Undoing metaphysics

What metaphysical assumptions do you hold that you are unwilling to reconsider? How about the assumption of an independently existing, objective, physical reality?

You may not think of this as an assumption at all, but it is one. Whatever evidence you have for it is equally good evidence for idealism ("the group of philosophies which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial").

Or you might recognize it as an assumption, but decide that your assumptions have no bearing on anything: reality will be the way it is, independent of them. Of course, this itself is an assumption that presupposes objectivity.

If you really wanted to test whether your assumptions influence reality, you'd have to do an A/B test. That is, you'd have to actually change your assumptions and discover what happens. You cannot rely on the results of other people having done so, since after all the world may not exist in the way you normally assume -- the very thing you're setting out to determine in the first place.

So how might you do such a thing?

One method is meditation. Unfortunately, many meditators hone their attention, but then turn around and use that attention to reinforce their existing assumptions -- albeit unconsciously. It's very common to sit there with the subtle feeling "I am located in time and space, honing my skills moment by moment." This is no way to go about undermining your assumptions.

Another possibility is to consider seriously the words of various philosophers who have raised profoundly skeptical issues. For example, David Hume's "problem of induction," stated simply, says that things having happened before gives no reason to suppose that they will continue to happen. There is no reason to believe, for example, that the laws of physics should continue to hold one second from now. (This is because, to justify induction, you must use an inductive argument: since induction has held in the past, it will continue to hold. This is circular.)

This probably strikes you as absurd. And it should:

It’s a good test of whether someone has actually understood Hume’s argument that they acknowledge its conclusion is fantastic (many students new to philosophy misinterpret Hume: they think his conclusion is merely that we cannot be certain what will happen tomorrow.)

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If Hume is right, the belief that the sun will rise tomorrow is as unjustified as the belief that a million mile wide bowl of tulips will appear over the horizon instead. We suppose the second belief is insane. But if Hume is correct, the first belief is actually no more rational. This conclusion strikes us as utterly absurd, of course.

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Hume’s argument continues to perplex both philosophers and scientists. There’s still no consensus about whether Hume is right. Some believe that we have no choice but to embrace Hume’s sceptical conclusion about the unobserved. Others believe that the conclusion is clearly absurd. But then the onus is on these defenders of “common sense” to show precisely what is wrong with Hume’s argument. No one has yet succeeded in doing this (or at least no one has succeeded in convincing a majority of philosophers that they have done so).

The point is not to decide whether he's right or wrong (you're unlikely to resolve it, unless you're smarter than the last 250 years of brilliant humans). It is to notice just how unwilling the mind is to consider that the next moment might genuinely be completely unhinged from all that preceded it. It's like "yeahh... but no...."

If that example is too abstract, consider a simpler one. Last Thursdayism is the tongue-in-cheek idea that God created the universe last Thursday, and just planted all the seeming evidence of a past. It's used as a counter to young earth creationism. There's no way to disprove either idea. Bertrand Russell noted:

There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that 'remembered' a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago.

Similarly, there's no way to disprove the possibility that it all sprang into being in this very instant. Yes, this one. As you read this, your mind is probably thinking: wait, which instant is it? This one, or the one from a few seconds ago? Hmm, there seems to be a contradiction here. I guess I disproved it!

But if you really grok what's being said, your world will shatter for a moment. It feels like having the whole universe yanked out from under you. In a sense, these are glimpses of what Buddhism calls "emptiness." Teacher Karl Brunnholzl says:

Emptiness not only means the end of the world as we know it, but that this world never really existed in the first place. If we really understand what that means, it is so scary we may freak out or have heart attacks like those arhats. Not necessarily, of course, because there are also reports of people who actually got it and had no heart attacks. Nevertheless, the main point is to dare to step into the infinite space of groundlessness, which is frightening because it questions everything that we are and everything that we think.

What is the point of realizing this "emptiness?" Perhaps an everyday example will help (and maybe be familiar). You're fighting with someone, totally sure that they've done something wrong, and that they are such-and-such a person. You can even prove it beyond any doubt (and you may even be right). But then suddenly, and against all reason, you discover a gap in which all of that certainty is totally erased. And in that same moment, as though by miracle, all their enmity collapses, and you can deeply forgive each other.

Of course, there are a thousand conventional explanations that don't require an explanation as high-caliber as emptiness. But the more you lean on them, the less willing and able you are to pull the rug out from under your feet in other difficult scenarios. And the more you find yourself in scenarios in which you seem to be bumping up against a solid world that stubbornly resists your attempts to mold it.

On the other hand, the more you're able to genuinely consider that you may actually be dead wrong about absolutely everything, the more a space opens up for the universe to be light and playful, and for it to surprise you in ways that you simply wouldn't allow it to before. Moreover, if your goal is to be happy (as it is for everyone), you discover fewer and fewer solid obstacles standing in the way.

So assuming you're already on a journey to discover more about the nature of reality, radically undermining your existing beliefs would be a fantastic place to start.