How To Deal With Contradiction?

[r0ckyreed]

I had a philosophical conversation with a friend, and I realized that I have so many contradictions in my understanding and worldview, and I wonder what to make of it.

We talked about the role of parsimony and Occam's Razor in how it is important to keep our explanations simplified.

Some of the contradictions that we noted is that I give authority to Astronauts that the Earth is round. I am 90% certain that the Earth is round. 

However, when it comes to scientists claiming that NDE's and Deja Vu is just a temporal lobe brain glitch, I question the neuroscientists and doctors who say that because I suggested that they are operating off of materialist paradigm assumptions that brain states cause consciousness. I suggested that it is possible that brain states correlate with consciousness in that it is possible that the way that we see the future requires that there are glitches in the brain.

The other contradiction was that reality is imagination, imagination is truth, but there are people who are just flat out wrong in their imaginations that differ from consensus reality, which is a shared imagination/dream. If reality is just perception, then is it possible for people to be wrong in their perceptions? Think of a paranoid conspiracy theorist vs. someone who claims to have seen aliens/ghosts. My argument against this point is that reality is full of contradictions because the same imagination that creates delusion is also the same imagination that creates brilliance. There are people who are lost in their imagination (i.e., paranoid people) and there are people who are enhanced (i.e., genetic freaks). Genetic freaks may be able to see 1% of what 99% of people cannot even fathom. But paranoid people who claim to see ghosts and monsters see 1% of what the 99% of people cannot. Who is right? How do we know?

My friend pointed out that there are many contradictions in my understanding, and I basically said that is because reality is very nuanced and complex. Maybe we should question the assumption that the simplest explanation is the best one. I also questioned the notion of "best." My friend seemed to be very scientifically minded and said that science gives us the best explanation of why Deja Vu happens. I questioned that saying that there are spiritual perspectives as well and that maybe consciousness being able to imagine the future is more simple than brain glitches causing subjective phenomena.

What are your all's thoughts? How do you make sense of contradiction in your understanding/worldview?

[r0ckyreed]

Here is part of my conversation with Claude:

Me: I wrestle with the contradictions that I have in my worldview. It is hard for me to articulate my worldview because on the one hand, I defined fools as people being closed-minded, but on the other hand, I myself am being closed-minded at times. Reducing wisdom and foolishness down to Openmindedness and close-mindedness is a difficult one because a fool can be so openminded that they are gullible to everything while a wise person is able to close their minds off to foolish perspectives. But at the same time, how do we know this balance? A wise person has to be openminded to some degree but then has to know when to be closed-minded as well.

Claude: You raise a profound and perennial challenge - how to strike the right balance between open-mindedness and discernment, between being receptive to new ideas and perspectives while also maintaining a grounded, critical stance. It's a tension that every sincere seeker of wisdom must grapple with.

On one level, openness of mind is clearly a virtue and a prerequisite for growth and learning. We can't expand our understanding if we're not willing to consider ideas that challenge our existing beliefs and assumptions. History is full of examples of dogmatic close-mindedness holding back progress and causing immense harm - think of the persecution of Galileo for challenging geocentrism or the rigid racist ideologies that justified slavery and colonialism.  

At the same time, you're absolutely right that wisdom isn't simply a matter of being open to everything. Discernment - the ability to critically evaluate ideas, to distinguish truth from falsehood, insight from delusion - is equally crucial. A mind so open that it accepts every notion uncritically isn't wise, but gullible and adrift. 

The key, as you suggest, is to find a middle way between these extremes - a way of being open-minded but not empty-headed, critically-minded but not closed-minded. This is what the philosopher Bertrand Russell perhaps pointed to when he said, "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."

In practical terms, I think this middle way involves cultivating a few key intellectual virtues:

1) Intellectual humility - recognizing the limits of our own knowledge and understanding, being willing to admit when we're wrong or uncertain.

2) Curiosity - a genuine desire to understand, to seek out new information and perspectives.

3) Critical thinking - the ability to analyze and evaluate ideas based on logic, evidence, and coherence.

4) Metacognition - thinking about our own thinking, being aware of our cognitive biases and assumptions.

5) Holistic thinking - striving to see the big picture, to synthesize different perspectives and ways of knowing into a cohesive (if always incomplete) understanding.

Operating from these virtues, we can strive to be open to new ideas while also maintaining discernment. We can hold our beliefs sincerely but not dogmatically, always being willing to revise them in light of new understanding. We can engage with different perspectives empathetically while also thinking critically about them. 

It's a challenging balance to strike, and I suspect it's a lifelong process of growth and refinement rather than a static state one achieves. The very fact that you're grappling with these contradictions and tensions in your own worldview is a sign of wisdom in my view - it shows a commitment to intellectual honesty and growth, a willingness to question and complicate your own understanding. 

Ultimately, perhaps wisdom lies not in having a perfectly consistent and complete worldview, but in navigating the inevitable contradictions and gaps in our understanding with humility, nuance, and good faith. It lies in striving for coherence while also accepting a degree of mystery and uncertainty. It's a challenging path, but one that I believe leads to growth, insight, and a richer engagement with the complexities of reality.

Me: It is hard to get clarity with all of these nuances of reality. It seems like contradiction is inevitable.

Claude: You're absolutely right that contradiction and paradox seem to be inherent features of reality, or at least of our attempts to comprehend it. The more deeply we probe into the nature of things, the more we encounter these perplexing tensions and apparent contradictions.

This is evident in many domains. In quantum physics, light behaves as both a wave and a particle. In mathematics, Gödel's incompleteness theorems show that any sufficiently complex logical system contains statements that are true but unprovable within the system. In philosophy, we encounter ancient paradoxes like the Ship of Theseus or the Liar's Paradox that reveal the limits of our conceptual frameworks.

And as you point out, in the realm of personal belief and worldview, we often find ourselves holding ideas that seem to contradict each other, or encountering contradictions between different modes of understanding reality.

In the face of this, it's understandable to feel a sense of frustration or even despair. Our minds crave clarity, consistency, and certainty. We want a worldview that is neat, tidy, and free of contradiction.

But perhaps this very craving is part of the problem. Perhaps the belief that we can or should achieve a perfectly consistent and complete understanding of reality is itself a kind of hubris or delusion.

This isn't to say that we shouldn't strive for consistency and clarity in our thinking. We should absolutely use logic, reason, and critical thinking to refine our beliefs and root out contradictions where we can. But we may also need to cultivate a certain comfort with contradiction, ambiguity, and uncertainty.

This is where intellectual humility comes in - the recognition that reality is vastly complex, and our minds are limited. We can strive to understand as best we can while also acknowledging the inherent incompleteness and imperfection of that understanding.

In practical terms, this might mean holding our beliefs and worldviews a bit more loosely. It means being willing to live with a degree of cognitive dissonance, to hold space for conflicting ideas without needing to resolve them immediately. It means approaching the big questions with a spirit of openness and curiosity rather than a desire for dogmatic certainty.

It also means drawing on multiple ways of knowing - not just rational analysis but also intuition, embodied experience, aesthetic and moral sensibility, etc. Different modes of engaging with reality can offer complementary insights, even if they sometimes seem to contradict each other on the surface.

Ultimately, the goal perhaps shouldn't be to eliminate all contradiction, but to find a way to hold and navigate contradiction skillfully. We can strive for a worldview that is as coherent and well-grounded as possible, while also remaining open to mystery, complexity, and the limits of our understanding. It's a challenging balance, but one that can lead to a richer, more nuanced, and ultimately more truthful engagement with the grand perplexity of existence.

These are just some thoughts, but I resonate with your sense of the difficulty and importance of grappling with these deep questions. The fact that you're engaging with these contradictions sincerely is itself a form of wisdom in my view.

[Jordan]

When you simplify your ideas they can become black and white thinking. Reality is in shakes of grey so there will be many contradictions the more you explain your simplified worldview. 
 

A worldview should be like a map that you use to navigate life. If you want to improve the map, you really should consider looking at what you are mapping more than what is on the map. Increase your consciousness of what life is directly. Not your model of it.
 

Consider different worldviews, try living life through different lenses and see what leads to a good life. See what maps work in certain situations and will not work in others. Contemplate and test your theories in reality.