CHAPTER TWO -- F Arthur M. Jackson
Copyright 2001, 2003, 2006
Concept of Law (Continued)
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The concept of law as traditionally used in Western society focuses on three primary points: 1) that the person was capable of intent, 2) that they did in fact perform an illegal act, and, 3) prescribed punishment will be meted out. The foregoing demonstrates the primary deficiency of this approach. It is concerned with guilt, blame, and punishment. There is limited interest in understanding the cause and effect involved, particularly society's role in the event. Therefore, laws as now utilized give us very little hope for future improvement. They basically only "work" in those situations where the individual has already accepted the need for changing their behavior. It is here proposed that being guilty and having intent are only part of the picture. Knowledge and ignorance are also of prime importance. They provide a way to consider society's share of the responsibility for the behavior under discussion. This would open channels to make whatever changes are necessary in society to prevent behavior that harms others whether asocial, antisocial, or otherwise; whether through innocence or intent. In most cases the need is not to guard society from individuals, but rather to guard both society and individuals from their own ignorance in order to help them avoid performing hurtful acts.
Murdering, stealing, lying, hating, dissipating, using addictive drugs, etc. are symptoms. These are things that exist because of erroneous beliefs. We must work at all times in the most strenuous manner to expose these beliefs and limit their power to control behavior. Saying that murder is immoral, or a crime is not very useful. Murder must be avoided for reasons far more fundamental than being illegal. It interferes with the perpetrator and victim becoming Enlightened Persons, and achieving a sustainable belief that their life has meaning; i.e., living one's life rather than just going through the motions.
Ethics itself has been an area of confusion relative to understanding the Enlightened Person. Ethics and morals have traditionally been interpreted as dealing with behavior that violates the rules of some Ultimate Reference System, normally God, but also systems based on rational shoulds; i.e., Platonic ideals. A given act is wrong because God has said not to do it, or, some act ought to be done because God says so. Or, in a rational based system because it violates the logic of the system. Since the death of God and the exposure of the limitations of reason, modern thinkers have tended to take a relativistic approach to ethics. They think of ethics as discussing a particular group's customs about behavior. Group A thinks adultery is wrong. Group B admires adulterers. Modern thinkers believe there is no objective standard by which to judge one group's beliefs in comparison with another's. However, Science of Ethics is based on the idea that there are objective standards, not in terms of some external absolute, but objective relative to the human nature of our species -- that can be empirically measured, and this book aims to show how that can be done.
All current folk religions propose that the essence of an individual is their "soul," a unitary, immortal spiritual essence. Of course such an idea has no standing in a Science of Ethics. Therefore, Science of Ethics would ask, From a naturalistic perspective what is an individual? Before determining how to achieve a sustainable belief that one's life has meaning it is necessary to clarify what a person truly is. One finds all kinds of ideas about the "I" presented in psychology, in philosophy, in folk religions, and in most writings that attempt to deal with anything that relates deeply about human beings. One such discussion concerning the "I" can be found in an interview by Bill Moyers.[21] I had hoped to quote the full dialogue, but the publisher was not willing to provide this permission.
[p. 2]
In Moyers' book, "Healing and the Mind,"[21] he is interviewing individuals who work beyond the limits of current medicine, but have sufficient credentials to avoid being called quacks or charlatans by responsible persons. In this section he is interviewing Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D. and founder and Director of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Preventive and Behavioral Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
They are discussing the "I" and over the course of two pages hash over the usual meaningless ideas about the "I": being independent of the mind, who is saying "I," that the "I" is not the body, but controls the body, etc.
Kabat-Zinn on a more useful note discusses "selfing" where the individual thinks of certain components of their "I" as their self: "I'm a failure, I'm no good, I'm inadequate, I'm unworthy." He points out that this identification has the potential of limiting one's options and behavior.
The point of Moyers' discussion is to clarify ways to promote healing. But this discussion -- like the explorations of the "I" by psychology, philosophy, and folk religions -- leads nowhere in terms of understanding the "I." The above discussion involves persons who are both intelligent and thoughtful. Therefore, it does give some specific evidence of the confusion that still exists around the "I," "the essence of an individual." There should be little doubt that one of the biggest mysteries in the Universe is the riddle of a human being. What is an individual, really? Why do persons behave as they do?
Traditionally, societies have evoked gods or God to explain where human beings came from, why they're here, and what they are in the most fundamental sense. This supernatural heritage has always made it more difficult to understand the natural world because it mis-focuses and confuses thinking. The mind-body "problem" has been an enduring "problem" bequeathed by those who thought in terms of the supernatural.
Speaking somewhat metaphorically we could say that, specifically we have Rene Descartes to thank for this "problem." In an effort to liberate science from Christian control he made a "deal" which was accepted by the Church. Religion got the "soul" (meaning), and science got everything else (cause and effect). Probably at the time this was a good deal because it allowed science to compile a tradition of success in understanding the natural world and gave up an area of study so far beyond the science of the day, that it still remains a collection of unanswered questions even in today's world. Nevertheless, it continues to be a popular topic of speculation among philosophers, scientists, and thoughtful people in general. Probably more hours of thought and conjecture have been consumed on this pseudo-problem than almost any other issue.
In my framework there is no mind-body problem. There is only the problem of understanding how the human body works including consciousness, choice, and related problems. Traditional explanations involve forces and factors that transcend the natural world. The view taken by Science of Ethics is just the opposite. Human beings are in every way considered to be a part of the natural world. They are looked upon as being complex organic machines.[22] However, this complexity is not a trivial attribute. My assumption is that it is essential to the "I." Also, it must be taken into account in understanding the choice process.
[p. 3]
Because of the complex nature of human beings, their choices can only be understood within the context of symbolic communication, chaos theory, and other theories that deal with the limitations of prediction. These matters are discussed more fully in the Fifth Way (strive to make the best choices possible). But for the sake of this part of the discussion I would like to focus on the role of prediction in understanding the "I."
It is currently known that any system that is turbulent or has feedback mechanisms -- though deterministic -- is inherently unpredictable except within some general limits. The choices made by an individual are the epitome of unpredictability. Chaos theory makes clear the relationship between determinism and unpredictability. Chaotic phenomena are deterministic, but unpredictable except within certain limits. Nevertheless, like any real phenomena human choice can be understood more and more fully as a result of greater study and experience. But to understand human choices one must understand the "I." At the same time one must understand that there is no part of the human being that is, in principle, beyond understanding, including their behavior.
An individual's behavior (including their choices) depends upon their physiological make-up, physical structure, bio-chemical composition, knowledge, experiences, and the environment itself. Every part and aspect of a human being is naturalistic and can be understood in terms of cause and effect. This behavior follows the laws of mechanics, electrochemistry, molecular biology, evolution, psychology, information theory, and related fields.
Another key component that affects behavior is the human ability to learn. Almost all organisms are capable of learning, but human beings exceed all others evolved on Earth primarily because of our language ability utilizing symbolic reference. Not only can people use this learning to modify and change their ideas, environment, and choices, they can use this knowledge to change themselves in ways they judge worthwhile by actually modifying their physical structures. If the nature of the "I" is to be understood, the role learning plays for an "I" must also be understood.
As discussed elsewhere a key element that relates to learning is the effect of symbolic communication. Also the language ability is a large part of one's "I." In a very real sense humanity is in the process of creating itself. An essential part of this creation is to alter the "I" in many important ways.
This "I" has long bewildered humanity. The science writer, Lincoln Barnett, is concerned with it when he mentions the "ability to transcend ourself and perceive ourself in the act of perception[23]"; and when he quotes the physicist Niels Bohr, "we are both spectators and actors in the great drama of existence."[24] Also, as Barnett states, "Individuals' inescapable impasse is that they themselves are part of the world they seek to explore; their body and proud brain are mosaics of the same elemental particles that compose the dark, drifting dust clouds of interstellar space; they are, in final analysis... an ephemeral conformation of the primordial space-time field."[25] Of course the preceding flirts with acknowledging that Human Beings Are the Ultimate Reference System, a concept which totally alters the way one must understand the "I."
Confusion about the "I" or "self" has dramatically retarded people's ability to understand themselves and all their behaviors including how they make choices. This confusion has also made it more difficult to recognize the fundamental connection between Science and the naturalistic core of Religion. At this time adequate terms are still lacking to discuss this fundamental aspect of the human being. As a result people's thinking about the foregoing ranges from the silly to the useless with rare contributions that are helpful. However, this is rapidly changing and modern philosophy and science, especially evolutionary biology, are now closing in on this issue in helpful ways.
[p. 4]
As indicated earlier there is still a widely held view within the human family that one's "I" exists as a basic, unitary core within a person that is stable and perhaps eternal. This stable, unchanging "I" is often called a "soul." A soul is usually believed to survive the death of the body. Is the foregoing possible? Could an "I" be separated from the totality of the body? Many philosophers and all religious leaders have thought so. Early philosophers such as Berkeley, Kant, Locke, and of course Descartes included "soul" in their thinking. But modern philosophers generally recognize that past philosophers wallowed in meaningless semantics on this issue. Freud was one of the first widely known thinkers to lift the veil and throw some light on what before had been in darkness. He focused on the human mind in ways that made it clear there is no soul. "Soul" cannot be meaningfully defined or discussed except when it is interpreted as meaning some attribute, or aspect of one's physical being. It is clear that the "I" is tied directly to bodily structures. Change the body in any way and the "I" changes. To consider that such a fragile, ephemeral thing as the "I" could exist independent of the structures that produce and maintain it must basically come out of wishful thinking.
The nature of the "I" is still being clarified. However, even with current limited knowledge it has become obvious that the "I" cannot transcend death. In addition if the "soul" (the "Atman" in Hindu theology) is the part of one's being which does not change and is the calm, dispassionate controller, then it does not exist. There is no such part of a person. The "soul" theory of the "I" turns out to be at most a satisfying myth -- a poetical, primitive, simplified, casual way to characterize a person.
However, like with most ideas (as Socrates so well demonstrated) it is easier to point out the errors in other folk's arguments/positions/ideas/ religions than to avoid errors in one's own. Some persons (like Socrates) attempt to avoid this problem by never taking a position. Others propose positions impossible to disprove. A Science of Ethics is committed to the approach of science. The goal is to propose ideas that can be falsified. Only then can one correct errors, develop better positions, and move toward congruency. Whatever tenets anyone proposes will be in error. But, do they lead persons to achieve a sustainable belief that their life has meaning? Do they enable one to more accurately understand the universe? Do they facilitate living a better life, having more joy? Do they assist humanity in spreading throughout the universe? These are the important things. Being wrong is not the problem. Not being able to admit errors, learn from them, and correct them is the problem.
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