Political Philosophy and Ethics discussion
Both Pol. and Ethical Philosophy
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Reason, Informal Logic, Evidence, and Critical Thinking
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Feliks
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Dec 01, 2019 11:55AM
I thought the confusion between JFK and Archduke Ferdinand was enough of an American aspect for us to look at. Anyway yes all surveys and all news articles; always to taken with a measure of salt.
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Dear All,Alan suggested that I post a link to this--https://www.academia.edu/40680131/The...
& I hope that some of you will find it interesting....
Best wishes!
I skimmed the article this morning, and will do a more in-depth reread later. I realized after talking to Alan yesterday and reading this article that I am not a proper student of philosophy. Plato would rightly describe me as a sophist. I think I am much more interested in consistency for the sake of a rhetorical point than I am in making sure my beliefs and actions are aligned. That was quite a revelation for me to make.
Mod
Full disclosure: I have not read any of the postmodernists and probably won’t have time to read any of them in the near future. Accordingly, what I understand about them is based solely on secondary sources. This is contrary to my usual self-imposed rule not to rely on secondary sources. However, it is a question of priorities: I simply have had more important things to read and, before retirement, more necessary things to do. Accordingly, with advance apologies, I quote the following as consistent with my understanding of what postmodernism is about. If someone who has read actual postmodernist literature wishes to express a contrary interpretation, please feel free, as always, to do so.
The following is an excerpt from Arthur M. Melzer, Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Philosophic Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 329-30, Kindle:
Postmodernism is, in Jean-Francois Lyotard’s famous definition, an “incredulity towards meta-narratives,” that is, a chastening effort to particularize, localize, and temporalize— in a word, historicize— rationality. [Citation omitted.] As such, it involves a wide-ranging critique of reason— a humbling of Enlightenment rationalism, a debunking of the idea of universal, objective, and eternal Truth. Among postmodernism’s various proponents, this critique involves such things as a rejection of foundationalism, essentialism, subject/object dualism, binary oppositions, and a leveling of the distinctions between literature and philosophy and between rhetoric and logic. For most, the key element of this critique of reason is the claim that all thought is necessarily based on or conditioned by something unthought, something given by language, politics, or history and therefore particular, contingent, and transitory. This widespread postmodernist disempowering of reason, in which modern philosophy seems to have culminated, constitutes the second powerful source of the contemporary attack on reason.Strauss died in 1973 and accordingly had no experience of Trumpist “alternative facts” and its constant employment of fallacious thinking (including but not limited to daily—nay hourly—violations of the noncontradiction principle). But I think it is not a stretch to suggest that such right-wing irrationalism is given “cover” by left-wing postmodernism. At least that has been my hypothesis for many years. When the Left—or significant portions of it—abandoned reason in theory, the Right put such postmodernism into practice by electing, with the help of the Electoral College, the first truly postmodernist president in US history. Perhaps there are historical parallels: one might investigate, for example, the effects of Nietzschean emotionalism on the rise of Nazism.
This crisis of reason is what formed the beginning point for [Leo] Strauss’s path of thought and the focus of his philosophical project. Beginning in the 1930s, Strauss was among the first clearly to identify and to confront this precise double challenge and also the first to explain it— that is, to explain the inner connection between these two opposite antirational forces, such that both of them should be surging at the same time. He argued that the strange, late modern resurgence of religion, the shift in the reason-revelation balance, has largely been caused by the triumph of postmodernism or historicism, because postmodernism has undermined the Enlightenment rationalism that had been undermining religion. The postmodernist critique holds that reason is unable to attain to anything like universal, timeless truth and furthermore that such truth is a thing that our culture can easily learn to do without. We can get by with our local “narrative.” But this critique of reason deprives it of the firmest grounds upon which to oppose revelation. You can do many things with a “narrative,” but you cannot refute God. Thus, the ancient force of religion has gained a surprising new lease on life at the end of modernity— and not for sociological reasons but for powerful philosophical ones: through the rise of postmodernism, corrosive modern reason has at length turned on itself, undermining its own capacity to contest the claims of revelation.
Mod
The excerpt from Melzer’s book spoke of “the second powerful source of the contemporary attack on reason.” In the preceding pages (237-39), he identifies the first attack on reason as the theoretical and popular ascendancy of religion, especially fundamentalist religion. Strauss was aware of the theoretical resurgence of religion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and his writing mostly addressed that philosophical position. (For example, though not mentioned here by Melzer, Strauss objected to the dominant Christian Platonist movement in academic philosophy, arguing that it departed from what Plato wrote and meant.) As Melzer observes, Strauss did not experience the popular fundamentalism and religious frenzy that have become so prominent in American and other cultures since his death.
Hi Alan, I'm actually somewhat flattered that you can find such mainstream antecedents for my own thinking, although I probably shouldn't be so surprised that someone has drawn similar conclusions that I have, and thought through the implications much more clearly than I could. I actually think of myself as sympathetic to the Enlightenment project, and it is only in discussion here that has made me realize that things may not be so simple.I think the real postmodern influence on my thought began with my engagement with feminism, and the few but crucial encounters I have made with various women over the years. Those experiences and my later reflections have made me instinctively suspicious of reason, although had these women I met been more sympathetic to the Enlightenment project of a life grounded in reason, perhaps things would have taken a different turn. I find that reason is unable to penetrate the psychological interiority of other people, which I most dramatically observed in my experience with women. I have not read the postmodernists at all, either in the primary sources or otherwise, but I have read a little of Nietzsche and Nietzsche scholarship, and read a little more about feminism.
I value psychological understanding of the Other even more than I value logic, (which I do happen to value,) ultimately because human beings are fundamentally social and we cannot get on in the world without understanding and (here is the hard part) respecting people even if they are clearly irrational and live in ways that I would not choose for myself. On occasion, I have even observed why theirs was the better way after all, after trying to see things from their perspective. I am a little more practical because of it. But when on occasion I contemplate how I could have been very different from how I am, I shrug and cannot help but feel that who I am now is the better way, for me.
Perhaps our democracy would be better if the electorate had a greater appreciation for the Enlightenment foundations of this nation, but I think fundamentally why the American system works is because presidential candidates do not win the White House unless they are keen students of human nature. That is the most important quality democratic elections select for, and the depraved, current resident of the Oval Office is no exception.
Regarding Nietzsche, I have read that the conflation of Nietzsche's thought with Nazism is due to the efforts of Nietzsche's sister, and that serious scholars of Nietzsche do not think he supported anything like Nazism or fascism. In fact, Nietzsche wrote virtually nothing about politics, but I am aware of at least one scholarly publication that attempts to wring a coherent political philosophy out of Nietzsche's vast corpus. What I have read suggests to me that I should be skeptical of these efforts, although if I were as conscientious as you are about familiarizing myself with the primary sources of an author to whom I consider some intellectual debt, I would perhaps be more open-minded about such things.
Mod
Yes, I have observed that quality of Nietzsche myself, not due to any close reading on my part, but simply by the number of times I have seen someone slap together a collection of Nietzsche quotes that sound, by themselves, highly objectionable. Based upon my own engagement with Nietzsche's writing, I think one of the challenges of Nietzsche scholarship is the difficulty of knowing when he is critiquing or praising a certain idea or behavior. He seems to have been an expert practitioner of sublimation - the art of absorbing the qualities of those whom he studied, whether he adored or detested them. His upbringing suggests to me that it is tempting to see him as a textbook reactionary, but the things he says and how he says them are so extraordinary that it is often hard to be sure of what he really meant, even if he often says things that can easily be quoted out of context as espousing this or that view. Reading his prose, it is not surprising to learn he went quite mad in the final years of his life.
Even though I've never read it myself, in spite of the wide availability of this celebrated Nietzsche study, I'm told that Walter Kaufmann's Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist depicts Nietzsche as the arch-rationalist. Alisdair MacIntyre in his After Virtue interprets Nietzsche as the logical outcome of the Enlightenment, as reason gone amok. MacIntyre's response was a rejection of modernity and a return to the classical virtue best embodied (in his view) by Aristotle.
I should add that based upon what I know about Nietzsche, I am not a Nietzschean. For one thing, I am not a fan of art, and for another, I am decidedly in favor of the quotidian and everyday, rather than the sublime. However, there are some remarkable critiques he has made that I think anybody can benefit from hearing. I think upon hearing what he has to say and having seen the world, however briefly, from his perspective, one is forever changed and cannot be indifferent.
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Mod
I read Beyond Good and Evil and Zarathustra as well as portions of other of Nietzsche’s works long ago. I concluded from such reading, as I have probably noted elsewhere in this Goodreads group, that Nietzsche was absolutely right half the time and absolutely wrong the other half. He had some important insights, as in Beyond Good and Evil and some of his other writings, but then he ruined it all with his bizarre poetic flights as in Zarathustra. Moreover, I disagree with what I understand of his overall philosophical structure. Someday I hope to have time to revisit his writings. If and when I do, it will be interesting to see how I separate the wheat from the chaff—and if I do so in the same way I did when I read him in my twenties.
To get the real flavor of Nietzsche, it’s probably best to read what he actually wrote and, thereafter, read secondary interpretations and see whether the latter agree with one’s own interpretation. Kauffmann is, to my knowledge, the best English translator of Nietzsche, though I am not an expert on this. I have some of Nietzsche’s writings in the original German as well as in translation. I know enough German to catch some of the lyrical quality of his writing but not enough to read him in German without the assistance of an English translation.
I have read Kaufmann's translation of On the Genealogy of Morals and thought at the time how much of a privilege it would be to read him in the original German. I imagine it is a privilege analogous to reading George Eliot or Thomas Carlyle in English.One gets the impression while reading Nietzsche of a fearless intellect who does not let anything pass before his analytical faculties without interrogation. But I think the ambiguity of such thorough analysis is why I have read scholarly analysis that conflicts with the impression I received while reading the text myself. For example, one might believe from reading Nietzsche's discussion of slave morality that he abhorred any form of morality or discipline. But one authoritative commentator problematizes this reading by noting in passing that, on the contrary, Nietzsche is a fanatic of discipline as a form of self-domination. He is the philosopher of power because he recognized how power arises from value, and how we disguise our greed for power in the form of morality. Where I part ways from him is where Nietzsche seems to suggest we should choose our morality in a way most consistent with our deepest desires for self-actualization.
I hope I am not misremembering what I have read, but in any case, I have been deeply affected by the example of Nietzsche as precisely what to avoid in my own life, while being inspired by his intellectual daring. I was rather deeply struck by the futility of the Nietzschean enterprise during a stay a few years ago I had at two mental hospitals, where I by chance struck up conversation with a fellow patient. He showed me his Bible, an English-Spanish bilingual edition if I recall correctly, and I happened to turn to a page and began reading out loud. The passage in the NKJV runs as follows: "And I set my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is grasping for the wind. For in much wisdom is much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow." I began weeping instantly.
Mod
I delved into Nietzsche at the same time I was experiencing mild symptoms of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. The consequences were unforgettable as I slid into full blown schizophrenia, and thought the American intelligence community was monitoring me and following me everywhere. It has been many years, but I have finally progressed to the point where I have attained peace of mind and a healthy lifestyle, in no small degree aided by medication.My doctor is gradually reducing the dosage of my medication, and in fact I already feel I am mentally equipped to go without it. In the meantime, this conversation has rekindled my interest in Nietzsche, so that I am reading a collection of essays on the Genealogy. I approach it out of intellectual curiosity rather than as an actual attempt to probe my deepest philosophical convictions, which is just as well for myself and those around me.
Mod
I'm glad that you are experiencing considerable improvement, and I wish you the best regarding your full recovery.
This is just a quick follow-up to Alan's & Allen's very interesting discussion about Nietzsche & related issues.Hans Sluga's 1993 book, *Heidegger's Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany*--
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.p...
ch. 2 in particular, has a very good discussion of the appropriation of N's philosophy by the Nazis.
Relatedly, my own radically different take/spin on N's "philosophizing with a hammer" is here--
https://www.academia.edu/40905915/How...
Mod
I notice that you do not discuss Leo Strauss's approach to the theory-practice question. Strauss taught that modern philosophy was wrong in subordinating philosophy to political ends—from Machiavelli to Marx, Nietzsche, and beyond. Yet Strauss also noted (quoting from memory and I don’t recall the source) that “philosophy need not be barren of practical consequences,” and he quoted a philosopher (I don’t remember whom and, again, quoting from memory and not recalling the source), that “philosophy must beware of attempting to be edifying, but it is of necessity edifying.” Strauss himself, of course, had a kind of intellectual political program in emphatically opposing positivism (scientism) and relativism (historicism). But Strauss never expressed support for a political party or even a political movement (unlike some of his epigones). The most he would say is that he admired Churchill for his stance against “the tyrant.” Plato's Republic, Strauss thought, was an eternal demonstration of the impossibility of combining philosophy and politics. Plato's Seventh Letter was along the same line, albeit in the context of actual, concrete historical circumstances. Unlike some scholars, Strauss considered the Seventh Letter to be authentic.
I have always affixed a question mark to Strauss's remarks on the theory-practice issue, and I still don’t know what my exact position is on this. I started out, as Plato says he himself did (Seventh Letter 324b), being interested in a political career, but, again like Plato (Seventh Letter 324c-26b), I soon realized that such a career would be impossible for me—and not only for the obvious reasons. This is when I decided to write my Master’s Essay ( “The Teaching of Plato's Seventh Letter”) on the Seventh Letter. It was kind of a cathartic exercise for me.
In my ongoing research on free will, I have been somewhat diverted by reading Descartes before returning to Kant, your interpretation of Kant, and your own approach to free will. I am preparing the section in my free will book on Descartes before proceeding to the section on Kant, since I need to understand what exactly Descartes said and how exactly Kant responded to Descartes. I read the Discourse on Method and Meditations in college and have now revisited those works. I also just finished reading Descartes’s Principles of Philosophy for the first time and am now reading his Passions of the Soul and some of his letters. It has always been clear to me that Descartes wrote somewhat exoterically in order to avoid Galileo’s fate at the hands of the authorities. But I didn’t realize the extent of his exotericism until reading him the last few days. For example (all quotes are from volume 1 of The Philosophical Writings of Descartes [Cambridge University Press, 1985]), sections 37 (“The supreme perfection of man is that he acts freely or voluntarily, and it is this which makes him deserve praise or blame”) and 39 (“The freedom of the will is self-evident”) of the Principles of Philosophy blatantly contradict section 40 (“It is also certain that everything was preordained by God”). Section 41 (“How to reconcile freedom of our will with divine preordination”) does not reconcile anything. It remains a contradiction, which Descartes basically acknowledges, pleading that “we remember that our mind is finite, while the power of God is infinite . . . .”
I have also just read Richard Kennington’s essay on Descartes in History of Political Philosophy, 3rd ed., ed. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 421-39. Kennington points to “the notorious caution of [Descartes’s] manner of writing,” as evidenced in part by the latter’s own written admissions (421); see also Arthur M. Melzer’s collection of quotations by and about Descartes in the section on Descartes here at pages 55-56. There are many interesting things in Kennington’s analysis (including on the theory-practice issue), but I found the following statement (page 433) most compelling: “[Descartes] shared with Hobbes, the chief founder of modern natural-right doctrine, the view that reason serves the passions. In the decisive context of the comparison of man and the brutes, reason is a ‘universal instrument’ [citation omitted]: what distinguishes man from the brutes is a unique means, not a specifically different end.” The more I read about modernity, including the Enlightenment, the more I realize how modernity twisted the meaning of reason to refer only to instrumental rationality. We see the consequences all around us in our lifetimes. Human goals or ends, according to modern social science, are mere “value judgments” not susceptible to rational analysis. Goals are all a matter of individual preferences. The job of academic social science is to apply reason only to the means, not ends, of political action. Thus, if you want to have a tyrannical regime, the intellectuals will provide you with the most rational means of achieving your desires.
Robert wrote: "This is just a quick follow-up to Alan's & Allen's very interesting discussion about Nietzsche & related issues.Hans Sluga's 1993 book, *Heidegger's Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi German..."
Hi Robert, I read your article, and I have a few thoughts about it.
I was actually already thinking about philosophical quietism before I started reading your article, and was surprised to find that you mention it, although your definition in many ways differs from mine. The kind of philosophical quietism that I have heretofore been sympathetic to is one that does not attempt to assert any kind of positive philosophical view at all, intending instead a consistent kind of Pyrrhonian skepticism.
I find it somewhat obnoxious to insist on this kind of skepticism in discussion with others however. It is not the impression I want to give. Namely, I prefer this kind of skepticism because it coheres with a kind of self-effacement that I am deeply sympathetic to. I think it is in some ways related to my medical condition, although because of my gradual recovery, I am finding this kind of of self-effacement (in both philosophical matters and otherwise) increasingly difficult to maintain. I find that philosophical discussion tends to make me take a philosophical position, and thus be other than the narrowly skeptical person that I prefer to be. I think this is good development.
You bring up Wittgenstein in your article, and I suspect even if I were to abandon my wide-ranging skepticism, I would still find Wittgenstein's philosophical attitude quite congenial. His approach to philosophy, as you mention, is that philosophy should attempt to describe and not to explain. I have read one expositor of Wittgenstein's philosophy claim that his approach is "anti-intellectual," and I like what his approach entails. It is one that tries to avoid unnecessary interpretation and attempts to instill an appreciation for common sense in philosophical matters. Perhaps one would still need to rely on arguments, to avoid question begging, but the end result would be to reduce the role of unnecessary intellectualization.
You identify philosophical quietism as simply an approach to philosophy that is apolitical. I am actually quite sympathetic to this apolitical approach, as I think it results in a style of bloodless matter-of-factness that is the very quality that will make such philosophy endure. Of course, as I have already mentioned, I am opposed to unnecessary intellectualization - so in that respect I am in some ways opposed to most philosophy as practiced in the academy - but in other respects, particularly the question of whether philosophy should remain apolitical, I am not. I think one nail you hit right on the head though is that academia, however much it pretends to be apolitical, is in fact thoroughly political in its assumptions, even if it is political in muted, repressed ways. What I would like to see happen, however, is for philosophy to be more objective, not less, even if I suspect that this objectivity could never be objective enough. It is only in philosophical discussion that I would like to see people acknowledge their subjective bias.
I have read that feminism opposes the sort of barren objectivity I am describing, simply because attempts to be objective inevitably bolster patriarchy. I am not so systematic a thinker that I have an answer to this tension in my commitments. On the one hand, I find feminism - a decidedly political approach to philosophy - quite compelling. On the other hand, I would prefer that philosophers remain as apolitical as possible, even when such attempts to be apolitical in fact highlight the necessarily political commitments that are simply unstated, though present. I think the way to resolve this tension, however facile though it may be, is to be political where the subject matter is fundamentally political, and to be apolitical otherwise. This gets into one of the points you raise - how can one determine if a topic is "fundamentally" political without question-begging? That is a thorny question that I don't have an answer to, and in all likelihood, it is fatal to the principle I am articulating. I will have to consider this question further.
Incidentally, you mention moralism in your article, multiculturalist or otherwise. I actually don't have a problem with it, either from the left or the right, namely because I feel the very shrillness of the rhetoric betrays the fragility of what is actually being said. Where doing so does not involve violating liberal neutrality in the broader societal context, I am all for people engaging in moralism, however authoritarian it may appear. As long as people have the freedom to follow their own conscience, I don't think there is anything wrong with Twitter mobs on the attack.
While I don't think it is the job of philosophy to solve the problem of alienation in liberal societies, the fact that your philosophical project results in prose that is so much fun to read makes me reconsider my opinion. Also, I have added your Kant, Agnosticism, and Anarchism to my to-read list.
Regarding the problem of thought-control imposed by the structure of society, my personal attitude is to make the patterns of thought that best adapt me to such a society so ingrained that I can fit in without a discernible cost. This is not such a bad thing actually. Part of being able to function in a liberal society is the ability to communicate - that is, get through, in the most fundamental way possible - with others, while being able to think for oneself. I don't think conformity, if it offers the possibility of genuine communication, can be as sinister as you make it out to be. So while I am sympathetic to your calls for "critical consciousness" and "radically enlightened self-education," with an opposition to "destructive, deforming institutions," I think our disagreement is in what exactly makes an institution destructive or deforming. Of course, perhaps my rather blithe acceptance of the status quo might have to do with the fact I am rather well-off financially and have good relations with my immediate family. If such was not the case, I would probably not feel as I currently do.
Again, the idea of using a different philosophical format is very interesting, and I hope to see more examples in the future.
Many thanks!, Alan & Allen, for those extremely interesting follow-up comments on my essay about philosophical activism vs. philosophical quietism--https://www.academia.edu/40905915/How...
Here are two quick follow-ups to your follow-ups.
First, the sort of philosophical activism I end up defending is entirely dignitarian & non-coercive, which would rule out philosophers engaging in any sort of politics that undermines, violates, or more generally fails sufficiently to respect human dignity, or is coercive in any way.
So that rules out a great many kinds of politics that philosophers might wrongheadedly engage in, via collaboration, or accommodation, e.g., any coercive authoritarian or totalitarian state.
And that thought overlaps, perhaps, with much of what motivated Strauss to recommend that philosophers stay out of politics--& that's also similar to what Sluga recommends in his book.
The crucial thing, for me, is that philosophers should also be prepared to engage in politics in order to defend or protect themselves, as philosophers & persons with dignity, & above all to defend or protect innocent others too.
Quietism in the face of such threats would be philosophically self-stultifying, not to mention immoral.
Second, apart from the reasons for my recommending dignitarian, non-coercive, philosophical activism, I'm also *very* sympathetic to Wittgenstein's views, both early & late.
E.g., in this--
https://www.academia.edu/41899807/The...
there are 4 chapters on Wittgenstein's *Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,* 4 chapters on his *Philosophical Investigations*, & another chapter on Wittgenstein's Kantianism....
Mod
On March 19, 2020, I will be moderating a discussion group of the Pittsburgh Freethought Community on the topic “Detecting Fake News: Critical vs. Fallacious Thinking.” I have posted the following topic description:
In this session we will discuss critical vs. fallacious thinking. We live in an age in which fallacious thinking and false information are rampant. How can we spot logical fallacies and improperly sourced “facts”? Among other things, we will consider some examples of fallacious and fact-free arguments perpetrated by elements of both the political Right and the political Left.The post-session bibliography referenced in the notice will include the books I have cited in the present Goodreads topic.
“Critical thinking” does not mean a propensity to criticize, though it does mean a propensity to evaluate carefully, rationally, and skeptically. It is synonymous with “rational thinking.” The study of fallacies is part of a larger subject called “informal logic.” This is the kind of logic that applies to everyday personal, social, and political life, as distinguished from quasi-mathematical, academic formal logic. Promise: no symbolic logic will be utilized in this session, and no humans will be sacrificed.
The following references are not required reading/viewing. Sometime after this session, a more extensive bibliography will be posted in the PFC Forum (accessed by clicking the three horizontal bars on the right-hand side of the PFC home page) for those interested in pursuing these issues further.
“What is Critical Thinking?” (video, 2:29 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnJ1b.... This is an introduction to critical thinking.
“5 Steps to Improve Your Critical Thinking: (video, 4:29 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dItUG.... This is a somewhat more advanced introduction to critical thinking.
“Top 10 Logical Fallacies” (video, 6:55 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IawIj.... This video is spot-on regarding typical fallacies, but there are many more examples, including political examples, than what are set forth here. It appears to be geared to a younger (millennial or gen Z) audience.
“How to Spot Fake News”: https://www.factcheck.org/2016/11/how.... As lawyers say, res ipsa loquitur (“the thing speaks for itself”).
Wikipedia, “List of Fallacies”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of.... This extensive list covers the gamut, though not all scholars of logical reasoning agree that every one of these items is a fallacy.
The location of the session will be in a southern suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. If you happen to live in the Pittsburgh area (or will be in the vicinity on March 19) and would like to attend this session, please message me on this Goodreads platform.
Alan E. Johnson
3/12/2020 NOTE: THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELED DUE TO THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC. It will be rescheduled after the crisis passes.
Mod
I laughed when I read your announcement yesterday morning, Alan, and was going to reply after watching all the videos later in the evening. I ended up not making it all the way through them, hence my lack of a reply.In related news, here is an article about WeWork cofounder Rebekah Neumann I read yesterday at the doctor's office. It gives an interesting account of how even the most canny financial investors were taken in by WeWork's methods to short-circuit investors' critical thinking faculties.
https://www.bustle.com/p/rebekah-neum...
Mod
Thanks, Allen, I wasn't sure that people would understand the joke, which was somewhat subtle and perhaps reflects my own priorities more than those of most people.
I skimmed the WeWork article (no time to read the whole thing), and it certainly is amazing how delusional a lot of people, especially the wealthy, are.
Mod
Mod
Alan wrote: "The more I read about modernity, including the Enlightenment, the more I realize how modernity twisted the meaning of reason to refer only to instrumental rationality. We see the consequences all around us in our lifetimes. Human goals or ends, according to modern social science, are mere “value judgments” not susceptible to rational analysis. Goals are all a matter of individual preferences. The job of academic social science is to apply reason only to the means, not ends, of political action. Thus, if you want to have a tyrannical regime, the intellectuals will provide you with the most rational means of achieving your desires..."Although social scientists might debate back with you Alan, from exactly this deeply-underlying blind spot you just raised; I think they would probably be fervent in their objections.
They might insist (both Gadamer and Schmidt, in 'History and Structure' for instance) that scientific determinism is the modern force which leads in this direction and that 'social sciences are at bottom, the moral sciences'. (Professor Joshua Cohen of MIT, reviewing Carol C. Gould's 'Rethinking Democracy').
I myself am not taking up this view strenuously because I think there's certainly merit in what you observed in the post above. But I want to reply theoretically, or as a devil's advocate:
Admitting for the moment that you are correct and that overly-liberal modernists simply embrace any human end, as 'reasonable' and 'acceptable'. But --in their defense, isn't that simply embracing human free will? If they were to assume any other position towards human-ends (judging or evaluating in advance) would that not be limiting human freedom to 'decide our own ends for ourselves'? Would that not be taking the Kantian negative role, denying humans as-ends- in-themselves?
Mod
I'm not clear as to what you are trying to say. During much of the twentieth century, the official version of "social science" said that all ends were mere personal preferences, and that reason was merely instrumental. I don't know what exactly the situation is in twenty-first-century social science. I don't think any of this had to do with free will. If one uses reason to formulate ends, this is not a denial of free will. Au contraire. I'm not advocating that human ends should be dictated by an authoritarian government nor am I saying that rational human ends are, in contrast to irrational human ends, somehow predetermined as a matter of metaphysics and/or nature and/or theology. What I understand you to say is that ends are freely chosen if they are irrational but not freely chosen if they are rational. I've never known any thinker who argues this, nor do I think it makes any sense.
Mod
Perhaps you are adopting the postmodernist position, as I understand it, that reason is inherently repressive. This is, to my mind, totally insane.
Mod
Along this line, Marcuse complained of “repressive reason.” See my critique of Marcuse’s approach at pages 2-5 and 25-27 here.
Alan wrote: "the official version of "social science" said that all ends were mere personal preferences, ..." Such as the preference of *someone* for tyranny, which, (taken from your sentence here) ...
"Thus, if you want to have a tyrannical regime, the intellectuals will provide you with the most rational means of achieving your desires"
...implies to me at least, that social scientists will freely assist anyone's preference because it is the individual's freely-made choice. Is there anything wrong with that, per se? They uphold human freedom-of-choice, because it is part of their liberal, modernist, framework to uphold such.
"I don't think any of this had to do with free will."
That's what I'm asking, because it seems to me as if it does. (Of course, 'free will' is on my mind lately a lot more than it ever has been before, thanks to your current project and the lively discussions ongoing about it here in the group).
"If one uses reason to formulate ends, this is not a denial of free will. Au contraire."
I'm not questioning what might lead to an individual determining his choice of say, a monarchy or a democracy. Only noting that it is 'his' choice.
And to safeguard the choice remaining 'his' --my next question is --does assessing 'his' choice and finding that it fails to meet our criteria means we restrain any impulse to assist it to fruition, not put us in the role of intervening in free will?
If/when we compare the social scientists' liberal-spirited impulse towards 'instrumentation only' (and find it so short-sighted when compared to a 'better method' wherein we rank human goals, instead) we are not interfering with the play of free will?
"I'm not advocating that human ends should be dictated by an authoritarian government..."
Acknowledged and understood. I follow you here. But --even with the understanding that one human judging another's goals, need not necessarily be his master --where do we then stand in relationship towards other human beings, if we can evaluate their preferences with the power to issue a 'yea' or a 'nay'?
"nor am I saying that rational human ends are, in contrast to irrational human ends, somehow predetermined as a matter of metaphysics and/or nature and/or theology...."
I hadn't directed any scrutiny to this aspect at all; at first glance it doesn't appear to have bearing on the point I'm honing in on.
I'm not comparing the validity of some 'ends' to other 'ends'; but 'means' versus ends'. Is it flatly adamantly wrong for social scientists to focus on 'means', if this is a result of their tacit allowance that human 'ends' are not for them to judge?
"What I understand you to say is that ends are freely chosen if they are irrational but not freely chosen if they are rational. I've never known any thinker who argues this, nor do I think it makes any sense. ..."
I didn't think that was what I was saying. What I think I am saying is that, (according to your observation) the social sciences apparently pledge themselves to aid human choices without enough regard for their rational outcomes (such as tyranny). I inferred further from what you stated that the 'outcomes' should be better assessed by the social scientists, before simply assisting an individual or group's preference. And that maybe the social scientists ought not to endeavor to help the citizen at all.
So I hope I've come around to a clearer phrasing: is this not interfering with free will? Aren't humans always free to choose their own ends, and if we meddle with the way they go about it, (because we deem them rational/irrational), aren't we preventing them from realizing their free will?
Said another way: what good is choice without implementation of a choice? Isn't it rather like Henry Ford saying, "yes, you can choose any color of Model-T you like, as long as it's black". Meaning: 'go ahead and fantasize about purchasing a car of any color, but when it comes to buying one of my cars, the only color you will actually receive is black because that's what I choose to sell you'.
p.s. Albert Camus talks about this at length in 'The Rebel' (a treatise on the ethics of political and social revolutions) but I'll have to look up the passage before daring to quote him.
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Such as the preference of *someone* for tyranny, which, (taken from your sentence her..."
I have to leave the house right now to get groceries. I'll respond later today.
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None of what you say makes any sense to me. I gather that you are perfectly all right with social scientists' helping Hitler. After all, in your apparent view, nobody has the right to evaluate the rational propriety of Hitler's goals. Indeed, that is what some American companies did: help Hitler, through technology, achieve his genocidal and totalitarian ends by providing him means to accomplish his desires. This is relativism pure and simple, and I think it is profoundly wrong.
You are conflating governmental coercion with individual moral judgment. I am not talking about government coercion (though it certainly would have been legitimate, in my view, for the US government to have prohibited such aid to Hitler). I am talking about individual moral evaluation and the expression of same.
But then I have not read Camus. If this is what Camus says, I will not waste time reading him. As Leo Strauss once wrote (quoting from memory), "Life is too short to read any but the greatest books."
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For the support by American companies of Hitler, see, for example, this article.
Is logic nothing but a natural, psychological fact?That thesis is called "logical psychologism."
And if logic cannot be justified or explained without using logic, then is logic unjustified & inexplicable?
That's called "the logocentric predicament."
If you're interested in either of these issues, then I recommend having a look at the fifth installment in PWB's series on the conceptual & historical foundation of Analytic philosophy--
THE FATE OF ANALYSIS, #5–Husserl’s Arguments Against Logical Psychologism, & How He Solves The Logocentric Predicament.
https://againstprofphil.org/2020/03/1...
I've also re-posted this in the Philosophy Without Borders thread.
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https://againstprofphil.org/2020/03/1..."
Bob, that link doesn't work, but I found it at /againstprofphil.org/2020/03/16/the-fa.... Is there a particular chapter or section in this table of contents to which you would like to direct our attention? I also note that the latter chapters/sections are not hyperlinked.
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https://againstprofphil.org/2020/03/1..."
Bob, that link does..."
Oh, I see now that the essay is after the table of contents.
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Many thanks! for noticing the failed link, Alan--I just edited the post in this thread & replaced it with the correct link, & will also do so in the PWB thread in a few moments.Yes, absolutely, I know that this thread isn't devoted to formal logic.
But these philosophical problems--psychologism & the logocentric predicament/circularity problem--affect logic & rationality generally, whether the logic is formal or informal, so I thought people might be interested; & no knowledge of formal logic is presupposed for an understanding of the basic issues....
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For more information about this session, see my summary and selected bibliography here.
I was deciding whether to respond based on how much I could actually contribute to the discussion.I don't know much about postmodernism, but my understanding is that it is generally concerned with an attack on the authority of reason and objectivity. In that light, I have some hazy notion why somebody would say something crazy like that - that the speed of light is a patriarchal concept. My guess is that the speaker was attacking science's claim to authority, arguing that because the scientific method is fundamentally masculine, it is harmful, as if reason were the domain of masculinity and therefore, patriarchy. Also, I have some hazy recollection of Derrida attacking logic as this mistaken idea that reason is like the light that illuminates the darkness, so the speaker may have been making some allusion that fellow postmodernists would conceivably understand.
One critique of the argument presented here is based on my understanding of liberal feminism, which is a moderate enough that any liberal should be able to see themselves supporting it. One concern of liberal feminism is with the destruction of gender norms, which when we really consider the matter, really constrain human dignity in hidden ways. So saying that rationality and objectivity is the domain of male ways of knowing is in fact a form of gender essentialism, and is ultimately a misguided approach for feminism to take. A sensibility truly liberated by feminist thought would not see reason as necessarily male, or emotion as necessarily female. This is a critique of the argument that has been presented internal to feminism.
Actually, I read in a book last year that most feminist philosophers believe that objectivity and rationality inevitably bolster patriarchy. I think this is a dead end for feminism. Reason and logic should referee public discourse, so if feminists cede rationality over to men, in the long run, they are consigning their movement to political irrelevance. I would not want to see that happen, because I think feminism has many ideas that should be more influential than they are. I am not as well-read about current trends in feminist thought as I would like to be, but I think feminism should be envisioning a future where men and women can be as rational or emotional as they desire without be seen as effeminate or butch. That is probably a long way away, however, and I am not likely to see these ideas infiltrate popular culture in my lifetime. I can always hope though.
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As I have frequently said, the political Left invented postmodernism, but the political Right implemented it in the political arena (see our post-truth political world led, currently, by the US president and his millions of followers). Perhaps it is more accurate to say that the political Left invented postmodernism and implemented it in the academic world, whereas the political Right implemented postmodern concepts (no objective truth etc.) in the bizarro world of right-wing politics and media. One difference is that the political Right still wants to enforce strict gender roles on people.
The attack on reason and evidence by both the far Left and the far Right is concerning, but its philosophical origins go back to the beginnings of modernity with Hobbes, Hume, et al. asserting that reason is and should be only the slave of the passions and then, later, the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment (see Rousseau et al.). Of course, the Enlightenment had its own issues, with its explicit or implicit premise of scientific predeterminism and its rejection of reason (at least with "common sense" philosophers such as David Hume, Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid and Adam Ferguson) in the sphere of human ethics.
Such is the world in which we live.
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Videos:
“5 Steps to Improve Your Critical Thinking: (video, 4:29 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dItUG...
“Top 10 Logical Fallacies” (video, 6:55 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IawIj...
“What is Critical Thinking?” (video, 2:29 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnJ1b...
Books, Articles, and Online Posts:
“How to Spot Fake News”: https://www.factcheck.org/2016/11/how...
“List of Fallacies”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
Barrón-López, Laura. “Bloomberg’s Online Tactics Test the Boundary of Disinformation.” Politico. March 2, 2020. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03...
Fearnside, W. Ward and William B. Holther. Fallacy: The Counterfeit of Argument. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Spectrum, 1959.
Hansen, Hans V. and Robert C. Pinto, eds. Fallacies: Classical and Contemporary Readings. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995.
Johnson, Ralph H. and J. Anthony Blair. Logical Self-Defense. New York: International Debate Education Association, 2006.
Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.
Kelley, David. The Art of Reasoning. 3rd ed. New York: Norton, 1998.
LaBossiere, Michael C. 76 Fallacies. Amazon Digital Services, 2012. Kindle.
Mill, John Stuart. A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation, 8th ed. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1900, https://ia601407.us.archive.org/11/it....
Talbot, Marianne. Critical Reasoning: A Romp through the Foothills of Logic for the Complete Beginner. N.p.: Metaphore, 2014. Kindle.
Toulmin, Richard Rieke, and Allan Janik. An Introduction to Reasoning. 2nd ed. New York: Macmillan 1984.
Vos Savant, Marilyn. The Power of Logical Thinking: Easy Lessons in the Art of Reasoning . . . and Hard Facts About Its Absence in Our Lives. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1996.
Walton, Douglas. Informal Logic: A Pragmatic Approach. 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Kindle.
(revised 4/19/2020)
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Isn’t the assertion that there are no truths self-contradictory? If there are no truths, then the assertion that there are no truths is, by definition, not true.
Or is the principle of noncontradiction itself an untruth? Perhaps that principle does not apply to ultimate questions about metaphysics (see Professor Kant). But if it does not apply to everyday life and human history, what then? Is the statement “totalitarianism is evil” merely an opinion and not a truth? I’ve recently heard the assertion that “the speed of light is a patriarchal construct.” Must we throw science out the window as well as common logic?
My observation is that the Left invents post-truth theory, but the Right implements it. Historians will recognize daily, if not hourly, examples of this phenomenon in today’s political milieu.
Of course there are historical precedents, e.g. Nazism and Stalinism. In the words of Big Brother, “WAR IS PEACE / FREEDOM IS SLAVERY / IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH” (George Orwell, 1984, in “Animal Farm” and “1984” [1949; repr., New York: Harcourt, 2003], 112, Kindle).
Yes, we should retain a proper skepticism and critical attitude regarding all historical, scientific, and philosophical assertions. Humans are always learning. But this is not the same thing as rejecting, a priori, the idea that there may be objective truths. Rather, we should constantly strive to search for same and to improve our knowledge and understanding, historical and otherwise. For example, my book on Roger Williams (The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience [Philosophia, 2015]) debunks, with primary-source historical evidence, many demonstrably false statements made about Williams over more than three centuries (scholars should read the endnotes and appendices as well as the main text). Although absolute, ultimate truth may be elusive to us humans, some statements are supported by reason and evidence, while others are not. We should not assert an equivalence between knowledge and mere opinion.
Alan, you might consider adding a third term to your binary opposition between "knowledge" and "opinion" in your last sentence in post #354.Aristotle distinguishes between knowledge based on inference ("demonstrable") and knowledge of the basis of the inference ("indemonstrable"). See, for example, chapter 3 of part 1 of Posterior Analytics: "Our own doctrine is that not all knowledge is demonstrative: on the contrary, knowledge of the immediate premises is independent of demonstration. (The necessity of this is obvious; for since we must know the prior premises from which the demonstration is drawn, and since the regress must end in immediate truths, those truths must be indemonstrable.)" (72b18-24; Mure trans.)
A term for knowledge of the indemonstrable is "intuition." This is the term that might be added to your binary.
Intuition is a difficult problem, much more difficult than problems of inference. For my two cents, modern philosophy has erred in tending to limit intuition to sensory intuition, eliminating intellectual intuition.
Perhaps the poster child for this error is Hume's billiard ball example, where Hume claims that when one ball collides with another, we may expect that the ball at rest to move when the moving ball hits it, but he insists that "a different different events" might just as well occur (Essay Concerning Human Understanding, section IV, part 1). We "know" the color of the balls (sensory intuition) but we don't "know" causality (intellectual intuition) because we can't "see" it. Hume does not deny causality. He simply makes the skeptical claim that we cannot "know" it; our expectations about it are simply "conventions" based on past experience.
Aristotle's chapter 17 in book 7 of his metaphysics has some simple examples of why we must go beyond what is available to the senses to know the cause of what appears to the senses. A good discussion of this issue appears in McKeon's book on Spinoza, part one, chapter 4, "Spinoza and Experimental Science."
Many think that Kant fixed up the Hume problem (Hume supposedly woke him up from his dogmatic "slumbers"). We can discuss whether Kant succeeded on the Kant thread. Here, it may be enough to note that in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant continues to limit intuition to sensory intuition. He charts the role mental faculties play in processing sensory intuition, but reason goes astray when it goes beyond what is grounded in sensory intuition.
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Aristotle distinguishes between knowledge based on infe..."
I was referring to Plato’s distinction between opinion and knowledge in the Republic, the Seventh Letter, and other writings. All the scholastic erudition from Aristotle to Kant and beyond is interesting, and is certainly a subject for academic theorizing, but Plato, for all his exoteric metaphysical speculations, always had a foot on the ground of practical, political, everyday life. To my mind, the postmodernist and Trumpian assaults on the concept of truth, which were the subject of my post, are more answerable by Plato’s basic distinctions than by intellectual sophistications that are beyond the ken of most people.
I have some time right now in my schedule, so I thought I would share my thoughts here. I do not know very much about postmodernism, so I will not address it here.However, several things struck me while reading this exchange.
First of all, one may grant that there are objective truths, but the question of what kind of truths can be described as objective does in fact have a practical import. For example, the natural and social sciences both claim to arrive at truth, but as Wilhelm Dilthey argued, in fact the kinds of explanations that they can justifiably marshal in the service of truth are different. Theory can offer an explanation as to why the explanatory power of evidence is different in the natural and social sciences.
Second of all, one may grant that the natural and social sciences can arrive at truth, but one may still disagree that there are objective moral truths. I do not have an opinion about this one way or another, but I do see reasons for arguing why this is or is not the case. Theoretical discussions can establish whether objective moral truths exist which do not depend on human consensus, or whether in fact all moral truth is nothing more than the result of human consensus. It seems to me there is not an obvious answer to this question.
Third, I do not think the evidence ever speaks for itself. I have not read deeply of Quine, but my understanding is that one does not subject individual statements of fact to scrutiny, but the whole of one's worldview and its concomitant apparatus to such scrutiny. The truth is that it is not the existence of evidence that is the problem, but often what one chooses to recognize as evidence.
Furthermore, it is surely always reasonable (although perhaps not ethical) to suspend judgment for the sake of skepticism. If that is so, one must realize, it seems to me, that no amount of evidence can ever decisively settle any question. That seems to be in line with the Socratic spirit - to question what is in fact the case. That renders any claim to truth on a fragile epistemological edifice that is always ready to crumble at the moment's notice.
I realize this is a rather controversial view, and I do not expect to convince you, Alan, that I am right. But please note that I did not need to rely on any knowledge of postmodernism to arrive at it. It is just one way of looking at the issue that is the result of taking "the question of truth" seriously.
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My post 354 lacked context, because it was excerpted out of a longer discussion in the American Historical Association online forum regarding post-truth theory. Accordingly, Bob W and Allen evidently misunderstood what I was trying to say.
The contemporary post-truth argument is advanced by two groups: (1) the postmodernists, who argue that all ethical and historical statements are culturally/historically relative, and (2) the Trumpians, who respond to facts supported with knowledge and expertise by arguing “alternative facts,” i.e., stuff they just make up on the spot to support their position. I do not have time or space here to establish the foregoing points: they have been well documented by fact-checkers and others as well as by the recorded statements of the postmodernists and the Trumpians themselves.
Some of the postmodernists even question whether there are any objective facts in science. Thus, some assert, for example, that “the speed of light is a patriarchal concept.” The Trumpians have an innate disdain for scientists and experts. They consult only their “gut” when they spout factual assertions. For both postmodernists and Trumpians, the principle of noncontradiction does not exist. Reason and evidence are useless.
Ergo, the Trumpians appear to be the “intellectual” offspring of the postmodernists. Of course, perhaps the similarity of their views is just accidental.
Are there objective moral/ethical truths? Let’s see. If person A murders person B to steal B’s money or property, is A morally wrong? The postmodernists would say there is no objective way to arrive at this conclusion. The scientific predeterminists would answer, “A is not morally responsible, because A was predestined to commit this murder and accordingly cannot be morally responsible for it.” I reject predeterminist doctrine for reasons I will explain in my forthcoming book on free will.
Similarly, is totalitarianism evil? The postmodernists would say (or would have to say, given their relativistic orientation) that we can’t make such a “value judgment.” Maybe totalitarianism was a good thing in Stalin’s Soviet Union or Hitler’s Germany. Maybe killing six million Jews in Nazi Germany was just their cultural way of doing things. Perhaps fanatical religious terrorism is a good thing in other cultures. We can’t judge. There are no objective ethical values. It’s all culturally relative. And, again, the predeterminists would say it doesn’t matter, because it’s all predetermined anyway.
Some (many?) postmodernists and most Trumpians assert that science and expertise are bogus. The speed of light is a patriarchal concept. The coronavirus pandemic is fake news designed to take down the president after impeachment failed.
In contrast, my view is that there is a difference between unsupported, self-contradictory, irrational opinion, on the one hand, and knowledge based on reason and evidence, on the other. Knowledge may not be identical with truth (see Plato), but knowledge is better, and has better consequences, than uninformed opinion (again, Plato). Some ethical/moral values are objective; their proper application may depend, however, on particular circumstances (see Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics).
Political Philosophy and Ethics
Books mentioned in this topic
The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms: Volume 4: The Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms (other topics)Mythical Thought (other topics)
The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms 3: The Phenomenology of Knowledge (other topics)
Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture (other topics)
The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume 1: Language (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Arthur Koestler (other topics)Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (other topics)
Edward R. Tufte (other topics)
Richard Saul Wurman (other topics)
