Is the Cartesian paradigm still fit for purpose, or should it be replaced by one starting with action? How can and should we decide?
Put another way, which comes first, action or thinking? It’s a bit like the chicken and the egg. Perhaps we normally think first, then act, but sometimes we act ‘instinctively’ and then think about the reasons afterwards!
Moving from one paradigm to another is not a smooth process, it is more of a jump. I do not think I can prove that action comes before thought, but I think it is rational to see that they are both valid starting points for making sense of life.
Starting from action fits in better with our experience of reality. It makes sense of things in a way that starting with thinking has been shown repeatedly over 400 years to be unable to do.
However the cartesian formulation is so deeply ingrained that the new formulation from Macmurray and Mises – to start from action, not thought, has been largely by-passed and ignored.
Ideas that do not fit into the prevailing paradigm do not need to be refuted: it is 100 times more effective simply to ignore them, ideally with a patronising comment or put down.
MacMurray’s work is now largely out of print and while Mises’s ideas are championed by a small but growing ‘Austrian’ school of Economics, they are not given much attention by philosophers.
Therefore I know I cannot ‘appeal to authority’ to persuade you to adopt the new paradigm. All I can do is ask you to think it through for yourself!
There is a world in which we act, and our actions are far more important than our thoughts. I’ve been reflecting on Macmurray’s ideas since I first encountered them in the 1980s and they more and more resonate with my experience and ‘common sense’.
Entrepreneurs, engineers, programmers, teachers, nurses, doctors, farmers, business people, ‘ordinary people’ of all shapes and sizes know that action matters, that you decide if you can trust someone based on what they do, not what they say.
This is not, of course, to say that thinking is not important. The quality of an action will depend on the quality of thought that has gone into it. Thinking and action are inseparable. Macmurray described thinking as the ‘negative’ of action: it matters intensely but what matters even more are the actions that follow from it.
We are all capable of deeper thinking. Go for a long walk by yourself or turn off social media and gaze into a fire on a winter’s night. Ask yourself, what if anything can I be totally sure of?
Question the awareness you have: the process of thinking that happens whether you want it to or not. Is it purely passive or can you be active? Are you only a purely passive observer of life or do you have agency: is there something in you that can make decisions and choose to do things?
Is the mysterious sense you have of your ‘Self’ something that can act?
It may be that you have a sense that you very rarely act: nearly all of the big decisions of your life have been made passively, by following the flow of expectation of those around you. The ability to act may be largely embryonic, hardly developed. But can you really deny that it is there altogether?
Thinking for yourself is only possible if you have agency.
You may come to me and argue that agency is an illusion: that although we may have a sense of action, the reality is that everything we think and do is behaviourally determined: free will is just an illusion. But I will notice that your very argument is evidence of your agency. You are acting to try and persuade me to change my thinking!
Discovering your own agency is one of the most important things you will ever do. It means choosing to live, to being responsible for your choices, to saying ‘Yes’ to life. And it means thinking for yourself, not following the herd.
These are not new ideas. In every generation they are stated afresh. In the 1990s Stephen Covey awakened a generation of business people to the importance of character and principles over ‘personality’ in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Habits are actions repeated so many times that they become habitual.
In the current generation millions are discovering the Twelve Rules for Life of Jordan Peterson, or more likely encountering the same ideas through his podcasts. Rules like ‘Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world’ (or ‘Tidy your d****d bedroom first’) show that it is your actions, not your thoughts, that matter. The path to finding meaning in life includes accepting responsibility for your actions.
Life can be confusing and it can be hard to know what to think about many issues, especially when you are young. But a good rule of thumb is to look at people’s actions as well as what they say. Is there a congruence between the two?
A person who flies around the world in a private jet or helicopter should not really go lecturing others on not using fossil fuels. If you are at a festival seeking to ‘save the planet’ you should at the very least recycle your own litter and clean your tent and re-use it.
If a person claims to be concerned with the plight of the poor and the marginalised then at the very least they should be considerate of waitresses, cleaners and others with ‘low status’ in society. If you claim to follow a religion based on God’s love, do your actions show this love in action?
Actions matter. And the only way we can establish for sure the effects of an action on the world is by using objective thinking: gathering evidence and applying logic. Our subjective thinking can tell us if we are feeling good or bad, but can’t tell us if we are doing good or bad.
Thinking for yourself involves recognising the difference. If we claim to want to do good in the world, there is no alternative to committing to objective thinking.
Posts on the Objective Thinking page begin to explore the implications of this in Politics, the Environment, Economics, Education and other topics.