Authority
One more dig at I mean comment on Steve Fuller. I think it’s the last for the moment, but who knows. The spirit bloweth where it listeth, etc.
It’s a point about arguing from authority. We’ve noted the arrogance of his tone in the thread at Michael’s – the way he seems to take for granted that he is The Expert in the subject and everyone else is some kind of supplicant or mendicant or rank outsider (an assumption not borne out by the comments, which would seem to reverse the equation – everyone commenting seems to be far more knowledgeable and clear-thinking than he does).
I’m sorry if this sounds patronising but I’d hate you to think you’ve been having a serious discussion worthy of people who claim ‘criticism’ as a profession. You guys simply take at face value what the media presents and then back it up with whatever you can dredge up. Haven’t you people heard of cultural studies? (It was also touching that one of you thought the New Yorker piece was harsh on me—you must lead a sheltered life, if you think that’s harsh!]
I just want to quote something that I think relevant to that tone. It’s from Jon Pike’s review of Ted Honderich at Democratiya.
But, since not even the first year undergraduate sees anything in truth by conviction, perhaps there is something else going on. Perhaps it’s not the strength of convictions themselves that matters, but the fact that they are Honderich’s convictions. Honderich is a Philosopher, after all, and an eminent one at that. He used to be the Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at UCL. He has thought about these things a lot, (as if time, on its own, mattered) and his conclusions are controversial. But he is an Authority, so perhaps the persuasive force is supposed to come from some strange mix of truth by conviction and truth by authority. It’s an odd conclusion to come to, because the very basis of doing philosophy, especially critical political philosophy is a rejection of all of these notions. In order to do serious critical political philosophy, you shouldn’t care about someone’s credentials, or the strength of his or her convictions. What matters, all the time, and only, is the argument.
There it is, you see. You shouldn’t care about someone’s credentials or strength of conviction. What matters, all the time, and only, is the argument.
It’s depressing (Susan Haack has pointed this out in great detail) how heavily social constructionism relies on rhetoric to do the work of argument. (It’s also immensely ironic that a social constructionist who is programmatically suspicious of hierarchies and authority in science is so quick to resort to them himself.)
“There it is, you see. You shouldn’t care about someone’s credentials or strength of conviction. What matters, all the time, and only, is the argument.”
But I guess when you’re in a field where the arguments are so contorted, opaque, and inconsistent, what else have you got to go on?
Just so. Which highlights the problem pretty well.
This comment from Bérubé’s site made me laugh out loud:
71. Fuller
“[2]“the motives of the proponents of ID are crucial”…. reflects the way the US legal system sees matters at the moment, whereby religious motivation ipso facto can disqualify a knowledge claim as scientific.”
That’s not true. That’s not the way the legal system sees matters, Mr. Fuller. The legal system understands that beliefs like “this invisible dude in this invisible called heaven will use his invisible powers to send your invisible soul to this invisible place called hell after you die” are RELIGIOUS beliefs. They are not “knowledge” any more than my belief that you are a robot programmed by John West is “knowledge.”
Get it, Fuller? In the US legal system, there are these things called “facts” which represent “evidence” that is considered by judges. Judges in the US legal system are not allowed to say, “Well, the facts show this but I prayed last night to Orbaboingboing and he said you’re guilty. Case closed.”
So when the ID peddlers say “ID is science and should be taught in science class” and the judge says “where’s the evidence” and the ID peddler says “just look around, you atheist idiot,” guess what happens? The judge takes a big dump on ID.
Too bad you chose to stand in the toilet bowl with Michael Behe, Fuller.
Posted by Lawrence Sober on 12/06 at 03:20 PM
Doug
Seconded.
What Fuller does reminds me of something that isn’t new, but is not perhaps always kept sufficiently in mind. OB, myself and probably other contributors here have mentioned the convergence of all the strands of “fashionable nonsense” that B&W fights by exposure. Because what the practitioners of FN (very umbrella-like now; I mean everything from religion to Feng Shui to ID to Po-Mo) are pushing is invariably something that requires some independence from verifiable facts, they seem all to resort to an “attack is the best defence” strategy. They have to destroy and banish knowledge we already have to make way for what they have ready to replace it. I think this holds for all the varieties I can come up with. Of course, they all do it differently (god exists in the gaps, ID complains that evolution can’t answer everything, Po-Mo denies reality exists). But the basic strategy seems to be the same in all cases. There is a need to create ignorance and intellectual darkness in which their aims can flourish. Anti-Enlightenment is almost too obvious to mention, but I think it’s apt that so much “difficult” academic writing is referred to as “obscure,” considering that word’s connection to the concept of literal darkness. Is there a good example that is an exception to this rule?
Stewart – FN – that is a nice umbrella, Off topic, and becsues I can’t think of an exception, and because it’s Friday (hereto known as Taking Liberties Day), I would suggest that Conceptual Art is sureley a related pehenomenon or sub-set of the above … a while ago I found a superb rant on the subject:
“there is a considerable linkeage between
Like Salieri in Amadeus, the conceptual artist is given the ability to appreciate greatness, but he is cursed with the inability to create greatness himself. So he takes the short track to fame and goes conceptual. Salieri was born too soon. Scheming, jealous, petty, vain, able to manipulate public opinion—Salieri could have written his own ticket as a self-pimping conceptual artist, a post-modern art critic, a pseudo-intellectual graduate professor in cross-media studies, a cliquish gallery curator, or any number of lesser titles in the wack-wack-wacky world of contemporary art. And Mozart? He would have been just another populist Jon Bon Jovi. “
-curt cloninger, 2001
http://www.spark-online.com/
Of course it is in the artistic and cultural spheres that the hardest-to-adjudicate grey areas exist. In that sense they differ from what I mentioned. It’s easy to say there’s no evidence of god, ID is not science, Feng Shui doesn’t work in any consistent way and lots of Po-Mo just plain doesn’t make sense. It can be more difficult to define what precisely defines a work of art. More to the point, the relationship of art to truth is not necessarily as straightforward as the other things I just mentioned. It is, for example, quite conceivable that one accepts as a work of art something bearing a message that is the opposite of truth. That said, I agree with you to the extent that I can appreciate the difference between something that calls itself art which makes me think and something that calls itself art that only makes me think “where does the person responsible get off claiming that this is art?”
Or, from a slightly different angle, loosely related to the example you brought, can there be “good” and “bad” religion in the same way that there can be “good” and “bad” music?
Art and also morality. (And – not sure if this is a subset of art, or a different category – or perhaps both; both part of art and an independent realm – imagination, fantasy, thought experiment, counter-factuals, possible worlds, etc.) Two or perhaps three areas where things get fuzzy.
Actually, to take that a little further, can there be such a thing as music that isn’t “true” (or religion that is, in the absence of any evidence for the existence of supernatural beings)?
Or yet another case: one could conceive of a stage play and a film perceived as a documentary that tell essentially the same story in very similar ways. If the story told is one that contradicts known facts, are both pieces equally dishonest, or is the audience’s knowledge that it is witnessing (at the very least) a re-enactment on stage a mitigating circumstance, a form of automatic editorial transparency that the film medium can try to avoid in order to pull the wool over the audience’s eyes?
This is not a pipe.
(It’s actually a depiction on your computer of a Magritte painting of a pipe.)
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/notescomment.php?id=1097&numcomments=9
Here’s the image:
http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/0/02/300px-MagrittePipe.jpg
Point taken, Doug. It’s a much more sophisticated version of a schoolboy scrawl saying “I am not writing this,” i.e. one would have to be pretty damn thick not to understand what is going on. And it doesn’t come close to the jokes people believe in, base their lives on and end others’ in the name of.