Anarchists are typically opposed to religions of various kinds. I don't think it is very useful to talk about religion as distinct from ideology; as distinct from the general procedure of applying a form of ideology as a tool to conceive the way things are.
I have spent most of this blog undermining, simultaneously, the idea that there is a way that things are, as well as the complete conclusion that the way things are is that there isn't a way things are. Following Kant, one can only be agnostic about the way things are. We test to see if the way we think things are, follows; whether it requires appending, modification.
Having faith in the unseen has always been the kid brother of hope. To listen to the remark of faith is to either suppose that one doesn't know, that such is a matter of faith; or that faith is a different kind of knowing, similarly certitudinal. I know that I am writing a blog presently (June 22, 2014, 10:06 est); and I cannot be trapped by a demon in my own mind of unknowing on this indexical score because, as Davidson argued, the demon still has to convince me that I do not know, so that what the demon says must be true, etc., In any event, if the demon also doesn't know, then the worry is lost. Peirce said that scientific modes of inquiry do not apply wholesale doubt, and for this reason, Descartes' epistemological ground up apparatus, was just irrelevant. Davidson glosses the point by saying that the demon can only cause us to doubt some things, if so, because language must be used, and language is a truth speaking medium. In any event, it isn't clear what kind of knowing is present in articles of faith. It usually has something to do with fear. And it might have something to do with fear for a good reason, say because the consequences would be unwelcome. But faith is better construed as non-knowing. Is it then a matter of ignorance?
It would be ignorant to think that we can live without ignorance. This is also Peirce's point. We do take our theories of the way the world is as given; we do not doubt them; precisely the opposite; we hold to them, tentatively, come what may. One might argue that there is a better way of conceiving the world according to an ideology. But the construct is always a matter of faith. I do not have faith in science for all of the obvious reasons. I have faith in what has proven itself; and science has either black-boxed its conclusions, which is merely pragmatic, or tested every theory, turning it to rubble, which implies, not the progress of knowledge, but an approach to underdetermination. Importantly, Popper's method of falsification is not a species of science per se; any content can be tested; even those rejected by positivistic ignorance. Empiricism only goes so far.
William James has a theory of truth that flies in the face of rationalist discourse. He suggests that we supposed that something is true because it is useful to believe. Now, to repeat, science does this all the time. The concept of the black box is essential to the faith of these new unquestioned masters; a black box is that which has been parceled and made true via selection and 'reasonable' testing. In order to get anything done, the scientist supposes the method is rational, and helps build the progress myth. All that I'm saying is that mystical experiences and bizarre occurrences are events that may be useful to believe too; for these may help us get by.
So I am not saying that there is a way the world is, following the rational scientists that seek this ignorantly; and I'm not saying that there is not a way the world is, in a manner that would still be keeping with the first horn of the dilemma like a pure nihilist; I'm carving a middle ground, rupturing both, on the grounds that I get to decide how I live my life; that I get to decide what is useful to believe, according to what I mean by works.
So I take what I please, and I long for the event. If something happens, I am interested in testing out how it hangs together for me. I am not saying that I can conceive of this clearly, in a manner of knowledge. I am merely following the concept of usefulness so that I can get by with constructing a series of events in my life under the heading of a story, a myth. Science creates myths that help us get by. Religion creates myth too. Neither Science, nor religion then: let us open ourselves to the mystical, to the concept of truth as usefulness for living well, and simply see what happens. If it works, so be it; if not, so be it. It makes no difference. Our hope is not certitudinal. Our hope is that we do not become burdened with ideology, that we are continuously opened to our own exploding desires.
Being open to anything goes makes one eventually select things in a coherent fashion. Being told by others that one should only start with a method that has worked for them, and then listening to them as well, makes one pretty clearly not capable of free thought. One might then deserve the chains of ideology. Being light on one's feet is to accept non-knowing in the arena of faith; and the faith that we have is that we will overcome our lack of lusting for life, for fruit.
In the garden of eden, it is purported that the blinders were taken off. So let's aim to put the blinders back on, to dance ignorantly, without the burden of ideology. Let us travel where we don't know; and leave the realm of knowing entirely. Protected in this place of faith without knowing, because such is mine and therefore my right to dance without ideology, might be sufficient to be opened to an interesting life, in confrontational opposition to the everyday predictability of scientific thinking. Such may be useful to believe to create a life worth living.
“Science manipulates things and gives up living in them. It makes its own limited models of things; operating upon these indices or variables to effect whatever transformations are permitted by their definition, it comes face to face with the real world only at rare intervals. Science is and always will be that admirably active, ingenious, and bold way of thinking whose fundamental bias is to treat everything as though it were an object-in-general - as though it meant nothing to us and yet was predestined for our own use.”
ReplyDelete― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, L'oeil et l'esprit
Very well put. Although, does Davidson not merely get this notion of demon from the trickster that attempts to convince Descartes of his inability to be a thinking thing?
yep. Davidson argues that most of our beliefs must be true because the skeptic must use language to persuade us where we are wrong. It is an answer of sorts to Descartes.
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