Posted on 12/26/2002 9:18:33 AM PST by shrinkermd
I was going to post several others, but I referred to Pinker's Chapter on politics. Previously, I poste Magnet's The Dream and the Nightmare about the "underclass."
Unfortunately, none of the end-notes came through. I can only say I am sorry.
Let me know when you find a similar book that has no negative reviews. Your post sounds like a plot for a FOX-TV sitcom. I don't like FOX-TV sitcoms.
Is Roger Brown related to Norman O. Brown who wrote Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History?
FYI, Sowell, himself, called this vision "tragic" in his earlier book, Vision of the Annointed. Both that book and The Quest for Cosmic Justice lead to the veiws he expresses in A Conflict of Visions. Heck, just read all of Sowell's books. Even if you don't agree with everything he says, they provide excellent food for thought.
Pinker has a few good words to say about Rawls's "veil of ignorance," which a big disappointment, and he avoids speaking boldly on a number of hot button issues, but, overall, the book, like its predecessor How the Mind Works, is a worthwhile contribution to the cognitive sciences, the evolutionary sciences, and contemporary philosophy generally.
I saw that too. I can't rembember what I said about Rawls, but one of my kids queried me when he died and I wrote the below:
John Rawls died at age 82 in November of 2002. Many noted his passing with an outpouring of praise and remembrance. Professor Rawls retired as Chairman of the Philosophy Department at Harvard University. It took him 20 years to write his first book, A Theory of Justice. The book, published in 1971, was an instant success and sold over 200,000 copies. Since its publication, over 5000 books or articles reference this one book. Professor Rawls published other books including Political Liberalism (1993), The Law of the Peoples (1999), Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (2000) and, finally, his Collected Papers (2001edited by Samuel Freedman). Shortly before his death, Barbara Herman edited and published his Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. Many believe Professor Rawls was the preeminent philosopher of his generation. President Clinton gave him the prestigious Medal of Freedom.
Rawls wrote for experienced philosophers and other intellectuals. Fortunately, his theories have been so popular that many have documented his positions in clear and concise English. Before Rawls began writing, utilitarianism was the reigning discipline when it came to social justice. Utilitarianism is an ethical principle that states an action is right if it maximizes happiness for not only the person but also everyone affected by this act. An alternative, but not altogether correct definition of utilitarianism is the "greatest good for the greatest number." The problem for utilitarianism is that it did not take into account the needs and interests of minorities. Rawls also believed the liberty of individuals was of secondary importance compared to the interest of the majority.
What Rawls did was to take utilitarianism and Kant's categorical imperative to arrive at a unique definition of justice. Kant's categorical imperative is, "Act so as to use humanity, whether in your own person or in others, always as an end, and never as a means. Not treating people as means is a crucial feature of Rawl's theories.
Rawls's theory has two facets. First, each individual has a right to the most extensive liberty compatible with the same liberty for others. Second, social and economic inequalities are just only to the extent they serve to promote the wellbeing of the least advantaged.
How and why could people accept these as just and necessary? Rawls proposes a "veil of ignorance" such that each person must select rules to live by without knowing their future income, intelligence and sex. Rawls called this the "original position." These theories protect the least fortunate. In the "original position" the public can reason things out only by avoiding religion or philosophy. Since things are now reasoned without individual passion and interests, the conclusions are above reproach and debate: they are now a given.
The outcome of Rawls's theories is exactly what the liberal Democratic Party believes --re-distribution of power and wealth with a strong belief in individual liberties. Rawls in his later writings also permits religious beliefs to continue even if they are contrary to the decisions made in the original position. He is also less inclined to redistribute wealth between nations than he in his own country.
From my conservative point of view, Rawls convinced the elites that it is simple and unquestionable justice to take from the majority and give to the minority. Indeed, we now judge society on these premises and there is no debate possible as to their necessity. Further, inequality is relative rather than absolute. For example, if a person enjoys a good standard of living but he sees others with Mercedes Benzes and Swiss watches, then he is still poor and victimized. This simply states the poor will always be with us and transferring wealth and power is an unending chore.
The liberal Democratic Party (Non-Marxist Socialists) believes in egalitarianism regardless of individual responsibility and effort. Further, by setting egalitarianism as the sovereign value they eliminate other values that are crucial for a successful society. To them, their beliefs are just, based on reason and eternal truths. If their egalitarian policies are challenged or refuted, liberals sometimes resort to angry, vituperative outbursts rather than factual debates. Recently, for example, Garrison Keillor made a fierce, demeaning ad hominem attach on Senator-elect Coleman. His emotional response makes good sense if you assume he believes his views, like those of Rawls, are above question and not debatable.
I note there was a long thread on Raws on FR. A number of much smarter people than I who had taken his class claimed he was a conservative! This may be. I had great difficulty even reading part of his first book. I never tried after that. I think you have to be very smart and able to wade through a kind of writing that makes legal writing look easy.
I think Pinker bought into the Rawlsian mystery. I was disappointed. I believe, contrary to what he says, that Pinker is of a liberal persuasion albeit not altogether a utopian. IMHO the Rawls test is the litmus test for liberals.
In brief, I consider Rawls's "veil of ignorance" a sham, an impossible, guilt-tripping sham that cannot be constructed in real minds. It only works as an abstract instrument in the hands of Blank Slaters, which is why I was so disappointed to see Prof. Pinker grovel before a PC altar by referring to it favorably.
Your kids must've been very happy to get so learned an essay about Rawls. If the analyses in it are any indication, you are more than capable of digesting Rawls's cabalistic mental peregrinations. The only question is, why would you want to? ;-)
Behind your "veil of ignorance" you have to choose between two societies. In one, you will be a free man. In the other, you have a 40% chance of being immediately put to death.
So, if Rawls actually believed his own crap, why was he a lifelong supporter of abortion?
May we take another look at Chapter 16? The thought struck me, reading this part, that 95 percent of the people who review Pinker's works would hardly want to put politics "up-front." They would prefer to do what Pinker seems to have preferred to do: Bury it in Chapter 16.
And yet the present reviewer, apparently sensitive to the problem of inadequate basis for the fulminations at Chapter 16, gives Pinker a pass.
I hope to revisit this topic soon. But I need to recover from the holiday season first. :^)
Happy New Year, each and every one!
Pinker turns up in today's NY Times look at overrated and underrated ideas. To me, at any rate, he doesn't make a good showing. Overrated: the "slippery slope." Underrated: "amoral pragmatism". Pinker's argument against "slippery slope" rhetoric -- "When we lowered the voting age to 18, we didn't slip down a slope and give 5-year-olds the vote, too" -- doesn't seem convincing or much of an improvement over what he criticizes.
Every generation has some conflict between older moral codes and new, radical, more amoral ideas. This is where some of us walked in. In previous generations, Marxism was the "new" idea. Or pragmatism or logical positivism or psychoanalysis. Also at various times in recent decades, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Existentialism, Deconstruction, Marcuse, the Frankfurt School. Today Darwin, sociobiology, and genetic engineering are the "new" scientific shortcuts to understanding, human improvement, and liberation.
That may be true, but I can't help being skeptical, but I will try to read more of your article in my spare time. It certainly looks worth reading. I commend your efforts.
Pinker is just TOO disingenuous.... IMHO FWIW.
IMHO, Pinker leaves himself no basis whatever by which to criticize anything. Indeed, Pinker's entire point seems to be that, once we understand man as the machine he putatively is (according to Pinker's grotesquely reductionist view), then questions about the "ghost in the machine" (does he ever source this quip to Julian Huxley, its author?) become moot. Irrelevant.
Of course, he knows as well as you or I do that whatever moral vision man has ever expressed down the ages, he never entrusted its communication to the language of a "machine" as his mouthpiece -- unless he needed an insanity defense....
So, what do you suppose this guy is really up to?
Pinker may be one of these scientific propagandists who make great claims for the latest research of science and its applicability to life. Iconoclasm, overconfidence, arrogance and prickliness, are common traits of this sort of person. When a new idea or scientific finding comes along it's seen as the big answer to everything. After the dust clears, we may find out that Pinker was right about some things and wildly wrong about others.
Perhaps we will, x. It's certainly possible that Pinker is right about some things. I think you already know that I think he is "wildly wrong" about others. Dumping the psyche -- Huxley's "ghost in the machine" -- is the preeminent example. For Pinker, there is only the machine: The "ghost" has been "evicted," by simple fiat. What Hegel "did" to God, Pinker does to man....
But this seems so silly. Pinker simply refuses to acknowledge that he's "got" a "ghost", so to speak, stipulating its nonexistence as the "pre-analytical notion" upon which to erect his system. Yet absent his "ghost," there would be no possible motive for his work. And lacking that, its mere existence would be inexplicable: Machines do not "do science."
The point seems to me so basic; perhaps that is the reason it is so easy to overlook. Yet perhaps this is not a mere methodological mistake; perhaps Pinker really is a willful denizen of Second Reality. In which case, we can be informed by his discoveries to the extent that his argument remains rational -- that is, to the extent that there is overlap between his Second Reality and First Reality, and only to that extent. Otherwise, the guy is floating in a dream world that is hitched to Nothing.
As Eric Voegelin points out, the imaginators and projecters of Second Realities can adduce important information about facts, and often perform brilliant intellectual feats of analysis. But we must be aware that, for them, facts and the thought process itself are subordinated to the requirements of their imaginative constructions. Truth will have to take a back seat if there is a conflict of reality with the construction.
Thanks for writing, x. Happy New Year!
Yes, x, the evolution of the main idea seems to involve a certain amount of "hucksterism" in this day and age.
Speaking of T.H. Huxley, recently I found this gem, which corroborates your observation:
“The [Protestant] Reformation was the scraping of a little rust off the chains which still bind the mind…. Darwinism is the New Reformation.”
Huxley penned these lines about the turn of the 20th century.
At the turn of the 19th century, Hegel – apparently in a fit of some kind of “religious” ecstasy – penned these lines in regard to the French Revolution of 1789:
“As long as the sun stands in heaven and the planets revolve around it, has it not happened that man stood on his head, that is on his thought, and built reality in conformity to it. Anaxagorus had been the first to say that Nous governs the world; but only now has man gained the insight that thought should govern spiritual reality. This was a splendid surprise; all thinking beings shared in celebrating the epoch. The age was ruled by a sublime emotion, the world trembled as the enthusiasm of the spirit pervaded it, as if only now the divine had been truly reconciled to the world.”
I don’t even want to get into problems of meaning here, WRT these two statements. (Though I might want to revisit this problem later on if there’s a reason to do that.)
All I want to know is two things. (1) Is there anybody out there in Freeperland who can detect one single FACT in either of these statements? It seems to me we are not dealing in the world of objective fact here, but in a more subjective world governed by personal taste, predilection, and preference. In short, the universe of rhetoric.
The other thing I want to know is: (2) Do people generally, these days, consider such “nit-picking” as to facts as raised in (1) unimportant or irrelevant to their actual lives? Is rhetoric finally annointed king of reality?
As far as I can tell, neither of the above reports deals with factual reality at all. And yet these two thinkers preeminently have managed to constitute a “style of thinking” that has moved humanity, arguably against its own best interests, for nigh-on two centuries by now. JMHO FWIW.
Please share your thoughts on this question, x…if you have the time and interest.
Happy 2003, x!!!
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