Sam Harris on Reason and Mysticism

The May 18, 2013 review of Sam Harris's book, The End of Faith, here, shows that Harris rejects religion because it relies on faith. By "faith," Harris means the acceptance of fundamental principles based on supposed historical authority, not on evidence that we can examine and debate today. Harris offers two alternatives to faith. This post examines those alternatives, drawing again from The End of Faith.

REASON. We need fundamental principles to guide us in living our lives. If, as Harris says, we should not rely on fundamental principles acquired through faith, how should we develop those principles? Harris has a two-part answer. First is reason. In a manner typical of his style, Harris offers no concise, rigorous definition of that concept. He does provide many cognitive elements which he apparently thinks the concept subsumes, though he does not say so explicitly.

For example, Harris says we should observe (p. 76), search for evidence (p. 15), and reject ideas that are not based on evidence. (p. 25) "Our beliefs should be representations of the world." (p. 58) We should exercise "commonsense judgments" (p. 75). We should experiment, at least in the sciences (p. 76). We should ratiocinate (p. 76), as well as engage in "discursive reasoning" and "rational discourse" (p. 25) We should critique and discuss our principles, as paths to progress. Religion is not open to progress. (p. 22) "Whatever is true now should be discoverable now, and describable in terms that are not an outright affront to the rest of what we know about the world." (p. 22) Harris also sees that one's ideas must be logically consistent; he says our ideas must not contradict one another, but then he adds: "at least locally." (p. 53) "By recourse to intuitions of truth and falsity, logical necessity and contradiction, human beings are able to knot together private visions of the world that largely cohere." (p. 51)

Most of those cognitive elements, with the exceptions of "commonsense judgments" and "intuition," are referents of the concept "reason" objectively formed. So, Harris has basically the right elements—looking at the world and thinking about it—for forming the concept of reason.

Confusingly, Harris sometimes uses the term "reason" ("rational") to mean merely syllogistic consistency: "In fact, even the most extreme expressions of faith [such as "Jehovah's Witnesses refusing blood transfusions"] are often perfectly rational, given the requisite beliefs." (p. 69) "Which beliefs one takes to be foundational will dictate what seems reasonable at any given moment." (p. 69) And: "Given what Islamists believe, it is perfectly rational for them to strangle modernity wherever they can lay hold of it." (p. 136) Harris does not grasp that reason is present only when objectivity is present, that is, when we form ideas logically from sense-perception of reality. For Harris, a link missing from the cognitive chain that connects observation to our most fundamental principles is a theory of concept formation. He has no way to account for logically building concepts of objects in reality (such as "dog" or "chair") and then building higher and higher level abstractions. We will see how he fills this cognitive gap.

MYSTICISM. Besides his truncated, unintegrated version of "reason," Harris offers a second alternative to faith: a certain other type of mysticism. Some background information is required. For Harris, "spiritual" and "mystical" are synonyms. (p. 40) Harris defines "spirituality" as "the cultivation of happiness directly, through precise refinements of attention," that is, "meditation." (p. 192) Mystical experiences are experiences of "meaningfulness, selflessness, and heightened emotion that surpass our narrow identities as 'selves' and escape our current understanding of the mind and brain." (pp. 39-40)

There is no denying that most of us have emotional and spiritual needs that are now addressed—however obliquely and at a terrible price—by mainstream religion. And these are needs that a mere understanding of our world, scientific or otherwise, will never fulfill. There is clearly a sacred dimension to our existence, and coming to terms with it could well be the highest purpose of human life. But we will find that it requires no faith in untestable propositions—Jesus was born of a virgin; the Koran is the word of God—for us to do this. (p. 16)

If our highest purpose requires understanding a "sacred dimension" of our world, but neither faith nor science (which is an application of reason) will provide that understanding, then where will it come from? Harris's answer is "empirical mysticism." (p. 215)

For millennia, contemplatives have known that ordinary people can divest themselves of the feeling that they call 'I' and thereby relinquish the sense that they are separate from the rest of the universe. This phenomenon, which has been reported by practitioners in many spiritual traditions, is supported by a wealth of evidence—neuroscientific, philosophical, and introspective. Such experiences are 'spiritual' or 'mystical', for want of better words, in that they are relatively rare (unnecessarily so), significant (in that they cover genuine facts about the world), and personally transformative. They also reveal a far deeper connection between ourselves and the rest of the universe than is suggested by the ordinary confines of our subjectivity. (pp. 40-41)

The claims of mystics are neurologically quite astute. No human being has ever experienced an objective world, or even a world at all. You are, at this moment, having a visionary experience. The world that you see and hear is nothing more than a modification of your consciousness, the physical status of which remains a mystery. (p. 41)

What then is mysticism? As usual, Harris defines his terms obliquely.

Mysticism is a rational enterprise. Religion is not. The mystic has recognized something about the nature of consciousness prior to thought, and this recognition is susceptible to rational discussion. The mystic has reasons for what he believes, and these reasons are empirical. The roiling mystery of the world can be analyzed with concepts (this is science), or it can be experienced free of concepts (this is mysticism). (p. 221, emphasis added)

A mystical state thus is a state of consciousness, that is, a state of awareness. Awareness of what? Of "the world," but without thinking about it. Thus mysticism is some sort of direct apprehension of the world, without concepts, without thoughts, without reasoning. That conclusion is confirmed by Harris in statements such as:

There is something to realize about the nature of consciousness, and its realization does not entail thinking new thoughts. (p. 218)

Now we live in ignorance of the freedom and simplicity of consciousness, prior to the arising of thought. (p. 219)

Mysticism, as Harris conceives it, is thus preconceptual consciousness, which, the reader may realize, is the consciousness of an animal.

"My debt to a variety of contemplative traditions that have their origin in India will be obvious to many readers," Harris notes. "The esoteric teachings of Buddhism . . . and Hinduism . . . have done much to determine my view of our spiritual possibilities." (n. 12, Ch. 7, on p. 293)

Harris supports two other forms of mysticism (defined objectively here), though he does not call them that. First is self-evidency. Harris sometimes claims certain insights are "self-evident," even when they are complex and abstract. (See p. 31 for an example.) (For a brief discussion of rational and mystical uses of the term "self-evidency," see: aristotleadventure.blogspot.com/search/label/self-evidency.)

Harris's second additional form of mysticism is intuition.

Whatever its stigma, 'intuition' is a term that we simply cannot do without, because it denotes the most basic constituent of our faculty of understanding. . . . When we can break our knowledge of a thing down no further, the irreducible leap that remains is intuitively taken. Thus, the traditional opposition between reason and intuition is a false one: reason is itself intuitive to the core, as any judgment that a proposition is 'reasonable' or 'logical' relies on intuition to find its feet. (p. 183)

Intuition is thus the same as claiming "It is obvious." (p. 184) (See other discussions here and here.) Harris says: 

How the loom of cognition first begins weaving is still a mystery, but there seems little doubt that we come hardwired with a variety of proto-linguistic, proto-doxastic (from the Greek doxa, 'belief') capacities that enable us to begin interpreting the tumult of the senses as regularities in the environment and in ourselves. (p. 248, n. 14 of Ch. 2, from p. 58)

RELATION OF REASON AND MYSTICISM. The advocates of the major Abrahamic religions often say they support reason and faith, each in its own domain, but usually relying on faith to "establish" such notions as the existence of another world, a god, and the god's ethical rules. Harris rejects the notion of peace between reason and faith as "delusional." (p. 16) What then is Harris's view of the relationship of reason and mysticism as he has defined these concepts (if he has)?

"We cannot live by reason alone," Harris states. (p. 43) To handle the greatest stresses in life—such as losing a loved one or facing an incurable fatal disease—we need something that will give us "an abiding sense of the sacred." (p. 43) Harris says, however, that we do not need to be irrational in order to have that sense of the sacred. "On the contrary, I hope to show that spirituality [which Harris says is synonymous with mysticism] can be—indeed, must be—deeply rational, even as it elucidates the limits of reason." (p. 43)

In conclusion, Sam Harris is indeed an opponent of faith, in the form of religion, but also an advocate of other forms of mysticism, alongside a form of "reason" so limited that we must "intuit" the ethical principles that serve as our guides in life. Adding his reductionism and determinism (not discussed here) to the mixture, one can say that he is not an advocate of reason.

Burgess Laughlin

Author of The Power and the Glory: The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith at http://www.reasonversusmysticism.com/

Laura Day, Popularizer of Intuitionism

Laura Day is an intuitionist. She is fifty-three years old, and she lives in New York City. The location matters. It is a financial hub of the world economy, and Laura Day offers advice and trains individuals in the financial industry as well as other fields, such as medicine. She herself uses intuition; she teaches others to use intuition; and, in six mass-market books she has published since 1997, she advocates for intuition.[1]

THE BOOK. This post, the third in a series of initial looks at intuition, draws information from Day's most recent book: Laura Day, How to Rule the World from Your Couch, Atria Paperback (Simon & Schuster), New York, 2009, 270 pages.

HER AUDIENCE. Day presents information in this book that she has "been teaching ... for nearly thirty years." (p. 86) "I have had the honor training so many different kinds of people, from surgeons, engineers, psychologists, and college students needing a clear path, to teachers, future authors, and artists." (p. 24) However, she writes in large measure to individuals in business: "As with everything in this book, the idea is for these tools [of telepathy in particular] to translate easily to use in the business world." (p. 77) For example, under the subheading "You Can Use Mediumship in Countless Ways," she lists: "To know how to sell your product from the market's point of view." (p. 52)

HER PURPOSE. Day aims to teach skills that will "really bring miraculous change to peoples' lives," she says. "There is a lot of science behind, actual proof of, the powerful, amazing abilities that intuition can yield." (p. xiii) Day is an altruist: "... I am nothing if not someone who desperately wants to give others what they ask of me. So here it is. This is my tool kit for using your intuition everyday in your life and business." (p. 24)

My goal is that the advice written in this book will prove itself to you, once applied. I'll give you an example: the best first-time student I ever had told me that he didn't believe in intuition. He attended my workshop as a favor to his wife and scared himself silly when, within thirty minutes, he got detailed, accurate information about someone he had never met just from holding the person's name in a blank, sealed envelope. (p. 9)

STRUCTURE OF HER BOOK. The structure and style of the book are befitting an activist who is appealing to a literate mass market. Chapter 1 is an "Overview." As the Table of Contents (pp. ix-x) shows, the remaining seven chapters are each devoted to an intuitive skill:

- Gathering information: "Flashes of insight gained without using traditional sources of 'information'."

- Mediumship: "The ability to become someone or something else and view the world from that perspective."

- Telepathy: "The ability to send and receive information from a distance."

- Body Heat Telepathy: "The ability to connect physically and emotionally with another from a distance."

- Remote Viewing: "The ability to perceive a scene when separated by space or time."

- Precognition: "The ability to move a person or situation forward in time and accurately experience what will happen."

- Healing: "The ability to have an effect on people or situations using the remote transfer of energy."

One can use these abilities to solve any problem in one's life.

If you seek intuitive information on a particular question, you may start with your remote viewing to get the physical layout of the problem but quickly use mediumship to experience the issue from the inside out; simultaneously, you may call on telepathy to hear the many positions on the topic, while also using healing to introduce a catalyst for a better outcome. (pp. 40-41)

Each chapter devoted to a single intuitive skill begins with a "Quick Hit Exercise" for experiencing that innate skill. The chapter continues with "What You Experienced in the Quick Hit," to explain the experience. The remainder of each chapter is a detailed explanation of pitfalls to avoid and techniques for gaining the most benefit from using the skill. Day is not a scholar writing to scholarly readers. The book contains no footnotes, bibliography, or index. The book is, in effect, a training handbook. Besides serving her professional goals -- earning an income from training -- it also serves her activist goal of spreading intuitionism:

I have ... included group exercises for those of you who wish to teach these techniques or experiment with them in your company training programs, as well as 'initiations' to use as class icebreakers, training evenings, or community experiences. Intuition is a powerful way to demonstrate to people how useful we all are to one another. (p. 18)

HER METAPHYSICS. Day is focused on the practical use of intuition, not on theory. She is not a philosopher of intuition, in the sense of creating a broad, integrated set of abstractions about the nature, foundation, and application of intuition, as Professor Robert Audi is. (See the June 27, 2012 post.) Day does, however, philosophize, that is, she does occasionally employ broad abstractions about the nature of intuition and the world in which it operates.

Day characterizes our world as one in which "[l]ife is full of miracles ... but they do not happen to us, they are of our own creation" (p. 23). There is in the world "an infinite field of information and communication" which we can "tap" into (p. 30),  a field of information-carrying "energy that we all share, the energy that knows no difference between the past, present, and future." (p. 86)

In summary, "[l]ife is an interactive crapshoot, but intuition gives you an edge." (p. 20)

WHAT IS INTUITION? Day says (p. 4) intuition is an ability. It is a means to an end, which is to create the world that you want." (p. 4) "Intuition gives you information ... in an immediate, accessible way." (p. 113) You already have this ability. "Intuition, you see, is innate. It is part of our human hardwiring." (p. 8) Intuition, which "is designed by evolution to give us immediate, accurate, effective tools" (p. 22), is "instant knowing" (p. 23). You need to refine it through training, which is what the book provides. (p. 7)

Intuition is accurate insight and information that you have not gained through the everyday use of your five senses, intellect, or experience. It is a higher octave of your five senses. (p. 29)

Intuition is not the subconscious, though the subconscious can use the information you gather intuitively and the subconscious can place roadblocks in the way. (p. 6) Rather, "[y]our information [gained through intuition] ... is stored, as it is gathered, mostly by your subconscious." (p. 28)

Nor, Day says, is intuition the same as: wishful thinking; an emotion (such as fear); belief; or intellect.  (p. 35) Consider the first item. Intuition is not wishing-makes-it-so.

A note of caution regarding the abuse, or misunderstanding, of intuition: do not get carried away and think that intuition is a way for you to will your desires into actuality. You do actually have to play things out, take the necessary course of action in any given scenario, and not use intuition as an excuse for idleness and self-deception. (p. 20)

A word of caution: Day uses the one term "intuition" in several separate, though related meanings, even on the same page. First, sometimes it means the information-gathering ability or skill. (For example, see p. 34, where she says "intuition uses storytelling as an information-finding sense.") Second, she sometimes uses the term "intuition" to mean, broadly, a capability of not only gathering information but also performing functions such as guiding memory in the search for information. (See p. 34, where Day says, "Intuition ... alerts you when an area in your life needs attention and gives you tools to address the given situation successfully.") Third, at times the term "intuition" names the information itself. (See again p. 34, where Day says "intuition is data that already exists.")

INTUITION AND ITS COMPETITORS. What is the relationship between intuition and its alternatives for acquiring information -- reason, faith, and following an authority?

REASON. "Intuitions give you a trail to follow. You can and will, automatically, think it through later." (p. 113) Here, with her reference to automatic thinking, Day uses the term "think" to refer to subconscious processing of information. "The information your intuition provides and your subconscious allows will come in bits and pieces that you must weave together to understand, and then you must verify it all against what your logic and knowledge tell you." (p. 208) So, reason, as a sort of handmaiden to intuition, can provide coherence ("weave together") and verification.

Reason is also helpful, Day says, in shaping the information for presentation to an audience expecting a logical chain of argument.

There are times when you want the details of the future on demand. Especially in business, you often need to present rational data-based arguments to justify your actions. The rest of this chapter will give you some simple ways to tell the future and fill in enough of the details so that your intuition is based on logic, and logical to those around you. (p. 202)

However, Day says, though reason is useful in verifying knowledge gained intuitively and helpful in shaping that information for presentation to others, do not make the mistake of trying to reason and intuit at the same time. Reason impedes intuition. (p. 168)

FAITH. Rather than using intuition, why not simply have faith in any particular idea that occurs to you? "You don't even need to have faith when you have an effective process that you follow without fail." (p. 21)

AUTHORITY. Nor do you need a guru.

I find that people often want a guru, and this is probably because we are conditioned to obey and accept others' perceptions of the world and what they believe is correct/moral/the way. The truth is that everyone has access to all of his or her own answers, resources, and truth. There are no secrets or experts. When you use intuition, you are your own guru. (p. 21)

EXAMPLE USES OF INTUITION. How might a practitioner of intuition use his ability? Consider two examples, one from medicine and one from business.

Let's say that you are a doctor and you have a few drug choices to treat muscle soreness. You don't know what the patient's chronic muscle soreness is from, but you want to resolve it in the least toxic and most helpful way. You might use mediumship ['The ability to become someone or something else and view the world from that perspective," (p. ix)] to become your patient and experience how she would react to each drug, taking notes as always. (p. 63)

If you want to raise money for your company, you use your telepathy and mediumship to find out what investors would respond to; your embodiment to experience yourself and your product as the desired person or group; your remote viewing to direct you to investors; and your body heat to draw them to you. (pp. 248-249)

DAY'S ACTIVISM. As a careful reading of How to Rule the World from Your Couch shows, Laura Day spreads her views on intuition in a variety of ways. Her books sell well, with at least How to Rule appearing on the New York Times bestseller list. Her satisfied clients recommend her and her ideas, for example, when actor Brad Pitt says, "I believe in the gut, and I believe in Laura Day" (back cover), and when Dr. James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA, claims that "Intuition is logic" (back cover) and lauds Day's work. Her training programs (which the book distills) explicitly promote intuition, and her private healing sessions (pp. 225-226) demonstrate it.

In conclusion, Laura Day, as a popularizer of intuitionism, is an intellectual and activist complement to academic philosopher of intuitionism, Robert Audi.

Burgess Laughlin

Author, The Power and the Glory: The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith, at http://www.reasonversusmysticism.com

[1] See "About" at howtoruletheworldfromyourcouch.com. See also the brief, partly documented Wikipedia account: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Day.

An Academic's Intuition and Intuitionism

Intuition is one kind of mysticism common in the USA in our time. Becoming familiar with intuition may help to arm advocates of reason for the long war ahead.

OVERVIEW OF THE SERIES ON INTUITION. The first post in this series on intuition was a book review (June 5, 2012) of The Good in the Right: A Theory of Intuition and Intrinsic Value, by philosophy professor Robert Audi. (Unless specified otherwise, page citations below refer to Audi's book.) That first post introduced the idea of intuition as it has been used by some academics working in the field of ethics, as a branch of philosophy. For cultural contrast, a later post, the third in the series, will present the idea of intuition advocated not by an academic but by an author who writes to a mass audience.

This post, the second in the series, further considers the academic concept of intuition and distinguishes it from intuitionism, which is a theory of intuition -- describing not only what an individual intuition is, but the manner in which individual intuitions relate to each other and to other ideas. The source for this post is Audi's The Good in the Right. This post will cite the views of intuition that Audi, partly a rationalist, has originated or has adopted from earlier intuitionists such as W. D. Ross, an empiricist.

Readers of this post should keep in mind its limitations: (1) The brief notes here are my simplified interpretation of one academic's complex presentation. (2) Academics who advocate intuitionism disagree with each other on many aspects of intuitionism. (3) Academics are only one set of voices speaking in favor of intuition in our culture today. Thus, this post is a sampling.

WHAT IS AN INTUITION? Consider an example of an intuition in the field of ethics. You see a man beating a child with a belt. A thought -- "Beating a child is wrong!" -- appears in your mind. That thought is the product of an intuition. (p. 60) In this case, the thought is a narrow principle, where "principle" means an idea upon which other ideas can stand. (For example, a broader abstraction -- such as the generalization, "Harming others is wrong" -- could stand on multiple narrow principles such as "Beating a child is wrong," "Hurting a parent is wrong," and "Injuring a spouse is wrong.")

The intuitional sequence is simple. You look at a particular social situation, and a thought appears in your mind. (p. 60) In epistemology, this sequence is an instance of epistemological "realism," the view that things outside the mind directly give rise to ideas in the mind.[1] More technically, the "natural properties" of things (the "is" of a child and a belt) somehow give rise to the "moral properties" (the "ought"); and the moral properties -- received by the mind's "moral sensitivity" (pp. 57 and 58) directly produce a narrow moral principle in your mind: "Beating a child is wrong." This sequence is a "reliable belief-generating process" (p. 57). Apparently this is the manner in which intuitionists bridge the "is-ought" gap. 

DEFINITION. An intuition is a "non-inferential cognition" (p. 8). An intuition, as a product of a "process" that has no steps, is a proposition, that is, a statement, a sentence. An intuition is not an individual concept. (p. 9) An example intuition, from the field of ethics, is this proposition: "Everyone has a duty to keep promises" (p. 43 for the duty of promise-keeping).

REQUIREMENTS. Not every thought that pops into the mind can qualify as an intuition. "One may not ... simply insist that someone has a [moral] duty, or ought to do something, and claim that one 'just sees' it.  ... The intuitionist thesis that some knowledge of what we ought to do is intuitive and non-inferential implies neither that it is not reflective nor that it cannot be supported by argument or refuted by relevant consideration to the contrary," Audi says (pp. 38-39). Intuited knowledge might be supported by or reached independently by "reflection," that is, thinking about the subject and making inferences from other, already acquired knowledge.

For an intuition to actually be an intuition, it must have these characteristics: (1) directness -- an intuition cannot be based on a premise;  (2) firmness -- the intuitionist has a "definite sense that the proposition ... holds [true]"; (3) comprehensiblity -- an intuition must be understandable by appropriately prepared, intelligent observers; and (4) pretheoreticality -- forming or understanding intuitions comes directly from observation and therefore cannot depend on a theory, which is a broad abstraction induced step by step from evidence. (pp. 33-35)

FALLIBILITY. While "firmness" of belief is one characteristic of an intuition, as Audi presents it, he and some other intuitionists do not claim that intuitions are infallible. Intuitions can be mistaken. Audi offers (pp. 8, 9) this analogy: Scientists rely on sense-perceptions of the world as starting points for their scientific conclusions. Scientists know, however, that sense-perceptions -- or our initial understanding of them -- can be mistaken. Seeing a "bent" stick in a pail of water is an example. The same idea, Audi says (p. 8), holds for intuitions. Misunderstanding the facts of a situation can lead to a false intuition -- but it is still an intuition. An intuition can never lead to a false proposition as a result of a defective process of intuition. The reason is that intuition is not a process. There are no steps in any particular intuition. You look and the proposition appears in your mind.

If that is the nature of any particular intuition that arises in observing a moral situation, then in what way do intuitions, once acquired, relate to other knowledge?

WHAT IS INTUITIONISM? The term "intuitionism" names a certain philosophical view, the conviction that intuitions in some form play some role in creating knowledge. At least among some academics, intuitionism is a theory that explains the source of intuitions, the limits of intuitions, and the relationship of intuitions to other elements of knowledge. Intuitionists disagree with each other about the details.

EXAMPLE: AUDI'S INTUITIONISM. In the field of ethics, intuitionism is "the view that at least some basic moral truths are non-inferentially known" (p. 5). The theory of intuitionism described by Audi has three characteristics. (pp. 20, 21, and 40)

First, Audi's intuitionism is pluralistic, which means that the foundation of this ethics is made of a set of narrow, individual moral "principles," like tiles in a floor. In contrast, in other ethical theories, a single broad principle -- such as the Golden Rule or the Categorical Imperative -- serves as a foundation (or sky hook) from which narrower ethical guidelines can be deduced.

Second, each particular, narrow moral "principle" (such as "Keep your promises") is "grounded" in one of these three sources: (a) an observable action (such as making a promise); (b) an item of knowledge (a bleeding man will die); or (c) an accessible fact (such as the fact that one individual can benefit others).

Third, each narrow, intuited "principle" is "knowable by ordinary moral agents," that is, individuals who are concerned about acting properly.

Audi is a syncretist. He weaves together elements from various sources into one intuitionist theory of ethics. For example, he melds (1) the idea of a set of intuited moral principles (the narrow kind) such as "Keep promises" and "Do no harm to others," with (2) Immanuel Kant's overarching moral rule of the categorical imperative.

TYPES OF INTUITIONISM. There are various theories of intuitionist ethics (and ethics is only one field in which intuitionists work). Some are rationalistic; others are empiricist; and still others (such as Audi's) are a combination of the two. (pp. 2 and 19) Some forms of intuitionism are "contextualist," that is, the intuitions are grounded in the context of a moral situation and arise automatically without inference and without reflection. (p. 59) Some forms of intuitionism are radical; their advocates accept only the intuitions themselves as guides and reject any form of reasoning about them. Other forms of intuitionism are moderate, as with Audi's theory, in which intuitions provide elements of the moral theory but "reasoning" weaves them into wider generalizations or at least connects them with an overarching principle such as the categorical imperative. (pp. 6 and 54)

CONCLUSIONS. On many issues, intuitionists in academia disagree among themselves, but they agree that intuition -- a claim to immediate cognition, from whatever source -- plays or should play some role in our knowledge of what we should do in the world. These intuitionists are commanding a seldom-seen but powerful battalion of soldiers in the war of mysticism against reason.

Burgess Laughlin

Author, The Power and the Glory: The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith, at http://www.reasonversusmysticism.com

[1] For epistemological realism, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_realism and Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 2nd ed., p. 2.

BkRev: Intuitionist Robert Audi's "The Good in the Right"

This is the first in a series of posts on intuition as one form of mysticism common in our culture today. My plan is simple: examine at least two instances of the advocacy of intuitionism -- one theoretical, formal, and academic (in the best meaning of that word); and one "practical," informal, and designed for a mass market.

The source I will use for a look at a sample theory of intuitionism is: Robert Audi, The Good in the Right: A Theory of Intuition and Intrinsic Value, Princeton University Press, 2004, 244 pages.

I plan three posts. The first, below, will briefly review Audi's book to provide background information for later posts. The second post will briefly characterize intuitionism in one of its many versions, as described by Professor Audi in The Good in the Right. The third post will examine the "practical intuition" advocated by a best-selling author who writes for the mass market not academia.

ROBERT AUDI. The author of The Good in the Right is a professor of philosophy and business ethics at the University of Notre Dame: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Audi. According to the back cover of his book, he has also been the Editor in Chief of the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. He knows philosophy, as the index of The Good in the Right suggests. He cites major and minor philosophers such as Aquinas, Aristotle, Kant, J. S. Mill, G. E. Moore, Plato, John Rawls, and W. D. Ross; and he draws from numerous modern philosophical scholars such as Lewis White Beck and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Audi's book is thus an appropriate choice for someone who wants to take a first step in seriously studying intuitionism.

Why study the role of intuition as it is used in any particular field? Doing so allows us to see not only an outline of intuitionism itself, but its effects when applied.

Why study intuitionism in the field of ethics in particular? "Appeals to intuitions in resolving moral questions are a pervasive strategy in contemporary ethical discourse," says Audi (p. 24). I would add that ideas are causes of human actions. As a branch of philosophy, ethics provides the concepts and principles that guide all human behavior -- such as an individual's actions in his career, in his relations with friends, and in the sort of political system he supports.

INTENDED AUDIENCE FOR THE BOOK. Audi writes to "nonspecialists," that is, anyone who is seriously interested in ethics but does not work full time in studying or developing ethical theory. One example, perhaps, is the sort of academic who mostly teaches a particular subject outside of philosophy, such as business, but also, part-time, teaches the ethics of that subject. Universities now offer courses in ethics for business students, medical students, and others. Because Audi is aiming at such an audience, he aims to "confine [philosophically] technical matters and some responses to contemporary critics of intuitionism mainly to the notes" (p. x).

AUTHOR'S PURPOSE AND THEME. Audi's overriding purpose is to present a theory of morality that answers all of the major questions a thinker about ethics might ask. To do so, Audi proposes a theory that is a synthesis of elements from other theories.

The theme of the book is that in ethics a syncretistic system of "value-based Kantian intuitionism" (p. 173) answers the main questions we face. Intuitionism is "the view that at least some basic moral truths are non-inferentially known" (p. 5). Audi weaves together three threads: a system of intrinsic values as general guides to action (Chapter 4); the Kantian principle of the categorical imperative as an integrator; and intuitionism as the source of particular ethical principles (Chapters 1 and 2). Audi takes on the task of extracting these three elements from their historical sources, fixing their errors, and then tying them together into one system (Chapter 5).

"Particularly in recent years," Audi writes, "intuitionism has re-emerged as a major position in ethics. Appeals to intuitions in discussing moral questions have long been common -- even if not always so described -- but there has also been renewed exploration of intuitionism as an ethical theory that uses intuitions as data for moral reasoning and makes a basic commitment to the power of intuition as a rational capacity" (p. ix).

Professor Audi's statement above contains key elements of his theme, which is to propose a theory -- a broad, structured abstraction -- of ethics that draws in part from "intuitions as data," as well as from other sources. His theory is syncretistic. It fuses elements of:

(1) Narrow ethical "principles" formed directly from observing situations around us, such as abuse of a child, (as formulated by 20th Century philosopher W. D. Ross).

(2) Values and virtues for guides (as in Aristotle).

(3) An overarching ethical command (Kant's categorical imperative, to treat others as you would expect to be treated).

(4) Systemization, to make all the elements work together.

Audi devotes part of his book to defending intuitionism from its critics, who raise questions such as: Why are there disagreements about morality if moral principles arise self-evidently through intuition? (p. 2)

ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK. The Introduction identifies the problems that this book answers: In ethics, why has intuitionism become more prominent? Are there answers to the objections that critics of intuitionism have raised? Can intuitionism provide both a comprehensive theory and a practical guide to ethical behavior?

Chapter 1 traces the roots of intuitionism from Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900, English) to G. E. Moore (1873-1958, English), H. A. Prichard (1871-1947, English), and finally W. D. Ross (1877-1971, Scot), who was the creator of "the most prominent intuitionist view throughout most of the twentieth century" (p. 3). Chapter 2 further describes Ross's intuitionism, extends it, and corrects it. Chapter 3 then integrates the corrected Rossian intuitionism with an overarching guideline, the categorical imperative formulated by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). The provisional result, in Audi's system building, is a Kantian intuitionism. In Chapter 4, Audi takes the next step in system building by integrating the duty-based Kantian intuitionism with "a theory of value that" unifies "all of the moral principles ..., from the ... general categorical imperative  'downward' to quite specific standards of conduct" (p. 3). Last, Chapter 5 reviews Audi's own theory overall.

STYLE. Sentence by sentence, Audi generally writes clearly -- compared to such philosophical obscurantists as Kant, Kierkegaard, and Derrida. Audi helpfully previews and reviews. He defines -- or at least describes -- key ideas, though not always on their first appearance. However, his book requires slow reading. First, he has chosen a difficult approach that attempts to weave together three threads: historical development of intuitionism in ethics, critical analysis of each successive philosopher, and exposition of his own position. Second, he presents no reader aids such as a chronology or a glossary. Third, he often writes sentences that have so many qualifications and neologisms that the main point can be lost. Here is a mild example:

"Despite Ross's in some ways unfortunate analogy between moral principles and elementary logical and mathematical ones, he leaves room for reflective equilibrium to enhance -- or for its unobtainability to reduce or defeat -- justification for an 'intuitive' moral judgment" (p. 66).

For sufficiently motivated readers, however, Robert Audi's The Good in the Right, can be a rewarding first look at the complicated world of intuitionist ethics.

For other reviews of the book, see:

- http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24816/?id=3041

- http://ethicalrealism.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/review-of-robert-audis-the-good-in-the-right/