Anything Can Happen?
I’ve been giving some thought to explanations lately. As a teacher and as the parent of a five-year-old, I spend a lot of time explaining things, and I’ve been wondering a bit about what makes a good explanation. I’m talking here about explaining why things happen the way they do – explaining what the heck Descartes means in contemporary English is a whole other ball of wax. And it strikes me that if we’re trying to give a full explanation of why Event A occurs, what we’re trying to do is identify a set of conditions X, Y and Z. And if the explanation is a full one, then whenever you have conditions X, Y, and Z, you are assured that you also have Event A. (I’m fudging the distinction between what philosophers call necessary and sufficient conditions here. I’ll try and get back to that.) If you can have conditions X, Y and Z but not have Event A, then there’s something that’s missing from your explanation. (For example, if I say “The explanation for that water boiling is that it reached 212 degrees Fahrenheit,” and then we go into high altitude and discover that 212-degree water doesn’t boil, we have to add somethign to our explanation about atmospheric pressure and sea level.) Now, maybe there’s a condition W that we hadn’t identified, and maybe there’s a pure random element such that you can’t ever give a full explanation. But in terms of defining a good explanation, it seems like this is what we’re going for.
And something that has struck me a number of times over the years is that if we think that there’s an explanation for things, then we’re essentially saying that there’s a mechanism driving events, that specific conditions dictate certain outcomes. Now, maybe we human beings won’t ever discover the explanations and the mechanisms. But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t there. So if the world is explainable, doesn’t that suggest that the world is what is, and that it can’t be changed? That whatever efforts we might make to change or not change the world are, in fact, already part of the mechanism? (“I’m sorry my paper is late, Dr. Thomer. A pterodactyl took a wrong turn millions of years ago, so I overslept.”)
Not that a world that can’t be explained is a whole lot more reassuring. I mean, the reason we want explanations is so that we can feel like we have some control over our lives – if I do X, I will get Y. To the extent that the world is random, I can’t have any control over it.
When I think about things like this, I get the sense that I’m sticking myself into a binary, either-or box, and like a good pragmatist I should try and find the shade of gray somewhere in between. But I’ll be damned if I have a clear idea of what that shade is, sometimes.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.
Tuesday, March 6th 2007 at 3:21 pm |
OK, my posting woes are fixed! Thanks, Dave! (I’m just going to use different browser for different wordpress accounts and hope they don’t clash anymore!)
Here’s what I was trying to post:
I admit, the problem of free will is pretty much the thing that keeps me up at night, too. (Whenever I get to teach this to my students, I tell them if they aren’t waking up in the night terrified by it, they haven’t understood it).
I’ve always found this the precise place where Pragmatism is helpful – the materialist in me says “It’s all natural and it’s all physical” and the scientist in me realizes that means either a) my volitions are only apparent and actually rooted in random chance on an incomprehensible level or b) there must be some level not capturable by pure physicalism.
Frankly, those options both scare me. Pragmatism has always seemed a nice option because it almost necessitates ignoring the dichotomy (and almost ignoring the problem as such) without reducing it to one or the other of the options.
Bet that didn’t help you at all.
Tuesday, March 6th 2007 at 4:50 pm |
Glad the posting problems are over. On the one hand, pragmatism helps a ittle, especially Dewey’s idea that the universe is a combination of stability and flux. But that answer only goes so far. Because stability sets the stage for explanations and flux sets the stage for randomness, right? That’s why I tried to stay away from physicalism specifically in this post and put the emphasis on explanations. Say physicalism doesn’t capture everything. OK, so either that whatever’s-left can be explained by non-physical means, in which case it’s just as much a determined/mechanistic situation, or it’s something random, in which case there’s no control. Either way, the reasonable conclusion seems to be that my conscious mind is just along for the ride watching it all play out.