Real axioms, e.g. the law of non-contradiction, cannot be false. They are the bedrock for foundationist theories of justification. Unfortunately, that bedrock is rare and understanding what is truly axiomatic is difficult. Lesser minds tend to believe they can create it by fiat: “All men are created equal is an axiom! Therefore....”
There’s something missing in this vital discussion fraught with bigger-than-life consequences. Let’s call it:
The implication of “being-in-the-world” (a la Existential Psychology and Heidegger/ Binswanger) when applying Newton’s Third Law of Physics (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction) through a metaphysical lens.
From a metaphysical perspective as postulated in the Indian Philosophical tradition (or the Gnostics for that matter), all action begets reaction (spanning over life times), and once we are beyond the opening chess move (for sake of argument, “one’s” initial birth, which was presumably ions ago), we find current life choices atrophied to the point where any discussion about “blank slates” and “all are equal” is reduced and relegated to quaint “first truths” that have in various practical terms lost their relevance and only remain valid largely from the “before God” perspective.
In this non-clairvoyant (where you can’t perceive the real, proximate cause of many events having their roots in previous lives) Hobbesian, self-projected holographic matrix, the collision of apparently conflicting, non-sequitur actions and events creates all sorts of illogical outcomes, dilemmas, conundrums, anxieties, and crazy-making catch-22s, the meaning and monetization of which left and right will forever struggle over. Inhumanity and brutality of various kinds is the resulting outcome we are horrifically condemned to live with.
In the end, men can only create a facsimile of the Logos, even of the Platonic ideos (archetypes), and as such, we are all consigned to Plato’s Cave, and to the “Tree of Woe”.
My 1st year college US Government prof had us read “Men and Nations” by Lois B. Halle, which was my entree to this grave existential reality. My long journey down the rabbit hole of understanding the Matrix began there. Where has it led since then?
To the proposition that none of this can be resolved without the help of metaphysics (the highest form of philosophy) and an attempt at direct mystical apprehension of Truth beyond discursive knowledge (if such Truth exists). The roadmap to “enlightenment” (but not the technique itself) was made succinctly clear by the Tao Te Ching, where we are enjoined to return in consciousness to the Origin (the singularity of Truth, for my lack of better words) by ascending to ever higher states of insight and comprehension by traversing the reverse order of creation): from the multitude of phenomena, go back to the two from which the multitude arose, then beyond the two (dual consciousness), to the one, and then to the formless, indescribable Tao, which is the actual, real Source of it all.
Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”) further popularized the roadmap and hero journey involved, with a hint of the epistemological apotheosis that awaits us at the end. It reveals the best outcome this crazy-making world can homeopathically induce, if only we are ready to “follow the call”, instead of being entranced by the “survival dance” (“The Primordial Wound”, Firman and Gila) it has us trapped in.
The rest is all vanity, muddled thinking and distraction; that is to say, a huge waste of time.
fine, but dense reading. Excellent points esp this outstanding line...Culture war always begins with words. It always ends with swords. is it yours and can i quote you?
I'm sympathetic to that position but Neo-Thomism and Neo-Aristotelian metaphysics don't seem to resonate outside of their own circles, perhaps because it requires unlearning so much Enlightenment metaphysics. In any case, Ed Feser has well-defended that position and I don't think I could do better than he did.
I wager that if you continue to investigate, you will find all the Enlightenment alternatives to be unsatisfying comparatively. Yes, it is painful and slightly humbling and seemingly prideful at the same time to say, 'no we made a mistake, let us turn around and go back'. But I found it rather freeing. :)
Indeed. No need to persuade me; I already think the Enlightenment took a wrong turn when it abandoned Aristotle for Descartes, Hume, et. al. I see Rand as part of the Aristotelian tradition rather than the Enlightenment tradition and thus find value in her work. If you haven't read her book on Objectivist epistemology, it's a short read and worthwhile. I thought her theory of concept-formation was quite good. She essentially posits that essences exist epistemologically but not metaphysically.
I admit i haven't read it and so am unable to make any critique and this is a defect I should remedy soon. However, color me skeptical that one can have their cake and eat it too. At the moment, I'm not even sure I know what is meant by the words 'exist epistemologically but not metaphysically'.
If the trilemma were resolvable, the world would be the same all over (as far as human societies go). Or maybe it would follow that social life at the human level would be impossible.
Because the trilemma exists, choice exists. And evolution of competing societies becomes possible.
We may still end up with a single world dominant accepted solution. If that happens, then it is its own proof of correctness. (At least on earth, for that time-period)
I'm not sure that the coherentist interpretation of leftism is the best, or even an acceptable one. "All men are created equal" is the central leftist axiom. In the leftist interpretation, it implies (maybe with some other, independent axioms) that in an ideal state of affairs, there should be no group differences in outcome. Yet, there are persistent group differences.
Given the axiom, this implies that evil social forces are at work in our world. This consequence of the axiom combined with the moral conviction that the natural state "all men are equal" must be realized and maintained, leads to a permanent war against the forces judged as responsible for the observed situation.
What is commonly called postmodernism, relativism etc., and diagnosed as the "core of leftism" is only a superficial, rhetorical obfuscation of a foundationalism with an absolute morality.
Classical liberalism (the Leftism of its day) was originally a system founded on axioms during the Enlightenment. When the Founding Fathers said "all men are created equal" John Locke wrote of "the blank slate," and Rousseau wrote of the state of nature, they believed those statements to be supported by natural philosophy, natural theology, classical thought, etc.
Present-day Leftism pretends to maintain this tradition. It argues that human beings are created equal because we are created as blank slates, upon whom social forces work to mold us into various social constructs. This leads, as you say, to the implication that there are evil social forces at work in our world. That's 100% correct.
What makes Leftism (contemporary liberalism-turned-progressivism) into a Postmodernist ideology is that it continues to insist that human beings are born as blank slates despite abundant evidence to the contrary. In order to do so, it introduces postmodernist interpretations of science, fact, and reason.
Given the abundant evidence chronicled by men like Steve Pinker, it is no longer possible to remain committed to science and reason while also maintaining a belief that all human beings are created as equal blank slates. (As gorias points out, you can believe in equality before God, or equality in moral worth, but that's not what present-day Leftists mean when they say equality.) In order to maintain their egalitarian worldview, the Left chose to eject science and reason.
The ideas above are not original to me; they were developed in Thomas Sowell's "Conflict of Visions," Steve Pinker's "Blank Slate," and Stephen Hick's "Explaining Postmodernism", which I recommend reading in that order, Sowell-Pinker-Hicks.
Thank you for the recommendations. I only read Hicks' book, and can't really agree with his interpretations. However, a recent book by James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose titled "Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody" gives a somewhat more complex interpretation of the left accepting its postmodern nature, but argues that postmodernism itself has transformed into an absolutist-activist phase. I think their approach is better. Anyway, now I better understand why you say the left is coherentist.
Still, it is interesting to observe that some leftists (Freddie DeBoer for example) accept that the blank slate is false, and agree that there are real and unchangeable intellectual differences between individuals (while maintaining that this does not imply anything racist, because race differences are not real). That does not change their egalitarian attitude, and explicitly argue against meritocracy, because it results in injustice.
Maybe the left cannot be captured with any of the three epistemological systems... it might be a vaguely but fundamentally egalitarian will which needs to destroy a civilization that the leftist cannot accept, and opportunistically uses anything that is useful in any given situation. How do you fight that?
So Stephen Hick's book is actually the inspiration for this essay series! In it he writes that the Enlightenment lost because it couldn't defend reason, fact, and value against the postmodernists. So I wanted to walk through out loud (as it were) why we lost and how we might "stage a comeback". I don't know that we can; it's an exercise I'm going through. But if you disagreed with his book's premise you probably will disagree with me, too. That's ok. It's a woeful tree, everything sucks here.
I haven't yet read Cynical Theories, since it seemed like it was already covering ground that Stephen Hicks and Michael Rectenwald had covered to my satisfaction. But I'll add it to my reading list.
As far as leftists who aren't blank slatists: I suppose it turns on your definition of Leftist! Thomas Sowell, in Conflict of Visions, defines the key difference between "Left" and "Right" as based on whether you have an Unconstrained (blank slate) or Constrained view of human nature. In general, I think he's correct.
That said, I think you are right that the Left will use any tool it can to destroy its enemies. In that sense it is both post-truth and post-value. Arguably it is even post-coherency: it doesn't even have a narrative. Just an id, a ceaseless want.
Nope, your error is with definitions. All men are created equal does not mean equality of outcome. You as an individual are equal to me in every way, but the effort you put in is what determines the outcome. You are arguing for egalitarianism which has a very different definition than what the founding fathers had in mind. You argument is based on a false premise which itself is based on changing the definition of a word without ever stating why the definition is now different then the one that has been used for hundreds of years.
i can't think of another thread i've seen in years that equals this in terms of intellectual discourse. Outstanding. You are correct; but all men are not created equally; any party of "science" would realize that DNA brings different things to the table. my musical skills from birth would never allow me to be as good as guitarist as Billy Strings or Mike Dawes. I am not artistic, never was. I'm extremely intelligent but don't get finance or physics at all. Never did. I'm healthy as a horse; my brother has diabetes. In fact, in my family there are dozens of high end college degrees and the striking similarity is that 3 of us failed college physics. it's a trope and misinterpretation that we're created equal. Good stuff.
I am not arguing for egalitarianism, since I am not an egalitarian or a leftist. Instead, I tried to argue that the left can be (better) interpreted as foundationalist, because it is possible to find propositions that they regard as axiomatic, and I gave an example. (Maybe I was not careful enough when stating the axiom, and it led to some confusions. I agree with what you're saying about the founding fathers).
Since the left is dynamic, it is probably impossible to give a set of axioms which characterize leftism once and for all. But this is not a problem: any epistemology must be open to change even at the axiomatic level, and changes of axioms don't change the foundationalist character of the epistemology.
In most cases historically, foundationalism has been used with foundations that are seen as special in that they are self-evident or irrefutable, such as A is A, or I think therefore I am, or because they rely on sense evidence.
Leftism, if foundationalism, relies on higher-order axioms that are susceptible to direct attack, rather than very low-order axioms like what I'm describing above. So that's why I don't really think it's foundationalist. But I do think you're on to something in suggesting it's not strictly speaking coherentist either. It's really a combo of the worst elements of both...an unfounded foundationalism and incoherent coherentism.
Real axioms, e.g. the law of non-contradiction, cannot be false. They are the bedrock for foundationist theories of justification. Unfortunately, that bedrock is rare and understanding what is truly axiomatic is difficult. Lesser minds tend to believe they can create it by fiat: “All men are created equal is an axiom! Therefore....”
I agree with you, although that point is denied by postmodernists. I will explore this more later.
There’s something missing in this vital discussion fraught with bigger-than-life consequences. Let’s call it:
The implication of “being-in-the-world” (a la Existential Psychology and Heidegger/ Binswanger) when applying Newton’s Third Law of Physics (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction) through a metaphysical lens.
From a metaphysical perspective as postulated in the Indian Philosophical tradition (or the Gnostics for that matter), all action begets reaction (spanning over life times), and once we are beyond the opening chess move (for sake of argument, “one’s” initial birth, which was presumably ions ago), we find current life choices atrophied to the point where any discussion about “blank slates” and “all are equal” is reduced and relegated to quaint “first truths” that have in various practical terms lost their relevance and only remain valid largely from the “before God” perspective.
In this non-clairvoyant (where you can’t perceive the real, proximate cause of many events having their roots in previous lives) Hobbesian, self-projected holographic matrix, the collision of apparently conflicting, non-sequitur actions and events creates all sorts of illogical outcomes, dilemmas, conundrums, anxieties, and crazy-making catch-22s, the meaning and monetization of which left and right will forever struggle over. Inhumanity and brutality of various kinds is the resulting outcome we are horrifically condemned to live with.
In the end, men can only create a facsimile of the Logos, even of the Platonic ideos (archetypes), and as such, we are all consigned to Plato’s Cave, and to the “Tree of Woe”.
My 1st year college US Government prof had us read “Men and Nations” by Lois B. Halle, which was my entree to this grave existential reality. My long journey down the rabbit hole of understanding the Matrix began there. Where has it led since then?
To the proposition that none of this can be resolved without the help of metaphysics (the highest form of philosophy) and an attempt at direct mystical apprehension of Truth beyond discursive knowledge (if such Truth exists). The roadmap to “enlightenment” (but not the technique itself) was made succinctly clear by the Tao Te Ching, where we are enjoined to return in consciousness to the Origin (the singularity of Truth, for my lack of better words) by ascending to ever higher states of insight and comprehension by traversing the reverse order of creation): from the multitude of phenomena, go back to the two from which the multitude arose, then beyond the two (dual consciousness), to the one, and then to the formless, indescribable Tao, which is the actual, real Source of it all.
Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”) further popularized the roadmap and hero journey involved, with a hint of the epistemological apotheosis that awaits us at the end. It reveals the best outcome this crazy-making world can homeopathically induce, if only we are ready to “follow the call”, instead of being entranced by the “survival dance” (“The Primordial Wound”, Firman and Gila) it has us trapped in.
The rest is all vanity, muddled thinking and distraction; that is to say, a huge waste of time.
fine, but dense reading. Excellent points esp this outstanding line...Culture war always begins with words. It always ends with swords. is it yours and can i quote you?
You write good articles, Alexander Macris.
Thank you!
All modern errors begin from the denial of essences.
I'm sympathetic to that position but Neo-Thomism and Neo-Aristotelian metaphysics don't seem to resonate outside of their own circles, perhaps because it requires unlearning so much Enlightenment metaphysics. In any case, Ed Feser has well-defended that position and I don't think I could do better than he did.
I wager that if you continue to investigate, you will find all the Enlightenment alternatives to be unsatisfying comparatively. Yes, it is painful and slightly humbling and seemingly prideful at the same time to say, 'no we made a mistake, let us turn around and go back'. But I found it rather freeing. :)
Indeed. No need to persuade me; I already think the Enlightenment took a wrong turn when it abandoned Aristotle for Descartes, Hume, et. al. I see Rand as part of the Aristotelian tradition rather than the Enlightenment tradition and thus find value in her work. If you haven't read her book on Objectivist epistemology, it's a short read and worthwhile. I thought her theory of concept-formation was quite good. She essentially posits that essences exist epistemologically but not metaphysically.
I admit i haven't read it and so am unable to make any critique and this is a defect I should remedy soon. However, color me skeptical that one can have their cake and eat it too. At the moment, I'm not even sure I know what is meant by the words 'exist epistemologically but not metaphysically'.
Hey, it's a series on the Trilemma, skepticism is totally called for :D
If the trilemma were resolvable, the world would be the same all over (as far as human societies go). Or maybe it would follow that social life at the human level would be impossible.
Because the trilemma exists, choice exists. And evolution of competing societies becomes possible.
We may still end up with a single world dominant accepted solution. If that happens, then it is its own proof of correctness. (At least on earth, for that time-period)
I'm not sure that the coherentist interpretation of leftism is the best, or even an acceptable one. "All men are created equal" is the central leftist axiom. In the leftist interpretation, it implies (maybe with some other, independent axioms) that in an ideal state of affairs, there should be no group differences in outcome. Yet, there are persistent group differences.
Given the axiom, this implies that evil social forces are at work in our world. This consequence of the axiom combined with the moral conviction that the natural state "all men are equal" must be realized and maintained, leads to a permanent war against the forces judged as responsible for the observed situation.
What is commonly called postmodernism, relativism etc., and diagnosed as the "core of leftism" is only a superficial, rhetorical obfuscation of a foundationalism with an absolute morality.
Classical liberalism (the Leftism of its day) was originally a system founded on axioms during the Enlightenment. When the Founding Fathers said "all men are created equal" John Locke wrote of "the blank slate," and Rousseau wrote of the state of nature, they believed those statements to be supported by natural philosophy, natural theology, classical thought, etc.
Present-day Leftism pretends to maintain this tradition. It argues that human beings are created equal because we are created as blank slates, upon whom social forces work to mold us into various social constructs. This leads, as you say, to the implication that there are evil social forces at work in our world. That's 100% correct.
What makes Leftism (contemporary liberalism-turned-progressivism) into a Postmodernist ideology is that it continues to insist that human beings are born as blank slates despite abundant evidence to the contrary. In order to do so, it introduces postmodernist interpretations of science, fact, and reason.
Given the abundant evidence chronicled by men like Steve Pinker, it is no longer possible to remain committed to science and reason while also maintaining a belief that all human beings are created as equal blank slates. (As gorias points out, you can believe in equality before God, or equality in moral worth, but that's not what present-day Leftists mean when they say equality.) In order to maintain their egalitarian worldview, the Left chose to eject science and reason.
The ideas above are not original to me; they were developed in Thomas Sowell's "Conflict of Visions," Steve Pinker's "Blank Slate," and Stephen Hick's "Explaining Postmodernism", which I recommend reading in that order, Sowell-Pinker-Hicks.
Thank you for the recommendations. I only read Hicks' book, and can't really agree with his interpretations. However, a recent book by James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose titled "Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody" gives a somewhat more complex interpretation of the left accepting its postmodern nature, but argues that postmodernism itself has transformed into an absolutist-activist phase. I think their approach is better. Anyway, now I better understand why you say the left is coherentist.
Still, it is interesting to observe that some leftists (Freddie DeBoer for example) accept that the blank slate is false, and agree that there are real and unchangeable intellectual differences between individuals (while maintaining that this does not imply anything racist, because race differences are not real). That does not change their egalitarian attitude, and explicitly argue against meritocracy, because it results in injustice.
Maybe the left cannot be captured with any of the three epistemological systems... it might be a vaguely but fundamentally egalitarian will which needs to destroy a civilization that the leftist cannot accept, and opportunistically uses anything that is useful in any given situation. How do you fight that?
So Stephen Hick's book is actually the inspiration for this essay series! In it he writes that the Enlightenment lost because it couldn't defend reason, fact, and value against the postmodernists. So I wanted to walk through out loud (as it were) why we lost and how we might "stage a comeback". I don't know that we can; it's an exercise I'm going through. But if you disagreed with his book's premise you probably will disagree with me, too. That's ok. It's a woeful tree, everything sucks here.
I haven't yet read Cynical Theories, since it seemed like it was already covering ground that Stephen Hicks and Michael Rectenwald had covered to my satisfaction. But I'll add it to my reading list.
As far as leftists who aren't blank slatists: I suppose it turns on your definition of Leftist! Thomas Sowell, in Conflict of Visions, defines the key difference between "Left" and "Right" as based on whether you have an Unconstrained (blank slate) or Constrained view of human nature. In general, I think he's correct.
That said, I think you are right that the Left will use any tool it can to destroy its enemies. In that sense it is both post-truth and post-value. Arguably it is even post-coherency: it doesn't even have a narrative. Just an id, a ceaseless want.
Nope, your error is with definitions. All men are created equal does not mean equality of outcome. You as an individual are equal to me in every way, but the effort you put in is what determines the outcome. You are arguing for egalitarianism which has a very different definition than what the founding fathers had in mind. You argument is based on a false premise which itself is based on changing the definition of a word without ever stating why the definition is now different then the one that has been used for hundreds of years.
i can't think of another thread i've seen in years that equals this in terms of intellectual discourse. Outstanding. You are correct; but all men are not created equally; any party of "science" would realize that DNA brings different things to the table. my musical skills from birth would never allow me to be as good as guitarist as Billy Strings or Mike Dawes. I am not artistic, never was. I'm extremely intelligent but don't get finance or physics at all. Never did. I'm healthy as a horse; my brother has diabetes. In fact, in my family there are dozens of high end college degrees and the striking similarity is that 3 of us failed college physics. it's a trope and misinterpretation that we're created equal. Good stuff.
I am not arguing for egalitarianism, since I am not an egalitarian or a leftist. Instead, I tried to argue that the left can be (better) interpreted as foundationalist, because it is possible to find propositions that they regard as axiomatic, and I gave an example. (Maybe I was not careful enough when stating the axiom, and it led to some confusions. I agree with what you're saying about the founding fathers).
Since the left is dynamic, it is probably impossible to give a set of axioms which characterize leftism once and for all. But this is not a problem: any epistemology must be open to change even at the axiomatic level, and changes of axioms don't change the foundationalist character of the epistemology.
In most cases historically, foundationalism has been used with foundations that are seen as special in that they are self-evident or irrefutable, such as A is A, or I think therefore I am, or because they rely on sense evidence.
Leftism, if foundationalism, relies on higher-order axioms that are susceptible to direct attack, rather than very low-order axioms like what I'm describing above. So that's why I don't really think it's foundationalist. But I do think you're on to something in suggesting it's not strictly speaking coherentist either. It's really a combo of the worst elements of both...an unfounded foundationalism and incoherent coherentism.