The Man Who Wasn't There is one of my favorite movies, and the best of Ludwig van Beethoven is as good as classical music gets. So enjoy the First Movement of the Moonlight Sonata to the masterful cinematography of the Coen Brothers.
Here is the final scene of the movie. Ed Crane's last words:
I don't know where I'm being taken. I don't know what I'll find beyond the earth and sky. But I am not afraid to go. Maybe the things I don't understand will be clearer there, like when a fog blows away. Maybe Doris will be there. And maybe there I can tell her all those things they don't have words for here.
That is the way I see death, as an adventure into a dimension in which we might come to understand what we cannot understand here, a movement from night and fog into the clear light of day. It is a strange idea, I admit, the idea that only by dying can one come into possession of essential knowledge. But no more strange than the idea that death leaves the apparent absurdity of our existence unredeemed, a sentiment expressed in Peggy Lee's 1969 Is That All There Is?
Perhaps no other popular song achieves the depth of this Leiber and Stoller composition inspired by the 1896 story Disillusionment (Enttäuschung) by Thomas Mann.
At a bare minimum, make the case to the American people and consult with congress.
A simple question that John Kerry does not address in his case for intervention is the one posed by Hanson: "And what of the irony that Assad is probably no worse a custodian of WMD than is the opposition that we would de facto [be] aiding?"
It must have been the fall of '72. Old Carl and I were sitting in his Culver City flophouse room drinking Brew 102 after a day's manual labor . He delivered himself of a line not to be forgotten.
"Bill, once I was limber all over but stiff in one place. Now it's the other way around."
. . . is like going hunting without an accordion." A line from Mark Steyn's brilliant column, An Accidental War.
Liberating Syria isn’t like liberating the Netherlands: In the Middle East, the enemy of our enemy is also our enemy. Yes, those BBC images of schoolchildren with burning flesh are heart-rending. So we’ll get rid of Assad and install the local branch of al-Qaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood or whatever plucky neophyte democrat makes it to the presidential palace first — and then, instead of napalmed schoolyards, there will be, as in Egypt, burning Christian churches and women raped for going uncovered.
"Atheists should say things that are perfectly clear. Now it is not perfectly clear that the soul is material." (Krailsheimer, #161, p. 82) An atheist needn't be a mortalist, and a mortalist needn't be an atheist. But let that pass. Although the one does not logically require the other, or the other the one, atheism and mortalism naturally 'go together.' (McTaggart, for example, was an atheist but an immortalist with, apparently, no breach of logical consistency.)
If it were perfectly clear that that the soul is mortal as the body is mortal, then then why all the wild disagreement among materialists/naturalists/physicalists? Think of all their different theories. For example, there are eliminative materialists who rely on the (true) premise that no brain state is intrinsically intentional. They conclude that there are no mental states given that mental states are intrinsically intentional. But other materialists reject the (true) premise, maintaining that some brain states are intrinsically intentional, namely, the ones that are identical to mental states.
So here is a deep dispute within the materialist camp. Identity theorists affirm what eliminativists deny, namely, that there are mental states. Members of each camp believe that materialism is true, but they contradict each other as to why it is true. Now if it not clear why materialism is true, then it is hardly clear that it is true. That, I take it, is Pascal's point.
It is not clear that the soul is material (and thus mortal) and it is not clear that it isn't. Neither view is ruled out or ruled in by the reason resident in the thinking reeds we are. So you are free to believe either way. And you are free to act either way. If you act and live as if the soul is immortal, then you may come to believe that it is. (See the 'holy water' passage.) What's more, if you believe that it is then you will live better in this world if not beyond it. So why not believe?
Of course, you may be constitutionally incapable of believing. In that case you have a problem that is better addressed by a psychotherapist than by a philosopher.
Etienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, Pontifical Institute, 1952, p. 177: "God knows essences, but He says existences, and He does not say all that He knows."
Here are the makings of a good examination question for a course in Thomism: What is the Frenchman driving at? Unpack the Gilsonian bon mot.
Among our fellows we ought to be as self-reliant as possible. But in matters moral and spiritual we ought freely to confess our exigency and ultimate inability to help ourselves. Honesty demands it. But to appreciate properly the need for outside help, one ought first to try to go it alone. When the self-therapeutics of Buddhism and Stoicism and cognate systems fail, then one will have a concrete motive for the confession of impotence.
Antony Flew, There is a God, pp. 40-41 (quoted from Appeared-to-Blogly):
I came to see, as I would write in An Introduction to Western Philosophy, that there can be progress in philosophy despite the general absence of consensus. The lack of consensus in philosophy is not an independently sufficient demonstration that the subject does not make progress. The attempt to show that there is no philosophical knowledge by simply urging that there is always someone who can be relied on to remain unconvinced is a common fallacy made even by a distinguished philosopher like Bertrand Russell. I called it the But-there-is-always-some-one-who-will-never-agree Diversion. Then there is the charge that in philosophy it is never possible to prove to someone that you are right and he or she is wrong. But the missing piece in this argument is the distinction between producing a proof and persuading a person. A person can be persuaded by an abominable argument and remain unconvinced by one that ought to be accepted.
Progress in philosophy is different from progress in science, but that does not mean it is therefore impossible. In philosophy you spotlight the essential nature of deductive argument; you distinguish between questions about the validity or invalidity of arguments and questions about the truth or falsity of their premises or conclusion; you indicate the strict usage of the term fallacy; and you identify and elucidate such fallacies as the But-there-is-always-someone-who-will-never-agree Diversion. To the extent that these things are accomplished with better reasoning and greater effectiveness, progress will be seen—even as consensus and persuasion remain elusive and incomplete. (from Flew, There is a God, pp. 40-41).
Is Flew right? I don't think so.
That there is no consensus in philosophy among competent practitioners is a widely-accepted fact, one that cannot be reasonably disputed. I challenge anyone to give me a clear example of a philosophical problem that has been solved to the satisfaction of all competent practioners. Of course, I am not talking about intramural or school-immanent solutions, but extramural or school-transcendent ones. I trust you catch my meaning. The Thomists think they have solved the problem of universals. The competent practioners within that school agree on that solution and consider the problem solved. But that intramural consensus means little given the existence of competing schools of thought with different solutions. A solution that is school-relative or relative to a set of background assumptions is not a solution, period. (This requires further discussion in connection with the views of N. Rescher, but not here.)
For a second example, the logical positivists in their heyday thought they had definitively established that metaphysical assertions are cognitively meaningless. They had no trouble persuading their own ilk. But the rest of the philosophical world was flabbergasted at their philistinism, not to mention the self-refuting property of the positivist's verifiability criterion of cognitive significance. Examples are easily multiplied.
So I take it to be a fact beyond reasonable dispute that there has been and is now no consensus in philosophy among competent practitioners. What can be reasonably disputed is whether the fact in question gives us a good reason to think either that (i) there will be no progress in philosophy, or that (ii) there can be no progress in philosophy. Flew blurs these two claims. Let's consider the weaker one, (i).
But first we need to address a logically prior question: what is progress in philosophy? It is clear that we ought not identify progress in philosophy with the achieving of consensus, or with progress towards consensus. Suppose consensus is reached as to the solution of some problem. It might still be that the solution is incorrect. Suppose the Thomists take over the world and enforce consensus by liquidating all dissidents and persuading the rest. Their solution to the problem of universals, say, or the problem of change, might still be incorrect. On the other hand, dissensus does not entail that no solution has been arrived at. Maybe Karl Popper did solve the problem of induction despite his failure to convince all of his competent colleagues.
Consensus does not entail philosophical knowledge; dissensus does not entail the lack thereof. (Note that I am assuming, with Flew, that progress in philosophy is progress in knowledge. This is not obvious, but this too cannot now be discussed. There are several ways in which philosophy has progressed even if no philosophical knowledge has been achieved. If nothing else, there are more philosopy books in the world than ever before.)
Entailment, then, fails. Nevertheless, lack of agreement among competent practitioners is good, albeit defeasible, evidence that a solution has not been attained. Flew seems not to appreciate this point, and he seems to miss it because he erects a straw man:
The attempt to show that there is no philosophical knowledge by simply urging that there is always someone who can be relied on to remain unconvinced is a common fallacy made even by a distinguished philosopher like Bertrand Russell. I called it the But-there-is-always-some-one-who-will-never-agree Diversion.
The fact there will always be people who disagree is not to the point. For it may be that they disagree out of stupidity, or temporary confusion, or ignorance of the nature of the problem, or unfamiliarity with the terminology, or because they are sophists or quibblers or contrarians who have a perverse need to contradict. This is why I used the phrase 'competent practitioners.' These are people who have all of the intellectual and moral virtues, a high degree of intelligence, familiarity with the canons of logic, knowledge of relevant empirical facts, etc.
So if anyone is committing a fallacy here it is Flew: he is committing the straw man fallacy. No one "simply urges" that there is no philosophical knowledge because someone remains unconvinced. The point is rather that even after such pesky varmints as the stupid, the confused, the ignorant, the intellectually dishonest, and their uncles and cousins have been excluded, there will still be diagreement, and that this disagreement cannot simply be discounted or ignored. If you are a competent practitioner and you disagree with my solution to a problem, then that ought to give me pause: it is a good reason for me to doubt whether my solution really is one. Of course, I might still be right. But then how would I know this? And if I don't know that my solution is correct, is it a solution? (This needs further discussion. Compare: if I have a true belief about the way to Tucson, does it follow that I know the way? If Seldom Seen Slim, a local, says you go thataway, when I think I ought to go thisaway, should that not give me pause if I don't have justification for my true belief?)
It is telling that the only examples of philosophical knowledge that Flew provides, in the passage quoted leastways, are elementary points of logic. This is not quite to the point since logic is a tool of philosophy but not philosophy proper. I would like to see him give some examples from substantive branches of philosophy where he thinks we have philosophical knowledge.
Today, August 28th, is the Feast of St. Augustine on the Catholic calendar. In honor of the Bishop of Hippo I pull a quotation from his magisterial City of God, Book XIX, Chapter 4:
And I am at a loss to understand how the Stoic philosophers can presume to say that these are no ills, though at the same time they allow the wise man to commit suicide and pass out of this life if they become so grievous that he cannot or ought not to endure them. But such is the stupid pride of these men who fancy that the supreme good can be found in this life, and that they can become happy by their own resources, that their wise man, or at least the man whom they fancifully depict as such, is always happy, even though he become blind, deaf, dumb, mutilated, racked with pains, or suffer any conceivable calamity such as may compel him to make away with himself; and they are not ashamed to call the life that is beset with these evils happy. O happy life, which seeks the aid of death to end it? If it is happy, let the wise man remain in it; but if these ills drive him out of it, in what sense is it happy? Or how can they say that these are not evils which conquer the virtue of fortitude, and force it not only to yield, but so to rave that it in one breath calls life happy and recommends it to be given up? For who is so blind as not to see that if it were happy it would not be fled from? And if they say we should flee from it on account of the infirmities that beset it, why then do they not lower their pride and acknowledge that it is miserable?
Memory compensates us for the passage of time, but it also ensures that we will never forget that we are subject to it. Yet better to be a man than an animal held hostage to the passing moment but oblivious of the fact.
Charlotte Allen, A Tale of Two Trials. An excellent point-by-point rebuttal of (willful?) mistakes about the facts and the law made by the purveyors of the liberal-left 'narrative.'
'Narrative' is a POMO word favored by those who for whom power is the end. For a leftist, truth doesn't matter unless it can be used as a means to the end of power. What matters are those 'narratives' that help forward their agenda. A narrative needn't be true to be a narrative. It is quite in line with Karl Marx's 11th Thesis on Feuerbach, "The philosophers have variously interpreted the world; the point, however, is to change it."
In this stupid piece, the author maintains that "No one talks about race." The author, a history professor at ASU, is further proof that the universities have become leftist seminaries. This idiot is being supported by taxpayers' dollars.
To recover from the foregoing farrago of Unsinn, enjoy this outstanding piece by John Lott, Obama's Racial Imbalance.
In the news this morning a story about a young man, 18, who lived not far from here in Apache Junction, whose body was found dead near his abandoned SUV in the woods of southern Oregon. According to his father, Johnathan [sic] Croom was "a young man who had a broken heart." He was grieving the end of a relationship with "someone back in Phoenix."
"He was a young man who had a broken heart and headed out to try to find himself," the elder Croom said. "We're looking forward to finding out exactly what happened."
[. . .]
Hutson said Croom also talked to his parents about Christopher McCandless, whose journey to Alaska was documented in the book "Into the Wild." McCandless gave up his worldly goods to live in the Alaska wilderness, only to die there, perhaps from eating wild potatoes.
A book can change your life. J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye is an even better example. It changed countless lives, some in very bad ways.
The last-mentioned ends like this, with some good advice for the young and in search of themselves:
In McCandless' case, the scorn for security, his fleeing a living death, led to a dying death. In an excess of self-reliance he crossed the Teklanika, not realizing it was his Rubicon and that its crossing would deposit him on the Far Shore. Be bold, muchachos, be bold; be not too bold.
Eric Holder's out-of-control Department of (Social) Justice is at it again, this time going after Bobby Jindal's school choice program in Louisiana.
Yet another attack on federalism. This is not a word that wears its meaning on its sleeve, and the average panem et circenses American would be hard-pressed to define it.
Federalism is (i) a form of political organization in which governmental power is divided among a central government and various constituent governing entities such as states, counties, and cities; (ii) subject to the proviso that both the central and the constituent governments retain their separate identities and assigned duties. A government that is not a federation would allow for the central government to create and reorganize constituent governments at will and meddle in their affairs. Federalism is implied by the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Federalism would make for less contention because people who support high taxes and liberal schemes could head for states like Massachusetts or California, while the conservatively inclined who support gun rights and capital punishment and border control could gravitate toward states like Texas.
The fact of the matter is that we do not agree on a large number of divisive, passion-inspiring issues (abortion, gun rights, capital punishment, affirmative action, school vouchers, photo ID at polling places, legal and illegal immigration, taxation, wealth redistribution, the purposes and limits, if any, on governmental power . . .) and we will never agree on them. These are not merely academic issues since they directly affect the lives and livelihoods and liberties of people. And they are not easily resolved because they are deeply rooted in fundamental worldview differences. When you violate a man's liberty, or mock his moral sense, or threaten to destroy his way of life, you are spoiling for a fight and you will get it.
I fear that we are coming apart as a nation. We are disagreeing about things we ought not be disagreeing about, such as the need to secure the borders. The rifts are deep and nasty. Polarization and demonization of the opponent are the order of the day. Do you want more of this? Then give government more say in your life. The bigger the government, the more to fight over. Do you want less? Then support limited government and federalism. A return to federalism may be a way to ease the tensions, not that I am sanguine about any solution.
Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. Now the order of thought is to begin with ourselves, and with our author, and our end.
Now what does the world think about? Never about that, but about dancing, playing the lute, singing, writing verse, tilting at the ring, etc., and fighting, becoming king, without thinking about what it means to be a king or to be a man.
The 1963 March on Washington now lies 50 years in the past. Those civil rights battles were fought and they were won. What could be achieved by legislation and government intervention was achieved. Unfortunately, the civil rights movement gradually transmogrified into a civil rights hustle and grievance industry as the original ideals of Martin Luther King, Jr. were betrayed by race hustlers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. And now look at the mess we are in. But it was a time of great and inspiring music. Here are some of Dylan's singular contributions.
After Dylan did his bit to change the world, the quietist and poet in him won out over the activist and he bid farewell to his past, and, like a quintessential American, moved on down the line.
"Memory is necessary for all the operations of reason." (Blaise Pascal, Pensées, Krailsheimer, #651)
This seems right. Consider this quick little argument against scientism, the philosophical, not scientific, view that all knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge:
1. I know by reason alone, a priori, and not by any natural-scientific means, that addition has the associative and the commutative properties and that these properties are distinct.
2. If scientism is true, then it is not the case that (1).
Therefore
3. Scientism is not true.
I grasp (understand) this argument and its validity by reason. To grasp any such argument, it is not sufficient that a succession of conscious states transpire in my mental life. For if the state represented by (1) falls into oblivion by the time I get to (2), and (2) by the time I get to (3), then all I would undergo would be a succession of consciousnesses but not the consciousness of succession. But the consciousness of succession is necessary to 'take in' the argument. And this consciousness of succession itself presupposes a kind of memory. To grasp the conclusion as a conclusion -- and thus as following from the premises -- I have to have retained the premises. There has to be a diachronic unity of consciousness in which there is a sort of synopsis of the premises together with the conclusion with the former entailing the latter.
But of course something similar holds for each proposition in the argument. The meaning of a compound proposition is built up out of the meanings of its propositional parts, and the meaning of a simple proposition is built up out of the meanings of its sub-propositional parts, and these meanings have to be retained as the discursive intellect runs through the propositions. ('Discursive' from the L. currere, to run.) This retention -- a term Husserl uses -- is a necessary condition of the possibility of understanding.
And so while I do not grasp an argument by memory (let alone by sense perception or introspection), memory is involved in rational knowledge.
The Pascalian aphorism bears up well under scrutiny.
Example of associativity of addition: (7 + 5) + 3 = 7 + (5 + 3). Example of commutativity: (7 + 5) + 3 = (5 + 7) + 3. The difference between the two properties springs to the eye (of the mind). Now what must mind be like if it is to be capable of a priori knowledge? Presumably it can't just be a hunk of meat.
But if the below companion post is right, not even sense knowledge is such that its subject could be a hunk of meat. We are of course meatheads. But squeezing meaning out of mere meat -- there's the trick!
My 1995-1996 Turkish Journal contains quotations from, and commentary on, some of S.K.'s journal entries. Unfortunately, I don't have complete bibliographical data, just the entry numbers. What sent me back to my Turkish Journal was London Karl's request that I dig up Kierkegaardian passages that smack of anti-natalism.
S. K. on Women, #4998. ". . . there is a moment in her life when she deceptively appears to be infinitude herself -- and that is when man is captured. And as a wife she is quite simply -- finitude."
S. K. seems to be alluding to the Platonic-Augustinian idea that woman (man too in Plato) can be either a deceptive appearance or a sort of reminder of Transcendence, a waker-upper from our Cave-like amnesia. (Anamnesis doctrine).
S. K. #5000. ". . . Christianity and all more profound views of life take a dim view of the relation to the opposite sex, for they assume that getting involved with the other sex is the demotion of man."
A problem for S. K. If the human race ought to come to an end, if procreation and propagation of the species is better not engaged in, then where will the souls come from to share in the divine life? Or does S. K. believe in the pre-existence of souls? Cf. #3970 where S. K. seems to endorse pre-existence.
Again the tension of Platonic-Gnostic and Jewish-Aristotelian elements in Christianity.
But, given problems like these, would it not be absurd to give up the quest for metaphysical truth and sink into a mundane existence?
S. K. #5003. To marry a woman is to be finitized and mediocratized by her. [A paraphrase, apparently, not a quotation.]
S. K. #5005. "Man was structured for eternity; woman leads him into a side remark."
S. K. 5006. "An eminently masculine intellectuality joined to a feminine submissiveness -- that is the truly religious."
Wherein resides the dignity of the king? At every time in every possible game, the king is on the board. He cannot be captured: he never leaves the board while the game is on. He alone is 'necessary,' all other pieces are 'contingent.'
But at game's end, he too goes into the box with the lowliest of the pawns, as if to demonstrate that the high and mighty in life are equalized in death.
This is a really good collection of state-of-the-art essays that comes at the right time in my philosophical development. I thank Ed Feser, editor and contributor, for sending me a complimentary copy. (I didn't ask for one, and you shouldn't either.)
Do you understand lasagne? Of course you do. But I understand it better because I know how to make it from ingredients none of which is lasagne. (If I were to 'make' lasagne by fusing eight squares of lasagne, and you were a philosopher, you would protest that I hadn't made lasagne but had 'presupposed' it. And you'd be right. That would be like making coffee by pouring eight cups of coffee into a carafe.)
It is tempting to suppose that what we know how to make, we understand. (He said with a sidelong glance in the direction of Giambattista Vico.) Let's give into the temptation. Suppose one day humans create a robot that is really conscious, conscious in the way I believe my wife is conscious. Whether or not I know that she is, in that tough sense of 'know' that entails being certain, I do not doubt for a second that my wife is a genuine bearer of intentional and non-intentional mental states. She has feelings just as I do and she thinks about things just as I do, and this is not a matter of ascription on my part as when I ascribe to my chess computer the 'desire' to inflict mate. Her verbal and non-verbal behavior do not merely simulate, even if exactly, behavior that is expressive of real consciousness; it is behavior that is expressive of real consciousness.
So suppose we have a really conscious robot fabricated to look like a woman, so well fabricated, let us assume, as to fool a gynecologist. If we know that that conscious being is a robot, we may find it hard to believe that she is really conscious. But suppose we can convince ourselves that our robot is really conscious and enjoys an 'inner' life just as we do.
What implications would this have for the mind-body problem? Would the existence of a really conscious robot that we had constructed from non-conscious material parts show that consciousness was a natural phenomenon that arises or emerges from sufficently complicated configurations of wholly material parts? Would it put paid to substance dualism? Would it show that there was nothing supernatural about consciousness? Could one refute substance dualism and the notion that consciousness (including self-consciousness and all spiritual functions) has a higher (non-natural) origin by building a conscious robot?
Many would say 'yes.' But I say 'no.'
If we make a really conscious robot, if we 'synthesize' consciousness and the unity of consciousness from non-conscious materials, what we have done is to assemble components that form a unified physical thing at which consciousness is manifested. But this neutral description of what we have done leaves open two possibilities:
1. The one is that consciousness simply comes into existence without cause at that complex configuration of physical components but is in no way caused by or emergent from that complex configuration. In this case we have not synthesized consciousness from nonconscious materials; we have simply brought together certain material components at which consciousness appears.
2. The other possibility is that consciousness comes into manifestation at the complex configuration of physical componets ab extra, from outside the natural sphere. A crude theological way of thinking of this would be that a purely spiritual being, God, 'implants' consciousness in sufficiently complex physical systems.
On both (1) and (2), consciousness arises at a certain level of materal complexity, but not from matter. On (1) it just arises as a matter of brute fact. On (2), consciousness comes from consciousness. On neither does consciousness have a natural origin. On (1) consciousness does not originate from anything. On (2) it has a non-natural origin.
Given these two possibilities, one cannot validly infer that consciousness is a wholly natural phenomenon from the existence of conscious robots. The existence of conscious robots is logically consistent with (1), with (2), and with the naturalist hypothesis that consciousness is purely natural.
My point could be put as follows. Even if we succeed in creating machines with (literal) minds, this has no bearing on the mind-body problem. This is because it leaves open the three possibilities mentioned. Suppose you are a conscious robot who is thinking about the mind-body problem. Substance dualism would be an option for you. You could not validly infer that your mind is not an immaterial substance from the fact that you were created in Palo Alto by robotics engineers. Same goes with me. I am not a robot, but a conscious animal who came into the world inter faeces et urinam. (Actually, if the truth be told, I came into the this vale of tears by Caesarean section; but let's not quibble: you came into it inter faeces et urinam.) But I cannot validly infer from the fact of my animal origin that my consciousness is a wholly natural function.
Now suppose naturalism is true. There is still the problem of the unintelligibility of the arisal of consciousness from brain matter, an unintelligibility that Colin McGinn, naturalist and atheist, has rightly insisted on. This unintelligibility will not be diminished one iota by the arrival of conscious robots should such robots make the scene in the coming years.
Robert Paul Wolff of The Philosopher's Stone too often comes across as a stoned philosopher. I gave one clear example last month in The Rage of the Wolff wherein I quoted the good professor's hyperventilation over the Martin-Zimmerman case. He spoke, delusionally, of "The judicially sanctioned murder of Trayvon Martin . . . ." But now the Wolff is howling and raging and losing sleep (literally) over the North Carolina photo ID law:
What is happening in North Carolina right now . . . triggers such rage in me that I cannot talk about it with my customary ironic detachment. I spent a good deal of last night tossing and turning, trying unsuccessfully to calm myself with fantasies of magical powers with which to visit great misery and pain on the Republican controlled State Legislature.
All throughout North Carolina, local Boards of Election, packed with Republican appointees and emboldened, empowered, and encouraged by the State Legislature, are openly, nakedly, unabashedly moving to deny the basic right to vote to any group that shows signs of inclining Democratic. It is perfectly clear what is happening. Throughout the state are countless White southerners who have never accepted the freeing of the slaves, the extension of suffrage to Blacks, or the ending of such comforting traditions as segregated schools and public facilities. The election of Obama and the steady move of the state in the direction of the modern Democratic Party has made them feel like aliens in their own home, and now they are unashamedly striking back, emboldened by the Supreme Court's appalling Voting Rights Act decision.
Does this outburst merit a response? No. But it is a telling specimen of leftist pathology. There is no wisdom and no common sense on the Left.
I coined the word here. Christina Hoff Sommers combats the thing. While so doing she provides further proof that the Left is devoid of common sense:
Across the country, schools are policing and punishing the distinctive, assertive sociability of boys. Many much-loved games have vanished from school playgrounds. At some schools, tug of war has been replaced with “tug of peace.” Since the 1990s, elimination games like dodgeball, red rover and tag have been under a cloud — too damaging to self-esteem and too violent, say certain experts.
Tug of peace? Is that a joke? Peace is better than war, of course, but to secure and maintain peace one must be prepared to wage and win war. Or as the Latin saying has it, Si vis pacem, para bellum. "If you want peace, prepare for war."
And another thing. Bring back the monkey bars and the long summer vacations. Enough with the wussification. (Not a word? It is now.)
$100M Calif. mansion has unusual sale requirement.
HILLSBOROUGH, Calif. (AP) — As if the $100 million asking price wasn't deterrent enough, the owner of a mansion for sale in a ritzy San Francisco suburb says the buyer can move in only after his death.
That is indeed a highly unusual requirement. Why would anyone buy a house that he could inhabit only after he was dead? And why would he need a mansion for such necrotic tenancy?
This means that the scientific outlook, if it aspires to a more complete understanding of nature, must expand to include theories capable of explaining the appearance in the universe of mental phenomena and the subjective points of view in which they occur – theories of a different type from any we have seen so far.
There are two ways of resisting this conclusion, each of which has two versions. The first way is to deny that the mental is an irreducible aspect of reality, either (a) by holding that the mental can be identified with some aspect of the physical, such as patterns of behavior or patterns of neural activity, or (b) by denying that the mental is part of reality at all, being some kind of illusion (but then, illusion to whom?). The second way is to deny that the mental requires a scientific explanation through some new conception of the natural order, because either (c) we can regard it as a mere fluke or accident, an unexplained extra property of certain physical organisms – or else (d) we can believe that it has an explanation, but one that belongs not to science but to theology, in other words that mind has been added to the physical world in the course of evolution by divine intervention.
Nagel, of course, rejects each of (a)-(d).
My overview of Nagel's book is here. More detailed posts on Nagel are in the aptly denominated Nagel category.
The comments on Nagel's piece are mostly garbage. There is something offensive about allowing any birdbrain to leave his droppings on an essay by one of our best philosophers.
The best arguments against an open combox are the contents of one.
Retorsion (retortion) is the philosophical procedure whereby one attempts to establish a thesis by uncovering a performative inconsistency in anyone who denies it. It is something like an ad hominem tu quoque except that the homo in question is everyman, indeed every rational being. Proofs by retortion have the following form:
Proposition p is such that anyone who denies it falls into performative inconsistency; ergo, p is true.
Suppose a person asserts that there are no assertions. That person falls into performative inconsistency: the propositional content of the speech act is 'inconsistent' with the performance. *There are no assertions* is the propositional content, or content, for short. The speech act of asserting is in this case the performance. The inconsistency is not strictly logical, which is why I employed scare quotes. Strictly logical inconsistency obtains between or among propositions, and a performance such as asserting is not a proposition. And yet it is clear that there is some sort of inconsistency here, some sort of 'contradiction.' The content asserted is falsified by the act of asserting it. The performance 'contradicts' the content.
We can put this by saying that *There are no assertions* is unassertible salva veritate. For no one can assert it without falsifying it. Its negation, *There are assertions,* has the opposite property of being such that no one can assert it without verifying it, without making it true. (Note that 'verify' has two senses.)
To be a successful metaphysical tool, a retorsive argument must establish the target proposition as true unconditionally and not merely on condition that there exist contingent beings like us who occasionally and contingently engage in such intellectual operations as affirmation and denial. Otherwise, it would have no metaphysical significance, but merely a transcendental one. Metaphysics, more precisely, metaphysica generalis, has as its task the laying bare of the most pervasive structures of being qua being. For it is one thing for the truth of a proposition to be a necessary presupposition of our intellectual operations, and quite another for that proposition to be true in itself and apart from us and our operations of sense and intellect.
To illustrate, let the target proposition be the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC), an excellent candidate for the office of 'first principle' and a principle it would be nice to be able to establish by retorsion. (One cannot argue directly for LNC without begging the question, and to simply announce that it is self-evident smacks of an unphilosophical dogmatism.) A successful retorsive argument for LNC as a truth of metaphysics and not merely as a law of thought must demonstrate that it 'governs' reality and not merely our thoughts about reality. For if LNC were merely an unavoidable constraint on our thinking, then it might be that reality does not 'obey' it.
What worries me is the putative gap between (a) LNC is a principle without which we cannot conduct our intellectual operations and (b) LNC is a principle of being itself. (Aristotle was aware of this putative gap.) I'm not sure there is a gap, but I'm not sure there isn't either. Nor am I quite sure that we need a metaphysical, as opposed to a merely transcendental, grounding of LNC.
There are very deep questions here, and they may be above my or any mortal's 'pay grade.'
My question could be put as follows. Which propositions are such that their undeniability salva veritate entails their being true independently of of us and our intellectual operations such as denial and affirmation? In other words, in which cases is retorsion a probative procedure for the establishing of metaphysical results? Let's consider some examples.
1. There are assertions. We have seen that anyone who asserts the negation of this proposition is involved in performative inconsistency. By retorsion, then, we conclude that it is true. But is it true independently of us, independently of whether or not assertors exist? No. The unassertibility salva veritate of *There are no assertions* merely shows something about us, not about reality independently of us.
It should also be noted that although *There are no assertions* is not assertible, it is thinkable without performative inconsistency. There are times at which the negative proposition is true. And though it is false now, it (logically) might have been true now. Presumably there is no necessity that there be any assertors.
2. There are thoughts. Can I think the thought that there are no thoughts? I can, but if I do I see that the thinking falsifies the thought's content. Now does this performative inconsistency show that there are thoughts in reality apart from thinkers? No. Obviously, a thought is some thinker's thought. The unthinkability salva veritate of *There are no thoughts* does not show there are thoughts in reality apart from us.
3. I exist. The thought that I do not exist is unthinkable salva veritate. Only I can think this thought, and my thinking of the thought falsifies its content, and this is so even if 'I' picks out merely a momentary self. (I am not committed by this to a substantial self.) So we have performative inconsistency. Unfortunately, this does not show that I exist apart from my thinking.
4. There are truths. Can I think, with truth, the thought that there are no truths? No. For if there are no truths then it is true that there are no truths, in which case there are truths. What we have here, though, is not a case of performative inconsistency, but a case in which a proposition refutes itself. It is not that a performance and its content are inconsistent, but that a proposition, by itself, is self-inconsistent. It is self-inconsistent inasmuch as it entails its own negation. If there are no truths, then there are some. And if there are some, then there are some. So, necessarily, there are some truths. This necessary truth is true independently of any mind. But it is not a truth known by retorsion since no performative inconsistency is involved.
5. Some memory reports are veridical. To prove this by retorsion, we begin by negating it. Negation yields *All memory reports are non-veridical.* This is subject to the retort that one who asserts it or affirms it in thought must rely on memory, and so must presuppose the reliability of the faculty whose reliability he questions by asserting it. For if anyone is to be in a position to affirm that all memory reports are non-veridical, then he must remember that on some occasions he has misremembered. He must remember and remember correctly that some of his memories were merely apparent. He must also remember and remember correctly that he has had memories. And in executing his skeptical reasoning, he must remember and remember correctly the early phases of said reasoning. It seems obvious, then, that the truth of *All memory reports are non-veridical* is inconsistent with its being affirmed. If true, it is unaffirmable as true. But does it follow that *Some memory reports are veridical* is true apart from us and our faculties?
6. Something exists. This is a proposition that is undeniable in the sense that anyone who denies it involves himself in performative inconsistency. For if one denies that something exists , then one affirms that nothing exists. But *Nothing exists* is falsfied by the very act (performance) of affirmation.
But does this undeniability show that *Something exists* is true in itself? I don't think so. It is true in itself, but not because it is undeniable. It is true in itself because the proposition, whether true or false, entails the existence of that very proposition. In this regard, #6 is like #4.
My tentative conclusion is that retorsion has merely a transcendental significance, not a metaphysical one.
There’s a youngster here considering going to college to study neuroscience, and I’m doing my best to inoculate him against scientism while offering a case for dualism. I’ve offered broad worldview reasons why that would matter, but I’m not sure off the top of my head what I would say if he asked what professional difference it would make to be a dualist neuroscientist. The dualist would say that areas X and Y are associated with and bear some causal relationship with the mind’s being in state ABC, while the physicalist would say that areas X and Y constitute or realize or give rise to state ABC. Pharma would be just as effective, placebo effects aside, if one takes a physicalist rather than a dualist interpretation of the mind-body problem. Metaphysically and religiously, there are huge differences, but during the time I was intensely reflecting on the metaphysics of mind the question of what difference it might make to a neuroscientist qua neuroscientist never entered my mind. If you have any thoughts off the top of your…er, mind I would be most grateful.
Off the top of my 'head,' it seems to me that, with only three exceptions, it should make no difference at all to the practicing neuroscientist what philosophy of mind he accepts. Emergentist, epiphenomenalist, property dualist, hylomorphic dualist, substance dualist, type-type identity theorist, parallelist, occasionalist, functionalist, panpsychist, dual-aspect theorist, mysterian, idealist, -- whatever the position, I can't see it affecting the study of that most marvellous and most complex intercranial hunk of meat we call the brain.
Eliminativism, solipsism, and behaviorism are the exceptions.
One of the things that neuroscientists do is to determine the neural correlates of conscious states. To work out the correlations requires taking seriously the reports of a conscious test subject who reports sincerely from his first-person point of view on the content and quality of his experiences as different regions of his brain are artificially stimulated in various ways. Now if our neuroscientist is an eliminativist, then it seems to me that he cannot, consistently with his eliminativism, take seriously the verbal reports of the test subject. For if there are no mental states, then the reports are about precisely nothing. And you cannot correlate nothing with something.
Suppose now that our neuroscientist is a solipist. He believes in other brains, but not in other minds. He holds that his is the only mind. It seems that our solipsistic brain researcher could not, consistently with his solipsism, take seriously the reports of the test subject. He could not take them as being reports of anything. He could take them only as verbal behavior, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Something similar would seem to hold for the behaviorist neuroscientist. What the (analytical) behaviorist does it to identify mental states with behavior (linguistic or non-linguistic) and/or with dispositions to behave. Thus my belief that it is about to rain is nothing other than my rummaging for an umbrella in the closet, and the like. My feeling of pain is my grimacing, etc. The analytical behaviorist does not deny that they are beliefs and desires and sensory states such as pleasure and pain. His project is not eliminativist but identitarian. There are beliefs and desires and pains, he thinks; it is just that what they are are bits of behavior and/or behavioral dispositions.
But if my pain just is my grimacing, wincing, etc. , then the brain scientist has no need of my verbal reports. Stimulating the 'pain center' of my brain, he need merely look at my overt behavior.
One issue here is whether analytical behaviorism can be kept from collapsing into eliminative behaviorism. If mind is just behavior, then that is tantamount to saying that there is no mind. This, I take it, is the point of the old joke about the two behaviorist sex partners, "It was good for you, how was it for me?" If the feeling just is the behavior, then there is no feeling.
So my answer to my correspondent, just off the top of my 'head,' without having thought much about this issue, is that a neuroscientist's philosophy of mind, if he has one, should have no effect on his practice of neuroscience except in the three cases mentioned.
But here is another wrinkle that just occured to me. Consider scientism, which is not a position in the philosophy of mind, but a position in epistemology. If our neuroscientist were a scientisticist (to coin a term as barbarous as its nominatum), and thus one who held that only natural science is knowledge, then how could he credit the reports of his test subject given that these reports are made from the first-person point of view and are not about matters that are third-person verifiable?
If you poke around in my visual cortex and I report seeing red, and you credit my report as veridical, then you admit that there is a source of knowledge that is not natural-scientific, and thus you contradict your scientism.
So I tentatively suggest that no neuroscientist who investigates the neural correlates of consciousness can be a scientisticist!
Peter's girlfriend Carolyn wanted to go on a hike, but Peter the biker is no hiker. So the guide task fell to me. It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it. The day's high was 113 F. with monsoon humidity.
You've heard of Robert Zimmerman, better known as Bob Dylan, and the 'white-Hispanic' George Zimmerman whose nomen has proven to be one bad omen indeed. (Would we have heard about him at all had his name been Jorge Ramirez?)
Permit me to introduce you to Jára Cimrman whose Czech surname, if I am not badly mistaken, is pronounced like 'Zimmerman' when the latter is pronounced as it is in German.
Cimrman is quite a character with many noteworthy accomplishments to his credit. One of them is authorship of the philosophy of non-existentialism. As one reputable source has it:
Long before anyone had heard about Camus or Sartre, in 1886, Cimrman wrote pieces like 'The Essence of the Existence', which became the basis for his "Cimrmanism" philosophy, also referred to as "non-existentialism" (the main premise of this philosophy is that: "Existence cannot not exist").
But if truth be told, this Cimrman is a plagiarist. He stole the idea from me! In Does Existence Itself Exist? I defend the thesis that existence does indeed exist, and necessarily. The despicable Cimrman passed off my idea as his own and tried to hide his crime by packaging my thesis under the verbally different but logically equivalent 'Existence cannot not exist' He then falsely claimed to have developed his theory in 1886 long before my birth.
The Essays of Montaigne, vol. I, tr. Trechmann, Oxford UP, no date, ch. 50, p. 295:
Why shall I not judge Alexander at table, talking and drinking to excess, or when he is fingering the chess-men? What chord of his mind is not touched and kept employed by this silly and puerile game? I hate it and avoid it because it is not play enough, and because it is too serious as an amusement, being ashamed to give it the attention which would suffice for some good thing. He was never more busy in directing his glorious expedition to the Indies; nor is this other man in unravelling a passage on which depends the salvation of the human race. See how our mind swells and magnifies this ridiculous amusement; how it strains all its nerves over it! How fully does this game enable every one to know and form a right opinion of himself! In no other situation do I see and test myself more thoroughly than in this. What passion is not stirred up by this game: anger [the clock-banger!] spite [the spite check!], impatience [the hasty move!], and a vehement ambition to win in a thing in which an ambition to be beaten would be more excusable! For a rare pre-eminence, above the common, in a frivolous matter, is unbefitting a man of honour. What I say in this example may be said in all others. Every particle, every occupation of a man betrays him and shows him up as well as any other.
Applying what Montaigne himself says in his final sentence to his writing of this essay, we may hazard the guess that he was much enamoured of the royal game, but not very good at it, and so here takes his revenge upon it, its goddess Caissa, and her acolytes. You will notice how onesided his portrayal is. He displayed the same defect in his remarks on clothing. But he is a Frenchman and so more concerned with witty phrasings than with the sober truth. The essay is delightfully brilliant nonetheless.
A good deal of nonsense about scientism has been written lately by philosophers and scientists who, apparently unwilling to own up to their embrace of scientism, want to co-opt the term and use it in an idiosyncratic and self-serving way. Fodor is a recent example among the philosophers and Pinker among the scientists. (See articles below.) So it is refreshing to encounter Alexander Rosenberg's accurate definition and his forthright acceptance of the view. (It is the forthrightness that wins my approbation, not the acceptance.) I quote from James Anderson's review of An Atheist's Guide to Reality:
Science provides all the significant truths about reality, and knowing such truths is what real understanding is all about. … Being scientistic just means treating science as our exclusive guide to reality, to nature—both our own nature and everything else’s. (pp. 7-8)
This comports well with the 'quickie' definition I have stated many times in these pages:
1. Scientism is the view that the only genuine knowledge is scientific knowledge.
But note that both Rosenberg's definition and mine need qualification given that 'science' is just the Latin-based word (L. scientia) for the English 'knowledge.' Surely the following is perfectly vacuous: "Scientism is the view that the only genuine knowledge is knowledge knowledge, epistemic knowledge." So I say, nontrivially,
2. Scientism is the view that the only genuine knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge.
Among the natural sciences we have, in first place, physics. And so a really hard-assed scientisticist (to coin a word as barbarous as what it names) might that hold that
3. Scientism is the view that the only genuine knowledge is physics and whatever can be reduced to physics.
But it would be more plausible for the scientisticist to wax latitudinarian and include among the natural sciences physics, chemistry, biology, etc. and their specializations and offshoots such as quantum mechanics, electrochemistry, neurobiology, and what all else. He ought also, for the sake of plausibility, to drop the idea that all natural sciences reduce to physics. (It might be difficult to write a textbook on plant physiology that employed only concepts from physics.) So definition (2) is to be preferred to (3). But (2) is still a rather strong claim, so it is advisable to distinguish between strong and weak scientism:
4. Strong scientism is the view that the only genuine knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge.
5. Weak scientism is the view that, while the 'hard' sciences are the epistemic gold standard, other fields of inquiry are not without some value, though they are vastly inferior to the hard sciences and not worthy of full credence.
(For the strong v. weak distinction, cf. J. P. Moreland, The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism, SCM 2009, p. 6. My review of Moreland here.)
Rosenberg, judging by the above quotation, plumps for strong scientism. It is this strain that I have under my logical microscope.
To illustrate the strong v. weak distinction, consider political 'science.' Does it give us knowledge? On strong scientism no; on weak scientism yes.
At this point we should ask what exactly makes the so-called 'hard' sciences of physics, etc. hard. 'Hard' does not mean (or does not primarily mean) that they are difficult to master and even more difficult to make a contribution to; it means that the criteria they must satisfy to count as science are extremely stringent.
This useful article lists the following five characteristics of science in the strict and eminent sense:
1. Clearly defined terminology. 2. Quantifiability. 3. Highly controlled conditions. "A scientifically rigorous study maintains direct control over as many of the factors that influence the outcome as possible. The experiment is then performed with such precision that any other person in the world, using identical materials and methods, should achieve the exact same result." 4. Reproducibility. "A rigorous science is able to reproduce the same result over and over again. Multiple researchers on different continents, cities, or even planets should find the exact same results if they precisely duplicated the experimental conditions." 5. Predictability and Testability. "A rigorous science is able to make testable predictions."
These characteristics set the bar for strict science very high. For example, is climate science science according to these criteria? Or is it more of a mishmash of science and leftist ideology? I'll leave you to ponder that question. Hint: take a close look at #s 3 and 4. There are branches of physics that cannot satisfy all five criteria. But most of physics and chemistry meets the standard. How about evolutionary biology? Does it satisfy #s 3 and 4?
Am I suggesting that the only real knowledge is rigorously scientific knowledge? Of course not. Consider the knowledge we find in the useful article to which I linked. There is no doubt in my mind that each of the five criteria the author mentions is a criterion of science in the strictest sense. (I leave open the question whether there are other criteria). Now how do we know that? By performing repeatable experiments in highly controlled conditions? No. By making testable predictions? No. The knowledge embodied in (1)-(5) is clearly not natural-scientific knowledge. It does not satisfy the above criteria.
We know that (1)-(5) are criteria of genuine science by reflecting on scientific practice and isolating its characteristics. When we do that we engage in the philosophy of science. Since some of the philosophy of science gives us genuine knowledge about natural science, knowledge that it not itself natural-scientific knowledge, it cannot be the case that all genuine knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge.
One might respond by insisting that the knowledge embodied in (1)-(5) is natural-scientific depite its failure to satisfy the above five criteria. But then one would be arbitrarily broadening the scope of natural-scientific knowledge which in turn would render (4) less definite and less interesting. Broaden it enough and you approach vacuity. You approach the tautology, "The only genuine knowledge is knowledge."
Mathematics poses another problem for (4). Mathematics is not a natural science. Empirical observation is no part of it. Nor is experiment. Mathematicians qua mathematicians do not make testable predictions about future events in the physical world. If a mathematician were to predict that a certain theorem will be proven within ten year's time, he would not be making a prediction in mathematics about a mathematical object, but a prediction about psychological and physical events: he would be predicting that some mathematician would undergo a series of mental states that he would then commit to paper by physical acts of writing. And yet mathematical knowledge is genuine knowledge.
So what can a strong scientisticist do? He can water down his definition:
5. Strong scientism is the view that the only genuine knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge plus mathematics.
But why stop there? Mathematicians construct proofs. Proofs are valid arguments. Not all arguments are valid. The disinction between validity and invalidity falls within the purview of logic. Now logic is a body of knowledge, but it is not natural-scientific knowledge. So logic is another counterexample to (4). Will our scientisticist advance to
6. Strong scientism is the view that the only genuine knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge plus mathematics plus logic.
At this point someone might object that mathematics and logic are not knowledge but merely systems of notation that we use to help us make sense of physical phenomena. And so, while natural science studies natural reality, there is no reality that mathematicians and logicians study. Well, do those who make such claims claim to know that they are true? If yes, then they lay claim to knowledge which is neither natural-scientific nor mathematical nor logical. They lay claim to philosophical knowledge, specifically, metaphysical knowledge. They lay claim to knowledge as to what counts as real. Will they then move to the following definition?
7. Strong scientism is the view that the only genuine knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge plus the philosophical knowledge that there is no logical or mathematical reality.
If they do advance to (7) then they are hoist by their own petard, or, to change the metaphor , they have completely eviscerated their own thesis. (What's worse, to be hanged or disemboweled?) After all, the whole point of scientism is to place a restriction on what counts as genuine knowledge. 'Genuine' is strictly redundant; I use it for emphasis. Pleonasm is at most a peccadillo.)
Introspective knowedge is yet another counterexample to strong scientism as codified in definition (4). The certain knowledge of my own mental states that introspection affords me is knowledge if anything is. Which is better known: that I feel head-ache pain or that I have a brain? The first, obviously. But introspective knowledge is not natural-scientific knowledge. The latter type of knowledge is knowledge via the outer senses, suitably extended by such instruments as microscopes and telescopes. But introspective knowledge is not knowledge via the outer senses taken singly or in combination. Suppose I see myself in a mirror wearing a sad expression and thereby come to the knowledge that I am sad. That is is not introspective knowledge. Introspective knowledge is first-person knowledge of one's own mental states via inner sense.
Since introspective knowledge is genuine knowledge, strong scientism is plainly false.
Memory is another source of genuine knowledge that refutes strong scientism. How do I know that I had lunch at 12:30 and then read Gustav Bergmann's "Some Remarks on the Ontology of Ockham" while smoking a fine cigar? Because I remember those events. Memorial knowledge is not natural-scientific knowledge. If you think it is, describe the repeatable experiments you had to perform to come to the knowledge that you had lunch. And yet memory is a source of genuine knowledge. It is of course not infallible, but then neither is sense-perception on which natural science is ultimately based.
And what of history? Do we not have a vast amount of knowledge of the past? We do, but it is not natural-scientific knowledge.
There is aso the obvious point that strong scientism is self-vitiating. Is the proposition All knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge scientifically knowable? No, it isnt. Therefore, strong scientism, by its own criterion, is not knowable. Is it true, but not knowable? If you say that it is, then you must countenance other propositions that are true but not knowable. If strong scientism is put forth as a linguistic recommendation as to how we ought to use 'knowledge,' then I decline the suggestion on the ground of its arbitrarity.
Finally, there is our knowledge of value and of right and wrong. If strong scientism is true, then we cannot claim to know that natural-scientific knowledge is a value, or that knowledge is better than ignorance, or that kindness is to be preferred over cruelty, or that vivisection is morally wrong, or that the Nuremberg laws in Nazi Germany were unjust.
But aren't these things better known than that strong scientism is true?
Scientism is not science. It is a philosophical claim about science that finds no support in any science. What's more, it is plainly false, as I have just shown.
Loosely translated: No pain, no gain. Der Fleiß (Fleiss) is German for diligence. Thus 'Heidi Fleiss' is a near aptronym, diligent as she was in converting concupiscence into currency.
Another interesting German word is Sitzfleisch. It too is close in meaning to diligence, staying
power. Fleisch is meat and Sitz, seat, is from the verb sitzen, to sit. One who has Sitzfleisch, then, has sitting meat. Think of a scholarly grind who sits for long hours poring over tome after tome of arcana.
And that reminds me of a story. Max Scheler and Nicolai Hartmann were German philosophers of high repute, though Scheler was more the genius and Hartmann more the grind. As the story goes, Scheler once disparaged Hartmann thusly, "My genius and your Sitzfleisch would make a great philosopher!"
Getting back to Heidi Fleiss, she is in the news again. This time her diligence has taken a turn toward the cultivation of the noble weed, some 400 plants worth, without a license. But the long arm of the law has 'smoked' her out.
If only naturalism were unmistakably and irrefutably true! A burden would be lifted: no God, no soul, no personal survival of death, an assured exit from the wheel of becoming, no fear of being judged for one’s actions. One could have a good time with a good conscience, Hefner-style. (Or one could have a murderous time like a Saddam or a Stalin.) There would be no nagging sense that one’s self-indulgent behavior might exclude one from a greater good and a higher life. If this is all there is, one could rest easy like Nietzsche’s Last Man who has "his little pleasure for the day and his little pleasure for the night."
If one knew that one were just a complex physical system, one could blow one’s brains out, fully assured that that would be the end, thus implementing an idiosyncratic understanding of "When the going gets tough, the tough get going."
Some atheists psychologize theists thusly: "You believe out of a need for comforting illusions, illusions that pander to your petty ego by promising its perpetuation." But that table can be turned: "You atheists believe as you do so as to rest easy in this life with no demands upon you except the ones that you yourself impose." Psychologizers can be psychologized just as bullshitters can be bullshat – whence it follows that not much is to be expected from either procedure.
Am I perhaps falsely assuming that a naturalist must be a moral slacker, beholden to no moral demand? Does it follow that the naturalist cannot be an idealist, cannot live and sacrifice for high and choice-worthy ideals? Well, he can try to be an idealist, and many naturalists are idealists, and as a matter of plain fact many naturalists are morally decent people, and indeed some of them are morally better people than some anti-naturalists (some theists, for example) -- but what justification could these naturalists have for maintaining the ideals and holding the values that they do maintain and hold?
Where do these ideals come from and what validates them if, at ontological bottom, it is all just "atoms in the void"? And why ought we live up to them? Where does the oughtness, the deontic pull, if you will, come from? If ideals are mere projections, whether individually or collectively, then they have precisely no ontological backing that we are bound to take seriously.
The truth may be this. People who hold a naturalistic view and deny any purpose beyond the purposes that we individually and collectively project, and yet experience their lives as meaningful and purposeful, may simply not appreciate the practical consequences of their own theory. It may be that they have not existentially appropriated or properly internalized their theory. They don't appreciate that their doctrine implies that their lives are objectively meaningless, that their moral seriousness is misguided, that their values are without backing. They are running on the fumes of a moral tradition whose theoretical underpinning they have rejected.
If that is right, then their theory contradicts their practice, but since they either do not fully understand their theory, or do not try to live it, the contradiction remains hidden from them.
0. I wanted to explore supposita in their difference from primary substances, but John the Commenter sidetracked me into the aporetics of primary substance. But it is a sidetrack worth exploring even if it doesn't loop back to the mainline. For it provides me more grist for my aporetic mill.
1. Metaphysics is a quest for the ultimately real, the fundamentally real, the ontologically basic. Aristotle, unlike his master Plato, held that such things as this man and that horse are ontologically basic. What is ontologically basic (o-basic) is tode ti, hoc aliquid, this something, e.g., this concrete individual man, Socrates, and that concrete individual donkey. Such individuals are being, ousia, in the primary sense. And so Socrates and his donkey can be called primary beings, or primary substances. Asinity there may be, but it can't be ontologically basic.
This is clearly the drift of Aristotle's thinking despite the numerous complications and embarrassments that arise when one enters into the details.
(If you think that there is 'substance' abuse in Aristotelian and scholastic precincts, I sympathize with you. You have to realize that 'substance' is used in different senses, and that these senses are technical and thus divergent from the senses of 'substance' in ordinary language.)
2. But of course every this something is a this-such: it has features, attributes, properties. This is a datum, not a theory. Socrates is a man and is excited by the turn the dialectic has taken, and this while seated on his donkey. Man is a substance-kind, while being excited and being seated are accidents. (Let us not worry about relations, a particularly vexing topic when approached within an Aristotelian-scholastic purview.) Setting aside also the difficult question of how a secondary substance such as the substance-kind man is related to Socrates, it is safe to say that for Aristotle such properties as being excited and being seated are theoretically viewed as accidents. So conceptualized, properties are not primary beings as they would be if they were conceptualized as mind-independent universals capable of existing unexemplified. Accidents by definition are not o-basic: If A is an accident of S, then A exists only 'in' S and not in itself. A depends on S for its existence, a mode of existence we can call inherence, while S does not depend for its existence on A.
3. So much for background. Now to the problem. Which is ontologically basic: Socrates together with his accidents, or Socrates taken in abstraction from his accidents?
What I want to argue is that a dilemma arises if we assume, as John the Commenter does, that Socrates taken together with his accidents is an accidental unity or accidental compound. A simple example of an accidental compound is seated-Socrates. Now I won't go into the reasons for positing these objects; I will just go along with John in assuming that they are there to be referred to.
Seated-socrates is a hylomorphic compound having Socrates as its matter and being seated as its form. But of course the matter of the accidental compound is itself a compound of prime matter and substantial form, while the form of the accidental compound is not a substantial form but a mere accident. The accidental compound is accidental because seated-Socrates does not exist at all the same times and all the same worlds as Socrates. So we make a tripartite distinction: there is a compound of prime matter and substantial form; there is an accident; and there is the inhering of the accident in the substance, e.g., Socrates' being seated, or seated-Socrates.
As Frank A. Lewis points out, accidental compounds are "cross-categorical hybrids." Thus seated-Socrates belongs neither to the category of substance nor to any non-substance category. One of its constituents is a substance and the other is an accident, but it itself is neither, which is why it is a cross-categorical hybrid entity.
The Dilemma
The dilemma arises on the assumption that Socrates together with his accidents is an accidental compound or accidental unity, and the dilemma dissolves if this assumption is false.
a. Either (i) Socrates together with his accidents is a primary substance or (ii) Socrates taken in abstraction from his accidents is a primary substance.
b. If (i), then Socrates is an accidental compound and thus a "cross-categorical hybrid" (F. A. Lewis) belonging neither to the category of substance nor to any non-substance category. Therefore, if (i), then Socrates is not a primary substance.
c. If (ii), then Socrates is not a concretum, but an abstractum, i.e., a product of abstraction inasmuch as one considers him in abstraction from his accidents. Therefore, if (ii), then Socrates is not a primary substance. For a primary substance must be both concrete and completely determinate. (These, I take it. are equivalent properties.) Primary substances enjoy full ontological status in Aristotle's metaphysics. They alone count as ontologically basic. They are his answer to the question, What is most fundamentally real? Clearly, Socrates taken in abstraction from his accidents is incompletely determinate and thus not fully real.
Therefore
d. On either horn, Socrates is not primary substance.
The Left is dangerous for a number of reasons with its disregard for truth being high on the list. For the Left it is the 'narrative' that counts, the 'script,' the 'story,' whether true of false, that supports their agenda. An agenda is a list of things to do, and for an activist, Lenin's question, What is to be done? trumps the question, What is the case? Paraphrasing Karl Marx's 11th Thesis on Feuerbach, the point for a leftist is to change the world, not understand it. See here: "Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert, es kömmt drauf an, sie zu verändern." "The philosophers have only variously interpreted the world; the point, however, is to change it." (my trans.)
The leftist's aim is the realization of 'progressive' ideals, and if the truth stands in the way, then so much the worse for it. Inconvenient truths are not confronted and subjected to examination; their messengers are attacked and denounced.
For concrete instances I refer you to Jason Richwine, Can We talk About IQ? Excerpt:
So when Larry Summers, then the president of Harvard University, speculated in 2005 that women might be naturally less gifted in math and science, the intense backlash contributed to his ouster.
Two years later, when famed scientist James Watson noted the low average IQ scores of sub-Saharan Africans, he was forced to resign from his lab, taking his Nobel Prize with him.
When a Harvard law student was discovered in 2010 to have suggestedin a private email that the black-white IQ gap might have a genetic component, the dean publicly condemned her amid a campus-wide outcry. Only profuse apologies seem to have saved her career.
When a leftist looks at the world, he does not see it as it is, but as he wants it to be. He sees it through the distorting lenses of his ideals. A central ideal for leftists is equality. And not in any such merely formal sense as equality under the law or equality of opportunity. The leftist aims at material equality: equality of outcome both socially and economically, equality in point of power and pelf. But the leftist goes beyond even this. He thinks that no inequalities are natural, and therefore that any inequalities that manifest themselves must be due to some form of oppression or 'racism.' But because this is demonstrably false, the leftist must demonize the messengers of such politically incorrect messages or even suggestions as that the black-white IQ gap might have a genetic component.
This truth-indifferent and reality-denying attitude of the leftist leaves the conservative dumbfounded. For he stands on the terra firma of a reality logically and ontologically and epistemologically antecedent to anyone's wishes and hopes and dreams. For the conservative, it is self-evident that first we have to get the world right, understand it, before any truly ameliorative praxis can commence. It is not that the conservative lacks ideals; it is rather that he believes, rightly, that they must be grounded in what is possible, where the really possible, in turn, is grounded in what is actual. (See Can What is Impossible for Us to Achieve be an Ideal for Us?) And so the conservative might reply to the activist, parodying Marx, as follows:
You lefties have only variously screwed up the world; the point, however, is to understand it so that you don't screw it up any further.
There is a paradox at the heart of the radically egalitarian position of the leftist. He wants equality, and will do anything to enforce it, including denying the truth (and in consequence reality) and violating the liberties of individuals. But to enforce equality he must possess and retain power vastly unequal to the power of those he would 'equalize.' He must go totalitarian. But then the quest for liberation ends in enslavement. This paradox is explained in Money, Power, and Equality.
I asked genuinely, not rhetorically : What is the difference between an Aristotelian primary substance and a supposit (hypostasis, suppositum)? The latter figures prominently in the philosophy of the School, as some call it, and I need to get clear about what supposits are, how they differ from primary substances, and whether there are any non-theological reasons for making the distinction. In pursuit of the first question I thought it advisable to state what I understand a primary substance to be. So I wrote:
By 'substance' I mean an Aristotelian primary substance, an individual or singular complete concrete entity together with its accidents. Among the characteristics of substances are the following: substances, unlike universal properties, cannot be exemplified or instantiated; substances, unlike accidents, cannot inhere in anything; substances, unlike heaps and aggregates, are per se unities. Thus Socrates and his donkey are each a substance, but the mereological sum of the two is not a substance.
I thought that was tolerably clear, but as so often happens, a commenter, ignoring my question, took issue with my set-up. That is, he questioned my characterization of primary substance. Nothing wrong with that, of course.
In his last comment, John the Astute Commenter wrote,
. . . I *am* saying that Socrates taken together with his accidents is not strictly identical to Socrates taken in abstraction from his accidents. But that point is obvious. What I am adding is this: Socrates taken together with his accidents is not a substance, but an accidental unity of a substance and some accidents. So I deny your claim that "it is only Socrates together with his accidents that is a complete concrete individual primary substance." Socrates together with his accidents may well be the only complete concrete individual, but he is not a primary substance. Nor is he prime matter; as you say, he is a compound of prime matter and substantial form, although in conjunction with his accidents he plays the *role* of matter in the accidental unity between him and his accidents. This would seem to be a debate about Aristotelian exegesis, so I'll leave it there and not continue to hijack your discussion. As I said, I thought the discussion in Z.4-Z.6 would prove relevant to that discussion, but it would seem that I was mistaken on that score, for which I apologize.
I will now continue in the second person.
No need to apologize, John. You have raised an interesting challenge which I ought to be able to meet. But I want to avoid the labyrinth of Aristotle exegesis to the extent that that is possible, for, lacking as we do the latter-day equivalent of Ariadne's thread, once we enter we are unlikely ever to find our way out again.
The disagreement seems to be as follows. I claim that, from a broadly Aristotelian perspective, which is the perspective of Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham and other medievals who speak of substances and supposita, Socrates is a concrete, complete, individual, primary substance at a time t only when taken together with his accidents at t. I don't deny that a primary substance can be considered in abstraction from its accidents. What I am claiming is that in concrete, mind-independent reality Socrates must have some set of accidents or other, and that, only when he is taken together with his accidents is he a primary substance.
Your claim is that Socrates together with his accidents (at a time, presumably, if I may interpret you a bit) is not a primary substance but an accidental unity, a hylomorphic compound the 'matter' of which is Socrates as primary substance and the form of which is something like the conjunction of his accidents. To put the disagreement as sharply as possible, I am claiming that Socrates counts as a primary substance only when taken together with his accidents, whereas you are claiming that Socrates so counts only when he is not taken together with his accidents, but taken in abstraction from his accidents. For one your view, Socrates taken together with his accidents is an accidental unity, not a primary substance. To get beyond a stand-off we need to consider some arguments.
Argument for My View
1. Every primary substance is ontologically basic, where ontologically basic entities are those that exist per se or independently unlike secondary substances and accidents.
2. Every ontologically basic entity is complete.
Definition: x is complete =df for every predicate F, either x is F or x is not F. (This is rough since some restrictions will have to be placed on the range of the predicate F. But it is good enough for a blog post.) Thus either Socrates is either seated at t or he is not. If he is neither seated nor not seated at t, then he is an incomplete object. But if he is an incomplete object, then he cannot exist. Now every ontologically basic entity is possibly such that it exists. Therefore, every ontologically basic entity is complete. Every ontologically basic entity satisfies the predicate version of the Law of Excluded Middle. (I don't think the converse is true, but then I am not affirming the converse.)
Therefore
3. Every primary substance is complete. (from 1, 2)
4. No primary substance minus its accidents is complete.
5. No primary substance minus its accidents is a primary substance. (from 3,4)
A. The complete individual Socrates is a hylomorphic compound of matter and form (Premise). B. The [primary] substance Socrates is the matter of the complete individual Socrates (Premise). C. For all x and for all y, if x is a hylomorphic compound and y is the matter of x, then x is not strictly identical to y. Therefore, D. The complete individual Socrates is not strictly identical to the [primary] substance Socrates.
Read charitably, John's argument is an enthymeme the suppressed or tacit premise of which is:
S. The complete individual Socrates is an accidental unity of Socrates + his accidents.
Without suppressed premises (S), (B) is obviously false and the argument is unsound. But with (S), John's argument begs the question.
Here is another wrinkle. Some accidents are said to be 'proper.' These are accidents that are entailed by the nature (essence) of the thing that has the nature, but they are, for all that, accidents. A proper accident of a substance is one the substance cannot exist without. To put it paradoxically, a proper accident of a substance is an accident that is 'essential' and therefore not 'accidental' to the substance whose accident it is. But a better way to put it would be to say that a proper accident, though no part of the essence, is de re necessary to the substance having the essence.
To adapt an example from John J. Haldane, if my cat Max is lounging by the fire, he becomes warm. His warmth is an accident but not a proper accident or proprium. Max is warm both temporarily and contingently in virtue of his proximity to the fire. But the warmth that flows from his metabolic processes is a proper accident without which Max could not exist.
Now let's suppose that this distinction is not a mere scholastic Spitzfindigkeit but 'holds water.' Then, clearly, and pace John, Socrates together with his proper accidents cannot be an accidental unity. So Socrates as primary substance must include at least his proper accidents.
Johnny Rivers, Summer Rain, 1967. It came out the summer we were all listening to the Beatles' Sargeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club Band, and captures the mood of that summer for me.
Eddie Cochran, Summertime Blues, 1958. An early teenage anthem in rockabilly style by one who died young. Wikipedia:
On Saturday, April 16, 1960, at about 11.50 p.m., while on tour in the United Kingdom, 21-year-old Cochran died as a result of a traffic accident in a taxi (a Ford Consul, not, as widely reported, a London hackney carriage) traveling through Chippenham, Wiltshire, on the A4. The speeding taxi blew a tire, lost control, and crashed into a lamp post on Rowden Hill, where a plaque now marks the spot. No other car was involved.[11] Cochran, who was seated in the centre of the back seat, threw himself over his fiancée Sharon Sheeley, to shield her, and was thrown out of the car when the door flew open. He was taken to St. Martin's Hospital, Bath, where he died at 4:10 p.m. the following day of severe head injuries.[12] Cochran's body was flown home and his remains were buried on April 25, 1960, at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Cypress, California.
Blue Cheer, Summertime Blues, 1968. A heavy metal version of the Eddie Cochran rockabilly number. The first heavy metal song? If you remember Blue Cheer, I'll buy you a beer.
Percy Faith, Theme from a Summer Place, 1960. I remember a girl complaining that this "old fogey music" was being played on the R & R station we were listening to: had to have been either KRLA, KFWB, or KHJ, Los Angeles.
I will first state in general why I consider the article of low quality, and then quote a large chunk of it and intersperse some comments (bolded). This is Part One. Part Two to follow if I have the time and energy, and if I can convince myself that continuing is worth my time and energy.
In the meat of his article, Pinker puts forth a number of mostly silly straw-man definitions of 'scientism' which he then has no trouble dismissing. For example, he suggests that on one understanding of scientism, it is the claim that "all current scientific hypotheses are true." Is Pinker joking? No reputable writer has ever said that or defined scientism in terms of it.
After he is done with his straw-man exercise, Pinker proffers his own definition, which, as best as I can make out, comes to the following. Scientism consists in the espousal of two ideals operative in science and which "scientism seeks to export to the rest of intellectual life." "The first is that the world is intelligible." "The second ideal is that the acquisition of knowledge is hard."
So Pinker's definition is essentially this. Scientism is the view that all of our intellectual life ought to be governed by two ideals, the ideal that the world is intelligible and the ideal that knowledge-acquisition is difficult.
Now that is a pretty sorry excuse for a definition of scientism. First of all, the intelligibility of the world is not an ideal of inquiry, but a presupposition of inquiry. Inquirers do not aim at or strive after intelligibility; they presuppose it. What they strive after is knowledge and understanding, a striving that presupposes that their subject matter is understandable, and is indeed, at least in part, understandable by us. Second, that acquiring knowledge is hard is not an ideal either; it is a fact. Third, Pinker's definition is vacuous and trivial. Apart from a few radical skeptics, who would maintain that we ought not presuppose that the world is intelligible or maintain that knowledge acquisition is easy? Even those who maintain that there are limits to what we can understand presuppose that it is intelligible that there should be such limits.
Fourth, and most importantly, Pinker's definition is just a piece of self-serving rhetoric that has nothing to do with scientism as it is actually discussed by competent scholars. What competent scholars discuss is something rather more specific than Pinker's nebulosities and pious platitudes. There are a number of different types of scientism, but the following will give you some idea of how the term is actually used by people who know what they are talking about:
Eric Voegelin, "The Origins of Scientism," Social Research, Vol. 15, No. 4 (December 1948), pp. 462-494. Voegelin speaks of
. . . the scientistic creed which is characterized by three principal dogmas: (1) the assumption that the mathematized science of natural phenomena is a model science to which all other sciences ought to conform; (2) that all realms of being are accessible to the methods of the sciences of phenomena; and (3) that all reality which is not accessible to sciences of phenomena is either irrelevant or, in the more radical form of the dogma, illusionary.
Compare Hilary Putnam, Mathematics, Matter and Method (Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. xiii (emphasis added):
. . . I regard science as an important part of man's knowledge of reality; but there is a tradition with which I would not wish to be identified, which would say that scientific knowledge is all of man's knowledge. I do not believe that ethical statements are expressions of scientific knowledge; but neither do I agree that they are not knowledge at all. The idea that the concepts of truth, falsity, explanation, and even understanding are all concepts which belong exclusively to science seems to me to be a perversion . . .
Putnam does not need the MavPhil's imprimatur and nihil obstat, but he gets them anyway, at least with respect to the above quotation. The italicized sentence is vitally important. In particular, you will be waiting a long time if you expect evolutionary biology to provide any clarification of the crucial concepts mentioned. See in particular, Putnam's "Does Evolution Explain Representation?" in Reviewing Philosophy (Harvard University Press, 1992).
Here is my characterization of scientism:
Scientism is a philosophical thesis that belongs to the sub-discipline of epistemology. It is not a thesis in science, but a thesis about science. The thesis in its strongest form is that the only genuine knowledge is scientific knowledge, the knowledge generated by the natural sciences of physics, chemistry, biology and their offshoots. The thesis in a weaker form allows some cognitive value to the social sciences, the humanities, and other subjects, but insists that natural-scientific knowledge is vastly superior and authoritative and is as it were the 'gold standard' when it comes to knowledge. On either strong or weak scientism, there is no room for first philosophy, according to which philosophy is an autonomous discipline, independent of natural science, and authoritative in respect to it. So on scientism, natural science sets the standard in matters epistemic, and philosophy’s role is at best ancillary. Not a handmaiden to theology in this day and age; a handmaiden to science.
I will now quote and comment on some of Pinker's text:
The term “scientism” is anything but clear, more of a boo-word than a label for any coherent doctrine. Sometimes it is equated with lunatic positions, such as that “science is all that matters” or that “scientists should be entrusted to solve all problems.” Sometimes it is clarified with adjectives like “simplistic,” “naïve,” and “vulgar.” The definitional vacuum allows me to replicate gay activists’ flaunting of “queer” and appropriate the pejorative for a position I am prepared to defend.
Pinker gets off to a rocky start with these straw-man definitions. Who ever defined 'scientism' as the view that "science is all that matters" or that "scientists should be entrusted to solve all problems"? Furthermore, there is no such "definitional vacuum" as Pinker alleges. The man has simply not done his homework. If he had studied the literature on the subject, he would have encountered a number of specific, precise definitions, such as the one from Voegelin above.
Scientism, in this good sense, is not the belief that members of the occupational guild called “science” are particularly wise or noble.
Who ever said it was?
On the contrary, the defining practices of science, including open debate, peer review, and double-blind methods, are explicitly designed to circumvent the errors and sins to which scientists, being human, are vulnerable. Scientism does not mean that all current scientific hypotheses are true; most new ones are not, since the cycle of conjecture and refutation is the lifeblood of science.
Stop the straw-manning! Who would ever get it into his head to think that all current scientific hypotheses are true? And who ever maintained that this is what scientism means?
It is not an imperialistic drive to occupy the humanities; the promise of science is to enrich and diversify the intellectual tools of humanistic scholarship, not to obliterate them.
Nice rhetoric, but what does it mean concretely? And to say that scientism is not imperialistic and expansionist simply flies in the face of what major proponents of it maintain. According to Edmund O. Wilson, "It may not be too much to say that sociology and the other social sciences, as well as the humanities, are the last branches of biology to be included in the Modern Synthesis." (On Human Nature, Harvard UP, 1978, p. 90; quoted in Mikael Stenmark, "What is Scientism?" Religious Studies, vol. 33, no. 1, March 1997, p. 16) If the humanities are branches of biology, then that counts as an "occupation" of the territory of the humanities by a natural science.
If the only genuine knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge, then the only genuine knowledge of the mind is via neuroscience and behavioral psychology; and if reality is all and only what is accessible to natural-scientific knowledge, then not only is phenomenological and introspective knowledge bogus, but the mind as we actually experience it is illusory. To fail to see a threat to the humanities here is to be willfully blind.
And it [scientism] is not the dogma that physical stuff is the only thing that exists. Scientists themselves are immersed in the ethereal medium of information, including the truths of mathematics, the logic of their theories, and the values that guide their enterprise. In this conception, science is of a piece with philosophy, reason, and Enlightenment humanism. It is distinguished by an explicit commitment to two ideals, and it is these that scientism seeks to export to the rest of intellectual life.
I am afraid that Pinker hasn't thought his position through very well. I am glad to hear that he thinks that there are truths and values in addition to "physical stuff." What I'd like him to tell us is which natural science is equipped to elucidate truth, falsity, explanation, inference, normativity, rationality, understanding, and all the rest. Biology perhaps?
This is better referred to as a presupposition of scientific inquiry rather than as an ideal of such inquiry, but let's not quibble. It is certainly the case that all inquiry, scientific or not, presupposes the intelligibility of its subject-matter, not to mention the power of our minds to access at least part of this intelligibility. But pointing this out does nothing to support scientism in any nonvacuous sense.
The phenomena we experience may be explained by principles that are more general than the phenomena themselves. These principles may in turn be explained by more fundamental principles, and so on. In making sense of our world, there should be few occasions in which we are forced to concede “It just is” or “It’s magic” or “Because I said so.” The commitment to intelligibility is not a matter of brute faith, but gradually validates itself as more and more of the world becomes explicable in scientific terms. The processes of life, for example, used to be attributed to a mysterious élan vital; now we know they are powered by chemical and physical reactions among complex molecules.
What Pinker seem not to understand is that opponents of scientism are not opposed to natural-scientific inquiry. He continues to waste his breath against a straw man.
Demonizers of scientism often confuse intelligibility with a sin called reductionism.
An awful sentence. Let me rewrite it so that it makes some sense. Demonizers of natural science (not scientism) often make the mistake of thinking that the quest for scientific understanding, which often takes the form of reducing X to Y, is somehow mistaken. For example, these people think that if lightning is explained as an atmspheric electrical discharge, then this reductive explanation does not generate genuiine understanding. But of course it does.
But again, what does this have to do with scientism, properly and narrowly understood?
Many of our cultural institutions cultivate a philistine indifference to science.
Sad but true! But it is also true that our cultural institutions produce hordes of ill-educated scientists who know their specialties but are philistines outside of them.
The second ideal is that the acquisition of knowledge is hard.
No one will deny that the acquisition of knowledge is hard. This is a fact, not an ideal. So far, Pinker has told us that scientism -- in his mouth a 'rah-rah' word as opposed to a 'boo' word -- is the view that two 'ideals should be promoted, namely, the intelligibility of nature and the fact that knowledge-acquisition is hard.
But this definition is quite empty since hardly anyone will oppose scientism so defined. Who denies that inquiry presupposes intelligibility and that knowledge-acquisition is hard?
The world does not go out of its way to reveal its workings, and even if it did, our minds are prone to illusions, fallacies, and superstitions. Most of the traditional causes of belief—faith, revelation, dogma, authority, charisma, conventional wisdom, the invigorating glow of subjective certainty—are generators of error and should be dismissed as sources of knowledge.
Now the problem is not that Pinker is saying something trivial but that he is saying something false. One source of knowledge is the testimony of experts and authorities and eye witnesses. Indeed much of what we know about the natural world is known on the basis of the say-so of experts whose authority we credit. For example, I know that there is no such thing as the luminiferous ether even though I have not replicated the Michelson-Morley experiement. How do I know it? I know it by reading it in reputable science texts. Besides, how many physicists have replicated the Michaelson-Morley experiment or the experiments or observations that confirm relativity physics? Could one do science at all if one took nothing on authority and tried to work everything out for oneself, including the advanced mathematics without which modern physics is unthinkable? Think about it. So it is simply false to say, as Pinker does, that authority is a "generator of error." Sometimes it is. But mostly it isn't.
Similarly with "conventional wisdom." Sometimes it leads us astray. But mostly it doesn't.
To understand the world, we must cultivate work-arounds for our cognitive limitations, including skepticism, open debate, formal precision, and empirical tests, often requiring feats of ingenuity. Any movement that calls itself “scientific” but fails to nurture opportunities for the falsification of its own beliefs (most obviously when it murders or imprisons the people who disagree with it) is not a scientific movement.
More platitudes! Who denies this? And what does any of this have to do with scientism?
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