Welcome to The Middle Way Society

The Middle Way Society was founded to promote the study and practice of The Middle Way. The Middle Way is the idea that we make better judgements by avoiding fixed beliefs and being open to practical experience. We challenge unhelpful distinctions between facts and values, reason and emotion, religion and secularism or arts and sciences. Though our name is inspired by some of the insights of the Buddha, we are independent of Buddhism or any other religion. We seek to promote and support integrative practice, overcoming conflict of all kinds.

Patrons: Iain McGilchrist and Stephen Batchelor

Cutting the Gordian Knot

Current Affairs, Middle Way Philosophy, Politics, Religion

The ability to cut through complexity and reach a simple resolution has an obvious appeal, yet ‘shortcuts’ can also be very damaging because they fail to engage with complexity. Are shortcuts always absolutisations? The story of Alexander the Great cutting through the Gordian Knot has always appealed to me. Here were lots of people arguing with endless complexity about how to untie the knot, and Alexander saw intuitively that all this complexity was unnecessary and unhelpful – so he cut the knot! Can this be justified?

I think it can. Absolutisations are always shortcuts, but shortcuts are not always absolutisations. Sometimes shortcuts are the best practical response to a situation in which continuing to try to address complexity is just creating more and more loops of conflict. Endless complex debate can also reinforce a certain limited framework within which a problem is being understood, with the boundaries strangely being reinforced by the complexity of discussion. Complexity is always there, and things are indeed likely to be more complex than we recognise, but that does not necessarily imply that a response that tries to limitlessly deal with complexity is the best one for us as agents within that system.

Alternative examples to Alexander cutting the Gordian Know can be found everywhere. For example, I think that agnosticism about God is a good example. The ramifications of theological debate about God’s ‘existence’ are endless, but their complexity depends on particular conceptual assumptions that do not actually help us address the complexity of conditions. Cutting the Gordian Knot here means pointing out that it’s totally irrelevant to our experience of phenomena (including religious experience), and of value, whether or not God ‘exists’ as a supernatural entity. The obsession with God’s ‘existence’ consists of a set of assumptions that we can simply cast aside. As long as we are caught up in the complexity of the arguments, that approach seems unthinkable, until one moment when it simply occurs to us that we don’t actually have to take a position on all of this. We can cast the burden aside and walk free.

But how can we tell when it’s justifiable to cut a Gordian Knot, rather than try to face up to complexity? I’d suggest that the key test is not about complexity at all, but about whether we’re facing up to alternatives. If we are offered alternatives that we simply ignore or dismiss because they are ‘off the map’ (not because of a reasonable judgement about their credibility), then the chances are that we are absolutizing, whether the alternative we’re ruling out is simple or complex. In the case of agnosticism about God, in most cases agnostics have tried out the arguments about God’s ‘existence’ and found them only productive of conflict, and have then recognised agnosticism as an alternative. Theists and atheists, on the other hand, routinely misunderstand, ignore or dismiss agnosticism: they have not engaged with it as a genuine option. On the other hand, many British attitudes to the EU routinely ignore its complexity, especially by jumping to the conclusion that it is ‘anti-democratic’, without examining the great complexity around the question either of what democracy means, or what it would mean for a supra-national body to be appropriately democratic. In this case, in my view the failure to face up to complexity is also a failure to consider alternatives to the easy view one has adopted, or to break out of the limited assumptions of a particular discourse.

My thoughts on this question have been especially stimulated recently by the Brexit impasse as it is continuing to ramify in the UK. I have taken a great interest in the complexity of these events, and am inclined at times to feel frustrated at the failure of most members of the public to engage with this complexity. However, I’m also beginning to think that one particular simple answer may in practice be the best one: that is, the recently adopted Liberal Democrat policy of simply revoking Article 50 and thus ending the whole Brexit debacle through one parliamentary action. It’s been pointed out to me that this would not be ‘simple’ at all, because it would create a lot of resistance, but this is where we also need to avoid the nirvana fallacy and compare different possible courses of action with each other rather than with an impossible ideal. The UK is deadlocked because there is great resistance to any possible course of action – so the choice seems to be between different actions that would all create great resistance: no-deal, deal, second referendum or revocation. Of these, the first three all threaten to prolong the impasse, because of the contradictions and impracticality in the case for Brexit itself. Only revocation seems to stand a chance of ending it in the long-term: but its simplicity seems to be one of the main barriers. Those who have been trying to engage with the complexity for so long can no longer believe that it might be that simple: just let go!

Part of the problem with discussing this topic also seems to be that people’s assumptions about what is ‘simple’ and what is ‘complex’ vary hugely with their background and perspective. If we are accustomed to dealing with complexity in a certain subject area, our handling of the concepts gets gradually easier, so it no longer seems ‘complex’ to us at all. Things that seem simple in one respect may also be complex in another – as I think is the case with Middle Way Philosophy in general, which is simple in its key idea, but complex in its application. However, we can probably all agree that cutting the Gordian Knot is a relatively simple action compared to trying to untie it. I expect lots of disagreement with my views on the two contentious examples I have used – God and Brexit, but the key point in my view will be not so much whether you are prepared to  cut Gordian knots on occasion, but what your approach is to judging those occasions. Can you face up to alternatives, even if those alternatives sometimes seem unacceptably simple rather than unacceptably complex? That is an ongoing practice for everyone.

Picture: Alexander cutting the Gordian Knot by Lorenzo de Ferrari (Wikimedia Commons/ Carlo Dell’Orto CCBYSA 4.0)

Buddhism 2.0? Stephen Batchelor’s vision of Secular Buddhism

Books, Buddhism, Religion,

At the time I was writing ‘The Buddha’s Middle Way’ (published this year), in 2017, I was able to refer to Stephen Batchelor’s 2015 book ‘After Buddhism’ as its nearest forerunner, but I had not yet read Batchelor’s collection of essays ‘Secular Buddhism’, which was only published in 2017. Reading that further book, more recently, I don’t think it would have made a huge difference to any of the (largely positive) things I said about Batchelor’s work. However, its essay ‘A Secular Buddhism’ does seem to be the nearest thing to a manifesto Batchelor has produced, and I guess that it’s one of the most influential statements to date of what ‘secular Buddhism’ means. For that reason, if no other, I feel it’s worth engaging with and responding to.

The reason I’ve been increasingly interested in Batchelor’s work, and have also been very glad to meet him personally, is not because I identify myself with the label ‘secular Buddhist’ (though I have been through an earlier phase when I used the term). However, I continue to be interested in what lies behind it – namely a fruitful process of deep critical thinking about Buddhist tradition, parallel to the similar process that is going on in relation to many other traditions.

Batchelor’s other metaphor for what he means by ‘Secular Buddhism’, ‘Buddhism 2.0’ appeals to me a little more. Despite its IT connotations, and the danger that these connotations will be taken too literally or reductively, it does convey the key idea of changing the paradigm that creates key assumptions about Buddhist practice. To do ‘Buddhism 2.0’ you don’t have to change your “hardware” (i.e. your body and brain) nor your specific app (e.g. ethical or meditation practice), but you do need to change the “operating system” that gives a wider formatting to your practice. You need to do so because the old operating system is no longer well-adapted to a new set of conditions. That’s a metaphor that could just as easily be applied to the reform of other traditions: e.g. Christianity 2.0, Science 2.0, or Liberalism 2.0.

The switch from one operating system to another may also seem like a sudden one, because it involves a disengagement from one set of connected assumptions in order to re-engage with another. Batchelor captures this very well when he writes about a “gestalt switch” from a metaphysical interpretation of Buddhist doctrines to a pragmatic one. In the work of Robert Kegan on levels of adult psychological development, that switch can be seen as the one between level 4 (thinking based on paradigmatic rational rules) to level 5 (flexibly moving between paradigms with a practical justification).

When this switch occurs, how does the new ‘operating system’ differ from the old one? Here, the key point where I agree with Batchelor wholeheartedly is that the new operating system is pragmatic whilst the old is dogmatic. The question, however, is what exactly “pragmatic” means. The implications of pragmatism need to be simultaneously pursued both in theory and in practise if they are to provide a strong enough alternative to the dogmas people are used to relying on. The more long-term and universal one tries to make one’s pragmatism, the further one will need to look beyond one’s personal experience and one’s immediate audience, and thus the wider and more fruitful one’s pragmatism is likely to become. Batchelor’s strength is that of communicating new possible approaches to people who are interested in Buddhism in a way that can inspire them and is consistent with practical experience. However, his limitations lie more in the area of how much he critically examines the perspectives he offers, to make his pragmatism more universal.

This takes me to my concerns about the framing of ‘Buddhism 2.0’ as ‘Secular Buddhism’. In his essay ‘Secular Buddhism’, Batchelor starts off by trying to clarify exactly what he means by that term. Let’s start with ‘Secular’. Batchelor says that there are three senses of secularity he is using: (1) opposition to religion, (2) being concerned with this world, and (3) involving a transfer of authority from ‘church’ to ‘state’. If that is what ‘secular’ means, then identifying my approach with any of them would worry me, because they all seem to rely on a (thoroughly false, in my view) dichotomy between ‘secularity’ and ‘religion’. If we state that we are concerned with this world, that seems to imply that we are still avoiding concern with another one, and if we are transferring authority away from religious institutions, this also suggests that we are rejecting religious institutions as holders of power. Surely that is continuing with the old paradigm, but just flipping our priorities within that paradigm, rather than adopting a new one? To adopt a new pragmatic paradigm, surely we need to apply the same sorts of autonomous criteria to critique both ‘religious’ and ‘non-religious’ spheres, recognising that religion is a complex system embedded in human societies?

There are, indeed, other possible uses of the term ‘secularism’, that I think may get a bit closer to what I take Batchelor to mean. Charles Taylor, in his big book ‘A Secular Age’ offers another alternative sense of secularity, as a transition “from a society in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is one human possibility among others”. The phenomenon of secular thinking has given us options that were not there before: to follow the church, to think oppositely to the church, and potentially, also, to break the dichotomous paradigm on which the popular view of religion as absolute belief depends. That’s a type of secularism I would personally find it much easier to sign up to: both individually and socio-politically, I think it’s very important to maintain those options. But secularists would need to be a great deal clearer about this as the prime reason for secularism than they tend to be for me to sign on the dotted line. Batchelor’s account of it does not suggest that it’s this kind of definition that he has in mind.

The other side of Batchelor’s account of ‘Secular Buddhism’ is the ‘Buddhist’ part. Here it may be helpful to quote him at some length.

On what grounds would such a Buddhism 2.0 be able to claim that it is “Buddhism” rather than something else altogether? Clearly, it would need to be founded on canonical source texts, be able to offer a convincing interpretation of key practices, doctrines, and ethical precepts, and to provide a sufficiently rich and integrated theoretical model of the dharma to serve as the basis for a flourishing human existence. (p.80)

Firstly, here, I wonder why he is so concerned as to whether ‘Secular Buddhism’ could possibly be mistaken for “something else altogether”. It’s a worry I’ve also encountered amongst many other Buddhists when discussing these issues, to such an extent that when I asked one Buddhist scholar why he was so narrowly focused on the Buddhist tradition, he answered “because I’m a Buddhist” – as though that answered the question! It should hardly be necessary to point out to Buddhists that essentialism is not part of their brief. Surely, if the practices work, it matters not in the least whether they are thought of as ‘Buddhism’? What matters practically, in relation to the Buddhist tradition, is whether it is a source of inspiration and practical support for spiritual progress, not what we call it. Its practical function as a tradition does depend on continuity, but not on essentiality, and helpful continuity can be maintained without essential identity.

Charitably assuming, then, that what Batchelor wants here more deeply is an effective practical relationship to Buddhist tradition rather than ultimate grounds for claiming that it is not ‘something else’, we can then find three criteria for it in the quotation above, only two of which are obviously pragmatic. A convincing interpretation of all the elements of the tradition is undoubtedly needed to maintain helpful continuity with it, and “a sufficiently rich and integrated model of it” to be practically helpful is also a pragmatic criterion. Why ever, though, does it need to be “founded on canonical source texts”?
There seems to be a contradiction between this criterion and Batchelor’s approach on the very next page:

The more I am seduced by the force of my own arguments, the more I am tempted to imagine that my secular version of Buddhism is what the Buddha originally taught, which the traditional schools have either lost sight of or distorted. This would be a mistake, or it is impossible to read the historical Buddha’s mind in order to know what he “really” meant or intended. (p.81)

Why does secular Buddhism need to be “founded on canonical source texts” if these very source texts have such a highly debatable relationship to the Buddha? Even if the scholarly lines of transmission were clearer than they are, would there not also be a basic issue of responsibility here? If we have responsibility for our practice, surely we cannot take any “canonical source text” as a complete account of it? Once we take responsibility for an idea, its source becomes irrelevant.

However, responsibility needs to be exercised in interpreting Batchelor as well as in interpreting scriptures. I’m fairly sure, having met him and discussed some of these issues, that he would deny that he intended “canonical source texts” to be an absolute source of authority. Nevertheless, I think there is a major issue about what one implies when one argues about such texts. In my own book ‘The Buddha’s Middle Way’, I have tried to make it extremely clear that I am using source texts from the Pali Canon as a source of inspiration rather than as a source of ‘truth’. Even then I found that some early readers of my draft book did not understand this approach, assuming that any reference to the texts was effectively an appeal to authority, and any changed interpretation must be based on a rival historical or textual claim of some kind. Appealing to authority is such an engrained habit in every sphere of religion, that one has to make a supreme effort even to open the Overton Window to other possibilities. People will still read in what they are used to even when you try to make it very explicit. In the absence of an extremely explicit statement about how one is using texts, then, I think it is very difficult to avoid the presumption, in readers if not in the writer, that one is offering a new version of what the Buddha “really” meant. For that reason I would like Batchelor to be very much more explicit on this point.

I think Batchelor’s concern with the dating and origin of texts also leaves him open to this interpretation. Sometimes the fact that one text is earlier or later than another is an informative part of the total story it offers and its significance. For example, knowing that ‘The Tempest’ is a late play of Shakespeare’s does make a difference to our appreciation of it, as we can understand the echoes of Shakespeare himself in the character of Prospero. In a similar way, awareness that the ‘Chapter of Eights’ in the Sutta Nipata is probably a very early text may help us to interpret it contextually. However, the dating of religious texts is very often part of an authority game in which the earlier text is taken to ‘win’ as the reward for a convincing (but unavoidably fallible) scholarly argument. In such cases, it has nothing much to do with the meaning of the text. Claims about dating may become hostages to fortune, and the practical meaning of the text very quickly becomes submerged in scholarly competitiveness. I very much feel that serious pragmatism demands agnosticism about claims that are heavily associated with the authority of texts, at least as the default option.

Overall, then, I think Batchelor’s account of secular Buddhism, though it has the great virtue of engaging many people in a pragmatic critique of Buddhist tradition, leaves a great deal that is of importance still unresolved or unnecessarily open to unhelpful interpretations. One reason for this is that it tries to use the concept of ‘secularism’ for a purpose for which it is ill-equipped. The other is that it remains unclear in practice how committed Batchelor is to a pragmatic interpretation, rather than one that continues (at least implicitly) to rely on tradition through the historical appeal to canonical sources.

Of course, I also think that one underlying reason for these limitations in Batchelor’s account is his neglect of the Middle Way, which really only gets passing mentions here and there, and is never really highlighted as important, despite all Batchelor’s discussion of the character and teachings of the Buddha. As Batchelor was kind enough to write an appreciative foreword for ‘The Buddha’s Middle Way’, I hope this may change in future. The key point missing here so far, though, is that, although Batchelor recognises that metaphysics is a problem, he doesn’t show any recognition that negative metaphysics is just as much of a problem as positive. As negative metaphysics in reaction to positive is such a feature of many interpretations of secularism, this is obviously a crucial reason for being cautious about identifying oneself with it.

The MWS Podcast 149: David Robson on the intelligence trap

Books, Podcast, Psychology, Science, Wisdom,

My guest today is David Robson, David is an award-winning science writer and editor, who specialises in writing in-depth articles probing the extremes of the human mind, body and behaviour. He was a features editor at New Scientist for five years and is currently a senior journalist at BBC Future. He regularly features on the BBC World Service discussing scientific issues, and his writing has also appeared in Guardian, the Atlantic and the Washington Post. His first book ‘The Intelligence Trap: Why Smart People Make Stupid Mistakes and How to Make Wiser Decisions was published earlier this year and this will be the topic of our discussion today

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Fractal adaptivity

Meaning, Middle Way Philosophy, Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Systems Theory,

Should the concept of adaptivity (or adaptiveness) not itself be adaptive? In my work on Middle Way Philosophy, I’ve often found myself arguing that a traditional way of thinking about a concept that may have worked in a past context is too restrictive for the present one. Moving on from the limitations of Buddhist ways of thinking of the Middle Way as lying between ‘eternalism’ and ‘nihilism’ is one example of this, and another (that I’m working on for my next book) is the need to move on from Jungian accounts of archetypes as innate features of the ‘collective unconscious’. In both cases, the alternative needs to be a more universal and thoroughly functional account of the concept, helpful to all people in all places rather than tied to a limiting paradigm. We owe a huge debt to the people who developed these concepts, but need to pass on the flame rather than worshipping the conceptual ashes. So it seems, also, with the concept of adaptivity itself, which for many people is strongly tied to a Darwinian paradigm.

In the basic Darwinian view, adaptivity is a matter of the continuing survival and reproduction of an organism in changing conditions. The organism passes on its genes to its descendants with minor mutations, some of which are better adapted to new conditions and others of which are not. ‘Natural selection’ then ensures that the better adapted organisms survive and reproduce, whilst the less well adapted die out. This kind of adaptivity , however, is a relatively crude. It takes a very long time for significant adaptation to occur, only operates at the level of entire species or sub-species, and requires the maladapted to perish in the process. Nevertheless, many thinkers still seem to think of this as the only acceptable understanding of adaptivity. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, for instance, expresses a valuable perspective on the long-term value of our ability to adapt to extreme and unpredictable events, or ‘fat tails’ as he calls them. If our perspective is too short-term, and we fail to take these events into account, even if we appear to be well-adapted to a more limited immediate range of conditions, we lose. However, the kind of adaptiveness he has in mind appears to be only that of survival (even if not strictly only of a species). In this he seems to follow a strand of thinking in evolutionary biology that reduces all other forms of adaptation to that one.

However, adaptation is clearly a much more complex concept than that. It is a feature of a system, and systems may operate at different levels where their goals may not be just the survival of the system (practically necessary though that remains), but rather the fulfilment of a variety of needs. As systems evolve greater complexity, their goals also become more complex. Whilst survival is always the grounding condition on which the development of other goals depends, a hierarchy of ‘higher’ goals can develop in dependence on them. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs expresses those adaptive goals for humans, working up from the social adaptations of belonging and esteem to the individual one of what Maslow called ‘self-actualisation’.But how can we understand Maslow’s insights in the context of adaptation? After all, a reductive evolutionary biologist would probably say that all of these needs boil down to survival in the end, and that even self-actualisation is only adaptive because it helps us solve problems or get on with others in ways that help us survive. I don’t agree that that’s the whole story, though, and it has recently occurred to me that talking in terms of a fractal structure may help to explain the relationships between different types of adaptivity. In a fractal structure, the features of a larger system are reproduced (potentially infinitely) at smaller and smaller scales, the Mandelbrot Set (pictured) being an example of these relationships mathematically turned into an image.

To think of adaptivity in a fractal way, we’ll need to think of a hierarchy of successively smaller systems (smaller both in time and space) dependent on the larger one, but in which the same basic pattern of conditions operates. Exactly how you divide up levels of adaptivity may be a matter of debate, but I think we can distinguish at least four levels: biological, cultural, individual and imaginative. In each case there is a means of transmission of certain features that operates only at that level, a specific selective force that depends on the fulfilment of needs in different conditions, and both reinforcing and balancing types of feedback. I’ve suggested what the features of these four levels might be in the table below, though I’m sure this sketch can be refined.

When we get to the ‘higher’, or more distinctively human, forms of adaptivity, it is our use of symbols to create meaning that seems to be the basis of adaptivity, but operating in three different ways. At a cultural or social level, shared symbols and beliefs help societies to adapt, although rigidity in those symbols and beliefs can also become maladaptive. At this level, safety, belonging and respect start to become important in addition to survival. At an individual level, the development of an individual capacity for meaning and belief through neural links allows that individual to meet all their needs, including self-actualisation. Again, however, rigidity of belief can be maladaptive – this time for the individual. Within the individual, and within a shorter time-frame rather than a whole life, there is finally an imaginative level of adaptivity that is created by our ability to use symbols hypothetically and thus simulate possibilities in our minds. This imaginative process boosts our adaptivity as individuals, helping us to adapt far more quickly than we could do by merely waiting for our previous habits to fail us in new conditions. However, once again, maladaptivity for the individual occurs through the reinforcing feedback of imaginative reconstruction in loops of anxiety or obsession.

I think that these ways of understanding adaptivity help us to distinguish the Middle Way clearly from other kinds of adaptivity to a context. The practice of the Middle Way does not consist in just any kind of balancing feedback loop, but rather the development of awareness required for provisionality. If we can examine alternatives hypothetically, we can not only be freed from reinforcing feedback at the imaginative level, but also start to make an impression on the more basic levels. Provisionality applied consistently and courageously can change both long-term individual development and social beliefs, slow and frustrating though that process may seem when we see our societies going through damaging reinforcing feedback loops. Whether we can successfully influence the biological level is much more debatable.

However refined our thinking as individuals, however, we are still subject to the more basic conditioning of the biological level. As we are increasingly discovering through the climate crisis, the very existence of the more complex and refined systems, both social and individual, is under threat if we cannot maintain the basic conditions for our survival as a species.

Pictures: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs by factoryjoe (Wikimedia Commons). Mandelbrot Set picture of unknown origin. Table of levels of adaptivity by the author.

A new review of ‘Thinking in Systems’ by Donella Meadows (reviewed by Robert M. Ellis) is now available on this page. This is a highly recommended book that can help you understand systems theory in a clear, universal form.