I think it best to weight heavily the opinions of those who read/hear their opponents' arguments and answer them.... [Mentioning a cautionary but unnamed example], I do not regard this as an intellectual failing, but an emotional one.... This is simply a cautionary tale that even later in life, after you have avoided many varieties of foolishness, such things (social and emotional rather than intellectual reasoning) can still hunt you down and make you stupid.
In spite of the fact that philosophy's most famous figure clearly comes down on one side of this, there is a contemporary debate about whether it is to engage in examining your life. (Also in psychology, where the consideration is not whether it is good but whether it is healthy.)
According to Jamison, not only is an unexamined life worth living; the rigorous examination of life should not be encouraged due to its possible negative effects on the participants and the entire society.2 In Jamison’s view, a consistent and unregulated examination of human life produces a feeling of ecstasy (a specie of spiritual feeling) in those who engage in it. The feeling, if allowed, could endanger both the thinker and the entire society. For Jamison, “once you get a taste of this kind of thing, you do not want to give it up”.3 Someone who engages in self-critical examination eventually becomes entangled with it. Socrates became entangled in dialectics, became unpopular, was accused of corrupting the youth and eventually sentenced to death....
As a matter of fact, Jamison’s position has a lacuna. He (Jamison) never rejects the method of self-critical examination. He recommends a form of social regulation whereby only a very few individuals are allowed to embrace the method. In his words, “there is no doubt in my mind that it is important for a community to have members that engage in critical thinking, and the examined life, but I also think it important to point out that it is not good for a community to have too many members doing this."
Like a lot of contemporary philosophy, we jump immediately to elitism: it's not good for 'too many' people to be examining their own lives. Society would be more stable, and the goods of a stable society more enduring, if people would just stop doing that (engaging instead, as the psychology article suggests, chiefly with sports, fashion, and the like).
Now -- on the other hand, in the spirit of "[considering] their opponents' arguments and answer them" -- there is a non-elitist form of this argument that might be persuasive. It comes from Joseph Schumpeter, most famous as the economist who showed why Marx's predictions for capitalism had failed. He nevertheless expected the downfall of capitalist society, precisely because it educated too many of its youth.
Schumpeter believed that the enormous productivity of capitalism would easily churn out the goods needed for basic consumption, freeing up labour from the fields and factories to enjoy a leisurely life in the new modern intellectual class of academics, journalists and bureaucrats. This class would be so separated and removed from the actual process of entrepreneurship and production, they would turn against the very philosophical foundations and institutions of the economic system that made their lives possible. Not understanding the roots of their own condition, they spend their daily efforts deliberately working to undermine the systems of private property, private contracting, decentralized decision-making, entrepreneurship and voluntary exchange. They condemn capitalism as a foregone conclusion and view any pro-capitalism position as crazy and anti-social.
I think the appropriate counter is that very few of these many are really engaged in self-examination, neither of their own lives nor of the systems of thought into which they have been inculcated. Critical theory in all its forms contains a basic structural problem that I have never heard anyone but myself describe, and certainly none of its advocates. I say that it is a problem, not an error, because it is necessary for the sort of enquiry it proposes.
The problem is this: in order to engage in critical theoretical enquiries, it is necessary to make an assumption about society and treat it as if it is true, but in order to get to true answers, the truth of the assumption has to be verified independently. Strict logic likewise can derive from assumptions to conclusions with truth-preservation, but you have to verify the truth of the assumptions outside the system of logic. Thus:
Assumption: A or B
Assumption: Not A
Conclusion: Therefore, B.
The conclusion is true if and only if the assumptions are both true, and logic won't tell you whether or not they are in fact true. You have to go look and see if, e.g., it is the case that "not A."
Critical Race Theory, currently the most famous, ends up providing strong evidence against its basic assumption: "Assume that, in spite of evidence, all of our social, legal, and economic institutions are really designed to ensure white supremacy." If you make that assumption and treat it as true, well, human beings are fantastic storytellers. You can tell all kinds of stories about how this or that thing really is about white supremacy. I'm not even against doing this, as it sometimes provides useful insight into ways we could reform some institutions to be fairer to people regardless of race. However, the fact that we are often motivated to institute such reforms is itself evidence against the truth of the assumed proposition.
If you went back to the Jim Crow South, for example, and pointed out that the grandfather clause had the apparently unintentional effect of disenfranchising Freedmen, no one would be interested in your proposal of reform. In an actual such society, no such reforms would be desired. The fact that we engage in the enquiry with the intent to reform is evidence against the proposition; the fact that we actually do reform could even be said to disprove it.
Yet people get so caught up in the stories that they were telling that they miss this. They end up motivated socially, as AVI says; but also emotionally, as he says. They fall in love with the stories they have crafted, and don't get as far as enquiring as to whether or not the exercise doesn't itself disprove the assumption. It may still be a useful exercise, if it generates helpful reforms that improve the decency of society. Yet the motivation of decent reformation proves, if anything, that the critical assumption was false.
Obviously I am inclined to Socrates' view, and Plato's, and Aristotle's; that is the real motivation behind this two-decade-long blog. I don't think the problem is that too many people are taught to be intellectually critical of society; I think it's that too few of them are taught to do it well and thoroughly.
10 comments:
Well stated. I was thinking along much simpler lines of very basic listening and elementary evaluation of one's own stuff. Jasper, couldja just look at what you are claiming and consider whether there are any counterexamples that pop up pretty quickly? Is this the situation at your local sheriff's, medical office you use, schools in your town, etc? Are the election of 2004, Canadian covid rules, or your own grandparents' jobs consistent with this conspirazoid claim of yours? Sheesh.
Yet as I started in on your response I saw immediately that there is indeed a set of larger issues underlying. A nation of self-evaluators may not be desirable. Further, individual self-evaluation can become obsessive, with diminishing returns, unhealthy for us singly and collectively. The distinction between self-evaluation and merely having it available works. Should we be teaching everyone how to do this and encouraging them to?
I return to my simpler original. It is trendy to call it "mindfulness," but there is a real ability to observe your own behavior or listen to your own words and consider how such would seem to the average person, and also to the very specific person you are dealing with. It is foundational to politeness. It is true that people can and should be taught a rote politeness that says "send a sympathy card in this situation," or "refrain from making observations about other people's children without careful consideration" that do not depend on always asking oneself "what would it feel like to be them in this moment?" Nonetheless those politeness rules are founded on someone having done just that, in order to make the rule.
While "how would that feel if it were said to you?" cannot be applied to every action and sentence we utter, but we had darn well better be asking it of ourselves sometimes, and the more fraught the situation the more necessary this is. One of the most painful lessons of the Nostalgia Destruction Tour is to learn there are many people who are smarter and better educated than I who seem to never spend fifteen seconds on such matters. I want to smack them.
I don't understand this claim: "However, the fact that we are often motivated to institute such reforms is itself evidence against the truth of the assumed proposition."
How is that, exactly?
"Paralysis by analysis?" I've had it happen to me a time or three.
Once I know what I ought to do, I ought to dig in and do it will all my might--one might say whole-heartedly. Like little children, perhaps.
Tom:
The assumption: “America only has a pretense of racial equality, but is secretly organized to ensure white supremacy.” Whether this (or any assumption made in logic) is true needs to be established independently, as for example empirically.
The empirical fact exposed by the reform: “American society is amenable to reform when racist consequences of apparently neutral policies are uncovered.” This seems to constitute an empirical falsification of the assumption.
You have to test the assumptions outside the logical system. The fact that you find people eager to adopt reforms when unexpected racist consequences are uncovered seems like a pretty solid argument that the assumption being made wasn’t true to begin with. The exercise can still be useful; indeed, it ought to be used both for improving society and also for proving that the society is open to striving for decency.
Ah, I see. I misunderstand what reforms, exactly, you were referring to: The reforms we as a society make when clear racism is uncovered, or the reforms the Critical Theorists want to make based on their unproven premises, and somehow thought it was the latter. I was tired.
Well, misunderstood, that is - past tense.
The Catholic Church recommends a serious self-examination of one's conscience at least monthly.
Note that this has the advantage of concentrating on What Really Matters, for all people, at all times.
No, not that they get everything they ever ask for, but for example there was a criticism of zoning laws that was pretty compelling. Many cities are now involved in reforms. If the assumption were true, you wouldn't see a reaction like this:
https://housingmatters.urban.org/articles/how-cities-are-paving-way-fair-housing-expert-discussion
D29, that's worth talking about. Do you have a good online resource I could link on how that ought to be done according to the Church?
I use an app called "Laudate". Has a couple of different examinations built-in. The US Bishops have a few suggestions here: https://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/sacraments-and-sacramentals/penance/examinations-of-conscience
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