COMMENSAL ISSUE 88

Dear Theo,

Thank you for your kind remarks about my contribution (C87, p. 7).

You query the accuracy of my contention that religion is defined by "subject as prior" while science treats "object as prior". You say that "most religions tend to have God as their object, and are based on relationships, while quantum mechanics is very much caught up with the relation between observer and observed".

Of course you are right in your observations. However, my argument (on the one hand) is that God, even though regarded as an object of aspiration or worship, is conceived of as a subject: that is, as some sort of supernal self who through his/her/its volition brought the universe into being. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth". Some religious or mystical beliefs go so far as to identify the essential self of each individual with the Godhead: "This my Self within my heart, this is Brahma; to Him shall I win when I go hence." (Chandogya Upanishad, translated by Max Muller, quoted in 'The Wisdom of the Hindus' ed. Brian Brown, London 1922). Thus a 'self' is in the religious conception prior to everything.

On the other hand, I would say that quantum mechanics represents a relatively recent development in the history of science, and shows science admitting to the difficulty of severing subject from object in any clearly defined way. Surely it is difficult to deny that the establishment of objectively verifiable principles is the commonly understood task of science ? To that extent, science regards the object as the prior term.

As for religion being "based on relationships" I see this as being its basic function. Its task is a moral one: to create coherence among persons by offering a transcendent focus for each individual's subjective sense of self.

The contention underlying my earlier contribution is that 'nature' operates in terms of continua - a matrix of relationships - while human verbal thought functions in terms of category. The attempt to understand the former in terms of the latter is intrinsically problematic.

You may have noticed what might amount to a slight logical inconsistency in Philip Lloyd Lewis' remarks on C87, p. 20 . He writes "all delusions are beliefs but not all beliefs are delusions". So the category 'delusions' is a subset (if I am using logical terminology correctly) of the set of all beliefs. But he then goes on to say that "one man's belief is another man's delusion", which seems to imply that beliefs and delusions are interchangeable terms both relating to the same set. However, a belief is only established as delusory when compared with a state of affairs designated 'actual'. Furthermore, the actual, or factual, exists in contradistinction to the delusory and vice versa. Whether a belief is delusory is something that can be tested against fact, but the fact can only be established by being so tested.

Consider the following :-

1. Let us posit two different types of truth value, designated 0/1 and
2. A fact is that which is the case -1- as distinct from that which is not the case: 0.
3. Beliefs or statements about fact, however, can be assigned a + or - value (true or false) in so far as they accord with some specific fact of value 1,
4. However, 1/0 can only be established in relation to + or - and vice versa. Thus the two types of truth value are mutually dependent: one would not exist without the other. Neither is prior. Difficulties only arise in considering either to have some value independent of the other.

This relates to the "how do I know that I'm not a bat dreaming that it's a human being" type of controversy. A possible response is "There are so many such possibilities it is highly unlikely that any one of them will be the case". I would add that the state designated ‘dreaming' only exists in contradistinction to the state designated 'waking' and vice versa. 'Objective' and 'subjective' describe the quality of our relation to something, not some quality that a perception 'has' intrinsically. It is not that there is a prior state called 'dreaming' that someone comes along and identifies and names without reference to anything else. If it were entirely consistent and persistent it would be a waking state. The one does not exist without reference to the other, but the category promotes the illusion that what it designates exists as a discrete entity. To say that I am a bat dreaming is unmeaning unless I have some experience of waking up as a bat.

Beyond all this categorisation, to quote Michael Frayn again, "The complexity of the universe is beyond expression in any possible notation". Yet categorise it we must, if we are to function as self-conscious entities, a privilege that is dearly bought: at the price of the knowledge of death.

Michael Nisbet

P.S. A suggested thought experiment in connection with the vexed question of time: Suppose that absolutely everything in the universe stopped: that no object moved in relation to any other object, and that all emissions of energy were frozen (a state of 'absolute zero'?) and then that everything started up again. Would it be meaningful to say that an interval of time had passed between the one event and the other? It seems to me that only if a clock existed somewhere outside the universe would time have any meaning in such circumstances; and that, since the universe means 'all existing things', would seem to be impossible. What existence does time have, in other words, beyond the movements of things in relation to one another?

Theo