All models are wrong, but some are useful. — George Box
Our minds develop models of the world around us. Starting from our senses, they learn truths like matter, form, object permanence, cause and effect. They develop archetypes, stereotypes, and tropes. Models are the matter of meaning.
As part of being honest, I want to know how far the validity of these concepts extends. This is why I have studied the physical sciences. These practices are external to our minds and our senses, as they use measurement devices outside of our bodies. The reason we do this is for objectivity, replicability, accuracy, etc. And indeed, scientific measurement, by letting us peer deeper into the external truth than our senses, gives us some surprises. We learn that most matter is empty space between subatomic particles, and that the emergent solid structure is only maintained by electromagnetic forces as electrons glue nuclei together. Or that temperature is an emergent phenomenon of the statistics of individual kinetic energies.
The story often ends here: distrust our minds, and believe only what is externally verifiable. This attitude is partially a response to the fact that when external observations contradict our senses, a great many people have difficulty viscerally admitting the science. This is science digging in against our subjective impulses.
Also, we all have the capacity for an intuitive sense of personal harmony with a model, an explanation, or a claim, a part of ourselves that honestly holds a belief, without any requirement of logic nor facts on the ground. I believe that all belief arises this way, and the scientific belief is that which we filter for compatibility with empiricism. The unfiltered whole still occurs in all of us, and I have to admit this strange implication: we very honestly believe more than the empirically rooted, external truth. Science digging in against it often involves internal ignorance, invalidation, or shame for these other parts of ourselves.
Because we value science so strongly, it is hard to admit or even notice when we are hurting ourselves, so I understand if my going here feels icky. But learning this uncomfortable truth the hard way has changed my values significantly: every aspect of our human experience can affect whether life is worth living, and giving these parts of ourselves their due can make a real difference. When I don’t, I feel bad and eventually I get depressed.
I’ve responded to this by making a separation for myself: On the one hand, I have my choices, decision making, and actions. These I can still freely choose to accord or not with empiricism. I will try to keep my stubbornness about things tied pretty closely to the amount of evidence fit. On the other hand, I have my beliefs, meaning-making, and concerns. I get to allow a richer notion of “belief”, including degrees of belief (say, correlated with evidence fit) or maybe even distinct categories or annexes of belief that don’t get to contradict each other. I may honor all of them as representing authentic truth in my heart.
They might all be useful, too, when used with discretion. It’s not only that they allow you to treat yourself and life as more than a depressing numbers game. Understanding them allows you to debug your life, especially your emotional experience. And, more subtly, they are an aspect of your intuitive knowledge, and so learning to sense and attend to them improves your access to this powerful asset.
I hope this approach doesn’t lead me in directions that challenge my credibility in discerning fact from fiction. Maybe sometimes I’ll succeed at saving the baby from the bathwater of my intuitive life. This tension is the reason for this blog's title: The Skeptical Hippie.