​In yesterday's Guardian newspaper (28th March, 2022) Robin Dunbar writes under the heading 'The big idea: do we still need religion?'. He begins with an interesting archeological discovery made during the building of the HS2 line to Birmingham, UK. Evidence has been found of people placing plates with bread and salt on the bodies of the deceased prior to burial. Before the coffin was closed, a village 'sin-eater' ate the bread and salt from the plate on the lap of the deceased and, in return, was given some coins and ale for their trouble. This sin-eater was usually a beggar and only too willing to take the rewards. By eating the bread, the sin-eater absorbed the sins of the deceased person, cleansing them for the next world. This practice was recorded as late as 1906.

Dunbar suggests that we might expect society to move away from such superstitious practices as we become "better educated and more scientifically orientated." He offers the observation that religious people are, on average, happier, healthier and live longer. "For better or worse, they also have an easier death when the time comes." The writer gives other examples of religious people flourishing spiritually, though he doesn't cite any sources. He then goes on to give various hormonal and evolutionary explanations for religious feelings.

I have no doubt that many, if not the majority, of these scientific explanations have real value and truth, but I always get a feeling with these types of harmonal and evolutionary explanations for religious feelings that a big chunk of the equation is missing. Firstly, consider a sceptical or Humean view. There may be strong evidence of an associative relationship between harmones and certain feelings but this doesn't mean it is causal. The Humean rule, foundational to science, is that an associative relationship doesn't prove a causal relationship. We don't know the direction of travel between the two. The hormones could be causing the feelings or the feelings could be causing the harmones. The causal nexus of truth could be on either side of the equation - or neither. It doesn't seem to me that the writer takes this into account. There is a material scepticism at the heart of the article that isn't a true form of skepticism. Materialism must also be doubted by the true sceptic.

Take the above example of the sin-eater. There is a difference between the actions of eating the bread and the resonant feelings about the after-life such actions express. Many societies have different rituals that are expressions of these deep feelings about a continuity of identity of the soul and some kind of cosmic purpose or teleology. Such rituals and actions signify an intense subjectivity on the part of the community where the practice occurs and embody a claim to be able to see beyond what is immediately perceptible. 

The scientifically minded sceptic would not consider such subjectivity to have the where-with-all to tell us anything about the underlying structure of reality - call it 'objective' reality. It can only tell us about human behaviour. It is of anthropological interest only. Therefore it seems counter-intuitive to suggest the true sceptic might consider this subjectivity to have something  to tell us about objective reality. It would place the true sceptic outside the realm of science. Maybe this is an area for artists and writers, but maybe this is too comfortable.

If we separate the feelings of 'something beyond' from the rituals (i.e. the signifiers) can we ask if such feelings have any claim to 'knowledge'? Is there even a remote chance they could give an insight into the ultimate nature of reality?  Can any part of the metaphysical picture we glean from such feelings have truth functionality, even at an intuitive and unfalsifiable level? Or must they be regarded as having no empirical value towards knowledge of something beyond the material? In other words, can we say that the extreme subjectivity at the centre of these rituals reflects no objective reality whatsoever? Instead, must we consider such feelings to be the product of evolutionary and harmonal pressures only? Must we take it as a given that there are evolutionary reasons for the consolations of religion, even if we do not know exactly what they are?  We accept as axiomatic that in the future the truth will be  explained in purely materialistic terms. 

If so, then how do I approach, for instance, Wordworth's feelings of the Sublime as conveyed in 'The Prelude'? The poem expresses a feeling that there is a higher immanent mindfulness in nature. Should I consider the poet's feelings to be ultimately the product of evolutionary forces only and reflect nothing about the ultimate nature of reality, though it comes from contemplations on his observations of nature but not scientific experimentation? If I want to truely understand what's going on in the poem, must I consider it only in the light of non-subjective forces? Should English literature studies, therefore, adopt evolutionary studies as the ultimate underpinning of the subject?

Let's say I have a sympathetic response to Wordsworth's central idea and I 'feel' there is something true about it 'out there in the world'. Should I disregard these feelings? Should I treat my response as an object of anthropological interest only? Is this ever fully realisable with your own true feelings? Can a process of self-reflection reveal the evolutionary forces at play in my being stirred by Wordsworth's poetry. Could poetry survive its substantial themes being considered secondary to evolutionary forces?

Is Wordsworth's notion of the Sublime a form of superstition that should be junked as society becomes 'more educated and scientific'? If not, then do I distinguish between 'sophisticated' and 'unsophisticated' expressions of subjectivity, so that Wordsworth could be considered 'sophisticated' and the villagers who believe in the sin-eaters to be 'unsophisticated'? What criteria do you use to validate such a claim? Could it be that the feelings at the heart of what the villagers experience is the same or similar to Wordsworth's but the expressions of them less sophisticated? If I lump the villagers and Wordsworth into the same 'superstitious' boat, do I contrast them with the extreme objectivity of science? Is it even fair on science to say it is an extreme form of objectivity?  Does any scientist deny there is a degree of subjectivity in science? Where is the dividing line?

Fairground, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, UK

I downloaded a free book from the Academia website last week entitled 'Introduction to Philosophical Principles' by Brian Kemple. He points out that in the ancient Greek world the concept of energy or 'energia' equates to what we would now call 'character'. We might describe someone as full of bubbly energy or full of moral energy. We might even consider ambition to be a kind of energy. But mostly we think of energy as a force that powers the electricity in our factories or heats our houses. At this present moment in early 2022, many of us are worried about the rising costs of energy and the consequent pressure on household budgets.

In modern physics, energy is considered a measurable force that causes motion or heat or sound etc. The unit of measurement is the joule. Technically, it is the amount of energy transferred when an object is moved one metre against a force of one Newton. It is a blind force that has no end goal. It can be neither created or destroyed. It has no moral purpose in itself. We don't think of it as having the 'ambition' or the 'desire' to transfer from one form to another, i.e. from motion to heat. Even if 'ambition' could be demonstrated in energy, it would be of no use to the engineer, unless you could find a way of persuading it to 'change its mind' - a hopeless task.

The ancient world equates energy/energia with forceful mindfulness. It is the very thing that drives me to do something. It is synonymous with who I am. Suppose I was sat outside in on a park bench and I saw someone being cruel to an animal. I was then compelled to get off the park bench, walk over to the cruel person and challenge their behaviour. There would be no motion if I wasn't minded to act. My walking was caused by my sympathy for the animal, and my sympathy for the animal was the result of the type of person that I am; my energia. Other people might not have been sympathetic and would have stayed put, resulting in no motion.

The ancients saw all motion to be the result of mindfulness; the motion of the clouds, the changing seasons, the motions of the seas and heavens. So, nature itself has a character as great, if not greater, and as present as human character. They thought of all forms of change to be a type of motion, so that a leaf changing from green to brown is considered to be motion, though it doesn't actually move from one place to another. We moderns tend to define motion as the rate of change of position, but why not the rate of change of colour or the rate of change in our thoughts?

The mindfulness of stuff is part of the unconscious assumptions about the nature of reality for someone like Solon, the hero of The Mystery of Healing. Everything that is seen contains it. The mindfulness of nature, like the mindfulness of others, is barely knowable. It constantly fools us. It is unpredictable. But equally it can be generous. It sustains us and gives beautiful things. It gives us life. But it has no principle of measurability. It does not have the objective 'thereness' of physical objects, hence its rejection by modern science as a constituent part of reality.

Watercooler bottles, London.

'Ghosts in the World Machine? Humility and its Alternatives,' by Rae Langton and Christopher Robichaux is a chapter in a book entitled New Waves in Metaphysics, edited by Allan Hazlett. It touches on an argument that would have been familiar to Solon, the hero of The Mystery of Healing. In a nutshell: acknowledging our inability to see the ultimate causal nature of reality whilst simultaneously acknowledging its agency should be a source of humility.   

To quote from Langton and Robichaux: 'There is a fundamental, intrinsic aspect of the world, and it is beyond us.'   

The writers take their first cue from the German Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804) who makes the distinction between the world as it is in itself and the world as we know it through our senses. This distinction goes back to the followers of Plato. It begins with the foundational tenet of all rationalism: Nothing can be in the mind that hasn't been presented to the senses. Our senses pick up surface information and our mind interprets this contextually by comparing the information to surrounding bits of information and to what we already know. Accordingly, the most fundamental properties discoverable from observations and experience are relational not essential. We don't experience the world as it is in itself, nor do we see its true causes. This is equally true of language. A word is understood contextually, not essentially. Its meaning comes from being part of a sentence, a wider dialogue of which the word is a mere part. We know a particular thing or word from its relation to other things at a given moment in time and from its history of relations. This is a rich and complex process, but it means we can know nothing about what is beyond our senses and the resulting 'sorting' processes in our minds - no matter how much science we throw at it. We are limited by our human nature. We cannot know anything of the deeper, formal structure and causes of reality.   

Another quote from Langton and Robichaux: '...it seems there may indeed be ghosts in the world machine, properties that are in some sense non-physical, and hidden from view.'   

An obvious charge against this is to argue we cannot talk of a 'thing in itself' if it is not presented to our senses - given the central tenet of rationalism that knowledge must come from the senses. Consequently the Kantian argument turns in on itself in a self-negating way. Kant and the Platonists, however, would argue the thing-in-itself must be inferred because all the qualities we see must 'hang' on some first unseen-thing that is also the cause of what we see. (The coats must be on a hallway coat-hanger even if we can't see the coat-hanger, otherwise they would fall to the floor.) There must be metaphysical scaffolding. It is not for me to argue either way except to say that Solon accepts the Kantian/Platonic division between the seen and the unseen. I think he would argue that we must trust our intuitions that there is something underlying the flux.   

Langton and Robichoux maintain that acceptance of this division between the seen and the unseen, and holding that the unseen must have a reality, leads to humility because we are acknowledging what we cannot know. A mystery lies at the heart of existence. There is something bigger than us - and it will always be greater than us because we cannot have knowledge of it, only intimations. This humility can encourage a sense of wonder rather than cynicism because it is the complex riches of the world that reveal it. It is scepticism in its truest and most positive form. The unseen is approachable, yet reality becomes more mysterious. What seems like a small island becomes a continent that cannot be fully mapped. Furthermore (and I realise there are huge leaps in logic here that are not in Langton and Robichaux, only in the mind of an overly poetic storyteller) the unseen is a cauldron of mindfulness and agency. It drives time itself and pushes the inexorable and inescapable change we all experience.   

This is too pungent for many who hold that the real is too present to allow for anything other than what is known to our senses and what can be discovered in the future by the senses. For the novelist, these different modes of thinking are indicative of different character types. Solon is attracted to the unseen because there is a poetic side to him. Others have no feelings for the unseen. Conversely, there are those for whom the unseen is hyper-real; the source of both celestial and earthly conspiracies. The world of lived experience becomes a flawed, fallen shadow.   

For Solon, the unseen world is the world of the gods, science and the human. It is a foundational place that causes things happen in the seen world. It is the place our world emanates from. Firstly, it is a place of the gods because it is where the intentions of the unseen arise; where fate is forged. Secondly, it is science because it the place where natural processes begin. And thirdly It is the place where human character originates. Yet Solon knows that knowledge of it is an assumed/imagined place, and our imaginings contain many falsities. Langton and Robichaux's point is that everything we affirm of the unseen is wrong, except that it must exist. Solon doesn't quite go this far. He trusts some small degree of knowledge must be possible.   (Again, one can sympathise with the extreme sceptical view that it simply doesn't exist; and there are times when Solon feels this way, mostly when he has lost his optimism.)   

​By and large, Solon embodies the humility Langton and Robichaux speak of. And it extends to his fascination and empathy with his fellow humans. The human subject embodies a true mystery, for the very same reasons the universe itself is a mystery. It is a product of the same unseen heart. So too, the human is discoverable but becomes more mysterious when approached, for instance when he falls in love.   

But the unseen is also a place that can be manipulated by those who claim knowledge of it. This is especially true of the relationship between political power, religion and cults. It is a place of superstition, fear and falsities, ripe for powerful people to abuse. Solon fights this corrupt relationship because his scepticism gives him a sharp tool to dissect the false reasoning. He is not particularly tied to any one belief system, but he has a committed heart.