Debate, Disagreement, and the Limits of Rational Discourse

I wrote a few months back,

. . . the wisest policy is not to debate leftists. Generally speaking and admitting exceptions, leftists need to be defeated, not debated. Debate is worthwhile only with open-minded truth seekers. Truth, however, is not a leftist value. At the apex of the leftist's value hierarchy stands POWER. That is not to say that a leftist will never speak the truth; he will sometimes, but only if it serves his agenda. 

Tony Flood replied that the above quotation reminded him "of [Eric] Voegelin's stance on this very issue, about which I blogged a few years ago."  In that post Tony reproduces the first paragraph of Voegelin's Debate and Existence as follows. [note to AGF: your hyperlink is busted: 404 error]  Tony breaks Voegelin's one paragraph into four.

 

In our capacity as political scientists, historians, or philosophers we all have had occasion at one time or another to engage in debate with ideologists—whether communists or intellectuals of a persuasion closer to home.

And we all have discovered on such occasions that no agreement, or even an honest disagreement, could be reached, because the exchange of argument was disturbed by a profound difference of attitude with regard to all fundamental questions of human existence—with regard to the nature of man, to his place in the world, to his place in society and history, to his relation to God.

Rational argument could not prevail because the partner to the discussion did not accept as binding for himself the matrix of reality in which all specific questions concerning our existence as human beings are ultimately rooted; he has overlaid the reality of existence with another mode of existence that Robert Musil has called the Second Reality.

The argument could not achieve results, it had to falter and peter out, as it became increasingly clear that not argument was pitched against argument, but that behind the appearance of a rational debate there lurked the difference of two modes of existence, of existence in truth and existence in untruth. The universe of rational discourse collapses, we may say, when the common ground of existence in reality has disappeared. (My emphasis.-AGF)

I don't have the time to go deep into Voegelin's view, but I will fire off four comments, one for each of the above four paragraphs. My aim is to clarify my position vis-à-vis Voegelin's (and Flood's).  

1) A lot depends on what we mean by 'ideology.' The tendency, of course, is for the partisan of a particular view to think that he has the truth and that anyone who opposes him is an 'ideologue' or 'ideologist' to use Voegelin's term. But should 'ideologue' and 'ideology' be used as pejoratives? We need to back up a step and essay a definition of 'ideology.' The definition cannot be merely stipulative, but it cannot be merely lexical either since 'ideology' and variants are used in a variety of ways. So we should expect that any definition given will involve an element of selection and precisification and is therefore bound to elicit disagreement.  Let's try a genus-species definition.

What is the genus of which ideologies are species? I suggest: belief system. An ideology is a system of beliefs, where 'system' implies a plurality of beliefs that are, ideally, mutually coherent and mutually supportive. But not every such system of beliefs is an ideology. Astronomy is not an ideology.  Neither is anatomy or geology or mathematics. Why not? Well, 'ideology' connotes beliefs that are highly controversial, and not just at the edges but in the main, in the sense of being controvertible by reasonable people, in the way that arithmetic, which is not an ideology, is not controvertible by reasonable people. But what makes ideological beliefs controvertible? What  distinguishes belief systems that are ideologies from those that are not?

I suggest the following as specific difference: an ideology is a system of beliefs oriented toward human action. An ideology is meant to guide human action.  Ideologies prescribe and proscribe courses of action. As such, an ideology is not merely theoretical, but theoretical-cum-practical.  Man does not, and cannot, live by theory alone.  For he is not merely a spectator of the passing scene but a participant in it: he is an agent, a doer, and he must act. He is free to act in this way or that, but not free not to act. With Gallic exaggeration one could say that we are "condemned to be free." (Jean-Pual Sartre)  We are so "condemned" because freedom is 'inscribed' as a Continental might say, in our nature. Being a rational and free agent, and not a mere responder to external stimuli, a man faces the task of figuring out how he ought to act to maximize his chances of flourishing, but also to satisfy any categorical normative demands that his conscience discloses to him. He needs directives, both prescriptive and proscriptive.  He needs a set of beliefs he can live by. Not even a math teacher can live by mathematics, though he can of course live from the teaching of mathematics. "I live by the Golden Rule" makes sense; "I live by the Pythagorean Theorem" makes no sense.  So he needs a worldview or ideology. As I use these terms they are interchangeable.

But note that 'worldview' is a bit of a misnomer since a worldview is not merely a view; it is not merely a matter of theory or spectatorship. It is also practical as involving prescriptions, proscriptions, and valuations pertinent to agents who, qua agents,  are not mere spectators. It is because ideologies prescribe and proscribe that they cannot fail to be controvertible. For what one ought to do and ought not to do is reasonably controvertible.  Evaluative and normative claims will always be bones of contention. Take John Rawls' Difference Principle. Roughly, it states that socio-economic inequality is justified only if the inequality benefits the worst off, making them better off than they would have been without the inequality. Is that obvious? No. It is reasonably rejected. (It is also reasonably accepted.) One example among many.

An ideology, then, is a system of coherent beliefs oriented toward action. With respect to what? With respect to everything that concerns human beings as agents embedded in nature,  in society, and in history, agents with a future and possibly with a destiny beyond the natural, the social, and the historical. 

Marxism is clearly an ideology on my definition. While based on certain theoretical claims, it is not merely theoretical or speculative but practical. As Karl Marx famously declared, "The philosophers have variously interpreted the world; the point, however, is to change it." (Theses on Feuerbach, #11)  

Buddhism is clearly an ideology in the same sense. It does indeed rest on purely theoretical claims such as the anatta doctrine, but its aim is soteriological and thus practical. This is true of every religion and every therapeutic wisdom path such as that of the Pyrrhonian skeptics (Sextus Empiricus & Co.). 

If you accept my definition, then 'ideology' is not a pejorative term and ideologies are not by definition false. Traditionalist Roman Catholics believe that they are in possession of ultimate truth about ultimate matters including the most important of them, the Four Last Things. If they are right, then their ideology is true.  Just as an ideology is not by definition false on my definition of the term,  it is also not by definition distortive, insincere, hypocritical, or merely a legitimation of existing power relations in a society.

I knew a guy in graduate school who maintained that Plato's Theory of Forms was nothing but an 'ideological' legitimation by aristocrats of the social relations in Athenian society. It was merely the obfuscatory super-structural reflection at the level of abstract ideas of the concrete dominance and submission relations in society for the purpose of keeping the oppressed in their place and the oppressors on top. Now what this guy maintained is preposterous on the face of it, but that is not my main point, which is that this is not the way I use the term 'ideology.' But I am not just making an autobiographical comment. I am recommending my way  of using the term, and I will continue to do so until someone convinces me that there is a better way to use the term.

To sum up the main points I have just made. First, an ideology is a system of mutually supportive beliefs oriented towards action that includes prescriptions, proscriptions and evaluations all or most of which can be controverted by reasonable  people in the way that the truths of arithmetic cannot be controverted by reasonable people. Second, not every system of beliefs is an ideology even if the systems can be applied or implemented in the world of space-time. You can use arithmetic to balance your check book or to calculate a tip on a restaurant bill.  If you tip at 20% on a tab of $40, you use the abstract truth that .2 X 40 = 8 to leave the concrete waitress eight concrete paper dollars.  This is an example of the application of a system of beliefs, in this case arithmetic. But it is not an ideology: it does not prescribe or proscribe courses of action. It does not, for example prescribe that one must tip at 20% or tip at all. It does not evaluate tipping as a practice that is good or bad. For that you need an ideology or a portion of one. 

Third, an ideology is not by definition false, distortive, hypocritical, insincere, or expressive of 'false consciousness.' An ideology is a worldview, and we cannot live a human life without one, where 'human' is not a merely biological term. We are animals but not just animals: we are free, rational, spiritual animals.  If we don't have one worldview, we will have another. Pace the Pyrrhonians, we cannot live adoxastos,  belief-lessly. Some worldviews are good, others bad. Communism is a terribly  destructive ideology based on falsehoods and outright lies, but there can be no doubt that it gave structure and purpose to many lives.   

2) Voegelin in his second paragraph gives a hint as to how he is using 'ideology' when he tells us that if there is a profound disagreement on fundamentals, then "not even an honest disagreement" is possible. V. is implying that if one's interlocutor differs profoundly, then he is an ideologue, is intellectually dishonest and  cannot be in possession of the truth or any part of it.  V. is using 'ideology' and variants in a pejorative way.  An ideology cannot be true, and if one is an ideologue then not only is one supporting  falsehoods, but knowingly so doing, and is  therefore intellectually dishonest.  Here then is a point of difference that needs to be borne in mind: V. is using 'ideology' as a pejorative; I am not.

3) In his third paragraph, V seems to be maintaining the he has the truth and that therefore anyone who disagrees with him is pushing a false alternative  'reality.'  He speaks of "two modes of existence, of existence in truth and existence in untruth" and he makes it clear that he thinks he is on the side of truth.  

4) The gist of V's fourth paragraph is in the sentence, "The universe of rational discourse collapses, we may say, when the common ground of existence in reality has disappeared."

It is not clear what V is saying in the third and fourth paragraphs, so we turn to our friend Flood for help. He writes,

In Voegelin’s cosmology, human beings inhabit a divinely created cosmos. But for the one who opposes a “second reality” to this truth, we’re the vomit of blind, impersonal process, even an explosion. Out of that matrix of virtually no-thing there emerged, somehow, beings who are either determined by that matrix or free to make of themselves whatever they desire. There is no objective way to elect one prong of this road’s fork or the other. Voegelin’s shorthand for those opposing existence in truth is “ideologists.”

Call the one prong theism and the other prong metaphysical naturalism. Is V. telling us that there is no way objectively and rationally to decide between these two?  Is he telling us that it remains a personal decision which fork to take? If that is what he is saying, why does he condemn his opponents as 'ideologists' who fail to live in the truth? When he condemns his opponents as 'ideologists,' he presupposes, not only that there is objective truth, but also that he possesses it, i.e., that he knows what it is, whereas his opponents do not.  Clearly, there is a crucial distinction between the questions Is there truth? and What is the truth?  One can agree that there is truth without agreeing as to what it is.

So on one way of reading the situation, both theist and naturalist presuppose that there is objective truth, but they differ as to what the truth is.  For the naturalist, the truth is that nature exhausts reality leaving no place for God. For the theist, nature does not exhaust reality and there is God, a supernatural being who is the ground, source, or first cause (causa prima) of nature. But then the question becomes: what justifies V's dogmatic commitment? By what right does he privilege his position and denounce his opponents as  'ideologists'?

We turn again to Flood for assistance:

If in back of everything is the void, then one cannot confidently articulate or predicate that putative “truth.” [The supposed truth that we are the "vomit of a blind, impersonal process."] By his resistance to existence in truth, the ideologist makes the coherent expression of resistance impossible. 

This gloss by Flood provides a clue as to V's meaning. It now appears that what V is saying is that the metaphysical naturalist who holds that there is no God and that reality is exhausted by the space-time system and its contents, is, whether he knows it or not,  denying the very existence of truth, the presupposition of any given claim's being true, such as the claim that Flood puts in the mouth of the naturalist, namely, that we are the "vomit of a blind, impersonal process." The content of this claim purports to be true, objectively true, true whether or not it is asserted or claimed by anyone.

On this interpretation of what V is maintaining, truth cannot exist without God so that if, per impossibile, God did not exist, truth would not exist either. No God, no truth. The refutation of the naturalist would then consist in pointing out that his affirmation of the truth of naturalism is inconsistent with the conditions of its own truth, namely, the existence of truth.  So, if naturalism is true, then it not true. And if not true, then of course not true. Therefore, naturalism is necessarily not true.  It is, necessarily, neither true nor false, and thus no proposition at all.

To put it in another way, we must presupposes truth if we are to assert anything at all. Now if truth cannot exist unless God exists, then the fact that we make assertions entails the existence of God and the falsity of every form of naturalism.

This refutation will of course not impress our naturalist colleagues, some of whom are not only brilliant, but also intellectually honest to a high degree. (I'm thinking of D. M. Armstrong.)  The problem for V and for Flood et al. is to show that truth cannot exist without God.  Why can't there be truth without God? 

I grant that the existence of truth is a presupposition of assertion and indeed of all of our discursive operations. But is this presupposition merely transcendental (in roughly Kant's sense of 'transcendental') or is it ontological? 

It might well be that WE must presuppose truth and cannot carry out our discursive operations (judgment, argumentation, etc.) without presupposing truth,  but that, in reality apart from us (and minds like us),  there is no truth.  In that case, truth would be a presupposition all right, but only a transcendental one. It would not be an ontological presupposition. Only if it is the latter, however, can we identify God as the source of truth and as truth itself in a super-eminent sense of the term.  Only then would the undeniable certainty of the presupposition of truth entail the undeniable certainty of God's existence.  

But of course the distinction between the transcendental and the ontological can and must be questioned. Is it coherently thinkable that objective truth first emerged when we truth sensitive organisms first emerged? And that before then nothing was true or false with respect to the cosmic and evolutionary processes that  eventuated in the existence of minded organisms? That very assertion, I will be told, purports to be true, and thus presupposes the existence of truth!

To which the response might be made, "Yes, that assertion and every assertion presupposes the existence of truth, but only at the times at which minds such as ours exist. For only at those times does truth exist. So it is true now, when truth exists, that the proposition Truth first began to exist when we began to exist is true but before then that proposition was neither true nor false. It is true now that pre-biotic physical and chemical processes occurred that eventuated in the arisal of life and mind and truth, but it was not true then. Then there were no truths about those processes and their properties but just the processes themselves.

My conclusion is that the retorsive reasoning V executes, while reasonable,  is not rationally compelling where a rationally compelling argument is one that forces the consumer of the argument to accept its conclusion on pain of embracing an explicit logical contradiction should he reject it.  There are two equally reasonable positions one could adopt on the matter. One could hold, with V, that truth cannot exist without God as its ground and source, or that truth does not need God for its existence.  It appears that philosophy is in no position to resolve the question. Either appeal must be made to an extra-philosophical source of insight, or one one must simply decide which alternative to embrace.

Related: Retorsion Revisited: How Far Does it Reach and What Does it Prove?

Comments

[Michael Brazier]

I am unaware of any version of naturalism that doesn't, on analysis, collapse into eliminative materialism, the belief that minds do not actually exist and our perception of ourselves as thinking and choosing is an illusion. As a result, claiming that truth exists only within a mind on the basis of naturalism entails that truth doesn't really exist at all - it's only a figment within a figment. Not only was there neither truth nor falsehood before us, there is neither truth nor falsehood now.

But it goes farther. The chief reason for accepting naturalism was the extreme agreement of classical physics' description of the world with the world as we perceive it to be, and the absence of any chink in that physics in which free will and reason could find a place. But for that to be a good argument, both our perceptions and the type of reasoning that led to classical physics have to be generally reliable - and not just in Kant's "transcendental" sense, but ontologically. Yet naturalism, if true, denies that anything can be true in so strong a sense.

The problem is that, if naturalism is true, the universe is a brute fact, blank and unintelligible, and nothing we "know" about it can be trusted. We live deceived in all our beliefs, not by Descartes' devil, but by ourselves. The only rational responses to someone arguing for naturalism are akin to an xkcd cartoon: "Those were certainly some words you just said. I think they mean I can take all your stuff!"

[Anthony G Flood]

Bill, I’m grateful to you for occasioning what follows. Within the ambit of a combox, however, I can only suggest outlines of answers that must strike you insufficiently analytical.

You say “‘worldview’ is a bit of a misnomer since a worldview is not merely a view; it is not merely a matter of theory or spectatorship.” No, not merely, but as I argued here on June 12th, the roots of “theory” in spectating, contemplating assert themselves.

You define an ideology as “a system of coherent beliefs oriented toward action.” What was Voegelin’s definition? “An ideology is a set of beliefs and expressions that present, interpret, and evaluate the world in a way designed to organize, mobilize, and justify social and political action.” (https://voegelinview.com/ideology/)

Voegelin’s definition of “ideology” entails nothing pejorative, but perhaps I suggested otherwise when I wrote “Voegelin’s shorthand for those opposing existence in truth is ‘ideologists’.” Today I’d say that by that term Voegelin meant particularly (not exclusively) ideologists he diagnosed as existentially malformed. The pejorative connotation is reserved for existence in untruth, the suppression of truth often accompanied by its explicit denial.

What has displaced truth in those with whom he often found himself in fruitless interaction are untruths, falsehoods, about God, man, and the world (theos, anthropos, kosmos). The ideologists whom Voegelin could not debate (at least, not with integrity) were truth-suppressers and -deniers. Perhaps he should have made it clear that anyone wishing to implement practically his (Voegelin’s) insights were also ideologists! In that case, “an ideology is not by definition false, distortive, hypocritical, insincere, or expressive of ‘false consciousness.’”

But, yes, “profound disagreement on fundamentals [God, man, world]” puts honest intellectual disagreement on other matters dubious: as a virtue, honesty does not comport well with being at enmity with God. The word “disagreement” does not capture the state of being at war with truth. You may believe that Voegelin and (at a galactic distance) I are judging certain intellectuals (e.g., D. M. Armstrong) unfairly; speaking only for myself, I believe you’re overlooking the possibility that their (dis)orientation toward theos, anthropos, kosmos undermines the force of their mundane predications.

You’re highlighting what I’ve called (in my Herbert Aptheker book) “willful blindness”; Greg Bahnsen (in his dissertation), “self-deception”; and the Apostle Paul, the “suppression of the truth in unrighteousness.” I question whether this falls under “intellectual dishonesty” simpliciter. It’s a symptom of a basic moral disorder. The suppressor or denier might be in possession of a great many truths, but his “existence in untruth” (Voegelin) or unrighteousness (Romans 1:18-20) adversely affects his reception of them. It warps what he does, including thinking and speaking. We must therefore take everything he says on a case-by-case basis. The “well-meaning” intellectual can be dishonest existentially, that is, about God, himself and his fellow man, and the world-order.

It's worth asking how existential dishonesty or disorder affects one’s commitment to intellectual honesty. Affirming that it does, however, is no warrant for spiritual conceit on the part of the truth-seeker. My regarding, say, Christopher Hitchens, as wrong ideologically (“worldview-wise”) is compatible with recognizing him as having been a source of insight in many matters and my intellectual and literary superior by orders of magnitude. Whether his ideology blocked his grasp of empirical truth is past my finding out.

To turn to a topic I know a little more about: Aptheker’s suppression of what he must have known about C. L. R. James in Aptheker’s specialty (slave revolts) was due to his having consecrated his life to Stalinism. Did that make everything Aptheker wrote worthless? No, but it rendered it all suspect. (There's is also an analogy to be made in the case of David Irving.)

You ask, “Is Voegelin telling us that there is no way objectively and rationally to decide between these two [i.e., theism and naturalism]? Is he telling us that it remains a personal decision which fork to take?” I can’t speak for him. I may have put words in the naturalist’s mouth, but I shudder to put any in Voegelin’s. My approach, worked out in Philosophy after Christ https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-after-Christ-Thinking-Thoughts/dp/B0B426P7SY —which I only dogmatically assert here—is that the one, nonarbitrary criterion for sorting out worldviews for adequacy is whether it satisfies the conditions of intelligible predication (including the imperative to honor the value of nonarbitariness (:^D)). The naturalist worldview cannot satisfy those conditions, but is not alone in that respect. The Christian worldview, the one formed by reading the Bible, uniquely does that. Accepting it does not involve any subjective, you-go-your-way-I’ll-go-mine decisionism.

Commitment to the Christian worldview yields a view of truth as, in the first place, a divine person, the Word (ὁ Λόγος, ho Logos) or expression of God: the former “speaks the truth” about the latter. Therefore, objective truth did not first emerge “when we truth sensitive organisms first emerged.”

“If you had known (ἐγνώκειτέ, egnōkeite) me,” Jesus responded to Thomas, “you would have known (ᾔδειτε, ēdeite) the Father.” (John 14:7) This obviates the need to ask, “Is there truth?” And yes, “No God, no truth.” A verse or two earlier, Jesus identified himself with truth. Pilate might have gotten an answer to his question had he stayed for an answer. (John 18:38)

The Wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:20; Colossians 2:3) is not a source of “nonphilosophical insight,” but is rather a sure foundation for framing and essaying answers to philosophical questions. For is there’s no God, there’s no accounting for the affirmation or denial of anything! (In which case even that hypothetical is meaningless.) As Cornelius Van Til encapsulated his position: atheism presuppose theism. (On this see James Anderson’s post: https://www.proginosko.com/2011/12/antitheism-presupposes-theism-and-so-does-every-other-ism/.) As Bahnsen framed the challenge: “without the existence of God it’s impossible to prove anything” or, for that matter, even to valorize proof itself.
(https://www.credocourses.com/2015/06/01/does-god-exist-bahnsen-vs-stein-debate-transcript/)

I look forward to finding out where I missed the mark, but I must leave it there for now.

Tony

[BV]

Tony,

You did mislead me a bit as to Voegelin's understanding of ideology, but the link you provided sets me straight. He and I seem to be using the term in roughly the same way. I confess to not having read much V.

Here are the salient issues: >>For is there’s no God, there’s no accounting for the affirmation or denial of anything! (In which case even that hypothetical is meaningless.) As Cornelius Van Til encapsulated his position: atheism presuppose theism. (On this see James Anderson’s post: https://www.proginosko.com/2011/12/antitheism-presupposes-theism-and-so-does-every-other-ism/.) As Bahnsen framed the challenge: “without the existence of God it’s impossible to prove anything” or, for that matter, even to valorize proof itself.
(https://www.credocourses.com/2015/06/01/does-god-exist-bahnsen-vs-stein-debate-transcript/)<<

I need to take a look at Anderson's post.

Thanks for he comments. I know you are pressed for time. I know some guy whose book you are trying to assemble. I'll be in touch.