Skepticism and Happiness
The Learning Technologies Department at the University of
North Texas is located off campus in a complex known as Discovery Park. The
department has a large meeting area call the agora (Greek for meeting place). As a consequence, I find myself
drawn back to my academic training in philosophy on occasion. My memory of my
early academic training is not all that clear so some of what follows may be
wrong or confused. Anyway, I shall attempt to construct a meaningful story out
of those memories.
Many associate skepticism with doubting or even a negative
attitude towards various things. I find this association odd. Sextus Empiricus,
a second century Greek philosopher who wrote a comprehensive account of
skepticism called Outlines of Pyrrhonism,
argued that skepticism was a kind of mental therapy that resulted in happiness
or at least mental quietude. In short, like other ancient Greek philosophical
traditions, achieving happiness was of central concern. Skepticism arose in
part as a reaction to Stoicism, another Greek school of thought. According to
Stoicism, achieving true and lasting happiness was best achieved by avoiding
erroneous judgment and minimizing negative emotions by leading a simple life. The
third Greek tradition to add to this mix is Epicureanism, which viewed
happiness as the absence of pain and mental disturbance.
Roughly speaking there are three competing traditions in
ancient Greek philosophy with regard to finding happiness and living the good
life. One proposes avoiding pain and enjoying the pleasures that one finds as
best one can – epicureanism. Another proposes avoiding negative emotions
through a kind of purity of simplified living – stoicism. And a third proposes
following a certain mental discipline to achieve happiness – skepticism. While
these three traditions seem quite different, they do have several things in
common. Notably, all three do not draw a sharp distinction between what we
might be inclined to think of as the cognitive domain (thought, reasoning,
etc.) and the affective domain (emotions, feelings, etc.). All three connect a
certain mental discipline with achieving happiness or at least mental quietude
(peace of mind). Hmm. One can think
oneself happy – by thinking, achieve happiness. How strange is that?
Perhaps it is not so strange when one takes a deeper look at
the principles of skepticism. Skepticism is not fundamentally about doubting –
it is about searching for the truth. The word ‘skeptic’ is derived from the
Greek word skepsis which roughly
translates to inquiry. A skeptic is
someone who is engaged in an inquiry process. That process logically begins
with doubt – with an admission of not knowing something that one wishes to
understand. The process does not end with that doubt, however. One must then be
engaged in a search for the truth. A skeptic is a seeker – a searcher – someone
engaged in an inquiry process. Most things worthy of such an investigation are
complex and do not lend themselves to simple answers. So, a skeptic must not
only be humble and begin by admitting to a kind of ignorance or lack of
understanding, a skeptic must also be open to alternative explanations and an
examination and re-examination of evidence. Finally, when one is exhausted from
the search process, one should not simply accept a finding as conclusive – new evidence
might become available or one might have erred along the way. The final stage,
then, in a skeptical process of inquiry is to realize that the final truth may
not have been found. This is precisely where skeptics parted company with the
stoics who held dogmatically to many truths that skeptics believed worth
further inquiry.
In my own life, I have come to realize that things that I
believed with certainty were not so certain after all. For example, prior to my
strong interest in philosophy I had a strong (also strange) attraction to
mathematics. I remembered being introduced to Fermat’s Last Theorem in high
school – the conjecture that no three positive integers can satisfy the
equation an + bn = cn for any integer value of
n > 2. Since the challenge to find a proof had existed for more than 300
years, I naively assumed a proof would never be found. I believed with
certainty that no such proof existed. In 1995, a proof was found. The certainty
with which I held that belief was wrongheaded.
In my mathematical period I became interested in the number π
(pi - the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter). I was taught
that the expansion of the number π was infinite. While I was able to follow the
proof that π is not the quotient of two integers (i.e., it is an irrational
number) or not accurately expressed as the ration of two integers, I was not
able to follow the proof that π was a transcendental number or that the
expansion of π led to a never ending and non-repeating sequence. I simply
accepted that stronger claim as true and came to believe it with certainty. I
raise this point because it would seem that continuing to search for or
understand the proof or seek a sequence in the expansion that repeated or ended
would lead to a lot of mental effort and not result in peace of mind – my own
efforts to understand π had led to more questions and a state of perplexity. I
do recall one conversation with my father, Rabbi Spector, when I was trying to
understand π. Remarkably, he know what π was and was familiar with an ancient
Hebrew text that had approximated π as the quotient of 355/113. He also quoted
Maimonides who said that π could only be approximated and not known with
precision or certainty. There ensued a remarkable discussion about infinity
with my father – one of the happiest memories of my life, so perhaps indirectly
the search did result in some sort of happiness.
Anyway, I believe the kernel of truth in connecting
skepticism with happiness is twofold. First, there is the notion that happiness
involves a cognitive element. Second, if one holds a belief with wrongheaded
confidence and is unwilling to examine evidence or consider alternatives, then
one is likely to encounter at some point a disquieting and unsettling cognitive
conflict. I have experienced several of these and have come to accept the small
kernel of truth that skepticism is generally a healthy state of mind.
Consider this story from Part IV Leo Tolstoy’s A Confession:
There is
an Eastern fable, told long ago, of a traveller overtaken on a plain by an
enraged beast. Escaping from the beast he gets into a dry well, but sees at the
bottom of the well a dragon that has opened its jaws to swallow him. And the
unfortunate man, not daring to climb out lest he should be destroyed by the
enraged beast, and not daring to leap to the bottom of the well lest he should
be eaten by the dragon, seizes s twig growing in a crack in the well and clings
to it. His hands are growing weaker and he feels he will soon have to resign
himself to the destruction that awaits him above or below, but still he clings
on. Then he sees that two mice, a black one and a white one, go regularly round
and round the stem of the twig to which he is clinging and gnaw at it. And soon
the twig itself will snap and he will fall into the dragon's jaws. The
traveller sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish; but while still
hanging he looks around, sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the twig,
reaches them with his tongue and licks them. So I too clung to the twig of
life, knowing that the dragon of death was inevitably awaiting me, ready to
tear me to pieces; and I could not understand why I had fallen into such
torment. I tried to lick the honey which formerly consoled me, but the honey no
longer gave me pleasure, and the white and black mice of day and night gnawed
at the branch by which I hung. I saw the dragon clearly and the honey no longer
tasted sweet. I only saw the unescapable dragon and the mice, and I could not
tear my gaze from them. and this is not a fable but the real unanswerable truth
intelligible to all.
This short tale describes how Tolstoy came to abandon the
epicurean approach to happiness. Perhaps it will resonate with some. There is
also Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus in which
Camus retells the story of Sisyphus being condemned by the gods to forever roll
a rock to the top of a mountain only to have it roll back down again – an infinite
but repeating sequence, recalling our discussion of pi. Sisyphus’ crime was apparently stealing secrets from and/or
offending the gods. The end of Camus’ version ends with the remarkable
statement that one must imagine Sisyphus happy. How is that possible? Roll that
rock to the top again and again, forever and ever? Where is the joy in that?
Asking such a question might lead to an interesting inquiry process …
Here is another tidbit from a
renowned skeptical philosopher – Friedrich Nietzsche. This quotation comes from
Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, #341
(philosophy is the gay science, by the way):
The
greatest weight.-- What, if some day
or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say
to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to
live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it,
but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything
unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the
same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the
trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is
turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!" Would
you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke
thus?... Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to
crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and
seal?
I encountered this
passage in my first year of doctoral studies with O. K. Bouwsma. After reading
the passage there ensued a discussion of tremendous moments in which several
students shared what thought would justify a positive disposition towards
eternal recurrence. For example, one offered the birth of a child as such a
moment. Someone asked Bouwsma if he had experienced such a moment of happiness.
As best I recall, he was about 75 when asked and he said something like the
following: “I remember when I was a child of about 7 playing on a snowy hilltop
in Nebraska. I was holding onto the lower rail of a wooden fence sliding my
feet back and forth creating a slippery spot to create a starting point for
sliding down the hill. A young girl I had not seen before came up next to me
and smiled. I smiled back and slid down the hill never to see her again.” He
said that seeing her smile was a tremendous moment. Add that story to many
other things I am not likely to understand anytime soon.
I conclude this short
excursion into skepticism and happiness with this simple realization: I know
less than I am generally inclined to believe.
Enjoy the happiness
that comes with serious and sustained inquiry.
