Why Do We Need to Speak As-if?

As-if is a strange and wonderful language that we all speak inside our normal language — whether English or French or Japanese. Even an Enlightenment rationalist like Adam Smith spoke of the Invisible Hand when he found himself not able to speak directly about what might now be called a self-organizing system. This is not really different from childish talk about fairies or superstitious talk about demons and spirits. Both are efforts to deal with what a theory of reality, what I call a worldview, when that theory is richer than our explicit thoughts and the available words. Before going on, I’ll note that I generally reserve the term ‘worldview’ for a relatively fleshed-out and rational ‘theory of created reality’, but simpler views — including those of some imaginative children — are much like worldviews.

As-if language can be a sign of a serious misunderstanding of reality or it can be simply a sign that metaphoric language is being used where straightforward language fails for the reasons I’ve already stated.

We can be trapped by as-if language. To be trapped into demonic language when speaking of the evil done by masses of men is to be trapped in one of the literalistic mazes. Once demons may have been the only likely explanation the eerie way in which such evil is done with surprisingly little design. In terms of self-organization, the Holocaust was as much a wonder as the economy of Glasgow which Adam Smith watched with wonder in his heart. How can we speak of such matters? Scientists and mathematicians and engineers and philosophers and others are still struggling to get a handle on that major source of the obscurity which leads to as-if language — self-organizing systems.

Schools of fish act as if under global direction: a school of many thousands of fish can turn in a fraction of a section. This comes about though the fish are only reacting to their immediate neighbors.

Human social and political movements are surprisingly similar to the movements of a school of fish — this is what Adam Smith called the Invisible Hand. An economy or a political society can organize itself though the individual human beings are doing nothing more than acting locally. Smith observed a society in which the individuals were subject to the moral order of the Presbyterian Church — whether they were believers or not. Hence, one characteristic of the economy of Glasgow was good moral-order.

The term ‘Invisible Hand’ is potentially as superstitious as any talk about goddesses who bring the earth to life in Spring or demons who possess human beings to cause various diseases. As-if language can be useful because it pushes the boundaries of our talk beyond the limitations defined by our well-formed knowledge. And sometimes, there is a certain beauty and power in as-if language so that biologists, such as the early Darwin, will wax poetically about the elegance and beauty of nature in a way his successors will often label as anthropomorphic. You might even catch an astrophycist speaking about the beauty of those exploding and imploding gas clouds which are the breeding grounds of stars.

As-if language can contain legitimate metaphors speaking of truths which can’t be stated in scientific or mathematical language. As-if can be useful even when there’s an element of fantasy or outright untruth involved. The problem comes when we literalize ways of speaking, including the times when we Christians literalize allegorical or metaphorical texts from the Bible.

The question remains: why do we speak as-if in the first place? I’ve given an answer but I’m not satisfied.

As-if language can be a sign of a serious misunderstanding of reality or it can be simply a sign that metaphoric language is being used where straightforward language fails.

This is a problem that deserves serious study and I’ll be trying to free time to catch up on developments in neurobiology, including those branches of neurobiology which try to use the power of evolutionary theories to explain issues of human perception, cognition, imagination, and speech.

So little time and so much to think about.