Laying foundations

A Dharmasankata

For a long while, I battled in my head about an ethical problem. What takes precedence? Truth or compassion. Let me first clarify what each term means to me. By precedence, I mean how would I act as my first response to a situation? Do the right thing and damn the consequences or damn the right thing and prevent undue misery. This old tale comes to mind, that my mother told me. Once a deer came running into an ashrama looking for a place to hide from some hunters. He saw a rishi there and asked him to not tell the hunters where he was. When the hunters eventually came to the ashrama and asked him about the deer, he promptly told them the truth. The deer, while dying from an arrow wound, placed a curse upon the rishi because of his cruelty. Now, there were two clear choices before the rishi. One was to tell the truth, as his vow as an ascetic would demand, and live with the fact that he was responsible for the death of the deer. The other was to lie, breaking his vow, in order to save the innocent deer from the hunters. This is what I mean by my ethical question. According to me, such ethical questions have no right or wrong answers, only personal choices. And, mind you, it is not necessary that truth and compassion always appear with a big “vs” symbol in between. It is entirely possible that they coincide.

I am a science researcher by training. All the best researchers and scientists have strong ethics and principles, not only while conducting an experiment, but also about the ownership of the data. As a primer in research ethics, we were given this problem to think about, commonly referred to as the Jessica Banks problem. In short, the problem is as follows. Jessica Banks, a PhD student working with Prof Hayward, collected some data on 3 different problems but chose to continue working on one because of better availability of grants. She defended her dissertation and took a job somewhere else, planning to continue research on one of the other 2 topics. She came back to her old office to take the data. When Prof Hayward asked her what she was doing, she told him but he denied her permission because he had procured initial grants for that project. She argues she had collected the data. He says the data belongs to the university and he plans to continue working on it with other students. She goes back and meets a classmate Paul Larson. He tells her she generated all the data and hence has a right to it. He also tells her that she could copy the data over the weekend, since Prof Hayward will be out of town. It’s only fair. The question is, what should she do?

These questions are not just headscratchers. Questions like these form the basis of ethical systems, laws, economic policies, political equations and even social relationships in general. The ambiguity is not in the questions, it is in the way a person thinks about the questions and their idea of a solution to it. It is reflected in almost every conversation we have. Each person comes with a moral compass, which is uniquely calibrated. People, more often that not, act based on this moral compass. They buy products from companies that engage in philanthropy. They appreciate movies with social messages, some of which are highly impactful. They vote for people who appear the most upstanding and responsible. There is at least some credible evidence to say that trust drives business. So, if emotions drive actions so strongly, we must try to understand how they work, or, even better, how we can use them for our benefit.

To feel or not to feel

Many authors of the tradition of Romanticism have described emotions as irrational and as screens that distort reality, and not without reason. Multiple studies in the fields of decision-making, social behavior, economics etc have described how emotions affect actions and what consequences are manifested. While almost none of these studies make a value judgement on the desirability of the influence of emotions on decisions and actions, it is clear that rationality is a positive predictor of objectively better outcomes, subject to availability of knowledge. In short, the more dispassionate and logical decisions are most often the best. It is a general understanding among people that emotions interfere with their lives, which leave them open to exploitation by vested interests. People with overly sentimental dispositions are often vulnerable to emotional blackmail, getting guilt-tripped and propaganda. This being the case, according to me, it is patently undesirable to stand in the wake of this knowledge and continue to act on the basis of feelings rather than facts.

The aim of this blog is not to tell people what to believe about anything. It is merely an exercise in self-questioning and skepticism of the orthodox point of view. This is not to be understood such that we are in a state of default acceptance of any heterodoxy. But, by definition, heterodox opinions are not popular, so, there’s little danger they pose. It is often popular ideas that get corrupt and then develop too much of an inertia. Our mission is to challenge such ideas and see if they stand our scrutiny and make this assault on these ideas as public as possible so that readers can make decisions for themselves. Some of us make no claims of being unbiased. But, the name of the blog of Objectivity and not Neutrality. We realize that bias is probably something that can not be gotten rid of, but we are of the firm opinion that we can function in spite of the bias using the doctrine of Objectivity, i.e. being independent of personal feelings or opinions and relying on facts.

Socrates and Charvaka

We look up to the likes of Socrates and Charvaka for inspiration. Both these ancient thinkers were known for their skepticism and irreverent natures. It was said about Socrates that he had a daemon inside him that told him what not to do. When he was put on trial for corrupting the minds of youth and for heresy, because he asked too many questions, he was given a chance to leave Athens. His friends implored him to do so, but his daemon forbade him. He accepted his punishment of death because he stood courageously by his principles and refused to bow down to the orthodoxy.

Charvaka is an ancient Indian philosophy that can only be stated to be skeptical of any truth claims unless they were backed by direct experience. The Charvaka, also known as Lokayata, tradition was believed to be first coded by a rishi named Brihaspati and was most prominently adhered to by an enigmatic but revered figure, Ajita Keskambali. The Charvaka are often described as materialists, even hedonists. Most Charvaka compositions and writings are now lost, so we only know about them as they were described by followers of other schools of thought. The word Charvaka has several etymological origins explained in literature. One of the meanings stems from the root charu which means sweet to listen to or pleasing, and vak which means speech. The Charvakas are often characterized in ancient stories and epics as amoral and untrustworthy since they questioned many claims in the three Vedas, and hence accumulated some disrepute. But, I respect their philosophy, since it resonates with the way I think. Though, I am not as well versed with their works as I would like to be, I have read enough to impress my inner skeptic.

Why I think I stand out

At this point, I would like to strike a distinction between myself and some other contemporary heterodox thinkers. I see a growing wave of disbelievers, as opposed to believers, both in the religious and psychological sense. With the rise of radicalism and fundamentalism in some sections of almost every religious group, organized or otherwise, there is also a radical rejection of religion going around. Neo-atheists, whom I do sympathize with because I used to be one of them, often claim that there is no God. While I do not want to comment on how they come to think of it, I can certainly say that you can disprove God as being the reason for anything, but can we disprove the existence of God as is defined by any book? Hence, I do not really call myself an atheist any more, but an agnost or a skeptic.

Here, in this blog, we shall question any issue that has the centerstage in popular parlance and try to rationalize our positions. The reason to do it out loud is not that we think ourselves smarted than others. It is that our thoughts are not extremely organized, which is reflected in the opinions we hold. Most of our opinions are often based on insufficient information or we haven’t thought about them enough or we believe some things to belong to a certain groupthink. So, in this blog, we do all our thinking aloud and openly and let everyone see what transpires.

Magna Carta

In the course of writing this blog, we might go against the most orthodox views a society might hold. It is eminently desired of the contributors of this blog to speak the truth, irrespective of who it might irk and in what way. In view of that,

We, the writers of this blog, solemnly swear upon whatever we hold dearest to ourselves to uphold the following principles in the course of writing this blog:

objectivity, to construe facts as such, notwithstanding any biases we may possess;
honesty, to convey what we know to be true to the best of abilities, notwithstanding any political correctness diktats;
humility, to accept any mistakes we might make;
, to stand forthrightly by what we write, knowing that we have carefully considered every stand we take.

I, on behalf of all contributors of this blog, sincerely hope that you, the readers, consider our humble efforts worthy of your time and read our posts. We strongly encourage you to think about everything you have read and not just agree or disagree, but critically analyze every assumption made, every leap of logic, every subjective opinion and every value judgement. You, the readers, are our greatest judge. We appreciate your support. Thank you.

Amogh Manthalkar

Originally published at http://rescurrectingobjectivity.wordpress.com on October 10, 2019.