to be inadequate many Newtonian presumptions. So even in physics we need to worry about what was getting left out in the earlier abstractions.... Beyond that still, we must eventually reckon with such phenomena as mind, society, and history, about which physics is silent." As Rolston points out below this is not strictly true. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics puts mind into science because it acknowledges that physics is about what we can know about the universe not what the universe is. Although this principle has not been followed through to its logical consequences – human beings are the ultimate reference system – it demonstrates the problem at the base of science which has not yet been adequately addressed.

[p. 7]

Continuing on Rolston says, "An allusion in the revolutionary sketch...[above] to primary and secondary qualities is not incidental. The Newtonian primary explanations were thought to correspond with what is really there in nature, matter-in-motion, while any secondary explanations are observer-dependent, the introduced products of subjectivity, appearing when mind interacts with matter. This switch in explanatory emphasis was to have far-reaching results. It yielded an enormous rise in technical power. But this know-how for manipulating the motions of matter came with a corresponding impoverishment of any sense of purposes, those upper-level explanations that were now said to be secondary, derived, subjective, only apparent. The revolution that gained increasing competence over causes in the world came with a reciprocal loss, a decreasing confidence about meanings there. What was no longer looked for was no longer found."

And this returns us to the point that to assign a cause, or effect requires a Reference System, and mechanistic science took objective reality to be the reference system. However, the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics completely turned this understanding around. Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg adopted a special version of the Human Beings Are the Ultimate Reference System concept. Based on the experiments performed by the physicists studying the quantum realm in the 1920s, the following conclusion were reached:

As Rolston says, "Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation, the nominal orthodox interpretation, rests on the idea that the aim of quantum theory is merely to describe certain connections between human experiences, rather than to describe a physical world conceived to exist and have definite properties independently of our method of observing it. According to this view, seemingly enforced by the difficulty of constructing a rational picture of the world compatible with empirical requirements, physics is actually about human consciousness."[22]

The very idea of reality became an open question:

Says Rolston, "Bohr's reaction to such ontological questions was unequivocal. Always professing a lack of interest in reality, he placed his emphasis on language. 'What is it that we human beings ultimately depend on? He asked.

We depend on words.... Our task is to communicate experiences and ideas to others. We must strive continually to extend the scope of our description, but in such a way that our messages do not thereby lose their objective and unambiguous character.... We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down. The word 'reality' is also a word, a word which we must learn to use correctly."

"Accordingly, he came to the conclusion that

There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum mechanical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about Nature." [23]

Due to the foregoing the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics gave up cause and effect and took the statistical interpretation of quantum phenomena to be all one needed to say on this issue.

My own position is that Bohr went too far in his willingness to speak only of what humans could observe and measure and remain silent about the possible workings of the real world. In my mind this has led toward obscurantist positions. If we take cause and effect to be basic organizing principles to describe change in the universe, as I do, within the context of Human Beings As the Ultimate Reference System then I think we have a firmer foundation for clarifying these issues. But this does require redefining science and recognizing its dependence on human nature rather than existing independent of human abilites and interests.

As I say elsewhere it is my own belief that Bohr went too far in trying to avoid thinking about “how nature is.” In his efforts to apply his own vision of how science works it seems to me that he ended up assigning nature some unnecessarily strange characteristics. Of course nature is whatever it is and when parts of it seem strange or paradoxical the problem need not reside in nature, but may be due to our limited abilities to understand anything totally foreign to our past experiences.

I take this to be the case with understanding the ultimate components of the universe. At this point physicists accept that they can be seen as either particles or waves. I think it is safe to say that whatever the basic components of the universe are, they are neither waves nor particles, but something currently beyond human comprehension because it is too far outside any experience we’ve yet had.

Should anyone desire to develop a new paradigm for this problem I would suggest a weeklong conference with a small group of quantum physicists and a similar number of artists. The physicists would present in as much detail as possible all of the experiments from which the dual nature of the quantum world is postulated. After each presentation there would be a significant time for questions and brainstorming. After all of the physicists present discussed their data then each individual would have a change to make a pitch and lead a brain storming effort.

Papers would be written and exchanged and if no breakthroughs had occurred there would be a follow-up meeting after a year to either focus on the ideas generated and/or retrace their steps to see if something had been overlooked in the first go-around.

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