Works
What does ‘X works’ mean? What does it mean to say that something ‘works’? It means different things, which need to be sorted out, and it’s not ground-shifting to say so. It’s not ground-shifting to make necessary distinctions and to clarify definitions. It’s just not. It’s an essential requirement for critical thinking and for coherent discussion, not ground-shifting. Look at Steve Fuller’s testimony (which I will be doing more of later, if I can steal the time) for example after example of fuzzy language allowing someone to make absurd claims – absurd claims that could do their bit to sabotage the education of a lot of students. Fuzzy language does that kind of work all the time; it is far from a trivial issue; and it is not ground-shifting to make an issue of it. That’s why there is a new dictionary of euphemisms and obfuscations on B&W, only it’s invisible.
Alister McGrath likes the word – as theists and their admirers so often do. Theism ‘works,’ you see.
Hopelessly overstated arguments that once seemed so persuasive – such as “science disproves God” – have lost their credibility. Anyway, our culture’s criterion of acceptability is not “Is it right?” but “Does it work?” And the simple fact is that religious belief works for many, many people, giving direction, purpose and stability to their lives – witness the massive sales and impact of Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life. Atheism, already having failed to land the knockout punch by proving that God does not exist…
Hopelessly overstated arguments that no one but silly people made in the first place. Non-silly people don’t say ‘science disproves God’ so that’s a straw argument. Try to do better. But that’s a separate issue; the question here is about ‘works.’ ‘Our culture’s criterion of acceptability is not “Is it right?” but “Does it work?”’ Boy is that ever debatable, and boy does it depend on a lot of fuzzy words. Our? Culture? Acceptability? Right? And especially ‘work’?
McGrath does implicitly say what he means by the word – ‘it’ works in the sense of giving direction, purpose and stability to the lives of many many people. True. But the fact that theism (for theism is the it that McGrath has in mind) works in that sense does not mean that it is true. So if McGrath means ‘true’ when he says ‘right’ in that sentence, then he’s wrong – but no doubt that is exactly why he was careful to say ‘right’ instead of ‘true.’ That’s how fuzzy language does its work. That’s how it ‘works.’
Simon Blackburn tells a joke that also hinges on the word ‘works.’
It concerns a friend of mine, who was present at a high-powered ethics institute which had put on a forum in which representatives of the great religions held a panel. First the Buddhist talked of the ways to calm, the mastery of desire, the path of enlightenment, and the panellists all said ‘Wow, terrific, if that works for you that’s great’. Then the Hindu talked of the cycles of suffering and birth and rebirth, the teachings of Krishna and the way to release, and they all said ‘Wow, terrific, if that works for you that’s great’. And so on, until the Catholic priest talked of the message of Jesus Christ, the promise of salvation and the way to life eternal, and they all said ‘Wow, terrific, if that works for you that’s great’. And he thumped the table and shouted: ‘No! It’s not a question of it if works for me! It’s the true word of the living God, and if you don’t believe it you’re all damned to Hell!’
And they all said: ‘Wow, terrific, if that works for you that’s great’.
Same thing, you see? It works for you. Great. It’s all bullshit, of course, but it works for you.
Okay, it works for you. It’s useful for you in some narrow sense – but that is not the same thing as saying it’s true.
It’s also not even the same thing as saying it’s right, but that’s another and large subject. Later.
Hey, if thinking that it ain’t necessarily so just cuz it works works for you, that’s great.
Well thank you Karl the pragmatist, or is that pragmaticist?
I think it is important to be careful with that word ‘truth’. Simon Blackburn, admirable Hume scholar that he is, advocates quasi-realism. Whether what is true is ‘right’ is very much a question of context. In french one does not say ‘il travail’; one says ‘il marche’.
I also think it is important to be careful with that word ‘truth’. I do my best to be careful with it. Simon Blackburn does advocate quasi-realism, but he doesn’t advocate dropping the word ‘truth’ from our vocabularies. Or book titles. I simply said that the fact that theism works in one particular sense does not mean that it is true. Well, does it? Was that a careless use of the word ‘true’?
In addition, I said that the fact that theism works in one particular sense also does not mean that it is right – and also that that is a different subject. Which is similar to saying ‘Whether what is true is ‘right’ is very much a question of context’. Isn’t it?
I’m not sure what follows from the French example. ‘Work’ in English has more meanings than ‘travailler’ does in French. The travailler meaning isn’t really the issue in this discussion at all, I don’t think. We’re not talking about work-as-labour but work as functioning, operating in a desirable way, being not broken, that kind of thing.
Yes. Theism works. Until someone asks those awkward questions.
‘Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life.’
Hadn’t previously heard of that. Not going on my reading list.
Theism can keep a culture going more or less unchanged for centuries, with most of the population compliant. There’s a cost, but it does work; excellent social control/cohesion, tendency to regulate reproduction, expansionist urges. It works great, until you start counting the legs.
“Well thank you Karl the pragmatist, or is that pragmaticist?”
I prefer to be called a pragmaticistianologist, thanks.
Also, it works great, until one of those pesky religious wars starts to brew. Then – not so hot.
Maybe, like Tobias on Arrested Development, Karl can be a combined Analyst/Therapist? :)
So,theism “works”? I suppose, liek all group think, there is a point to which it does. But, such group think also leads to things like religious riots and Birmingham. Not working too well, there?
Can I be a pragmatistianologist too?
I didn’t mean to seem to disagree with your point OB, nor to suggest that we should drop the word ‘truth’ from our vocabulary, just to emphasise the point that truth is a very slippery customer.
I quite see your point about fuzzy language and its abuses – simply to say something works, or goes, is a pretty useless evaluation.
What an odd question, it strikes me.
Something works when it fulfills the function for which it was designed and/or for which it is used.
It has nothing with “truth.”
For example, Feng Shui may offer rubrics which “work” but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the theory behind Feng Shui is “true.”
No, it’s not an odd question, David. The matter is not as straightforward as you seem to think. Different people simply do mean different things when they say something works – just saying something works when it fulfills the function for which it was designed and/or for which it is used doesn’t ‘work’ because it’s not always what people mean by the word.
One, it’s not entirely true to say it has nothing to do with truth. For one thing, according to your own definition, some things work only if they tell the truth. Two, I didn’t say it did have anything to do with the truth, I was questioning an evasive assertion of McGrath’s.
‘For example, Feng Shui may offer rubrics which “work” but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the theory behind Feng Shui is “true.”‘
Rubrics which ‘work’ in what sense?
“Rubrics which ‘work’ in what sense?”
In the sense that the rubrics “work” to produce a better environment.
Feng Shui might for example (and in fact does) set forth rules about how to locate the front door of a house. And those rules are often fairly sensible and what professionals inthe field wouldcall “good design.” But the “energy flow” theories behind those rules might be bunk.
Aren’t we getting some repetition from the other thread here? Surely there could be some aspects of Feng Shui which just seem like common sense, practical ways to arrange things. The question is, is there anything there that goes beyond inspired interior design? If you’re agreeing that the “energy flow” part of it might be bunk and yet the people who do call themselves Feng Shui experts maintain that that is the most important thing in their work, the part that makes it possible for them to charge so much more for their services than a regular interior designer, well, er… do I really have to complete this already long sentence?
“And those rules are often fairly sensible and what professionals in the field would call “good design.”
But does FS contain any sensible rules of good design that we didn’t already know? If professionals in the field already recognized these rules as “sensible” and “good design”, what would FS have to offer us that we didn’t already have, except a lot of nonsense about “energy flows” and “chi” etc.? And are the rules of FS always sensible, or are some of its rules sensible and some utter nonsense? If the latter, why waste time studying FS? Wouldn’t we be better off scrapping FS altogether and just sticking to common sense and the principles of good design?
Yeah, what Stewart and Karl said. Not to sound like an echo chamber – but I did ask that when the FS thing came up (was dragged up) last month. What does FS offer that other good design doesn’t offer? What is the special something – given that the chi stuff is nonsense – that FS adds to the mix? What is the special something that non-FS lacks but FS provides? Why is FS better than FS-free design?
There – there is the question stated in four different ways. Surely that’s clear enough.
This thread seems to have been hijacked. Let’s get back to the original point, shall we? Which was: Who among us really knows what The Truth is? For example, Feng Shui. How can you be so sure that Feng Shui doesn’t contain a deeper truth, a mystical truth that transcends all common sense, observation, practical experience, and so-called rational thought, huh? Huh? Why don’t you disprove Feng Shui if you’re so smart, Ms. Smartypants with a Fancypants degree from Egghead U.? Maybe you’re not so smart after all….
And another thing: What about Feng Shui?Why don’t you deal with the devastating counterexample of Feng Shui and its awesome power? Why haven’t you spent years studying its magical effects? Is it because you’re scared of what you’ll find? I have to laugh at your pitiful lack of faith in Feng Shui.
Feng Shui. Oh yeah.
By the way, Limited Rational Robot For Whom I Feel Deeply Sorry…how about Feng Shui? Gotcha there, didn’t I? You didn’t think I’d remember Feng Shui, did you?
Say it loud, say it proud, brothers and sisters: Feng Shui.
One more time: Feng Shui.
Gee, Karl, sometimes you just meander and never get to the point. You were so vague and wooly in that last post, I still haven’t figured out what the subject was.
I do have one suggestion for the “Works” thread, though. How about “if it works even though you don’t believe in it, then it works; if you have to believe in it for it to work, then it’s the placebo effect”?
“Gee, Karl, sometimes you just meander and never get to the point. You were so vague and woolly in that last post, I still haven’t figured out what the subject was.”
Sorry you didn’t catch it the first time around (FENG SHUI). It should be obvious to even a dullwitted child that the topic (FENG SHUI) was whether mere functionality (in a social cohesiveness sense) is an adequate criterion for determining the truth of any claim. For example (FENG SHUI), the astounding, ungainsayable example of FENG SHUI shows that it is, which is why our blogger fears it and refuses to confront it with her full being. And furthermore, we see that FENG SHUI is the chink in Ms. Smartypants’s armor. She has so far been unable to disprove that FENG SHUI isn’t a deeper, mystical kind of truth that these limited, pitiful scientistic types like Ms. Egotistic Egghead are afraid to even deal with–which is why she just keeps asking the same petty, logic-chopping, life-force-denying questions over and over and expecting an “answer” instead of dealing with the fullness of the awesome “at-handedness” of people’s real living experience of the thing itself (FENG SHUI), and not your mere quotidian does-it-workness? of the unimaginative plotzer looking for his next paycheck. The “aliveness-within-the context-of-ultimate-beingness” of FENG SHUI decisively shows how little her mean squalid little Popperian criteria equip her for the true living life of communal wholeness within a shared understanding of what it means to truly BE.
Also, in case you didn’t notice, I think FENG SHUI is just fucking AWESOME.
FENG SHUI. Dude. It’s happening. GROW UP, man, and live with it.
6 pints of Guinness and a swallowed-whole bold key later.
Stewart’s placebo effect suggestion reminds me of a joke from Spank the Pony – where the doctor tells the patient who has flu, ‘I’ll give you a placebo for that.’ Well actually it’s not a bit funny like that – you have to see it acted. Never mind.
Yeah, sorry about that Guinness-fueled nonsense I just posted. This would never have happened if I’d had my den Feng-Shui’d. (Everybody Feng Shui tonight!)
Wasn’t kijacked at all — I was simply using FS as an example of something which “work.”
Want another example? Consider the Three Rules of Urban Design at http://citycomfortsblog.typepad.com/cities/2004/09/the_three_rules.html
Do they “work” to create walkable neighborhods? Absolutely yes and there are really no exceptions. Are they “true?” I have no idea — I have never ever considered them in that framework as it is not necessary to go there.
er, David:
I went to the link and saw that the three rules are in a 972 kb PDF, then glanced down and saw someone complaining they’d tried to download and got eleven pages of nothing. Is this one of those cases where you don’t get any answers whatsoever till you commit your entire life to a study of nothing else? Why should three rules take up 972 kb? And I don’t think you’ve really answered the question: isn’t the thing that makes Feng Shui Feng Shui and not just sensible design the part you admit might be bunk?
And, Karl, I don’t think any amount of Guinness can make someone who isn’t Halasz sound like the real thing. Since this ought to be both testable and falsifiable, I think we have a real science project on our hands.
Stewart, I volunteer to be an experimental subject. Please forward Guinness vouchers….
OB:
Is this something we could get some kind of institutional funding for? Finding out whether enough Guinness can make one write like Halasz sounds saner to me than the prayer study. Of course, it’ll have to be done double-blind with all the controls, not to mention requiring that we get the real Halasz for comparative results. We’ll also have to establish whether Halasz drank anything, and how much, before his own posts. This could end up like those celebrity imitation contest stories they tell about Chaplin and Jolson, where the real person entered and ended up in last place.
OB- Do you mean “Smack the Pony”???
Is it true that the really strong and effective placebos are prescription only and not available over the counter?
P.S. I’m actually on a very strong placebo right now, which might help explain some of my recent postings.
Sorry about that, Stewart.
Try this one — it’s only one page:
http://www.citycomforts.com/3Rules.pdf
Fair enough. But it looks like common sense. These three rules and their sub-rules contain absolutely no mystical, untestable elements. And though I’m no expert, you’d probably concede that there might be cases where circumstances might warrant breaking or bending one of them occasionally if, for argument’s sake, some other pre-existing, indispensable (maybe for historical reasons) architectural feature was already part of the mix. Does that answer anything about whether they’re “true”? I don’t know, but I don’t think anyone’s trying to found an entire religious philosophy on them, either. That’s why I was being completely unfacetious in seriously recommending Randi. The JREF won’t even begin to start constructing a test protocol until the applicant has been absolutely clear about what it is he/she is claiming. And if their claim is only that they’re really good interior designers, I would say, fine, maybe you are, but that’s also a matter of opinion and personal taste. There are lots of common sense variables for the physical arrangement of any given space. Vaguely justifying why that particular lampshade must be red and hang precisely 13 cm down from the ceiling goes beyond that. It shouldn’t matter so much what your room contains as long as you contain a fully-operational bullshit-detector.
In any case, I don’t see anything in those three rules that compares to the somewhat mystical claims that have been made for you-know-what (we don’t want to set Karl off again, do we?).
Maybe it’s simply a mistake to go asking questions about issues as practical as urban planning in a forum where we have our hands full of things like religion. If I can remember far enough back, I think OB began by pointing out how McGrath was carefully and deliberately using inappropriate terms to get a message across that would have been impossible if he’d expressed himself with more genuine precision. I don’t think anyone here has been disputing that for some people life is easier if they believe comforting things, whether those things are true or not. I think we all get a bit up in arms when we see that fact being used to somehow confer a more objective validity on those beliefs. And it’s at that point that urban planning doesn’t come in, but it did, so we all got confused. I stand by my earlier “placebo effect” suggestion as the best I can come up with for now.
Fog lifting…
Can we all agree (even David) that holding a set of beliefs that may not be “true” “works” for some people?
Perhaps I am out of the loop, but what in tarnation is ‘Feng Shui’ and why on earth are we even talking about it on this thread?
All the threads of fashionable nonsense seem to fuse into one somewhere, don’t they? Is there a single set of F.S. rules to which all practitioners adhere? If so, might they be corrected with the addition of new knowledge (yeah, like science)? If not, why not?
Karl, would you care to answer Brian’s question?
Feng shui is Ancient Chinese Wisdom on how to align the sink with the stove without pissing off the kitchen god.
We’re talking about it on this thread because the post itself is partly about something David S said about FS in a previous thread. Only partly, mind; it’s also about a silly, smug piece by Alister McGrath in the Times. But the two items dovetailed, because they have a train of thought in common – the one Stewart well describes above.
See, this stuff about whether urban planning works (and in what sense it does) and whether that has anything to do with truth, is why I asked what ‘works’ means in the first place, and why I pointed out that it means more than one thing. Sometimes rules don’t ‘work’ in any sense if they’re not based in truth; other times they do; it depends what kind of ‘working’ is being talked about. It’s no good pretending this is all simple and that ‘works’ only ever means one thing which is straightforward and obvious. ‘Tain’t so.
Fung Shway is an Ancient Chinese Secret. That’s all you need to know. If you doubt its efficacy, you are a racist neo-imperialist pig and a sad, limited little person who has no imagination and cannot love others or even himself. Such people are to be pitied. You don’t want us to pity you, do you?
If you need further incentive to accept it unquestioningly, you should know that Fung Shway will cure your impotence and add three inches to your divining rod, but only if you believe in it with all your heart, which might explain why certain people get so passionately defensive about it.
Actually, I was rather depending on you pitying me… especially since I match all the other criteria…
I was just thinking (uh-oh)… that to bring Feng Shui more into the practical realm we could simply redefine it as Ancient Chinese Wisdom about how to align the toilet bowl with the kitchen god without pissing on the kitchen god.
Well it sounds to me as if we all basically agree.
Not being facetious.
“Well it sounds to me as if we all basically agree. Not being facetious.”
That’s beautiful, man. I see it now. Because, like, when you get right down to it, aren’t we all just saying the same thing, you know, all of us, Christians and Muslims, theists and atheists, scientists and creationists? Aren’t we all just saying we should love one another as spiritual beings and respect other people’s beliefs and not argue about what’s true and what’s not (like we would even know, man), just let whatever works for you work, without all that buzz-killing hassle, you know? Just let it be, man. Cuz it’s all beautiful. So beautiful.
I would like to thank the good folks at 3M for making this transcendant vision possible.
No, Karl. I’m sorry. I’m afraid you still haven’t quite gotten the hang of this. Nobody agrees about anything until it’s been taught in infant school. Then we can all agree about it. And then – maybe – we can talk about it getting to the peer review stage. Ok?
Well, Karl, I am sorry that you don’t agree. But if that works for you…