February 20, 2005

you had me at mutatio controversiae

many people believe the arab world needs to undergo their own enlightenment period before they can really integrate into the western-owned world. i won't pretend to be able to really evaluate that statement, don't have the necessary understanding of the mechanisms of western history, much much less that of arab cultures. it sounds to me of course ethnocentric and determinist, but looking past that, there's a valid point there: every culture needs a century or so of pompous philosophers and naturalists alike running around cataloguing things.

here's an example. this is a bit late to the game enlightenment-wise, but schopenhauer is so sticking to linnaeus' guns it's hilarious: the art of controversy.

here's what it consists of:

1. Preliminary: Logic and Dialectic.

some etymology: logizesthai vs dialegesthai, and what the role of logic vs dialectic has been semantically; nothing new here if you've read your diogenes laertius but who the fuck has? so this is interesting. also, some amusingly straight talk:

"Dialectic, then, need have nothing to do with truth, as little as the fencing master considers who is in the right when a dispute leads to a duel."

this is good stuff, and i mean that in the sincerest way: this is good straight-talk that leaves the smart reader in control of the irony adjuster. (you know, unlike your typical half-witted wannabe-machiavelli types.)

2. The Basis of All Dialectic.

if you're pressed for time, lazy, or not inclined to generally waste your life with stuff like this, this is a good place to stop. this is where, in best enlightenment fashion, schopenhauer starts to shine the bright miner's hat flashlight of his mind into the mystery of dialectic, and of course, the de rigueur way about it is by analysis, in the strict sense:

"Our opponent has stated a thesis, or we ourselves,—it is all one. There are two modes of refuting it, and two courses that we may pursue.

I. The modes are (1) ad rem, (2) ad hominem or ex concessis."

and then there are two courses for those two modes, and generally everything divides neatly into subcategories, until (and this is the keystone of analytical philosophy) you're so completely divorced from your subject matter that further analysis would be, well, beside the point.

3. Stratagems.

this is money.

dude lists and explains, in detail, the methods of refuting your opponent in dialectic (there are 38 of them). i'm not making this up. apparently there are thirty-eight ways to jab, dodge, parry, camouflage, annoy or obfuscate. and reading this catalogue makes you a better conversationalist much in the same way that memorizing the dewey decimal system makes you an author.

however, with all of his philosopher's arrogance, his concluding statements win me over. dude had an ego the size of hegel's System and an annoying presumption of superiority, but i think he was a gentleman at heart:

As a sharpening of wits, controversy is often, indeed, of mutual advantage, in order to correct one’s thoughts and awaken new views. But in learning and in mental power both disputants must be tolerably equal. If one of them lacks learning, he will fail to understand the other, as he is not on the same level with his antagonist. If he lacks mental power, he will be embittered, and led into dishonest tricks, and end by being rude.

"The only safe rule, therefore, is that which Aristotle mentions in the last chapter of his Topica: not to dispute with the first person you meet, but only with those of your acquaintance of whom you know that they possess sufficient intelligence and self-respect not to advance absurdities; to appeal to reason and not to authority, and to listen to reason and yield to it; and, finally, to cherish truth, to be willing to accept reason even from an opponent, and to be just enough to bear being proved to be in the wrong, should truth lie with him."

Posted by matti at 04:46 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 19, 2005

bullshit (not funny)

"One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit", begins the essay On bullshit by harry frankfurt.

this is the story of how the essay sucks.

that beginning right there sets up some towering expectations. indeed, do we not live amidst what comes across to us as bullshit? we have to learn to ignore most people tugging at your sleeve, like advertising, but what can we take at face value anyway--surely not the dark matter of commodified media culture the ads come wrapped in? and if you're of critical bent you're at least slightly suspicious of classic culture (inasmuch its the dead tissue of society, the ghoulishly traditionalist pretentiousness of an established sub-elite), as well as the modern varieties, if only for the ubiquitous sense of "youre whole life is a lie! fuck you! love me."

i mean, not that you go around saying "this is shit", but a well-tuned bs detector hooked up to your reality filter is a mental health sine qua non, no?

is this a cultural thing? is this just a thing about being human? did/do people in "premodern" agrarian societies have this experience?

cos you can't really do much to define "bullshit" dictionary-style. or if you do, you lose the magic, the common thread, the experience of incredulity it conveys.

of course this is but dilettantish dark-stabbery. that's why I was stoked that a princeton dude, with what must be an enormous mind, loads of time and interest in the topic (fact: people with tenure can live up to 250 years old) and a safe and nurturing environment for thinking about bullshit was taking a stab that that topic. sweet! a rogue academic's tongue-in-cheek cross-disciplinary glimpse into a fantastically atypical POV into culture and experience and everything.

to start the essay like a true diligent (which is another word for "intellectually submissive"), conscientious academic, dude sets out to, yes, define bullshit using bigger words! he ends up accepting, interexchangeably, max black's definition of humbug: "deceptive misrepresentation, short of lying, especially by pretentious word or deed, of somebody’s own thoughts, feelings, or attitudes."

how big of a letdown is that? now we're suddenly in the realm of semantics of misrepresentation. ok. now is he going to delineate the history of bullshit discourses, showing how we've come to accept the same level of self-serving half-truth in matters of literally life and death (politics, war) as we expect in advertising? is he going to take a scalpel to the workings of your mind, talk about all those things you know you think and how you deliberately misrepresent yourself and you think nobody knows? will it make you first ashamed, then stronger for the sheer excruciating insight?

why no. dude actually uses most of the 8000 words in defining bullshit. the great funny here is, that itself is fucking bullshit, yet it falls outside his definition.

in the last fifth of the essay, dude starts tackling issue:

"Why is there so much bullshit? Of course it is impossible to be sure that there is relatively more of it nowadays than at other times."

thanks, sherlock. next:

"The contemporary proliferation of bullshit also has deeper sources, in various forms of skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are. These “anti-realist” doctrines undermine confidence in the value of disinterested efforts to determine what is true and what is false, and even in the intelligibility of the notion of objective inquiry."

ok now i get thrown a bit by all those big words, but to my best understanding, i think what he's saying is that the late 20th C deconstructionist/postmodern/critical (i.e. french) movements that questioned the notion of capital-T truth have actually somehow contributed to the proliferation of half-truths..? am i reading this right? how fucking PETTY is that?

this essay has been published as a book so i tried looking at the positive reviews at amazon; they all seemed to say pretty much "smart man deals with funny topic! side-splittingly literate." or something, and i don't see anybody gleaning any insight from this.

i don't think i'm being fair with it, though. so, please, if you take a look at the essay and find a good thing in it, drop me a line, tell me what i'm missing. cos i'd really, really like to have some respect for "one of the most prominent moral philosophers of our time."

update: there's a video interview available, i saw it after writing the above, and i would like to point out two short segments that are very much worth watching.

Are more highly educated people more likely to engage in bullshit?

and

Can you give us any salient examples of bullshit today that we might be familiar with?

Posted by matti at 06:00 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack