How Can We Know What We Think, If We Don’t Think About How We Know?

October 22, 2024

How Can We Know What We Think
If We Don’t Think About How We Know?

“The fundamental purpose animating the Faith of God…is to safeguard the interests and promote the unity of the human race, and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men.…Whatsoever is raised on this foundation, the changes and chances of the world can never impair its strength….Let them…take counsel together and…administer to a diseased and sorely afflicted world the remedy it requireth…”

Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh (CX)

Gerald Filson received his Ph.D. in Philosophy but spent most of his working life in explaining, as well as helping to direct, the work of the Canadian Bahá’í community. Recently retired after 10 years as a member of its elected council, the National Spiritual Assembly, he had previously led its department of Public Affairs for 25 years. In his “Big Ideas” presentation, he sought to deepen understanding of the power and limits of philosophy, and to relate it directly to the realm of the actions we take in the world. “Experience, Knowledge and Reality” was the title of his talk, and nearly 100 friends attended virtually and in person at the Bahá’í Centre on McArthur Avenue.

“I want to talk about four different subjects,” Filson began. “First, how do we experience the world?” The fundamental complementarity of science and religion, a pillar of Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings, leads us to reflect on how spiritual experiences (including artistic ones) amplify the logical, material ones that we engage in, including the most methodical scientific investigations. Such amplification is necessary, for as mathematician John Myhill said, “No non-poetic account of reality can be complete.” Inspiration, religious teaching, even the jostling of our minds by people we engage with – all these are essential companions to scientific processes.

Gerald Filson’s second topic was a brief apparent detour discussing the great scholar of the Golden Age of Islam, Ibn Sīnā. Avicenna, as he is commonly known, made arguments for the existence of God. Deeply schooled not only in the Qur’an but in Greco-Roman, Persian and Hindu thought, he reasoned that there are some concepts “impressed in the soul in a primary way”, and that existence itself is among them. We cannot define it, or even prove conclusively that existence is not an illusion. For Avicenna, existence then is not a secondary concept that we discern from what we can sense around us in Nature; rather, since every natural phenomenon can be traced back to some something else that caused it, then existence itself must be preceded by what Bahá’u’lláh called “the One Who is the Causer of Causes, and the Sustainer thereof…” Thus, Avicenna’s centuries-old argument that “God is the one reality that transcends this conditional…mutable order of nature” is being taken up by modern philosophers, as well as in the social and even the physical sciences, due to the limitations of reason in describing reality. Filson cites Avicenna alongside the work of contemporary thinkers and finds real compatibility, since scientific analysis must ultimately be in harmony with the wholeness that comes from religious teaching, as Bahá’u’lláh proclaimed.

Filson’s third topic, the heart of his presentation, contained numerous references from (mainly) modern thinkers on the role of human action: to what extent do we come to our understanding of the world by how we behave within it? Aristotle famously referred to “excellencies we get first by doing them.” Many modern writers have also come to criticize philosophies based only on reason and logic. Talbot Brewer’s The Retrieval of Ethics and Andrea Kern’s Sources of Knowledge, for example, echo Aristotle in noting how our actions themselves, often based on intuition or inclination or even simple joy and interest, impact how we acquire knowledge. American pragmatist philosophers also affirmed the value of the deliberations of ordinary women and men. In the latter half of the 19th and in the early 20th centuries, William James, (The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) and the founder of modern psychology), John Dewey and others questioned purely rational philosophy, showing how common sense and relationships with others can be pursued “in such a way as to create a coherent framework.” Bahá’í thought points out that, from a human perspective, even religiously based truth is not absolute, but relative and progressive. Therefore, truth-seeking is the same in a spiritual context as in a scientific one. We must experiment. There is intrinsic value in “activities that aim toward a life lived in recognition of the Good in ways that only gradually achieve a good life,” for individuals and societies.

“Ideal formations and values – like love, and friendship – strive to resemble the world of God.” The world changes, but the truly Ideal does not, Filson began in discussing his fourth topic: how knowledge and experience, plus divine teachings, can be reflected in human action. As Bahá’u’lláh wrote in the 19th century:

“The tabernacle of unity hath been raised; regard ye not one another as strangers….Gather ye together, and for the sake of God resolve to root out whatever is the source of contention amongst you.”

The experience of the global Bahá’í community blends spiritual authority, consultation and shared action. Could it reflect a deeper, wider movement toward humanity’s transformation? A few centuries before the life of Jesus Christ, the confluence of the Judaic prophets, the Greek philosophers, and the lives of the Buddha, Lao Tse and Confucius in the east led philosopher Jürgen Habermas and others to see that period as an Axial Age, a great human turning point. Social scientist Hans Joas (The Power of the Sacred) is intrigued by a “science of religion” that recognizes, as do the Bahá’í teachings, the value of many different spiritual traditions. And the “remarkable historian” Jürgen Osterhammel, in his 2009 opus The Transformation of the World – A Global History of the Nineteenth Century, suggests that a new “Axial Age” may have begun; he names the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh as figures of “prophetic authority”. In short, as Filson noted, contemporary thinkers have begun to echo the teaching of the Bahá’í Faith that “we have two major systems of knowledge, science and religion”, both more informed and enriched by the experiences of ordinary people navigating the world than we often think.

“Underlying Bahá’í thought,” Gerald Filson argued, “is an effort to engage in human discourse that extends itself in sacrifice, kindness and magnanimity.” Unity, even in the face of wars, climate change and immense injustice, is always the underlying principle. “One can read in the Bahá’í Faith a slow and gradual ‘revolution’ that will remake the world’s communities and institutions… Over the centuries poets and philosophers have often written of the future of humanity as a Golden Age [but] we have lost that view of transcendence. Today, we are living through another Axial Age, where the evident forces of both societal disintegration and integration will undoubtedly move humanity forward.”

Now that is a Big Idea!