Q&A: The Importance of Method over Content
The Importance of Method over Content
Question
You’ve written more than once that in your view it is better for a person to think well and arrive at a mistaken conclusion than to hold the truth by means of crooked thinking.
Can you explain that? To me this is very puzzling. Method is ultimately just an excellent means of reaching conclusions. If someone happened by mistake to land on a correct conclusion through an illogical path, maybe he’s foolish, but who cares?
One could argue that the same conclusion will be understood more precisely if it is reached in the right way. I accept that, but: a. it’s hard to find a case where an imprecise understanding would be worse than a complete but logical error. b. in the end, in such a case the person arrived at a conclusion different from the truth, and it doesn’t seem that that’s what you were talking about.
My puzzlement grows when it comes to value-laden and moral issues. Isn’t it practically better for a person to be right by mistake and act properly than to err for a reasonable cause and sin?
Answer
I don’t agree with your premise. If the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted results, He would have created us without free choice and would have achieved them with certainty. His purpose is that we choose them. Therefore the path is of very great importance, perhaps even more than the bottom line. See also my columns on perfection and self-perfection.
Discussion on Answer
Poq,
I see at least two important virtues in your argument: 1. It has nothing to do with the discussion. 2. It begs the question. I’ll now explain why.
1. The question whether the path matters does not mean that the path has to be philosophical rather than intuitive (or that a professor has an advantage over an ordinary person).
2. You are begging the question, because you are examining whether the results matter according to the results of the two alternatives.
You’re saying that the path matters because through it the conclusion is reached out of choice. So in the end what matters is the result; it’s just that you want it in a chosen way.
Are you simply claiming that intention matters more than outcome? Even then the issue is not clear. Because obviously not every instance of illogical thinking stems from culpable negligence. At the very least you need to narrow your claim and speak about intellectual honesty, not intellectual sharpness.
My first sentence was a genuine oxymoron. After I explained to you why it is not true that the result is what matters, but rather that intention and the path are no less important, you repeat that and then conclude that what matters is the result. Fascinating.
I personally do indeed think that intention matters more than outcome. Kant thought so too, and reason supports it. A person who intended good and it turned out badly is a good person. A person who intended evil and it turned out well (he thought he was eating pork and what came to his hand was lamb) is a bad person.
Finally, you end with a sentence fitting for you and for your whole comment: I need to narrow my conclusion and speak about intellectual honesty rather than sharpness. And here the reader wonders: where exactly did I speak about sharpness?!
Quite a riddle indeed. Many thanks.
Easy now—what’s with the tone? I’ve learned a lot from you and I respect you. I came to discuss this respectfully, and I’m only trying to understand you on this point; there’s a problem with terms (path, result, sharpness), and it can be solved.
1. You write elsewhere that the path is more important than the result. If you mean to be more precise here and claim that they are equally important, I’d be glad if you would confirm that clearly (and then I’ll wonder where you got such precise and narrow scales).
2. You say the path is more important because what is required is choice. I replied that from that reasoning the opposite follows: the result is what matters, except that we want it by choice.
3. Point 2 became irrelevant because in the second part of my comment I suggested—and you indeed confirmed—that you are relying on a moral principle according to which intention matters more than outcome, and from that it follows in particular that when it comes to thinking, it is preferable for a person to make a serious effort and think earnestly and arrive at errors than to think negligently and arrive at the truth. If we compare it to the lamb-and-pork case, then putting one’s hand into the pot is the analogy for the thinking, and lifting out the meat and eating it are the analogy for the conclusion and living accordingly. Okay, if I summarized you correctly, then we’re aligned.
4. If that is indeed the case, then when you say that good thinking is more important than correct conclusions, you mean serious and thorough thinking—not necessarily clever or wise thinking. That is, if someone thinks carefully with the limited abilities he was given, that is perfectly fine, and I don’t care that he isn’t smart enough to think correctly. “To think well” can mean intellectual honesty, and it can mean sharpness (or wisdom / cleverness / knowledge or whatever) and anything else that helps thinking be logical. Whether a person is more or less logical does not make a difference with respect to the moral value of his thinking; what does make a difference is how sincere and honest he is with himself.
That’s why He gave the Torah: so that most people wouldn’t go wrong and would simply accept things from the sages, and that’s it. In any case everyone still has choice, because they can choose not to accept. That’s at least Maimonides’ theory.
And in fact, in reality we see that it’s דווקא philosophers who arrived at very strange ideas, some of them truly dangerous, which caused enormous damage to humanity, especially in the 20th century, whereas most ordinary people have common sense. In Israel too, if Heaven forbid the political views of the professors were listened to, there’s a very good chance that the State of Israel would long since no longer exist.