--- title: "Spiritual Rationality, part 2 of 9" canonical: "https://spiritual-rationality.org" pages: 3 --- # Spiritual Rationality, part 2 of 9 {#top} *Part 2 of 9, complete edition — “Good, Right, & Wrong” through “"Real"”. Previous: https://spiritual-rationality.org/llms-full-1.txt. Next: https://spiritual-rationality.org/llms-full-3.txt. Whole edition in one file: https://spiritual-rationality.org/llms-full.txt. Index: https://spiritual-rationality.org/llms.txt* ## Notation {#notation} Source notation, not standard markdown: - `::gloss[…]` — definition of the heading above it. Invisible on the site; it is the hover card for links to that heading. Read as a definition. - `::gloss[…]{#id}` — defines a term holding its own anchor. `#id` is the link target; the block below is what it annotates. - `::nogloss` — heading deliberately has no definition. - `:::note[…]` / `:::info[…]` — callouts (MyST/Docusaurus admonitions). Footnotes are GFM. Heading anchors are GitHub-style slugs, written out as `{#id}` in the combined files. ## Contents {#contents} - [Good, Right, & Wrong](#metaphysics-rightness-ontology) - [(Mis)use of Language and Rhetoric, re Rightness](#metaphysics-rhetoric-rightness) - ["Real"](#metaphysics-real) --- # Good, Right, & Wrong {#metaphysics-rightness-ontology} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/metaphysics/rightness-ontology — also at `/md/metaphysics/rightness-ontology.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `metaphysics-rightness-ontology--`.* :::info[This perspective is not quite meant absolutely] There's no way to jump into meta-metaphysics without assuming some kind of metaphysics! I [argue later](/md/metaphysics/metaphysical-disagreement.md) that we mostly don't have frameworks for resolving metaphysical disagreements. Even for those whose metaphysical beliefs don't agree with the assumptions I make here, I still will say that you can notice what distinctions these arguments make, which I'll be coming back to throughout the book. I also think these arguments aren't quite airtight and are more to gesture in a direction. Still I think one broadly speaking can't really "get away with" making arguments, under most systems of metaphysics, that are fallacious under this model. For moral realists in particular, I dig into a weaker form of this argument near the end of this section. ::: There are a variety of contexts in which people invoke concepts like "true" or "right" or "good," whether implicitly or explicitly. Quite a bit of reasoning about this is straightforwardly *incorrect* because conflates different kinds of *rightness*.
My stance here is broadly spacious, personal, and flexible. I don't think you ought to feel or perceive what I do. A main thread throughout this book is that what's good and right and beautiful is going to be highly spacious, and allow for a great deal of flexibility in personal temperament, sensitivity, and aspiration. *On the other hand*, there are many claims that are made about what's right which are from what I can tell, metaphysically or factually *wrong*, and I want to criticize them very clearly.
## A sketch of an ontology of rightness {#metaphysics-rightness-ontology--a-sketch-of-an-ontology-of-rightness} ::nogloss I'll say again, this is a sketch, it gestures in a direction, but it's not quite an airtight argument. In addition, this isn't trying to be an exhaustive ontology of "rightness", but is trying to point out one important dimension on which certain kinds of claims can vary. ### Mathematical and logical truth {#metaphysics-rightness-ontology--mathematical-and-logical-truth} In some sense we can start here with mathematical truth. Theorems are true in a solipsistic universe of meaning, they have no *certain* referent in the physical world, they are "true" only within their axioms and laws of inference. This doesn't make them weak, it in fact makes mathematical truths extremely robust. Mathematical statements are true insofar as they are *logically necessary*, that is, that they *cannot but* be true, as a consequence of their assumptions. Mathematical truths are however often conflated with empirical claims, facts, etc., and I want to distinguish them very clearly. ### Empirical {#metaphysics-rightness-ontology--empirical} Empirical claims, including either variously "bare facts," models with some assigned credence, or predictions about future events, all of these are constructed with respect to a physical (or at least external, etc.) world. These always have the shape, "one, or some, external objects, have a property or relationship, which (at least in principle) can be observed." Empirical claims need to be *demonstrated* to abide by some logical or mathematical representation. Really there are quite a few subtypes here, which I won't go into. In general, though, I would say that empirical claims are "compound" with respect to mathematical propositions external or physical phenomena. When we talk about things having properties, sets of objects, shapes, numbers, and the like, we're engaging in fundamentally mathematical thinking. Don't be mistaken, empirical claims are completely ordinary. Even though I'm expressing it in technical language, this is all humdrum and everyday: "Joe was upset today", "I broke my foot", "Lettuce isn't very filling," "I think Russia won't invade Ukraine," and so on, these are *empirical* claims. ### Evaluative {#metaphysics-rightness-ontology--evaluative} ::gloss[*Evaluative* claims are those which say "this is preferred," or "given these criteria, this is preferred." They add an evaluative function on top of an empirical claim.] *Evaluative* claims will either look like "this is (dis)preferred" or "given a specific set of criteria, this is preferred," depending on whether they are stated in absolute or qualified terms. Evaluative claims are built on top of empirical ones, adding an *evaluative function*. Some examples: - "You played the song wrong," or especially "I played a wrong note" - "That was a great move" (in a chess game) - "That business decision was a mistake" - "This painting is gorgeous" - "Avocados are gross" - "AI should not xyz" Let's say, within evaluative claims, there's going to be quite a few subtypes. Among these, at least, we're going to want: - Conformance, whether strict or relative, to a specification - Optimality or fitness under a utility function or a loss function - A utility function or a loss function, for this purpose, is just a function which maps an input, whether a physical object, an idea, a strategy, etc., to a number. We can then rank inputs by the value of their output, eg. a machine which produces more widgets per hour, or which uses less fuel per mile, etc. - One special subtype would also be optimality or fitness of a *strategy*. The concept of an evaluative function is very general; basically, we need to be able to distinguish *the object under consideration* from *the criteria used to evaluate it*. Mathematically, we can use different kinds of functions with different properties for the sake of comparison and choice. In practice, most people don't think of evaluative reasoning mathematically, and might balk at being asked to actually assign a number to some object or another. "Yes, this soup was delicious, but no it's not a matter of numbers!" etc. Nonetheless we can, broadly speaking, say that evaluative judgements conform to some mathematical structure. For example, if between objects A and B, either one is "better," or they are the same, then we have what's called a total ordering over evaluations. (It's important to note that many evaluative judgements define what's called a partial ordering, rather than a total ordering. Eg. if asked which was better, the paintings of Michelangelo or the music of Stevie Wonder, most people would say "apples and oranges!" etc. Some evluative functions are binary and don't define an ordering, and there are probably more nuanced cases as well.) Evaluative claims can be said absolutely, or qualified. An absolute evaluative statement will usually not refer explicitly to an evaluative function. Evaluative claims can on the other hand be qualified in such a way that they become empirical claims which contain reference to an evaluative function. I would claim that it's basically *meaningless* to refer to something as "good" or "bad" without a specified evaluative function. In practice, of course, eliding the evaluative function from an utterance like this is perfectly fine in a lot of contexts, and the point here is not to be the language police. *At least* I would say, we can notice when someone is making an evaluative claim, and notice that they are using an evaluative function, usually implicitly, and surface that distinction. **One cannot make an evaluative statement, and then claim that it is true absolutely and *without reference to an evaluative function.*** If someone says, "this is the best car," we can ask, "good according to what?" Hearing an evaluative statement without an evaluative function should (I'll claim) be as strange as hearing a comparative statement without a point of reference: "this car is 50% better!"—better than what? There is a sense in which one can say "indeed, a kilo weighs more than a pound," and assume that this ought to be basically utterly compelling to any sane person, but one *cannot* in general say "this thing is bad" in quite that same sense. Evaluative claims are often understood to be *matters of taste*, that is, even if the evaluative function is left out, there's an understanding that people will vary and feel quite differently about food, music, etc. Sometimes this is a polite mask over quite a lot of judgement, but often no one has anything at stake, one simply doesn't like licorice, or noir movies, and has such preferences without thinking those things are wrong or bad. On the other hand, the speech act of making an evaluative claim also often serves to, socially, make those who don't use the speaker's evaluative function dumb, low status, or evil, or to do the opposite for those who do. For example: - "Rap music is garbage" - "People who voted for [candidate] are idiots" - "Homosexual sex is an affront on God" - "Modern art is pretentious bullshit" Other kinds of evaluative claims are implicitly claims about strategic choices, broadly speaking. These make claims at the same time about what goals one *should* have (again, what evaluative function one should use) and that a particular strategy rates poorly under their evaluative function. These usually take the form of prescriptions, implicit or explicit. For example: - "Carbs are bad for you" - "You should finish college" - "Regular exercise is what your body needs" - "It's important to learn a second language" Often these are less problematic; we can make some plausible assumptions about what values people *do* have, and say something to the effect, implicitly, of "assuming, as is true for almost everyone, that you want to be energetic, mobile, and feeling good on a day to day basis and into old age, exercise is indeed vital." Nonetheless prescriptions like these often sort of "cheat" by presenting a strategy as an unalloyed good, and leave out a specific person's desires, and especially their constraints. Once again, it is simply *incorrect* to say "this is a choice that should be made irrespective of all goals." That said, notions like "goals" and "values" can often be myopic or shallow. These can change, and changes are often regarded as "truer" or "better." I think there's a lot of real substance to this, and that there's big questions here. I talk about this in depth in the [last major section of this book](/md/goodness.md).
More detail on the metaphysics of empirical and evaluative claims There's a useful sense in which "empirical" claims are contiguous with evaluative statements. I would say here that one's ontology is convolved with one's goals or values. The notion here is that there is no sense in which an ontology can be defined, or maybe "would be defined," absent some values. More confidently, in at least *most* cases an ontology and some goals are defined together at once, so whether something "is" a member of a category has mostly to do with what you're using that category for. In this sense, still, there's in most contexts at least a meaningful difference of degree between most empirical and evaluative claims, where the axis in which they vary is something like "how commonly shared the ontology is"—which even for empirical claims obviously is seldom 100% among humans, and sometimes quite a bit less. Again, in addition, see [no universally compelling arguments](/md/metaphysics/what-why-metaphysics.md#no-universally-compelling-arguments). Modern psychiatric diagnosis is of course the standard counterexample here of what's presented as though it were ontologically straightforward, like *most* medical diagnoses, but is highly convolved with a specific set of goals, namely treatment, primarily pharmacological, and usually defined in terms of "difficulty coping" or similar. To be clear, I actually think the DSM (the standard diagnostic manual in the US) is doing a pretty good job here, given the various constraints and pressures. I think the main problem with psychiatric diagnoses are people who think they're something they aren't. (IIRC in Quine's work there's another expression of a very similar distinction, namely of observations being "theory-laden.") In this sense, my point that evaluative claims without an evaluative function are meaningless (really, a type error) also applies to empirical claims; we would have to say something like "under this epistemology" to be more absolute in our empirical claims. Indeed, I've sort of [already said as much](/md/metaphysics/what-why-metaphysics.md), that the epistemology we use affects what we think is real and true. Still, there's obviously a pretty large difference of degree between empirical and evaluative claims. Maybe I can't say "speaking an evaluative claim as though it were empirical is a type error" but nonetheless, I'm going to put my foot down and say that conflating the two is confused and often harmful. I think, given a shared frame, that it's broadly fine to make evaluative claims authoritatively, but that in domains where the evaluative function is contested, speaking as though the evaluative function is definite, or shared among all speakers, or actually just-as-real as empirical truths, is a kind of metaphysical and memetic harm. [I also discuss](#metaphysics-rhetoric-rightness) how these harms are perpetuated. Finally, I'll talk [later in more detail](/md/spiritual-truth/rationality.md) about the sense of empirical truth that I use and think is broadly helpful and appropriate, as well as limitations of that model. (And, for what it's worth, [I end up endorsing](#metaphysics-real) a kind of weak epistemic and ontological anti-realism.)
### Moral {#metaphysics-rightness-ontology--moral} Moral claims are a confusing point, and I'm not sure where I stand on them. In a meaning-reductionist view, moral rightness is purely just an evaluative claim; I'm not fully on this side. Part of the emotional, imaginal, and memetic power of moral claims comes from them being made absolutely. Taking morality purely as object often makes it thin and tawdry. Nonetheless I believe that morality is a property of minds, and not of the mind-external universe, despite the [claims of many religious traditions](/md/metaphysics/eternalism-nihilism.md), and even some secular moral realists. (Relatedly, see [no universally compelling arguments](/md/metaphysics/what-why-metaphysics.md#no-universally-compelling-arguments).) Briefly: moral realism is from my perspective usually something like [eternalist](/md/metaphysics/eternalism-nihilism.md) window-dressing on real, legitimate, and vital moral sensibility. In any case, moral truths strike one as more important and less flexible than optimization, efficacy, or beauty—and certainly not just a matter of personal opinion or taste. Murder is wrong! Rape is wrong! Torture is wrong! (I'm pretty sure I really mean that. I've never witnessed these things myself but I'm pretty confident that if I saw them in front of me, I would be very disturbed, regardless of whether I would have the courage to do anything.) But, there's moral contention! Many people in the world have believed, and still believe, that homosexual sex is evil, while many people in the liberal west thing it's just fine. And so on for countless other examples. For now, I'll say, I still think that strictly speaking these are evaluative claims, and are constrained in their "objectivity" (read, maybe: "pure inescapability") in the same sorts of ways. I also think that this doesn't actually need to weaken their emotional weight, at least in general. (Often it does in particular, for moral claims that have been taken as more real than they ought to have.) I'll say as well, there's moral change if not moral progress. There's at least maturity, attunment, and alignment with one's deeper truth. The obstructions to our virtue and goodness can be cleared, and we can have truer apprehension of what is good and right. I think some moral anti-realists refuse this—I don't, and I think moral growth and moral insight are real and important, I just don't place them in an eternalism. I'll discuss [at much greater length](/md/goodness/metaphysics-axiology.md) how metaphysics relates to and interacts with various kinds of moral claims. Among other things I talk about why believing that morality exists in minds doesn't necessarily imply or require moral nihilism.
What should moral realists take from this? For died-in-the-wool moral realists, there's a few points I'll stress: 1. It's not clear *which* domains of evaluative claims are under the purview of your ultimate moral reality. Obviously we've come and gone on this point culturally, eg. regarding apostasy, lots of details of sexual ethics in particular, capital punishment, etc. Maybe you can say "indeed, there's some moral uncertainty, but certainly murder is wrong." I'll grant you that, but this brings us to the next point: 2. Even if we assume moral realism, you *still* have to demonstrate that any particular moral claim is true. Furthermore, the means by which we do moral investigation and discernment are mostly the same anyhow, namely introspection and debate. I have the same apparatus for ascertaining moral truth whether moral realism is true or not, my mind and my heart. So then, we're largely back where we started: there's moral uncertainty, and the metaphysics is ambiguous and difficult to determine, except insofar as you believe you have perfect gnosis of moral truth. (Some may or may not want to count prayer as separate from introspection. Separately, even if your moral epistemology rests on a textual tradition, there's still an enormous amount of moral uncertainty due to hermeneutic problems, in which case the above still applies. If you think your epistemology and tradition of biblical interpretation are unassailable, then I suppose I can't convince you of much.) 3. Everything not covered by your moral theory is subject to the limitations of evaluative claims in principle that I've laid out. You can't *really* trick someone into not wanting something that they do, at most you can either bully them into denying their own feelings, even to themselves, *or* you can cause them to notice what's good or bad about something, using their own discernment.
## Opinions, matters of taste, and ways of seeing {#metaphysics-rightness-ontology--opinions-matters-of-taste-and-ways-of-seeing} ::nogloss One of the important questions in judging some claim will often be "is this domain, or this type of evidence or argument, applicable to the kind or degree of rightness being claimed?" For example, some questions are really a [matter of taste](#metaphysics-rhetoric-rightness--taking-a-specific-example-confusions-regarding-aesthetics). Or, even if there is an "objective" structure which distinguishes one thing from another, like that something is more complex, precisely tuned, or difficult to achieve, *still* you might just actually enjoy the simpler thing more, and your preferences can't meaningfully be said to be "wrong." I would say that a nearby category would be [ways of seeing](/md/metaphysics/ways-of-seeing.md). I wouldn't call these a *matter of taste*, but it seems like, various *consistent* ways of seeing, while powerful and deeply felt, can't really be distinguished as "wrong" or "right," but more like "helpful," or "appropriate," or "clarifying." This obviously confuses matters even more about moral claims. I still have intuitions along the lines of "no, murder really is wrong, that's not just my feelings"—but this is a real question for me. However, there are cultures and legal systems in which eg. honor killings are acceptable and legal. I'm mostly fine with saying that they're wrong too, but it's often not clear what really counts in here, and I still don't think we are [able to determine or adjudicate](/md/metaphysics/metaphysical-disagreement.md) this meaningfully. --- # (Mis)use of Language and Rhetoric, re Rightness {#metaphysics-rhetoric-rightness} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/metaphysics/rhetoric-rightness — also at `/md/metaphysics/rhetoric-rightness.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `metaphysics-rhetoric-rightness--`.* There's a common kind of rhetorical trick, in which someone sneaks an [evaluative claim](#metaphysics-rightness-ontology--evaluative) in, like "a wolf in sheep's clothes," as though it were certain and absolute. They then carry on to convince those listening of something which they couldn't argue for if it were clear that this claim isn't *true* in the same way, or with the same force as *stabler* kinds of truth. Colloquially there are quite a few different words that are used to refer to different kinds of evaluative statments. From a technical perspective, a musical performance might be described as "wrong" or "poor," variously on the basis of strict adherence to the specification (the written piece of music) and of the performance's expressiveness, beauty, etc. Optimality and fitness often take quite a few adjectives, eg. "beautiful," "delicious", or for that matter "sexy," but also of course just "good" or "best." Strategic fitness in particular is often described as "right" (as in, "the right choice"), "smart" (same) or "effective." "True," even when used consistently, means something fairly different for mathematical claims as it does for empirical ones. We also commonly use the words "right" and "wrong," though never "false" or "incorrect," to describe evil, sins, or moral failings. Again, without becoming needlessly pedantic, we can *notice* that there are differences between different kinds of language for different kinds of rightness, and that words have a prototypical meaning. **I think that one can "cheat" rhetorically by using one set of language which brings in intuitions about the strength and stability of one kind of rightness to bolster a different kind of claim.** Furthermore, I'd say this isn't just about manipulative rhetoric, often the language a broad culture uses to describe one kind of *rightness* implicitly conflates it with another, eg. "this is the truth" (of a spiritual teaching). Evaluative claims are often spoken with the same tone and language as empirical or logical claims, and as though they had the same "inescapability." There are contexts in which you can reasonably say "these are pretty much just the facts of the matter," which serve to say, ostensibly, "you ought to be compelled to believe this, due to the kind and strength of evidence for it." I believe it is usually inappropriate to present evaluative claims as though they have this same kind of compelling force. I think people are sensitive to this kind of ruse only *to some extent*. I see quite a lot rhetoric, broadly in the context of morality and values, which makes this move and meets with no open objection. I'll make here a moral claim: in the same way that it's wrong to deceive someone about some *facts*, whether by straightforward falsehood or by manipulative rhetoric, it's also wrong to cause them to believe evaluative claims using the sorts of rhetorical abuses I've described. Insofar as you respect the discernment, autonomy, and agency of the people you're speaking to, you should make evaluative claims transparently, and let people decide on their own two feet. Now, there's nuance, and there are exceptions. The more that a frame is shared within some community, or the more that there's effectively consensus about what evaluative functions to use, the less it matters if we leave the evaluative functions out when making evaluative claims. It would be ridiculous to call it "rhetorically abusive" for a religious order, within its own community, to simply have shared assumptions about what is good and right. Nonetheless I think there's something pernicious about the "unknown knowns" of ideology and metaphysics, where the entire evaluative frame remains tacit, even if it's not contentious. And then, what should we do when the evaluative frame *is* contested? Descriptively, when talking to others that one trusts and respects, people will generally surface the evaluative function as contentious. "In my opinion," "I've been told that," "the experts say x, but I'm not sure," and so on. I don't have a smack-down argument, but my sense here is that insofar as we want to cultivate a productive, healthy discourse, this kind of nuance and openness with respect to ambiguity and contention is broadly what we should be striving for. (I'll also say, there's some rabbit hole here about socializing children, for which I just don't have an answer. One way or another, children will absorb moral intuitions, some of this is embodied and demonstrated, but a lot of it is also taught explicitly, and it seems pretty much impossible to try to teach precepts to children in a way that's nuanced with respect to a broader cultural discourse.) One last piece: often people conflate, implicitly or explicitly, different kinds of evaluative claims. In particular often claims about what strategies are effective end up transmitted culturally in terms of morality, obligation, and sin. I'm thinking here about many people's relationship to exercise, diet, parenting, "financial health," etc. This will also be an important distinction to keep in mind when we talk about [spiritual practice](/md/practice.md). ## Taking a specific example: confusions regarding aesthetics {#metaphysics-rhetoric-rightness--taking-a-specific-example-confusions-regarding-aesthetics} ::nogloss *First: the point here is to say, "here's a nuanced case of misunderstanding the role and strength of certain kinds of evaluative claims." When we get to talking about [spiritual truth](/md/spiritual-truth/truth.md) later, I'll return to this question, of what kinds of *truth* and *correctness* apply when talking about morality, goodness, spiritual teachings, etc.* In music we have the concept of a "wrong note." A piece of music, as written or as transmitted in an oral tradition, defines a particular sequence of notes for certain lengths of time, and of course people constantly make mistakes and simply play a different note than what is expected. This sense of "wrong" is fine enough, and indeed in many contexts in music we just want to play the piece as written, or at least as written and interpreted within the bounds of the tradition. In fact in those contexts everyone will basically agree as to what "wrong" means, and what counts as a "wrong" note. However, this evaluative function is only suitable in some contexts and not others. In jazz, many of the rules are relaxed, not into chaos but into a denser and richer structure. You will literally find jazz musicians saying that there's no such thing as a wrong note.[^metaphysics-rhetoric-rightness--jacob-collier] [^metaphysics-rhetoric-rightness--victor-wooten] In jazz improvization, if you play a wrong note, you can just about always recover it into a "right" note, with enough skill. Separately, much of the history of Western classical music, from Bach until Schoenberg in the early 20th century was a progressive elaboration and *subversion* of established structures. Most of the classical composers you know made their name by doing things that were "wrong" at the time, in tasteful and beautiful ways. This tendency can get arbitrarily wacky, see again Schoenberg's atonal work, free jazz, microtonal music, and even harsh noise[^metaphysics-rhetoric-rightness--nil-admirari]. [^metaphysics-rhetoric-rightness--jacob-collier]: [Jacob Collier](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meha_FCcHbo) [^metaphysics-rhetoric-rightness--victor-wooten]: [Victor Wooten](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biunavwAl_w) [^metaphysics-rhetoric-rightness--nil-admirari]: [OPN](https://open.spotify.com/track/4HvCNpSDFZk2vQytT16CB6?si=b4f3524b34344dff) Here's a marvelous quote on the subject from Plato[^metaphysics-rhetoric-rightness--plato]: >Thus their folly led them unintentionally to slander their profession by the assumption that in music there is no such thing as a right and a wrong, the right standard of judgment being the pleasure given to the hearer, be he high or low. By compositions of such a kind and discourse to the same effect, they naturally inspired the multitude with contempt of musical law, and a conceit of their own competence as judges. [^metaphysics-rhetoric-rightness--plato]: Plato, *Laws* [700e ](http://www.euphoniousmonks.com/platomus.htm), trans. Hamilton & Cairns 1961 It seems obvious to me that there's something quite confused about this take. Maybe we can argue about good or bad taste, but "right" and "wrong" (note that another translation[^metaphysics-rhetoric-rightness--plato-2] gives "as a thing without any standard of correctness") don't even *make sense* to me to apply to music. I would say that the goodness or rightness of music is a "matter of taste," that there *isn't going to be* something like a "right" answer, in the way that we find with mathematical or empirical claims. [^metaphysics-rhetoric-rightness--plato-2]: Plato, *Laws*. [700e ](https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0166%3Abook%3D3%3Asection%3D700e), trans. Bury 1967 This is a nice example to dig into because, I expect, almost everyone reading this will agree that Plato is doing something confused here. This is not just to say that he's mistaken about some empirical fact, but that his metaphysics is deeply confused, and perhaps *wrong*. (Even if you believe that some people just have atrocious taste in music, it's still hard to argue that music can be "right" or "wrong" in a very strong sense here. If you disagree, imagine, as an example, if someone said that burritos were "wrong." Fine as hyperbole, but if this is said fully in earnest, clearly it's gotten something *wrong* metaphysically.) More generally, we can ask, "in this domain, what kind of rightness do we observe?" In particular if we're concerned with evaluative claims, again, "what kind?" Is this a matter of taste? Is this about what choices are strategic, given some set of goals, but where the goals are "up to" each person? Do we believe that something is good or bad in a more stable sense, like morality (if we believe in morality as stable at all)? To be clear, even in the weakest sense, to say that something is a *matter of taste* is not to say that it *doesn't matter*. A piece of music might be utterly lovely or even gobsmacking, even if I'm confident in saying that I'm no more "right" in finding it so than the people who don't, or that anyone can be "compelled by the evidence" to find it lovely, the way that they ought to be *compelled* by a mathematical argument. --- # "Real" {#metaphysics-real} *Page: https://spiritual-rationality.org/book/metaphysics/real — also at `/md/metaphysics/real.md`. Anchors within this section are prefixed `metaphysics-real--`.* Quite a lot of jousting goes back and forth about what is "real." I will claim that the determination of some phenomenon as "real" is often a stand-in for questions like "does x matter," or "should we pay x any mind." Furthermore, I'll claim that the fact of the matter is nuanced enough that often whether something is "real" doesn't *really* help us answer these questions. ### *How an algorithm feels from inside* and *disguised queries* {#metaphysics-real--how-an-algorithm-feels-from-inside-and-disguised-queries} ::nogloss I'll bring in two concepts from Eliezer: how an algorithm feels from inside[^metaphysics-real--eliezer-1], and disguised queries[^metaphysics-real--eliezer-2]. [^metaphysics-real--eliezer-1]: Eliezer Yudkowsky, 2008. [*How An Algorithm Feels From Inside*](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yA4gF5KrboK2m2Xu7/how-an-algorithm-feels-from-inside) [^metaphysics-real--eliezer-2]: Eliezer Yudkowsky, 2008. [*Disguised Queries*](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4FcxgdvdQP45D6Skg/disguised-queries) Most concepts are [nebulous](/md/metaphysics/eternalism-nihilism.md#nebulosity), but still track real structure in the world. Human intuitions about membership in a category often construct membership as an *extra fact*, besides all of the facts about an object's properties. In the proverbial "if a tree falls in the forest, but no one is around to hear it," there are two properties which are normally tightly correlated, namely an event causing acoustic vibration, and it causing aural perception/experience, that have been decorrelated. This question is sort of about asking, "but did it really make a sound?" as though there were a question left to ask, besides the two component phenomena. Yes vibrations, no perception, simple as. To be clear, I don't think anyone is actually vexed by this question, but it's helpful to lay it out very precisely, because indeed I see this exact mistake being made with respect to this class of problem in general. Another example: are viruses alive, or for that matter [prions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion)? Viruses do not have a metabolism and can't reproduce outside of a host, but do contain genetic material, and do evolve. Prions are much simpler, they are misolded forms of ordinary proteins, they don't contain genetic material, and they only reproduce by causing normal proteins to misfold. Again, we might ask, "but are viruses really alive?", as though there were a meaningful answer to this question, beyond the facts of which properties they have in common with most kinds of life, and which they don't. We can construct a category in such a way that marginal cases are strictly speaking not members, but we haven't really *learned* anything by this. There is a large diversity of observed biological systems, and gerrymandering "life" to exclude some of them hasn't told us anything new about the ones we excluded, nor would it to arbitrarily choose to include them. In Eliezer's explanation, his claim is that we might imagine choosing one algorithm (or really, data structure) or another to represent some concept, and that the intuitions that humans have, in which this "but is it really?" question arises, would happen in some kinds of representations and not others. As well, these kinds of ontological intuitions are constructed in his view out of cognitive algorithms, and that the intuitions are "what the algorithm feels like from inside of it." ::gloss[A *disguised query* explicitly contests category membership, in order to argue for something else, eg. that something is dangerous, good, or reasonable.]{#metaphysics-real--disguised-queries} Eliezer's claim in *Disguised Queries* is that questions like "is x in category y" are often stand-ins for "is x dangerous," or "is x reasonable," or "is x important." A category is presumably predictive of some other properties, besides those that define the category. Often people will haggle over whether x should be included in a category, *in order* to be able to determine that we should infer some other property about x. For example, we could (well, at least in principle) imagine someone trying to argue that Gandhi was a criminal—which is absolutely true, strictly speaking! Of course, our imagined speaker here is really trying to argue that Gandhi was dangerous, or immoral, or whatever. This is a silly example, but this is *absolutely* a move that people make with respect to categories like racism, violence, and terrorism. These kinds of questions are called "disguised queries," since the real question which is being debated is disguised by a question about where to draw a boundary. Let's assume, though we don't necessarily need to assume this, that the reality described by physics is stably "real" in a straightforward sense. I'll make a few claims: - There's a fairly large diversity of phenomena which we call "real" (or at least which we *regard* as real) that are [ontologically](/md/metaphysics/what-why-metaphysics.md) very different from physical reality. - Many of the details of physics are quite counterintuitive, and the deepest questions about what's "real" are still contentious in physics. - Physical solidity (as in, of wood or stone or bone) is quite a bit subtler and stranger than ordinary human-scale intuitions about "solid matter", though my understanding is that the popsci schtick that matter is "mostly empty" is somewhere between oversimplified and false. - Famously, the cosmological interpretation of quantum mechanics is *still* contentious even in academic physics. Furthermore, both interpretations currently in the ring get openly metaphysical, and in either case are quite contrary to day-to-day intuition. - I don't believe that there's an account of what's "real" which includes far-flung notions like romantic love, money, status, mathematics, or music, that doesn't also end up including a pretty wide swath of meditative and spiritual experiences. - Perhaps, we can hypothesize various grades, or at least a diversity of disjoint types of *reality*, which is broadly the stance I like, but then we end up with "real" as something either much weaker or much narrower than people usually want it to be. (Also, gosh, wtf, *multiple realities?* Is that really how far we've stooped?) - In any case, this doesn't really help, because there still doesn't end up being space to argue that all this spiritual stuff is just "not real." I want to be very clear here: I am not claiming that nothing is real, or that reality is completely socially constructed, or that everything which we call "real" has the *same* ontological status. I am claiming that "real" is both nuanced enough and diverse enough ontologically that it *must* admit spiritual experiences, one way or another.
And what about this assumption that physics is real? Look, if we're going to throw that out then you're just *really* screwed. More seriously, if we don't assume a basis of reality like "physics," then whatever sense of reality we're working with is yet weaker, and so my broad take is even stronger. I suppose this obviously leaves out gnostics, or various "mind-only" or "mind-first" metaphysicses. I'm not really writing for those people, but in any case I think they're already going to agree with some claim like "reality is more nuanced and ontologically fussy than modern secular metaphysics would like."
Let's take some specific problematic cases: - **Math**: There have been a variety of theories with respect to the ontological status of mathematics, over millenia. Math seems both more inescapable than physics, but also completely intangible. We can *imagine* (and, it's now often hypothesized) worlds with different laws of physics, but we largely *can't* imagine "worlds" with different arithmetic, or calculus, or topology. - **Music**: Is music real?—sorry, wait what? Since when is music even the kind of thing that can be real?—well, we care about music, we devote quite a lot of economic productivity to it, we argue about what music is right, and some people dedicate their lives to the practice of it. For most people it's often much more salient and powerful than math or history or certainly theories of physics. On the other hand, it's not quite like most things we would ordinarily call "real." It's just sounds, often without words, in some pattern, how could that matter? How could that possible mean anything? - **Love**: Yes yes, "true love" and all that; but in any case, once again, is love real? What would it mean for it to be "real"? Sometimes people feel bamboozled or manipulated by love, and there's certainly deception and fraud presented as though it were love. On the other hand, love, whether romantic, familial, love of one's country, etc., seems like one of the most important forces in world. People will give their lives for it, they'll work themselves to the bone for it, etc. etc. etc. Love is also richly imaginal: tied into fantasy, imagery, and elaboration that are both *more* salient, powerful, and motivating than what's actually in front of our faces, but also never quite present "in the here and now." - **Money**: The value of money is certainly "[rational](/md/spiritual-truth/rationality.md)" in a clear sense: macroeconomic shenanigans aside, you can generally expect that you will find a counterparty willing to accept your dollars for most kinds of transactions. Still, money isn't quite just "made out of physics," or at least not *just* physics. There's a large, only-somewhat-centralized cooperation in the construction of a coordination mechanism, which relies on expectation across the network that the rest of the network will continue to exist, and continue to behave largely the same. Of course, money is quite real! Money is incredibly salient and powerful, almost anywhere in the world. So we have both a very high degree of indirection, and something to the effect of "social construction," which is meanwhile quite "real," in the sense of "important, and worth worrying about." So, again, if a tree falls in the forest, but there's no one around to hear it, is it real?—sorry, again, there's a variety of properties, some in common with other things which we take as real, some not, and no extra fact about whether it's *actually* real. ## Ontological and spiritual commitments {#metaphysics-real--ontological-and-spiritual-commitments} ::gloss[An *ontological commitment* is an attachment to some account of what exists, which fixes what can matter at all.] An [ontology](/md/metaphysics/what-why-metaphysics.md), among other things, serves as the framework through which we understand what exists, and what *can matter at all*. Descriptively, most people have commitments to particular ontologies: moving from one ontology to another often inspires a fear that what one now understands to be real and will become meaningless, wrong, or harmful, and vice versa. This is often correct! One metaphysics will often, in fact, [reify](/md/metaphysics/reification.md) or valorize notions which are fake or irrelevant in another. These kinds of ontological commitments might be made by way of organized religions, ideologies and philosophies, or may be cultural and implicit, idiosyncratic, and even completely unspoken. Some examples would be things like reductionist materialism, Karma[^metaphysics-real--karma], Heaven and Hell, souls and spirits, and even persistent personal identity. [^metaphysics-real--karma]: This is usually left out of bowdlerized Western Buddhisms, but Buddhist Karma traditionally amounts to something to the effect that the goodness of actions is ontologically/cosmologically basic. I think it's a bit hard for us to appreciate both how weird and how intense such a perspective would be, if fully taken on. To be clear: this list is not to say "these are utter nonsense, and everything that flows from them is wrong." Rather, mostly I want to inspire some sort of ontological flexibility and a skepticism of over-reified systems of metaphysics. (Still, as an empirical claim about cosmology, I'm pretty confident that Heaven and Hell are not real.) Most of the point here is to say, a. that the ontologies that people use are largely *unjustified* (though in the [next section](/md/metaphysics/metaphysical-disagreement.md) I'll get to why this is so hard), and b. that in general, these domains are nebulous enough that there isn't going to be a singular, stable ontology on which to build all of our theories of what matters or is worthwhile[^metaphysics-real--real-meme]. [^metaphysics-real--real-meme]: [Chat, is this real?](https://x.com/forthrighter/status/1802708371725852909) The naive view which says "physics!" or "science!" [in response](/md/metaphysics/eternalism-nihilism.md) to questions of ontological nebulosity simply can't make these problems go away. But, still, there are things which aren't real! Certainly, there are lies, and there are dreams, and there are hopes that do not come true. Often, scientism and atheism maintain a commitment that entertaining many [ways of seeing](/md/metaphysics/ways-of-seeing.md) is "wrong", since these are "not real." Except, again, a. what's real, but more importantly, b. how have you determined that the collection of ways of seeing that you use are correct, or the only ones that should be used? Now, my real question is: what should we make of both claims and experiences of prayer, meditation, psychedelics, mysticism, etc.? I think these are real questions, I mostly don't have a clear answer. One of the main claims of this book is something like, "actually, I still don't have a clear answer, but it's definitely not any of these." Note that I'm not claiming that eg. those who report talking to God are definitely talking to a persistant physical being etc. etc. Mostly, I think these experiences often have very substantial existential value, and can't be excluded. However, determining which are baloney and which are actually worthwhile is much harder. [I discuss this more later](/md/spiritual-truth/gnosis-confabulation.md). (Though, I do have a very small probability on some spiritual reports having a straightforwardly literal ontological/cosmological interpretation. Again, [I discuss this more later](/md/spiritual-truth/gnosis-confabulation.md).) I'll note, that if I say, "well, there's something interesting going on metaphysically with respect to spiritual stuff," this isn't yet to say that you should regard it as important or valuable, but just to say that it can't be flatly determined to be not real, just by writing it out of your map. I'll discuss this all in much more detail in the section on [spirituality and spiritual practice](/md/practice.md). ### "Real" and "True" {#metaphysics-real--real-and-true} ::nogloss One last bit here: I'll claim that "true" is nuanced in basically the same sorts of ways as "real" above. What's true? Just mathematical theorems? What about very high confidence predictions, from scientific theories? What about just *high* confidence predictions? And, which theories, or is it mostly about their being socially acceptable, and endorsed by the current priesthood? What methods are even acceptable for determining what's true? What does it mean, if anything, for introspective or spiritual claims to be true?