The Lack of Certainty

Human beings are problem solvers. I have argued, however, that when humans make decisions they never have all the information they need in order to know for certain what outcome will result from the action they take. That is, they must make decisions where “something is missing” from the picture they are observing. (See “What is Missing?” posted on February 1, 2008.) They must solve their problem or make their decision based upon incomplete information.

The assumption here is that if a person facing a problem had complete information about the decision he/she faced there would really be no problem making a decision for the appropriate decision would be obvious. There would only be one ‘best’ decision. So, if people had complete information pertaining to every decision they had to make thereby making each decision obvious, the world would be deterministic for everything would have already been determined.

If a person does not have complete information, the decision that needs to be made is not obvious. The problem solver, therefore, is confronted with at least several possible outcomes from any solution that might be decided upon. We can say that the outcome of the decision is uncertain. Since human beings do not have complete information about anything, we can say that all of their decisions are made under conditions of uncertainty.

One model of the process of problem solving/decision making under uncertainty is as follows. First, for a given solution or action, the decision maker must state all of the possible outcomes that could result from that solution/action. Then the decision maker must determine how likely it is for each possible outcome to occur. Here the term ‘probability’ is introduced for what the decision maker must do is assign, subjectively, the likelihood that an outcome will happen relative to the likelihood that all the other outcomes might happen. Thus, the decision maker could argue that in two out of four days, it will be sunny; in one out of four days it will be cloudy but it will not rain; and in one out of four days it will rain. These assignments are subjective because they represent ‘the degree of belief’ that the individual has concerning the likelihood of each possible outcome occurring. The decision maker must do this kind of analysis for all the possible solutions/actions that he/she is considering concerning the problem under review. The general decision rule is to choose the solution/action that provides the problem solver with the ‘best’ expected outcome from all the solutions/actions considered.

In our previous post, it was argued that the world is sufficiently ordered so that human beings can solve problems in ways that contribute to the survival and evolution of their species. That is, humans can build models to predict outcomes that contributed to their welfare. We can extend this argument one step further: the world is sufficiently ordered so that human beings can build models that produce probabilistic predictions so that they can survive and evolve.

Working in a world of uncertainty means that people are not going to find the correct solutions or make the right decisions every time they have to produce a solution or make a decision. Because of this, individuals really need to focus on the process of problem solving or decision making rather than upon just a specific outcome at a particular time. In other words, a person needs a methodology of problem solving that is used and refined over and over again. An individual also needs to internalize the use of a probabilistic approach. Human beings crave certainty and even when using a probabilistic approach they tend to use too narrow a range of possible outcomes in their problem solving. Humans must accept the fact that they don’t have complete information and learn to be as comfortable as possible knowing that this is how life is.

The problem solver must also accept the fact that they cannot judge the results of a probabilistic system over the short term because in the short run one can always be overwhelmed by the randomness that seems to be present in the world. That is because we, as humans, know so little about the world, it can seem, at times, to be very chaotic. It has been argued that to find order we must really search for it because it is not altogether obvious. (See post of February 8, 2008, “On ‘On Looking into the Abyss.”) So, human beings must find systems that seem to work and stick with them over time. Again, the process is crucial, not a specific outcome.

Belonging to a community can play a very important role in the models one chooses and in the persistence with which one sticks with these models. For example, belonging to a church implies that you spend time with other people who roughly believe the same things that you do. This is important for a community like this has models that ‘work’ (if they don’t work the community would disappear) and that provides a support system to help people through those times when the models don’t seem to be working. Belonging to such a community also helps one to ‘believe’ in what lies behind the models.

In this respect we can examine the wager attributed to Blaise Pascal. Ian Hacking has argued that this wager should be expressed as follows: “As Pascal sees it, you either act with complete indifference to God, or you act in a way that you will, in due course, believe in his existence and his edicts….One cannot decide to believe in God. One can decide to act so that one will very probably come to believe in God. Pascal call that the wager that God is. To wager that He is not is to stop bothering about such things.” (“The Emergence of Probability,” Second Edition, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006) p. 66) In other words, a person bets on the existence of God by joining a church, thereby putting themselves in a position where it is possible for them to believe. By living their life within that community they are more likely to believe in God and in the models of the church than if they were not a member of such a community.

This is an entirely different picture of the commitment one makes to God than is presented by some existentialist thinkers. The image I had of this commitment, coming from the period of time when I was caught up in the existential way of thinking, was of a person standing on a totally barren hilltop at night with thousands of stars shining in the sky. This isolated, alienated person had to make a decision, had to decide all by himself whether or not he believed in God. It is his existential moment. Once this individual makes a choice, then he must live out that existence every day…the choice was his and his alone…it was his selection of being.

The action words, however, are ‘isolated’ and ‘alienated.’ The existent had to do it all by himself. No one else could choose for him. No one could live for him. But, this image does not work if one has internalized a probabilistic approach to the world. There is no process here. There is no methodology to work with. There is no trying and testing of the system. There is no support for the ‘down’ times. The focus is on the Abyss and not on the order that exists within creation.

Pascal argues that the individual needs to pick a way of life that one would like to live. But, this requires other individuals that are living the life that one would like to emulate. Once a choice is made one puts oneself into a position where they are living with those they would like to emulate and in doing so they have role models and a support system that helps them to keep their eyes on the process and not on the randomness. In this way, faith is built and lived. And this is our topic for the next post.