Sanity

It would be the sanest thing in the world to assume that one is sane, yet it would be insane to believe that there is a Sanity.

Truth in Music

This article from Spiked Online on music's impact on public thought and culture takes a few interesting (if not particularly fruitful) detours into discussions of trueness of Truth, but a few of its quotations are particularly well-chosen.

"We know the truth, not only by reason, but also by the heart." --Pascal
"There is no truer truth obtainable / By Man than comes of music." --Robert Browning

Nietzsche might have said the same things if he didn't take delight in obtuseness.

Truthiness reconsidered?

I wonder if there may have been an overreaction to the philosophical problems posed by Truthiness by the likes of Susan Jacoby, Frank Rich, and myself. The robust and protective theories of Truth advanced in opposition to Truthiness are probably perceived by their targets as an overly stuffy response to an issue most people would rationally never consider. These approaches demand that individuals perform their inquiries with rigorous methodological requirements to qualify as “acceptable inquiry,” while the majority of everyday people are ill-equipped for that kind of rigor, yet will be compelled to inquire nonetheless. Curiosity is a universal trait, even if the capacity for careful thought is not.

Indeed, the backlash from the intellectual chastening of sloppy inquiry may push the masses to the opposite method of inquiry (revelation) because of the alienation created by failing to meet the elites’ standards for philosophic or scientific inquiry. Ironically, the undermining manipulation of discourse comes about precisely because of an over-concentration on what meets the standards of “Truth,” while we could simply be talking about which ideas are “truer.”

Religion

I am not against religion per se. I am, however, against anti-rationality. I have no problem with people holding irrational beliefs. It's when the irrational beliefs require the rejection of rational beliefs that they become problematic.

Pretty True

When used by academics, “Truth” is a noun. Ordinary people don’t know how to wield this word, but they do use its cousin “true” as an adjective quite effectively.

Binary Star

I am not exactly sure whether or not my position on Truth has changed since I writing my senior thesis. I think it's roughly the same, but I can't be sure.

***

The prototypical activity of analytical philosophy is ascertaining the "truth-value" of a proposition. In undergraduate "Logic" classes, this usually involves assigning a dramatically reductionist value of either "T" or "F" to the propositions signified by similarly reductionist letters "A" through "D." These assessments of "Truth" or "Falsity" are based on metaphysical manipulations entirely divorced from any actual interplay of the propositions; rather, all the induction takes place in a vacuum and explicitly relies on the veracity of the assumptions built into the problems. Such assumptions include statements like "A is true" or "If A, then B." These are almost always assumptions about Truth of a proposition and the absolute and immutable relationships between those propositions. Logic, as a discipline, is internally consistent and holds a vivid appeal for those with an analytical frame of mind. Indeed, like most good philosophy, formal logic does not impose any particular content or subject matter on one's inquiry; rather, it claims to equip the inquirer with the tools necessary to deal with his or her own philosophical problems.

While these formal logic games work well enough within their own constructed vacuum (much like Economics), the assumptions these games rely on often render their conclusions oddly inapplicable by human beings. After all, how often do we have reliable assumptions about whether or not a given proposition is absolutely true or false such that it can be manipulated in the precision-demanding ways contemplated by logicians? Furthermore, a truth-value is merely a human assessment of a proposition's efficacy at describing some experience; to claim that something is True because of some "external" verification misses the perspectivist's point that any of these validating mechanisms are channeled through some human perception at some point, making such Truths inherently reliant on human assessments of reality at some point (whether through repeated and shared experience or from idiosyncratic moments from an individual's life). If this sounds like an endorsement of any kind of relativism, you should have more respect for the power of human inquiry.

Aside from inquiries into naturalistic phenomena (Science, writ large), the truth-value of almost all of our interesting propositions lies somewhere in the middle of a spectrum running from false to true, not on either pole. This is not to say that we cannot use such propositions fruitfully; indeed, we can and do use propositions that are not fully true or false constantly, we just don't call the ideas "Truths," out of respect for those ideas that we are more certain about. We all must understand that we develop our ideas on the basis of individualized and idiosyncratic experience (which inherently takes lifetimes to tease out), and that not all of our assumptions about the world will be shared by every other members of our political community. Incidentally, this is the reason why attacking someone's logic in an argument is almost surely the wrong strategy; the other person can always default to some assumption that you will be forced to disagree with as a matter of "opinion" that varies based on personal experience.

Indeed, it is incredibly difficult to put amorphous ideas into language such that others will be able to concur with the aptness of the metaphor, especially because these metaphors are often used to describe some set of experience which may not correspond from person to person to begin with. As such, the proper goal of good philosophical inquiry is not to design some metaphor that will be universally adoptable (i.e., an idea that everyone can call True)--that is the goal of political inquiry. The proper goal of philosophical inquiry is to fashion a metaphor that is coherent. An individual's act of philosophy is synthesizing and reconciling various competing theories and propositions about the nature of life, given the arbitrary and contingent perspective of the inquirer. Therefore, the individual needs not find ideas that are universally True; he or she only needs to assemble a set of ideas that will be conducive to the happiest possible life for the inquirer on the basis of his or her idiosyncratic experience. Human experience is too diverse and multifaceted to try to manufacture or impose any set of ideas on people a priori; good philosophy is individualistic, experimental and dynamic.

***

Hopefully, this will have been the last really foundational entry necessary to give the reader a glance at my perspective and a chance to play along with me in my language games. I'd like to be able to exercise a little more creativity in both form and function from now on. If I am ever ambiguous or unclear, please use the comments section liberally; I will respond in kind.

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.