Truth, Goodness and Facts

 Truth, Goodness and Facts

Horkheimer’s critique of Kant was over the assumption that the good brought happiness!   Kant believed that we must do our duty even if it meant every person on earth would suffer. Kant is a non-consequentialist and happiness, as well as suffering, are consequences. Kant does not care one whit about consequences, he cares about motives, intentions, good will; he cares about what happens BEFORE the action is performed, not about what happens after duty is fulfilled.

‘Good or happiness’ - many philosophers believe that “good” means happiness, which is not always clear cut. Good is too often a non-cognitive term - good cannot be perceived. And, good does not necessarily lead to happiness.

Truth also is vague. Truth as truth-telling is different from truth as factual. One can be telling the truth in terms of their emotional state of mind or consciously while being completely erroneous about the facts. But, many philosophers equate truth and rightness, that in being “right” they articulate the truth which is not appropriate. 

Truth may not require evidence. Truth may forever be unknown because of a lack of evidence or because reasoning cannot establish necessity. Knowledge requires evidence. According to the foremost epistemological theory, knowledge is "justified true belief." True belief alone is not sufficient for knowledge because one might hold a belief which is true by accident or coincidence. 

A "justification" usually involves the presentation of evidence.

The standard for truth is rationality which means that a truth or rightness claim is motivated by a justified, warranted and grounded consensus which includes the perspectives of all, hence rational. In other words, evidence is necessary.

There are preventions of nature’s wrath. Humans are part of nature, can understand nature and rationally control it. Humans can prevent catastrophes.

Truth adds values to 'facts.'  The term "fact" has two easily conflated meanings. The first is simply "true statement"; truth cannot be understood without redundancy. The second meaning can be compressed as "the way the world is," which includes objects, events, situations, etc., in the universe, including truths about an individual's state of mind: what a person knew about a state affairs at a given time and their intentions.

Truth addresses the accuracy, or adequacy of descriptions about facts. Truth includes several dilemmas beyond the fact-value difference. To explain an event or a happening - why it emerged and how to formulate it, truth must address both teleology or goal-directedness - how certain goals or aims determined or influenced the event, and causality, the causes, reasons and intentions that led to the effects and consequences. 

Formulating the truth about events or change involves interpretation and reinterpretations - properly attributing the teleological and causative elements of the event.

Destruction or Destructuring in Heidegger's Being and Time (1927)

 Destruction or Destructuring in Heidegger's Being and Time (1927) from p23

"In thus demonstrating the origin of our basic ontological concepts by an investigation in which their 'birth certificate' is displayed, we have nothing to do with a vicious relativizing of ontological standpoints. But this destruction is just as far from having the negative sense of shaking off the ontological tradition. We must, on the contrary, stake out the positive possibilities of that tradition, and this always means keeping it within its limits; these in tum are given factically in the way the question is formulated at the time, and in the way the pouible field fOr investigation is thus bounded off. On its negative side, this destruction does not relate itself towards the past; its criticism is aimed at 'today' and at the prevalent way of treating the history of ontology, whether it is headed towards doxography, towards intellectual history, or towards a history of problems. But to bury the past in nullity [Nichtigkeit] is not the purpose of this destruction; its aim is positive; its negative function remains unexpressed and indirect." Macquarrie translation 1962

"This demonstration of the provenance of the fundamental ontological concepts, as the investigation which displays their "birth certificate," has nothing to do with a pernicious relativizing of ontological standpoints. The destructuring has just as little the negative sense of disburdening ourselves of the ontological tradition. On the contrary, it should stake out the positive possibilities of the tradition, and that always means to fix its boundaries. These are factually given with the specific formulation of the question and the prescribed demarcation of the possible field of investigation. Negatively, the destructuring is not even related to the past: its criticism concerns "today" and the dominant way we treat the history of ontology, whether it be conceived as the history of opinions, ideas, or problems. However, the destructuring does not wish to bury the past in nullity; it has a positive intent. Its negative function remains tacit and indirect." Stambaugh translation 1996

The fundamental or elementary concepts were given just earlier by Heidegger as "Insofar as certain distinctive domains of being become visible in the course of this history and henceforth chiefly dominate the range of problems (Descartes' ego cogito, subject, the "I," reason, spirit, person), the beings just cited remain unquestioned with respect to thebeing and structure of their being, which indicates the thorough neglect of the question of being. This sort of list was also found in Nietzsche's "Twilight of the Idols" as unity, identity, permanence, substance, cause, thinghood, being which catches us in error.

Postmodernism

 Postmodernism

Postmodernism is the name of the cultural turn of the 1980's from structures to feelings, also called poststructuralism.

Postmodernism is critical and focuses on the particular, not on the general or universal such as tradition, authority, or rationality. A typical postmodern analysis or criticism focuses on power.

Postmodernism claims that science has been captured by the right which includes both the professional class and the corporations.  Science, and medicine, is considered to be socially situated.

Postmodernists detect increasing social instability and volatility, and a decline in predictability and regularity.

Postmodernism emphasizes the mind, fantasy, and the turning of fantasy back upon itself - fantasy versus fantasy - and this more fantasy.

Knowledge has no stable foundation, such as rationality, tradition or authority. Heidegger and Arendt emphasize that these  foundations have been forgotten, and lied away.

Knowledge must simply be useful but follows artistic and intellectual mutations as represented by Deluge's notion of the rhizome.

The observer and the observed are bound together by historical situatedness and moral commitments, not by notions of truth or value.  Values are properties of products in social relations.

Jameson describes postmodernism as deathlessness, spatial disorientation, a blurring of high future with popular culture, loss of historicity, and the rise of pastiche.

Reason and Judgement

 The Distinction Between Reason and Judgment

"In the Critique of Judgement, however, Kant insisted upon adifferent way of thinking, for which it would not be enough to be inagreement with one's own self, but which consisted of being able to"think in the place of everybody else" and which he therefore calledan "enlarged mentality" (erne erweiterte Denkungsart). Thepower of judgment rests on a potential agreement with others, andthe thinking process which is active in judging something is not, likethe thought process of pure reasoning, a dialogue between me andmyself, but finds itself always and primarily, even if I am quitealone in making up my mind, in an anticipated communicationwith others with whom I know I must finally come to some agreement.From this potential agreement judgment derives its specificvalidity. This means, on the one hand, that such judgment mustliberate itself from the "subjective private conditions," that is,from the idiosyncrasies which naturally determine the outlook ofeach individual in his privacy and are legitimate as long as they areonly privately held opinions, but which are not fit to enter themarket place, and lack all validity in the public realm, And this enlargedway of thinking, which as judgment knows how to transcendits own individual limitations, on the other hand, cannot functionin strict isolation or solitude; it needs the presence of others "inwhose place" it must think, whose perspectives it must take intoconsideration, and without whom it never has the opportunity toToperate at all. As logic, to be sound, depends on the presence of theself, so judgment, to be valid, depends on the presence of others.Hence judgment is endowed with a certain specific validity but isnever universally valid. Its claims to validity can never extendfurther than the others in whose place the judging person has puthimself for his considerations. Judgment, Kant says, is valid "forevery single judging person,"13 but the emphasis in the sentence ison "judging"; it is not valid for those who do not judge or forthose who are not members of the public realm where the objectsof judgment appear."

Excerpt from Hannah Arendt "Between Past and Future - The Crisis in Culture" p221

The teacher and the system

 The Teacher and the System

 The 'good teacher' inside of individuals is a potential. The teaching system that socializes people into teachers, or socializes the entire society to value teaching, education and the teaching profession is the extant reality. The emphasis on evaluation must address both the teacher and the system.

Part of the answer to a good educational system is the teacher, but let's not exaggerate the personal responsibility. There is an institution of education which dovetails with several other institutions. If the connections between the institutions, and within each institution, are too far apart, too differentiated, and not integrated enough, then individuals stick out as problems when the institution does not produce achievement. There are many stakeholders who are responsible from parents, to community leaders and politicians, to universities and especially graduate schools, to professional organizations, to unions, and ultimately to funding decisions made at the political level - the primary system of the social system!

Blaming the teacher is only appropriate in certain cases, most teachers having qualified through the university system by acquiring credentials. Supervision of teachers is perhaps an especially important key area because individuals have to be socialized on the job to perform; resources and training for the specific curricula and student population - the school or community - must be present and must be good for results to be forthcoming.

Look to the organizational dynamics of schools and schooling as a system, an institution. For example, you can teach a curriculum as best as you possibly can but if the students are closed, will not pay attention, or do the reading, education does not work. Getting under the surface problems to motivations, values and especially norms in the community, historically, and socially is very important to creating change in the teaching-learning dynamics in the classroom. 

Some teachers can bear the burden of the entire social force and come through looking good with high rates of student approval and achievement, but these stars are few. More importantly is the issue of motivation, norms and values regarding learning, lifelong learning, not just for the degree, or for the job. This enters into questions of the spirit of a people, their interests, and their appreciation of knowledge!

Multidimensionality

 Multidimensionality

Multidimensionality is an approach to complex problems like action or order that rejects linear analysis and one-dimensional thought. One-dimensional thinking is usually empirical but can be normative where material conditions and social problems are minimized. 

Multidimensionality means that all dimensions are considered and in this sense is considered formal although strictly formal analysis may conflate dimensions or displace one level of analysis by another. For example, one critic will evaluate a theory for its normative emphasis while another critic will emphasize the focus on empirical, material conditions. 

Multidimensional analysis takes the variety of variables and the levels of analysis into consideration; presuppositions and assumptions are analyzed, the subjectivity of actors and groups are examined, objective conditions and events are related to the normative order and the actual behaviors. 

Multidimensionality entails complexity and rejects reduction or simplification. For example, each theorist is faced with selectivity issues like expectations, belief systems or ideology, culture, and systems such as personality and society or social interactions. She does not merely address an issue as normative or empirical or an exigency, but interrelates these levels. And, the theorist is constantly taking up contingent processes and describing their relevance and impact. 

However, multidimensionality is not just methodological or epistemological, presuppositions are addressed; multidimensional approaches synthesize all relevant theories as analytic elements.

Reason or Deduction

 Reason or Deduction

Reason is thinking as the effort to get clear about the meaning of an idea, thought, word or sensation. Deduction is the process of transforming an idea into a proposition, a T-F statement or implication, in a logical sense as necessarily entailing a certain conclusion.  Deduction is more easily understood as drawing a valid conclusion.

Hegel differentiated himself from Descartes' innovation of the proposition.  For Hegel, concepts are used to clarify. The direct awareness of a concept is mediated by reflection - reason as thinking - to produce a clearer concept. Recall that for Descartes the issue is 'clear and distinct ideas.'  Propositional thinking takes the concepts, or words, as given, whereas Hegel provided arguments that propositions required conceptual clarification, thus Hegel's emphasis is on the 'concept.'

A concept is a word plus an idea. A proposition is a combination of ideas: two or more concepts in a meaningful statement, often as a subject-predicate sentence.

Logic begins with identity, A is A. Adorno criticizes the static notion of identity as not only atemporal, A may be not-A at a different time, but also for rejecting the existence of contradictions and paradoxes.  Identity thinking is idealistic: A = A is "ideal truth."  Identity may also be concrete or particular through difference.

Tocqueville on the 'Omnipotence of the Majority"

 Tocqueville on the 'Omnipotence of the Majority" 

The 'tyranny of the majority' was already in full swing when Tocqueville wrote "Democracy in America." The genocide of the Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans and several other ethnicities were contested by abolitionists and rejected by the majority. It took a Civil War to get straight about what Democracy stood for but this did not stop the conservative majority. The Civil Rights movement, the movement for women's suffrage, feminism, began around the time of the Civil War, or earlier. These two social movements are still pushing because the tyrannous majority led by faction and sect persist in discrimination. Plato called it "mob rule" or "the dictatorship of the majority" in the Cornford translation of "The Republic." Hegel called it the 'rabble' and stated in 'Philosophy of Right' that he had no solution to the problem. Napoleon hauled in cannon and blew them away! Thus ended for good the French Revolution even after Thermidor, the execution of the revolutionaries!

This is a Problem that Tocqueville turns to in that very important chapter from book one called “The omnipotence of the majority in the United States and its Effects,” which is, in many respects, a response or provides his reading and critique of the classical or traditional theory of democratic tyranny. 

The U.S. constitution has enshrined the majority in its own Preamble – “We, the People.” But as sovereign power doubled, It has enshrined the majority and the elite representatives as it has sought to limit the powers of the people. 

He is far less impressed than Madison or the Federalist authors were that the problem of majority faction has been solved in America. Again, the Federalist authors, following Locke and Montesquieu, believed all that was necessary was separation of powers, a system of representation, a system of checks and balances, that this could serve as an effective check on majority rule.

But Tocqueville was less certain of that. He was less certain that these institutional devices alone could check what he calls the “empire of the majority.” The 'empire of the majority' clearly has theological connotations, denoting a kind of divine omnipotence, that the people have come to be the ultimate or final authority. Rather than regarding the people in Madisonian terms simply as a kind of ongoing shifting coalition of interests, or expressions, Tocqueville regarded the majority in democratic societies, the power of the majority, as unlimited and unstoppable. 

Legal guarantees of minority rights, he thought, were unlikely to be effective in the face of mobilized public opinion. Why does Tocqueville believe that, or what led him to express such skepticism about even American democracy’s inability to check the prospect of democratic tyranny? 

Tocqueville’s answer was that majority tyranny was inseparable from the threats of revolutionary violence and particularly charismatic demagogues and military leaders like Napoleon in France and America’s counterpart to Napoleon, Andrew Jackson. Napoleon was in France, the man capable of mobilizing the masses into fits of patriotic zeal and to carry on war. Jacksonianism, for him, simply looked like an American form of Bonapartism, a military commander riding to political power on the wings of popular support. More than anything else, Tocqueville feared militarism combined with a kind of unlimited patriotic fervor. 

In these respects you can see some of the less ennobling features of the democratic experience and the more ominous possibilities of democratic rule.

The power of the majority, he says, makes itself feared especially through the dominance of the legislature. He believed, we could talk about whether this belief is still valid or true that democracy tends towards a dominance of the legislatures where the people’s voice makes its will most clearly known as if the legislatures are expressions of the people! By having short elections or short cycles every two years in the House of Representatives, it was a way of making sure that the legislatures, the House, the states, Houses, are very close to public opinion and public control. He sees this as a dangerous thing, this kind of legislative dominance that he sees is one form in the way in which the tyranny of the majority expresses itself. 

But the most important and the most memorable aspects of tyranny of the majority have less to do with these institutional forms. It has to do with the way in which the the empire of the majority makes itself felt in the realm of thought and opinion, the influence of the majority over thought. In a startling passage, Tocqueville remarks, “I know of no other country where, in general, less independence of mind and genuine freedom of discussion reign than in America.” 

He is, I suspect, overstating the case, because political dialogue is the most important form of talk that we engage in, but his argument here is that the dangers to freedom of thought are exercised in subtle forms of exclusion and ostracism. Tocqueville is one of the first and most perceptive analysts of what today might be called the power of political correctness, and propaganda, to control and to eliminate certain kinds of ideas and opinions from being thought. 

It is the fear of ostracism, in some sense, the fear of being socially ostracized through which the majority exercises its control. Tocqueville says that persecution can take many forms under a democratic people, from the cruelest to the most mild. He gives various examples of the crueler forms of the way in which the majority have expressed itself. In a lengthy footnote, he gives two examples; one in which during the War of 1812, he says there were some anti-war journalists in Baltimore who were taken out. Their newspaper press was burnt down and they were hung. This is a way in which mob mentality took over. He also uses the example of the way in which black voters in the state of Pennsylvania, and he focuses on this particularly, have been disenfranchised. 

He mentions Pennsylvania in particular because Pennsylvania is a Quaker state, that is to say a state where one would have thought liberal opinion towards questions of racial justice would have been most advanced. Even there, he says, the majority constrained African American voters, free blacks, from voting.

Overt and cruel and persecutory ways, others milder, but through the form of ostracism democratic sovereignty can exercise itself. “Chains and executions are the coarse instruments,” he writes, “that tyranny formerly employed. But in our day, civilization has perfected despotism itself, which seemed to have nothing more to learn.” We have perfected despotism, he says. “Under the absolute government of one man, despotism struck crudely at the body so to reach the soul,” no doubt thinking about the Inquisition and things like this in Spain and in parts of Catholic Europe. France underwent 6 religious civil wars before 1789! He writes, “and the soul escaping from those blows rose gloriously above it. But, in democratic republics, tyranny does not proceed in this way. It leaves the body alone and goes directly for the soul.” 

"Tocqueville’s new political science is based on a novel and profound understanding of the relationship between history or historical forces and human agency, between individual powers or agency and historical forces. Tocqueville attributes a kind of providential power to history. The immense, centuries-long progress or transition from the aristocratic to the democratic era seems to be, as he describes it, almost an act of divine providence, almost of divine will. He warns his readers that it is a mistake, it is self-defeating to try to resist or to turn back this movement. This would be futile. It would not only be futile. He even suggests it would be impious, it would be in some ways to go against the will of God, as if the hand of God were behind this immense historical progress or process. Tocqueville no doubt deliberately overstates that argument but he does so, I think, in order to make a serious and profound point." Smith, S 2009 "Introduction to Political Philosophy"

Our politics are deeply embedded within long structures of human history that we can do little to alter and escape. We seem to be deeply embedded, we as individuals, deeply embedded within these structures. This is, to use a term that modern political scientists often use to describe this, it is an argument from what is often called path dependency, that we are again deeply embedded within historical processes, tendencies, paths of development that we can do little to resist or control. And in many ways Tocqueville often–you will find Tocqueville often writing as if he is some kind of historical or sociological determinist allowing little room for individual initiative or agency. Words like “fate,” “destiny,” “tendency” are frequently used throughout the book to underscore the limits of political action. It would even be an interesting experiment to go through the book, page by page, and find how many examples of those kinds of words, “tendency,” “fate,” “destiny,” these kind of deterministic words that suggest irresistible movements, movement of history, how many times he uses these and in what context.

Here is what Tocqueville writes about the statesman. He says, “Sometimes after a thousand efforts the legislator succeeds in exerting an indirect influence on the destiny of nations and then one celebrates his genius whereas often the geographical position of the country about which he can do nothing, a social state that was created without his concurrence, mores and ideas 

of whose origin he is ignorant, a point of departure unknown to him, in part irresistible movements to society against which he struggles in vain and which carry him along in turn.”

In sum, the problem is that the new structures of democracy, the institutions and their differentiated form of executive power, legislators and judiciary under a Constitution is a structural edifice enforcing the procedures and dialogue of the political structures, but Tocqueville posits a movement of history itself as an agential force, a natural law, which may undermine the man-made structure and cause surface events of a punitive nature!

The Controversy between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein

 The Controversy between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein

Where Melanie Klein surveyed Freud’s concepts, Anna Freud calmed that Freud’s concepts were misunderstood and distorted by critics. Melanie Klein posited unconscious fantasy, which is spelled ‘phantasy,’ as the symptom to be uncovered by analytic techniques. Anna Freud posited the interplay of environment and innate competencies as one world, body and mind as a singularity. Mind in this case is the combination of perceptual consciousness, memory and internal sensations, not a distinction between consciousness and a social mind. 

Perhaps, the main difference was that Anna Freud emphasized the pleasure principle and instinctual gratification as the essence of the child whereas Melanie Klein emphasized aggression and mourning. Klein discusses the infant’s representation of the mother-infant interaction whereas Anna Freud discusses the mother’s satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the infant’s narcissism and autoeroticism.

Anna Freud represents the US psychotherapeutic community’s research focus as conventional: the analysts are reasoning scientists who consider their critics as power seekers and manipulators who think ‘deep analysis’ is a trojan horse, an ad to lure analysands. Klein represents the British psychoanalytic community’s aggressive attack and defense culture: the analysts are crusaders, the critics are authoritarians unwilling to offer challenging views.

Anna Freud brought the International Psychoanalytic Association to the US but the British Psychoanalytic Training Society declared Anna Freud to be an ideological extremist. This intergroup conflict between theoretical approaches to psychoanalysis reflects the anti-American and anti-Europeans biases.

Kant and "transcendental idealism"

 Kant and "transcendental idealism"

Kant did not call his philosophy 'transcendental idealism.' Transcendental means ‘from without’ or ‘from above’ - an external imposition. Idealism however had a different meaning than the notion of perfection; idealism for Kant and Hegel meant ‘objective and realistic.’ What is not understood today is that the distinction made by Descartes which eliminated the ancient philosophers was the mind-body distinction. Descartes established that the body, or things, or the physical was unknowable and indeterminate. All that could be known was mind - thinking. Descartes also eliminated the soul as “air” by Plato. Descartes distinguished mind as consciousness and eliminated the notion of soul. 

Although Descartes lived at the same time as Galileo who was confronted by the Church for proclaiming the blow to man’s egocentricity - man is not the center of the universe, Descartes relied on Aquinas’ cohering of God and science. God could not contradict that a triangle has 3 sides!

Others called Kant's philosophy ‘transcendental idealism’ which Kant frequently rejected. Kant called his philosophy 'critical idealism.' So, when referring to Kant, critical philosophy is invoked, and vice versa, the critical philosophy begins with Kant.

However, concerning transcendental ideas and their use, philosophers often confuse transcendental with metaphysics and logic. Metaphysics and logic are similar because they deal with the science of things grasped in thought; logic being the clarification of ideas as sensible or confused.

Transcendental idealism for Kant is really empirical realism because according to Kant inner reality or thought is impossible without external reality. Kant rejects the idealism of Descartes and Berkeley which holds that all cognition through the senses and experience is sheer illusion. 

Kant says, "All cognition of things merely from pure understanding or pure reason is nothing but pure illusion, and only in experience is there truth." Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics, 1783.

By idealist Kant means 'originated in the subject' and refers directly to the forms of intuition, space and time, and the categories of the understanding which are representations and not things and which organize experience. He considered those who idealized his philosophy by reducing it to logic as retrograde, e.g. Fichte and Schelling. 

At issue in Kant's philosophy and in the larger world of philosophy is the problem of the connection between inner and outer, between transcendent ideas which are apriori, that is, Reason, and the immanent or immediate experience. The ground of confusion here is that of illusion and fantasy; this is before the recognition of the social context of thinking and the transmission of thoughts, of language, of a social cognition which deepened the problematic of the connection between thought - in the strict Aristotelian and Kantian sense of categorizing concepts and classifying phenomena - and experience.

Questionable Social Differences

 Questionable Social Differences

Three big ideas in history are Democracy, markets, and the unconscious. When ideas are divided or fragmented into various interpretations, distortions can emerge which negate the fertility of relevant interpretations. One way that social critics have addressed this problem is by contrasting the right way to think and live against the wrong way. John Dewey, for example in 1929 ‘The Public and its Problems’ rejected technocracy or rule by experts, elites and professionals, and emphasized the pragmatic benefits of democracy.



Civil society, as distinct from the state, also interacts and does not just react - it becomes a matter of struggle, force, and competition which is manifested by individuals. Interdependent individuals create social relations which are embodied on the basis of ideas but are these ideas practical, legitimate, or ethical? The idea of Democracy, for example, is an ethos that posits fairness, inclusion, truth in speech, rule-following and reason giving, and sincerity which form the legitimate basis for social relations as distinct from relations of domination - the quotidian shunning, harassing, assailing, and abuse. When antagonisms and divisions erupt in the public, the people often look to the state, leadership, for solutions. One issue that arises is whether markets provide or betray solutions to inflation, recession, and violence - the conditions of social relations. The question becomes whether the state destabilizes the public society or whether there are unconscious, invisible forces which cause discontent - the imputed causes to questionable social movements like fascism and communism, neoconservatism and neoliberalism, Republicans and culture warriors.

Eric Voegelin 1952 “The New Science of Politics” said, the problem of the ‘Public' is that the recognition of the structure of reality, the cultivation of the virtues of sophia and prudentia, the discipline of the intellect, and the development of theoretical culture and the life of the spirit are stigmatized in public as "reactionary," while disregard for the structure of reality, ignorance of facts, fallacious misconstruction and falsification of history, irresponsible opining on the basis of sincere conviction, philosophical illiteracy, spiritual dullness, and agnostic sophistication are considered the virtues of man and their possession opens the road to public success. In brief: the public is a problem as long as civilization is reaction, and moral insanity is progress."

Fracturing of the population is multidimensional: occupational categories, race and ethnicity, income levels, party affiliation, regional locus, and gender. There are the higher powers of capitalism: national capitalists, local capitalists: proprietors, partnerships, corporations, foreign capitalists and investors, and international capital. Economic conditions plus the layers of governmental bureaucracy and state institutions have formed the globalized arrangements of neoliberalism. This context then forms the individualized situations of economic and social winners and losers who tend to form groups, relations of domination, often unconsciously, territorially, to protect their perceived self interests. The resulting fear and shame is easily converted into hatred, into communities of hate, where scapegoating, rivalry and hatred is approved. Who are the offenders and who the victims?

Is the public display of hatred and intolerance nothing but the intrapsychic conflicts of distorted world views diffused across entire socio-economic strata, communities and families? Cognitive deficiencies of ideologies make the change from shame to harassment to violence all too easy!

The Relevance of Philosophy

 The Relevance of Philosophy 

Philosophy today is caught between emotivism and moral realism where philosophers who think it is reasonable to seek rational solutions to practical problems are marginalized. It is important to recall the meaning of Reason: to seek the truth and solve problems.

A post-truth attitude has infected philosophy. "We have decided there is no knowledge to be sought so we will seek pleasure rather than happiness." 

Why do "philosophers" or anyone pursue philosophical investigation? For practical reasons? That is, they always have some program, some issue, or problem that they seek clarity, resolution, or simply a deeper understanding. Why is there any quest at all? Perhaps because the notion of Reason, whether innate or learned, motivates some people to seek the truth and solutions to problems.

A student who is concerned about questions of systemic and historic injustice examines their feelings of social estrangement and certain practices in their culture regarding crime rates and the aggressions of social life. In Ethics 101, various normative frameworks such as consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics are presented for discussion. Can a moral judgment be true? In meta-ethics, we wonder whether morality actually exists or is it just emotional expression. Epistemology addresses whether it is possible to find an answer - what can I possibly know, what am I that actually exists? A bit of exploration in the University finds academics ruthlessly debating every issue.

The purpose of philosophical pedagogy should be to make proper judgments through right reason, not to put everything under skepticism and everyone under suspicion. During college education, students tend to develop from subjectivism to realism but many end up uncertain about key issues, e.g. abortion, rape, environmental destruction, war, liability, etc.

Perhaps one way to frame the issue is comparing dogmatism to skepticism to refutation or argument. The common pedagogical practice in philosophy is to question everything. The professor plays devil's advocate defending various alternative viewpoints. A better analogy may be a child repeatedly asking, "But why?" Or, vice versa, the student asks 'why' to an indifferent professor. In certain circumstances, there's an argument and counterargument ad nauseam for literally everything. The student is often left perpetually thinking without a solution to anything. At some point, we must ask the question of whether this skepticism ad infinitum is truly worth anything. Or, whether one viewpoint is really better than another.

There are certain viewpoints or philosophical arguments which should be taken seriously, like normative and applied ethics which are critical, that is, they address all rebuttals - they consider all the data. The transcendence, or imposition, of ethics is not understood dogmatically or as a justification for relations of domination. But, ethics requires the basic agreement that morality is real.

Until we reach a point in philosophy where people can agree that certain things just are true, philosophy cannot contribute to social discussion. There is no common ground upon which to reach moral consensus. If a view like emotivism is true, what good is ethical debate anyway? Social relations turn into open season, cutthroat, and destructive. Regardless of whether you are an Aristotelian or Neo-Platonian, one must recognize why Socrates and Aristotle were the standard teachers all the way up until the modern period. Today, we are aware of the misconceptions and concealments of the ancients. However, the importance of morality - whether one's dispositions, virtues and vices, attitudes, thoughts, decisions or habits impose domination and oppression on others - is the foundation of philosophy.

Neo-Conservatives

 Neo-Conservatives

Conservatism means either fiscally responsible, e.g. balanced budget, low corporate taxes, and social service cuts except for police and judiciary, OR religious and social conservatism: strongly anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-sex and pro-family. The problem with the former is that wages and income are low for most people, income does not become significant until workers have put in 20+ years at a good job. The problem with social conservatism is that it leads to domination or violence in domestic settings; it is bald patriarchalism with strict gender roles and condemnation for difference. The paradox is that conservative pro-natal, marriage for life and anti-abortion/adoption value commitments are shared between conservatives and their rivals who have secured same-sex marriage rights!

These two strands of conservatism consist of contradictions in terms of rights and individuality, still a tolerated ideology in the context of the entanglement of the 4 norms: couples, marriage, heterosexuality and parenting. Republicans tend to go up and down - backing fiscal conservatism when in the minority but flaunting overspending when in the majority. Individualism is a conservative notion about character, decency, integrity and dignity, and working to become successful. Fiscal economic and libertarian inconsistency is the hallmark of Republican incoherence.

"Anti-Liberal" or neoconservative are more pejorative and diffuse synonyms for conservatives, but a key difference is that liberals rely on the state, e.g. judges protect property rights and individual rights, whereas neoconservatives expect the state to follow their advice concerning handling the poor and working classes, and conservatives generally wish for a smaller, less expensive state, e.g. lower taxes, but taxes never decrease for the people - a tax cut here means a tax increase there! Should states with no income tax receive federal funds that originate from states which do not charge income taxes?

But, the neoconservative Republican inconsidtency is more blatant in the contrast between the def eg Mae budget and the social safety net. The result of this contrast can be seen in the highly effective precision ABM called the Patriot missile and the oppressive totalitarian policy called the Patriot Act.

 

These 2 dominant neoconservative attitudes regarding fiscal budgets and social norms, or defense budgets and policing policies, are not about bargaining or negotiation. They are defensive and entrenched positions against complaints from the state, workers, unions, women, minorities, pressure groups and foreign nations which all push back over issues of inequality, domination, unfairness and poverty, i.e. homelessness and drug abuse.

The catch to this aspect of political philosophy is that the liberalism of Hobbes, Locke, or the founding fathers is conservative. They are exactly the same: the belief in property, that is, happiness, the belief in freedom and equality, and the belief in rights. All of these core values have survived, they are the basis of our customary way of thinking; they are the basis of democracy but they are often violated and have to be enforced. The liberal core value is the state as the enforcer of the laws, not the individual. The state as federal/state/city jurisdictions sets the legal framework and incentivizes or enforces it.

The contest over values, e.g. multiculturalism, culture war, politically correct, free speech, racism and sexism, the reading war, etc., demeans the group that the conservatives call pejoratively "liberal" progressives, dependents of the welfare state, or those called by the "liberals" defiers of our constitutive values. "Conservative," is often a smoke screen or illusion masking of the interests of one group against the other in terms of what they feel or believe is right and wrong about a particular circumstance, situation, or state of affairs. So, each issue and problem has to be elaborated, investigated, evaluated and argued for and about. But, humans are emotional and manipulate each other very subtly, humans try to dominate each other to get their own way, to get their version of the national interest implemented by the power of the state. The income of the people is taxed, the revenue is distributed to the wealthy, and in other cases, the rights of some people are violated favoring the interests of the more dominant. These problems are argued about, which is the normative process, but power, influence, deception even force and fraud, come to play causal roles, often without a critical eye noticing, and sometimes with protest. Political commitments - party ideology and value orientation - determine attitudes and behaviors, and form the divide between the anti-liberals and the liberals.

The difference between these two ideologies or parties are the interests at stake in any dispute, any issue, the respective arguments and tactics on each side, the big picture, the possible results and the unintended consequences. However, both sides feel strongly that the other side is looking down on them, holding them in contempt, disrespectful, mistreated and left out.

Cognitive Dissonance

 Cognitive Dissonance and Psychoanalysis

The theory of ‘cognitive dissonance’ arises from a common sense belief that, if someone holds two ideas or desires or opinions that conflict, this conflict should cause mental discomfort and that the holder of the opinions will do something to lessen the discomfort. 

He or she may abandon one idea, possibly, or gain new information or beliefs to lessen the dissonance; if there is commitment to an idea, the person may adapt their belief or behavior, by forgetting, by reducing the importance of one of the dissonant elements or—in particular—by seeking to convince others whose adherence will confirm the cherished belief.

The "convincing" or persuading occurs by force of attitude or inner state versus by words, or rhetoric.

When people with strongly held beliefs are confronted by evidence clearly at odds with their beliefs, they will seek to resolve the discomfort caused by the discrepancy by convincing others to support their views rather than abandoning their commitments. They will seek, for instance, some means of re-establishing cognitive consonance without sacrificing their religious convictions or metaphysical ideas.

The psychoanalyst Langs felt strongly about this problem and presented the methodology of interpreting the interactions with a patient - verbal, behavioral, psychological - by hypothesizing an interpretation based on given evidence, and then wait for validating evidence later in the therapeutic situation before offering the interpretation. This kind of double checking provided a way of self-refuting interpretations based on counter-transference and establishing convincing evidence for the interpretation.

What Langs does, and what Popper exclaimed about, is to seek to falsify or disconfirm hypotheses that are primarily growing within the inner-dialogue between analyst and analysand on the basis of interpretations of talk.

I suppose however that over the time of a psychoanalysis a long series of hypotheses are generated, some are remaining without being falsified, and the gambit is to consider these as true or false, or as meaningless. But, the main issue of dissonance - convincing others on the basis of your own commitments - is avoided.

Propaganda is the sole substance of politics

 Propaganda is the Sole Substance of Politics -

Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) on Propaganda and Journalism

Lippmann is best known for his 1922 “Public Opinion” which is considered the founding document of journalism and media studies. Lippmann wrote continuously about democracy and freedom.

Lippmann (Preface to Morals, 1929) defined propaganda as deception: half-truths, lies, ambiguities, evasions, calculated silence, red herrings, unresponsiveness, slogans, catchwords, showmanship, bathos, hokum and buncombe. “They are one and all,” he said, “methods of preventing a disinterested inquiry into the situation.”

Lippmann (1929, Preface to Morals) distinguishes the politicians from the statesmen. “Candor is a bitter pill when first it is tasted but it is full of health, and once a man becomes established in the public mind as a person who deals with habitually and successfully with real things, he acquires an eminence of a wholly different quality from that of even the most celebrated caterer to the popular favor. His hold on the people is enduring because he promises nothing which turns out to be a fake. Sooner or later the politician, because he deals in unrealities, is found out.”  Lippmann goes on, “The words of a statesman have value because they express not the desires of the moment but the conditions under which desires can actually be adjusted to reality.”

Lippmann called the ‘technic of propaganda pernicious,’ and ‘pure democracy a mistake.’ He felt strongly that democracy will work if it is accurately representative. “The propaganda, the pressure groups, the formulation of a law that is higher than the Constitution, and the breaking down of the checks and balances (on the people’s will) are evidences of a radical defect in the conception of democracy” (How Liberty is Lost, 1938). 

Resistance to mass propaganda depends on individualism, on the independence of individuals. Lippmann addresses education as insufficient to protect the people from the media: the propaganda, the journalism, the lobbyists and pressure groups, and the corporations – what is required is self-education.

In “Mr. Strachey’s Case and the Law,” 1938, Lippmann discusses how the democrats believed they could tolerate any form of agitation short of open incitement to violence. However, since WWI, democrats have come to believe that an active defense of democratic institutions, e.g. elections, is an absolute necessity. He points out that the European nations have enacted laws making it a criminal offense to conduct propaganda which incites extreme hatred and thus leads to violence as when the right to meet and parade incites trouble. The democracies of Europe have turned away from the tolerance of agitation and now restrict free speech and freedom of the press when they are used to defame public authorities and to destroy the dignity of democratic institutions. Some nations have specially trained political police. 

William F. Buckley in 1974 said that free speech should be limited when it becomes licentious. Lippmann states the problem of democracy is when others come saying, “I demand from you in the name of your principles the rights which I shall deny to you in the name of my principles.” He addresses the problem of free speech as license to say whatever you like!

In 1957, The Portent of the Moon,” Lippmann contrasted two options for dealing with the Russian technological advance, “One response could be to think of it in terms of propaganda, and to look around for some device for doing something spectacular to outmatch what the Russians have done. The other response would be to look inward upon ourselves and to concern ourselves primarily with our own failings, and to be determined not so much to beat the Russians as to cure ourselves.” 

He goes on to specify our failings as the underfunding of education, a primary democratic public institution, and the scandals of racial inequality, the segregation and separation that contradicts our democratic principle of equality.

Lippmann frequently uses the term ‘propaganda’ as Communist propaganda, war propaganda, unprofessional journalism and the problem of licentious free speech. In 1943, “The Fascination of Greatness,” Lippmann praised Winston Churchill as a great statesman. He contrasts Churchill’s eloquence and magnanimity with this state of affairs: “That is why our spirits languish when their daily food is only the military communiques (the credibility gap), press releases, and an absolutely intolerable flood of gossip journalism, pipe-line journalism, and intrigue journalism about who is in the doghouse now, and how the courtiers (advisors and appointees) at the palace (White House) are planning to cut one another’s throats, and how the misunderstood and underappreciated are those who hand out the dope (the fake news) to those who then lick their boots.”

“The air is foul and stale with it all.”

Problem in the philosophy of meaning

 The Problem in the Philosophy of Science - Meaning

Economics, political science and the other social sciences imitate the natural sciences.  The differences between nature or natural objects, and human beings who can use information to adapt or adjust to ongoing concepts and language does not however get discussed. Natural objects - the sky, clouds, soil, oceans, etc., cannot internalize or accommodate human concepts like truth, logic, or understanding.  Philosophy of science, i.e. philosophy of biology or philosophy of sociology, evaluates ideas and knowledge in the context of the differences between natural science and social science. 

The philosophy of science and the philosophy of the social sciences both address the problem of the difference between our language or statements about natural and social objects - object being whatever is intended - and our experience, perceptions, or how we construct and produce knowledge.

Wittgenstein’s leading idea in the Tractatus was that propositions – that is, statements asserting facts, such as ‘it is raining’ – are a picture of what they describe. This is Wittgenstein’s ‘Picture Theory of Language’, or as he himself called it, his ‘Theory of Logical Portrayal,'

“We can say straight away: Instead of: this proposition has such and such a sense: this proposition represents such and such a situation. It portrays it logically. Only in this way can the proposition be true or false: It can only agree or disagree with reality by being a picture of a situation” (Notebooks)

He added later: “The great problem round which everything I write turns is: Is there an order in the world a priori, and if so what does it consist in?” (Notebooks p.53)

By “an order in the world a priori,” Wittgenstein meant an order that we could know to exist in the world without reference to our experience of the world. He felt forced to conclude that there is such an order, for it is this order that is pictured or logically portrayed by the relations between the symbols of a proposition.

The second big idea in the Tractatus – which the logical positivists ignored - was the thought of an unutterable kind of truth that ‘makes itself manifest.'  Hence the key paragraph 6.522 in the Tractatus,

“There are indeed things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.”

In other words, there is a categorically different kind of truth from that which we can state in empirically or logically verifiable propositions. These are instances which indicate what something is not.

Wittgenstein’s intention in asserting this is precisely to protect matters of value from being disparaged or debunked by scientifically-minded people such as the Logical Positivists of the Vienna Circle, and later the technologists and technocrats.

He put his view beyond doubt in this sequence of paragraphs:

“6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value – and if there were, it would be of no value. If there is value which is of value, it must lie outside of all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental. What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental. It must lie outside the world.”

In other words, all worldly actions and events are contingent  - ‘accidental’ or senseless, but matters of value are necessary, for they are ‘higher’ or too important to be accidental, and so must be outside the world of empirical propositions.

“6.42 Hence also there can be no ethical propositions. Propositions cannot express anything higher.

6.421 It is clear that ethics cannot be expressed. Ethics is transcendental.”

You should be aware that the Vienna Circle appropriated LW’s Tractatus which caused a conflict. LW quit Cambridge and took up as a school-teacher! Not until 1926 did LW agree to meet with only certain Vienna Circle members: Schlick, Neurath, and Waisman. Once Karl Popper was invited, there was a breakdown. 

Popper took up several questionable positions, namely, falsification - the notion that verification or confirmation of statements could never prove the truth of the statement; however, a falsifying instance could negate the truth of the statrement. Underlying this key idea of Popper's was the rejection of induction, that is, that no repeatable observation or measurement could justify a generalization or uniformity. Popper proposed instead a form of eliminative induction, or deduction where principles might predict an observalbe instance, or peferably, be falsified!

Science does not accept any necessity or certainty, we must instead acknowledge error and interpretation.  The field where natural science and the social sciences intersect is at Evolution. Evolution is empirical but incomplete. The meaning of the term evolution is indeterminate.  Those who reproduce form offspring that might adapt to new environmental and social conditions.

Where Wittgenstein posited a field where values did not count was opposed by Popper who interpretted evolution as circular reasoning but who did hold a values orientation.

Evolution is not about morality or religion. It is simply a matter of who reproduces in the competition of the sexual market.

Evolutionary biology tries to modify the ‘red in tooth and claw,’ the mating practices that tend to exclude many people.

Evolutionary biology posits notions like adaptation and altruism,  memes or cultures that defend reproducers. Political science posits societal learning processes as advancing cultural and international integration and modifying intergroup conflict.

The wars, hostility and hatred continue however; aggressive practices collide against legal and democratic social organization.  Adaptation and altruism seem like moral accommodations that encourage reproduction, but people who are amoral, manipulative, selfish and authoritarian reproduce more than the moral and ethical.  The wealthier reproduce more than the impoverished which speaks to the (im)morality of population control and the normalization of sex.

The criteria of interest is ‘meaningfulness.’  Therefore, ‘change’ is an essential attribute of reality for scientists.  To understand what has happened during the history of man and science from the 19th century’s positivism, to mathematics and logical empiricism to the linguistic turn, the interpretation of meaning and the analysis of the sociology of science are the current frameworks.

During the linguistic turn, the study of language, the language of description in relation to reality, the standard became ‘meaning.’

Psychopathy and Psychiatry

Psychopathy is the standard for identifying criminality but a few caveats should be considered: any person with a mental disorder tends to have periods of time which are normal and then there is the pathological or disordered period; the disorder is probably triggered by the social environment and not simply a continuous brain state or malfunction. The problem of antagonism in social relationships, especially concerning the “power of family” and the ‘cutting-off’ effect from “authorities" (which may or may not be via official channels) deserves to be addressed - are people being responsible when they deny their role in triggering the psychopathological break in another?

In "The Divided Self" Laing construed this attribution as a function of an extremely disjunctive relationship between the person who is in the role of a depersonalized—and depersonalizing—diagnosing psychiatrist and the person who has become a depersonalized, and sometimes depersonalizing, diagnosed patient. This construction is a contribution towards a personal understanding (*Verstehen) of what is going on between psychiatrist and patient, in contrast to a scientific explanation of what is going on in the patient alone. In fact, he offered a personal understanding of the psychiatrist's scientific explanation and construed it as, unwittingly, a way of cutting off

the cutoff person from the possibility of reunion and renewal.

The psychiatric, diagnostic look is itself a depersonalized and depersonalizing cutoff look. 

Psychiatry is an application of a highly sophisticated scientific look that is culturally deeply conditioned. It is a way of seeing things, and the relation between things, by subtracting all personal experience. However, a person is not a thing, nor is a thing a person. It is a look which is cultivated with the express intention of not seeing intentions in others or even collectively as in the intention of a group. Things have no intentions. It is the exact opposite of a sensibility cultivated with the express intention of recognizing and sympathetically understanding the intentions of others, and their interconnections.

Laing is opposed to physical treatments, e.g. drugs and surgery.