Fewtril #77

Upon a glimpse of his true nature, the ideologue may begin to feel a pang of shame, and no sooner has he felt it than he seeks to allay it with the palliative salve of believing that all people are ideologues.

Fewtril #76

We sometimes hear the self-styled progressives argue that we ought to withdraw our support from and let perish those things whose existence is a mere historical accident. Why they should argue against such existence, I cannot rightly say, but let us hope they have prepared and are yet to reveal a better argument for the historical necessity of ours.

The Great Philosophaster of Science

In the opinion of the late philosophaster of science Paul Feyerabend, “our entire universe . . . is an artifact constructed by generations of scientist-artisans from a partly yielding, partly resisting material of unknown properties” [1].

At first sight, and judging by these words alone, we might take Professor Feyerabend’s claim to be absurd, if we take it to mean that the universe itself was created by scientists. At second sight, however, we might take his claim to be radical, if we take it to mean that the scientific description of our universe is an arbitrary construct built by scientists in ignorance of the nature of the universe. At third sight, and in a charitable mood, we might take his claim to be merely banal, if we take it to mean that a scientific description of our universe is built by scientists. Which is it to be?

I must admit that I am not inclined to do charitable work for pseudo-philosophers who delight in making attention-seeking declarations that I suspect are designed to appear absurd at first sight; moreover I cannot see in the context in which these words appear, nor in the context of Professor Feyerabend’s career as a whole, why his claim should be interpreted as anything other than absurd or radical. As it happens, it appears that Professor Feyerabend wanted us to take it at second sight, after having tried to shock us at the first; for he also told us that “nature as described by our scientists is a work of art that is constantly being enlarged and rebuilt by them” [2] and, as such, “modern science uses artifacts, not nature-as-it-is” [3].

Duly, he maintained that “normal science is a fairy tale” and that “equal time should be given to competing avenues of knowledge such as astrology, acupuncture, and witchcraft” [4]. Nowhere does he record whether he believed that advances in witchcraft would one day provide cheap alternatives in air-travel, though doubtlessly the leaving-open of such a question by a man of Feyerabend’s standing has led not a few environmentalists to stockpile birch-twigs in anticipation.

Realism assumes [quoth our philosophaster] . . . that a particular phenomenon – the modern scientific universe and the evidence for it – can be cut from the development that led up to it and can be presented as the true and history-independent nature of Being. The assumption is very implausible, to say the least. For are we really to believe that people who were not guided by a scientific world view but who still managed to survive and to live moderately happy and fulfilling lives were the victim of an illusion? [5]

With the incredulity of his last question, Professor Feyerabend steers us towards a modus tollens that seems to be as follows:

If the scientific world view pertains to an understanding of reality, then those not guided by it are victims of an illusion.
Those not guided by it are not victims of an illusion.
Therefore, the scientific world view does not pertain to an understanding of reality.

Now, in its logical frame, this argument is valid, but upon its premises it is unsound; for in respect of the minor premise, it is surely true that at least some of those not guided by the scientific world view are indeed victims of an illusion of some kind; and in respect of the major premise, a false inference is made therein to stand as fact, namely, that those not guided by the scientific world view could not be guided by something else that, though perhaps less exacting, would nevertheless be productive of understanding.

When, for instance, a Kalahari bushman, unguided by the scientific worldview, hunts an animal, does he not make inferences based on the empirical data of tracks and signs, a skill productive of understanding and thus in this respect free from illusion? He shares in this respect the same realist assumptions and inferences as those who subscribe to the scientific worldview, even if he has illusory beliefs appended thereto. Indeed, in the case that he has mistaken the evidence and tracked the wrong animal, one is unlikely to find a more committed realist than the Kalahari bushman when he is chased by a lion, except perhaps for the lion itself. It is the professor of philosophy who has the motive and the luxury of pseudo-doubt, at least when he is writing a bold thesis at a safe distance from lions.

That science is a more exacting and systemized way of looking at the world than commonsense realism does not diminish the effectiveness of commonsense realism. Humanity has lived without science for most of its existence, and of course many humans have come to untimely ends because they have been under illusions, illusions that might have been dispelled by science, but humanity as a whole has survived into the scientific age because it has made the same realist assumptions that form the basis of the scientific world view.

But Professor Feyerabend, against all sense, feigned to believe that “[t]here is only one principle that can be defended under all circumstances and in all stages of human development. It is the principle: Anything goes” [6]. Thus, Professor Feyerabend’s recommendation for those who would seek enlightenment in this pretended world of anything-goes is one of stark flippancy:

In order to progress, we must step back from the evidence, reduce the degree of empirical adequacy (the empirical content) of our theories, abandon what we have already achieved, and start afresh. [7]

As far as I am aware, Professor Feyerabend had no children, which is just as well, for I should think fatherly advice in this vein would be unwise.—“Son, in order to fetch my medication from the pharmacist across the road, you must neglect the evidence of your senses, reduce the degree of your attention, abandon all experience of traffic, and step out”. That said, I suppose Professor Feyerabend could have hoped in such a case that there was a trained witch at hand to airlift his son to a nearby stone circle.

[1] P. Feyerabend, “Nature as a Work of Art”, Common Knowledge, 1:3. (1992), p.3.
[2] Ibid., emphasis added.
[3] Ibid., p.6.
[4] P. Feyerabend, quoted in W.J. Broad, (Feature) Science 206, (1979) p.534.
[5] P. Feyerabend, “Ethics as a Measure of Scientific Truth”, in From the Twilight of Probability: Ethics and Politics, ed., W.R. Shea & A. Spadafora, (Canton, MA: Science History Publications, 1992), p.109.
[6] P. Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge. (London: New Left Books, 1975), p.28.
[7] Ibid., p.113.

Fewtril #75

It is to be suspected that we have some very wonderful and complex theories because there are no prizes for stating the obvious.

Radical Posturing

“Sure, I know this isn’t the time for a gender war; I know I should be concentrating on the class war.”

(Zoe Williams, “The old school lie”, The Guardian, 28th February 2006.)

For pretentious middle-class flatheads such as Zoe Williams, urging on class war seems like an exciting and authentic thing to do, and so long as it does not halt the supply of couscous or novels or documentaries on the plight of inner-city children, over which they might shed a very visible tear, then all is well. The last thing they would wish is that a mob of proletarian idealists should take them seriously and burn down their toddlers’ nurseries. That would be ghastly, and not what they mean by class war at all. What they mean by class war is the chance to stir up trouble from what they believe is a safe distance and to say silly and frivolous things that sound all daring and bold—but at no obvious risk to themselves. It is a game they play to bring meaning to their empty lives and to demonstrate to one another that their lives have authentic meaning after all—and to demonstrate above all that they care about something other than themselves. It is ultimately a dangerous game, for sure, but they are far too busy indulging in their vapid pastimes of reading novels or talking at one another at dinner parties to take the time to study anything that might bring them an understanding of this.

Fewtril #74

Only when one has detached oneself through ideological rectitude from the factual premises of the world can one then proceed with faultless logic to insane and confident error.

Fewtril #73

Those ministers of the State who believe that social order can arise from rational planning flatter themselves in regard to their powers of reasoning; and in order to consolidate power it becomes useful for them to flatter the people in regard to theirs.

Fewtril #72

For every thinker who has hit the nail on the head, there are a hundred blackguards to say that he missed; and amongst them there are still those who would swear he was a blind lunatic wielding a carrot.

Fewtril #71

The foolish and the wise may share many beliefs; for what is evidently true may be known to both; but many a fool, in a effort to distance himself from the foolish, is wont to eschew any belief that he might have in common with them, and thus he establishes himself as a greater fool in the denial of evident truths.

Signs

“Our imperial road signs . . . contradict the image – and the reality – of our country as a modern, multicultural, dynamic place where the past is valued and respected and the future is approached with creativity and confidence.”

Lord Kinnock, quoted in “Call for metric road sign switch”, BBC News Online, 23rd February 2006

The reality of this modern, multicultural, dynamic place must be rather fragile if it can be contradicted by imperial road-signs, or is the fragility only in Lord Kinnock’s sense of proportion? They’re only road-signs, after all; but then in so disproportionate a term as he uses, we might glimpse that Lord Kinnock and his ilk will not tolerate even little differences in this modern, multicultural, and dynamic place; and so I suppose that even over such small matters, great battles of principle must be fought, lest we find ourselves travelling “with creativity and confidence” up the road to a fully rationalised and homogenised future.
.....In losing my sense of proportion for a moment, I wish Lord Kinnock and his ilk be strung up from imperial road-signs until they stink in accordance with the odour of their ideals.

A Draught from a Disordered Mind

There are things against which a teacher might usefully warn his students, so that they might avoid some common pitfalls of thought and thereafter lead a fruitful life: for instance, not to distribute in a conclusion a term that is undistributed in its premises, is one such useful warning; not to play table tennis in the buff, is another. Amongst French psychoanalysts, however, such warnings lack the requisite je ne sais quoi, being that they are altogether too sensible. Monsieur Jacques Lacan, for one, thought it worthwhile to warn his acolytes against the belief that doors are entirely real:

Please give this a thought—a door isn’t entirely real. To take it for such would result in strange misunderstandings. If you observe a door, and you deduce from it that it produces draughts, you’d take it under your arm to the desert to cool you down.

Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II, The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis 1954‑1955, ed., J.-A. Miller, tr. S. Tomaselli, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 301.

I might wonder who on the banks of the Seine would be so silly that he might need to be warned against believing that a door produces draughts by itself, but then I suppose Monsieur Lacan must have known his audience. But assuming a number of sensible persons amongst them, I wonder how many would have inferred from the fact that a door does not produce draughts by itself that a door is not entirely real; for that is Monsieur Lacan’s underlying inference, as far as I can ascertain. So great a silliness hardly needs to be warned against, since it is the product of a rare and disordered mind.

Shrill Denunciation and Ritual Epithets

Few things bear the mark of this age more boldly than that one must denounce in the strongest terms and without care for temperance those unpopular views with which one disagrees; for such intemperate denunciation bears the mark of demotic politics. It appears that an unpopular opinion that is silly or wicked can hardly be remarked upon nor shown to be wrong without an accompaniment of shrill denunciation and ritual epithets, an accompaniment that serves little purpose but to advertise to one’s fellows the exaggerated view that one is a goodly and pious person utterly different from those persons whose unpopular views are deemed to be beyond the pale of public opinion.

.....In describing unpopular opinions from which he is strongly averse, must a man really spend half his time telling us that he finds them “deeply repellent”, “profoundly detestable”, “utterly vile”, and a hundred other such ritual epithets? Why must he make so bold and ostentatious a display of his aversion? Does he believe that such boldness demonstrates his moral bravery? But what moral coward cannot show so great a boldness in conformity with popularity? Does he believe that the more extravagant the denunciation, the more his righteousness is demonstrated? But what scoundrel does not make so grand a play of his morality? Methinks he protests too much. Would not many of those persons who stand now so boastfully against unpopular opinions, and who work to outdo one another in flatulent denunciations thereof, make a different sound if those same views were popular and the opposition thereto unpopular? History suggests so.

Fewtril #70

A man might go carefully in attacking an idea from which he is averse, not because he is fair-minded and temperate, but because the idea shares some of the premises upon which his aversion depends.

The Comic Play of History

In the comic play of history, the people cry out for liberty, and revel when they are set free from the authority that set them to their virtues and duties, whereupon they call out for security from the vices and rights of others. Enter stage left: the tyrant.

Under Louis Philippe, a parliamentary France, with people making all kinds of speeches about freedom; today, the consequences of that: an emperor who holds down dangerous elements with a firm hand and is therefore praised by the majority of the people as a saviour of the country.

(Johann Jacob Bachofen, Letter to Meyer-Ochsner, 29th August 1864, in Gesmmelte Werke, ed. Karl Meuli (Basel: Schwabe, 1943-1967), vol 10, p. 80; quoted by Lionel Gossman, Basel in the Age of Burckhardt, (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 129-130.)

The tyrant is best served first by a time of misrule and social license, against the chaos of which he might appear to the people as the best remedy.

Fewtril #69

How wonderful it is that liberalism has progressed so far as to find only compassionate understanding for the barbarism of its enemies and contempt for the virtues of its friends!

Fewtril #68

An idiot is heard to say to another: “I think you are a moral man; I mean, you are not judgmental”. Cabbages are not judgmental, though they do have trouble making moral choices.