Language Games

The way in which most comprehensive doctrines, of the sort espoused by most religions, are maintained is through willful ignorance.  This is particularly true of text based religions, and perhaps why Plato distrusted "writing."  I won't fall off the post-structuralist cliff and engage too much in the philosophy of language.  I will simply say (influenced mostly by Searle) that language is for the most part instrumental -- in other words, the one making a statement intends to "do something" with it, and that "something done" engages others.

For example, take the following statement:  "in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."  In it, we might say, the "speaker," the scribe of God, intends to represent the world in which we live to his "audience," humanity.  Except insofar as it is ostensibly holy writ, the word of God, it is no different, in kind, from the statement, "in the beginning, a big bang brought the universe into being."  In it, the speaker intends to represent the world in which we live to his "audience."  Because they are representational in intent, the statements are both subject to a "truth" test -- in other words, the statements either do or do not accurately represent the world -- or perhaps more precisely, as the audience of the statements, we form a judgement as to the accuracy of the statements relative to the world we presumably inhabit in common.  For the vast majority of us, not much is at stake in either case.  The former we recognize as religious, the latter scientific, but because both represent a truth so remote, it makes little difference which we believe.  We go on about our lives as before.

Let's take another more down to earth example where something is at stake:  "He's the one who shot and killed Mary Jane."  If the statement is made from the jury box, and if you are the one referenced by the pronoun "he," then it makes a significant difference whether the statement is true or false.  We bring evidence that will either prove or disprove the claim being made.  "It couldn't be me.  At the time of the shooting, I was away on a business trip to a neighboring state.  Here's the plane ticket that took me there.  Here's the hotel and restaurant receipts for lodging and meals.  Here is Joe Smith who will testify to my actual presence there."  The exonerating evidence is largely "circumstantial," and really doesn't bear directly on the claim, but it's the sort of tangible evidence we would credit, and we know enough of the world to know in particular that bullets do not travel from one state to another to take their victims.  The statement, "he's the one who shot and killed Mary Jane" is very, very likely false, and the one making the claim is mistaken.  To your great relief, the bailiff releases you to go on about your life as before.

Would it make a difference if the one making claim did so as follows:  "God revealed to me in a private vision that he's the one who shot and killed Mary Jane."  I doubt that the district attorney would prosecute on that basis, and few, even the most religious, would simply accept the claim prima facia.  They would particularly object if they were the object of accusation, and would like almost everyone else question the sanity and veracity of the accuser, and if really pressed would bring forth the same sorts of tangible evidence to discredit his statement.  You will note that I say "discredit his statement," not "disprove it."  It is still not possible to prove a negative, that the accused did not do it.  It's a very remote possibility that you "faked" the evidence of plane tickets, boarding passes, credit card receipts, and the like.  For even the computer expert, however, in this day and age, the enormity of that task would be daunting.  One would need to hack, not one, but several very secure computer systems and insert falsified information.   In other words, it's not just a matter of faking the receipt.  The veracity of the tickets and receipts can be verified, independently, within the computer systems of United Airlines and Visa.  Given the evidence, the statement still lacks credibility despite the accuser's preliminary claim of God's revelation.

So, a couple of additional questions:  what would it take to make you believe the statement "God revealed to me in a private vision ...?"  You know, of course, where this is going.  When it is making a factual claim about the universe we inhabit, most would want some tangible verification.  What is the difference between the former and this:  "God revealed to the scribe of Genesis in a private vision ... "  In the cultural baggage that each carries there is, of course, considerable difference, but so far as statements go, not much.   As one person put it to me a few days ago, "if you believe in the Bible at all ..."  Well, when it is making a factual claim about the universe we inhabit, I would want the tangible evidence in support of that claim.  If the tangible evidence contradicts the claim then to actually believe the factual claim as "truth," despite the evidence, would require an act of willful ignorance.  I would need, in other words, to intentionally ignore much of what I know about the world around me.  For example, again, if I believe in the factual truth of the statement "God created man in his own image ..."  What would I need to keep under the veil of ignorance if I were to actually believe it as a prima facia statement of fact?   In the absence of evolutionary explanations, what would I do with racial differences?  Is the image of God actually negroid, caucasion, or asian?  You can see, suddenly, it is not a trivial question.

There is another sense to the question, "what would it take to make you believe?"  I will operate on the assumption that it is impossible to coerce actual belief.  I will draw a distinction between persuasion and coercion.  I can be persuaded to believe otherwise, given evidence that convinces me, but ultimately I believe what I believe in spite of myself.  It is not, however, impossible to coerce conformity to the appearance of belief, conformity to an act of willful ignorance, and coercion ultimately necessitates violence or at least the credible threat of violence.  If it is of the utmost importance that you believe in the truth of a comprehensive doctrine -- whether it be absolute and unequivocal truth of the Bible, or the Koran, or Das Capital -- am I justified in using violence to coerce at least conformity to an appearance of belief?  You can see again it is not a trivial question.                        

A side note:

To say the Bible represents something of a "symbolic truth" distances the act of willful ignorance one remove.  To make this addition claim of the text, if you will, I would need to engage in a so-called willing suspension of disbelief that we associate with the interpretation of fiction, and I would need to make claims about the text itself which are subject to "verification" of a different sort.  I would be asserting that the scribe's intent was to was to symbolize this truth and that truth is "..."  In other words, I would need to expend effort providing evidence that the author's intent was to create a symbol of a truth and that truth is "..."    In the words of my students, I would need to "read into" the text something it does not say explicitly.  I would be providing an "interpretation" of the text beyond its simple propositional value and that interpretation would itself would be open to challenge.  I would still need to provide "extra-textual" evidence that the truth symbolized is, well, true.    

On the Idea of a Comprehensive Doctrine

Brad and I were drifting the South Fork of the Boise River.  He was a bit high on weed, and the fish weren't all that active, so in a quiet moment, he asked me if I was a religious man.   He was, as they say, testing me, and I answered, "not in a way that you would recognize," and left it at that.  No discussion followed, and it's probably a good thing.  I would have had to answer that "any doctrine that requires me to have 'faith' in it, to the exclusion of all others, including the evidence of my own senses, is a doctrine founded on willful ignorance."  On another occasion, Mike, arguing of all things the veracity of global warming, sought to settle the argument by saying, "if you believe in the Bible at all, it says ..."   He quoted some obscure passage that I didn't quite catch or don't quite remember, but in truth I don't "believe" in the Bible, not if belief is the act of positing complete and final authority in its verses.  Why would I posit any more authority in the Bible than in the Quran, the Lotus Sutra, Das Capital or, for that matter, any other religious text that also purports to carry complete and final authority in its verses?

The idea of a "comprehensive" doctrine is not original to me.  I come to it by way of Berlin and Rawls, with a metaphorical sprinkling of Goedel by way of Kuhn in the mix.  If I were to state my principles around this, one would go something like this, "no 'comprehensive doctrine' -- that is to say, no doctrine that purports to be the complete and final authority, once and for all -- is proof of its own truth."  In other words, I cannot quote the Bible, and its own claims to final authority, as "proof" of its final authority.  I can only quote the Bible to prove statements about the Bible.  If I wish to prove the truth of statements in the Bible, then I must step outside the Bible and provide evidence in support of its claims.  For example -- brace yourself -- the Biblical claims around creation, that God created man in his own image.  If I wanted to prove the truth of Genesis, then I must step outside the Bible and provide evidence in support of its particular claims.  What that evidence would look like, I'm not sure, but we cannot, in the end, take the final refuge of parental authority, "because I said so."  Every parent, at one point or another, wants their authority to be complete and final, and are often willing to use coercion to insure their authority is complete and final, but every child knows it is simply not enough.

For what it's worth, I should also point out that "scientific evidence" in support of Darwinian evolution does not in any way "disprove" the Biblical account.  I can no more "disprove" the Biblical account of creation any more than I can "disprove" God's existence.  I cannot prove a negative claim. I can prove a positive claim, at least provisionally.  No matter how many white swans come before me, I cannot prove that black swans do not exist.  The next one that comes before me may well be black.  I can, however, prove that black swans do exist.  I simply need to produce one black swan.  Even if it is one among billions, I need only produce one.  On the same order, I cannot disprove the Biblical account.  I can, however, provide an alternative explanation -- Darwinian evolution -- and provide evidence for that, and there does seem to be evidence in abundance for that account of "creation," little or no credible evidence in support of the Biblical account.  Consequently, given the evidence at hand, I choose to believe the Darwinian account over the Biblical account, though I know my choice is provisional.  There may come evidence that supports an even better explanation than either the Biblical or the Darwinian account.

All this is by way of saying that no comprehensive doctrine, including the more or less comprehensive statements of science, are in fact ultimately comprehensive.  I am not suggesting that we should discontinue any search for more and more comprehensive accounts of ourselves and our universe.  I am, however, suggesting that all such accounts are themselves always provisional -- in other words, always theoretical.  The evidence for this comprehensive account, this theory, may well be supplanted by evidence for that even more comprehensive account, that theory.  Epistemologically speaking, we live in a provisional universe.   All our accounts of ourselves and our universe are provisional, theoretical, and to say "we stop here" is to close the mind, is to hunker in with a willful ignorance.

Next post -- why it's not the comprehensive doctrine that's dangerous, but rather the insistence on willful ignorance ...        

The right man

In the war of all against all, the strongest, by definition, will prevail, because having prevailed is both necessary and sufficient evidence of strength.  For the academics out there, it's tautological, a truth by definition, but then a truth nevertheless.  The one at the top of the hill raises his (or her) arms in a Rocky like victory dance at the top of the stairs, and proclaims "I have prevailed against all others, and therefore I am the strongest."  He can continue in his victory dance, until, of course, someone comes and pushes him back down the stairs, and so, in this Hobbesian state of nature, to get there, and to stay there, one must be willing to exercise violence, without hesitation or compunction, against all who impede or threaten one's position.

In the war of all against all, might, the means to exercise one's will regardless of others, brute strength, does make "right," but here, of course, is where it gets a bit slippery in the slime.   We see this in our candidate Trump.  Here is a man who has prevailed in the capitalist struggle, and many admire or respect him for having done so.  He is at the top of the stairs in his Manhattan penthouse, and has arrived in his opulence in part because of the advantages of birth, in both senses of the word -- the good fortune of being born with the "right" attributes  to the "right" parents.  If one's method of keeping score is casino style opulence, then Trump is, in every respect, the "right" man in the "right" place.  It's not surprising that his promise to "make America great again" has achieved a following.  He promises greatness, and we want to believe that the "right" man will confer greatness upon us, but of course, it cannot work that way.  He is a great man, not because he has conferred greatness on others, but because he has prevailed over others.  Like the school-yard bully, to be his sycophant may confer benefits over others who are not his sycophants on the playground, but never enough that you will challenge his position as the "right" man in the "right" place.    If you do, of course, it follows that "you're fired!"       

Here there comes a subtle (well, not so subtle) shift in our notion of "right" and "rights."  It is one thing to say, "I am the right man in the right place, and I know this because I have prevailed against others."   There we are referring to nothing more than a darwinian fit within the prevailing environment.  It is quite another thing to say, "consequently, I have the 'right' to exercise my will over you."  He does, of course, but it is a wholly circumstantial right.   He does, that is, but only so long as he retains the position of being the strongest, a position that, in the war of all against all, will be perpetually challenged -- a position that must be perpetually defended by making one's self relatively greater and greater and greater, or conversely by making others lesser and lesser and lesser.   The former usually entails the latter, and so it seems, historically, every despot I know has gathered to himself the populist strength of the people to become despot, but after has governed through varying degrees of violence and the fear of violence, without hesitation or compunction, against those self-same people, else he won't remain despot long.  To be his sycophant may confer benefits over others who are not his sycophants, but never enough benefit that would allow one to challenge his position as despot.  If you do, of course, you either prevail and become the strongest or, as the saying goes, "you're toast!"

So, principle two -- we are never without "government," even if it merely the "government" of the "strongest."  Those who, out of wishful thinking, want to wish away what passes for government today, are to the same degree simply wishing into place a government of the school-yard bully.  If the last century taught us nothing, it should have taught us that.  Hitler, Stalin, Mao, all were the right men in the right place.  There is no Edenic paradise of all for all, not so long as Satan lurks in the bushes, and Satan really is just desire.  If one desires something, and wishes to make it his own, and wishes to be unfettered in his "right" to do so, and does not wish to confer on all others the same unfettered "right,"then I have wished into place the post-lapsarian war of all against all.    

     

On Guns and the Zombie Apocalypse

Let me say from the outset that I have nothing against guns, per se.  I know several people around Mountain Home who hunt not only for the sport of it, but for subsistence -- as they say, to fill the freezer.  I suspect, however, that those who support "gun rights" know that, in the absence of effective government, the war of all against all will prevail.  For example, chatting with a customer in our store, it came out that we had once lived in Chicago.  The average Mountain Home denizen, of the sort that frequents our failing little store, cannot quite imagine what it might mean to live in a place like "Chicago" beyond what they've seen on the crime procedurals on network television.  They see it, in other words, "Chicago" symbolically as a festering underworld where the war of all against all actually does prevail.  Of course, I experienced none of that.  In our Lombard home, I experienced what is probably the typical suburban life.  Our home in Farmington, New Mexico -- a town in many ways similar to Mountain Home -- was robbed not once, but twice, but the only crime we experienced in Chicago was credit card fraud.  Certainly no violent or invasive crime, not even the threat of it, not once.

Sorry, a bit side-tracked.  Start again.  Chatting with a customer in our store, I mentioned that we had lived in Chicago.  He said, predictably, that he could never live in a place like "that" -- where all that "that" entails now goes without saying, but I suspect it wears gang attire and has a black or hispanic  face.  He went on to say he had to drive through "Chicago" in the past as a trucker.  I'm pretty sure he was referring to interstate 80, and the "Chicago" he drove through wasn't "Chicago," but actually Gary, Indiana.  The finer points of the megapolis were lost on him.  It was all "Chicago," where he felt threatened enough that "my gun went on the seat right next to me" and "I got the hell out as quick as I could."  I didn't pursue the thought, but even in the cab of a semi-truck, tooling down the Interstate, he clearly felt that the normal protections of civilized society no longer prevailed -- that he needed to "protect himself" and he needed a gun to do it -- but rationally speaking, I'm not sure what exactly he would be protecting himself from?  what exactly he feared enough that he had to arm himself?  Had I  pressed (and I didn't) I'm sure he would have resisted its articulation with a fraught "you know."

At the root of this discussion around guns is fear.  The braggadocio that comes with the assertion of "self-protection" would seem at first glance the opposite, but it's an inarticulate fear that must remain inarticulate, because to articulate it, actually say it out loud, would reveal prejudice, at best, racism and xenophobia at worst -- a fear and visceral loathing of the brown and black faces that are becoming the minority-majority in the United States.  They have taken the cities and are now expanding into rural America, but to actually say it out loud, to articulate the minority-majority apocalypse, would reveal that it is almost as irrational a fear as the zombie apocalypse.  Of course the story is much more complex, but at some level the cynical attitude of the gun-rights republicans prey on this fear of the war of all against all, or maybe more accurately, my kind against the unknown other.  Guns, particularly if "they" have guns, are a way of leveling the playing field.

I say "almost" as irrational because there is a coherence at the center of it.  On the one side, there is a fear that arises from the perception of a war of all against all, a war in which the lone cowboy must "protect" himself and his kindred and his kind against the marauding others, a war in which he must strap on his concealed weapon each and every day.  The Hobbesian answer to this was, of course, the leviathan, government write large in the form of the sovereign, but those who fear the apocalypse would have none of that.  On the other side, there is a fear that arises from a conspiracy laden fear that the government itself has been co-opted by malign forces, a fear no doubt exacerbated by the black face that now inhabits, of all places, the white house.   The government is no answer, and lacking that answer, well, we are left with the war of all against all, which necessitates the self-protection of guns, and not just hunting implements, but real anti-personnel weapons, with "stopping power."

 

 

What I Believe

No doubt this will be mostly incoherent babbling, but living in Mountain Home and before that in Salt Lake City, I have broken too often my fundamental rule against argument with ignorance.  It is one thing to alleviate ignorance with education, and too much of my life was wasted in the attempt to do just that.  It is quite another thing to engage in argument, if it can be called argument, with ignorance of the willful sort.  I will have plenty of time to describe as I go along just what I mean by willful ignorance, but for the moment after conversations on everything from guns to climate control, I need an outlet where I can say what I really think, and I am anxious to get to it, mostly to clarify, for myself, my own thinking.

So, first, I believe that Hobbes had it fundamentally right -- that, without government, in the so-called state of nature, which prevails just under a gossamer thin veil of civilization and civility, it is essentially a war of all against all.  I could refer to Golding's Lord of the Flies as a primer on what, for short, I will simply refer to as the "playground"  -- that, without the paternalism of government, brute strength rules.  I can elaborate on what I mean by "brute," but essentially, on the microcosm of the playground, the kid with the most brute strength rules through intimidation, and when intimidation doesn't work, through violence which helps insure that intimidation does work.  We are all familiar with the bully and I don't know that I need elaborate, except to say that the bully needs a corresponding personality trait to fully intimidate, and that is a sociopathic ego-centrism and a lack of empathy.  He (or she) wants what he wants and is perfectly willing to "do what it takes" to get it regardless of how it might impact on others -- "regardless" in the proper sense, without regard to the pain and suffering it might cause.

I admit to an autobiographical base for this belief.  As a child coming of age, I was small and introverted, nearsighted and bookish -- a prescription for the attention of the bully -- and I received plenty of attention which always puzzled me.  I preferred simply to be left alone, and had I been left alone, I would not have much bothered anyone, but I seemed to be born with an invisible target that illuminated under the gaze of the bully.  I was not especially "timid," pre se, and I was willing to "fight back," but on more than one occasion, had it not been for the intervention of teachers, my willingness to "fight back" might well have caused me permanent damage.  Willingness, even the most stubborn willingness, does not equate to the ability to fight back effectively and only a couple of raging attempts to fight back impressed that lesson on me.  I got the proverbial snot kicked out of me.  I was not especially "timid," but I was intimidated and the bullies that intimidated me, from all available evidence, just didn't care in the least in how it might affect me.  If they were aware at all, it simply increased their sense of superiority and the pleasure they took in being the bully, not the bullied.

So, rule number one, if you believe "government" is the problem, and you wish to do away with government, whether in whole or in part, you must also believe that you will prevail (or have already prevailed) on the playground -- that you will be the bully, not the bullied.  Please note, the imperfection of government I do not consider an excuse to abolish government.  For reasons that I will come to, government will always be imperfect, and it will never  be able to perfectly regulate human affairs once and for all.  There will always  be problems associated with the design and enforcement of regulation, and we will never achieve perfect efficiency or equity, but the alternative is the playground.   Those calling for no or less regulation, I suspect, believe they have already prevailed on the playground.  They are already the bullies.  Of course they want to freedom, what I will refer to as a "positive" freedom -- the freedom to do as one pleases -- because they possess (or believe they posses, or believe they will possess) the means to fulfill their whims and exercise power over others.  

The irony is this: in the world of perfect freedom, without government, the whims of the bully, the tyrant, become the regulatory force.  It takes only three nano-seconds to come up with a plethora of historical examples to demonstrate that the lack of restraint leads, not to freedom for all, but to freedom for the few, to the subjugation and intimidation of the many.