Don’t Believe a Word A glossary of philosophical terms in my possession defines ‘truth’ as ‘the conformity of the mind to reality’. A famous psychology experiment, the Asch social pressure experiment, is as follows. There are ten subjects in a room, supposedly for a perception test. Nine of the ten are in on the conspiracy while one, placed more or less in the middle of the group, is unaware of the true nature of the experiment. The person leading the proceedings holds up a series of cards each with three columns of clearly different heights. He asks the members of the group, one by one, to identify the largest column. The first group member identifies a column as the largest that is clearly not so and the others then confirm this. In repeated tests with different groups a very large majority of the ‘true’ subjects agree with the bogus observation rather than with the evidence of their senses. Long ago in my secondary school days during Christian doctrine class a controversy regarding the proposed demolition of Georgian buildings in Dublin was discussed. The teacher remarked that, while at that time the ‘obvious’ right course of action was the preservation of national treasures such as old buildings, some fifteen years previously it was considered just as ‘obvious’ that an old building should be replaced by a new, and therefore better, building. The teacher was certainly not actually advocating the latter position but was challenging the basis for our conservationist fervor. Perhaps our zeal for the conservation of Georgian Dublin was, in fact, justified in absolute terms but the ‘obvious’ position some two decades previously had been the opposite view, even if this view was, in fact, totally erroneous. By the same token in the present day things that are considered to be ‘natural’ are regarded as being superior to their synthetic equivalents. I remember a television advertisement for detergent some time ago that claimed that the particular brand contained less “chemicals and things” than other brands. The loosely defined, ‘green’ position seems to have the moral high ground even if economic factors might often prevent the attainment of these ideals. However in my extreme youth I clearly remember the term ‘man-made’ being used as referring to an improvement over the natural. In fact I remember a teacher remarking that the purpose of human existence was to replace all things natural with synthetic equivalents. Does anyone remember the ideal of ‘man’ pitting himself against nature? In a very real sense much of what most people regard as ‘common knowledge’ can in fact be socially reinforced delusions about reality. Rene Descartes (1596-1650) is regarded as the father of modern philosophy. He rejected traditional sources of knowledge, such as medieval scholastic philosophy and classical literature, as being built on shaky foundations. It was all hearsay and unsubstantiated opinion. In doubting everything that could reasonably be doubted he concluded that the only thing that he could not doubt was the self-evident fact that he was doubting. In other words he could not doubt that he was aware. “I think therefore I am.” Descartes described a methodology by which certain knowledge could be obtained based on the careful observation of what could not rationally be denied. Might I, here, challenge the readership to question the bases of their beliefs? As an experiment, take an opinion that you hold and scrutinize it in the manner described above. How solid is its grounding? A few years ago we spent a week in Venice, just across the lagoon in the Lido. There was a glass re-cycling bin every 75 meters or so in front of almost every row of houses. This system is designed by the local government to make a small but significant contribution to waste management and energy saving. The system is designed with this end-product in mind. However in Cork the number of glass recycling depots is designed in such a way as to maximize the ‘feel-good factor’. The number and position of bottle banks is designed with the intention of maximizing the amount of effort that an environmentally minded citizen will actually expend without being put off by the level of effort. The purpose of the system is to induce a perception among those with an ecology based ideology that they have made a meaningful contribution. Factors such as waste management are not considered important by the power structure. It would be naďve to believe that democracy actually is rule by the people. The electorate is consulted on a regular basis and the input of the people guards against the worst excesses of corruption. An unpopular régime can be replaced bloodlessly and another put in place subject to the same checks and balances. There may, in fact, be a high green vote in and around Venice but I suggest that it is at least possible that the glass issue or any one of a hundred issues, green or other, might not be important enough to surface as election issues. Support for a particular party may, of course, have an influence on policy but elected representatives will have to deal with the permanent government of the civil service and the technocrats. The action of putting a bottle into a bottle-bank is the same in Venice as in Cork. But the same action occurs in a different cultural context in each case. The intention of the depositor is the same but the end result is different because the system he is using is different. So many people exist in a personal belief system that is composed, to a significant extent, of shared delusions about reality. These beliefs in turn generate desires of a bogus nature. And even actions performed out of a well thought out ideology of some kind may, in fact, be futile. A skeptic holds that knowledge is impossible. I am not such a person. But I would encourage everyone to be wary about what actually is knowledge … and what is only popular or fashionable prejudice. Then bear this in mind when you act. Brendan Burke MA (Phil) Cork Unitarian Church 26th Jan. 2007. Cover