In the previous post, I suggested that Western Philosophy is an attitude. It does not accept authority, and reserves the right to examine anything at any time for any reason. It also commends that attitude to all of us.
How realistic is this, how does it differ from scepticism and outright cynicism?
The law says that at eighteen we become adults, and are deemed to be competent moral decision-makers, except in certain cases of reduced capacity. An allowance is made for the ignorance and recklessness of youth, but only for minor offences. Most children know when they are doing something their parents might not approve of, which is why they are very quiet when doing so. People know what is right and wrong for most of the eventualities of ordinary life. It's at the edges that the judgements can become ambiguous.
Making moral decisions is something human beings (mostly) seem to be wired for. Making judgements about matters of non-everyday facts, or about the plausibility and verisimilitude of theories, seems to require technical knowledge and skill that only a few people might have. At some point, don't we ordinary people need to defer to the "experts"?
How does someone who left school at eighteen judge if String Theory or Quantum Gravity are plausible theories? Surely this is something only suitably-informed physicists can do? Not at all. Anyone who understands that the test of a scientific theory is that it makes new predictions that are confirmed, can ask one question to determine the value of String Theory. What has it predicted that has been confirmed? When? Where? What was the experiment? What was the prediction and what was the result? If an ordinary person is faced with evasions and odd-sounding claims that physical theories should be judged by different criteria, they will and should conclude that someone, somewhere, is hiding something.
One tactic is to reduce what looks like a highly technical issue to something within one's understanding. Some lawyers are very good at doing this, as they know they will need to explain the core issues to a jury. In the case, perhaps, of pollution by a chemical company, nobody needs a detailed understanding of organic chemistry. They need to know that a) many people suffered symptoms A, B and C; b) those symptoms are consequences of poisoning by substance X; c) substance X was found leaking into the groundwater from the abandoned drums which had the defendant's logo on them, and which the records in Exhibit A show were dumped by the company’s drivers. Nobody needs to know how substance X causes those symptoms, only that it does, and reliably and frequently so. Experts and specialists are not allowed to hide behind gobbledy-gook, and indeed, sustained use of gobbledy-gook and protests that, for instance, the law of financial fraud is too complicated for ordinary folk, are usually and mostly rightly taken as a sign that something is being hidden.
Another tactic is to examine the credentials of the "experts". In some cases, such as ballistics, these can be demonstrable and convincing. In others, such as virus-based pandemics on a supposedly "novel" virus, by definition there can be no experts, since it is "novel" and experience from previous viruses cannot be transferred. In these kinds of cases, expect "expert" status to be justified via the Fallacy of Misleading Credentials: a recital of impressive-sounding official positions, academic awards, research papers and previous appearances as an "expert', which on closer examination have nothing to do with whatever is happening now.
This sort of thing requires an understanding of how the world works. Philosophers in earlier centuries had plenty of this, as they were often advisors and private secretaries to members of the ruling class, and sometimes appointed to public office in their own right.
Nobody can question everything all the time. I can't, and neither could Descartes and Hume. Both recognised that ordinary life has to be supported by a web of beliefs held without question for the time being. However, one should always be prepared to question any of those beliefs if a cause arises.
One does not need to be sceptical or cynical to embrace the spirit of Western Philosophy, but one does need a healthy caution towards the claims of the established, the powerful, the dogmatic, the over-confident, those who claim to have Just and Right Causes, anyone trying to sell anything, and above all, never to have any dealings with anyone or any institution which makes money as long as they don't solve the problem. Anyone who brands an argument or idea with a word ending in '-ism' is not arguing but throwing mud. Mud may be dirty, but it is not an argument. One should always remember that propaganda is what they want you to believe, news is what they don't want you to know.
No comments:
Post a Comment