Beholding

If we do not all see at once, or at least share an image of the simply appearing, we shall have no common ground to build on

There exists a strand of learning I was not acquainted with until a short time ago. I was, like many other people, erring by heeding strictly to the words alluded to Albert Einstein that you do not know a subject if you cannot teach it to a six-year-old child. I was in that wise an idiot just like Black Swan Man, Nicholas Nassim Taleb described in his book of aphorisms, Bed of Procrustes that “mathematicians think in symbols, physicists in objects, philosophers in concepts, geometers in images, jurists in constructs, logicians in operators, writers in impressions, and idiots in words.” What not being able to teach a six-year-old implies is that you cannot teach a six-year-old. Finito.

People who think in words, I suppose, are the bone in the throat of discursive reasoning. And while language serves clarity on such occasions where we might require much of it, it is important that we recognise a given limit — given by whom I do not say — on our ability to multiply words. It is an error to assume that we can map our entire reasoning or the capturing of processes in words that cut so sharp to leave very fine edges. This is the curse of definitional knowledge. It is a curse to suppose that we can suffuse and diffuse the entire human experience with words, and this done so neatly that we will have no trouble nor run into a wall. I simply now take it as a sign of intellectual health that a person knows where words fail and where we must depend on our intuition to carry us. 

Perhaps similar to those who think in words are the quanti-cousins: those who think only in quantity. And for this category of people, a simple thought experiment should suffice.

This experiment relies on grains of food (or salt, or sand) — generally, things that present themselves difficult to numbering or counting. Given a pile or heap of sand, at what point using strict quantification, counting each grain, can you say a heap of sand becomes a heap? This is the fallacy of the heap. If 10,000 grains make a heap, does the removal of one grain make it a non-heap? Or if it were 9,999 grains already, is that a non-heap? Does it need the 10,000th grain to be a heap? I will leave the reader to contemplate that. But the point here is that in the purely theoretical domain, it is by ‘beholding’ or intuition that we arrive at some type of knowledge. Our more beloved instruments of knowing — which are in fact efficient when refined and applied in their right domains — may not do a fine job of giving us an answer. Yet, we cannot move on from the theoretical into the practical without accepting these types of knowledge. You cannot have a productive conversation if you spend all day quibbling about the definition and quantification of a heap.

The distinction then must be made between what is better referred to as faculties and types of knowledge. The distinction stands between ratio and intellectus.

Ratio, the first, is best considered a method; what we call discursive reasoning — knowledge developed by moving from one proposition to another. Intellectus on the other hand, best considered an apparatus, depicts an appearing, a beholding, almost seeing as angels see; as if bare; at once; intuitively; sort of a self-evident appearance of an object. The things perceptible to the intellectus are not reached through discursive reasoning; they are simply seen; or simply appearing. And it is from the conclusions of the intellectus that we can move on to ratio. These components — ratio and intellectus — make it possible for us to be rational beings.

Having made this crucial distinction, I will further argue that a large fault rendered in discourse (in modern times) owes to a deficiency in the intellectus apparatus. I argue that while ratio is in fact necessary, it is often stretched to its limits. Why? Because of its efficient and decorative fashion; efficient because it works, decorative because we are attracted to eloquence howbeit empty. We seem too tied into an element of rationality that pleads for extensive justification for everything; an endless pleading for ‘proof.’ But we should know that while we seek to establish as much justifications as we can in our discourse, discursive reasoning is impossible without the simply appearing. Without the self-evident, we will struggle with turtles all the way down. 

Without intellectus we can have no “purely receptive stance to reality” as Josef Pieper calls it. It is in the intellectus that we establish our shared knowledge from which all our other propositions may proceed. There is no productive conversation without this purely receptive stance. It behooves us as rational agents who share the same world, that we train our intuitions together. For if we do not all see at once, or at least share an image of the simply appearing, we shall have no common ground to build on. We will multiply words to no end. We will have no end.

I suppose that for so many people who think in words, all that matters is linguistic data. But a second look tells us that data is nothing without an inferential framework. You can shove all the linguistic data — words — into an empty frame. It returns nothing worthwhile. You need a frame that must be built on the simply appearing. It is important, I repeat, that we train the intuitions to pick up on the right flavours of knowledge good for flourishing. There are things that we must mutually behold before we can both speak of them. That’s the way it is, and that is the way it is going to be.

An important addition that I suppose helps as a clarification is on the subject of biases. It is naive, I am convinced, to rule out the place of ‘gut’ in thinking. And I mean this in the sense that in a debate, an interlocutor may know in his gut that something is off about his fellow interlocutor’s argument. But the long fingers of biases serves to criminalise an objection that is lacking in words. It is possible to know intuitively that something is wrong, without being able to discuss it.

Another case exists that one’s argument comes from a seat of deeply held sentiments. But it does not appear that all arguments supplied by a sentiment are automatically biased or lacking. Where an argument comes from sits in second place to the strength of the argument itself. Yes, a bias may sponsor an objection. But it does not follow that the objection is outrightly wrong. You may not simply dismiss such argument because “you are a man, you have every incentive not to agree.” It remains that you must demonstrate how an argument fails a rational test — you must test the proposition before you can altogether disregard the sentiment. 

Naive rationalists make the mistake that rationality equals the absence of sentiments. But a person is not rational because he is frigid and void of sentiments. He is rational — or rather his argument is rational — because the argument passes the test of moving from premise to conclusion.

Our sentimentality remains a part of our humanity. It is from it that we experience all the colours of life. It is through it that we feel all the social temperatures: we feel the heat of anger; we feel the flush of love; we jump in the jamboree of joy; we sample the sourness of sadness, and grapple with the grim gargoyle of grief. We need them all. We must not harvest these organs in the bid to become more than we are not. We must embrace them all. This is how we flourish. By beholding, we flourish.

“Virtue lies in giving things their proper place. To lack reason is to be inhuman. To rely on it solely is to be disembodied.”

Simon Sarris.

Have a splendid weekend.