All posts by Robert M Ellis

About Robert M Ellis

Robert M Ellis is the founder of the Middle Way Society, and author of a number of books on Middle Way Philosophy, including the introductory 'Migglism' and the new Middle Way Philosophy series published by Equinox. A former teacher, he now runs a retreat centre in Wales, Tirylan House, and is in the process of creating a forest garden there.

Seven contentions against the academics

Middle Way Philosophy, Philosophy, Science

People do seem to like lists for some reason. When I suggested Five Principles of Middle Way Philosophy (scepticism, provisionality, incrementality, agnosticism and integration) these seemed to have been helpful in providing a way in. The Five Principles have the advantage of being (largely) positive, but they may not bring out how Middle Way Philosophy challenges current ways of thinking: a more negative, but necessary argument. It is that role I have in mind for this list of Seven Contentions, which has evolved out of some earlier, similar lists.

Why ‘against the academics’? Well, I’m obviously not against academics as people, but I do want to challenge the effects of academic over-specialisation, and the over-confidence in one’s assumptions that often seems to come from academics spending decades working in one particular niche. What these Seven Contentions all do is challenge widespread assumptions in Western academic culture that I think seriously hold us back. Like the Five Principles, it is necessary to understand them together rather than piecemeal, so a relatively short summary like this may help to put them all in view together. I am well aware that there are a few academics that might agree with me on some of these, but I have yet to find one that recognises them all in relation to each other.

1. The Middle Way is a method of judgement, not a claim about reality

This is the most important point where I part company with the way in which most Buddhists and scholars of Buddhism tend to present the Middle Way. For them the Middle Way story tends to be that the Buddha gained awakening to a ‘reality’ beyond the delusions of ordinary existence by avoiding eternalism and nihilism: but beliefs abMiddle Way symbolout such a ‘reality’ tend to then undermine the Middle Way in Buddhism at every point by creating new metaphysical beliefs about the Buddha’s achievement and authority. The Middle Way needs to decisively move away from metaphysical ways of thinking, and it can’t do this if it is understood in metaphysical terms itself. Instead it  needs to be seen as a method of judgement that avoids  both positive and negative absolutisations. Once you accept that, you also need to start looking at the huge implications: that it offers a universal basis of more adequate judgement for both science and ethics, and thus does not necessarily need to be understood in the terms of Buddhist tradition at all.

For more on this see The Buddha and the Middle Way.

2. Full-blooded scepticism is not a threat, but rather a stimulus to provisionality

We can question everything as much as we like – no holds barredChange_Your_Mind Dr CVSB CCSA4-0 – and there cannot possibly be anything ‘extreme’ about such scepticism as long as we remember to treat negative claims with just as much scepticism as positive ones. Scepticism is then just a helpful prompt to provisionality in our judgements, making us aware that we have no certainty. It is not about to destroy science or make anyone’s life impossible, but on the contrary brings us back from abstract certainties to fallible experience.

For more on this see The misunderstanding of scepticism.

3. Metaphysics is not inevitable

The standard objection to this whole approach from analytic philosophers and related academics is that metaphysics is inevitable, because it is taken to consist in basic assumptions we make in our lives. But no basic assumptions are absolutely beyond question – even that the universe exists, or that the world didn’t begin last Tuesday – even if we do often take them for granted. If we treat such assumptions as beyond question then they become absolutisations that are potentially rigidifying our thinking. But if we start to recognise them as ultimately questionable, even when we actually have a lot of confidence in them (99.99% confidence), we stand a chance of avoiding that absolutisation. The view that metaphysics is inevitable has become part of academic culture, but it is most unhelpful, because it tends to distract people from recognising the damaging effects of absolutes that repress alternatives and claim to have the whole story.

For more on this see the video ‘What’s wrong with metaphysics’.

4. Objectivity is a matter of degreeFinalviewFromNowhere small

There is an incremental sense of ‘objectivity’ as a matter of degree in widespread use. However, for some reason there is also a widespread academic view that an absolute, God’s eye view of ‘objectivity’ is the default (and that it is opposed to ‘subjectivity’). But the God’s eye view sense is in practice completely irrelevant to human beings. How did we manage to let a practically irrelevant sense steal the show? If we see objectivity as a matter of degree (incremental) we do not have to believe in ‘truths’ beyond experience, only recognise that at some points we judge in a bigger and more adequate way than others.

For more on this see the ‘Objectivity’ page.

5. Meaning is both cognitive and emotive: inextricably

A great deal of common academic reasoning is fatally undermined by the assumption that ‘real’ meaning is solely cognitive – the kind of meaning one can look up in a dictionary – and that this can be separated from emotive meaning (how things feel to us). But this distinction is a merely abstract one, having no basis in our experience where every word or symbol that denotes something also connotes and vice-versa. This purely abstract distinction is then allowed to run the show in all sorts of other ways, by deciding the basis on which we will think about how to justify our beliefs or about what is right. If our experience of meaning is embodied, as linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson have shown, then cognitive and emotive meaning can no longer be separated, and we can no longer justify academic ‘business as usual’ proceeding on the basis that they can.

For more on this see the ‘Embodied meaning’ page.

6. Facts cannot be divided from values, nor reasons from emotions

If cognitive and emotive meaning cannot be separated, Boy with blocks ragesoss CCSA 3-0nor can the beliefs about ‘facts’ and ‘values’ or ‘reason’ and ’emotion’ that are erected on the same assumptions. These are false dichotomies on which huge intellectual edifices have been built, solely on the basis that facts and values can be distinguished in abstract analysis. But in human experience they are never separated, every fact involving values and every value involving presumed facts. Neuroscientific investigation has also failed to find an independently operating part of the brain for ‘reason’ as opposed to ’emotion’. Any adequate ways of understanding how to make judgements in our experience have to deal with these things together. That implies that reductions of issues both to logical processing and to intuitive insight are equally likely to be mistaken.

For more on this see the ‘Facts and values’ page.

7. I encounter myself as a wish, not a thing

I am an ego (and probably you are too!). That means that I consist in a set of desires or identifications – or at least, that’s what I encounter when I experience ‘myself’. I can’t encounter myself either as a thing or as the absence of a thing, and these are just wishful thinking abstractions foisted onto my ever-changing experience of wanting to be a thing. Academia often seems to have rejected Descartes’ view of the absolute self, but not to have taken on board all the implications of doing so – which includes there being no single self to make ‘rational’ philosophical or scientific observations. How well I can judge the world around me seems to depend on how well I can integrate the conflicting desires that threaten to distract and delude me. I cannot be assumed to simply have such a stable self, and thus the scientist also cannot be discounted from science by maintaining a model of ‘God’s eye view’ objectivity.

For more on this see the ‘Self and ego’ page.

Picture credits: 2nd: ‘Change your mind’  by Dr CVSB, CCSA 4.0; 3rd: cartoon by Norma Smith, reproduced from ‘Migglism’; 4th: Boy with blocks by ragesoss, CCSA3.0

 

Round and round

Buddhism, Middle Way Philosophy, Psychology,

Cycles are an easily identifiable feature of universal human experience. Arguments go ’round in circles’. Efforts to change get caught in vicious circles or Catch 22s. Buddhism has its Wheel of Samsara (or ‘Wheel of Life’), in which craving leads to frustration and then more craving. Various social sciences identify various cycles: the economic cycle, the political cycle, the cycle of addiction, the cycle of violence, the cycle of poverty and degradation, and so on. What do these cycles have in common? Are they inescapable?

One interpretation I want to resist from the start is the belief that these cycles are inescapable (or alternatively, only escapable through some miraculous supernatural cause) because ‘natural’. The cycles I’ve mentioned so far all depend on the human brain, so we have no reason to conflate them with other sorts of cycle that are entirely (rather than debatably) beyond human control – such as eco-cycles, planetary cycles, or the cycle of birth and death. Though they may share some formal features with other kinds of cycles, the kinds of cycles I want to focus on here are within the sphere of human judgement: and that’s a sphere in which the extent of our responsibility remains perpetually vague and unresolved.

What the cycles within that sphere seem to have in common is their relationship to looped synaptic tracks in the brain. Broadly, we can see our feedback loops as leading from the older ‘reptilian’ lower brain, where our basic motives arise, to the pre-frontal cortex in the front of our brains, where we conceptualise and contextualise in a more distinctively human fashion. But this understanding of the situation then gives rise to new motives, looping us back to the back of the brain. We ‘go round in circles’ when we are in the habit of following certain entrenched synaptic tracks, in which certain kinds of desires give rise to certain kinds of beliefs, that then reinforce the desires and again reinforce the beliefs.  For example, Marc Lewis shows this process in the brain of an addict in his book The Biology of Desire, reviewed here. As Lewis points out, it’s not only drug addicts that go through such feedback loops, but to some extent all of us.

We also go through such cycles over a shorter period of time when we ‘ruminate’: going through a proliferating cycle of thoughts that are usually motivated by obsession or anxiety. If you keep thinking the same thoughts over and over again and can’t get to sleep, or can’t focus on work or meditation, you are probably caught in a positive feedback loop.

Positive feedback loops are the means by which we can set up good habits as well as bad ones, and as long as we are in a stable environment in which those habits are helpful, relying on them isn’t too much of a problem. However, if we want to be able to adapt to ever-changing new circumstances, we need to be able to move out of unhelpful positive feedback loops of this kind. Where they become conceptualised in the left pre-frontal cortex, these loops are the basis of confirmation bias: we tend to just seek out evidence that fits the beliefs we already have, rather than challenging those beliefs – and this tendency is the basis of all sorts of other errors.A positive feedback loop

We have good evidence from experience that we are able to move out of such positive feedback loops, by responding to new experiences that challenge our beliefs, and thus adapting our beliefs to fit new circumstances. Instead of a positive feedback loop in which an old habit is reinforced, this is then a negative feedback loop in which learning and adjustment can take place. However stuck in our ways we may be, we have all done this lots of times in the past, especially as children. The human brain retains its plasticity well into old age – and thus we are always capable of changing our beliefs, even if we find the process uncomfortable. To get out of a circular argument, then, or even an addiction or an economic cycle or a cycle of violence, we just need to be willing to learn how to do things differently.

I sometimes think that if this wasn’t called the Middle Way Society, it could be called the ‘Negative Feedback Loop Society’. It’s that basic to what the Middle Way is about. For the extremes avoided by the Middle Way are rigid or absolutised beliefs of a kind that resist change and maintain themselves only in the context of positive feedback loops. In the Middle Way, or as Ed Catmull memorably calls it the ‘messy middle’, we are able to be creative, to switch strategies, to adapt.A negative feedback loop

Some people are confused by the labels, assuming that a ‘Negative Feedback Loop’ must be bad because it’s negative. But it’s negative only in the sense that it challenges and catalyses change – not necessarily emotionally or logically negative. Similarly, there’s nothing necessarily ‘positive’ in an emotional sense about positive feedback loops: indeed the repression that they often bring with them is likely to stifle any sense of joyfulness and replace it with alienation and boredom in which the energy of possible alternatives is dimly felt but nevertheless denied.

In some formulations of Buddhism (such as that of Sangharakshita), the Wheel of Samsara (which may be interpreted along the lines of such an addictive cycle) is accompanied by a Spiral. A spiral gives graphic expression to the idea that we might continue to go round and round to some degree whilst lifting out of those habits in other respects, and is thus one way of symbolically representing the process of moving out of positive feedback loops and into negative ones. However, the Spiral is often represented as though it was a single absolute path culminating in the transcendent point of nirvana, and on that interpretation, at least, it seems to be incompatible with the Middle Way. Negative feedback loops are a different pattern of judgement, but one that we might find in the thick of a complex pattern of positive feedback loops, and it is the nature of the judgement that is important rather than the ultimate destination.Wheel of samsara

Positive feedback loops, like samsara in Buddhism, should not be seen as intrinsically bad, but they are limited, and a set of beliefs that rigidly limits us to such loops does then become morally inferior when compared to alternatives that allow us to adapt to a wider range of conditions. We do not need to deduce this from a supposed standpoint of nirvana, or any other supposed absolute beyond experience. It should be clear to us as long as we are willing to simply compare a relatively flexible standpoint to a relatively inflexible one.

A Tale of Two Metaphors

Meaning, Middle Way Philosophy

All our thinking depends on metaphors. The work of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson explains the way in which we build our cognitive models on a particular metaphor, which is mapped onto a physical experience schematised into our neural connections. For example, the picture here illustrates an old Platonic cognitive model for the mind or soul in relation to the body: the body as a cage in which the otherwise free mind is constrained. It never seemed to occur to anyone using this metaphor that our experience of being imprisoned is a physical one, and we’d need a body to even experience what it meant to be released from a cage. Nevertheless, a good deal of Plato’s philosophy depends on this metaphor.Byzantine_Metaphor_For_The_Soul_and_Death

Plato’s basic mistake here is one that we are all prone to: of adopting just one basic metaphor and assuming that it is the final word. A ‘stuck’ metaphor is what one might otherwise refer to as a metaphysical belief. As long as we take them provisionally, however, metaphors are also the only way in which we can build up an understanding of anything. Very often, if you’re trying to explain something abstract, people only ‘get it’ when you use a metaphor. That means they’ve found a way of making it meaningful in relation to their wider bodily experience. Metaphors tend to come in connected groups, too (Plato didn’t just use the one about the soul in a cage, but also the soul as a charioteer, and many others). We can reinforce one metaphor with others, or challenge one metaphor with a different one. Perhaps the major difference between creative philosophy and mere analysis is that creative philosophy works with metaphors, pulling them together, testing out compatibility and incompatibility, whilst mere analysis just works away doggedly within one cognitive model on the assumption that it is right.

One crucial point in Middle Way Philosophy is that a belief is not ‘merely relative’ because it’s dependent on a metaphor, any more than it’s absolutely true because it’s hit the right metaphor. Some metaphors provide more adequate models for interpreting conditions than others do. The better ones can link together a great many other metaphors, as well as explaining a wide range of experiences. We can stretch metaphors to make them bigger by linking them with others, and the more provisionally we are holding the metaphor, the easier it is to do this.

So, here is a challenge to Middle Way Philosophy that I’ve been reflecting on. There is one key metaphor of the Middle Way, which relates to our experiences of following a path and of balancing: but is this metaphor being relied on too much? How can this metaphor be provisional when it is also so all-encompassing?

I have two linked responses to these linked questions. One is that Middle Way Philosophy doesn’t just depend on the metaphor of the Middle Way, but also that of integration. Another is that the bigger and stretchier a metaphor is, the more provisional it is. Middle Way Philosophy is not an ultimate explanation, but at the same time it is the kind of explanation that becomes more adequate the more it encompasses.

Firstly, then, the metaphor of the Middle Way and that of integration. These two models offer rather different models of thinking, but they are still linked. Integration is basically the Middle Way inside out. Whilst the Middle Way is a negative model that takes our motivation for granted and just tells us that there are metaphysical traps to avoid on either side, integration takes the things on each side more positively, suggests that they do themselves have motivating power, and that both the energy and the metaphors on either side can be positively incorporated into a whole The two metaphors complement each other enormously and yet remain compatible. Without the rigour of the Middle Way, integration models can get rather naïve and new-agey; but without integration, the Middle Way can get rather dry and negative.

Would it be possible to combine the two metaphors? Well, here’s an attempt. Suppose you’re captain of a ship heading through a dangerous strait between two rocks. Some of your passengers want to go straight on, but others want to pick up friends from the rocks on either side. So, you do head straight on, but not before you have picked up further passengers and rescued them from the rocks on either side. This requires both courage and skill. Once you’ve picked up all the passengers from both sides, everyone can be united in urging you onwards through the rest of the strait.

This combination of metaphors illustrates the way that even metaphors that at first seem separate can be combined and stretched. That’s one reason why I’m interested in studying even religions that seem to have a heavy metaphysical emphasis, like Islam, and, metaphorically speaking, picking up the passengers from that rock too. I want to argue that the more a given metaphor can explain the strengths of others in that way, without getting sucked into the assumption that any one metaphor is final, the more justified confidence we can have in that metaphor. If a given approach can offer responses that account for the successes other metaphorical approaches, rather than simply rejecting them as wholly wrong, it provides the basis of a bigger and more adequate metaphor.

I think Middle Way Philosophy is like this. That’s one of the reasons why it is so all-encompassing: it needs to be able to account for the insights available from different traditions and from different specialisms. However broad it is, though, to remain provisional it must be fallible. If someone else can come up with a better theory that explains all the things Middle Way Philosophy explains and does all the things it does: explaining the nature of objectivity, providing a justifiable ethics, resolving the absolutism/ relativism split, combining theory with practice, facts with values, the religious and the secular, art and science, whilst taking into account the scientific evidence for things like embodied meaning, the splits in the brain and our cognitive biases, then I will drop this theory and come and help them on theirs. Theories based on particular metaphors can be superseded – but they have to be superseded in doing the job that they set out to do, explaining both the successes and failures of the theory to be superseded.

This blog was originally posted on my ‘Middle Way Philosophy’ site in Sept 2013

Picture: Byzantine metaphor for the soul by Ken & Nyetta CCSA

The Middle Way to Anarchy

Middle Way Philosophy, Politics

Recently I’ve been writing educational materials on anarchism, which has made me think again about this raft of ideological approaches. It is possible to make all kinds of claims for anarchism, depending on how one defines or understands it: for example, either that it is aSpread anarchy threat to a peaceful society, or the reverse that it is the most peaceful ideology in existence; that it is the only true road to human freedom, or that it is the ultimate threat to freedom. It also seems to me that defined in one way, everyone is an anarchist, and defined another way, nobody is. If you think of anarchism as a gradual intention to minimise unnecessary interference by the state in people’s lives, with no government merely as an remote ultimate goal, then virtually everyone is an anarchist. If on the other hand you think of anarchism as a revolutionary wish to immediately destroy all coercive sources of order, then really nobody is an anarchist, least of all those who call themselves anarchists when their wishes are more closely examined.

All this sounds familiar to me from my philosophical explorations of the function of metaphysical ideas, like those of God, freewill, determinism, materialism etc. Anarchism can be seen as just another of those remote idealisations that have no genuine connection with people’s experience. Our experience is actually of societies in which there are varying degrees of coercion going on, not of a society with final and complete freedom, absolute equality, and no more government. In the mixed up context in which we live, the only function of such idealisations is to support dogmatic actions that are ill-adapted to their environment.

This can be seen, not only from the remote and idealised nature of the conception of anarchy itself, but from its degree of abstracted adaptability. Like God, anarchy can be all things to all people. Every other ideology has its own version of anarchy: there are anarcho-capitalists at the ultra-extreme end of libertarianism, tribal anarchists who are ultra-conservative, anarcho-syndicalists and mutualists who take socialism as their departure point, anarcho-ecologists, and anarcho-communists who offer a slightly more coherent account of communism (than Marx) without the determinism. For all of these ideologies, the appeal to ultimate anarchy is little more than the source of an extra dogmatic edge to their libertarianism, conservatism, socialism or whatever. I suppose out of all the range of anarchisms, it is mutualism that earns my respect most, because it is largely concerned with directly constructing communities or institutions that actually help people to support each other without an appeal to authority, such as credit unions or workers’ co-operatives.

At the same time, again like God, I don’t think that the idea of anarchy is meaningless. It is symbolically important precisely because, for some people at some times, it does stand for or evoke important experiences. It seems to stand symbolically for integration, particularly as understood socially and politically. The final state of society that so inspires anarchists is one in which there is no conflict, and therefore no reason for intervention by authorities. However, to bring about a lessening of conflict, as I have argued a good deal elsewhere, it is integration that is required, with psychological integration meshing with social integration. Our ability to avoid conflict with others depends on our ability to avoid conflicts within ourselves.

So here is perhaps the biggest naivete in Anarchism: it is often described as “having an optimistic view of human nature”, such that, when the imposition of authority from outside is removed, human beings will “naturally” start to behave in a peaceful and co-operative way. This is not naïve because it’s impossible: I don’t think it is impossible, but there’s nothing “natural” about it. For people to co-operate (i.e. be integrated) in such a way, they need to be integrated in themselves, and their integration is a matter of degree, rather than a matter of being “naturally” good or bad. So the state of anarchy could only be achieved, as a matter of degree, by a similar degree of integration amongst all the individuals in the world. We could only work towards achieving it by the practice of the Middle Way. So the way to work towards an ideal state of anarchy involves avoiding metaphysical beliefs such as ones about human nature being “naturally” rational or “naturally” corrupt, or any other such absolutist dogmas.

So, along with pretty much everyone else, I’m an anarchist in a sense. I don’t expect that we will ever reach a state where stable anarchy without the need for government will occur, but I’m happy for that idea to have archetypal importance so long as people don’t start believing in it and using it as the basis of dogmatic judgements. That’s when the harm starts creeping in, whether its from the Angry Brigade or from the free-market egoism of Ayn Rand. I think there is a possible road to such a state of virtuous anarchy through gradual integration, just as there is to enlightenment or God or any other such idealisation. And everyone could be an anarchist in this sense without it making much difference to our political judgements, as political judgements are about what we do, now, in experience, not about such remote ideals.

 

This is a repost of a blog I posted on middlewayphilosophy.wordpress.com in July 2013. The picture is of unknown origin, but seems to have been used by various anarchist blogs that probably have no respect for copyright law! If it violates any copyright, please get in touch and I’ll remove it.