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Additions of The Map Is Indestructible (Part II)
Further Thoughts, Points, and Reflections on Featured Essays
Defining Evidence
On Description
1. If we are Liberal, we are likely to think that an article about Trump voters that doesn’t refer to them as “bigoted” is dishonest and propaganda, as Conservatives are likely to think the opposite. When Liberals use the word “bigot,” it seems to me they often mean something that falls in line with the thinking of Berger: a bigot is someone who reacts against socioeconomic changes and the loss of “givens” in a manner that tries to preserve those “givens,” contributing to the exclusion of minorities and/or those who don’t ascribe to those “givens.” And indeed, this is a kind of bigotry, seeing as societal “givens” in America favor white Christians, and so to preserve them can be to preserve what benefits whites more than other minorities. And yet Conservatives are likely not to agree with the definition of “bigotry,” and so rationally (relative to what they think is true) disagree with the description as “Liberal political correctness” or the like (so the same goes if Conservatives describe Liberals as “anti-American”). If Liberals don’t refer to Trump voters as “bigoted,” fellow Liberals may accuse them of being “dishonest” (“honesty” and “empathy” can conflict); if they do refer to Trump voters as “bigoted,” the Trump voters are likely to think the Liberals have no idea what they are talking about, and relative to Conservative descriptions of themselves, this is indeed the case; however, relative to Liberal definitions of “bigotry,” this is indeed not the case.
I’ve never met people who didn’t agree that it was important to be honest and seek truth regardless “wherever it may lead,” but as “the problem of description” should make clear, such convictions alone aren’t enough and prone to contribute to tribalism. We might always follow truth, but truth might always follow our description first.
2. “The problem of description” might also help us understand why so many debates ultimately become “emphasis debates” (for good and for bad), about if x is “more so y than z” though x is ultimately both. For Liberals, though Trump voters are concerned about employment, they are more so concerned about cultural changes, and hence it is accurate to say “Trump voters are racists,” which is to say to emphasize the racism. Conservatives may not deny that some Trump votes are racists, but argue that the statement, “Trump voters are racists,” creates the impression that all Trump voters are racists — the emphasis leads to misunderstanding.
When describing something, it may very well prove impossible to not be susceptible to accusations of emphasizing x over y: the nature of spacetime and causality is such that I can only discuss one thing at a time and that I must discuss things in some order, and this being the case, it seems I can always be accused of “emphasizing x too much” over y since I discussed x first instead of y (and hence implied x is “more relevant”). Furthermore, since humans are naturally ideological and prone to confirmation bias, readers who are more on the side of y are likely to (unconsciously) believe I am against y because I mentioned x first or because I have discussed/mentioned x without mentioning y. This in mind, I believe we need to be careful before critiquing an argument on grounds of “emphasis” and disregarding a thinker because of his or her emphasis. There doesn’t seem to be an agreed upon standard on what constitutes “emphasizing x too much” and/or “too little” anyway, and once we step into this territory, it seems very difficult to escape it (perhaps hindering more useful discussion).
But at the end of the day, perhaps “it’s emphasis all the way down”: perhaps emphasis is to what all disagreements ultimately come down? Perhaps, but I believe this conclusion must be “earned” every debate and discussion, not immediately brought up. If ultimately “the problem of emphasis” cannot be avoided, perhaps awareness of this inevitability will at least help us mitigate the problem and maintain more fruitful discussion.
3. If two Christians have been persecuted in America (for whatever reason), then the statement “Christians in America are persecuted” would be true, and yet LGBTs who have been persecuted would perhaps take offense; for them, Christians in America aren’t really persecuted like LGBTs are, so much so that the statement “Christians in America are persecuted” is false (in the sense that the statement implies too much, that it implies equality with LGBTs in persecution). But the true statement isn’t “Christians are persecuted equally with LGBTs in America,” only “Christians are persecuted in America,” and so we highlight a problem with language and description that I believe is very consequential for our internet age. The true might not be “the true,” per se.
If I am Christian and believe it is wrong for Christians to be forced to serve LGBTs for their wedding and a court so forces two Christians, I could believe that it is objectively true that Christians are persecuted in America. If I post this on Facebook (“Christians are being persecuted in America”) and someone lashes out at me, this could function to me as evidence that this person isn’t informed of the facts or is in denial of them. I have not (at this point) claimed LGBTs aren’t persecuted, only that Christians are persecuted for their beliefs, and the fact a person lashes out to me can function as evidence that indeed, Christians are under attack. Would I be wrong? Perhaps, perhaps not, and regardless though it might be the case that Christians aren’t persecuted as much (quantity and/or quality) as are black, Muslim LGBTs, it would not follow that the persecution of a given Christian isn’t worse than the persecution of a given black, Muslim LGBT, meaning there is always “rational space” for someone to post something on Facebook that ignites a firestorm, a firestorm which could function as evidence to each tribe that their tribe is indeed right and under attack. This in mind, a “true description” can nevertheless be “a true-yet-incomplete description,” and failure to recognize this is likely to contribute to tribalism in our Pluralistic Age. The fact something is true isn’t necessarily enough (and yet can any truth be utterly complete?).
4. It is rare to find writing that doesn’t prime us to interpret presented data in one way versus another: much writing will use phrases like “the data shockingly shows” versus “the data shows,” “studies confirm” versus “studies find,” “the horrible rally happened” versus “the rally happened,” and so on. With these minor descriptions, regardless how accurate they might be, the writings can come to contribute to tribalism. Also, readers gradually come to learn to outsource interpreting the data presented in articles to the articles themselves. Not only does this fail to train us to critical think, but it also fails to train us to resist confirmation bias (especially confirmation bias that is subtle enough, only unveiled through descriptions, that we can genuinely believe we aren’t engaging in confirmation bias at all); we are especially likely to fail if we believe the descriptions contribute to “calling out” and stopping injustice, heresy, Communism, and so on: “just confirmation bias” is very difficult to stop (not that there is necessarily any other kind).
5. Not to say there aren’t other kinds of argumentation, but it seems to me that there exists “argument by logic” and “argument by description” (not to say both kinds of argumentations can’t be found in a single work). Description is argument: if I describe a cup so well that an undeniable image of it forms in your mind, and if you feel something toward the cup, I make the cup real to you. To describe something well is to make it difficult for people to deny that it exists, in the same way that if I present a well-constructed syllogism, I make it hard for others to not follow me to my conclusion. Of course, readers can deny my argument, as they can deny the validity of a moving description, but at a certain point, when the description is so vivid and the syllogism so undeniable, the objection becomes denial.
Take a book like Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates: what he describes is so vivid and emotionally impactful that the reality and truth of what he describes becomes hard to deny: Coates has made an “argument by description” that moves the reader to a new view, practically identical to a syllogism (and in fact, art might be the best if not the only way to move people between “internally consistent systems,” as discussed in The True Isn’t the Rational by O.G. Rose). Of course, a fantasy world can be described well (such as in The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien), as a beautifully crafted argument can turn out incomplete or wrong (take most philosophers and theologians): the point is that, like logic, description is a method of convincing people to change their minds.
Logic without description is incomplete and “unreal,” for we don’t live in a world that is merely logical, as we don’t live in a world that is merely experience: the two complete one another, always together. Good writing combines “argument by description” with “argument by logic,” and the best minds are aware that description is a such a powerful tool that they need to seriously examine their worldviews before directing people toward it, lest they unintentionally “describe people toward” falsity (perhaps worsening the very situation a writer describes for the sake of fixing). Humans tend to be more moved by description than mere logic, for as described in “The Heart/Mind Dialectic and the Phenomenology of View(s)” by O.G. Rose, humans are not primarily “heads on sticks,” but bodily, and so it is imperative that a master of description be deeply thoughtful and logical to make sure his or her skills are used to lead people in the right direction. Problematically, novelists can make enemies of philosophers as philosophers can downplay the role of novelists, weakening both.
Another way “argument by description” works is by presenting x so vividly that the reader is able to compare and contrast his or her experience of x, and if they “fit together,” the reader can feel that his or her experience (and his or her interpretation of that experience) has been validated. The experience is “supported,” like evidence “supports” an argument, and the more “support” an individual garners, the more reason that person has to “make the leap” and claim “x has been proven.” Similarly, like witnesses in a court case, if ten people all describe x similarly, we have reason to believe that x is indeed like they have described it, and the more people who come forward with similar descriptions, the more unlikely it is they are all making it up (especially if the describers have never interacted before, which can be increasingly hard to tell in our Internet Age). Eventually, enough subjective experiences are collected and compared that a threshold can be exceeded, and it becomes reasonable to believe “as described, x is true” (even if ultimately it is proven we were wrong about x, for “being right” and “being rational” aren’t necessarily the same). Likewise, eventually a novelist or essayist offers up enough descriptions and perspectives that a threshold is passed and it becomes “unreasonable” to think the writer is lying or completely wrong. (As a side note, in academia, I think there is also a kind of “argument by authoritative consensus”: eventually, enough experts say “x is true” that a threshold is passed and it becomes “unreasonable” to think “x is false.”)
To describe is to argue, and good description can be a good argument. No, describing a cup well doesn’t tell the reader what to do with the cup, but it might imply that the reader should fill it with liquid and drink. Description alone isn’t always instructive, but the same goes with logic: a syllogism proving “Socrates is a man” doesn’t tell me who Socrates was or if people have human rights. More work must done using all the tools we can find in the toolbox, but the point is that to fail to understand description as a method of argumentation is to make our work more difficult to complete.
5.1 To allude to “On Thinking and Perceiving” by O.G. Rose, “arguments by descriptions” seem to be more perceptive; “arguments by logic,” more thoughtful.
5.2 That all said, a distinction should be drawn between “argument by description” and “dismal by description,” the latter being more ad hominem and problematic. To say “that paper was reductive” — to describe a work as a way to dismiss it rather than deconstruct its argument — is not what I mean to highlight.
6. If you describe z as x and I describe z as y, identifying whose description is right would require determining if z = x or if z = y, which very well might be impossible.
7. To allude to “Monotheorism” by O.G. Rose, as people are tempted to create single theories by which the understand the cosmos, so “monodescriptions” have a powerful allure. It is tempting to say, “x is a rich country,” that “she is beautiful,” that “she is smart,” etc., and yet all these descriptions necessitate generalities that leave out valuable nuance and specifics. There is no country in which everyone is rich, no person who is smart at everything, and yet it is natural for us to think this way (except when asked directly). Monodescriptions are in many respects generalities, but they tend to be generalities that are not identified as generalities, making them more difficult to stop. This is because they are embedded in descriptions, not laid down as statements.
8. Personally, I try in my fiction to incorporate states of mind and philosophies of various characters, because not only do I feel that I don’t know someone unless I know how he or she thinks, but also because it is only in art that the mind can be conveyed in ways not possible elsewhere. I cannot “see” how a person thinks by traveling, though I can see London. In everyday life, I cannot “see” how a person thinks about London and how living in London impacts how a person thinks, but I can in art.
In my view, characters should express their first-person perspectives, both internally and externally (for that is indeed how we all live). Perhaps extroverts more so perceive than introverts, and since extroverts are the majority, perhaps this is why art has predominately become of “the school of perception.” However, introverts also need a place, and knowing how characters “live inside themselves” (often in conflict with the world) might help introverts relate to the work. Furthermore, the availability of this work might help us all develop empathy and help us relate to the internal worlds of others.
9. As C.S. Lewis warned in his Studies in Words (and as identified by William Wilson), it is natural for words that describe to become words that judge, threatening our capacity to see clearly. Gradually, as words like “proletariat” cease being a way to refer to the working class and instead also refers to an oppressed people (to offer an example), our capacity to identify is usurped by our capacity to judge, meaning we cease to do either well, for how can we judge what we cannot describe?
‘[T]he more a word becomes simply a means of reacting, Lewis argues, the greater is its semantic loss’; likewise, the more a word becomes a judgment, the less it helps us identify what is present, and thus the word suffers verbicide.¹ Now, in our present moment, ‘[o]ur likes and dislikes hold sway over an application of what something is or is like.’² ‘As Lewis says, we use [a] word [(like ‘psychopath’)] not to be accurate about the person we intend to injure. Rather, we use it to mean anything our adversary would least like to be called.’³
Words have power, but unfortunately that power is naturally and gradually perverted from “empowering us to behold the world” into “a power we use to make the world beholden to us.” When we try to rule the world, our words about the world fail us, and we practically become dumb and blind — but powerful, like a fool wielding bombs.
¹Allusion to “The Theological Implications of C.S. Lewis’ Studies in Words” by William Wilson.
²Allusion to “The Theological Implications of C.S. Lewis’ Studies in Words” by William Wilson.
³Allusion to “The Theological Implications of C.S. Lewis’ Studies in Words” by William Wilson.
10. Artists might often look for descriptions that “fit” reality like thinkers look for ideas that “match” actuality. To me, Tolstoy represents more of the describers; Dostoyevsky, more of the thinkers. While Tolstoy risks creating empty bodies, Dostoyevsky risks creating disembodied minds. Those who don’t long for descriptions that “fit” with reality might prefer Dostoyevsky, while others who don’t long to explore ideologies and ideas might prefer Tolstoy, who helps them see the world in which they believe. To those of one personality type, Tolstoy might not be “too new,” while for those of another personality it is Dostoyevsky who is “too new.” Those who have seen the world Tolstoy describes might find him “old”; those who don’t care to study existential tensions might find Dostoyevsky lacking in artistic skill. It is possible that our personality type forms our tastes and “objective” judgments of artists.
Some may read to “see”; others, to determine how what they “see” connects. Some may find a text too dense (as attempting to stuff too much into each sentence, not giving readers a chance to process) while others can find the same text engaging and not wasting time. As some may like opera because in not knowing the language there’s more room for imagination, some may like a lack of details in story, while others might dislike words they don’t understand, believing them poorly-formed. This in mind, since the experience of books changes based on personality type of the reader, it might not make sense to have a “greatest book of all time”-list, only “greatest book of all time for INTPs”-list, per se. That said, I don’t what to say that there is no such thing as artistic standards: I don’t believe art is entirely subjective. Rather, by recognizing that the experience of art itself changes based on personality, we might become better at exercising empathy and “seeing art through new eyes.”
The Phenomenology of (True) Ignorance
1. We often say, “Don’t just tell people what they want to hear,” but this assumes people are able to tell when they’re “telling people what they (don’t) want to hear.”
2. Our ideology presents us with (supposed) “evidence” that is only such “to us,” artfully hiding “the groundlessness” of our knowing — angst-causing true ignorance.
3. If we know we don’t know x, we know the x by which to compare our ignorance to, but if we don’t know we don’t know x, we don’t even know the standard to start grasping what we don’t know.
4. If we are incredibly informed about x and yet” truly ignorant” about y which proves x false, we are still incredibly informed.
5. Because there is “true ignorance,” we must always be careful to concentrate power: a large State or corporation will act out of “true ignorance” just as much as we do, but at least our ignorant actions cannot ruin countless lives.
6. It can be as if the mind wants to accept empty phrases as gospel.
7. “True ignorance” structures bias, prejudice, stereotypes, etc., and since there is no such thing as a human being who isn’t “truly ignorant” in some way(s), there will always be soil for bias, prejudice, stereotyping, etc. This doesn’t mean people shouldn’t try to stop being biased, prejudice, stereotyping, etc., but it might be better to focus on changing institutions than changing how people think, for most people who are prejudice are “truly ignorant” about their prejudice (though we aren’t “truly ignorant” about the prejudice of others). Focusing on institutions though may help us shape the directionality of our thinking, and that seems more fruitful than correcting all “true ignorance,” for there is always infinitely more we’re not thinking about than are, and thus always something else we can correct before we allow ourselves to consider progression.
8. It could be said that Socrates’ mission was to unveil to others their “true ignorance” while also revealing his own “true ignorance” to himself. Perhaps this is “true teaching”?
9. When we look at a book we haven’t read, we know we don’t know what’s in the book, but when we don’t look at a book we don’t know exists, we don’t know what we don’t know.
10. To allude to “On Responsibility” by O.G. Rose, how responsible are we for knowing about what we’re “truly ignorant”? If we don’t have someone in our life to make us aware of x and are truly ignorant about x, can it be said we are responsible for not knowing about x? The answer may vary between people, but if we’re not responsible, is someone else responsible for not enlightening us? On the other hand, if we know a person is totally ignorant about x, are we morally obligated to enlighten that person? And what does it matter if we’re totally ignorant about x unless we can change x for the better? But if we’re totally ignorant about x, we can’t know if x is something we can change for the better. And are there not books we can read to realize we’re totally ignorant? But if we’re totally ignorant, we don’t know which books we need to read. And so on — this question on responsibility might be one of the great questions.
11. As we are very bad at knowing what we sound like, so we are very bad at knowing how ignorant and/or objective we are, and as we can be shocked to hear a recording of our voice, so we can be shocked the rare times when we are forced to acknowledge our level of ignorance. And as our inability to identify our real voice is biological, so our inability to recognize our ignorance seems innate.
12. We all know we’re supposed to “check our sources,” but unfortunately we are usually “truly ignorant” about which sources we’ve checked and which we haven’t. On this point, “The Myth of the Woman Who Spilled McDonalds Coffee and Sued” could be a good case study.
13. How much we can think is relative to how much we don’t have to think about.
14. Waiting until we encounter something we don’t understand before reading books about it is like waiting until a fire to buy a fire extinguisher. And yet, since we don’t know what we don’t know until we encounter it, we can all be tragic clowns.
15. “True ignorance” has ramifications for the arts. A role of art is arguably to expose people to what they don’t know they need to experience, but this means there is likely little demand for this kind of art (because no one knows they need it). Hence, it isn’t marketable, and publishers will struggle to sell it, not necessarily because they think the work is bad, but because they run a business that could go under at any moment. This could contribute to culture lacking art which could awaken citizens to “higher ideals,” but no one is directly responsible: “true ignorance” is to blame.
In the past, where “consumer demand” perhaps wasn’t all-powerful and marketability less of a problem, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Goethe, and other great artists could force the world to experience what it didn’t know it needed to experience. According to Harold Bloom, Shakespeare made us “more human” in ways humanity didn’t know it needed. Today, it is questionable if history’s greatest playwright would even be published. The market controls what shapes culture, and what shapes culture today I fear isn’t that which we are “truly ignorant” about needing. Capitalism follows demand, and demand is made in the image and likeness of what we think we need: our only hope would be to expand our minds. (This all suggests a problem that perhaps only “intrinsic motivation” could overcome, that which happens regardless of demand.)
16. It is as if we are incapable of realizing that we are not skeptical of what we believe. We can consider this possibility but forget it amidst our everyday lives immediately thereafter. We can conceptually be skeptical of ourselves (maybe), but not practically each and every day. Practicality seems to necessarily self-delude us about our self-skepticism, as it necessarily seems to self-delude us about how seriously we will take this point (as Wittgenstein understood).
17. We necessarily think of a decision we disagree with as irrational and, to some extent, rational to negate and even ridicule.
18. What we know we don’t know is a small percentage of our total ignorance, the high majority of which consists of what we don’t know we don’t know. The ignorance we are aware of is much less than the ignorance which we can only experience as “knowing.”
19. It is not possible for anyone to look at “all the evidence” — that would take a thousand lifetimes — and yet we must all form an ideology as if we have (while not letting ourselves truly recognize that we haven’t). We must form an ideology as if we aren’t ignorant when we necessarily are incredibly “truly ignorant” (and this can help preserve ideology).
20. We oversimplify when we say, “People are oversimplifying it”: they, like us, are “truly ignorant.”
21. A man can say, “You don’t know what you don’t know,” and then immediately say something that he doesn’t know he doesn’t know (is false).
22. As it is easier to convince someone to change who has a bad motive versus no motive at all — all we have to do is make the person “turn inward” and recognize the evil of their intent, while if there is no motive, there’s nothing to see — so it is easier to make a person recognize their ignorance versus their “true ignorance” (and please note there is no such thing as a “bad motive,” in the end).
23. Knowing we are “truly ignorant” hopefully creates an existential tension within us that compels us into being more objective and critical of our own feeling that we are objective, but if this is lacking and we are “truly ignorant” of this lack, perhaps not.
24. When saying x and about to say y — while truly ignorant about topic y — we will feel about y what we feel about x: nothing or intelligence. When we are about to say something about which we are “truly ignorant,” we don’t know it at all: no sign pops up in the sky to warn us. We speak. Yes, if we knew that what we were about to say wasn’t true, we might very well silence ourselves, trying to be intellectually honest, but “truly ignorant,” alas, we speak on. This “phenomenology of speaking” doesn’t bode well for Habermasian democracy, and it could be a major threat to liberal democracy.
25. Education lessens ignorance, but it may increase “true ignorance” by contributing to our failure to grasp the profound extent to which we are “truly ignorant.” When we know we are educated, we might be more likely to interpret the feeling of “true ignorance” (which is necessarily “as knowing”) as a sign that we understand, precisely because we are educated.
26. If we believe in x, we must think (at least unconsciously) that a person who doesn’t believe in x “isn’t objective,” for we necessarily experience our subjectivity as “objective” (enough), and hence experience believing in x as “objective” (enough) by extension (and yet our “true ignorance” is unfathomably extensive).
27. It can seem sometimes that what we are “truly ignorant” about is designed by us around what will preserve our ideology. If not intentional, it just seems to happen naturally, because of how life is: for example, it seems likely that our ideology will reflect our environment, and our environment naturally keeps out that which would make us question our ideology without us realizing it. Just because of how life is, it seems we can end up being “truly ignorant” about what threatens our ideology.
28. People naturally think a lot less for themselves than their ideologies will allow them to realize. People are naturally much more ideological than their ideologies will allow them to know.
29. We rarely experience a claim we are about to make as “unsubstantiated”; otherwise, unless intellectually dishonest, we wouldn’t make it. We naturally experience what we are saying as “backed”: we remember “reading this there” and “hearing this there” that supports us. And if someone asks us to substantiate our claim, though we may fail, we can still feel that there is an explanation “somewhere out there,” lurking in the back of our minds (our memory failing us). We just “know” what we’re saying is true: we necessarily experience what we say as such and are necessarily “truly ignorant” about how much we say that lacks substance.
We rarely realize how many of our claims are unsubstantiated, but we can notice quickly when the claims of others are unsubstantiated. In truth, virtually every claim is “unsubstantiated,” because ultimately everything we know is grounded in uncertainty and relies on authority (see “Ludwig” and “The Authority Circle,” both by O.G. Rose); when we say, “x is unsubstantiated,” we ultimately mean “x is less substantiated than acceptable.” I’ve never seen Pluto with my own eyes, so I can’t actually substantiate the claim “Pluto is real” without trusting in authorities who could be lying: much of what I call “proof” (“that which substantiates”) is that which I myself couldn’t substantiate (without authority). Ultimately, considering all this, we often call “unsubstantiated” that which we don’t want to be true, all while we ourselves believe lots of things that aren’t substantiated that we necessarily experience as “substantiated.”
As we experience “being wrong” as “being right” in ourselves, we experience “the unsubstantiated” as “the substantiated”: we experience ourselves in the best possible light, comically and especially when we are trying to be objective about ourselves and to “know ourselves,” as Socrates (ironically) employs of us.
30. If only we knew when we were misrepresenting, generalizing, stereotyping, etc. but tragically we naturally experience a (false) portrayal of x as accurate. Considering this, educational efforts to stop these misrepresentations are unlikely to succeed, because the way we experience ourselves leads us into thinking that these efforts never apply to us, only others (helping us preserve ideology, suggesting that education can actually do more harm than good). Furthermore, “truly ignorant” about when we mispresent, the way we experience reality can keep us from recognizing the times when we need to put these lessons into practice. At best, it seems education can inform us that “we are truly ignorant of the times when we misrepresent x” and then hope that this lesson makes us more self-skeptical and open.
31. Since it is the nature of thought to “grasp” whatever it experiences, it is the nature of thought to support “confirmation bias” (which is only worsened by the reality that we can only hold one “case” within us at a time, as discussed in “Self-Delusion, the Toward-ness of Evidence, and the Paradox of Judgment” by O.G. Rose). It could almost be said that thought is “confirmation bias.”
32. What we know is true is what we’ll naturally stop thinking about, and seeing as not everything we know is true is in fact true, we’re naturally helpless, thoughtless, and/or paranoid. There is strangely an absurdity to thinking about what we “know” is true, and out of all we “know” is true, how could we have any sense of what we should rethink versus accept? Will not everything we “know” feel the same? And if we open this “Pandora’s Box,” how could we live without ending up like how Martha Nussbaum describes Euripides’s Hecuba: unable to trust anything, unable to avoid becoming an animal? Perhaps this is a fate we (those who rely on trust and who are fooled by it) all must eventually suffer: “the legitimization crisis” (Habermas) and similar phenomena are symptoms of destiny.
33. If x is caused by y, I’m not prohibited by the nature of reality from saying “z caused x.” I have freedom, after all, and how can I ever be sure that x is caused by y and that I’m not identifying an erroneous line of causality? If I claim incorrectly that “Republican extremism is due to the failure of the Welfare State,” how can I be sure that I’m wrong? “Truly ignorant” and in a world that doesn’t keep us from saying what is false as true, I can utter what is false as truth, and then arguably no one can disprove what I say (there is always room for uncertainty).
34. If we are told “You know very little,” we do not then and there experience how little we know (as we didn’t just now, or just now, or just now…), and considering “The Conflict of Mind” by O.G. Rose, epistemic responsibility would thus have us press on to experience for ourselves “how little we know,” unless that is it is epistemically responsible to listen to what others tell us and to not “think for ourselves,” which in some cases, it might be — though we may have to experience such a situation to know (which we didn’t just now, nor just now, nor just now…). Hence, epistemic responsibility may require people to journey to experience what they’ve known from the start — and for what? Something that cannot be shared?
The Heart/Mind Dialectic and the Phenomenology of View(s)
1. As argued in “The True Isn’t the Rational” by O.G. Rose, since “the map is indestructible” (which is to say any given ideology can be equally defended and rationalized within itself), whatever premise one emotionally selects is a premise that the mind will be able to defend (within the premise and its corresponding ideology). Whatever ideology the heart leads the mind to, the mind will be able to justify, all while the mind hides from itself the role and influence of the heart, so providing itself with an illusion of “objectivity” “from the top down and the bottom up” (which doesn’t bode well for ever ending “Culture Wars”).
2. “Ideas Are Not Experiences” argues how emotions toward x change as does the understanding of x through history, and how we fail to learn from history because we cannot learn to feel from history: we can only experience history in terms of our heart/mind, not the heart/mind of past people.
3. The Geist of Hegel is perhaps a “heart/mind”: the split between “heart and mind” has made Hegel harder to understand.
4. When a man steps on stage and begins singing beautifully, is it primarily a mental act by which we recognize this beauty, or is it primarily an emotional reaction to what we are experiencing? How do we recognize talent? It is seemingly both: we acknowledge both technique and the expression of that technique (“recognition” is a simultaneously mental and emotional act).
5. The heart and mind almost seem designed to self-deceive. We seem wired to be wrong, for we seem wired to be right.
6. As there is reason to think from Who Really Cares by Arthur Brooks, many Conservatives care about helping the poor, but, unlike Progressives, Conservatives often believe (rightly or wrongly) that the best way to help the downtrodden is to get government out of the way and reduce the size of the State. Yet when many hear the phrase “Conservatives care about the poor,” I will venture to say that people feel more cynical toward the sentiment than the statement, “Progressives care about the poor” (though perhaps not when we point this out to them, like just now), which is to say many trust Progressive intentions much more than of Conservatives. The same can be said about phrases like “Conservatives care about stopping racism, ending sexism, etc.”: we just naturally and effortlessly question the motives of the Conservative, while we seem naturally less skeptical of the Progressive (even though it’s possible that the Progressive could be using welfare to garner votes — though please note the mere suggestion of this possibility could cause backlash). Both could be genuine just as easily as both could be deceptive, but it would seem to me that the emotional/mental “benefit of the doubt” can often go to the Progressive (perhaps rightly or wrongly). Why?
It’s hard to say, but perhaps this is at least partially due to how the heart/mind is orientated toward “low order complexity” over “high order complexity” (to use a distinction from “Experiencing Thinking” by O.G. Rose). Humans tend to emotionally/mentally favor “low order complexity” (perhaps because we are more so “low order” creatures than “high order”), and since State action is “low order” while free market activity is “high order,” it seems to me those supporting State action naturally receive more emotional/mental agreement than those who support the action of dynamic systems.
Considering this, it would seem that those who support “low order”-solutions have a heart/mind advantage to those who support “high order”-solutions, regardless what works, suggesting perhaps that the State has an advantage contributing to its growth and power. So similarly those who favor “low order”-solutions in debate might have an advantage over those who favor the emergent and indirect.
7. If we disregard a loved one’s thoughts, we disregard a loved one’s heart (we never choose between these, only think/feel we do).
8. If we feel/think “toward” issue x, we won’t be motivated toward issue y, even though issue y might be more important. It is possible that our heart/mind directs us toward issues that aren’t as important as others, but since we are directed toward issue x, we can feel as if we are “interested in current events” and hence informed. Blinded by a feeling of being informed, we can be uninformed (though perhaps no one who is truly uniformed thinks they are uninformed).
9. Because the mind and heart are deeply linked, what strikes us as “worth thinking about” can be that which has an emotional draw, and if a society isn’t debating the idea, it will easily lack that emotional pull. This truth points to the importance of activism, for the activist tries to raise public awareness of an issue the public otherwise wouldn’t think about. The activist has the power to change what the public feels/thinks is “worth thinking about,” which means we should not be quick to assume activism doesn’t matter.
10. We must think of what we disagree with as “irrational” (for we wouldn’t think what we did if we thought it wasn’t “rational”), and yet in line with “The True Isn’t the Rational” by O.G. Rose, other people, according to different premises, are in fact rational relative to those premises. Hence, how we naturally experience “other views” can hide us from the rationality of those views, providing us with a sense of rationality and superiority.
11. Because we have “hearts/minds,” we don’t slip down logical “slippery slopes” as quickly as people might think (though that’s not to say we don’t eventually head down that slide). We experience the “slippery slope” more so as a “slippery hill”: thanks to our emotions and changing motivations, we can put our foot down and stop the descent (for a time, at least).
12. Considering that we have “hearts/minds,” Conservatives can have “bleeding hearts” just as much as can Liberals (“stone minds” are just as bad).
13. We often claim that “we can’t help what we feel,” but we might just as easily say “we can’t help what we rationalize.” The fact that both “what we feel” and “what we think” seem uncontrollable might suggest their intricate connection.
14. With the “Heart/Mind Dialectic,” so a “Mind/Body Dialectic.”
15. How we phenomenologically experience a topic is often more of what we debate than the topic itself; likewise, we seem shaped more by what we feel when we read than by what we read (perhaps it is thanks to “The Heart/Mind Dialectic” that Bloom is right that the history of literature is a history of misreading). This means we must be aware when we read, but at the same time not overly-aware, unless we fall into the errors discussed in “Paradoxes of Awareness.”
16. Zeitgeist influences what ideas we take seriously, and hence what ideas we are motivated to investigate. Because we investigate, we believe we are “critical thinkers,” but what we are motivated to investigate is relative to what other people are thinking about. Yes, our investigation is self-motivated, but rarely is what our investigation “of” self-motivated; in other words, our “self-motivated investigation” often takes place within an arena of the culture’s choosing. The investigation hides from us our lack of independence with an appearance of independence.
17. To be “objective” is to, in a sense, leave behind one’s own person to learn from “the object” (whatever that means). Objective/object-like, a person perhaps can “know” a thing, but the person cannot be “spoken to by it” without the presence of the observer’s self (which suggests a conflict of interest). The aim of art though is to “speak to you,” not simply to be “known by you,” and that requires “you.” And yet if “you” is too present, there will be no “thing” for “you” to speak through. We speak through what silences.
18. Our experience impacts what cases we investigate, which cases we take the time to debate, how many counter-examples we feel like creating, etc. — the “you” is ultimately more impactful than reason. To be objective, we must fight against the “you” which we require to have a world at all.
19. To emphasize, what we “feel” and “believe” changes what “stands out to us” as evidence for or against x, and this will enable us to feel objective about ourselves. The Liberal professor who denies tenure to a Conservative peer (for example) doesn’t think of his or her self as “ideological”: he or she just “sees” evidence that the professor shouldn’t receive tenure much more “vividly” than such evidence against a Liberal candidate. Not because the professor intends to be ideological, but because it’s as if the professor cannot help it — as Liberals might “just naturally feel” that this example I’ve written suggests bias (even after pointing this out, for “self-reference” is emotionally losing effectiveness after years of Postmodernism).
20. Does what we do change what we think more than what we think change what we do? Yes/no: we think/do.
21. If we read a paper about how we need to wear different glasses while wearing old ones, the very fact we successfully read the paper could be proof to us that the paper is wrong.
22. Like Augustine, I’m unsure how much knowledge can save us, and yet I must believe it at least improves the situation (comically/tragically). And yet we don’t tend to learn to (not) do something until we’ve experienced the consequences for doing that thing, for it is experience that impacts the “you” while ideas impact a “mind” that is an abstraction as a “thing by itself” (versus a “heart/mind”). And yet there might need to be knowledge ready to catch us so that we know when we “fall.”
23. If I say, “Men commit suicide more often than women,” women reading this sentence may wonder why I haven’t mentioned that women suffer more domestic abuse, and they may take as evidence the fact that I haven’t mentioned this truth as proof that I am disregarding what women have suffered: my view is incomplete and even sexist. But now men might be upset with me — I’ve failed to mention the sizable number of men who suffer domestic abuse — and conclude that I’m just reciting “feminist talking points” (my view in incomplete and even sexist). Who’s right and who’s wrong is not what interests me; rather, what I want to highlight is how we psychologically respond to what we are reading.
It is true that “men commit suicide more than women,” and it is true that “woman suffer more domestic abuse than men” (unless that has changed), but it is not true that no women at all commit suicide or that no men at all suffer domestic abuse. The truth is both, and yet I can’t say “men commit suicide more than women” and “women suffer more domestic abuse than men” at the same time, meaning the phrases must come out of my mouth in a particular order. In this way, the nature of spacetime itself sets me up to suggest a bias (a point elaborated on in “Spacetime Makes Sounding Dialectical and Balanced Really Hard” by O.G. Rose): the nature of language is such that we can’t help but come across as “emphasizing” this instead of that, suggesting we might be doomed.
(It would be interesting to know how much of our debates, conversations, etc. are ultimately just reactions to emphasis, emphasis which the nature of language makes impossible to avoid and toward which “the phenomenology of view(s)” makes us react poorly.)
24. Ideas and emotions both motivate, but ideas are weak motivators (as discussed in “Ideas Are Not Experiences” by O.G. Rose). Emotions naturally motivate and we are naturally motivated by them, both in what we do and what we think. Ideas motivate ideas and emotions much less than emotions motivate emotions and ideas, and in a conflict between emotions and ideas, emotions will probably feel like the winner (or else the right motivator). If emotions tended to be good motivators more than not, the human race might not be prone to error or in need of education (what we naturally did would, more so than not, be a good course of action). Ideas are needed to sanctify emotions: if truth is sacrificed for emotion, both are lost, but if emotion is sacrificed for truth, true emotion is gained. At the same time, an “unemotional truth” might be the truth of a rock.
Ideas are weak motivators while emotions are strong motivators. This can be good, for something like confidence is a weak pride (being truth-based), while arrogance is strong pride (being emotion-based). In being weak, confidence is good and helps establish healthy boundaries in relationships (for example), while its strong manifestation is prone to hurt relationships. Problematically though, it is easier to be motivated by arrogance than it is to be motivated by confidence, for arrogance feels more than does confidence, and hence is more likely to motivate than is confidence.
In conflicts, resolving them usually takes discernment and an understanding of truth, and usually conflict entail emotions. Problematically, those involved in the conflict will probably not feel like discerning as they will feel like fighting, being upset, etc., and so to fix a situation, one must work against the strong motivation of emotion with the weak motivation of truth and ideas. This is hard enough, but what’s then also very hard is getting others to listen to the truth that is discerned, for this truth will not motivate or feel as valid as the emotions. The longer the history of the conflict, the harder this will be.
Considering this, it is likely the majority will find themselves in conflict and unlikely to escape, and perhaps this points to why history repeats. It is unlikely the ideas of this paper will be easily remembered when a person is in the middle of an experience of an emotion (even with that meta-point said), and it is unlikely that this paper will motivate people as much as emotions. Ideas are naturally handicapped, and for our emotions to blossom well (not too one-sided), we must overcome them with what is weak in their presence.
Certainty Deterrence and Ideology Preservation
1. Considering “On Critical Thinking” by O.G. Rose, “critical thinking” is that which tries to consider not just a proposition but a “nest of propositions” (even though “critical thinking” may fail).
2. Wittgenstein writes in On Certainty that ‘when we first begin to believe anything, what we believe is not a single proposition, it is a whole system of propositions. (Light dawns gradually over the whole.)’¹ I think that this insight gives an explanation to the inquiry Thomas Sowell sought to answer in A Conflict of Visions. In that work, Sowell explores how it is that people who tend to agree on a few premises tend to agree on lots of them: he asks why it is that Conservatives and Liberals seem to have beliefs that come in “box sets.” In other words, Conservatives tend to have the same views on abortion, Capitalism, marriage, etc. — why don’t people have more of a “mixed bag” of beliefs (say favoring abortion yet against LGBT marriage and State intervention to fix the environment)? The reason, Sowell concludes, is because Liberals and Conservatives hold different fundamental axioms that lead (via “being rational”) to certain whole worldviews (for example: Conservatives might believe “being free” is the prime virtue, while Liberals might believe “being equal” is, and this fundamental axiom shapes how each thinks about a whole range of topics.) ‘Isn’t this altogether like the way one can instruct a child to believe in a God, or that none exists, and it will accordingly be able to produce apparently telling grounds for the one or the other?’² So it goes with Conservatism and Liberalism.
¹Wittgenstein, Ludwig. On Certainty. New York: First Harper Torchbook Edition, 1972: 21e.
²Wittgenstein, Ludwig. On Certainty. New York: First Harper Torchbook Edition, 1972: 16e.
3. According to David Hume, we can’t jump from “is” to “ought,” and as Wittgenstein suggests, perhaps neither can we jump from “believe” to “know.”
4. ‘Supposing it wasn’t true that the earth had already existed long before I was born — how should we imagine the mistake being discovered?’¹ It’s not clear if the mistake could be recognized “as a mistake,” and considering this, another way ideology can be preserved is by being situated around that which cannot be disproven or even proven — that which must just “be.” “Is-ness” might be an invincible defense against reason.
¹Wittgenstein, Ludwig. On Certainty. New York: First Harper Torchbook Edition, 1972: 39e.
5. In the “language game of philosophy,” common sense cannot be easily defended, but outside of it, common sense seems so undeniable that it doesn’t need a defense. It seems that common sense “vanishes” as soon as one considers it, in the same way that perception “vanishes” in thought (to allude to “On Thinking and Perceiving”). Perhaps it is this “vanishing” that made Wittgenstein concerned about our grasping of the role of “language games.”
6. Personality can function as does ideology, and what has been said about “languages games” and ideology preservation in this work might apply to “being INTP” (to use a category from Myers-Briggs) just as much as it can apply to “being Liberal.”
7. If humans are a result of an “un-rational evolutionary process,” can humans trust in their cognitive abilities (as C.S. Lewis and Alvin Plantinga discuss)? How can we be sure that consciousness accurately “grasps” the world? We cannot be, but using Popper’s falsification, we can at least create enough of a sense of certainty by which to live (even against some “Evil Demon” of Descartes).
8. Considering what has been said about certainty and deterrence, it could be said that what we are certain about is “held up from the side” (“intersuppositional”) rather than from “underneath” (“presuppositional”).
9. “Compelling” often seems a better standard against which to rate an argument compared to “certainty,” for absolute certainty is mostly impossible. There is a Humean gap between “compelling” and “certain,” and so a person can perhaps always find “space for doubt,” preserving ideology, but in such a way that people can genuinely make them believe that they aren’t persevering ideology (for to realize ideology needs protection is to acknowledge it isn’t invincible, which means it isn’t completely true, which works against ideology).
10. To combine Popper and Wittgenstein: we seem certain about what if falsified falsifies our entire ideology, and yet we require the possibility of falsification for our ideology to be “meaningful,” if for no other reason than to provide us a (perhaps self-deluding) sense of validity.
11. ‘The squirrel does not infer by induction that it is going to need stores next winter as well. And no more do we need a law of induction to justify our actions or our predictions.’¹ Once we accept a “being true,” what constitutes “being rational” can become instinctual to us, and what we accept as “being true” incubates (intellectual) habits and instincts. In a sense, rationality sinks beneath conscious thought, and yet isn’t rationality a mechanism of thought? Yes, but not the parameters in which that rationality operates and is framed. Consciousness (“being rational”) operates within “free range,” the fences being the subconscious (the “being true”).
¹Wittgenstein, Ludwig. On Certainty. New York: First Harper Torchbook Edition, 1972: 37e.
Intention
Incentives to Problem-Solve
1. When things are good, bad things might stand out; when things are bad, bad things might not stand out. And so it is precisely amongst goodness that “badness” might feel “the most bad,” suggesting why wealth and mental illness could correlate — why a “Rat Utopia” could follow from success (and why history might repeat).
2. A broken school system full of heroes could be a system that seems to “change more lives for the better” than a school system that isn’t broken and maintains a high quality of academic achievement. A system where kids make Bs from Cs could be a system that feels as if it “makes more of a difference” than one in which kids come in making As and leave making As. If we are not aware of this regarding impressions, the incentives we create could be problematic.
3. Metaphysical phenomenon can have physical causes, as physical phenomenon can have metaphysical causes. Phenomenon can be (meta)physical. Without the physical, there could be no recognition of the metaphysical, as without the metaphysical, the physical would be without recognition. And in the (meta)physical, the two are confused together.
4. Rationality driven by problem-solving over problem-prevention is a rationality that may drive us into problems we must always solve.
5. Evidence of our “observation prejudice” and how difficult it is to be “abstractly confident” could be glimpsed in how a scientist can say, “We don’t need philosophy,” and we respect his opinion, while we laugh if a philosopher suggests we don’t need science. Is it even imaginable that science is ignored? Probably not, though schools without philosophy seem widespread. But philosophy is at least partly to blame for its dismissal, because philosophy that problem-solves over problem-prevents will fail to make as strong of a case for its necessity alongside science compared to philosophy that problem-prevents over problem-solves.
6. Our prejudice against the metaphysical in favor of the physical is odd given that we are mostly surrounded by “(in)animate objects” like computers, which only exist because “conscious” humans invented them.
7. A person can use the word “reform” to mean “remove” as a person can use the word “remove” to mean “reform” — to determine what it is meant, “abstract discernment” is needed, which suggests a consequence of us being habituated against “abstract discernment” is the inability to discern the fluidity of words (“metalanguage”). If it is naturally for words to be used “more fluidly,” this would suggest a loss of “abstraction” could hurt relationships.
8. To use the language of “A is A” by O.G. Rose, what we experience as (an) “A is A” (physicality) can train us to not think of ourselves as (an) “ ‘A/(A-isn’t-A)’ is ‘A/(A-isn’t-A)’ (without B)” (“(meta)physical”). Furthermore, we are prone to forget we communicate and think via abstraction, and hence to forget the role of abstraction when considering problems and reality (as warned by Alfred Korzybski).
9. Regardless their validity, “emotional cases” will probably have an advantage over “non-emotional cases” when it comes to which cases people choose to “take up” (through their “you”), seeing as rationality follows after a case is “taken up.” This isn’t to say what is emotional is necessarily false, but that what is emotional will have a “vividness” other equally valid cases lack.
10. An exclusively empirical society that says, “We don’t have enough data,” is also a society that, once it decides to do something (such as to establish public education, ban drugs, etc.) — as picked through some “you” — will easily try “every possible version of it” before trying something “entirely new,” with each possible variation getting perhaps ten years of testing before anyone can speak “objectively” about it. And so reform will probably happen and keep happening indefinitely — “the first choice” is notably important in a world where we don’t or can’t look beyond the path we’re (already) on.
11. It is possible that the State is fundamentally “a problem-solving institution” versus “a problem-preventing institution,” precisely because people don’t tend to vote for people on issues that are yet to become, in fact, “issues.” Furthermore, the problems that politicians prevent are the problems that no one readily experiences to know they should vote for the politicians who prevented those problems. Perhaps citizens can “suppose” politicians did something good (though this confidence is experientially indivisible from delusion), but citizens don’t have to “suppose” the one who solves a problem did something beneficial for the country: “it’s a matter of fact.” Lastly, the State intervenes where force is needed — where the freedom of free exchange is inadequate — and it doesn’t seem as if “force is preventive” in nature as much as it is “solution-orientated.” I don’t mean to say the State can’t be a problem-preventer, only that it seems to me to be more orientated “toward” problem-solving.
12. A person who is perceived as not having preferences can be called “laid back,” as if “being without preferences” comes naturally to the person, while the stubborn person who expresses preferences and then overcomes those preferences can be thought of as “dying to self.” The one thought of as “laid back,” however, perhaps had to fight hard to not let his or her preferences get the best of him or her, but because the person does so well at being selfless, no one appreciates what the person has done: others don’t see anything happening. Hence, the problem-solver can be rewarded, while the problem-preventer goes overlooked.
A bias toward problem-solving over problem-preventing can also affect personal relationships. For example, someone is incentivized to be accommodating toward someone who gets upset when things aren’t the way the person likes (the incentive being “keeping the person happy”), while one is less incentivized to accommodate the person who doesn’t voice his or her preferences, but rather internally deals with them (introverts, for example, who might “silently cope,” may notice this bias toward extrovert “verbal coping”). This could create a bad incentive structure, where people are rewarded for not learning to deal with and overcome their preferences, while those who do are treated with less consideration. For the one who “internally copes,” no one sees the person struggling to overcome his or her wants and/or desires, and no one may realize the person fought this battle. However, people do see the person who voices or expresses his or her preferences overcoming them (assuming they are overcome), and so that person can come to be treated more nobly than the one who “internally copes” (at the very least, they can be acknowledged for trying). Gradually, this might lead to people not working to keep problems from becoming “problems,” but rather just solving problems once they arise. And this could be alright at least until one of those problems become unsolvable…
Similarly, we might be incentivized to be “Emotional Judgers” (as warned about in “Emotional Judgment” by O.G. Rose), to worry and fear (admonished in “Concerning Epistemology”), to always speak (discussed in “On Words and Determinism” and “Inception, Discrimination, and Freedom”), and other, detrimental tendencies.
13. To allude to the thought of “Scripted” by O.G. Rose, society might support preventive measures for which there is a “social script,” but gravitate toward problem-solving where there is no such script. The society favors exercise, because we as a collective consciously agree exercise is important; however, when it comes to other preventive measures, we aren’t so favorable. This isn’t to say “scripts” are bad, but it is to say that tools can be problematic because they work.
14. It is harder to identify problem-preventers to appreciate over problem-solvers.
15. Does “vividness” of problem x increase to a person as does that person’s feeling that he or she can solve problem x? Perhaps, but why does a person feel he or she can solve problem x instead of problem y? The very fact a person feels this way can in fact be a consequence of “vividness,” ever-intensifying the “vividness.”
16. If one person becomes passionate about a topic during a conversation with another person, the other person who doesn’t feel this passion might be off-put and confused by this emotional display, and, not experiencing the same “vividness” of the topic, conclude the person is becoming emotional because he or she lacks evidence for his or her case — evidence, by the way, that the person can’t “see,” not having taken up the case to “see” the world and evidence through, and so the person has reason to believe “objectively” that the person is becoming emotional because he or she lacks evidence. Someone who doesn’t feel the same “vividness” as another must be careful not to judge someone who is emotional as irrational, and at the same time, those who are passionate must be careful not to be upset at someone for not seeing what is “vivid” to them, a frustration that can be difficult to resist falling into, precisely because “the truth is so obvious” — seemingly.
17. Because of how we are rationally and empirically “walled off” in the “closed loops” (ideologies) we enter, we require people to “teach themselves” more than we “teach them,” for the change to a perhaps “more true” and new case (ideology and/or “being true”) has a higher likelihood of working through an internal change and conviction than “in the space between” people trying to change one another (and considering this, if a culture struggles to think well, it is unlikely it will ever come to do so). Arguably, all changes to a new case are ultimately an internal matter, even if externally stimulated.
18. The one who “problem prevents” is an individual who might not really allow evidence to come into existence verifying the problem exists. Unfortunately, this means it is possible for someone to claim he or she is “a problem-preventer” when the person actually isn’t, using the “negative space” to justify his or her self and the actions that individual wants to implement.
19. Just “the (phenomenological) way reality is” makes us orientated to problem-solve over problem-prevent — no one really is to blame.
20. “Physical prejudice” also contributes to procrastination: the further something is away, the harder it is to make it motivate us (we simply don’t “see” it).
21. “Vividness” is “toward” which “The Heart/Mind Dialectic” is naturally directed.
22. If a person really wants to believe “x is bad,” seeing as there is a gap between “compelling” and “certain,” that person can always find “space” and “doubt” by which the person can preserve his or her ideology, and do so in such a manner by which the person can genuinely make his or her self believe that he or she isn’t persevering his or her ideology (especially if the society allows the person to get away with that kind of reasoning, if not support it).
23. As “hard” empirical standards can threaten human dignity, it is also the case that completely discarding epistemological methods can also threaten human dignity, for without them, humans are susceptible to superstitions and untested ideas, and humanity will struggle to accumulate human knowledge and progress.
24. If there are say four problems in a country and the media focuses on one of them (which the media picks based on “vividness”), it is likely that I too will focus on that problem versus the other three. As a result, I will likely take up a “lens” through which to see the world and through which phenomena are made “toward” me as “evidence.” In light of the “vividness” of the evidence for the case I take up, evidence for the other three problems will likely be “over-shined,” per se, which is to say they will be much harder to see. That isn’t to say I won’t see them, but it is to say that if I do, their duller “vividness” probably won’t “draw me in” to “take up their case” as does the “vividness” of the case I’ve already taken up. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is important to point out that it is possible a person misses out on seeing a problem that should be addressed, due to already taking up a case, all while thinking he or she isn’t inactive and indifferent, precisely because the individual “sees” the problem he or she does see. Considering this, it should be noted that the media can control and/or influence the attention of the people and what they choose to problem-solve via “vividness,” not necessarily consciously, but by simply being what the media is as mostly that which is attracted to reporting on “the vivid” (no conspiracy required).
As to avoid self-delusion it should be noted how media can influence our focus onto what the media chooses (as “vivid”), so it should be noted how we can limit our thinking by taking up “macro-cases” versus “micro-cases.” What I mean by this is that humans seem to tend to take up an entire “Conservative case,” versus “a Conservative case on sexuality,” “a Conservative case on gun rights,” “a Conservative case on environmentalism” — one by one. We tend to “take up” a whole versus parts: we tend to “take up” one giant lens versus multiple lenses. This is why Liberals and Conservatives tend to not just disagree on one issue here and another there, but to disagree on most if not all the issues, as if all the issues were the same issue (as noted by Thomas Sowell in A Conflict of Visions). It seems that humans aren’t wired to take up several particular “cases” and/or “lenses” that they switch between; rather, humans seem primed to accept a single “macro-case” and/or “macro-lens” as if all smaller cases/lenses are one (evidence of a “gestalt nature”). This, I believe, makes us prone to error and “thoughtless” thinking (“thoughtless” in the sense of how Hannah Ardent uses the word), and also makes it difficult for Liberals and Conservatives, for example, to agree on anything, they dismissing one another entirely all at once, rather than one by one issue at a time.
Coda III
1. The professor who searches for reports providing evidence that college is still important could be like the coal miner searching for evidence that Global Warming isn’t real (though that isn’t to say they’re equally right): both are (naturally skeptical) of what threatens their way of life. But while the professor has a job that allows him or her to comb through data all day — identifying what’s valid and what’s not — the coal miner has much less timenergy (as David McKerracher discusses). All the same, the coal miner is likely to be dismissed by the professor for being uninformed and “closed minded.” The coal miner and the professor are similar in both being “deniers” (for having that natural, human impulse we all possess), but the coal miner’s “denial” is much less socially acceptable, and also the coal miner can be treated as much more biased than the professor because the coal miner is less informed (even though it’s much easier for the professor to be informed given his or her “privileged” environment). Neither is necessarily superior morally, and the coal miner might prove resentful. Map-vanishing then could contribute to extremism, backlash, fascism…
2. Is freedom possible without metanalysis? Or is overdetermination fate?
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