Unperceivables:
Why Belief is beyond Logic and Science
By Soreth Whitescale
The situation is not an uncommon one: The Rational Nihilist versus the Person Who Believes. It's been repeated over and over again, often at high volume, throughout the last several hundred years. It's a situation that practically all of us have seen or been through in one fashion or another. It's boring. Trite. Even cliché. But it's something else, too:
It's pointless.
Yes, you heard that right. That particular kind of argument is utterly and totally pointless: There's no good reason to engage in it at all. It's not capable of solving or proving a single thing, and engaging in such a debate is one of the surest ways to infuriate either yourself or your opponent. Even if we assume that both parties are behaving in a more or less rational fashion (usually not the case) and not committing any grievous fallacies (almost always not the case), nothing significant is going to come of the debate.
(An interjection at this point: If you're reading this and you feel that the Person Who Believes has already committed a fallacy just because he's not the Rational Nihilist, I urge you to go do something else. This essay is not for you, being as it's written by someone who does not happen to be a Rational Nihilist. Therefore, by your standards, I've already committed a fallacy and lost. Go feel good about yourself for winning a debate with an essay, okay?)
So, what's the reason that the debate is pointless? Surely once one person has his opponent in the crushing grip of Reason, then something has been discovered. Something must have been proved at that point, right? Logical analysis and debate never fails to lead to certain truth and the Absolute Correct Answer, right? Right?
Wrong. The reason is that there are arenas in which logic is absolutely useless, and this age-old debate is in one of them. Now, don't get me wrong here - I'm not saying that if someone believes in something, then logic can't touch them any more. That's silly. If I believe that a certain brick in the sidewalk is really a cheese sandwich, that's obviously not true. Anyone could easily mount a very successful argument against my belief, since the brick shares none of the qualities of a cheese sandwich: It's not made of bread and cheese, it doesn't smell good, if I attempt to eat it I'll break my teeth, et cetera.
Likewise, I'm not arguing that if someone believes something, that makes it 'true for them.' If someone believes, no matter how strongly, that they can't be killed by being totally immersed in a vat of hydrofluoric acid, they're going to have a very painful and fatal experience to the contrary if that belief is ever put to the test. It's not "true for them" that acid can't kill them, because it can. It will, in fact. They're made of flesh and bone, and hydrofluoric acid will eat away at that like nobody's business.
Getting back to the point, however: Logic doesn't necessitate anything at all in metaphysical matters. Neither does its kid brother, Science. And why don't they? Because they're both systems based on observations about the way the material and/or observable world works. Well, guess what; the material, observable world is not the same as the metaphysical world, and that's what we're talking about when it comes to things like spirituality, religion, and beliefs about souls. The metaphysical is the realm that exists outside of our everyday comprehension and perceptions.
Now, if you're new to the idea of something existing beyond the realm of the physical, let's get a little explanation going. There's the physical, observable world, which is where most of us spend most of our time. This is what your senses (the five normal ones, anyway) give you direct information about. It's filled with things for you to perceive and experience, full of things to describe and puzzle out empirically (that is, with experiments and instruments).
The metaphysical realm is something else completely. If you had a complete system of physics that fully described everything about the sensory, material, physical world, then the realm of metaphysics is what would be left over afterwards. Typical examples of metaphysical questions and issues are "Do we have free will," "Is there such a thing as a soul," "Is there such a thing as Fate," "Am I the same person today as I was yesterday" and suchlike. These are questions that science can't ever really answer, no matter how much it might like to - these are all things that you can't measure with an instrument, or keep logbooks about, or use a multi million dollar machine to smack one question into another with.
So, there's a little explanation of the difference between the physical and the metaphysical - time to put that to work. We'll start with Logic's little brother, Science.
Blind Science
Science is not the great and all-encompassing tool that it likes to pretend to be. Science is an empirical process - it needs to have data and observations to work with. Let's take a hypothetical situation and suppose that there's such a thing as an unperceivable: a tasteless, scentless, untouchable, invisible object that doesn't emit or reflect sound waves. We'll put it on this table here, and invite all the experts in the world to find it. Now, unperceivables might not actually exist here in the real world, but let's pretend that in this hypothetical example, it's a real thing. There's really and honestly an unperceivable on that table, surrounded by the experts.
Well, our unperceivable is invisible, so they can't find it with a video camera, X-ray photography or any kind of MRI scanning1. Sonar won't find it, since the sound waves won't bounce back off of the object. You can't find it by putting something on top of it, since it will just fall through the unperceivable. And as long as we're on Earth, you can't detect any gravitic effects it might have, unless it's extremely high mass. We'll suppose, for the sake of this example, that it only weighs a pound - so there's nothing detectable there.
Scientific investigation is going to inform us that this unperceivable has no evidence for its existence whatsoever. There's nothing to conclusively prove that it's present at all, because it's completely outside the sensory world. So our team of scientific experts are going to shrug and say that they can't see anything there. Most of them are going to think that there isn't anything there. And yet, the unperceivable is still sitting there on top of that table, right where we put it in the example. It's there. It exists (hypothetically, at least). And yet, because it's not measurable by scientific investigation, not quantifiable, not observable, science will tell us that there's no reason to think that it's there at all.
Now, for a further exercise, go back three paragraphs and replace the word 'unperceivable' with 'soul.'
Hmmm. Same results. Nobody detected it with instruments, did they? It didn't show up at all on any scopes, photosensitive papers, charts, graphs, cloud chambers, or anything at all. If we follow along with scientific investigation as our only guide, then we're left shrugging and saying, "There might be such a thing as a soul. I just don't know."
Now, sure, it's simpler to say that there's no such thing as an unperceivable or a soul. We don't have so many things cluttering up the universe if we say there aren't such things, and science prefers to keep things as simple as possible when it can. But remember, science just can't detect these things. It can't say anything at all about whether or not they really exist.
So things such as the unperceivable are scientifically unprovable, regardless of whether or not they really exist. And if you happen to believe in any given unperceivable, then science can't say a damn thing about your belief in that thing. The absolute most that science can do with regard to metaphysical issues is shrug its shoulders and go do something else. Any and all science-based arguments directed against Draconity, Otherkin, or even just things like free will or the existence of anything spiritual are going to fall short.
An Interlude
For the rest of this essay, I am going to assume that you, the Reader, possess a basic grasp of propositional logic. If this is not the case, much of the following may not make sense to you, and I strongly urge you to go read an overview of the basics of logic such as the one found here or another, similar, resource before continuing on with the rest of this document.
(Un)sound Logic
So. We've taken care of attacking someone's beliefs from a pure science standpoint - the next step is going up to look at Science's big brother, Logic. Logic means a lot of things to a lot of people, but one thing that's important to know about it is that it's only a tool. Logic requires some form of input to go anywhere, and a logical argument is only as good as the input that goes into it. If you use a tool badly, you get bad results with it.
Let's take a look at a simple logical argument with some bad input in it:
- If someone thinks they're Otherkin, then they're crazy.
- Someone thinks they're Otherkin.
- Therefore, that person is crazy.
You see this one a lot on forums. It's built on a valid argument form, of course, but its soundness is very questionable. You see, the whole argument hinges on that first premise: It has to be true that if someone thinks they're Otherkin, then they're crazy. If one person exists who thinks they're Otherkin, but isn't crazy, then the first premise is untrue. And if so, then the argument is unsound and worthless. Now, so long as it remains unproven that all people who think they're Otherkin are crazy, the argument isn't really either sound or unsound - but it's unconvincing. And an unconvincing argument proves about as much as an unsound argument - nothing at all.
Here's another argument that gets thrown around a lot:
- You can only have the "soul" of some creature if souls exist.
- Souls don't exist.
- Therefore, you can't have the "soul" of some creature.
Well will you look at that, it's valid. Just like the first one. But is it sound? Nope. Again, the second premise is unproven. It's just an assumption, the same as in the other example. If this argument is going to turn out as sound as the Rational Nihilist wants it to be, that second premise has to be true, and right now that's completely open for debate.
Now, here's the funny part: That second premise deals with an unperceivable. The statement "Souls don't exist" can't be backed up by logic's kid brother, science, because science can't deal with the metaphysical - we've already seen that. Now, you could try to pull another argument out attempting to prove that there's no such thing as a soul, but what are you going to base your argument on? You can't just say "Souls don't exist because I don't like them" and then go on and use that to prove that souls don't exist - that's a circular argument, and it's laughably false. Neither science nor logic can fill in that gap and show the second premise true2.
So what to do about that unperceivable?
It's exactly at this point that the Rational Nihilist has to step back and say, "Oh fiddlesticks, I'm talking about something I can't even prove the non-existence of." His cousin the Irrational Nihilist, of course, entirely disregards this point and continues on without caring about the line that just got crossed (Which means that as far as rational discourse goes, you can completely ignore them).
That unperceivable locks away the argument in a big vault labeled Unprovable. Nobody can verify that souls do or don't exist in any conclusive matter (or at least they haven't, yet), so there's nothing at all that should be done with this argument. It's quite literally not worth discussing at all, except in purely hypothetical terms:
"Y'know, if souls don't exist, then nobody can have the soul of anything else, so you Otherkin are going to look pretty silly."
"That's okay. If souls do exist, you Nihilists are going to look pretty silly."
That's infinitely preferable to the average debate that you get to see or hear on the subject. No shrieking, no babbling on about unrelated facts, nobody clapping their hands over their ears and yelling "I can't hear you!" Just calm and rational chatting, with each side acknowledging that there's a large conditional statement that can't really be dealt with. Debate over unperceivables shouldn't cause people to shriek at each other; it should be making people to shrug their shoulders and admit that really, they don't have any proof either way.
Heads and Tails
And, of course, that's the downside to this whole Unprovable thing. If nobody can prove that unperceivables don't exist, then by the very same token nobody can prove that they do. They're outside the bounds of things like proof and rational debate, and solidly inside the realm of belief. Believe what you will about any given unperceivable, just keep in mind that your position is not going to be logically provable.
Science just can't touch a system of belief with Unprovables or unperceivables in it, and neither can logic. The presence of unperceivables creates Unprovables, and they mean you can't win or lose in a debate. You can't be proved right or wrong about your beliefs in a deductive logical argument if they deal with an unperceivable. They mean that you get a choice to satisfy your own intuitions with whatever belief system you want to check out, regardless of how "irrational" it seems. unperceivables mean, quite simply, that you're free to pick and choose, swim in a veritable sea of belief systems, and find the one that best fits your intuitions about the way the universe works. (Just try not to pick a belief system that says all bricks are cheese sandwiches!)
Don't be swayed by someone trying to argue against the unperceivables that you believe in. They can't do anything more than make mouth noises and pretend that their arguments and their 'evidence' are sound and damaging. There is no evidence against unperceivables. There is no logic that can say they don't exist. There's only a choice: believe, stay neutral, or disbelieve. Believe if it makes sense to you. Disbelieve if it doesn't. Stay sitting on the fence if you can't make up your mind - there's nothing wrong with that at all
The only thing that's wrong about unperceivables is arguing over them. That's pointless, and it's irrational, and it's never going to accomplish anything significant. Don't get dragged into that kind of a mess. You've got your own set of beliefs, other people have theirs. Neither 'side' will ever, or can ever, prove the other wrong. And there's something else to keep in mind, too: The Rational Nihilist may have nothing to lose, but the Believer is not left unarmed to deal with unprovables - and after all, he has everything to win.
1: Both of these techniques require light waves to bounce off of the object in question - an invisible object would allow light waves to pass completely through it. [Back]
2: If you think you can prove that souls do or don't exist in a deductively logical argument, I would love to see it. Remember, all your base premises are going to have to be tautologies - statements that are philosophically necessary truths. Drop me a line if you manage it. [Back] |
