The idea that I always associate with Hadot is encapsulated in the translated English title of one of his major works: philosophy as a way of life. Hadot, a scholar of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, treats this philosophy as a way of life, a set of “spiritual practices,” and in so doing he helps remind us of the distance between ancient and modern philosophy. And I don’t just mean that he gives us yet another reason to critique contemporary philosophy departments, which (whether analytic or continental) typically seem far from any ancient ideal of the love of wisdom. I mean also that he reminds us why philosophy has so little place in contemporary Western culture.

I’ve noticed that a fairly large number of my posts have to do with “religion and science,” and the supposed relation between them. This wasn’t my original intent, since I don’t care much for the idea of “religion” in the first place, as most of those posts attest; and the most animated question in “religion and science” debates – the relation between evolution and Hebrew Bible accounts of creation – is of relatively little interest to me, since I’ve never bought any of those accounts to begin with. But I’ve been realizing something about most people today, even well educated people who might be expected to know some philosophy, and not only in the Western world. When moderns look for the things that Greek and Roman philosophy was supposed to provide – answers to big questions about the purpose of our lives, our proper view of the world and our place in it, ways of dealing with death – they don’t turn to philosophy. They turn to “religion” – Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, various “Hindu” traditions – and they turn to natural science, above all to psychology. It is in the realms of religion and science, that is to say, that philosophy is found today, especially any sense of philosophy as a way of life. Scientists often claim their work to be value-free, but especially for those who are not part of a “religious” community, much of the guidance we receive in life comes from scientific evidence and the people charged to apply it to our daily lives. The title we use for those people – “doctor” – originally referred to learned Christian religious. It is doctors who warn us that our behaviours are self-destructive, that we need to change our views and habits and ways of life, and that we fail to do so at our own peril – and this advice often involves codes of behaviour toward food that rival Leviticus in their complexity.

But philosophy – that is what we don’t have. Hadot reminds us that the ancients did. It’s not just that their academic work was not so carved up into disciplines, so that the inquiries now called “science” would have been known as “philosophy” (though of course it was that). The Stoic practice of prosoche, attention to one’s soul, bears a startling resemblance to Buddhist mindfulness – conducted in the name of philosophy. When the Greek explorer Megasthenes explained ancient Indian society to his fellow Greeks , the name he gave to the brahmins and to the samana wandering monks – the Buddhists, Jains and their ilk – was “philosophers.” He recognized what the Greeks called philosophy in what they were doing. It is in the Christian (and Islamic?) Middle Ages, Hadot notes, that philosophy loses this status, becoming “the handmaid of theology.” It is not a huge step from there to the analytic philosophy of today, which (I think it would be hard to deny) sees itself largely as “the handmaid of science,” answering only those questions left over from the empirical inquiries of natural science.

Now the terms “religion” and “science” seem unlikely to go away any time soon. We are probably stuck with them. Perhaps more importantly, the realms of knowledge and practice that the terms cover – from Kierkegaard to prayer, from Einstein to psychotherapy – are of inestimable value to human life. As much as I might wish for a world where these terms went away (at least the “religion” term), I would find it devastating if the phenomena were to disappear. So for better and for worse, “religion” and “science” are here to stay. So while I have always identified the present venue as a blog about philosophy, it necessarily also becomes a blog about religion and science.

What then happens to “philosophy”? Can it ever again become the way of life that Hadot tells us of? Not in the terms of the ancient world. If one were to start a monastic garden of philosophers the way that Epicurus did – even if one were explicitly to call it Epicurean – most people would invariably call it a religion (or worse, a cult). At the same time, I think philosophy takes on a crucial role in the world of “religion” and “science,” as a middle ground between the two. New Atheists like Richard Dawkins, full of bile toward “religion,” nevertheless affirm the value of (at least analytic) philosophy; and philosophy, even today’s academic philosophy, has tools to examine even conservative forms of “religion” critically on their own terms, terms that science does not have. Even to the fundamentalist who denies philosophy as heretical, one may still ask the fundamental questions: why is scripture inerrant? Why must faith take precedence over knowledge? The answers to these questions can be interrogated by philosophy, but not by experimental science. One might even say that the problem with Stephen Jay Gould’s NOMA is that, in separating the realms of science and religion, it ignores the third realm that unites them, namely philosophy.

This all is at the theoretical level. But it matters at the level of practice as well. One can always try to live one’s life entirely within the guidance specified by a particular tradition of inquiry, including the tradition of natural science. But once one tries to be both at once – to be both “religious” and “scientific,” or even to inhabit more than one “religion” – then one needs philosophy to settle their differences. One can no longer take philosophy by itself as a way of life. But philosophy may yet turn out to be an inescapable part of the best way of life today.

As a historical claim, the latter part of the sentence is laughable and merits no consideration: it takes very little research indeed to find that the drive for logical consistency far predates any modern culture wars. It can be found not only in Plato, its most famous advocate, but also in Augustine, in Aquinas, in Śaṅkara and Kumārila. One might be tempted to find an exception in Nāgārjuna and his Madhyamaka school, which try to avoid having any position whatsoever; but even Nāgārjuna relies in his arguments on the assumption that our positions should not contradict each other – should make logical sense. Fish is smart enough to know this point; the claim that the drive for consistency is a product of the contemporary culture wars can only be understood as a deliberate falsehood, a lie.

More interesting is the normative claim, the view that we shouldn’t be bothered by contradictions. After all, if that’s true, Fish may be entirely justified in lying. One can claim in the context of editorial journalism that consistency is merely a modern invention, and in the context of historical scholarship that it is an ideal as ancient as philosophy. That’s inconsistent, but consistency doesn’t matter.

Fish’s answer to the religion-science debates depends on just such a view: “the realms of belief supposedly existing in a condition of opposition and conflict are, at least to some extent, discrete. What you believe in one arena of human endeavor may have no spillover into what you believe, and do, in another.” In a sense, Fish is taking up the logical implications of the NOMA view more seriously than Stephen Jay Gould had himself: “science” and “religion” can remain separate domains, not because they don’t contradict each other on important matters (it should be obvious that they do) but because that contradiction itself doesn’t matter.

Fish’s argument makes the case from everyday life. It’s not hard to imagine a fundamentalist Christian medical student during the week learning biological ideas founded on the presumption that human life evolved over millions of years, and then going to Bible fellowship on Sunday and speaking about human life on the assumption that human life was created by Jehovah in one instant. People can and do live with contradictions. Why should contradictions bother anyone, beyond pedantic philosophers bothered by obscure details?

Well, for starters, most of us already are bothered. Leon Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance is fairly well established in social psychology: the perception of inconsistency among our own beliefs and actions is a motivating factor in its own right, one that makes us want to reduce this inconsistency. Perhaps Fish’s preferred form of spiritual practice would be a kind of therapy or meditation that makes us comfortable with such inconsistencies. He doesn’t, however, describe how such a practice could work, nor why we might want to follow it rather than just trying to make our beliefs and practices more harmonious. So we’ve already got a prima facie reason to try and reduce our inconsistencies and contradictions.

More than that: consistency is important for the efficacy of self-transformation as well. If one is trying to practice Osho‘s ideal of free expression for pleasure and sexuality, one will be hindered by simultaneously trying to practice the ascetic self-denial of a Theravāda monk; and vice versa. One’s efforts to become a better Christian will be hindered by learning in science class that core Christian beliefs are false. Attempting to practise contradictory ideals is like taking an expectorant and a decongestant at the same time: one undermines one’s own efforts. Perhaps Fish has never tried to become a better Christian or a better Buddhist or just a better person more generally, and has never had to deal with this problem; but for those of us trying to improve our lives, it’s a big issue. Consistency matters, and the differences between competing worldviews will not be resolved this easily in practice, let alone in theory.

I have my doubts about Wilber’s approach. It seems to me hypothetically possible that carefully defined controlled experiments could prove that the Buddha’s path does not actually reduce our suffering. I prefer to affirm knowledge but deny certainty: we must learn enough to have confidence in our views, but accept that some of them will nevertheless be proven wrong. New experimental evidence is one way we can be proven wrong; so is existing evidence that we weren’t always aware of; so even are new arguments that don’t depend on evidence. Descartes thought that the one thing he could be certain of was that he existed, but Buddhists have raised powerful challenges even to that view. If Descartes could be wrong in his certainty on the self, how can we really be certain of anything else? (Some teachers like to tell their students: “25% of what I’m telling you is wrong. I just don’t know which 25%.”)

To deny certainty is not to deny knowledge; it’s just to deny certain knowledge. We need, it seems to me, to accept knowledge as in some respects provisional, but as no less knowledge for that. It’s self-contradictory to deny the existence of truth or knowledge, but there is no contradiction in denying certain knowledge. (It’s perfectly consistent to be uncertain that there’s no certainty.) The knowledge derived from controlled experiment is, in this respect, not different in kind from any other knowledge.

The irresponsible option is to simply avoid the science. I’ve previously lambasted Stephen Jay Gould’s concept of “non-overlapping magisteria” (NOMA), in which “religion” and “science” don’t overlap, so “religion” can proceed without thinking of science. (The NOMA view is sometimes called “Averroism,” but that’s an awful term for the view because its namesake Averroës, ibn Rushd, never actually held it.) It’s not merely the “religious” who are tempted by the NOMA option, either. John Doris in his Lack of Character, and the resulting debates over it, complained that philosophers too often see themselves as examining a priori questions of pure reason, waving scientific research away with “That’s an empirical question.” I don’t agree with Doris’s specific claim that current psychological research strongly undercuts virtue ethics, but I think he’s right on the more general point: experimental research matters for philosophy. Experimental studies of cognition matter for the theory of knowledge; experimental studies of happiness matter for practical philosophy. Experimentally derived knowledge does not and cannot exhaust philosophical reflection, as E.O. Wilson seems to think it does, but it does matter.

It matters not only for philosophical reflection, but also for political participation. And here the question of authority comes to the forefront. What’s put these issues fresh in my mind is George Monbiot‘s discussion of climate change denial. As you likely now, the present climate talks in Copenhagen are now operating in the shadow of a scandal to the effect that climate scientists fudged data to exaggerate the evidence for global warming. Their behaviour was surely wrong, and it calls the authority of these particular scientists into question. But Monbiot notes another, earlier leak in the opposite direction. It’s not news that well funded consortia of energy companies have been trying to push public opinion against action on climate change, partially by denying that it exists or that it’s human-caused. But what the leak reveals is the consortium’s rhetorical strategy: “members of the public feel more confident expressing opinions on others’ motivations and tactics than they do expressing opinions of scientific issues.” Portray climate scientists as sleazy and dishonest and you will sow public doubt about the existence of climate change, no matter how solid the evidence for climate change remains.

Such an ad hominem approach, unfortunately, seems to be working all too well for the energy companies. But there’s another problem: unearthing the energy companies’ motivation is merely an ad hominem attack in the other direction. Both sides push rhetoric that departs from the actual evidence. Why? Because the political leaders who make most of the decisions about action on climate change know so little about the science involved, and they will be elected by a citizenry that knows even less. The motivations of the participants in the debate are not irrelevant – they affect the degree to which those participants can be considered reliable authorities for knowledge – but they must be less important than the evidence the participants use to generate their authority.

So what’s the responsible thing to do about science for laypeople, in politics as in philosophy? We cannot but act on the knowledge we presently have, as uncertain as it may be. We need an epistemological humility; we need to allow for the possibility that we may be wrong. We also need to consider exactly what the fudging of data implies, and what it doesn’t imply. Ideally we would fully examine the evidence ourselves; to the extent that we can’t do that, we must still rely on authority. The particular scientists involved in this scandal have had their authority compromised; but there have been plenty of others who haven’t.

Simply imagine what would happen if we indeed said that modern physics support mysticism. What happens, for example, if we say that today’s physics is in perfect agreement with Buddha’s enlightenment? What happens when tomorrow’s physics supplants or replaces today’s physics (which it most definitely will)? Does poor Buddha then lose his enlightenment? You see the problem. If you hook your God to today’s physics, then when that physics slips, that God slips with it. (from Grace and Grit, p. 20)

Gould’s claim would be a great way of resolving the conflicts between science and religion – if it were true. The problem is that it isn’t. A rigid separation between fact and value cannot be rationally sustained, and rare is the “religious” person who tries to do so. Gould approvingly cites encyclicals from Pius XII and John Paul II allowing Catholics to believe in evolution; but they don’t do so on the grounds of a fact-value distinction. The popes say we may believe in the evolution of the body as long as we also believe those bodies have souls; but the existence of souls, if true, would be a fact. It is a fact imbued with moral meaning – but so are the existence of grinding poverty, the development of a fetus, and the heritability of homosexual orientation.

Other “religions” are similarly concerned with questions of fact. Much of Buddhism is composed of psychological hypotheses about the nature and origins of human suffering. If we can disprove empirically that suffering is caused by craving, then we have effectively disproved Buddhism. Wilber is right to see that if we tie our “religious” claims to scientific ones, then they become far more tentative, far less a source of certainty; but that’s just in the nature of knowledge itself. People have disagreed on matters “religious” since time immemorial. (The soul that’s so essential for the Popes is explicitly and directly denied by the Buddha of the Pali suttas.) Science does offer ways of resolving some of those disputes, for those inclined to listen. To refuse to tie your beliefs to experimental evidence, for fear that they might be disproven, is to refuse to allow your beliefs to be true.

It’s not just that “religion” deals in matters of fact. It’s also that science deals in matters of value. I’ve previously discussed the way in which health is itself a value, and medical science is inescapably normative in prescribing the healthy functioning of human beings. The point applies even to biomedical science with no explicit psychological component, but it goes double for psychology and neurology, which cannot help but deal with questions of happiness, virtue and vice.

The NOMA idea only has a chance of making sense if we separate questions of value out into an a priori realm completely detached from the physical world – as Kant tried to do, for example. But it’s an inordinately difficult task to try and derive a full set of answers to questions of value without reference to the physical world, and I don’t think that even Kant managed to succeed at it. Even when asking questions of ethics and meaning, we need evidence from the physical world. And that means that, indeed, science may disprove matters like the Buddha’s enlightenment – not causing him to lose it, but demonstrating that he never had it in the first place. The point is all the more reason to embrace some degree of uncertainty; new connections in the physical world are likely to be discovered, in ways that change things we thought we knew for sure. I’ve previously noted the difficulty with attempts at certain knowledge. Since writing that post, I’ve become a little more confident in saying we can never truly have certain knowledge – but, of course, I have not become certain.