If a flood washed away a town, would you attribute this disaster to meteorologic patterns or an act of god? Would you attribute this flood to any causal chain existing independent of you, or would you interpret such an event because of some mechanism in which you are an immediate participant, resulting in the flood (i.e., sin, karma)? If you had a loved one that perished in the flood, would it chain your perspective on the matter? Possibly feeling the irrationality of death, would you attribute such an unexplainable event to a similarly unexplainable mechanism?
Why ask these hypothetical questions? To determine if you believe in an objective or subjective reality. Let me explain. Over the past month I have been contemplating what I think I know and how I know those things. Given my position as an education researcher, my obsession with knowledge should be unsurprising. How I view knowledge and knowledge formation will have drastic implications for both my teaching and research. Upon reflection, I hold observation and measurement in the highest regard for building knowledge. Science is a way of knowing which I believe to give the most accurate description of reality, the closest we can get to some semblance of truth. If your claims do not align with observed patterns, then I do not believe you. The patterns I see, and the accuracy gained through measurement are the justifications for making the claim that I know something. Given my position as a scientist, should this surprise you? Call me an empiricist, a positivist, see if I care. Some philosophers and scientists would disagree with me, arguing against a reality outside of the human mind, the naturalists. I hold that observations and measurement are my justifications because other justifications deny rationality and the knowledge claims they allow me to make are extremely useful for deciphering and analyzing the world. This view of knowledge has allowed others, like me, to explain and predict phenomenon, leading to all the great marvels of the information age. Maybe that makes me a pragmatist.
However, usefulness is subject to the intended use, which in turn, is subject to the user. Perhaps some people have other uses for the knowledge claims they make; therefore, their justification of some knowledge claims will look quite different from mine own. If a person were attempting to run from this absurd reality, run from an unexplainable lose, an explanation or solution which involves neither observation nor measurement would seem logical if that knowledge claim serves them — they may invoke any justification necessary. This is where god enters the picture. If people are motivated to run from the human condition, to find ways to escape the inevitable realization life is meaningless, then justifications are thrown to wind, people leap from one knowledge claim to the next without answering to the observable and measurable. Any god or religion serves people in eluding absurd reality and serves them by allowing those people to place meaning on an otherwise meaningless world. It allows them make claims which are not answerable to anyone, these claims are not falsifiable. Is it possible that a god created that flood to smite the people of that town? Do I believe this? No, because I have recognized that this world holds no meaning. If that is true, why not kill yourself? Because suicide does not resolve the conflict between the absurd natural of reality and man’s encounter with it, suicide reaffirms the absurd, giving into the meaninglessness of the world (Camus, 1942). I must not give into death, but entertain death. I must exist despite everything. I must revolt against my existence, against the path of eluding the absurd.
An existentialist in crisis,
JLS
References
Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. translated by Justin O’Brien. New York: Vintage Books, 1991. Translation originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, 1955. Originally published in France as Le Mythe de Sisyphe by Librairie Gallimard, 1942. https://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/ phil360/16.%20Myth%20of%20Sisyphus.pdf