Date: Mon, 8 Apr 1996 21:41:59 -0500
Subject: Re: More on Modernism, Reason and Myth


This is amusing, Leo. First you say I made no other arguments, then you
answer the arguments I didn't make. Phrasing a question as a one-line
attempt at humor doesn't make it less of a question.

>I'm going to show the same insistence on correctly citing political
>philosophy that you want for physics. All you have to do is go to John Locke
>to see how the concept of the social contract, and the idea that the
>legitimacy of the state rests upon the will of the people, leads right to the
>idea of a right to revolution. (We can throw in Thomas Jefferson and the
>Declaration of Independence, clearly inspired by Locke on this count, for
>good measure.) Hardly politically quietist!  Hobbes was clearly more of an
>absolutist who did not recognize a right to revolution (but did see a duty to
>obedience to a revolutionary government once it was established); we can
>discuss why this was the case and compare him to Locke, but this would take
>us into some complex terrain which relates to the very difficult question of
>how one grounds limits on a government based on legal-rational legitimation.

I wouldn't tax Hobbes with Locke or Locke with Jefferson, myself. Yes, like
everything else, the idea of the social contract has a contradictory
legacy, and I (marginally) overstated the case. Hegel was a reactionary.
Marx, who used Hegel, was not. It is, however, perfectly legitimate to
claim, as many have done, that much of Hegel's oeuvre was created in an
attempt ideologically to uphold the Prussian state. If you say, "But Marx
was inspired by Hegel," that is simply not to the point.

>Analogy is a form of logic, and has been since Aristotle wrote about logic.
>If I am correct that you are referring back to my response to Justin here,
>let me say that induction too is a form of logic. One of the first subjects
>in a logic course is the different forms of logic; the notion that logic can
>be reduced to the one form of deductive syllogism is, my friend, quite
>fallacious. We use inductive reasoning (generalizing) all the time; when one
>does a representative survey of a universe, we assume by inductive reasoning
>that the results are reflective of the entire universe. The logic behind
>demanding that scientific experiments be duplicated involves, among other
>things, inductive reasoning. There are ways to refute analogies and inductive
>reasoning; pointing out that they are not deductive reasoning is hardly one!
>It is just an avoidance of the argument which has been made. (This
>fetishization of deductive syllogisms rests, I  believe, on the false premise
>that they can entirely separated from rhetoric, while analogy {sounds
>dangerously like metaphor} is more suspect.)

Ah, yes, the argument from authority. Scratch any "anti-authoritarian"
social scientist and out it pops. And why? Because to conduct an argument
requires appeal to some authority, and if you deny the complete authority
of reason and of empirical test, and suchlike things, you must introduce
the authority of people. At least you aren't ashamed to go right to the
best source and, along with the Scholastics, say, "Aristotle dixit."

I don't find it hard to believe at all that in every first course in logic
of the kind you mean there is something incorrect. The first course in
logic I took, however, concentrated on the predicate calculus and didn't
bother mentioning that an excellent way of reasoning was to find some
obscure fact about some long-dead famous person's oeuvre that could
possibly be made to seem similar to the subject of discussion if you
strained hard enough.

Induction is, strictly speaking, not quite valid, and cannot be used if one
wishes to ascertain absolute truth. Fortunately, no one on the list but the
Catholics and the Stalinists is interested in that, so we can use induction
as one of our chief modes of reasoning -- although care must be exercised
that is not needed with deduction, such as choosing representative samples,
inter alia. Analogy, on the other hand, is about the best method there is
for achieving absurdity. I can make an analogy between any two things (or
could if I was perhaps a hair's-breadth more creative than I am). Analogy
has as much place in reasoning as final cause does in analyzing causation.
If you disagree on that, your time might be more profitably spent figuring
out how many angels can stand on the head of a pin. Analogy is *at best* a
useful heuristic device, and, even in that capacity, misleads more often
than it enlightens, unless one is very careful.

>The relevance of Hobbes is thus: if he was one of the first to expound a
>particular style of argument with a particular conception of logic, and if
>this modern conception of logic became the basis for the idea of Reason in
>western thought (most especially the Enlightenment), and if he continues to
>be the model for a great deal of the work in the field (rational choice
>theorists love him, and are one of the most prominent schools of
>interpretation of him), then there is insight to be gained from a close study
>of his texts. I don't think this is such a hard thing to see: it would be no
>different than the reasons why a historian/philosopher of science would go
>back to study the work of Newton or Einstein.

This doesn't follow. Let me give you an example from science, just to show
you I'm not biased. It seems that Galileo, at least at times, didn't
understand Galilean relativity. In response to what he called Kepler's
"mystical" view that tides were somehow related to the moon, he put forth
the suggestion that perhaps they were simply sloshing of water because of
the earth's motion. Anyone who actually understands what is being taught in
freshman physics knows by the end of the first week that this is
impossible. Now, Galileo's opinion on Galilean relativity is of the most
profound irrelevance to anything. Because I like to use reason and Hobbes
was one of the prophets of reason doesn't mean that his attitudes toward
the importance of myth are something I should take into account. Many
people would go along with Descartes's cogito without agreeing with or even
caring that he used that merely as a starting point to "prove" the
existence of God.

Leo, I agree with you that this discussion requires some substantive base
to start with instead of some ultimately self-referential criticism and
counter-criticism. You have tried to do so, although what you wrote was, in
my opinion, far too diffuse and hardly to the point. I suppose it's
incumbent on someone else to take the next step.

Rahul

On reading this over, I find I've said some things you might possibly
construe as insulting. I still want to keep them, but, in my typical
passive-aggressive way, let me apologize for them now.




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