Reason from Rhetoric

If you’re interested in some of the best philosophical writing from undergraduate students around the world, check out Aporia: Brigham Young University’s undergraduate journal of philosophy.

http://aporia.byu.edu/site.php?id=current

This was the last issue I worked on as a student at BYU, and I’m grateful for all the help and support I received from students and faculty. In this issue, I particularly enjoyed articles by Shae McPhee and Alyssa Cirne.

I’m no longer the editor of the journal, but I’ll always be grateful for the experience.

The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.

 

I think most of us aspire to be wiser, but without the side effect, and seeming insecurity of doubt. But there just might be a causal relationship between the two. One way wisdom has been defined, (and just one way), is as the correct application of knowledge necessary in making or discerning a judgement. Usually the best judgments are made with the most information and thus, the more “moving parts” (assumptions, factors etc), added into a making a decision, the harder the decision process can be.

I had a friend tell me just yesterday that if she could have one super power it would be the ability to touch any book and instantly know all of its contents. I suggested to her that such a power might cause intellectual paralysis (a complete inability to make any decision) because she would suddenly be able to analyse an issue hundreds if not thousands of completely different ways. She speedily disagreed which I thought was ironic. Obviously to her, there was only one way to analyse my response. (Of course, if I was right, how could I be certain without verifying it a thousand ways?) But without an equally enlarged capacity for judgment, I think it would be analogous to attempting to install a 3000 pound jet engine into a Toyota Tercel; the car wouldn’t fly, rather the chassis would buckle under the pressure. And so, knowledge can be equally crippling. And if you don’t believe me, just head to your closest McDonald’s and watch how long it takes the fat guy with a fiver to form his highest possible caloried meal from that ever-expanding dollar menu. You might be there for a while.  (Unless of course he’s got a routine or a system, but then there’s no deciding involved,  just devouring).

But this probably isn’t what Russell meant. More and more I’m beginning to endorse the idea that the world doesn’t reward the most intelligent, moral, or innovative voices, but rather just the most persistent, loudest, and certainly the most confident ones. Without getting too specific, I have come to believe that there exist entire industries, even prominent and seemingly credible industries selling nothing but snake oil shrouded in confidence.

But that’s fine. We can all deal with fools trying to make a quick buck. You can mute the infomercials and fallacious media; you don’t have to drink the Kool-Aid (or Tahitian Noni) on gimmicky products. As oversimplified and condescending as this might sound, those individuals desiring only money, accolades, or fame are operating within a very few intellectual parameters about their own purpose in life anyway. And they grossly underestimate themselves and their true identity. (I suspect that given my friend’s osmotic-book-knowledge-absorption power, they might not know what to do, except touch books that only increase their “wisdom” in their own biases).

Fanatics, however, are a slightly different story; especially since their primarily methodology of convincing is done through coercion rather than persuasion. We see their products quite conspicuously. Terrorism. Violence. Oppression. But as devastating as the products are I’m inclined to believe that the perpetual teaching of an ideology or philosophy, the intellectual terrorism that drives violent behavior is equally, if not more sinister. What’s more immoral, killing an innocent person, or giving  an innocent child a reason to kill in the first place? I’ve wondered. (Obviously, I’m speaking primarily of religious extremism, militant theocracies etc.) The only consolation with these fanatics is that you can usually see them coming. At least if you’re lucky enough to have been born on this side of the Atlantic.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that there is another sort of intellectual attack  plaguing our generation, especially among the affluent. It is far less conspicuous which is what makes it dangerous. Enter the hipsters. Enter calculated apathy. Enter an entire generation attempting to find form in nebulae; identity in collusion, social advantage in unspoken games of one-up-man-ship. And trying to pass it off so nonchalantly; working so hard to appear not working.

From time to time, I like to go through my email inbox and purge myself of old ideas and perspectives. Sometimes I search by a key word, other times I search by individual’s email address. I find this ritual to be tremendously psychologically beneficial when I need a firm course correction. I also find valuable conversations I want to keep. Recently I found a letter I wrote last summer to a very dear friend. It better explains what I mean when I speak of hipster nonsense.

So [Mary Jane], (name has been changed).

I got on the metro this morning, and I couldn’t help but think of this poem by William Wordsworth [Phantom of Delight]. Though its among my favorite, it certainly isn’t among Wordsworths’ better known works. History seems to have remembered “The Dafodils” and obviously “Ode to the Imitations of Immortality” and “Tintern Abbey” but its almost as if this particular poem has been locked away. I have tried bringing it up in some of my classes, but it seems as though we as students of poetry are determined to forget about it and I don’t know why. So many people in the literary world want to see poetry reemerge as an overt artistic medium to compete again with music, novels, even television. Such mediums can be so blatently obvious, uni-dimensional and starved for validation and so I’m not sure I agree, (though I enjoy the purpose they serve). But perhaps poetry is meant to be a private pleasure, loved only individiually like a handwritten note or an intimate secret. Maybe thats grossly elitist, as if [we're only] enjoying it,  [because] we delude ourselves [into] thinking we’re taking the intellectual or artistic high-ground. Maybe in so doing, we imitate the new-age “hipster”–stereotyped as the man desiring nothing more than to be abstract and aloof in developing his craft; seeking to be misunderstood while alive, in the hopes he will die a tragic, penniless genius and later be immortalized and canonized. Though such authentic individuals have existed I don’t believe they ever desired these outcomes. 

I believe brilliant men and women, consumed by their own genius have sought to develop their respective abilities (music, art, poetry etc.) as an outlet; the means of coping with an imbalanced view-point that seems to perpetually accompany all genius.

I wonder now if petty insecure people (and I certainly don’t exclude myself in this group from time to time) consumed with a superficially imbalanced view-point seek to produce counterfeit works of so-called genius hoping that in the end, when they die tragically and penniless, they will have some excuse for their of thoughtlessness, and blame their hollow works on a world that just “wasn’t ready” for their shallow ideas. 

This petty and decidedly misunderstood man is the modern man, our so-called “hipster” who has more luxury than ever to worry about appearances. And left to his own design, he will bring virtually nothing tangible to the table of society, except stylish apathy. And what he lacks in work-ethic, he makes up for in excuses.

Finally, for those who are so far “underground” that they can’t even feign faux nonchalant genius, there’s plenty of trendy minutia, fragmented philosophies and causes to get lost in. The following clip relays what I mean.

With all the foolishness, fanaticism and hipster nonsense going around, I’m actually a little surprised Russell felt full of doubts. It seems so clear to me how absurd some of these modern ideas are. But then perhaps that confidence makes me exactly the kind of fool Russell was talking about.  More to the point, I imagine his doubt wasn’t in the ridiculousness of the trends or ideas of his day, but of much more consequential things. I suppose his reverence for original, clairvoyant thought and passion for human advancement is why is he among the greatest philosophers, logicians, and mathematicians of all time.

Perhaps its time for fools and fanatics to hold their tongues. Perhaps taking the time to acknowledge these trivialities makes you no more than a fool in the first place. And perhaps those wiser minds ought to speak up, doubts notwithstanding. I have several such readers that I consider among those wiser minds and you’re proverbially sitting on a winning lottery ticket. So when you see unbridled, ignorant confidence, speak up. You don’t just owe it to yourself. You owe it to me.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNEjsxIEI-Y&w=560&h=315]

The following is an old post from a discontinued personal blog:

I had something of an apparition during my last Metaphysics class of the semester back in April. Class ended and I found myself confronted with a scene that kept playing over and over again in my mind. Typically, when that happens, I try to make time to write it all down. I then sent it to a friend, to get his opinion since he’s the only real serious writer I know and since he’s currently studying at a top film school. He said he “loved it” it and told me might “pilfer” from it for future scripts. I considered that high praise since I don’t really write this kind of stuff normally.

*****

[Scene: Two longtime friends in their late twenties-early thirties, Cal and Brian sitting eating at a food court at Bellevue Mall, in Seattle WA, or similar upper-class shopping mall in a region of coastal America; Brian [MBTI: ISFJ], an idealistic yet logical and pragmatic associate professor at a local University and Cal [ENTJ], a ‘hot-shot’ venture capitalist. Cal has just come from buying an expensive suit for a new promotion. Brian is absolutely appalled that Cal would be so reckless with his money].

Brian: “You cannot possibly justify a $2000 suit.”

Cal: [Looking nonplussed] “Of course I’m justified.”

Brian: “Let me rephrase that. You don’t need a $2000 suit.”

Cal: “Of course I don’t need it, but what on earth does that have to do with being justified?” [Cal makes a self-satisfied look].

Brian: [Pausing incredulously, attempting to comprehend] “Sometimes I don’t get you, Cal. You have this smug belief that you’ve got it all figured out, and yet when I talk to you, I find all these gaps in your plan for ‘World Domination’ or whatever you think you’re doing here. Like paying next month’s rent for example, instead of buying a $2000 suit. Your problem is you’re deluded. Your self-assurance is your own delusion.”

Cal: “Really? I’m deluded?” [Cal gives a look of slight amusement]

Brian: “Yes, I think you are.”

Cal: “Look around for a second. I want you to count the number of people wearing headphones.”

Brian: “I don’t see—”

Cal: “Just look!”

Brian: [Looks around in the immediate area, then looks behind him] “Ok, so maybe a third of the people.”

Cal: “A third? Look again, it’s nearly half.”

Brian: “Whatever, So what?”

Cal: “So what? [Cal makes an incredulous gasp] Ok, at your 9 o’clock, don’t stare, Subtlety, Man! Ok. The Hispanic family?

Brian: “I see them.”

Cal: “The baby in the high chair?”

Brian: “Ya.”

Cal: “You see how he’s reaching?”

Brian: “For his Dad? Ya.”

Cal: “I didn’t say anything about the Father.” [Cal says carefully]

Brian: “Well he’s obviously—“

Cal: “Forget the Dad. This is the universe.”

Brian: “I’m pretty sure that’s a baby.” [Brian looks amused]

Cal: “You know, it’s bad enough I’ve got to sit here smelling those boiled scallops. Who orders boiled scallops? And now you’re calling me deluded without any substantiation. I’m going to defend myself and you’re going to learn something. Now look!”

Brian: “What’s wrong with my—” [Brian, getting offended, looks down at his plate of seafood]

Cal: “LOOK AT THE BABY!”

Brian: [Sigh] “Yes, yes, the baby, the baby. The little guy wants a French fry. And look, Daddy’s got one for him. Fascinating, but it would probably be more meaningful if Dad was wearing a $2000 suit, huh?” [Brian gives a self-assured smile]

[At the adjacent table: Father talking on his cell phone, puts a French fry in the mouth of the baby with his free hand. The outstretched hand of the baby lowers as he eats. The baby looks around, as if to contemplate something.]

Cal: [Condescending smirk] “You’re a funny guy. No, really you are. Ok right behind me sitting in the booth, the teenage couple.”

Brian: “The Asian girl in the booty shorts?”

Cal: “With the—”

Brian: “Ya, lanky white trash kid in the wife beater.”

Cal: “Right. How old do you think she is?”

Brian: “14-15”

Cal: “And him?”

Brian: “I don’t know 18-19.”

Cal: “Right. Brian, this is the universe. Case closed.”

Brian: “Seriously, that’s your defense?”

Cal: “Do I really need to explain myself?”

Brian: “Are you kidding?”

Cal: “Are you?”[Cal pauses, squints at Brian then sighs] “Look around Brian! Open your eyes! What kind of prospects do you think Booty Shorts has? You think she’s even aware that’s she heading down a path with that stoner?”

Brian: “This has nothing to do with—”

Cal: “The headphones. You think these people are listening to Milton or Tolstoy? You think they’re concerning themselves with foreign issues beyond myopic sound bites and bastardized political philosophy? Do you think they’re learning about commercial real-estate or how to create passive income so they don’t live their whole lives paycheck to paycheck? Do you think they’re learning how to protect their children from bloated government or scam artists?”

Brian: “That has absolutely no bearing on—”

Cal: “Because they’re not, Brian, they’re not. [Cal briefly pauses] How fortunate for leaders that men do not think.”

Brian: “Wait, who said that?”

Cal: “Adolf.”

Brian: “Hitler?”

Cal: “Ya.”

Brian: “No. Ok? No. You’re not doing that. [Points a stern finger as if to stop conversation] Don’t do that.”

Cal: “What?”

Brian: “Call him Adolf.”

Cal: “Why?”

Brian: “That’s weird. Don’t do that.”

Cal: “Why?”

Brian: “Because I don’t like the thought that my best friend since junior high is on a first name basis with Satan’s little brother. Because if that’s the case, I don’t like the prospect of being one degree of separation from that man.”

Cal: “I’m on a first name basis with all the Charismatics.”

Brian: “You know what? I think its megalomania. Seriously, listen to yourself. That’s what you are. You’re beyond delusional. You’re an actual megalomaniac.”

Cal: “Look at the baby, Brian.”

Brian: “THAT DOESN’T MEAN ANYTHING!”

Cal: [Authoritatively] “Look! You sit there and see a child reaching toward his Father; reaching towards a French fry. I see the microcosm for the human condition. That child is exerting all of his mental and physical faculties towards his own advancement; his survival; his ennoblement. He is more mentally and emotionally focused on that activity than you or I have been on anything we’ve attempted in years. And look at his reward. Look at the carelessness of his father. It is only the curse of that poor baby’s circumstance, that in his greatest yearning, the universe is teaching him to choke down a French fry.”

Brian: “You’re unbelievable—”

Cal: “And you’re not listening. This child is being subdued when he could be groomed for greatness, for kinghood. He’s being taught right now, that at his very best, with all of his skills and abilities, the best he’s going to get is grease.”

Brian: “You can’t possibly—“

Cal: “Let me finish. The fact is, by the time he reaches his twelfth birthday, his passions will most likely be so subdued, his ideas so diluted, and his personal expectations so low, he will be nearly unrecognizable from his true identity. In fact, we may never know who this little kid really is. Just look around. Look at our generation. We read nonsensical teen fiction about vampires and call it literature. There are high functioning human beings, our same age, who are serenaded and who genuinely and deeply empathize with the unintelligible music lyrics of Katy Perry and Justin Bieber. We truncate all wisdom to 140 characters on Twitter. The amount of ignorant self-indulgence in this country is stifling. We are a nation of emotional and intellectual gluttons, and I’m the one that’s deluded?”

Brian: “That has no bearing on your wasting money on a suit. And besides, everyone is entitled to their own opinions.”

Cal: “And that’s exactly it. We have this belief that people are all entitled to their opinions. Where did we get this idea?! People are not entitled to their opinions! You have to work for your opinions! You have to pay the price for your opinions! You think Picasso created ugly paintings? Do you really know enough about the context of what you’re talking about? Do you really know enough about his work, or 20^th century Cubism, or about art in general? Simply having a brain doesn’t give you permission to speak on its behalf, especially without consulting it first!”

Brian: “And—”

Cal: “AND, what you see as smug self-assurance is just self-awareness. I know about the gluttons. I wake up every morning knowing that the majority of the people I run into are doing their very best not to think; to reason; to dream; to muse. I bank on these imbeciles, and you know what? They bank on me.”

Brian: “But people still have the personal legal freedom to express whatever they want whether it’s thoughtful or not. And you can’t take that away from them!”

Cal: “Of course. They’re also free to order boiled scallops [Cal looks down at Brian’s plate in disgust], or to try clean their clothing in a toilet or take politicians at their word. But they can’t pretend that those activities will ever make any sense.”

Brian: “Again with my food…”

Cal: “So when I go out and buy a $2000 suit it’s not egoistic or impulsive. Its calculated. There are over 100 clients at this firm who each have investments greater than $10 Mill. They need me in that suit. They need symbols of vitality and security. And so does my staff. Their peace of mind is measured by the stiffness of my lapels and the crease in my pants. I do it because our generation has decreed it. We as a society have determined that this suit means that after you go home at night, there will be a hot meal waiting for you, and everything will be ok.”

Brian: “The cynicism of your world is just…unbelievable. And what about the baby then? Is his future pre-determined?”

Cal: [Pauses] “Probably.”

Brian: “You know, your notions of fatalism will be your undoing.”

Cal: “And your misplaced idealism will be yours.”

Brian: “What about having a free will and subscribing to principles that create success? Like the kind of success you’ve had at this firm?”

Cal: “What about it?”

Brian: “Humanity is still vibrant. It’s still real. People are caring and kind, perhaps more so now than ever. We still have our principles.”

Cal: “HA! Principles!? People don’t have principles. Principles require thinking. At best people have incomplete proverbs. More often they rely on bumper-sticker aphorisms.”

Brian: “I pity you, Cal.”

Cal: [Smirking, looking down at the scallops] “I pity your stomach.”

I have an Apple iPhone 4s which means I have the artificial intelligence feature Siri on my phone. But sometimes for whatever reason Siri activates in my pocket, or I press something accidently that causes Siri to record some of my conversations (quite often  misunderstanding words). Sometimes it goes to a text message or a random notepad. Almost 2 years ago now, I took a poetry class that was taught by nationally recognized poet who tried for the first time to open me up to Modern and Post-Modern poetry. I admit, I found some interesting writing, but I’m very particular when it comes to that era of poetry. In fact sometimes I think it doesn’t sound like anything at all. Sometimes Siri does a great impression of Post-Modern poetry. So well in fact, I’ve saved some of her transcriptions ( in chronological order over the past 6 months) on my phone and complied them into a poem that I think shines light on the absurdity of Post-Modern poetry (or maybe the remarkable insight of Siri). i.e. I’m essentially arguing reductio ad absurdum that modern poetry is so ridiculous that I could tack together any string of incoherent fragmented words together and it would qualify as poetry. I’ll let you be the judge. Quick Note: Each paragraph represents a misunderstood inadvertent pocket recording from Siri. There have been no additions made to the words themselves, but I decided to take a little creative license by adding line breaks and punctuation hoping it might make more sense.

Lucy Extra
Lucy Extra: what happens if I lose my ball?
All names just a moment for you.
Allow blank passion and creativity
to burn.

The King of Awesome:
Redirect thoughts and motives
Beyond whimsical trust.

You had a check?
For Mason. For water.

Are you such sweet sorrow?
I could kiss you.
Not sure if I believe that Valencia hot sauce
was from Louisiana.

What if we left tomorrow an ideal world with
My face (which is on the one hand, full of punches)
Another handful of roses.

And take my medication, supplements,
Shaving cream, bathroom and errors.
Post tomorrow: “Punchless blind person.”

Invite people and dogs and sanctuaries
and two twelve friends
and friends and
Oprah Winfrey.

Does this sound like a poem to you? Yes? Then you’re an idiot. Or maybe I am. Or maybe poetry as a genre is dying. Or maybe its thriving and I’m just not seeing it. Either way, I won’t take the credit or the blame for this. In the context of this blog, poetry definitely falls under “Rhetoric” and is one of the hardest things to speak constructively and intelligently about because of its extremely fluid and open nature. Don’t get me wrong I love poetry, especially Victorian and Romantic poetry, but most Post-Modern poetry is really tough. I did, however, think that Siri sounded poetic so give her a little credit. This is the first poem I know written inadvertently by artificial intelligence.

There is an apocryphal story about philosopher Bertrand Russell who gave a public lecture on astronomy, presumably in his native Great Britain. He described the orbit of our spherical Earth around the Sun and then elaborated that the Sun follows its own orbit around an enormous cluster of stars which constitute our galaxy. The story goes thusly:

At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” [Russell] gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

I think I laughed for a full ten minutes the first time I heard that story. Of course this woman sounds like the definition of crazy because eventually, (and this is obviously just one of many problems with her idea), if the Earth-supporting turtle needed to be supported by another turtle, and so on, eventually that poor first turtle would still have the need for some original grounding; some foundation upon which to place his giant turtle legs.

I wish there was more to the story.  Was this woman actually out of her mind or was there some kind of reasoning to her view?  And was/is there any truth to her position? Obviously, if you took her literally there isn’t, but what if this was the result of a child’s story that gave her tremendous symbolic or allegorical meaning? There are some Eastern religions that recount the history of the Earth in a similar fashion, that sound crazy to me but may hold tremendous sentimental or didactic meaning to others, especially if viewed in the right context. You’ll think I’m crazy, but I would love to follow that woman out of the auditorium and ask her a few questions. It could be a futile attempt and perhaps she was just spouting off incoherent ideas. But it could also be a goldmine of ideology, moral convictions that shaped a life and affected thousands more. To say nothing of an opportunity to stretch myself and solidify my own convictions as well. After all, you never know how strongly you believe something until it is tested. Maybe C.S. Lewis said it best,

“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to [tie] a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it?…Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief.” - A Grief Observed

You might say that there’s no risk in arguing with the turtle woman, and if you choose not to give her a second thought then maybe you’re right. But there’s also no real pay-off either. You could use that method every time you encounter something odd or seemingly ridiculous in your life and not only would you avoid any kind of intellectual challenge, but you’d also rob yourself of some of life’s most colorful experiences. Of course the greatest tragedy would come when you finally did find yourself in need of a reasonable explanation for one of your own convictions, and because you avoided those experiences, you found your mind blank or your mouth tongue tied. There’s no guarantee of that either, but I’m inclined to believe that those who don’t use their minds, eventually lose them.

In philosophy the expression, “turtles all the way down” refers to paradox of of the originally beginning of the universe; that unknown first cause made by an intelligent designer, known better as “The Unmoved Mover“, God, or the Being that caused that everything that is to be. It can also be used to describe any absurd infinite regress of ideas.

Thinking is so underrated in today’s society. There are thousands of daily voices competing for your attention, and many times those  voices are destructive. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met who abandoned their own religious convictions over the most trivial historical or doctrinal “incongruities”, or who bought into financial scams because they never applied their mind to thinking.

The worst example might be modern politics. Politics have become little more dignified and thoughtful than reality television, and hardliners on both side of the aisle are perpetually digging in further, holding to their “purist” views, and refusing to think about the consequences of their actions. They attempt to trump up their disputes by clouding their weak ideas in bloated language spoken by a charismatic guy in a suit. To further mask their ineptitude for thoughtful ideological convictions, they constrain the common voter with either quippy senseless, one-liners (say “YES WE CAN!” a thousand times and tell me exactly what you’re saying “yes” to), or with intimidating statistical models as the foundation for their ideological agenda. And in this regard they are completely backward. In short, they make their rational grounding statistics, instead of using statistics to build upon their rational grounding. AND THERE IS A DIFFERENCE! Facts, figures, and economic models are tools to promote an ideology, they are not ideology themselves! And we routinely fail to remember that. All the statistical data in the world will not save you from crazy! You may have the most sophisticated economic plan to eliminate the national deficit in five years, but if it involves transitioning our economy to one that subsidizes food stamps by feeding the homeless with cheap, stray cats or cutting military spending by equipping our armed forces with nerf guns, we obviously won’t see our goals translated into progress.

As a side note, we can easily prove that statistics cannot be the ultimate foundation for ideology because statistics can be reverse engineered as the quantifying of basic assumptions to be used within control models. If such statistics were the grounding for ideology they could not be reverse engineered into ideological assumptions, or intuitive moral imperatives. Instead there would be infinite regress of statistics as the foundation for, you guessed it, statistics. It would be as we say, “turtles all the way down.”

My point is, sometimes “crazy” is just a matter of context, and if you don’t understand that context, you will either scoff ignorantly at something that could potentially be genius, or you will lose confidence, and perhaps even fear something that is quite intelligible. Remember this clip from Batman Begins. I doubt very many real criminals understand so well how fear works. The last 35 seconds aren’t as important as Falcone’s (Tom Wilkinson) main point, and you’ll know it when you hear it.

“You always fear, what you don’t understand.” So then, seek understanding!

I know I need this advice more than anyone, but I don’t think we can overstate the importance of thinking and learning to think is in our society. As we go further into learning logic, we’ll learn that there are some things that are completely rational but nearly impossible to prove deductively (this may be in the distant future). Consider for example trying to prove to a blind person that the color of your car is red. A simple, rational concept, but an arduous undertaking.  But one doesn’t have to engage in those activities to sharpen his faculties. The important thing is that we think, and really learn to think, even if that means following turtles all the way down.

We’ve covered several inductive and deductive logical fallacies in the past few months that  have tremendous practical application in real world situations but perhaps no fallacy is more pervasive and prevalent than the mind projection fallacy.  Everywhere you go, and universally among every person you will ever meet, you will find opinions of about how the world works and operates. This isn’t news. None of us knows everything about every subject that interests us, and most of us will never know everything about the respective industries we work in, or every detail about the lives of the people that we love. And so, we generally make decisions without all the information. By necessity, most decisions, even the most important ones, have to be made with incomplete information.

But have you ever met someone who lives according to a viewpoint based purely in speculation, here-say, or willful ignorance?  Their reasons are largely baseless and generally justified through past failures and rooted in deep emotional negativity.  In virtually every case I’ve encountered, these individuals live according to the mind projection fallacy, and I’ve been as guilty of this as anyone.

This fallacy is characterized by an individual who insists that their own perspective is in fact a real reflection of the way the world  really is, going as far as to assume the real existence of imagined objects or obstacles. The fallacy can also occur when an individual asserts that his or her own lack of knowledge about how the things really actually means that things or a certain state of affairs are indeterminate!

Imagine someone who believes they will always be overweight because their parents or siblings are overweight. Imagine someone who believes they will always be financially poor because their parents were poor. Or imagine the indeterminate state of affairs: imagine someone who believes if they don’t have that knowledge first hand, then that knowledge doesn’t exist. By this line of reasoning, if you’ve never traveled to Australia, it doesn’t exist or since you didn’t live during the time of the Holocaust, it never occurred or at least it cannot be determined that it did occur. Believe it or not, there are people who not only rely on this reasoning but ardently defend it.

Maybe the greatest cinematic adaptation of this fallacy is found in Rudy, the story of a young man trying to play collegiate football for the University of Notre Dame. If you haven’t seen it, don’t watch the clip, just see the movie. In these scenes, Rudy hears opposition from multiple sources but perhaps the most obvious example of the mind projection fallacy occurs at the beginning at the bus stop with his father who tries to discourage Rudy from achieving his dream. Note that after 1:32, Rudy begins to triumph, so if you haven’t seen the film, there will be spoilers.

Listen to his father’s reasons. Does he really possess strong reasons why Rudy cannot achieve his goal or is re-appropriating his own fears and failures on his son?

If you’ve ever tried to achieve something extraordinary, you know that opposition especially in the form of this of this fallacy isn’t coincidental but rather a rite of passage. And if you announce your dreams to the world, by necessity, there will be someone who will try to discourage you from your goal, perhaps even someone very close to you.

Understanding this fallacy will give rational power over negativity or doubt. Understanding this fallacy can also empower you beyond succumbing to delusions of grandeur. The difference here is that deluded individuals insist on extraordinary achievement without getting their feet wet, or without ever receiving opposition or even critical feedback. Such a person is like a boxer attempting to win a heavyweight championship without ever taking a punch to the face, even in training. He is so touchy that he possesses the metaphorical equivalent of a “glass jaw” and does not understand the nature of his achievement, in fact he doesn’t understand what boxing is. An individual determined on this course will eventually alienate all of his greatest allies and must create an alternative reality of delusion losing credibility and trust with virtually all of those around him. Tragically, unless he is rescued from his ungrounded imagination, like Biff and Willy Lowan of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, he must live out his entire life completely and nearly irrepressibly self-deceived.

Finally, this fallacy works to give you an indicator of your success: you can know you’re on the path of achievement the minute you start receiving opposition, and greater the storm of opposition rages, (we can infer in many cases), the closer you’re coming to your goal.

Moral of the story?  In the words of Henry Ford, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.”

 

I recently wrote a little article that deals with the philosophical questioning involved in evaluating the performance metrics of non-profit organizations.

If you’re interested, check out the link below:

http://www.byupoliticalreview.com/?p=103050
For those who have been asking, the new issue of Aporia: Brigham Young University Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy should be online by the end of May and in print by the first week of June.

There haven’t been any posts for the past few months because I’ve been busy updating BYU‘s philosophy journal, Aporia. If you’re interested in collegiate philosophical arguments from some of the brightest students in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. checkout http://aporia.byu.edu/site.php?id=current

Also, my present health circumstances have prompted me to start a personal online journal that takes a nearly fictional approach to my recent history. If you’ve known me well over the past 4-5 years, chances are you have a new identity in a “new” historical fiction. It doesn’t make sense until you check it out. But because it is very personal, you’ll need to email me for permission. davidstcrapo.wordpress.com

 

I think the most important single thing I have learned from studying leadership in the context of learning in the humanities this year is how important vision is to any cooperative enterprise. I want to show briefly how a vision can be a powerful tool to encourage cooperation, provide some examples I have come across, and show how Kenneth Burke’s methods can be helpful in its development, communication, and execution. A well-defined vision can focus individual efforts towards common goals and provide the motivation which persuades a highly individualistic population to think in terms of ‘we’ and ‘ours.’ As John Dewey writes in “Search for the Great Community,” “’we’ and ‘our’ exist only when the consequences of combined action are perceived and become an object of desire and effort” (151). A vision contains those desired consequences of combined action and the means whereby they can become reality. When this vision is consciously sustained and nurtured we get what for Dewey would qualify as a community. The values and practices this community adopts to achieve that vision is what we would call ‘culture.’

Culture has become a buzz-word in modern business. As Human Synergistics International notes in “Culture Makes the Difference in Business Objects and Crystal Decisions Merger”: “Constructive cultures are worth the effort to develop as they are positively correlated with high levels of motivation, cooperation, performance, and quality” (2). In “Building Your Company’s Vision” James. C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras claim: “The dynamic [or culture] . . . is the primary engine of enduring companies. Vision simply provides the context for bringing this dynamic to life” (77). In other words, the vision by itself does nothing. However, the vision can create the framework and direction to channel subsequent action if the community accepts the vision and aligns itself to it. The vision outlines a way of life and a way of thinking. As Collins and Porras claim, “When you have a superb alignment, a visitor could drop in from outer space and infer your vision from the operations and activities of the company without ever reading it on paper or meeting a single senior executive” (77). We can infer from these statements that creating and communicating a vision, and aligning the company culture to it, are some of the most important tasks a leader has. I will show how a study in the humanities can provide valuable skills to assist in these endeavours, because the humanities chronicle centuries of experience with the same work of human motivation and identification.

In First Democracy Paul Woodruff describes how a democratic culture was created and nurtured by shared experience, rituals, theatre, and public speeches. The culture created by Athens’ heroes lived longer than their progenitors, and the essential democratic virtues of humility and harmony were central themes in plays and poems. The Blithedale Romance chronicles the collapse of a common endeavour due to a weak vision which never fully translated into the culture of the community, and thus did not have the strength to hold the community together in the face of individualistic ambitions. And the work of Kenneth Burke is focused on “the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols” (Rhetoric 43).

Kenneth Burke offers some of the best insights on how language can be used to induce cooperation, and his theory of dialectical transcendence directly describes the mechanisms of a persuasive vision. As he writes in “I, Eye, Aye: Emerson’s Early Essay on ‘Nature’: Thoughts on the Machinery of Transcendence,” transcending is “the building of a terministic bridge whereby one realm is transcended by being viewed in terms of a realm ‘beyond’ it” (877), and “insofar as things here and now are treated in terms of a ‘beyond’, they thereby become infused or inspirited by the addition of a new or further dimension” (880). The vision provides a greater reference point which infuses the individual tasks of a worker with meaning. According to Collins and Porras, a vision is both discovered (core ideals) and created (envisioned future, purpose, etc.). Burke’s method of dialectic transcendence can work both as a heuristic to develop a vision (seek to go from particular to more general and abstract ideas) and as an analytic tool to discover ideals implicit in the symbol system of a community. With the help of Burke’s method of indexing, it should be possible to chart the relationships which uncover the structure of a symbol-system, including which ideas are more important and have greater transcendent value than others. Because of the limited scope of this post, only a brief explanation will be given for this method: In “Linguistic Approach to Problems in Education” Kenneth Burke outlines his method of indexing. The steps of this method would be to first find the terms that regularly occur together in a text, mapping which words are socially inferior or superior, and finding from this the verbal pyramids which contain words of higher abstraction which subordinate or gather other words. He believed this method could uncover the ‘personality’ or, if you will, ‘culture’ of the text. He also claimed that this method could be applied to all human communication as well as literary texts. This same method can be used to evaluate alignment to the vision that has been outlined, for, as Collins and Porras claim, when a company has perfect alignment to vision “a visitor could drop in from outer space and infer your vision from the operations and activities of the company” (77). Such alignment to vision should leave a clear linguistic trace which can be tracked from internal communications.

For a vision to be effective it is essential that it is communicated clearly to all the members of the community, and that they in turn are persuaded to adopt the vision as a guide for their actions. If their individual tasks are linked clearly enough to a desirable and shared vision they are likely to be more motivated to work towards its fulfillment. In “Rhetoric – Old and New,” Burke claims that “a rhetorical structure is most persuasive when it possesses full dialectical symmetry – or, otherwise put, dialectical symmetry is at once the perfecting and transcending of rhetoric” (204). In other words, the rhetorical structure will be most effective if there are clear steps and connections between the transcendent purpose and the particular actions of the individuals in the group. In order to make this clear to understand, one could create a graphic way of displaying the ‘verbal pyramid’ which connects particular tasks (lower steps) with the transcendent vision (higher steps). W.L.Gore and Associates, a company which has a strong focus on developing their culture, have designed a graphic where the vision stands at the core and is surrounded by layers with greater degrees of abstraction closer to the core.

At the core we find “What We Believe” followed by “Guiding Principles”, “Core Values”, “Key Disciplines”, and finally ending with “Practices.” Terri Kelly, the CEO of the company, explained the importance of this model at an MIT lecture titled “Nurturing Culture to Drive Innovation”:

Because the culture is such a rich part of how we communicate in our organization and how we want to drive both actions and behaviours, you will find a poster like this in probably every plant conference room at Gore, and the reason is we want it to drive our conversation. So, with a lot of companies you hear about their values and you hear about their culture, but if it’s not an integral part of how you make decisions and how leaders talk about how we get the work done, it really becomes pretty superficial.

I am currently writing my master thesis about the method of indexing and dialectical transcendence. In one instance mentioned by Human Synergistics International, a clear evaluation of company culture and the reformulation and communication of a vision basically doubled the value of two companies over a short period of time (“Culture” 3). The valuable work of Kenneth Burke, along with that of many other humanists, can give fresh insights to business because its line of inquiry starts with different premises, which are more based on human nature than mere profit. As the focus of the business world shifts from capital and property to productivity and innovation (which Richard Lanham claims are the new wealth-creating activities) concepts like culture, community, and vision will become even more prominent. More efforts will be made to understand human nature and the discovery, creation, and communication of knowledge. As such, I feel very confident that the Humanities will become a more prominent and desired source of knowledge for society. We just have to communicate what we have to offer.

David Erland Isaksen is pursuing an MA in English with an emphasis in rhetoric from Brigham Young University. He currently holds a BA in Literature and Languages from Telemark University College in Norway and an MA in Interpreting and Translation from University of Central Lancashire in the UK. He teaches writing and rhetoric at Brigham Young University and also does translation work between English, German, and Norwegian. You can read this post and more on his professional blog intelligenceofpersuasion.blogspot.com

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Sometimes we say things we don’t mean, or say things we think have a different meaning, or in the case of Michael Scott, just say anything that comes to our mind, oblivious to its actual meaning. When I was a kid, I thought volleyball was actually just called balleyball, I would “try not to take things for granite”,   and unfortunately, I would tell people that “some music really designates with me.”

I had a homonym problem, a heteronym problem, an antonym problem, a synonym problem, and possibly a hearing problem. One of the quickest way to lose your  credibility (regardless of your field) is to constantly demonstrate these problems in public discourse.

Sometimes we  use expressions that we really don’t understand but because we hear them used colloquially, we repeat them and then perpetuate a false understanding of a word, or adage and confuse our readers or listeners.Without attempting to give an exhaustive list of such expressions, I want to focus on two notions that have the compounding problem of inspiring unjustifiable activities when their respective convoluted meanings are converted into action.

“The Letter of the Law”

Usually when you think of someone who follows “the letter of the law” you think of an uptight individual with perhaps a narrow perspective of how to maintain a certain moral code of conduct; one who is “straight-laced”, unyielding, self-righteous or even pharisaic. But that’s not actually the meaning of the expression. If an individual adheres to the letter of the law, what he is doing is technically following the explicit or literal meaning of an idea without following the intention of that meaning. (And most likely has his own agenda for following his private interpretation). For example, if Mom and Dad tell their 12 year old son that he is not to watch R-Rated movies because the material may be inappropriate, violent, suggestive or pornographic, their intention is to protect their son from harmful influences. Their law against R-Rated movies is the manifestation of that law. If, however their son has occasion to watch a PG-13 movie that contains similar harmful influences of an R-Rated film, and if the boy believes his action is justified because his parents never explicitly cited PG-13 films as harmful, he is no longer following the intention of his parents’ “law” and as a result, he is following the letter of the law. The implication of such an individual is often confused as an overly-principled individual, when in reality the meaning of this expression more accurately describes an unscrupulous character.

“The Spirit of the Law”

I’ve found that the meaning of this expression is not as convoluted. Following the spirit of the law is just the opposite. Following the spirit of the law occurs when an individual makes a decision to follow the intention of the law without adhering the literal meaning of the law. The only problem is, if you cannot communicate with the law-maker, or if the law-maker is a consortium of dissimilar law-makers then the individual attempting to follow the spirit of the law can have a hard time making a correct interpretation, especially when that interpretation means applying it to a specified case. As a result he is left to his own opinion and as such, is prone to self-indulgence, and self-deception in the name of “creativity” or because of he believes in following a more “unorthodox” approach.

A great example of this, is the ongoing case of interpreting The Constitution of the United States. We even have categories for such differing interpretations of the document and label our supreme court justices with words like “literalist”, originalist”, or “progressivist.” The great fallacy of this reasoning occurs almost daily on the prime-time political talk shows, when pundits and  ideologues accuse members of the opposing political party of “misinterpreting the founders.” While you might disagree with the interpretation of others, (and while you may even be right), attempting to argue based completely on this foundation would require an omniscient understanding of the intentions of every delegate at the Continental Congress between 1770-1776, a singular understanding of The Declaration of Independence, a unique insight into the perspective of every member of Congress until 1787, including and especially James Madison (the author of the Constitution), and a perfect contextual understanding of late 18th century Colonial American linguistics. Oh, and it might not hurt to be “besties” with John Locke and John Milton, since many of their ideas made it into the mix of the Constitution as well. Obviously, such an undertaking would, of course, be absurd.

No, attempting to follow the spirit of the law is not easy, but there are times when there are no manuals, no procedures, no laws to dictate an appropriate course of action. Usually in those times, I have found that there isn’t a whole lot of time for philosophy either. It’s in those times that you must organize all the information you have as quickly as possible, make a decision based on principle, and then, looking Heavenward call out, “Stop me if I’m wrong” before storming into the blaze.