Last updated on February 7th, 2013 at 11:50 pm
“If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom. ” – George Byron
The Oxford English Dictionary says of certainty that it is “The quality or state of being subjectively certain; assurance, confidence; absence of doubt or hesitation; as a matter of certainty, beyond doubt, assuredly.”
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Reasonable people know that certainty is not necessarily a good thing. As Voltaire pointed out, “Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is an absurd one.” Bertrand Russell went so far as to call it an “intellectual vice.”
It is easy to fall in love with the idea of certainty. As Russell also said, “What men want is not knowledge, but certainty.” Certainty feels good. It’s addictive. Scientific studies demonstrate this. But certainty can be a dangerous thing. It is good to question. It is a healthy thing to have doubts even if, as Voltaire said, it is not a pleasant condition.
Socrates dedicated his life to questioning and he questioned with great ferocity. Men would come to him certain, and they would often go away with that certainty shaken. This may not seem like a victory to some, but Socrates challenged people to use their minds, to think, to reason, to examine life.
As Socrates said (Apology 38a), “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Stop and think. Question. And be wary of falling in love with the answers you find.
This process of examining life, questioning, and doubting, seems to be antithetical to the conservative mindset. Certainty is what they want. Certainty is what they believe they have. It has become almost an end in itself; it closes off debate, shuts off reason, and stops questions.
They’re more interested in telling people what to think than asking them to think. But Socrates did not improve people by telling them what to think. He improved them by challenging them to think.
Avatars of Moral Certainty: Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck
We cannot say the same of people like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. To learn, one must first doubt. Descartes knew this; and he stripped away all certainties save one, in order to being his quest for knowledge: “I think, therefore I am.”
Francis Bacon said it as well: “If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts: but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.”
The problem for conservatives seems to be that they have never read Shakespeare: “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool” (As You Like It Act 5 scene 1). We must be prepared to accept that we don’t know everything; that there are gaps in our knowledge. And the bottom line is that you can’t learn until you’re willing to admit how little you know.
Inquiry is Fatal to Certainty
But for Republicans intellectualism is something not to be trusted. Those with a authoritarian mindset always distrust intellectuals, because intellectuals think, and thinking is dangerous. It is dangerous because as historian Will Durant said, “Inquiry is fatal to certainty.” And authoritarianism, whether it is secular or theocratic, rests on a solid bedrock of certainty.
And because thinking is contagious, it must not be encouraged. In fact, it should be discouraged. Stalin murdered the intellectuals immediately. Hitler envied Stalin’s ability to do so. President George W. Bush openly despised the very idea of thinking. He said he trusted his instincts more. Sarah Palin has already established intellectuals to be her enemies. The “elites” she calls them.
American conservatism is riding a wave of anti-intellectualism and the Republican Party has caught that wave. Intellectuals are “them.” Sarah Palin spreads this meme idea with her faux-folksy wisdom narrative. Real Americans are just “folks” and apparently anybody who trusts their thoughts more than their feelings can’t be “just folks.”
The problem with certainty is that it’s not infallible, or as Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, “certainty generally is illusion” (“The Path of Law” 10 Harvard Law Review 457 (1897). Holmes also helpfully pointed out that certitude is not the test of certainty” (“Natural Law”, 32 Harvard Law Review 40, 41 (1918).
Republicans hate that. If you question certainty, you are guilty of the greatest of arch-sins: moral relativism. Questioning is challenging god. Remember that choice = heresy. We’re back to the old second century saw: “Don’t ask questions; just believe!”
But we can believe something to be true with all our heart and soul, and be catastrophically mistaken. As Holmes put it, “We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.” The problem is that certainty does not allow for this possibility. And that makes people who are filled with certainty, whether we call them zealots or fanatics or ideologues, very dangerous people.
As Friedrich Nietzsche put it, “Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes experienced the Civil War. His conclusion was that moral certainty leads to war. In our own time, we have seen another terrible war result from moral certainty.
Neurologist Robert Burton, former chief of Neurology at the University of California at San Francisco-Mt. Zion Hospital, speaks of the Certainty Bias with regards to politics:
I suspect that retreat into absolute ideologies is accentuated during periods of confusion, lack of governmental direction, economic chaos and information overload. At bottom, we are pattern recognizers who seek escape from ambiguity and indecision. If a major brain function is to maintain mental homeostasis, it is understandable how stances of certainty can counteract anxiety and apprehension. Even though I know better, I find myself somewhat reassured (albeit temporarily) by absolute comments such as, “the stock market always recovers,” even when I realize that this may be only wishful thinking.
When asked how the certainty bias can be avoided, Burton answers that he has “taken strong exception to the popular notion that we can rely upon hunches and gut feelings as though they reflect the accuracy of a thought.”
But of course, Burton is an intellectual, and so not to be trusted. Still, for the rest of us, those who are willing to listen to doubt, might take hope, as does Burton:
My hope is the converse; we need to recognize that the feelings of certainty and conviction are involuntary mental sensations, not logical conclusions. Intuitions, gut feelings and hunches are neither right nor wrong but tentative ideas that must then be submitted to empirical testing. If such testing isn’t possible (such as in deciding whether or not to pull out of Iraq), then we must accept that any absolute stance is merely a personal vision, not a statement of fact.
Burton’s advice to us? “In short, please run, do not walk, to the nearest exit when you hear so-called leaders being certain of any particular policy. Only in the absence of certainty can we have open-mindedness, mental flexibility and willingness to contemplate alternative ideas.”
This is good advice. Moral certainty starts wars. It was such certainty that led to the Inquisition, to the Crusades, and to witch-burnings and to the genocide of European Jews. Doubt is healthy. A little healthy doubt is widely recognized to be a good thing, and we should entertain some ourselves, before we run off and do the bidding of those who wallow in certainty.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
