Category: Philosophy

Another Example of the Idealist Method in Action

A Facebook discussion of a particular aspect of so-called cultural appropriation led quite naturally—perhaps inevitably—to an underlying difference in method that has vital ramifications for those of us who fight for a more just, egalitarian world.

Here is the remark that, in my opinion, expresses it best: “Lack of respect as people for black people is the root cause of police assassination of black people”. And, lest anyone think this just sloppy or careless expression, not really meant, the commenter goes on to say explicitly, “economic issues are a thin veneer — a cover — for implicit prejudices that are then built into the society.” She only neglects to explain why prejudices are implicit—presumably because of Original Sin.

The root cause is seen as lack of respect as people for black people. Not a contributing factor, not an expression of a deeper problem, not an effect of conditions, but the “root cause.”  “Respect” is an idea, or a set of ideas—the word describes a relationship between the thoughts in one person’s head, and another person.  Thus, the root cause, is, to the commenter, an idea.  This is a perfect example of the philosophical method called idealism—a method that sees conditions as a reflection of ideas, rather than the reverse. The materialist believes that, as Marx said, being determines consciousness, something recognized at least in a limited and confused way by those who say, “You just believe that because you’re white.”

“Race” as we understand it today (it previously meant nationality or ethnicity, eg, the “French race,” the “English race”) is a creation of the 18th Century, and only became popular in the United States in the early 19th when it was found useful for justifying African slavery and stealing the land of the American Indian–and speaking of, I believe the argument that tribalism is the same as racism, and is part of the human make-up, is refuted by, if nothing else, the generally friendly reception the American Indian gave the first Europeans.

The continued existence of racism—its promotion by the political Right, its acceptance as permanent by sections of the pseudo-Left—are just as much products of actual, material needs and wants as its use two hundred years ago. Then, it justified slavery and theft. Today, for the Right, it interferes with the working class unity that would challenge their property rights. For the pseudo-Leftist, it permits them to advance claims that will benefit themselves—a tiny, privileged section of the upper middle class—and ignore the genuine suffering of the masses.

Behind the idea, always look for the conditions that produced it.  This, by the way, applies to the materialist method itself: materialism, emerging in the 16th Century, is the result of improvements in the technology of discovery spurred by improved lens-grinding techniques (telescope, microscope) as well as by the needs of the newly emerging bourgeoisie to break free of the rigidity of the Church regarding social status and political power.

And here’s the rub: The two differing methods produce tremendously different results. If we are to fight oppression in all its myriad forms, we must, above all, understand it scientifically. The belief that racism is “innate” leads to whole groups that stop after pointing it out—they have no program for, or hope of, actually ending it. Their activity is confined to calling working class white women racists if they wear dreadlocks. To understand racism as a product of class society is the key to developing a program both for attacking the cause—that is, the destruction of capitalist property relations and the ending of social privilege—and also a guide for battling racism itself as part of that fight:

1. The continued killing of African-Americans is an attack on the entire working class, and the working class must unite under a socialist program to destroy the system the police are using violence to defend.  The fight against police violence and other forms of systemic racism has to be part of the fight against capitalism—not by (as some have accused me of advocating) “waiting until the revolution fixes everything,” but exactly the reverse: taking on the mechanisms that oppress our brothers and sisters is part of building a movement that can carry the revolution to victory.

2. Problems of racism within the working class have to be fought as part of the struggle for class unity: we must tirelessly point out, not how the white worker “benefits” from racism, but, on the contrary, how he is harmed by it—how it works in the favor of the class enemy.

This is a materialist approach to addressing the problem.  What has the idealist approach to offer?

 

The Power of Symbols

One aspect of the recent, horrific events in South Carolina that has gotten some attention involves the “Confederate Flag” (technically, a rendering of the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia)–displayed on the license plate holder of the shooter (If this were a newspaper, I’d be obligated to say “alleged shooter” but it’s not so I’m not so I won’t) and also flying on the grounds of the South Carolina statehouse. Some are giving intellectual, carefully wrought defenses of the flag, explaining what it “really” means–that’s fine; such people can be written off as morally bankrupt and we don’t need to deal with them. But I’ve recently come across some who are saying, “Let’s forget about the symbol and concentrate on the substance.” That’s worth taking a moment to look at.

A symbol is a concentrated image. Symbols can be powerful rallying points, like union songs during a strike. They can establish points of commonality, both by loving them and hating them. I know my pulse quickens when I see the hammer&sickle-4, symbol of the Fourth International, because of all that it means in history and in defiance and in hope. I know that I clench my teeth on seeing the Confederate flag because of all that it means in violent, organized opposition to freedom.

Let me quote from my own book.  I can do that, because this passage was written by my collaborator: “But it’s never the symbol–the bird itself, the cross itself, the prophet’s name in and of itself that is sacred–it’s the welter of emotions, ideas, and insights it triggers. If it triggers nothing, its power is nothing.”--The Incrementalists

To be sure, a symbol can only do so much; its power is limited. It cannot answer arguments, or explore nuances, or provide a cost-effective treatment for subdural hemotoma. But thousands of avowed white supremicists have taken the Confederate flag as their symbol.  There are, no doubt, many to whom it represents something different.  Yet to me, it is significant that it is impossible to disagree on the meaning of that flag without the conversation at once leading to a discussion of the U.S. Civil war in which the person defending the flag will pull out all of the old idiocies–“It wasn’t really about slavery” “they had a constitutional right to secede” “Lincoln was a bad human being” &c &c ad nauseam. And what all of those arguments boil down to is a defense of human chattel slavery, which today means a defense of all that is backward, reactionary, ignorant, anti-democratic.

That is one thing that symbol does. Another thing it does is that in our (in my opinion, fully justified) disdain, it can bring many of us together. Whatever our differences, when use of that flag makes us seethe, we know that what we have in common is a hatred of oppression and injustice.

The differences among those of us who support equality are legion, and non-trivial. But with that much in common, it is good to be reminded that those differences may be worth talking about.

That is the power of symbols.

 

Hammer sickle 4

Regrets

Now that my 60th birthday is approaching, I’ve been starting to look back at some of the things that I always meant to do but that, to be realistic, it is now too late for. Some of you, I know, are still young, so take this as advice from an old man, and learn from it.

I meant to learn Sumerian well enough to have written a powerful, moving, life-affirming novel that would have been hailed as a work of genius by the three people able to understand it, and that would have been instantly translated into four other dead languages.

I would have liked to raise a horde of mounted warriors and lead them on a plundering expedition across central Europe.

I wish I’d gotten around to building that time machine so I could have gone back and listened to the Grateful Dead closing Winterland, December 31, 1978.

I always wanted to discover a portal into a parallel universe in which everything is just like it is here except that bunny ears and propeller beanies are standard business-wear.

I wish I’d finished the schematics for the teleporter.

I kept meaning to re-invent mathematics in such a way that the deepest mysteries of the universe became trivially obvious, but I always seemed to be doing something else.

Somehow, it was just never the right time to turn into an immortal demi-god breathing fumes of Argon gas with volcanoes erupting at my whim and travel the universe leaving a swathe of destruction in my wake.

Ah well. If my advice saves just one of you from these sorts of regrets, my life won’t have been entirely wasted.

Some Samples of Internet Logic

Here are a few things I’ve come across over the last few years.  I have not made any of these up.  Their profundity speaks for itself.

 

Scientists are sure they’re right, and religious people are sure they’re right. Therefore, science is a religion.

Leftists have splintered into many factions, and Christians have splintered into many factions. Therefore, Leftists are the same as Christians.

Different historians studying the same event will come to different conclusions. Therefore, there is no such thing as historical truth.

Individuals on both sides of [internet kerfuffle] have behaved badly. Therefore, both sides are wrong.

I do not have a name for my philosophical method. Therefore, I have no philosophical method and I just see things as they are.

Reactionaries oppose political organizing based on personal identity, and revolutionaries oppose political organizing based on personal identity. Therefore revolutionaries are the same as reactionaries.

There has not been mass working class action in my lifetime. Therefore, there will never be mass working class action.

I can’t think of any reason for atheism except faith. Therefore, neither can you.

I do not understand how society works.  Therefore, neither do you.

 

Steve vs St. Thomas

ETA 8-Apr-15: I am informed (see comments) that the argument I attribute to St. Thomas was in fact made by St. Anselm, and that Thomas refuted it.  I take some consolation in not being the only one to make this mistake (again, see comments).  But I’m leaving the post alone, because it seems sort of jerky to change it at this point, and because the basic argument remains unchanged.

One thing I’ve noticed in the atheism, agnosticism, theism debate is that it is generally the agnostics who frame the question. That is, the question, as it is normally put, is, “Does God exist?” Put this way, one must answer yes, no, or I don’t know. Small wonder that the “I don’t know (and neither do you!)” crowd finds it so easy to claim to be the only rational kids on the block. Interestingly, St. Thomas Aquinas took the opposite view: using pure reason, he proved that God exists. His argument ran as follows: God is, by definition, perfect. One aspect of perfection is existence. Ergo, God exists. Neat, isn’t it?

But let’s take a moment to look at it. In fact, God is never examined by St. Thomas. God is never placed under a microscope, or studied through a telescope. Skin and hair samples are never taken, blood is never drawn. St. Thomas never even shakes His divine hand. So then, what is St. Thomas actually basing his conclusions on? Not God, but the idea of God. The idea of God includes perfection; hence, we have now proven that the idea of God exists. This, of course, was never in doubt. The idea exists.

But, stay. The idea exists. What does that mean, exactly? Well, an idea is nothing more than the mind’s reflection of the objective world. In the last analysis, ideas are the result of sensuous activity, reflected in our material brains. So, have we now come to the conclusion that God is real because the belief exists? Well, no. There are many ideas that are simply wrong, but are nevertheless reflections of the objective world. At one time, it was supposed that the Sun revolved around the Earth. This idea came from nowhere except observation of the movement of heavenly bodies, as best they could be observed and understood at the time. To put it in more contemporary terms, some guy truly, honestly believes that the world is dooooomed unless a Republican is elected. Another guy believes the same about a Democrat. I, myself, disagree with both of them. Assuming we are all in general agreement about what dooooomed means, two of us must be wrong; but we are all taking our ideas from our interactions with the world, coupled with our method of understanding information, and all of the material factors that have influenced how we view the world.

But that, you see, frames the question entirely differently. If instead of saying, “Does God exist?” we say, “Where did the idea of God come from?” we are now having a different conversation, and, in my opinion, a much more interesting one. We can bring up the degree of knowledge at various points in human history (aye, and pre-history); we can talk about fear of death; we can talk about personal experiences that make one feel one has transcended one’s normal, mundane life, what causes such experiences, what determines how our brains interpret them. But now, instead of the negative (“Prove God doesn’t exist!”) we are putting the question in positive terms (“Whence comes the idea of God?”).

What becomes clear at once is that the answer is knowable. By “knowable” I do not mean, “will someday be fully understood with all i’s crossed and t’s dotted,” I mean that we have taken the question out of the realm of the numinous. We can approach this question as we do any other question of science, and use our best efforts to understand it. We can understand that endowing nature with consciousness is a very reasonable, indeed, inevitable consequence of living under conditions where nature dominated all aspects of life, and could not be controlled; and that confirmation bias would certainly have an effect when attempting to influence whatever aspect of nature was of concern. As the size and complexity of the brain increases, as emotions such as fear become more complex and nuanced, as our capability for imagination grows and the capacity for more robust and powerful forms of communication increases, the creation of phantasms of all sorts, as an explanation for the unknown and a balm for uncertainty, has nothing mysterious about it. And the other side of the coin is that, as more has been learned about the natural world, as we have gradually used the discoveries of science to control more and more aspects of the natural world, the sphere of influence of God–the things that God is in charge of–has sensibly diminished. We can even use the history of religion to draw important conclusions about society; for example, the relationship between the development of early capitalism and the Protestant Reformation–how the first flowering of the commoner as an individual was necessarily accompanied by a faith that permitted an individual, personal relationship with God.

And so we come to method. Do we approach knowledge from the perspective that the world is a reflection of ideas, our own or God’s? Or do we approach it from the perspective that ideas are a reflection of the world? Or, to put it another way, can there be an idea before there is a brain to think it? And to answer that question, we do not go to our thoughts (we cannot prove the reality of our thoughts by thinking), but to our actions–socially, as a species. As we have understood more and more of our world, we, as a species, have used this knowledge to alter our world. We have modified food to make it more easily digestible. We have built bridges to cross rivers. We have created machines that permit us to fly. We have created complex infrastructures of power and shelter, which we use in our constant fight against the destructive forces of nature to keep us warm and healthy and safe. We learn, we act on our knowledge, we correct our understanding based on the results of our actions, we act some more. This process is not only how we improve our world, and not only how we learn more about the workings of the universe (and ourselves), but also, in passing and almost by accident, it answers the question of the relationship between our thoughts and the world around us. Or, as it has been sometimes put: Man answered the question of the relationship between his thoughts and reality thousands of years before it occurred to him to ask.

In comments on the previous post, Nathan S says this: … one wouldn’t say that “I can neither prove nor disprove the existence of leprechauns, yet I do not disbelieve in them.” Why is that sentence unacceptable with something as silly as Irish faerie spirits yet completely acceptable with deities? An astute question, and one we are now able to answer: at one time in human history, belief in Irish faerie spirits was perfectly acceptable and reasonable; but we have gained knowledge, and one thing that has gone by the wayside (with some regret in this case) is the need to find an explanation for certain fortunate or unfortunate events in the actions of the Good People.

When we now return to our old friend God, we find him exactly where He belongs: as another aspect of human thought, of human culture, of the struggle for understanding. We reject God as a being who exists apart from human thought, as we also reject the ahistorical attacks on religion that tell us man “should” never have believed in God–as useful and as scientific as saying that stone-age man “should” have built a superconducting supercollider. We understand God as an idea that has emerged from and changed with certain stages of the development of knowledge and culture as a distorted reflection of the material world, heavily influenced by the needs of the society that produced Him. As Feuerbach said, Man created God in his own image. We have taken the unknowable out of God, and what is left is: us. For me, that is quite sufficient.