126. Is change evil?

 There is a deep-rooted fear, in human thought, of change and contingency, human vulnerability to accident, illness and death, and consequently there is a craving for certainty and stability in universal and fixed truths and certainties, in religion or ideology. But how, then, to account for change, which is so obvious and pervasive in the world? It has been dismissed either as illusory or as associated with evil, work of the devil.

 According to Freud’s lust principle people crave for stability, lack of change. As a result, people may lust for death as the ultimate peace. If that were true, we might need religion as an alternative haven of restfulness, to stop a wave of suicide. But all this, I think, is just nonsense. How to account for the Nietzschean drive towards the excitement of sex, conquest, adventure, and discvovery that also clearly exists? Freud tries to answer this question but fails. I propose hat human beings have an urge for both rest, serenity, and excitement, ecstasy. I discussed that in the context of art, in item 81.

An ancient logical argument against change that it is either genuinely new, which would entail creation out of nothing, which is impossible, or a reconfiguration of what existed before, in which case it is not genuinely new. A counter-example is that of evolution, with species that are genuinerly novel while arising from mutations and recombinations of genes.

I propose that there is no creativity (as a ‘good’) without destruction (as an ‘evil’). Hindu philosophy recognised that with the god Shiva, next to Brahman, the source of all, and Krishna, the pinnacle of virtue.

Destruction is not annihilation (as Heidegger noted) but a de-construction, a taking down or taking apart what exists, allowing for re-construction. In economics there is Schumpeters notion of creative destruction as novel combinations.

In my theory of invention and innovation, summarized in item 31 of this blog, I offered a general ‘logic’ of how in society novelty may arise, in a cycle of discovery. An essential part of it is that what exists is subjected to novel challenges, in novel contexts, where it meets the challenge and the elements for de-construction and reconstruction from old and new elements.

Heidegger claimed that development of (philosophical) thought requires a disposition to change, i.e. a openness to it and a shift of position, and I think my cycle of discovery may clarify that, in the step to novel contexts for novel challenges.

While destruction can be creative, it does entail a break-down of what existed before. Is that evil? If it is, again we find that exclusion of evil would entail stagnation, which, I propose, is destructive of the flourishing of life. To allow for flourishing one must allow for uncertainty and risk. A society without risk is a stagnant society. Society can compensate for injustices that emerge from risk, and that is what it does, in social security, though this can go too far, eliminating willingness to take risks. It should not remove risk but compensate for it when needed. Society has been going too far in eliminating risk.

125. Private and public virtues

 Ethics has mostly been approached from an individual perspective: how should the individual behave. There, the proposed universal principle is the ‘golden rule’ that one should (not) do to others what one does (not) want done to oneself.

Now, most individual ethics are powerless when we turn to public conduct, of states, which are under pressure of geopolitics, aggression, crime, insurgence and terrorism. Torture is clearly wrong but what if by torturing one person one can save a nation?

This was brought home forcefully by Machiavelli’s classic ‘The prince’. For reasons of state things may need to be done that are blatantly bad, such as torture. However, that does not make it good. What does this do to ethics?

Should one now say that there are two kinds of good and bad: private and public?

I propose that there is no fundamental difference. Ethics and morality are not clear-cut on the individual level either. Also in the private sphere there can be multiple goods and bads, and it is often difficult to choose.

Earlier in this blog (in item 40) I referred to Martha Nussbaum’s account of the Fragility of goodness, with the example of Agamemnon, who had to choose between his daughter, to whom he had paternal duties, and his army, to which he had the duties of the commander.

I also argued (in item 118) that the golden rule is not strictly universal. There are things that I would do to others that I would not like to be done to myself, because knowing the other I know what s/he appreciates that I do not.

Lying is bad, but even on a personal level I may have to lie to protect someone’s interests. Would I lie to keep my child out of prison? I certainly would. Others might not.

I appealed to Aristotle’s virtue ethics. There are multiple dimensions to what may be good, they are often not commensurable, not amenable to a common denominator, and what is good depends on circumstances. Sometimes I need to be brave and at other times prudent. Next to valour and prudence there are choices between trust and control, ‘voice’ and ‘exit’, attack and defence, spontaneity and restraint, truthfulness and lying, etc.

As I claimed (also in item 118), ethics is indeed multiple, debatable. What is to be chosen, and to what degree, is a matter of debate. However, the impossibility of universal rules and judgements is not a passport to the arbitrary. Or to relativism in the sense that any opinion is as good as any other. The striving for justice remains. And an ethical stance is subject to argumentation.

For matters of state there is an International Court of Justice. To justify oneself one needs to show awareness of the bad, evidence that one deliberated, evidence of proportionate action, and the willingness to have one’s judgements tested and possibly condemned and punished.

Also as an individual one must submit not only to the rule of law and but also, since the reach of the law is deliberately limited, to ethical judgement of friends, colleagues, and communities. It does not automatically suffice for bankers to plead that they are aware that they acted immorally but acted within the law and were forced to act as they did under pressures of competition. They need to argue their case in a balancing of virtues.

Socrates drank the cup of poison though convinced that his actions had been right.

124. Art, love and God

If you have the urge to aspire to perfection, and to feel special, significant, essential in life, does that make you a narcissist, or only if you need to be admired, celebrated for it? However that may be, how does one satisfy that urge?

Patricia de Martelaere saw three ways: art, love and God. The problem with God is that he does not answer or speak, and you cannot be sure he really exists and loves you. The problem with romantic love (eros) is that the loved one may cease to love you or may desert you. Art has the advantage that it is under your own control, if you have the talent for it. Unfortunately, the price you pay is that it is dead, not alive by itself. Yet for control freaks, seeking to achieve an essential life without risk, that may be the way. Perhaps that is why often artists (and philosophers) wind up alone, avoiding the risks of love.

Foucault, at he end of his struggle with pervasive and all-invasive powers of social structures, sought a way out in turning one’s life into a work of art. How could that go?

De Martelaere said that death does not fulfil life but interrupts it, prevents one from rounding it off as a finished product, and that to foil death an artist (and, I would add,  also an intellectual, scientist or entrepreneur) seeks to achieve a finished work, after which one can say: I achieved that before death could snatch it away.

How could this be related to the imperfection on the move that I advocate in this blog, and the idea that the only life after death is the life of others that one leaves behind? 

For the artist (or intellectual, scientist, entrepreneur), after finishing a project there is always the next one to engage upon, which may not get finished and in any case is only a step in an ongoing series that will certainly never be finished.

Suppose one sees one’s life not as a series of projects for oneself but as a contribution to an ongoing stream of life, where one’s projects contribute to those of others to come. Then, may not the urge to feel essential in life be satisfied by making essential contributions to what may come, to the potential after life? But how does one know whether one’s contribution is essential? That also is up to posterity to decide. All one can do is to strive for it to the best of one’s capability and insight.

That is also what parents, especially mothers perhaps, do, in bringing up children as a project without end, contributing to the potential of posterity. And how about workers in health care, say? In their way they can feel essential in life.

In both Western and Eastern philosophy there is a tendency to reserve enlightenment for an elite of the initiated, the illuminated, the trained, the ascetic, in gaining access to a transcendent, elevated, absolute, supreme being (God, Brahman) or condition (Nirvana). If one renounces absolutes and embraces imperfection on the move, one can achieve freedom from self-obsession in ordinary life, in transcendence that is horizontal, in others, and immanent, during life.  

123. The destruction of distrust

Trust is needed to give some space to others for choice and action. The alternative is to lock up the other in measures of control and monitoring.

However, while distrust is destructive it is itself difficult to destroy. Deep distrust will always defeat trust.

In a relationship that starts with distrust others have to prove that they are trustworthy. This is doomed to fail. Proving one’s trustworthiness is logically impossible in the same way that it is to prove that a theory is true. No matter how often or long a theory has been corroborated, i.e. not contradicted by observations, it remains possible that it will be falsified in the future. In the same way, no matter how often one shows one’s trustworthiness, in keeping to agreements and promises, and taking positive action to mutual advantage or even from altruism, and being open about mistakes and failures, this does not prove that next time one will not break trust.

Since trustworthiness cannot be proved, and the possibility of its lack remains, the mistrustful are inclined to impose ever-stronger tests of trustworthiness. But there is no logical end to this. At some point the people who remain mistrusted will break out and exit. And the mistrustful will interpret this as evidence of untrustworthiness.

If a relationship is started in distrust, and people have to prove their trustworthiness, they will avoid all actions that may break expectations, which would likely be seen as a confirmation of untrustworthiness. No opposition will be voiced. I once worked at a university faculty where the dean took the stance that people must first prove their trustworthiness. It led to an organization of ‘yes-men’, lack of criticism, sweet-talking the dean, a culture of fear and conformism. It is the only case that I know of where in the end a dean was deposed by a university board.

By the same mechanism, in the difficult struggle of going from eros to philia, discussed in a preceding item of this blog, a deep fear of vulnerability and failure may yield the stance that now the other has prove his/her trustworthiness, and then the destruction of love sets in, leading to an exit which is seen as a confirmation of untrustworthiness, or lack of love.

Deep distrust can keep one from engaging in relationships that would allow people to show their trustworthiness. Trust, on the other hand, enables relationships and can be adjusted when untrustworthiness manifests itself.

In contrast with distrust, trust, with its assumption that another is trustworthy, can be falsified by evidence to the contrary. However, if the room for action offered by trust leads to a disappointment of expectations, that does not necessarily prove untrustworthiness. It can be due to a mishap, a mistake, or lack of attention. One should extend benefit of the doubt and engage in voice, a discussion of what is going on, allowing for mistakes or lack of competence, and be open about one’s own errors and mistakes. When this voice does not work one can reduce the space for action, extending control, or one can go for exit. Trust is imperfection on the move.

 

 

122. Commitment and choice

In the preceding item in this blog, concerning love relationships, I argued for a certain channeling or re-direction of passion (eros) to allow for the build-up of loving friendship (philia). I did not mean to imply that emotion should be replaced by rational evaluation.

Eva Illouz, in her book ‘Why love hurts’ (2012), analyzed modern conditions of love and commitment. She found that rational evaluation of multiple alternatives, which have increasing arisen in modern times, after the suspension of constraints of class, education, standing, income, procedures and ritual, and multiple dimensions of choice, of appearance, spirit, life style, interests and abilities, can have an adverse effect.

Rational evaluation is typically analytic, decomposing objects of choice into different characteristics and weighting them to arrive at some composite measure for comparison of alternative options. Illouz employed a variety of outcomes from research that show that this procedure can have adverse effects.

It has long been known that often choice is best left up to intuition. While rational choice is analytic, intuition is more integrative, employing tacit knowledge built up from experience, which by definition escapes rational grasp. Tapping from various research, Illouz further analyses this as follows. ‘Decomposing an object into components diminishes the emotional force of a decision’ (p. 93), and causes people to ‘moderate their evaluations’ and to lower emotional quality’.

In a rational analysis of alternatives, there is a consideration of opportunity costs (as the economist calls it): of the value of options not chosen, in an anticipation of regret, which lowers the value of whatever one does choose. It produces ambivalence in choice.

Illouz reports research that shows that cohabitation before marriage, as a ‘try-out’, increases the risk of divorce and lowers the quality of marital satisfaction. Ongoing analysis and comparison of value drives out commitment. She concludes that ‘.. the affective dimension of commitment ultimately is the strongest because commitment cannot be a rational choice’ (p. 96).

It is not a matter of dotting all the I’s and crossing all the t’s of rational choice and solving all problems before a commitment is made. At some point an emotional commitment needs to be made, to close issues of choice and as a basis for solving problems.

In sum, the emotional sweep of eros is still needed to leap into commitment, as a start, for next developing philia. So what does this do to my analysis in the preceding item in this blog? On the one hand the furor of eros should be tempered, in eliminating its possessiveness and its fear and suspicion of loss or dependence, and on the other hand it is needed to clinch the issue of commitment, in preserving the emotional craving to be with the loved one and to keep him/her, and no-one else, as a basis for philia to develop.

What is wrong with modernity is that eros has been reduced to sex and rational choice has replaced commitment.

121. How does love work?

 Earlier in this blog (item 6) I discussed romantic love (eros) in contrast with loving friendship (philia). Romantic love is utopian, reaching for an unattainable ideal outside reality, and tends to be possessive, aiming to own the loved one.

As an outflow of the Enlightenment, in modern society our self-image is that we make our choices in freedom, as a rational, autonomous being. But in love we are about to surrender our autonomy and freedom, incurring constraints on our actions. That step is difficult to reconcile with rational autonomy.

Romantic love is needed to cause blindness, initially, to the imperfections of the loved one, in order to be prepared to take the leap into the hazardous adventure of love. But how can a possessive, self-oriented, obsessive eros next develop into the openness and reciprocity of philia?

Freud had more to say on this issue. Eros entails dependence and a risk of loss, of sinking a deep emotional investment without receiving equally intense love in return, or of losing the loved one. This fearful dependence can yield suspicion, lack of trust. The lover anticipates unrequited love, and is on the lookout for signs of it, twisting perception to confirm the fear. It can yield hate. The urge to appropriate the loved one is an attempt to maintain control, to eliminate dependence and risk of loss. Of course all this only antagonizes the loved one and threatens to fulfil the fearsome risk of a lost love and of desertion, in a mutual escalation of fear and mistrust. The greater the passion the greater the risk, possible suspicion and hate, and the hazard of breakdown. 

The perversity of perfect passion especially tempts the adolescent, with its dream of purity and perfection, in disdain of adult cowardice and compromise.

Could it be the other way around: start with philia rather than eros? Is there a way to develop acquaintance and familiarity first and release the passion of eros later? As described by Eva Illouz, in her book ‘Why love hurts’, that is what we had in the past, in social rules and rituals of acquaintance and engagement prior to commitment. Presently, love has to be immediate and ‘authentic’, preferably in love at first sight. I would not want to go back to former social and ritualistic strictures that locked up love in class endogamy, but how, then, can we proceed?

The challenge is to learn not only to recognize but also to accept, and next even to cherish, the quirks and imperfections of the loved one, in what Eva Illouz called incremental reciprocity. Here again we find imperfection on the move. Learning to trust and shed suspicion. To give space to the loved one, not to appropriate. Not to jump to dark interpretations of innocuous conduct. To learn to talk about it, and to hear the other out. To count to ten. To extend benefit of the doubt, to allow for errors of interpretation and for mistakes of judgement or perception of the partner. In other words: to exercise voice, as discussed in the items on trust in this blog (items 68 to 74). That, I propose, is the maturity of love.

Next to the negative freedom of being free from constraints, there is positive freedom of having access to new sources for fulfilment or development of the self, to be discovered in a process of incremental reciprocity. While the leap of eros limits freedom in the negative sense, it can enable positive freedom, in the building up of philia.   

  

 

120. Does reading literature make people better?

In item 5 of this blog, on free will, I argued that we do not have full free will, we do not have full conscious control over unconscious impulses, but we do have some conscious influence. We can consciously simulate the effects and outcomes of possible actions. While this may not determine the choice of action it may affect it. When we consider how bad smoking is for our health, this may not keep us from smoking, but it may still affect the impulse to do so.

In item 92 I argued that reading fiction helps to develop empathy and the ability to simulate the consequences of acts. Fiction is about possible worlds, and the reader must suspend disbelief.

The Belgian philosopher Patricia de Martelaere argued against this view. She claimed that it is a ruse to maintain the old, failing philosophical view of meaning in terms of reference to things in the world. She claims that the very term fiction is misguided. The claim of the reference view is that with our words in language we can access ‘reality’; that literature is not about this reality and hence must be ‘fictive’.

De Martelaere claims, correctly, that we cannot claim to ‘represent reality realistically’. We use language not to mirror reality but to form it conceptually. Presumed ‘reality’ is already fictive. In literature we simply go a step further, adding ‘more of ourselves’, in deliberate imagination.

While I agree with this, I still think that it is useful to think of literature as being about possible worlds rather than what we see as reality. It makes a difference whether we violate reality because we cannot do otherwise, in language and thought, or do so deliberately, in phantasy.

De Martelaere claims, correctly in my view, that in reading fiction we do not take more distance from protagonists but less. In real life we have good reasons not to identify with others. We might suffer from it in various ways. Our identification may not be reciprocated. We may have to follow it up with sacrifices. We look away from miserable people lying crumpled on the sidewalk, from personal tragedies we encounter, and from global hardship and terror displayed on TV. We identify more easily with Madame Bovary, or with Othello.

I still think that reading fiction (I maintain that term, notwithstanding de Martelaere’s criticism) entails a suspension of disbelief , but, and here I agree with her, that it also entails a suspension of distance, and leap of identification, at no cost or risk.

Because of that we can experiment, intellectually and morally, with emotions, motives and actions, at no cost and risk, using literature as an exercise in simulation and empathy.

Does the development of empathy make people better? There is warm and cold empathy. Warm empathy is accompanied with feelings of compassion, remorse, and shame, arising in the amygdala, deep in the brain. Cold empathy is a purely intellectual, dispassionate insight in how people think and feel, in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, in a disconnect with the amygdala.  

It is a feature of psychopaths, and of other people who remain calm and lucid under danger, violence, risk or what to other people would be stress. Think of surgeons, heroes, and investment bankers. Empathy is for better or for worse.

119. Moral animals?

 Frans de Waal published studies on moral behaviour, in particular altruism, among apes. They turn out to frequently support each other, even if it yields no advantage or indeed goes against it, and also when they are not kin. 

 A Dutch commentator, Chris Rutenfrans, criticized the claim of morality among apes on the grounds that morality entails a philosophy and a debate on ethics, which animals cannot have[1]. It would be preposterous to suggest that de Waal entertained the thought that animals do have that. But more importantly, the comment misses the point of de Waal’s studies. Moral behaviour does not necessarily require a moral theory or religion. It could be instinctive.

 It has long been thought that humans do not have an instinct for altruism

because that would not have survived in evolution. Egotism or self-interestedness, to
protect one’s interests, would have favoured survival and would hence have been favoured in selection. Altruistic genes would have been muscled out by genes for self-interest. If that were so, then altruism would have to be completely cultural, working against evolutionary pressure towards unmitigated self-interest. Then Rutenfrans would have been correct.

However, more recent evolutionary theory came with an argument why next to self-interest also altruism could have survived. I gave the argument earlier in this blog, in item  46, and I will not repeat it here.

The point of de Waal’s work now is that it shows empirically that altruism arises even among apes, which is important precisely because apes have no moral theory that might have given an alternative explanation, and thus the proclivity towards altruism must somehow be in their genes, and if that is possible then it is possible also in Man.

In other words, while cultural artefacts such as religion may enhance altruism, those are not necessarily the only basis for moral conduct in the form of altruism. To be sure, next to an instinct for altruism the human being also has an instinct for self-interest, to survive in evolution, and any contrary instinct towards altruism would be up against that. When push comes to shove, self-interest will mostly win over altruism. Cultural counterforces would and do help, but de Waals work shows that they may not be indispensable or the only basis.

Rutenfrans also jumps to the conclusion that morality requires a sense of something ‘outside’ and ‘bigger’ than the self, and hence requires a God. Earlier in this blog I argued that while religion indeed is best defined as yielding a sense of something ‘outside’ and ‘bigger’ than the self, that is not necessarily a God. It may be a sense of awe and respect for nature, life and for the other human being. Here, I drew inspiration from Levinas.

A final comment. In my analysis of instinctive altruism, in item 46, I argued that in-group altruism comes at the price of instinctive out-group suspicion. I wonder if that would be found also in studies of apes: less altruism or suspicion or discrimination concerning apes outside the group (allowing for different ways to define that).

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[1] In a review of de Waals recent book, in the Dutch newspaper ‘De Volkskrant’, Saturday 6 July 2013.

118. Debatable ethics

In this blog I have argued (e.g. in item 16) against absolute universals that apply strictly everywhere and forever.

Concerning knowledge, I arrive at warranted assertability, instead of truth in any absolute sense of being objective and indubitable, as discussed in item 104. We cannot claim truth in an absolute sense but this does not necessarily yield relativism in the sense that any opinion is as good as any other. Arguments matter, using logic and facts whenever those can reasonably be established, imperfect though they remain, and conditions for their use are satisfied.

Now I arrive at the equivalent of this in ethics. There are no absolute, i.e. strictly universal and fixed rules of conduct. In item 95 I even rejected Kant’s famous categorical imperative (a variation upon the ancient golden rule that one should not do to others what one does not want done to oneself). I accept fundamental moral rules as guidelines that are to be followed as a matter of strong principle, but I allow for exceptions and special pleading.

To many philosophers this yields a debatable ethics, and indeed that is precisely the point: ethics is debatable. That, after all, is also what we find in legal courts, where judges interpret the law and mete out punishment with an eye to motives, pressures, circumstances, means, and capabilities. Here also we find the use of multiple causality that I discussed earlier in this blog. There generally is no simple single cause of misdemeanour or crime.

But how, then, can argumentation in deviance from rules occur without resulting in a relativism where any excuse will do? It is a matter of debate, again with arguments concerning multiple causes, as indicated.

There are problems in the notion of a just debate, without one-sided imposition of power, as I discussed in the preceding item (with reference to Jürgen Habermas). Perhaps under unequal power such debate should look more or less like jurisdiction: with a prosecutor and a defence attorney. And should there then be a jury, as in countries with an Anglo-Saxon tradition, or only a judge?

A complication here is, of course, that there are no detailed moral laws as there are legal laws, and no independent judges, prosecutors and attorneys, subjected to standards of knowledge, training and ethical conduct. Once upon a time priests and vicars fulfilled that role, executing divine law.

There are good reasons for this. Political mechanisms determine legal laws but liberal societies are averse to laying down similar moral laws beyond legality. That does not mean that no more or less law-like moral rules arise, as part of institutions, but that they are beyond democratic control, and as a result they are even more subject to hidden structures of power than legality already is.

Morality should be based on ethics, so what ethics do we use? As I argued earlier, I am a follower of Aristotelian virtue ethics, recognizing that virtues are multiple, often not instrumental but intrinsic, often incommensurable, contingent and subject to change.

So, what moral debates can this yield? Similarly perhaps to Socratic dialogue. But rather than this being dominated by a single clever rhetorician, such as Socrates, there should be competent opponents. In case opponents are not competent, mediators and perhaps something like a jury. Or could one perhaps think here of the role that the chorus played in ancient Greek tragedy, taking an outside view for commenting on the proceedings? Is that perhaps how we can ideally interpret public debate in the media?

117. Habermas

Here I start a series of items on ethics

Jürgen Habermas is exceptional, among continental philosophers, in continuing to press for rational and just debate. Conditions for it are: no asymmetric power (‘herrschaftsfreie Discussion’, in German), truthfulness, in mutual striving for truth and justice, and sincerity, meaning what one says.

This is of course a perfect ideal and goal, but the conditions are hardly realistic. There is rarely if ever a balance of power in debate. It would, for example, preclude employer-employee debate, and teacher-pupil debate. And there inevitably is strategic behaviour, in dissimulation, half-truths or outright lies to protect interests or to promote a cause. To speak with Nietzsche, there is will to power and that is part of human flourishing as well as misconduct.

I noted before (in item 50 of this blog) that power could be positive, in providing new options or room for choice, and negative, in limiting them. To limit negative power, I pleaded for measures that ensure both voluntary access and exit from a relationship. That applies also to debate. In my discussion of trust I used the notion of exit and voice. When in disagreement with arguments or actions one should say so and give the other the benefit of the doubt, and an opportunity to explain and justify. But hidden behind the stage there is a way out, an exit, when persistent efforts at understanding and acceptance fail.

In my discussion of cognition I used the notions of absorptive capacity and cognitive distance (item 57): The ability to understand, and hence rational debate, depends on cognitive structures developed in life and thus differs between people to the extent that their life paths have been different. This is a problem but also an opportunity: precisely because others perceive and think differently, there is an opportunity to learn from them and broaden one’s horizon. Cognitive distance is a source of learning and innovation (item 58).

Third parties or go-betweens may help to achieve mutual understanding, to cross cognitive distance (item 74).

Power and lies being inevitable, and partly constructive, there must be countervailing measures against negative power, striving for, though never quite achieving, balance of power, under threat of exit, and an awareness that give and take and forbearance, not grasping every opportunity at negative power, is often to one’s own advantage, instrumentally, and rewarding for its intrinsic value, as part of virtue. I discussed this in a series on trust (items 68 – 75).

For both cognitive and ethical reasons go-betweens can help, and as I will argue in the following item on debatable ethics there may need to be a jury, or forum, or bystanders to help craft understanding and adjudicate justice. But that also can be biased or prejudiced, and ways of exit must be maintained. To be a voluntary outcast, paying a price of isolation for the sake of freedom.

In a discussion of freedom (item 49) I proposed that beyond negative freedom, in not being bound or constrained by others, the highest level of freedom is freedom also from one’s own prejudice. For the latter one needs others, but when those become oppressive one needs to escape even if it means getting buried in one’s own myopia and prejudice.

116. Reason in the rise and fall of civilizations

According to Cioran[1], when civilizations emerge, the new religion, values, myths, ideology, or doctrine, are vigorous, vital, clear, hard, simple, and compelling. In time, tested by earthly realities of complexity and variability, they develop nuance, differentiation, refinement, tolerance of diversity and individuality, and become soft, more pliable. Culture strays from nature, and instincts are subdued by reflection. This is next experienced as degeneration, decadence. Too clever for its own good. Diversity is seen as confusion. And then the old doctrine becomes vulnerable to a takeover by the next more hardy vision looming on the horizon.

According to Cioran, decline is accompanied by intellectualization and erudition: myth is replaced by science, song by discourse, and emotion by reason. That may have been the case in the decline of ancient Greek culture in Hellenism and in the decline of the Roman Empire. But does it apply to current times?

It seems to me that the Enlightenment, since Descartes, especially in its radical stream, initiated by Spinoza, constituted a new culture at the peak of which, in the 17-18^th century, myth was replaced by science, finesse by geometry, emotion by reason. Central values became reason, truth, freedom, and democracy.

And now we seem to be in a stage of decline where those Enlightenment values, right or wrong, are surrendered for the return of emotion, idolatry, myth, hype, and post-modern relativization of truth and freedom. In which lies the decadence? 

Consider the supposedly ‘degenerate’ values of diversity, individuality, tolerance, nuance and change? Early, 16^th century humanism celebrated those, notably the philosophy of Montaigne. They were briefly institutionalized in the reign of Henri IV, who instituted the Edict of Nantes for the sake of religious tolerance. According to Toulmin, in his Cosmopolis, in the 17^th century those were replaced by dogmatic doctrine, and intolerance, and the Edict of Nantes was repealed, under the pressures of religious strife between Catholics and Protestants, as in the 30-year war. Under the polarization of Protestantism versus Catholicism there was no room for nuance: one had to choose sides.

Thus, in the Enlightenment we see an emerging civilization at odds with Ciorans thesis. It is not vigorous myth at the peak, followed by the decadence of reason, but a peak of vigorous reason, with universalistic, pure ideas. Presently we see, I propose, a decline, with departures from reason and argument, and a reopening of the gates for myth, emotions, hype, and delirium. There, I propose, lies the degeneration.

So, what next? Are we in wait for a new, more vigorous culture? Would that require hard myth and ideology without nuance or differentiation, as Cioran claims? Does culture require unreason, intolerance and repression to be vigorous? Or could we, perhaps, think of, and hope for, a revival of the 16th century humanist combination of reason and tolerance, with a dynamic interplay of universals and individuals, the general and the specific, as I have argued for in several places in this blog? Could this not be vigorous?     

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[1] From Rumanian origin, Cioran mostly lived and worked in France. 

115. The success of theistic religion

 How have theistic religions, such as Christianity and the Islam, been so successful, persisting for so long?

My hunch is that this is because of a clever combination of the universal, eternal, pure, and Platonic, in a single God, or Allah, with the individual, specific, diverse, earthly, fragile, weak and human, in the form of a saviour or prophet, a Christ or Mohammed. Christ succumbs in suffering but is resurrected, re-connected with the eternal, and by his suffering offers the gift of salvation. The human need for recognition of earthly nuance, plurality, indviduality, the tragedy of contingency, and softness of compassion is satisfied but remains connected to the pure and transcendent, is reabsorbed in celestial universality and eternity.

Then, if that is correct, what about other religions or philosophies, such as Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism? They lacked the one or the other: the absolute and universal or the individual, the earthly nuance. Buddhism and Confucianism are wisdoms of life that have no absolutes of God. Taoism, by contrast, is oriented not to human tribulations but to the system of nature as a whole, in its harmony and perfection. As such it is like the God of Spinoza. It lacks nuance and tragic individuality.

The histories of these wisdoms are patchy, with intermissions and shifts, a thinning out, and their survival was precarious.

 

In attempts at synthesis between them, as in forms of neo-confucianism in China, is there a perspective for forging a unity of the supreme and absolute with earthly contingency, justice and individuality?

Totalitarian ideologies try to implement on earth the absolute and pure, of race or doctrine, and cannot tolerate the mellowness of nuance and tolerance. The craving for justice and compassion needs to be suppressed by terror. But sooner or later they will collapse for want of justice.

Theistic religions are not exempt from the need for terror to sustain the absolute, as exhibited in old Christian crusades and inquisition, and present Islamist fundamentalism, and terrorism, which have the appeal of returning to the purity of old, rejecting the niceties and decadence of democracy and diversity.

In Western society, Enlightenment ideals, inspired among others by Spinoza, have served to provide the pure, Platonic, and universal in reason and knowledge. In an earlier item in his blog (93) I noted the demise of the old culture of delving for the deep, the fundamental, the abstract, which is being replaced by the rush and race of the superficial. After that loss, what next will appear in order to satisfy the urge for the pure and perfect? Will there be a return to God, or a new ideology?

114. Remedies?

 In the preceding four items in this blog, inspired by the work of Baudrillard, I paraded a few complaints about present society. Can I also offer any remedies? I indicated a few but here I will expand on them and give a survey.

Against loss of contact with reality, in hyperreality, we can go against mere opinion, emotion, hype and ecstasy and persist in demanding arguments and facts, even if, admittedly, facts are never ‘rock bottom’ objective, never identical to reality, and are mentally and socially construed. At least they entail a commitment to grasp reality, even if that is imperfect. The imperfection of our grasp entails the need for debate, for a contrast between what you and I think we grasp. And we can step out of the virtuality of games and make-believe, to combine experience with entertainment, action with simulation, face with console.

Against loss of individual identity, in hyperidentity, we can maintain variety, utilize and revitalize cognitive distance, and insist on room for one’s own interpretation, one’s own path in the construction of the self, even if that construction is social and we need others to loosen ourselves from our prejudice. We can try to use social networks to make new connections rather than consolidate existing ones. We can resist the regimentation of ideology embedded in institutions by bringing it to light, applying the x-ray of analysis.

Against closed groups or communities we can resist myopia, intolerance, nationalism, chauvinism, and insist on their opening up, on outside connections, and on turnover of membership. This applies to boards of directors and supervisors, committees, organizations, positions, jobs, etc. Democracy is never perfect, is often a myth, but it does yield turnover of power due to elections.

Against loss of responsibility we can stop hiding the inability to exercise responsibility as a result of system tragedy, unmask and demystify managerial fables of control, accept that not all uncertainty can or should be eliminated, leave room for error, and seek new forms of control. Here I refer to item 75 in this blog, on horizontal control. The crux of that is that those controlled help to inform the control over them, with the reward of less control if they do so honestly.  

Against system tragedy due to complexity of social systems, we can reduce complexity by decentralization, with a large degree of local autonomy, in localized government and smaller, more independent organizations, collaborating rather than concentrating in mergers or  acquisitions. This is a classic solution: decompose. Another solution is to reduce strong ties, by reducing rules, untightening control. Here again I refer to horizontal control.

On a deeper level, underlying all this is the issue of universals that I discussed repeatedly in this blog. We should surrender claims of closed, complete and universal ideas and rules, applying everywhere and always, to recognize variety and contingency of circumstance, and the flux involved in life and society, the changes that cannot be foreseen and planned for. In short: imperfection on the move. 

113. Loss of responsibility

In item 109 of this blog I discussed what I called system tragedy. Well-intentioned ideas and actions are laced together in a complex, interdependent system, with cross-overs and mutations, yielding outcomes that cannot be foreseen and that nobody wants, let alone intends. This is mingled with personal and institutional interests.

Under this complexity, managers, in business and government, cannot realize the responsibilities they assume. They cannot admit this, since that would eliminate their authority and position. Inevitably, they regularly fall into failure. When pressed, they have to admit this. Yet they maintain the illusion of control, ritualized in high remuneration and bonuses, rationalized by the difficulties and risks they face. They credit success to their actions and blame failure on complexities.

This remainds me of a scene in the film ‘Orfeu negro’, the story of Orpheus and Euridice in the setting of carnival in Rio. At the beginning of the film the hero plays the guitar at daybreak, to a ring of admiring youths who believe that the sun will rise because of his play. And then, indeed it does.

Like former robber barons, kings and dictators, managers strive to maintain their position, no longer with physical force but on the basis of mythmaking and indoctrination. Conduct is enforced by conformism. Criticism is needed to make problems visible, but it is discouraged by ostracism or dismissal. Blinded, organizations stumble into crises. Procedures are enforced to regulate even professional labour that cannot be forced into closed protocols. Little is left to personal imagination or interpretation. This kills variety. And motivation. And as I argued in the preceding item of this blog, closed systems are bound to fail, to lose life.

Ideology has been defined as what is in the interest of others for me to believe. Foucault showed how ideology is assimilated and accommodated in our subconscious. Culture is ideology embodied in institutions, in rules of language games. This serves to hide the interests behind ideology.

Risk avoidance and the drive to master complexity and uncertainty by more rules runs into limitations, professional and entrepreneurial resistance, and work-arounds to escape from them. The resulting gaps are patched up by yet more rules. This contributes to yet further complexity, resulting in further unpredictability and inability of control, and strangling initiative.

I end with an illustration. Presently, under the drive towards a market regime in health care, in the Netherlands, hospitals are forced to subject professional medical practice to protocols for diagnosis and treatment. This is needed for health insurers to judge efficieny and impose conditions for funding. Problems remain in the judgement of quality, and further rules are designed for it. Surgeons are only allowed to perform operations if they do them a minimum number of times per year. This yields concentration of complex treatments in larger hospitals. That yields a drive towards alliances or takeovers between hospitals, with all the problems involved. A political drive to control surging costs of health care leads to limits of funding. Hospital management is dependent on the community of specialists and does not dare to discipline them to prevent waste, expensive hobbyism, shirking, and corruption. The minister for health threatens to impose further controls. What is intended as a market is in fact an explosion of rules.

In this environment, it is almost impossible for managers to fulfill their tasks, and most managers are far from up to it. This leads to a ban on the reporting of problems, and a destruction of responsibility among both management and staff. This is about to erupt in public scandal.

112. Loss of information, differentiation and life

 Baudrillard said that with modern communication we are flooded with information and that ‘more information yields less information’. How can this paradoxical statement be understood? He also said that ‘what flourishes by the same must perish by the same’. What does that mean?

In so-called information theory the degree to which information is informative is modelled in terms of its improbability, as a measure of its surprise value. Predicting the outcome of the toss of a coin (head or tails) is less informative than predicting the outcome of the throw of a dice (six possibilities). Known, familiar, trite, cliché propositions have little surprise value and hence low information value. Confirming an established view, practice or theory is less informative than refuting it and coming up with a new, distinctive, contrary one.

In the preceding item in this blog I went along with Baudrillard’s claim that with present communication technology people tend to assimilate themselves in groups of like-minded people, with similar ideas and habits, and that this reduces variety and cognitive distance, in a kind of intellectual incest. Conspiracy theorists seek each other out to nurse their favourite grudge. Lesser differentiation within groups narrows individual identity and merges individuals into hyperidentities. How fast and far this goes depends on how closed a community is, on how few outside relations members have.

Now, the measure of uninformativeness used in information theory is the same as the measure of entropy, lack of differentiation of energy states, used in thermodynamics. According to the second law of thermodynamics, in a closed system differences in energy states decay. When two bodies of different temperature are brought together they will exchange heat until temperatures are the same.

Here we see a parallel with the decay of information in the loss of differentiation in babble within closed social groups. Views and ideas converge to the same.

One definition of life is that it goes against the increase of entropy, in producing differentiated, distinctive, improbable forms of life. To do that, a form of life cannot be a closed system and must ingest food and excrete refuse to maintain its distinctive structure. Death yields decay into an undifferentiated mass, a chaos, of elementary particles.

Now I can understand Baudrillard’s claim that more information is yielding less information, in two ways.

First, with communication technology there is an explosion of messages and images thrown around, but much of it arises from repetition, duplication, redundancy, amplification, reverberation in the internet, and from impulsive, unreflected and unargued utterances. Opinions rather than facts. Ease and low cost of communication allow for lower effort, in an explosion of triviality, a disintegration of information, a swell of entropy.

Second, what people send and select, the babble of what people tell each other within groups, has decreasing surprise value. In internally oriented, homogeneous social groups there is loss of cognitive distance, loss of differentiation in views and ideas. We can now say that this goes against life, constitutes a form of decay, a form of death.

Intolerance, closed minds, parochialism, chauvinism and nationalism are killers of cultural life. For life to remain, in communication, we need to break open closed communities. To live, closed systems must be opened to ingest and to defecate.

Indeed, as Baudrillard said: what flourishes by the same will perish by the same.

 

 

111. Hyperidentity

According to Baudrillard the individual self has lost its identity in what he calls the ‘mental diaspora of networks’. Individual thought is no longer relevant and is replaced by a cacophony of voices and actions, reverberating in networks, amplified and distorted, with haphazard, unforeseeable outcomes that are intended and controlled by no one. Individual identity is replaced the hyper-identity (my term, not Baudrillards) of a network or group. People form collective identities they can neither oversee nor understand, any more than the microorganisms that constitute our body have an inkling of our personal identity. There is a potential for diversity, but often it dwindles, with people parroting each other, and seeking out similar opinions.

This may sound odd. Aren’t we, to the contrary, complaining about the selfish, self-obsessed, narcissist individual obsessed by the celebration of its own authentic, unique self? And wouldn’t it be a good thing if people oriented themselves more towards communities?

I will try to analyze. In part, what happens is related to the theme of hyperreality, discussed in the preceding item in this blog. If there is no shared, outside reality on which ideas are tested, then there is no basis for ideas to converge.

Three things seem to be going on. 

First, in virtual reality the self no longer interacts with what someone else (an author, an artist) has thought up, but with something that the reader himself configures with tools offered to him. In virtual reality one can construct a lover to make love with, resembling one’s favourite idol.

Second, often selves now construct themselves in the image of shared idols, taken from show business or sports, hoarding their tweets, becoming more like each other, cloning the celebrity. The variety of people dwindles in collective identities.

Third, in social networks, such as Facebook, others are selected for their similarity. People congregate and even lock themselves up in networks or groups of like-minded people

In all three cases, the other is no longer a genuine other, and as a result will scarcely help to free oneself from one’s prejudice. The self gets steamed up in itself, with self-created or similar others that duplicate rather than contrast the self. That is likely to destroy attention, tolerance, empathy and understanding of real others.

Within groups and social networks there is a reduction of what earlier in this blog (in item 57) I called cognitive distance, and since cognitive distance is a source of learning and discovery, people are now mimicking each other, in blissful agreement on a shared prejudice, and ridiculing others, in outside groups. Developing in environments of intellectual incest, minds become dumb. Sender and receiver become similar, in circulation of similarity, in what Baudrillard called circolocution.

In the development of cloned identities in sub-cultures, shared views become self-evident, forming the established language game, and outsiders are not just wrong but wrong-headed, deviant, out of line. 

Between groups, shared interests become difficult to negotiate. An overarching politics becomes virtually impossible. So, what were self-oriented selves now get assimilated and socialized into self-oriented hyperidentities. They achieve their sense of authenticity and worth by proxy from the group.

110. Hyperreality

 Here I start a series of items that is partly inspired by the work of the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard. I am not sure that I understand him well, and in so far as I do, I agree with him only in part, but the questions he raises are interesting and here I present what I make of them. In this first item I pick up his claim that in uses of modern communication technology reality has been lost and replaced by what he calls ‘hyperreality’. 

 To be precise about reality I recall a few basic notions in the theory of language and meaning that were discussed in earlier items in this blog. One is that of the signifier (word, image, sign) and what is signified by it. Another is that the meaning of a word or expression has two parts: reference (signification of words) and sense. The referent of the word ‘chair’ is the set of all chairs, and its sense is how an object is recognized as a chair. For a proposition reference is its truth or falsity, and sense is the argumentation for it. Propositions without arguments are senseless.

I now interpret Baudrillard as saying that in present culture we focus on the signifier, the word, and have lost sight of what it is supposed to signify, refer to. Our images and verbal constructions, still inspired somehow by reality, become footloose from what they are about. The signifier steals the show, shoving the signified off-stage. What matters is no longer so much what is said as how one says it. Not what is true but what is interesting or exciting. Not arguments but opinions. This, Baudrilllard acknowledges, goes back to Marshall McLuhan’s slogan that the medium is the message.

So what is new? The signifier/word has always stood apart from the signified/referent: it is never a true, complete representation of the signified. As we acknowledge since the philosopher Kant, we can never know and represent reality as it is in itself. As we acknowledge since the philosopher Wittgenstein, words are not a true representation of underlying thought. In some religions images of God are forbidden because if they truly represent God then God is no longer transcendent and if they do not faithfully represent him they mislead us.

Baudrillard claimed that under the impact of present information-and-communication technology, reality is replaced by hyperreality. That simulates reality, offering an idealized, more exciting, ecstatic reality, a lie that is better than truth.

Again, what is new? Art, literature, theatre, and music have always deliberately idealized, reduced, distilled, and transformed reality as we perceive it. Its purpose indeed is, and always has been, to provide a hyperreality, exploring possible or stylized worlds. This serves as a mental exploration that stimulates intellectual and moral imagination, formation of ideas, and shifts of meaning. As discussed in items 5 and 92 it helps to simulate the consequences of possible actions, to explore morality.

It does, however, seem to be the case that we have moved further into hyperreality. An example of hyperreality, given by Rick Roderick is the ‘Swiss garden’, where one finds Swiss cuckoo clocks, mountain scenes, costumes and food all brought together conveniently, to be visited without the bother of actually travelling to Switzerland. Another example was that of the shark from the film ‘Jaws’, more enticing and interesting than any real shark. Also, you don’t exist unless you are on TV, so people hype up to get there, reducing considered opinion to a slogan, turning character into caricature.  

What, if anything, is wrong with all this? When we give up on the groping for reality we surrender argument and facts to emotions and opinions. Facts, imperfect as they are, help to tie us to reality. When we disregard facts reality indeed disappears.

Next to reality, identity also is lost, Baudrillard claims. I will consider that in the following item.

109. Conspiracy, incompetence and system tragedy

Internet is rife with conspiracy theories. A classic one concerns the assassination of Kennedy, and a more recent, salient one concerns 9/11. In an extreme form, conspiracy theorists blame every mishap on an evil state that with fiendish competence aims to exploit and oppress ‘the people’. The truth is hidden because the media conspire and whistleblowers are scared off or eliminated.

In more moderate forms, there is an eye for facts and arguments that do not rhyme well with official accounts, and the recognition that sometimes state conspiracies are indeed proven. There are awkward facts concerning 9/11: why airspace happened to be undefended precisely on that day, the odd way in which the towers collapsed upon themselves, including a third tower not hit by the planes, apparently falsified identities of the highjackers, suspicious streams of finance, and more. Suspicious also are the exploitation of the disaster to justify severe security measures and a diffuse ‘war on terror’, and business interests connected to the policy makers involved. And yes: it is widely accepted now that entry into the war in Iraq was based on lies and conspiracy. So, evidently conspiracies do occur.

Conspiracy theorists claim that they are dismissed as cranks because people are psychologically unable to face the fact that the state is against them. That would yield on intolerable feeling of insecurity.

So, what is going on? I do not doubt that there is bad intent among bankers, politicians, managers, traders, etc. in the form of cupidity, egotism, thirst for power, urge to win at all costs, and that critical scrutiny and countervailing power are needed to constrain them.

But more than from pervasive, widespread, and well planned conspiracy I think we suffer from incompetence, in an inability to identify problems correctly, to find good solutions, implement them, and to foresee and control all relevant consequences.

Perhaps most important, in our increasingly complex, interconnected world, is what I would call system tragedy. Well-intentioned ideas and actions are laced together in a system of cross-overs and mutations that could not be foreseen and that nobody wanted, let alone intended. Political decision-making is like bumper cars on a fancy fair. This is mingled with personal and institutional interests. Political and institutional logics of consensus and protection of vested interests and positions shove aside more substantive logics about the good and the true. And there is cowardice, in not daring to rock the boat and in the need to maintain social conformism. I have experienced all this myself in a conceptual battle concerning innovation policy where I succumbed miserably.

I also offer a psychological argument, here against conspiracy theorists. It is even more frightening to face the facts of incompetence and system tragedy than to assume evil intent in conspiracies. Conspirators can be replaced by tapping from the ‘good people’, and measures of control can be adopted. The really frightening thing is that this also mostly fails in system tragedy. The problem lies not only in ‘them the state’ but also in ‘we the people’.

108. The self as work in progress

Heidegger is said to have abolished the spectator theory of the subject, the self as autonomous, disconnected and looking at the world from outside. Instead, the self is involved in the world, and is constituted by actions in that world. Thought and action interact. I discussed this before in this blog, in item 40, on being in the world.

The rejection of spectator theory arises also in pragmatist philosophy, as in the work of George Herbert Mead, with the idea of the self as constituted by interaction with others in the world.

This is part of a wider shift of thought from a static view of the self, with a given mind and body, a given identity or authentic self, to a dynamic view of the self as work in progress. This is found also in the thought of Nietzsche and of Kierkegaard.

Kierkegaard described the self as ‘a relation that is itself related to itself’. I understand this in terms of the idea of embodied cognition that I discussed in the items on cognition (23-29). The brain constructs representations of the body, which yield a feeling of coherence of the self, and representations of the world, and higher level representations of representations, on different levels of cognition.  On some level, representations of representations may constitute self-consciousness.

The idea of the self as work in progress, in being in the world, in existence, forms the crux of existentialism, of which Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Heidegger are seen as the fathers.

As I discussed in a preceding item on Wittgenstein (item 105), meanings of words get established in their use in practice, yielding language games with their rules of legitimate usage.

The idea was carried further by Michel Foucault, who analysed how legitimate meanings and conversations get established in practices that reflect the interests and positions of persons or institutions in control. See his studies of prisons, health care and education.

This leads to a view of the human being as caught in the power of institutionalized discourse that eliminates freedom, in a suppression to which those subjected themselves contribute, in their tacit acceptance or inevitable entanglement in the language games to which they are brought up to submit. This suppressive power is all the more sinister for its being hidden in what is taken for granted, in the tacit rules of the language game, to the point that what is in fact submission is seen not only as well intended but as beneficial.

As I discussed in item 50, towards the end of his life Foucault tried to find a way for the individual to break out by ‘turning its life into a work of art’. That is what rebelling intellectuals and artists do, and entrepreneurs (as I indicated in item 41). They try to create a new game but thereby break the rules of established games and suffer for it.

In item 107 I proposed that hope turns into despair, and loss of trust, when one gets trapped in conditions one can neither choose nor influence, in established systems and corresponding language games. Kierkegaard proposed that we can only escape from despair by surrendering to God. Rebellious intellectuals, artists and entrepreneurs find other ways to create new hope.

107. Hope and trust

In an interview on YouTube, the Dutch philosopher Paul van Tongeren explained the notion of hope. It is partly active and partly passive. It entails an expectation that ‘things will be all right’, depending in part on one’s own actions, but also, to a greater or lesser extent, on outside forces that one cannot control.

This brings the notion of hope close to the notion of trust, which I discussed extensively in earlier items in this blog (nrs. 68-76). And this appeals to intuition: trust has to do with hope. Trust also is an expectation that no great harm will be done, while one is dependent on outside forces, of people, organizations or (social) systems that one cannot control. Up to a point, outcomes can be influenced by one’s own actions, and one needs to take responsibility for taking such actions.

Trust is to a large extent emotional but it can be based, in part, on a rational assessment of reasons why others may be trustworthy or not, such as self-interest (including reputation), morality, and friendship.

But the scope and force of one’s own actions and rational inference of trustworthiness are limited, and beyond those limits trust entails a leap of faith, a surrender to hope.

A key question is whether people one is dealing with will be prepared to incur losses to honour promises or commitments. Pressures of survival will reduce the trustworthiness of people, the extent to which they are prepared and able to take one’s interests at heart. Under such pressures also hope will dwindle. 

In the trust literature there is a distinction between trust and confidence. In trust one can exert influence, and one has a choice: afterwards, if something goes wrong one can blame oneself for having trusted. In confidence one has no influence or choice: one is inevitably subjected to the powers or forces that be, which one can neither avoid nor influence. Think of God, legal laws, laws of nature, the economy, a dictatorship, or social systems. Do we find this difference also concerning hope? I think so: In case one has no influence and no choice we would speak of resignation, or despair, rather than hope.

However, resignation, and certainly despair, without hope, choice or influence, are scary, difficult to bear.  And so one may convince oneself that the powers that be are benevolent, against all evidence. The classic case is that of ‘father Stalin’, who must be right in his suspicions and purges. It would be unbearable to face reality. Something similar may have applied with Hitler. Here, one fools oneself to turn resignation or despair into hope and to nurse trust.

Markets were seen as a source of hope, in opportunities of labour or entrepreneurship, with a measure of trust in behaviour and institutions, which one could influence in persuasion, in so far as they were personal, and in democratic control. Now markets seem to have become an impersonal, autonomous force beyond control of governments and democratic institutions, destroying both hope and trust. This also is scary, so that some people convince themselves that markets are fundamentally and unquestionably benevolent, in spite of the evidence.

106. Relativism

The philosopher Jacques Derrida initiated the notion of deconstruction. Here, constructions of language, in science or narrative, are analyzed, taken apart, for their possible, possibly hidden, and possibly multiple meanings. A text has no unique, best or final interpretation. There is no single, unambiguous meaning, given in ‘what the author really intended’. Authors may themselves admit that what they intended is ambiguous, multiple, paradoxical, or hidden. That arises most of all in poetry. Interpretations depend on the context and on who interprets.

Readers develop their own interpretations, though those are not unrelated to what the author may have intended. This is in line with the theory of language that I proposed in this blog (in items 32-37). There I argued that reference, i.e. that what a story is about, is identified on the basis of sense, the way in which one identifies things on the basis of a repertoire, formed in personal experience, of what one knows and associates with what is talked about. Identification is achieved in combination with the context, which triggers selection from the repertoire of sense. In dialogue, different ways of making sense by different people are put up for discussion. This may lead to convergence or divergence of views. And the discussion will contribute to the development of one’s repertoires of sense making. Discussion alters the way one looks at the world.

Some people seem to interpret deconstruction as implying that theory of meaning should drop the notion of reference.

This idea has been inspired, in part, by Ferdinand de Saussure, who claimed that meaning is structural: derived from the position of a word or expression in a totality of language or discourse. ‘A word means what other words don’t mean’. Thereby language becomes self-referential. I think this is valid and useful, but the idea has run amok in the position, adopted by some postmodern philosophers, that ‘therefore’ language no longer has external reference. I don’t see that has to follow. Meanings may shift depending on other meanings, while there remains an intention to refer to something.

I think the abolition of reference is madness because it would abolish the aboutness of language. Surely, a central aim of language is to talk about things, and that is what reference means. True, as I showed earlier, language is not always reference, or only reference, and often constitutes a speech act of illocution, as in making requests or giving orders, accusations, endearments, etc. But animals have that, in growling, calling, warning, posturing, luring, purring, or barking, while with them reference is in doubt. Dropping reference is to take away what people have more than animals have. It is de-humanizing.

Is all this relativism? Yes, in the sense that interpretations depend on the context and on the cognitive make-up of the interpreter, resulting from his/her path of life. But not in the sense that any interpretation is as good as any other. There is argument, a comparison or confrontation between differences in sensemaking.

This is closely related to the notion of warranted assertability replacing truth in any absolute and universal sense, discussed in item 104. There may be different judgements of purported truths in the same way that there may be different interpretations. Knowledge of the world is an interpretation of it. But some truths and interpretations are more warranted, have better arguments, than others.