Elite

If one agrees with Rorty's conception of philosophy as the process of finding and refining a set of metaphors for some kind of use in life, the inherent and immediate question is to what scope these metaphors will be applied. On an individual scale, philosophy can be an amalgam of idiosyncratic experiences that result in a perfectly coherent and adaptive worldview (one's ideas can be said to have "cash value"), but is contingently based on that individual's circumstances. This basically amounts to a simplified version of existentialism, whereby no individual is bound by any externally imposed moral or ideological definitions, but all are bound by the contingency of their own individual experiences, which they themselves have a hand in shaping.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, diverse and heterogeneous populations require metaphors that are more universally adoptable. However, whether or not an idea may be more easily adopted by large groups of people (let's call this "liquidity") is not exactly a normative consideration. While liquidity may be important for accomplishing the purposes of the advocate of the new metaphor (i.e., the poet or the philosopher), the quality of a metaphor may lie in the depth of its communication, not only its breadth. For example, an idea may have high liquidity because it is oversimplified and loses nuance that is reasonably appreciable to the relatively smaller audiences of experts in that subject. Newtonian mechanics is a perfect example of how one paradigm or set of metaphors is appropriate and highly liquid, though it is descriptively inferior in quality when it comes to explaining sub-atomic mechanics. And that's just dealing with something as reliably observable as the natural world, let alone the much more contentious ideas relating to notions of justice, decency, and other metaphysical constructs. Such issues must be resolved by political communities in such a way that allows the state to survive in a (somewhat) Machiavellian sense. Coming to a grand consensus on notions of political justice is arguably the prime function of any form of government. The metaphors used in these political inquiries are definitive of the state; they define the polis.

The goal of all poets and philosophers (especially those post-Hegel who are "historically aware") is to fashion metaphors that will supplant conventional language by virtue of their superior communicative merits. Indeed, this goal is co-extensive with a more holistic "search for Truth," but without the pretension that some objective reality exists that we attempt to discover and then put into words with varying degrees of success. Sadly (depending on your point of view), arguments based purely on "reason" are often less effective as advocacy employing more emotionally evocative imagery. Given that some of the most universal human emotional attributes are "fear" and "laziness," it is no surprise that more abstract and intellectually demanding philosophical ideals are less convincing to the large majority of people. Classically-minded philosophers since Plato, and Nietzsche in particular, have complained of the incompatibility of their notions of "good philosophy" and political realities. Logically, this amounts to a problem of liquidity in "good philosophy."

Consistent with the metaphor of a free market of ideas, attempting to increase the liquidity of all ideas is one sound goal of public policy, and high quality public education (and a liberal arts education beyond that) is certainly one of the surest ways to achieve it. However, it is also fairly clear that many of the principal determinants of academic success, and the liquidity of ideas in general, are culturally contingent: the involvement of one's parents, one's role models, and so on. In any event, this warrants an entirely different discussion.

The Federalists thought they reconciled "good philosophy" and "good politics" in the Hobbesian tradition, channeled through Locke, Montesquieu and a host of other philosophers. As with most natural rights philosophies, their propositions on governance were publicly accessible and verifiable, while simultaneously appealing to the private existential interests of the population as a whole. The emphasis was on the personal liberty to create one's own identity without the need for the state, but with the state there to ensure a maximum of mutual collaboration in these private endeavors. Some variation on this theme has dominated the world's politics for the last hundred years, due in no small part to the high liquidity and cash value of the ideas at the foundations of liberal democracy.

All of this has been somewhat of a buildup to suggest that a well-entrenched class of culturally-minded elites would be good for a population if they contributed their own syntheses to a national dialogue. For those of you who knew him, think Ward Elliott before he went insane; perhaps his father is a better example. These cosmopolitan individuals, who grew up in relative luxury (like a William or Henry James), channel their efforts toward learning about the best that other cultures have to offer, and importing that perspective in the domestic market of ideas. The Federalists were cosmopolitans in this exact way; they were on a new continent trying to assimilate a heterogeneous population and successfully synthesized abstract notions of governmental power and individual liberty imported from Britain and France. Even on a more practical level, "worldly experience" can sharpen one's understanding of human psychology, simply due to one's greater exposure to different types of individuals. These elites have the power to shape the culture by offering a wider range of perspectives and experience by which to analogize and perform philosophical synthesis than the majority of the polity.

The Framers understood this and created a republican form of government in order to try to promote "representation" by elites, or perhaps the more Burkeian description of "delegation" of political power. Unfortunately (in my view), the Progressives offered an alternative vision of justice and political philosophy which was strongly anti-elitist and appealed to the more visceral notions of redistributive justice inherent to any democracy. The Framers had always hoped that the elites would guide government voluntarily, but fashioned a government that was capable of dealing with much less. The Bush Administration has been a profound testament to that notion.

Liberal Isms

Toward the end of the last post, I indicated that the need for Ockham's Razor becomes larger as the audience for the proposition grows. If one believes that there are any tenable connections between politics and philosophy, this assertion inherently supports a live-and-let-live form of (classical) liberalism or libertarianism. Ockham's Razor requires a natural skepticism of claims that are not subject to public validation by common access to the experience justifying the proposition.

Applied to propositions commonly found in political philosophy, Ockham's Razor would probably only leave negative liberties intact (if they truly approach natural rights in terms of their universal assimilability), given that the justifications for many positive liberties or values (e.g., welfare, social security, education, etc.) are much more contentious and contingent. Rawls might like to have claimed that he solved the problem of justifying positive liberties through the veil of ignorance, but the artificial lack of context and presumed preference for a liberal society with what might be called "social insurance" is intentionally ignorant of psychology.

A population's contingent and idiosyncratic makeup often creates a temperament that becomes determinative of the population's willingness to accept certain propositions. Madison called these populations factions. Thus, the American experiment gambled that when a democracy's people's interests are diverse and atomized enough, they wouldn't be able to collude to form a majority power capable of imposing positive values on the rest of the population. Conversely, smaller constituencies (on down to the individual level) are capable of accepting more sophisticated and uniquely fitting propositions. This is the concept of federalism.

As such, it is unsurprising that Pragmatism grew up in America. Nothing embodies America more than an attitude of experimental existentialism fueled by the passions: Pragmatism, in short.

Ockham's Shaver

In Politics and Vision (an excellent read), Sheldon Wolin writes that “Philosophy can be distinguished from other methods of eliciting truths, such as the mystic vision, the secret rite, truths of conscience or of private feelings. Philosophy claims to deal with truths publicly arrived at and publicly demonstrable.” When I first read that sentence, I couldn’t have agreed with it more. In light of Rorty’s analysis, however, I can’t help but think that this is just a bit too rosy of a picture to paint on philosophy’s behalf. However, as a distinction from inquiry that could be called “revelation,” Wolin’s description (or metaphor if you will) serves well.

When Wolin says that philosophy deals with publicly demonstrable propositions, he means that these propositions are capable of being subjected to independent verification (a form of the scientific method). Philosophical independent verification can be analogized to a peer review process. The strength of a proposition depends on the individual attempts to assimilate the metaphor based on data that they themselves (or anyone else for that matter) would have access to, either by virtue of countervailing personal and historical experience or an internal inconsistency within the very language employed by the metaphor. Any such inconsistency can be used in an argument to point out potential disutility of the proposition, which, as I have previously observed, is the basis for assessing the truth-value of a proposition. Insofar as an idea is easily and usefully assimilated by the public (or even by a few individuals), the idea has a degree of truth to it. However, an idea needs to only implicate data that is publicly available in order to be considered philosophic.

This description explicitly precludes the possibility that philosophy could produce a unitary, objective truth for any given inquiry. Philosophical propositions are metaphors used to describe life, which are contingent and affected by language, historical context, and psychology. As such, philosophy can and does produce wildly differing approaches to solving the multi-faceted and intricate problems that will be subject to the same assimilation process for each potential believer. Even stating the problem implies a multiplicity of responses because of the different, contingent reactions every individual experiences in the very act of hearing a particular question posed.

Conversely, propositions based on revelation require subjective faith in the authority that legitimates an individual’s assertion. The crux of the issue lies in the process of verification that the propositions allow. Revelation relies on a chain of trust whereby one is required to believe testaments about an individual who claims to have knowledge of an omnipotent authority’s desires or commands, which forms the basis of authority for the propositions communicated by that individual. Believing that such an individual received such commands from this authority implicitly demands that the individual believer also trust the individuals throughout history who observed and related the details of the interaction.

In a sense, all of history relies on the same sort of trust. Again, the difference is in the verification process. Most historians require verification from alternative sources that not only they themselves find trustworthy, but from sources that their peers find trustworthy. As such, most academia is subject to some kind of verification process that requires its ideas to be based in some evidence that is at least minimally agreed to by others capable of verifying their assertions. Where there is no access to the underlying logic of the basis for accepting a proposition, other than an assertion of authority, the idea is more accurately described as “revelation” or perhaps, in a more incendiary form, “intellectual fascism.”

Popper’s scientific method view of philosophy I have outlined acknowledges that we may contingently and arbitrarily start with our null hypotheses about reality, but that through peer-review (which is essentially just experience and repetition) these hypotheses becomes more difficult to reject and more commonly assimilated in a fashion that could be analogized to the Darwinian concept of natural selection. However, unlike Darwinian selection, the force that weeds out bad ideas in philosophy is not scarcity, but Ockham’s Razor. Ockham’s Razor guides us to reduce redundant and piecemeal explanations for phenomena, preferring the simplest and the most comprehensive theory. Ockham’s Razor puts a necessary brake on our relativistic impulses to accept every idea as plausibly valid or even true, and proves especially useful when our ideas rely on conflicting premises or modes of inquiry. Consequently, the need for Ockham’s Razor becomes even greater as one attempts to fashion propositions that can be assimilated by the entire public at large for political purposes, and not just some individuals for their own benefit. Of course, the best way to arrive at good hypotheses is to generate lots of raw material (experience) to analyze, pare down, and refine.

Living Philosophically

To lay some groundwork for this blog, the nature of philosophy itself requires some exposition. The following account of the history and function of philosophy is the product of my own years of intellectual synthesis, which might inadvertently render this discussion circular, as you will soon see.

Philosophy, as originally conceived and practiced in Ancient Greece, was a somewhat disorganized attempt to fashion general rules and descriptions that addressed the nature of reality, as experienced by the Greeks. This activity was more in the nature of practicing an art than a science, given that these philosophers essentially offered metaphors that served to describe some aspect of life, from Euclidean geometry to Pythagoras’ famed theorem to Heraclitus’ notion of eternal chaos, to the abstract notions of justice in Plato’s Republic.

The fact that the metaphors that described the natural world retrospectively seem to exhibit more “truth” is because we have grown to find these descriptions, relationships, or (in reality) the mental processes that these ideas produce in us so reliable that we can call them “truths.” “Truth” is a badge of honor bestowed by the community; it proclaims that the sentence it refers to has been assimilated or affirmed by any and all comers. As such, if philosophy can be described as the love of knowledge, which almost implicitly includes a search for truth known as inquiry, then philosophy is the process of finding and fashioning the metaphors that most resonate with us and evoke an implicit sense of agreement, whether in the form of an a priori rationalization, an emotional response, or merely a strong intuition. Thus an individual’s philosophic activity is necessarily one of synthesis: going out and collecting the metaphors that best equip that individual to successfully live a life of their choosing (this would be the liberal side of the liberal ironist in me coming out).

Because the acts of inquiry and synthesis are the quintessential activities of the philosopher or intellectual on an individual level, finding the truths and metaphors that are most likely to be effectively shared and adopted by all is the core activity of political philosophy.

Of course, given that this whole description is itself just another set of symbols comprising a form of a metaphor for describing the activity of philosophy, one can see how those who want to get off the ride (Nietzsche comes to mind) end up peering into the nihilistic abyss.

The Virtue(?) of Concision

Brevity may be the soul of wit, but it is also the humbug of wisdom. Style, therefore, is necessarily a function the author's communicative purpose.

A Liberal Dose of Irony

I have decided to name my ideas blog after Richard Rorty's language in Contingency, irony, and solidarity, an excellent work of philosophical synthesis that I could not more fully agree with. Never before have I come into contact with a philosophical work with which I have more instantaneously and intuitively agreed. In a poetic way, Rorty's analysis of the contingency of the human perception of meaning, which he finds most powerfully achieved through metaphor and literature, is itself an excellent example of philosophy as a dynamic of metaphors competing in a Darwinian struggle to get themselves assimilated into our language games.

To get to the name itself though, Rorty's mission of the book is to fashion an approach to philosophy that is "content to treat the demands of self-creation and of human solidarity as equally valid, yet forever irreconcilable," embodied in the "liberal ironist." Rorty uses the European/classical definition of a liberal, in a live-and-let-live sense where "cruelty is the worst thing we do." Rorty more intriguingly defines an ironist as

"the sort of person who faces up to the contingency of his or her own most central beliefs and desires - someone sufficiently historicist and nominalist to have abandoned the idea that those central beliefs and desires refer back to something beyond the reach of time and chance."

Rorty effectively assimilates Nietzschean perspectivism and a Wittgenstein approach to language games with a Pragmatic and (less overtly) existential sense of experimentation. Rorty cautions against human obsession with Truths as existing "out there" to be found, since truths are a function of language, which is a series of symbols (or vocabularies) that have been contingently established as sufficiently useful to accomplishing single purpose, as a tool is suited to some task, which does not necessarily say anything about any intrinsic nature of reality.

More details on the liberal ironist coming soon.