maybe as a result of their own success.
do you mean that the spread of cheap/free communication media permitted the more intense use of propaganda?
i've been wondering about soros, is he our friend?
his actions puzzle me sometimes,and his intentions are obscure, does he play both sides of the net? ~Government budget deficits are not nearly as dangerous as the deficits we have created in vital and complex natural systems.~ Naomi Klein.
One of the moral implications is the perfect sovereignty of the individual, which leads naturally to late capitalism.
Unfortunately it's a doomed moral position. Perfect individual sovereignty isn't reality based, and leads to disasters on small and epic scales.
If there's going to be a re-Enlightenment it's going to need a morality of context and relationship which balances personal freedom with a rational awareness of consequences.
The Enlightenment never explicitly addressed morality.
Veblen traces liberal ethics back to Locke's idea of natural rights.
The modern theories of property run back to Locke, or to some source which for the present purpose is equivalent to Locke; who, on this as on other institutional questions, has been proved by the test of time to be a competent spokesman for modern culture in these premises. A detailed examination of how the matter stood in the theoretical respect before Locke, and whence, and by what process of selection and digestion, Locke derived his views, would lead too far afield. The theory is sufficiently familiar, for in substance it is, and for the better part of two centuries has been, held as an article of common sense by nearly all men who have spoken for the institution of property, with the exception of some few and late doubters. This modern European, common-sense theory says that ownership is a "Natural Right." What a man has made, whatsoever "he hath mixed his labor with," that he has thereby made his property. It is his to do with it as he will. He has extended to the object of his labor that discretionary control which in the nature of things he of right exercises over the motions of his own person. It is his in the nature of things by virtue of his having made it. "Thus labor, in the beginning, gave a right of property." The personal force, the functional efficiency of the workman shaping material facts to human use, is in this doctrine accepted as the definitive, axiomatic ground of ownership; behind this the argument does not penetrate, except it be to trace the workman's creative efficiency back to its ulterior source in the creative efficiency of the Deity, the "Great Artificer." With the early spokesmen of natural rights, whether they speak for ownership or for other natural rights, it is customary to rest the case finally on the creator's discretionary dispositions and workmanlike efficiency. But the reference of natural rights back to the choice and creative work of the Deity has, even in Locke, an air of being in some degree perfunctory; and later in the life-history of the natural-rights doctrine it falls into abeyance; whereas the central tenet, that ownership is a natural right resting on the productive work and the discretionary choice of the owner, gradually rises superior to criticism and gathers axiomatic certitude. The Creator presently, in the course of the eighteenth century, drops out of the theory of ownership.
This modern European, common-sense theory says that ownership is a "Natural Right." What a man has made, whatsoever "he hath mixed his labor with," that he has thereby made his property. It is his to do with it as he will. He has extended to the object of his labor that discretionary control which in the nature of things he of right exercises over the motions of his own person. It is his in the nature of things by virtue of his having made it. "Thus labor, in the beginning, gave a right of property." The personal force, the functional efficiency of the workman shaping material facts to human use, is in this doctrine accepted as the definitive, axiomatic ground of ownership; behind this the argument does not penetrate, except it be to trace the workman's creative efficiency back to its ulterior source in the creative efficiency of the Deity, the "Great Artificer." With the early spokesmen of natural rights, whether they speak for ownership or for other natural rights, it is customary to rest the case finally on the creator's discretionary dispositions and workmanlike efficiency. But the reference of natural rights back to the choice and creative work of the Deity has, even in Locke, an air of being in some degree perfunctory; and later in the life-history of the natural-rights doctrine it falls into abeyance; whereas the central tenet, that ownership is a natural right resting on the productive work and the discretionary choice of the owner, gradually rises superior to criticism and gathers axiomatic certitude. The Creator presently, in the course of the eighteenth century, drops out of the theory of ownership.
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is
It's certainly not rigorous, and the idea that there's such a thing as 'universal law' which applies equally to every individual in similar situations is really rather silly.
A more basic moral problem seems to be that a minority of individuals sees power as an end in itself, while a majority see mutual support as an end in itself.
Another segment of the population will happily follow whatever morality it's told to follow without questioning it.
It probably isn't possible to reconcile those positions. I'd guess the best you can hope for is creating a framework in which predators are forced to justify their existence by creating positive outcomes rather than disastrous ones.
'Democracy' is not a practical aim, it's an abstract ideal. Which is why it's so easy to hijack the word and make it mean 'Colonial rule by an installed thug' - and keep a straight face.
'Open access to policy influence without filtering by cash or caste' is more of a practical aim.
Of course it's not any kind of philosophical absolute. But it doesn't need to be - it just needs to create results which everyone can experience directly.
That, then turns ethics into a political problem because you need to get a large supermajority of the population to agree to the practical aims before they can agree on what constitutes ethical behaviour.
Individual sovereignty, however unrealistic and ultimately destructive, is an easy sell. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
That, then turns ethics into a political problem
Ethics is always a political problem - abstract ethics become meaningless without practical relationships with other people and the environment.
Individual sovereignty, however unrealistic and ultimately destructive, is an easy sell.
Exactly. But it's inherently and automatically corrosive to practical relationships - unless it's tempered with some other more inclusive ethical basis.
One of those relationship types has to be a comprehensive innoculation against charismatic leader/follower relationships.
It would probably be better still to round up all the predators and keep a close and permanent eye on them.
If you deal with the predators effectively, I think everything else gets very much easier. It's the predators who parasitise tribalism, and without out them it becomes much less of a problem.
I'm not sure what 'deal with' would mean in practice. I'm certainly not proposing shooting them all - more some sort of formal oversight and rechanneling of energies, with limited freedom for those who can't contribute.
Of course this seems draconian, and it goes against our indoctrination into the mythology of perfect personal freedom. But it's less draconian than allowing Hitlers, Mugabes and Bushes to run things. Because all they'll do is round up people anyway - and probably kill them too, one way or another.
If you deal with the predators effectively
problem being that to do that you need predators, of an incorruptible character, to boot.
then how do you keep them honest?
eliot spitzer comes to mind... ~Government budget deficits are not nearly as dangerous as the deficits we have created in vital and complex natural systems.~ Naomi Klein.
i'd love to believe that, it would take genetic manipulation.
i hate it, the chinese do it, and we haven't for a while, (nuremberg notwithstanding) but execution would be the only fate that would put the fear of godde into them enough to stay on the straight and narrow, and even then some psycho risk-junkies would crap out, just to see if they could.
it's just so hard to eradicate selfishness and the corollary disprespect once it's installed in the person's OS from childhood, until we raise everyone with a conscience people will act out, and never so much as when they can gamble everything on it...
same reasons priests rape kids, the thrill of what's taboo, sociopathic urge to push the envelope in living a double life...
if you can't find /or have blocked out real, then the ache of life lacking meaning can give rise to a compulsion in some to go to the other edge, to live life with greater complexity and inner drama than what most accept more or less grumblingly...
that's what happens when adult bodies encase immature, unevolved value systems, it's fucked but there it is.
extreme fear would keep them straight, until we raise enough generations right, without implanting the terrible fears and insecurities, the existential dread that then gets covered up by anger, slow or fast-burning, because. their. life. should. be. better. than. this. they. got. gypped. and. someone. is. going. to. pay.
whoa this sounds like i'm channeling tony perkins on his way to the shower...
raise 'em right, or have to go medieval on 'em later. cast secret ballots for who gets to be executioner, and of course cut him/her some slack over and above the fat paycheck (to pay for therapy?), hell they should have given eliot all the naughties he wanted, he was sticking it the Man, (as well as his 'escorts'!
semi-snark ~Government budget deficits are not nearly as dangerous as the deficits we have created in vital and complex natural systems.~ Naomi Klein.
It would probably be better still to round up all the predators and keep a close and permanent eye on them.If you deal with the predators effectively, I think everything else gets very much easier. It's the predators who parasitise tribalism, and without out them it becomes much less of a problem.
The problem is that those you call "predators" are not a specific, predetermined category. Most of the people, including probably you and me can become a "predator" (or behave like one) in certain situations. And it is impossible to predict if somebody could become a "predator" or not. History is full of examples of people who started as selfless idealists and, once in power (or after a certain time in power) started to behave as "predators"... "Dieu se rit des hommes qui se plaignent des conséquences alors qu'ils en chérissent les causes" Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet
In this sense "moral" or "morality" derives from the latin mores, which in some of its senses referred to what was right according to custom and was understood to vary from society to society: e.g. sexual customs were known to vary from one group of people to another and what was right depended on the customs or mores of that society. There was multi-culturalism even in Roman times! As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
We need a new term adequate to the task at hand. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
a minority of individuals sees power as an end in itself, while a majority see mutual support as an end in itself
That minority of power individuals looks pretty cooperative among themselves, while the majority does actually very little for mutual support. How much of their effort is not directed towards minute needs of themselves or serving the power minority? There seems to be little confidence that doing good to others is reasonable.
Dan Ariely's book, Predictably Irrational, among its other virtues, describes experimental behavioral economics results that reveal the fragility of social norms when these are forced into competition with market norms. It's a fascinating and sometimes profoundly disturbing book. I highly recommend it, even to those who have been casually following the literature in the area. (Fun to read, too.) Words and ideas I offer here may be used freely and without attribution.
The Authoritarians.
The authoritarian followers.
....while a majority see mutual support as an end in itself
The proverbial 'good men and women who mustn't stand idly by whilst evil flourishes'.
Have you read any of the above linked Professors' book? Or did I hear about it here from you? It's pretty much an expounding of your comment.
Enlightenment attitudes never penetrated very deep into the general population, in fact, well less than 50% by my estimate in our contemporary USA. And the Enlightenment greatly over estimated the role and power of reason. That has led to an academic devaluation of the "soft sciences" which, due to problems of verifiability and falsifiability, are actually much "harder" to do, in some senses.
Cognitive scientists such as George Lakoff work against a "credibility gap" compared to physicists and chemists and brilliant synthesizers of the work of modern psychology, such as Ken Wilber and Integral Psychology go completely unnoticed. Wilber's work shines a bright light on our current problems while unifying inner perception with the external physical and social worlds. He also unifies psychological observations from the Vedas to the present day into a comprehendible whole while providing the best exposition of pre-modern to modern to post-modern I have found. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
Enlightenment attitudes never penetrated very deep into the general population,
I beg to differ: enlightenment ideas disseminated widely in the XIXth century middle class as well as working class. A lot of more or less clandestine "societies" fed a lively debate about the future society. It led to the creation of both trade unions and co-operatives and, eventually of the socialist movement.
It stayed quite lively (with ups and downs) throughout most of the XXth century until the end of the 70s. The Reagan-Thatcher neo-liberal counter-revolution promoting selfishness and individualism clearly targeted it ("there is no such thing as society") and heavily damaged it. However, it still exists in many places. "Dieu se rit des hommes qui se plaignent des conséquences alors qu'ils en chérissent les causes" Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet
My understanding is that the Enlightenment is a label for a set of ideas which center on applying rational thinking to all aspects of the world. In this viewpoint, the modern world is as irreconcilably wedded to the Enlightenment as can be, and talking of the end seems nonsensical, no? -- $E(X_t|F_s) = X_s,\quad t > s$
One of the most disastrous unintended consequences of the Bill of Rights springs from the 1st Amendments bar on the establishment of religion. In European countries which have or have had established religions religious belief has withered much more thoroughly than in the USA. Perhaps we should establish a state sponsored Church of the Living God in the USA and let all of the fundamentalists duke it out for control. Then they would be so busy fighting about religion that they would have no time for politics! As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
The effect of state sponsored religion on the non-religious is probably similar to what has happened in Europe. But the combination of state support and benefits, together with a high birthrate, is resulting in a gradual takeover of the country by the fundamentalists (which, like all unsustainable trends, can't go on for ever, but it's anybody's guess at what point it will stop). Do you really want to take the risk that the U.S would be more like Europe?
There is a variety of reasons - most of them very good - that pulling an Atatürk on a modern, reasonably democratic society would be A Bad Idea.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Many of the 18th Century Enlightened philosophers were ministers to their respective kings, and the Enlightenment has been an elite project.
Nowadays, when the elite subscribes to Market Fundamentalism and the political class shows time an again an appalling ignorance of the scientific/technical underpinnings of the way our modern world is organised, it is just conceivable that "the modern world" might unravel through wrong-headed management. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
Once the Market Fundamentalists co-opted those words they started to mean their opposites, and lost their potency.
This has actually been a semiotic war. There are plenty of examples of semiotic war from the end of the dark ages onwards, with people writing each other letters and arguing to define reality.
But the Market Fundamentalists have run one of the fastest and most successful semantic campaigns in history, completely debasing and perverting concepts which otherwise showed real promise and squeezing out competing narratives with terrifying effectiveness.
So they were certainly not “ministers to their respective kings”, of which Koselleck writes that they were, on the contrary, to “agree with the king against their own agony”.
I could go on, but you already see my point: whenever the elites act for their own benefit, they still prefer to surround themselves with experts, as a rule. This is not the case when they make decisions for others, and there is a lot more mismanagement there. We like to gripe about all our governments' failures in the Middle East, on health issues, retirement funds, etc., yet do those failures truly affect the elites as much as the rest of society? I don't think so.
The difference is not that great from the 18th century either. Kings' ministers didn't rule *for* the common people then, nor do they now. Social progress did occur, but it was paid for in blood. And today ministers have MBAs and PhDs, which admittedly didn't exist in the 18th century... -- $E(X_t|F_s) = X_s,\quad t > s$
Louis XIV reactive absolutist reign owes much to la fronde upheaval that would have granted new powers to the parliament and the judiciary. The defeat of la fronde "exiled" progressive thought to the parlors (the salons) and the province. The fables of La Fontaine are political treatise, just as the careful extraordinary works of the Bordeaux landholder Montaigne.
It is fitting that Louis XIV left the state in shambles. His reign simply postponed an inevitable revolution.
I do find that qualifying any major intellectual movement as elite is reductive and somewhat a tautology. There are simple requirements for philosophical speculation in periods of repressive zeitgeist- education, free time, a minimum guarantee of livelihood, a tolerated or clandestine network for the diffusion of works, a knack for dissimulation. It is rare that a serf or peasant could fill the bill. In the rare occasions someone rose from the lower classes, usually through the Church, he or she became "elite."
The Enlightenment sought to apply the scientific method that had been so successful in Physics to all branches of knowledge. In the late 18th century saw the great Naturalists began the transformation from Natural History to Biology and Geology. But in the humanities you had people like Humboldt (also a naturalist) who also laid the groundwork for Anthropology. And the thing is, the success of cultural anthropology in the 20th century has been to realise to what extent culture influences the way we reason about and perceive the world (i.e., the rational and empirical basis of the Enlightenment approach are culturally determined). In this way, the scientific study of human culture shows that the Enlightenment is itself a culture and not universal. This is the truth at the core of the Postmodern reaction to the Enlightenment.
Now that people wedded to the Enlightenment values are beginning to realise what's going on, we might have a positive resolution that goes beyond both the Enlightenment and Postmodernism. Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis? That would be a Hegelian happy ending... A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
Secondly, I don't see how the fact that a significant population is for all intents and purposes uneducated on these values can matter. In the 18th century (or 19th century for that matter), universal education was nonexistent, yet those are commonly associated with the Enlightenment. Surely, today's near universal levels of education in rich societies compares very favorably?
While education is far more substantial in "fixing" ideals and values, cultural signposts serve to ground that knowledge as a shared experience. Without public recognition of values, they become a private experience. A sort of deregulation or outsourcing toward sporadic and local selfish charities.
One of the central tenets of the Enlightenment is its universality (since it is based on reason and empiricism, it is independent of culture). It can be argued (and has been on this site) that the Enlightenment ended up undermining itself by showing this tenet to be false.
It is easy to conflate the "Enlightenment" with "Modernity," which was one of its children. Another Enlightenment value was that social status should be based on merit, not birth. It is also easy to forget that "western liberal democracy" was not the only political offspring of the Enlightenment.
The other notable political offspring was the Soviet State. They embraced the same universal values as the others. It can be argued that they were much more effective in identifying and nurturing talent wherever it was found than were most "western democracies."
Universality proved very useful to the governance of a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society. They had no use for nationalism or racism with so many nationalities and ethnicities. Religion was suppressed in the name of rationality. I am, of course, referring to the official dogma, not actual practice. Apples to apples, as it were.
Since 1989 we have seen a general retreat from universal values and a rise of nationalisms. This has become the context to the rise of market fundamentalism. But these universal values were never too well rooted anywhere, and were repeatedly overwhelmed by nationalism and racism in the 19th and 20th centuries.
As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
The other notable political offspring was the Soviet State. They embraced the same universal values as the others.
By contrast, historical sciences require interpretation, because alternative histories cannot ever be observed. It's obvious that interpretation has a degree of arbitrariness, which the postmodernists have rightly pointed out.
Yet in Physics, postmodernism has no place. The primary authority is the experimental result, and the interpretation is merely a convenient summary which can always be replaced or ignored. It is a second tool for answering questions, which complements the experiment, which can always be performed.
Does your Hegelian dialectic count as universal if it applies only to a subset of human knowledge? ;-) -- $E(X_t|F_s) = X_s,\quad t > s$
The primary authority is the experimental result, and the interpretation is merely a convenient summary which can always be replaced or ignored.
But, in addition, the history of physics is as much the history of the theories as it is the history of the experiments. Or, in fact, more about theory than about experiment, with key experiments punctuating the transitions between successive theories. Don't get me wrong, I still agree with Sokal when he said
I confess that I'm an unabashed Old Leftist who never quite understood how deconstruction was supposed to help the working class. And I'm a stodgy old scientist who believes, naively, that there exists an external world, that there exist objective truths about that world, and that my job is to discover some of them. (If science were merely a negotiation of social conventions about what is agreed to be ``true'', why would I bother devoting a large fraction of my all-too-short life to it? I don't aspire to be the Emily Post of quantum field theory.)
It is physics that represents a small subset of human knowledge. In fact, the more physics we know the less we need to know as the theories become more and more generally applicable. But for the last 30 years theoretical physics has become largely divorced from experiment. Instead of moving en masse to mesoscopic physics, theoretical high-energy physicists have marched onwards in pursuit of unification and quantum gravity with no experimental hints, with know (disastrous) results. The extent to which research in theoretical physics is directed by the likelihood of coming up with a publishable paper to put in one's CV for the next job placement 3 years down the line is positively postmodern.
Finally, "my" Hegelian dialectic is not about "Knowledge" but about structural narratives/frames/myths of a society. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
Experiments need a theory to even describe what is going on, or if their result is surprising, why it is surprising.
Why publish actual data otherwise? It would be sufficient to publish the theories, and just claim that they work.
However, you're entirely right that the choice of which experiments are significant (and therefore are the ones that should be carried out and published) depends on the theories of the day. So the succession of experiments is guided by the history of the theories. Is that what you mean?
It is physics that represents a small subset of human knowledge. In fact, the more physics we know the less we need to know as the theories become more and more generally applicable. But for the last 30 years theoretical physics has become largely divorced from experiment.
The extent to which research in theoretical physics is directed by the likelihood of coming up with a publishable paper to put in one's CV for the next job placement 3 years down the line is positively postmodern.
Finally, "my" Hegelian dialectic is not about "Knowledge" but about structural narratives/frames/myths of a society.
good papers (though not all) will be cited, while the trash gets forgotten
When you do a literature search properly you quickly encounter the reality of the plagiarizing of reference lists. Papers are not quoted because they are good, but because they are quoted by other papers. Then again, you're right, just because they are listed in the references doesn't mean they have been read by the authors so, yes, the trash is forgotten.
for the last 30 years theoretical physics has become largely divorced from experiment. Now I think you're exaggerating too :)
it's far from clear that we're close to a GUT. And if we were, so what? We still wouldn't be able to calculate a lot of systems for fundamental mathematical reasons
The results speak for themselves, whatever they are.
At the risk of repeating myself, this diary is not about the experimental sciences, it's about the dominant narratives of society.
But, seriously, most modern experiments make no sense without a theory. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
(key word missing...) A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
Information theoretically, the meaning is in the prior and the likelihood. The amount of surprise is, too, since entropy is an explicit function of the model, and for a given datapoint it can take any value as soon as you vary the model.
Is knowledge more than a collection of facts? Yes, but I would say it's a construct built on facts. If we lose the theories and the models, we can rebuild them, or substantially equivalent ones, from the facts. If we lose the facts, we can't just simulate new ones and call them real. -- $E(X_t|F_s) = X_s,\quad t > s$
Within physics you have astrophysics or cosmology which are also historical.
And, to a certain extent, stationarity and ergodicity are model-dependent features.
It's not that "postmodern" "textual analysis" doesn't apply to physics, it is that when studying physics one has to take into account the repeatability.
So "repeatability" is a special quality that applies to a subset of human knowledge.
No, it is limited by the extent of repeatability. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
In the USA I would guess, and it is a guess, that no more than two to three times the number of college educated people had any significant exposure to enlightenment thought. Prior to WW II and the GI Bill that was a rather small portion of the population. And by no means did all of those so exposed become exponents of enlightenment values, particularly among the parsons and ministers. And many of the educated were so involved in furthering their own interests that any concern about enlightenment values took a decidedly second place in their concerns. Think lawyers, factory owners, plantation owners, judges, etc. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
Secondly, I don't see how the fact that a significant population is for all intents and purposes uneducated on these values can matter. In the 18th century (or 19th century for that matter), universal education was nonexistent, yet those are commonly associated with the Enlightenment. Surely, today's near universal levels of education in rich societies compares very favorably? -- $E(X_t|F_s) = X_s,\quad t > s$
1) World view: The Enlightenment was primarily a change in world view which came to see and explain the world in naturalistic terms rather than in religious terms. It incorporated the humanistic emphasis of the renaissance, "man is the measure of all things." with a newly found confidence in the ability of the human mind to understand the workings of the natural world.
The development of science from Copernicus to Newton provided the foundation for this shift. Voltaire, among others, assimilated an understanding of Newton and an appreciation of his impact while cooling his heels in England in the early part of the 18th century. Locke provided a rationale for governmental authority separate from Divine Right, which had been the prevailing view. This was a practical necessity in England after the beheading of Charles I.
The Enlightenment Project, so called, came to include replacing all arguments from authority and all explanations involving Divine Intervention with naturalistic ones. This was Adam Smith's great contribution. He developed a comprehensive account of moral and economic organization and behavior that was independent of any Divine Supervision. These were set forth most notably in The Theory of the Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations Smith did for the social sciences what Newton had done for physics.
In all spheres of knowledge men sought to determine the Laws of Nature. The nature of God changed from that of a theistic divinity to which one prayed directly to a deistic divinity who, if he really existed, had created, or was embodied in, the Laws of Nature. This was known as The Clockwork Universe. God created it, wound it up and let it go. He retired from the world.
It came to be assumed, among the educated, that The Laws of Nature could be studied and apprehended by man. This was a profound change from a world view in which God was the immediate author of all things and man was assumed to be incapable of understanding his inscrutable ways. But this process was hesitant and proceeded over a long period of time.
2) Reason and History. The worship of reason during the French Revolution became infamous. Most of the Philosophers sensed the inadequacy of reason alone as a guide to man in society. In their heart of hearts they might have believed that there was no God, but Hume, Diderot and others refused to publish some of their best works during their lifetimes: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion in Hume's case and Le neveu de Rameau in Diderot's case.
Reason showed them the absurdities of religion and led them to doubt the existence of God, but they had little confidence that they had an adequate replacement. They could see that an omnipotent, omniscent and omnibenificent deity was an absurdity, given the state of the world, but they had no satisfactory replacement. It was as though God had absconded during the night, leaving mankind in the lurch. Hume said of his work: "It is true, but men cannot live by it."
Hume turned from philosophy to the study of history, economics and politics. They came to study useful arts and sciences and to compile these into Diderot's Encyclopédie and in England the Encyclopedia Britanica. Experience had to supplement abstract reason. As Priestly said: "Without history the advantages of our rational nature must have been rated very low." Gibbon, Hume, Voltaire, Montesquieu and Herder all produced histories. These histories were written to teach by example. They sought to see through history the universal nature of man.
Per Becker, what they really did was to create a new religion. "The essential articles of the religion of the Enlightenment may be stated thus: (1) man is not natively depraved; (2) the end of life is life itself, the good life on earth instead of the beatific life after death; (3) man is capable, guided solely by the light of reason and experience, of perfecting the good life on earth; and (4) the first and essential condition of the good life on earth is the freeing of men's minds from the bonds of ignorance and superstition and their bodies from the arbitrary oppression of the constituted social authorities.
3) The uses of posterity: The philosophers saw the future as a better world they were building and they looked to posterity for justification for their actions. They sought to reclaim the world from the misery into which they saw Christianity as having sent it. "For the love of God they substituted the love of humanity; for the vicarious atonement the perfectibility of man through his own efforts; and for the hope of immortality in another world the hope of living in the memory of future generations."
This is but a poor Cliff Notes of Becker's work and already too long. The great virtue of Becker is his brevity, 168 pages. The Heavenly City was written in 1932 and there are newer works available, notably by Peter Gay. But I believe Becker remains the best introduction to the subject. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
Yet upon reading your comment, I do not feel as if the current world is leaving Reason behind, which was my impression from some of the comments in this diary.
Technologically and scientifically, the world is essentially the same, only with less philosophy and more practical application.
The importance of education remains both high and widely recognized to be high. Throughout the world everybody, especially the poor, sees education as key to success.
There are comparatively few societies left around the world in which social status is rigidly based on blood or caste, as opposed to merely wealth.
It's true that religion remains a formidable motive force in the world, as it always has been. However, the number of nonbelievers remains significant and shows no sign of actually vanishing. This is a net "win" for Enlightenment given how it started.
It's easy to lose sight of the big picture though, from the bleatings of the media, which likes to scare us with terrorism, war with enemy empires, and assorted religious issues of the day. So I'm still unconvinced that we have entered a post-Enlightenment world.
(*) somewhat off-topic, but you might find this interesting if you don't know it already: Newton's contribution was, in various ways, a dead end for physics. Without taking anything away from his achievements, his ideas about forces are in most cases unworkable, and must be replaced by ideas about fields and least energy, which were actually proposed as alternatives by thinkers on the continent. -- $E(X_t|F_s) = X_s,\quad t > s$
There is or was a tag line: "Our knowledge has exceeded our wisdom." Gains in technical knowledge, unless classified, are described in technical journals and or patent applications and thereby become relatively permanent in nature. Many can see and apply the advances. With the social sciences and the humanities is is very different.
There have been advances in the social sciences, but they have not been adopted on the basis of their usefulness to society at large, but rather on the basis of their utility to those occupying the seats of power. Worse, they often are no more accessible to the average citizen than are the findings of the hard sciences.
One of the great weaknesses of Enlightenment thought which persisted into the Enlightenment's child, Modernity, is the over valuation of the importance and power of reason. This is not to diminish the importance of reason, but to put it into perspective against the scope of the problem facing those of us who are awake.
Reason has so little scope in the effective decisions of so many people that the consequences are, or should be, frightening. Consider Germany in 1932 or Russia in 1918. There were people who understood what was happening and tried to do what they could to bring about a good outcome. They were like leaves in a hurricane. So often, especially in times of crisis, society at large is more like a vast ocean of unreason. I am reminded of the prayer from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer: "Lord, thy ocean is so vast and my boat is so small!" Our reason is like a boat upon the ocean, but one that was not designed for ocean going voyages. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
I don't know what he plays at. I think he genuinely believes in the Open Society. Too bad it took him until now to realise that there was a missing element in his blueprint for it. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
The open society is indeed a post-Enlightenment ideal like free markets and the invisible hand, derived from the fallacy of the state of nature and natural law. There is no state of nature in human society. So, of course,
social sciences, including economics, should be considered historical and so that the scientific method doesn't apply in the same way.
What else?
I think that is a common failing of Enlightenment philosophies. You could say that the Rovian aide slaps Ron Suskind out of the Enlightenment dream in the infamous reality-based-community incident.
I think a number of us on this site are also trying to figure out after the Enlightenment, what? given 1) our self-professed commitment to rationality and "truth"; 2) the realisation that the Enlightenment programme has probably (successfully) run its course and (destructively) exceeded the limits of its applicability.
I mean, after reading Altemeyer's the Authoritarians, whither Democracy?
Maybe public accountability becomes more important than universal suffrage. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
It is not so that the Rove guys are completely ignorant of reality. They are just working hard to obstruct or manipulate perception of the same reality for others. That looks rather rational from post-social-Darwinian perspectives.
As we know, the father of the Neocons, Leo Strauss, is an explicit advocate of the Noble Lie: people need to be lied to for their own good. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves!
In the enlightenment world view these - paradoxically - become gods which you're supposed to worship without question, and in return they'll look after you.
It's really quite a theocratic view of the world, and like all theocracies it makes it easy for parasites to hitch a ride on the ideals for their own personal benefit.
Postmodernism created an anti-absolute which demolished the absolutes without putting anything in their place.
I suppose a reality-based democracy would explicitly acknowledge the mechanisms by which people think and reason morally (which isn't usually all that moral or reasonable) and create systems of guidance and participation accordingly.
What's frightening is that the right has already done this, with huge success. It's repulsive to the left because on the left we like our absolutes, and it's crushing to acknowledge that they're not absolute at all.
I think it's possible to do it without the right's cynicism. But it's going to be a hard sell to a population which is thoroughly indoctrinated into parsing the world through convenient but wrong headed absolutes.
An unwelcome collision with reality would deprogram the brainwashing, but anything more subtle is going to be hard work.
Postmodernism created an anti-absolute which demolished the absolutes without putting anything in their place. I suppose a reality-based democracy would explicitly acknowledge the mechanisms by which people think and reason morally (which isn't usually all that moral or reasonable) and create systems of guidance and participation accordingly. What's frightening is that the right has already done this, with huge success. It's repulsive to the left because on the left we like our absolutes, and it's crushing to acknowledge that they're not absolute at all.
profound, as usual, tbg.
i never heard of 'anti-absolute' before, i suspect it's what the pope means by 'moral relativism'!
absolutes can be conceived in the mind, but are never borne out in reality.
maybe, like many forms of idealism, they serve as unattainable destinations, affirmations of remote possibilities, if only...
people would slow down and take a long hard look at their underlying realities, rather than skittering like dragonflies, sipping and hunting only at the surface of existence, as if to slow down and more on board might shatter their fragile vehicles.
lives lived with casual, scattered frenzy do not happy campers make...
what's for sure is that absolution must find new remedies, new pathways, since the ancient dualistic breakdown on right and wrong has... broken down. ~Government budget deficits are not nearly as dangerous as the deficits we have created in vital and complex natural systems.~ Naomi Klein.
Giving up the Enlightenment really just means giving up detached Platonic absolute ideals - 'democracy', 'freedom', 'the invisible hand', 'reason', and so on. In the enlightenment world view these - paradoxically - become gods which you're supposed to worship without question, and in return they'll look after you.
Perhaps it depends on which "Enlightenment" you have in mind. Adam Smith was perhaps the major figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, although I don't know that the term Scottish Enlightenment was used until recently. In his Theory of the Moral Sentiments he attempted a complete recasting of morality on a naturalistic basis. Nor in Wealth of Nations is there any evidence that Smith saw the Invisible Hand as the Left Hand of God. I suspect that the Apotheosis of the Invisible Hand was the work of Milton Friedman in his propagandistic mode, as opposed to his academic mode. Other earlier suspects could be found in England in the second half of the 19th Century amongst those who turned political economy into Economics for the University. Hobson clearly described their motives. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
As for the Invisible Hand and The Wisdom of the Markets - I'd be surprised if the Chicago-ists don't privately see this as a Straussian Big Lie.
The most remarkable thing about the US economy is that it's almost entirely state managed, and has been for decades now. There are a few relatively insignificant niches which entrepreneurs can busy themselves in, and every so often there's a giga-niche like the ones filled by Microsoft and Google.
But the fundamentals of the economy, especially on the demand side at the consumer level, are subject to constant pressure from deliberate market manipulation and the propaganda which is called advertising. Corporate welfare, especially on military spending is hardly insignificant.
A reality-based map of the US economy, with clear descriptions of tarrifs, pork abd earmarks, bubbles, demand management, and military welfare, would be an interesting thing to put together.
The fundamental fallacy of this, of course, is that one cannot remove the state, since the state is, by definition, merely the gang of armed (wo)men with the monopoly on violence in your immediate environs - and violence is a natural monopoly... If one removes the Iraqi state, for instance, one does not get a "non-state" environment - one merely gets a number of statelets - the Badr Brigades in parts of Basra, Blackwater and Haliburton in the Green Zone, the Mahdi Army in Sadr City, PKK in Kurdistan and so on and so forth and etcetera.
But then again, discussing the logical and logistical implications of orthodox Friedmania is nonsense, because there are no orthodox Friedmaniacs. Whenever they crop up, they reveal themselves to be simply old-fashioned feudalists: The state should protect the privilege of the oligarchs and fuck the rest. If one can install a suitably co-operative dictator, it doesn't matter that the government budget explodes or that taxes go up - so long as they only go up for the poor and the government expenditures go towards protecting the interests of the local (or transnat) oligarchs.
And it doesn't really matter in Friedmanism that the barrier of entry to that market is so huge that only billionaires and companies can effectively do business there, because entry costs don't matter - The Market Will Provide.
And indeed the market has provided the US with the best politicians money can buy...
But then again, discussing the logical and logistical implications of orthodox Friedmania is nonsense, because there are no orthodox Friedmaniacs. Whenever they crop up, they reveal themselves to be simply old-fashioned feudalists:
Bingo. And that's the big lie.
It's not that the Republicans want small government. What they want - genuinely - is a feudal government where there are no legal restraints on their ability to rape, pillage, plunder and abuse those beneath them.
The reason they hate liberals is because the liberal conception of compassionate government, no matter how flawed, is the only thing standing between them and their plans.
The current Palin/McCain hate fest is the true face of the feudal party. The peasants support it through conditioning and magical thinking, and as and when the party wins an election, liberals will be systematically eliminated from having any social influence. (Or possibly just eliminated, full stop.)
There is no Republican party, there's no Chicago school and there's no Christian evangelical movement.
There's only a single unified feudal party with different propaganda wings which expand a power front by leveraging the interests and preoccupations of different demographics with different imaginary manufactured narratives.
I believe that Uncle Miltie deliberately conjured the Invisible Hand from the dead starting in the late 60s and began a process of inserting the concept into the media via right wing think tanks to lay a foundation for his project of rolling back what he saw as the evils of the New Deal. It is hard to believe he took it very seriously. Did he ever write a paper or book in which he attempted to mathematically model the effects of The Invisible Hand on the economy?
Tobin at Yale mocked the Invisible Hand rhetoric. To paraphrase,(from memory): "You would think that after all these years that economists would have at least articulated the concept of the Invisible Hand to the extent that we could at least see the fingers." I fail to see how Friedman and his associates could have seen the Invisible Hand and the Wisdom of the Markets as anything other than useful propaganda to spread amongst that layer of society which tried to keep up with events by reading Time, Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report. Anyone who had ever taken a course in Economics was familiar with Smith and the metaphor. That would facilitate the process. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
That, in a nutshell, is why I am here. Great diary. Alas, I am at work and can't really contribute right now. Now where are we going and what's with the handbasket?
the irreverend loon comes right out and calls it 'divine deception',lol. the road to heaven is paved with bad intentions!
i think there is no permanent truth, except maybe 'what comes around, goes around'...
maybe buddhism called it 'the void' because it ran out of adjectives.
the only constant is change, etc.
the enlightenment correctly claimed that it's rational to be moral, the problem is there is a narrow time window to teach that in childhood, and most exit their families with some pretty distorted, conditional views on right(er) and wrong(er).
right being pretty much what you can get away with, and/or what peers are doing. (hedge fund trading, smoking weed, mp3 piracy all come under this heading.)
societies are still too full of cognitive dissonance to offer any coherent code that withstands modern trends, shame, but there you go...
meanwhile 'be kind, is that a religion?' remains one of my favourite mantras.
what will it take till we realise it all comes down to that, alla fine della fiera?
deep ecology could substitute for all we did with religion for millennia. no conflict with enlightenment principles there! ~Government budget deficits are not nearly as dangerous as the deficits we have created in vital and complex natural systems.~ Naomi Klein.
I suspect that Soros came to his recent insights as a result of coming into contact with academics well versed in the subject via his Foundation. He probably was trying to understand why so many of the things he has done in an attempt to help have been so counterproductive. Given his wealth, abilities, heart and new-found insight, I wish him many more years to try to apply his assets and talents in a more effective way.
The most fundamental insight of the post-modern critique is that what we perceive as reality is in fact a social construct. "Nothing is but that thinking makes it so." As part of critical analysis of any cultural artifact, post-modernists "de-construct" the artifact and in so doing show how it arose out of its society of origin and how it affects the world view embodied in that society.
This has both a light and a dark side. On the bright side, there is no inherent reason we cannot make our world into a utopia, were we just able to agree on the form it should take. Redefine reality in a way that properly accounts for the limits of ecology and human psychology and that provides a nurturing environment for human activity within the limits of a continually probing understanding.
Rove and GWB have shown us the dark side. Consciously redefine reality in a manner that serves the interests of a small elite and to hell with any consequences. That their wealth and power might not save them from the folly of their actions is irrelevant. In light of the starkness of these extremes, it is at this point silly to argue over the direction that utopia should take. We need all hands on deck to stave off looming distopia. I think Soros will help and Pickens possibly will also.
from the bunch of people of the left, the ones at least know a little bit about research and try to project it into left-wing circles Soros and Lakoff are probably the best... it is not perfect, it is clearly not perfect andthey might not get exactly the problem that enlightenment may have but at least they try to make other people see what we know as obvious and clearly demonstrated, enlightenmet is no different than other mythologies int he sense that people do not buy it jsut becuase they see it.
...not because it exists everybody is going to follow it blindly... it is just an option and other narratives out there and other mythologies are just as powerful as enlightenment... and looking for the truth, frankly, does not appear in a lot of them.
The idea that there is some kind of truth is hardly present ion other narratives, .... most people's myths and narratives do not give any spetial relevance to truth and certainly do not bring with them all the scientific connotation of truth...
And frankly, it makes sense becasue in a lot of our life experience, truth is irrelevant...the next step is trying to convince people on the left that enlightenment values and narratives are very hard to find... do not take as a given that people are going to make rational judgement (if it ever existed) ort aht theya re going to try and find what "really happens", or that they are not going to defend two completely different propostions at the same time...
Once they get that,w e may start discussing how we can improve our changes to get heard... they might want to have a look at the narratives and moral histories we are tryting to combine here with reality-based analysis.... they may learn something.:)
A pleasure I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude
