From: Matt Kundert (pirsigaffliction@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu May 12 2005 - 21:13:48 BST
Hey Mark,
Mark said (on May 3):
The social level consists of entities like the university and the church and
the presidency, but it also consists of Aristotle's rational animals, like
you and me. As rational animals we bump against and sometimes penetrate the
ceiling between the Social and Intellectual levels. But the Intellectual
level is itself composed of an infinity of IDEAS making up its own internal
hierarchy: some ideas are better than others. So, some of us, blame it on
the biology of intelligence, bump a little higher into the hierarchy of
ideas. It's an accident, a freak of nature, pure luck, or dismal
misfortune, depending on one's personal perspective, but it's still a fact.
When I said "social-level thought" I meant all thought that is static and
therefore protective of the status quo. I meant all thought that retards
rather than enhances evolution.
Matt:
I can’t see that you’ve changed your position significantly from the one
before. My criticisms were designed to attack the usefulness of a
distinction between social-level thinking and intellectual-level thinking.
You’ve saved the exact idea being attacked in the distinction between
“static thinking” and “Dynamic thinking.”
I said before that the problem with the distinction between levels of
thinking is that both you and your opponent will describe yourselves as
working at the higher level, both claiming the moral high ground, which
trumps your opponents arguments (because they are at a lower level). In my
view, the distinction between levels does no actual work in either person’s
argument: its an idle wheel set spinning, but no where does it connect with
the subject material. The other things you and your opponent say may do
work, but any addition of the kind “You’re thinking statically” or “That’s a
static argument” is basically just calling your opponent stupid (as you
basically admit). And that’s not an argument.
As an example of what I mean, we can take a few of your responses to the
rest my last post.
Matt said:
But say we allow it [a distinction between two levels of thinking]. There's
social level thinking and intellectual level thinking. How do we tell the
two apart?
Mark said:
We can distinguish good ideas from bad ideas by evaluating the effects they
have at the Social level. For example, requiring people to pay exorbitant,
profit-driven prices for basic services will result in the destabilization
of society, as more and more people are pushed to the margins. This
particular bad idea can be summed up as the "let them eat cake" philosophy.
And we know where that led.
Matt:
But how should this help us distinguish between static thinking and Dynamic
thinking? The Randian conservative replies, “No, having our economies based
on a profit-driven market raises the level of comfort for everyone. This is
the ‘rising tide lifts all ships’ philosophy.” An argument ensues. But how
has a distinction between two types of thinking helped us? You argue that
the Randian is thinking statically because he’s protecting the status quo.
But the Randian replies that it is you who are thinking statically because
1) Isn’t it static to be told what to do with your money rather than freely
choosing on your own? and 2) Your economic plan will halt the rising tide,
making it static (and it’ll probably even fall).
Now, you can then get into the nitty gritty of economics and other stuff,
but how has the distinction helped your argument at all? The Randian can
use it just as well. And now the two of you are half fighting about
economics and the welfare of humans, but you are also fighting a fairly
useless battle about who’s static and who’s Dynamic, who’s retarding
evolution and who’s pushing it forward. But the title of each is the spoils
of war, not the tools. The victor of the argument, of policy, of the trend
that takes our culture to new places, that’s to whom we look back after time
has passed and go, “My, that sure was some Dynamic, evolutionary enhancin’
thinkin’!” Because if you use the distinction as a tool in your argument,
you’re begging the question over your opponent because you’re defining the
terms in your favor, terms your opponent has every right to contest. Static
thinking is thinking protective of the status quo? Which status quo? The
status quo of women voting? Nah, you must mean something like the “bad
status quo,” the rich and powerful. But the world has seen discernible
change over the last 2500 years, change some would say is for the better.
Like women voting. So, if the rich and powerful have been in control over
this time period, and there’s been good change, why shouldn’t we contribute
this change to them? Why don’t we view this as a well-functioning system,
the rich and powerful in control, slowly changing things as need be?
Sure, this is a crappy argument, but someone smarter and more creative than
I (also someone who actually believed it would help) could probably come up
with a pretty convincing argument and context where this all makes sense.
And how does the distinction between static and Dynamic thinking aid either
person in their arguments? How does saying that you are helping us evolve,
and the other guy is retarding us, help in an argument when its already a
function of you putting forth the argument that you think it will help us
evolve, and vice versa for the other guy?
Another illustration:
Matt said:
I still can't imagine how one would use the distinction in a political
discussion. Start from abstract principles like "freedom" and "human
rights" and you'll get agreement from everybody,
Mark cut off:
Right. Then you attempt to show through evidence and argument that some
ideas promote freedom and human rights better than others. Does a law
against gay marriage increase or decrease freedom? Does allowing wealth to
influence policy decisions expand or restrict human rights? On and on.
Matt:
Yeah, but I continued after that comma, “but as soon as you start talking
about policy, which is when you start bringing things that are seemingly
‘independent’ or ‘remote’ from everyday life back into the everyday by
fleshing out such thin concepts like freedom and rights with details—that's
when you get the fight.” So you start fleshing out freedom and human rights
with evidence and argument—let’s pick a tougher case: abortion. Say you’re
pro-choice, believing in the freedom to choose. What about the baby’s right
to live? What about the baby’s right to grow up and exercise her own
freedom? That’s where the fight occurs—the fleshing out of the thin
concepts of freedom and rights and equality with evidence and argument. And
how does the distinction between static and Dynamic thinking help here? How
does the distinction between one moral level of thinking and one immoral
level help when your attempt to place yourself at the higher level begs the
question?
To my mind, your argument for using the distinction, your argument for
thinking it helpful, hinges a lot on two other notions: the notion of
“immediately accessible ideas” and “fully realized human beings.” Your last
two posts to me displayed a certain amount of faith in both the rightness of
your position and the ability of people to come around to it. And if not
your current position, than at least someone’s position will be realized as
the correct position through argumentation and evidence. I remarked earlier
that someone smarter and more creative than I could probably come up with an
argument and context where the conservative’s, say, economic ideas seem very
convincing. I can sense, before even sending this out, the thought bubbles
in some other people’s heads: no they couldn’t. I think the reason for
this, despite the fact that all of us may retain some notion of “following
the better argument” is because sometimes people are just plain wrong by a
person’s own (current) lights. Consider the Nazi. No argument the Nazi
will ever make will ever strike us as being convincing. But why? The Nazi
feels the same way as us when they hear our arguments. Why? I suspect your
argument would be that “not commiting genocide” is an immediately accessible
idea, and if you don’t get this idea, then you are not a fully realized
human being. It’s a convenient way to wipe the playing field of people we
have no hope of convincing, but if an idea is really immediately accessible,
shouldn’t people be able to access it, Nazi or not? I think we do need to
wipe the (argumentative) playing field of people we have no hope of
convincing (Nazis, psychopaths, etc.), but I think its philosophically
disingenuous to invoke the notion of a “fully realized human being” and
claim that the other person isn’t smart enough to work at your higher moral
level, and if they just weren’t so stupid, they’d see the light.
That’s not an argument and it’s that idea I’ll be turning to in the next
post (this one being the “political” one, and the next one the
“philosophical” one).
Matt
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