THE MEANING OF “BELIEF + DOUBT = SANITY”
BY GARY PAVELA
The American Bar Association definition of a “judicial temperament” refers to “compassion, decisiveness, open-mindedness, sensitivity, courtesy, patience, freedom from bias and commitment to equal justice.”
Are those qualities compatible? For example, how does one combine “open-mindedness” with “decisiveness?”
This question was posed and answered in a work by conceptual artist Barbara Kruger, displayed at Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.
“BELIEF + DOUBT = SANITY”
“Sanity” encompasses cognition and emotion (especially empathy); it reflects humility about possessing ultimate knowledge. The capacity to trust and gain insight from others may be the best evidence of sanity we can display.
The methodology of science — one of humanity’s most transformative conceptual inventions — is grounded on this view. Scientists display humility by starting with a question rather than a dogmatic assertion. The question prompts thought and inquiry leading to an educated guess or belief. The belief is then stated as a hypothesis. The hypothesis is challenged by disciplined doubt (empirical examination and openness to criticism). The result is actionable truth, always open to evidence-based correction and reformulation.
The methodology of science is a comparatively recent human creation. It remains vulnerable, as evidenced by the authoritarian hubris, rhetorical passion, and personal invective on display in contemporary politics. Each “side” (left and right) blames the other for those unfortunate traits — and neither side (sharing a common human nature) is immune to them. See our MEDIUM Essay: “Nine signs you may be part of a political cult.”
How do we teach and preserve the “sanity” of humility, disciplined doubt, and a willingness to act on beliefs, while remaining subject to correction?
One answer includes appreciation for tested methodologies (e.g. understanding “due process” as a disciplined truth-seeking mechanism, not a “legalistic” inconvenience) and habituation in practicing them (“hear the case before you decide it”).
We previously suggested that the methodology of science might provide a sense of purpose (TPR 13.48). That view was stated by the American philosopher John Dewey in a February 6, 1924 essay in The New Republic (“Fundamentals,” p. 275):
Those . . . who have arrogated to themselves the title of fundamentalists recognize of course no mean between their dogmas and . . . hopeless uncertainty . . .
[They are not] aware that there are a steadily increasing number of persons who find security in methods of inquiry, of observation, experiment, of forming and following working hypotheses. Such persons are not unsettled by the upsetting of any special belief, because they retain security of procedure. They can say, borrowing language from another context, ‘though this method slay my most cherished belief, yet will I trust it.’
Nobel-Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman said something similar in this marvelous, short BBC video) (1981) (please click the video link and take a moment to hear his actual words) (transcription by Antti Yrjönen):
I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things; but I am not absolutely sure of anything . . .
Feynman elaborated on this point at a CalTech forum in 1956:
“[I]t is imperative in science to doubt; it is absolutely necessary, for progress in science, to have uncertainty as a fundamental part of your inner nature. To make progress in understanding we must remain modest and allow that we do not know. Nothing is certain or proved beyond all doubt. You investigate for curiosity, because it is unknown, not because you know the answer. And as you develop more information in the sciences, it is not that you are finding out the truth, but that you are finding out that this or that is more or less likely.
That is, if we investigate further, we find that the statements of science are not of what is true and what is not true, but statements of what is known to different degrees of certainty: ‘It is very much more likely that so and so is true than that it is not true;’ or ‘such and such is almost certain but there is still a little bit of doubt;’ or — at the other extreme — ‘well, we really don’t know.’ Every one of the concepts of science is on a scale graduated somewhere between, but at neither end of, absolute falsity or absolute truth.
It is necessary, I believe, to accept this idea, not only for science, but also for other things; it is of great value to acknowledge ignorance. It is a fact that when we make decisions in our life we don’t necessarily know that we are making them correctly; we only think that we are doing the best we can — and that is what we should do . . .
I think that when we know that we actually do live in uncertainty, then we ought to admit it; it is of great value to realize that we do not know the answers to different questions. This attitude of mind — this attitude of uncertainty — is vital to the scientist, and it is this attitude of mind which the student must first acquire. It becomes a habit of thought. Once acquired, one cannot retreat from it any more.”
Affirming these principles to our students is best accomplished by example (how we treat them and our colleagues). But it also helps to identify admirable lives that exhibit comparable qualities. Historical examples include Plato (who emphasized the importance of dialogue rather than rhetoric); Nelson Mandela (who proclaimed in one of his most famous speeches that “I have been influenced in my thinking by both West and East. All this has led me to feel that in my search for a political formula, I should be absolutely impartial and objective”); the authors of the United States Constitution (who created a document that challenged any claim to perfection by incorporating a procedure for amendment); and Judge Learned Hand’s famous observation that “The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right.”
Overall, perhaps the best example of humility, disciplined doubt, and a willingness to act without the pretense of absolute truth is Abraham Lincoln. Please consider again these words in his Second Inaugural Address
Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered.
That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr suggested that Lincoln’s “brooding sense of charity” came not from any dogmatic claim to truth, but from life experiences that produced a humble and “contrite heart.” In this context, we might include the capacity for love and compassion as additional components of the “sanity” Barbara Kruger had in mind.
