Socrates’ Worldview

Conversation 5, Socrates Worldview 4/22

ADEIMANTUS. Good morning, Socrates.

SOCRATES. Good morning Adeimantus. I trust you are well. We have work to do. We can delay no longer. I will expound to you, in the briefest outline, my worldview. You must then probe it with all your might. I might help you by pointing you towards what I consider to be the weak points, if you seem not to be homing in on them yourself.

A. Very well, I am ‘all ears’.

S. Let me begin by reminding you, for the third or fourth time, I have asserted that it is not irrational to adhere to a materialist view of the world, neither is it irrational to believe in a spiritual world, always with the proviso that boundaries apply in both cases.

A. That is what you said.

S. I think that delineating the boundaries, and deciding whether one can accept them, might turn out to be crucial to the matter. Let us bear that in mind for later.

A. I will remember that.

S. I must add one more caution, Adeimantus. Neither you nor I are professional philosophers. The professional philosophers, over many years, have done a splendid job of defining with the utmost precision the terms they use, so that they know exactly what they are talking about.

A. Even if they are talking nonsense!

S. You said it, Adeimantus. But, as I was about to say, there is neither time nor coffee enough in the world to sustain us if we go down that path. We will use terms in the sense in which intelligent laymen in our society, like ourselves, understand them. Hopefully, this will be clear enough. Do you agree?

A. Fair enough, Socrates. You have already chastised me for using the word ‘epistemology’.

S. Very well, what do you understand ‘materialism’, or ‘the materialist view of the world’ to mean?

A. I take it to mean the ‘belief that nothing exists but matter and its manifestations’ (The Little Oxford Dictionary of Current English, 1962).

S. That definition will do nicely for our purpose, Adeimantus. I will make materialism the first ‘plank’ of my worldview. I maintain that the materialist view of the world is useful for understanding, explaining, and in some cases even predicting, the phenomena we observe around us. In the fullness of time, I will explain why I think it is rational to adhere to this view. But, as you may have guessed, I do not think materialism alone constitutes a satisfactory worldview. There are whole areas of human life and experience in which materialism offers no help or guidance. Although the boundaries of materialism are immense, they are not nearly wide enough. So, there we are Adeimantus. What is your first probing question?

A. Where do we fit into the materialist view, Socrates?

S. Exactly the question I would have asked, Adeimantus. My faith in you was not misplaced. In the materialist view, we are part of the material world. Our consciousness must be a manifestation of our material bodies, because in the materialist view there are no immaterial things that exist independently of us. Through our physical senses we perceive the world of material things around us. In our physical brains we remember and think about what we have perceived. Each of us naturally makes one very important assumption: that the other people we observe around us are more or less the same as us, that is, they perceive and think in the same way we ourselves do. Experience tells us that this is a good assumption.

A. And how do we learn about the world?

S. By experience, Adeimantus. In the materialist view, there is no other way. The use of experience in a systematic way is what we call the scientific method. I am a great believer in science. Science has given us a wonderfully consistent and coherent understanding of the physical universe, from the microscopic to the cosmological scale of time and space. We should be exceedingly reluctant to accept some assertion which is contrary to science in its proper domain. I am not some ‘postmodernist’, Adeimantus, who thinks that science is just another belief system among many others of equal use or validity. If you want to argue on that foolishness, it will have to wait until we have less important things to discuss.

A. I have a number of points to raise, Socrates, but postmodernism is not among them.

S. Shall I describe the scientific method for you?

A. I think I know what it is, Socrates, but go ahead anyway so I can be sure I understand correctly.

S. Would you say that science and materialism are the same?

A. No, science is a method for examining the world, while materialism is the assertion, or belief, that only material things exist. They have elements in common, but they are not the same.

S. What do science and materialism have in common?

A. They both begin with the assumption that we need only consider material things when discussing the behaviour of the physical universe. Materialism asserts this because it asserts that there is nothing other than material things, while science does not necessarily rule out immaterial things, but assumes they have no influence over the behaviour of material things.

S. Very well. Firstly, we acknowledge that the scientific method is based on the assumption that the material things in the universe move or are transformed according to laws which are discoverable by observation.

A. Agreed.

S. So when we think that we have discerned such a law, we put it to the test of observation through carefully constructed experiments. We propose the law as a hypothesis, and then we design experiments to test the hypothesis.

A. Correct.

S. It follows that our experiments must deal with simple processes, because we must strip away all influences that are not relevant to our hypothesis and which would confuse our experiment. For example, if we were performing an experiment on the collision of two bodies with a view to testing our hypothesis that momentum is conserved, we must ensure that the motion of the bodies is not impeded by friction, which would be difficult to account for in our calculations of the results.

A. Definitely.

S. Next, we must ensure that our experiments are repeatable.

A. Why is that, Socrates?

S. Because of the way in which we arrive at confidence that our hypothesis is true. It is through the process of induction. A proof by induction is not really a proof, but as we repeat the experiment and find that the results always agree with our hypothesis, we become more certain that the hypothesis is true. We assess that the probability of the hypothesis being wrong is very low. We are willing to bet even our lives on our hypothesis. For example, so confident are we in the laws of aerodynamics that we are willing to go up in aeroplanes.

A. Yes, we go up in aeroplanes, even though we do not understand the laws of aerodynamics!

S. That is another matter, Adeimantus, although an important one which we might return to another time. For now, I need to remind you that one experiment that disagrees with out hypothesis is enough to disprove it with certainty, once we have satisfied ourselves that no extraneous factors have intruded.

A. Agreed.

S. The law of conservation of momentum, along with the rest of Newton’s laws of motion, have been tested countless billions of times in experiments and in everyday life and never once have they been found to fail. We can have great confidence in them. We would be irrational to do otherwise.

A. Certainly.

S. Did you know, Adeimantus, so well did the laws of motion predict the path of the New Horizons spacecraft, that in the year 2015 it successfully passed through its planned fly-by window at the planet Pluto? This window was a mere 9 minutes in duration and 35 miles by 60 miles wide. This is after a flight of over 9 years over a distance of 3 billion miles! That was an accuracy equivalent to hitting a golf ball from Los Angeles to New York and scoring a hole in one (Stern, 2017).

A. We should all have great faith in the laws of motion. But am I right in thinking that even Newton’s laws have limits to their validity?

S. Yes, Adeimantus. Newton’s laws become inaccurate when things move at a speed approaching the speed of light. Then we have to transition to the more accurate laws of Special Relativity. And when we are dealing with very, very small things we must use quantum mechanics. Every hypothesis is limited to its proper domain of validity.

A. Quite so. Why do we need to assume that all human observers are like ourselves?

S. This is the social dimension of science, Adeimantus. We cannot possibly do all the necessary experiments ourselves. We need to trust others to do experiments, and we can only do that if we believe that they are like us. When they repeat our experiments and get the same results as we did it adds to our confidence, and we accept their results for experiments we have not done ourselves.

A. Fair enough. You said that science deals with simple processes, yet many people believe that science is very complex and that is why they don’t understand it.

S. They think science must be complex because they don’t understand it. The concepts of science are sometimes abstract, but they are generally simple at the base level. Complex cases arise when many simple and well understood processes combine. For example, models of the weather or climate compound many simple processes. Climate models are often criticised for getting the wrong answers in some situations, and this is not because climatologists do not understand the processes, but because it is difficult to include in a model all the processes that are relevant in every situation. Furthermore, all models need data to start their processes, the so-called initial conditions, which are not always sufficient in number and quality. The failure of a climate model is not a failure of science, but an indication of the complexity of the problem. There are other limitations of science that are more fundamental and which we will come to later.

A. I have noticed that nearly everyone accepts the weather forecast without question these days.

S. Quite so. Weather models were once crude, but now the modellers have fine-tuned them with the aid of powerful computing and access to good data. Weather phenomena that were once regarded as acts of God are now viewed as the outcome of natural processes.

A. Would you say, Socrates, that science gives us a comprehensive view of the world?

S. Yes and no, Adeimantus. Science has enabled us to understand the workings of the universe from, as I said, the sub-atomic to the cosmological scale of space, and from near the apparent beginning of the universe until now.

A. But?

S. But science falls short in two areas. Firstly, science is not complete in itself. We will talk about this in detail one day but let me just say for now that quantum mechanics imposes a limit on our ability to see what goes on at the smallest scale of space. All that we can work out are probabilities of events. We can calculate these probabilities with great precision, but we have lost the determinism that prevails at the macroscopic scale that we exist in. And quantum phenomena are non-local: things separated by great distances are connected in a way that no signal could mediate. And, what’s more, we are unable, so far, to unify quantum mechanics with General Relativity, the theory of gravity. And, most shockingly, our concepts of time and space that seem so intuitive may be only the emergent appearances of some deeper reality that prevails at tiny scales (Becker, 2022). The whole foundation of our concept of our existence may be a mirage.

A. Crikey!

S. Crikey indeed, Adeimantus. Secondly, science does not, and cannot, deal completely with the experience of being human. Let me take a few moments to say what I mean by that. Suppose you are a materialist and I ask you, ‘How should a man live his life? What principles should he base his actions on?’ How would you answer, and how would you justify your answer? Would you appeal to science?

A. Yes, I would appeal to the social sciences which would tell me that most people hold certain views, and possibly to neuroscience which would tell me that most people think such a way in certain circumstances. From those observations I would formulate certain ‘natural laws’, or ‘natural rights’, applying to all people. From these I would derive any further principles needed to govern a person’s life.

S. Spoken like a true humanist, Adeimantus! And my response would be ‘I do not accept this natural law or that natural right, so my principles are different from yours!’

A. So where do you get your principles from Socrates?

S. As I have said, from the quite conventional Christian belief that there is a loving and merciful God who desires us to act in certain ways. That is my preference.

A. Are you saying it is a matter of preference?

S. Absolutely, it is a matter of preference! The great humanist hoax is that the principles of morality can be derived rationally from some self-evident truths or rights. What they actually do is choose a set of rights that they prefer for themselves and then seek to impose them on the rest of us. They play kindergarten games of ‘My beliefs are more rational than yours.’ My blood boils to think of their smug hypocrisy. A tidy bunch of fascists, if ever I saw one!

A. Strong language, Socrates. Steady on, old chap.

S. You are right, Adeimantus. Let us not get worked up over our coffee. Ultimately, it is a matter of preference. We all choose what we prefer to believe. On another day I will attempt to explain to you why I think that my preference for a religious viewpoint is superior to the humanist preference, in terms of the benefits to both the person and to society. But there is another vast area of human life in which the materialist view falls short.

A. What would that be, Socrates?

S. The mystery of life, Adeimantus.

A. Please explain what you mean, Socrates.

S. After decades of thought, Adeimantus, I have concluded that science has very little to tell us about the essential experience of being human. I accept that the physical human body belongs to science. I would even argue that what we call consciousness, the working of the brain and the experience of ‘mind’, belong to science. But science deals with the simple and the repeatable. To science, a ‘person’ is a randomly chosen sample of the human species to whom things happen through the workings of deterministic processes. It has nothing to say about the uniqueness of a particular person’s life experience, their story of hopes and loves, of happiness and tragedy, of decisions and regrets, of the twists of fate that govern their life. The unique history of a person’s internal and external experiences is what constitutes the ‘person’ and because of its inherent uniqueness, science has nothing to say about it. Even to the person themselves, life contains an element of mystery. If they are a thinking person, they can grapple with the why and the how of their past life, but they can never quite see or understand it all. That is why I say, ‘Life is a mystery.’

A. Is this connected to your religious preference, Socrates?

S. Totally, Adeimantus. Think of what we mean by ‘person’. In my view, ‘person’ is a concept, a name to which are attached our impressions, memories, feelings, and so on, triggered by our experience of the physical person, or even by reports of them. Your concept of Socrates is caused by your experience of the presence of the physical Socrates and what you hear him say. Socrates’ concept of Socrates is similar, except that it also has attached to it the memories of internal feelings, happiness and sadness, guilt and forgiveness, triumph and defeat, love and rejection. This conceptual person is like a piece of music. Music is a conceptual thing, an idea about a progression of notes with pitch and timing, tone and harmonic colour. Sure, we need a physical system to store and regenerate the sound of the music so we can hear it, but the music itself is not a physical thing. Neither is a ‘person’.

A. And so?

S. The conceptual person is what in times past would have been called a spiritual thing, the spirit of each person being what we call their ‘soul’. That is the connection of the person to religious ideas. God himself, we think of as spirit. I am not at this stage asserting that spirit has an objective existence apart from our physical existence, from our brains in which concepts reside. What I am saying, Adeimantus, is that the concept of a person, like the concept of a piece of music, takes on a life of its own and in some way transcends our physical existences. I think the term that is used these days is ‘meme’. The ‘person’ is a meme. Religion is all about spiritual things. It has a lot to tell us about the conceptual person and the mystery of life.

A. What about ‘purpose’ and the ‘meaning of life’.

S. Science specifically excludes the assumption that there is purpose behind the motion of things, unless it be divine purpose that things should behave according to fixed and universal laws. So, there can be no purpose to human life, which emerges from the accidental movements and transformation of material things according to those physical laws. A materialist can, I suppose, experience a sense of purpose, even if it is only to convince religious believers of the folly of their ways, but that purpose can only be a personal choice. Meaning is a more subtle thing, I think. A materialist would have to say that meaning is where you find it, that is, it is an individual thing, different for each person. But that denies the true meaning of the word ‘meaning’ in this context, which carries the sense of ‘relation to a broader purpose.’ A religious person would say that the meaning of their life is to be in tune with the divine purpose, but since a materialist denies the existence of divine purpose, their life can have no meaning. This is the great tragedy the humanists have foisted on humanity, that taken to its logical conclusion, life has no meaning.

A. A minute ago you said: ‘I am not at this stage asserting that spirit has an objective existence apart from our physical existence.’ Are you going to assert that?

S. Nothing escapes you, Adeimantus. What I am going to say is that this is something we cannot know for certain. There will be much to say about the question, but no certain answer. I will assert that in some ways, on which I will elaborate, it is good base your view of the world and your actions on an understanding of a spiritual dimension to life.

A. Is that it?

S. It is more than perhaps it seems at first hearing, Adeimantus. What I am saying, for now, is that there are limits to what science has to tell us about the things that, ultimately, matter most to people, and that religion has much to say about those things.

A. I accept that for now. It seems to me that you agree with your illustrious ancestor that natural philosophy is not the most important subject for a man to study (Xenophon, 2013, pp. Memorablia, Book I, 1 [11]).

S. A person may study science with great reward both for themselves and for mankind, but I agree with Socrates the Elder that on the most important questions of life, science is not much help. In summary, Adeimantus, what I have been saying is that a good worldview does not involve a choice between science and religion. It must encompass both. It is not a question of ‘science or religion’, but ‘science and religion’. Our real work is to discern the proper domain of each.

A. I see. It seems we have much to do.

S. Indeed. Let us continue tomorrow.

References

Becker, Adam. 2022. "The Origins of Space and Time." Scientific American (Scientific American) (February 2022): 22-29.

Stern, S. Alan. 2017. "Pluto Revealed." Scientific American (Scientific American) (December 2017): 33-39.

1962. The Little Oxford Dictionary of Current English. Third. Oxford: Oxford Clarendon Press.

Xenophon. 2013. The Complete Works of Xenophon. Delphi Classics Version 1. Hastings, East Sussex: Delphi Publishing Ltd.