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.