Benjamin Franklin's excellent statement on the final day of the Constitutional Convention, which we considered in the last blog, reflects a healthy humility and respect for the views of others.  In Apology, Plato describes Socrates as holding that the greatest wisdom was to know that you know nothing.  With all due respect to Socrates, I think he takes things a bit too far.  We can know things.  We do know things.  How do we differentiate between what we know and what we merely think we know?  How do we apply the lesson of humility without taking it to the Socratic extreme?

Rene Descartes was a French philosopher, soldier, mathematician, and scientist who lived in the first half of the 17th century (1596-1650). In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes offers a powerful, simple argument to start us back on the path to establishing what we can know. Descartes set about a thought experiment, examining everything he thought he "knew", and imagining whether it was possible that some powerful wizard was simply deceiving him about this knowledge. He determined that there was one fact about which the wizard could not deceive him--the fact of his existence. Descartes reasoned that, even if everything in his experience was simply an illusion, he himself--the entity that was experiencing the illusion--had to exist.  Stated another way, the powerful wizard had to be deceiving something with his illusions, and that something had to exist.  Descartes summarized his conclusion with the famous statement, "I am thinking, therefore I exist." [1]

There is more we can do with Descarte's first step, but it is a powerful first step, so I will leave our reflection there for today.

[1] Rattle, Allison, and Alex Woolf, 501 Things You Should Have Learned About Philosophy, Metro Books, New York, 2013, p. 54.

I get that we are worried about foreign governments planting misinformation in American social media as a way to influence elections and undermine the processes of our society.  Ultimately, however, I am more concerned by the fact that there are large numbers of people unable or unwilling to protect themselves from thinly veiled misinformation. The first step to the truth is to have a proper humility about the things you believe to be true.

Benjamin Franklin's statement on the last day of the Constitutional Convention is one of the best expressions I have encountered of this humility of thought:

"I confess there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve....But I am not sure I will never approve them. For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others. Most men indeed as well as most sects in religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them it is so far error.... In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such." 

Franklin famously believed America could preserve our republic only if the people could live with civic and personal virtue. Adopting an appropriate humility toward one's personal beliefs, along with an appropriate respect for the beliefs of others, is the first step toward this ideal of virtue.
​

"The business being closed," he wrote, "the members adjourned to the City Tavern, dined together and took a cordial leave of each other; after which I returned to my lodgings, did some business with, and received the papers from the Secretary of the Convention, and retired to meditate on the momentous work which had been executed, after not less than five, and for a large part of the time Six, and sometimes 7 hours sitting every day, [except] Sundays and the ten days adjournment for more than four months."
Miracle at Philadelphia; Bowen, Catherine Drinker; Hachette Book Group, New York, NY, 1966; p. 264

One of the most fascinating aspects of the men who founded our nation is the fact that so many of them were Deists, including George Washington. James Thomas Flexner, in his essential biography of our first President, writes, "Washington subscribed to the religious faith of the Enlightenment: like Franklin and Jefferson, he was a deist." (Flexner, p. 216). Catherine Drinker Bowen, author of Miracle at Philadelphia--The Story of the Constitutional Convention May to September 1787, writes that "Deism was in the air.... Dr. Franklin could have defined this creedless religion; with Jefferson and John Adams, the Doctor shared the Deistical outlook." (Bowen, p. 216)  Washington's religious belief was but one example of his amazing ability to bring reason to bear on the social conventions of his day.

The fascinating thing about the broad popularity of Deism among the luminaries of eightteenth-century America is that it is so rational. Deism, or natural religion, acknowledges the existence of a Supreme Being but, at the same time, acknowledges that we cannot know anything specific about this being.  It is the perfect reconciliation of the religious intuition many of us share, with the limits of what we can confirm as fact. While insisting on the existence of a Creator, Deism denies that there is any rational basis for the overly specific dogmas associated with the anthropomorphic mythologies we call--collectively--organized religion. Because there is no rational basis for the differences between the world's organized religions, if you are a Deist, tolerance is central to your philosophy.  

Neither can scientists who insist on fact alone disqualify the religious intuition that so many of us share.  That widely shared religious intuition is itself a fact. And there is so much about creation that we simply do not understand.  Most of the matter and energy in the universe is "dark"--it does not appear to react with the matter and energy we see. Given all we do not know about the universe, there is nothing irrational about Deism.

Among the many exceptional things about our first President was his ability to rise above the constraints and conventions of his world through the application of practical reason. After the death of his father when he was only eleven, George Washington's education was limited to about the eighth-grade level. Yet this man, with no formal military training, became the Commanding General of an army that defeated the most powerful army in the world at the time. This man served as president of the convention that produced our Constitution. By the end of his life, he understood that the institution of slavery was inconsistent with the principles of that Constitution, and provided in his will for the emancipation of the slaves at Mount Vernon. This man understood that reason was consistent with his faith in a Supreme Being, but was not consistent with the many dogmas and prejudices associated with the common practice of organized religion.

Happy birthday, Mr. President!