Monday, September 3, 2012

Against the 'isms'

It is very easy to stick labels on things. In the nominalist tradition, labels are all that there are in terms of language and thought. The word 'tree' is merely a human label applied to a set of phenomena (sensible aspects of the imagination) seemingly bringing together likenesses, but not actually capturing anything universal behind them. The tree is just one thing, which bares a likeness, perhaps to other things, but which is not a 'kind of thing' (i.e. the label does not describe the essence, or being, or form of the thing). There is no being, or set of beings, whose essence is that of 'tree', or more specifically say 'Oak', just individuals with likenesses to one another (brought together arbitrarily by the human mind (which is also not an thing)). As a result everything which seems to ground rationality and reason, literally ratios, as well comparison, differentiation disappears. Since, 'tree' and 'not-tree', cannot signify any real unity but only 'this' single thing.

Of course nominalism has one fatal flaw. It assumes the truth of essentialism in order to refute essentialism. One needs to say that this 'Oak' is not an instansiation of 'Oakness', but merely 'this Oak here in front of me'. But in pointing out an instance of a thing is simply to assume the essence of the thing, you are still saying 'this Oak'. An argument for nominalism needs essentialism to get off the ground, because the words used in the debate must point to, symbolise some-thing, that is to say some object beyond the horizon of individual thought that can be understood. If nominalism were true it is difficult to conceive of any way for knowledge of the world to be passed on from generation to generation, indeed from one individual to the next, further from one moment to the next in the same individual.

But just because nominalism is flawed doesn't mean that all labels are essences. This is where a key distinction can be made. Not everything that the mind apprehends necessarily reflects a real form or essence. For instance, vending machines are merely a set of parts collected together in one place to dispense various consumable goods. (The parts to be sure have essences of there own, for example the glass, metals and food stuffs). The machine have no meaning outside of the function it performs with reference to human beings. Likewise, many scientific abstractions, though they help to describe the world, are not really what the world is like. For instance, chemicals are not made up of collections of balls and sticks, but this is a useful abstraction to enable human beings to visualise something that is otherwise invisible or only describable in mathematical language. Additionally, Descartes famously describe the world (including human bodies) as the res extensa and the mind (abstract thought, imagination and sensations, the stuff of consciousness) as the res cogitans. These abstractions were reified by Descartes to the point that he made a substance out of them, separating in a fixed way these corporal and incorporeal realities. They may be useful abstractions to help describe the world but they were not what the world was actually like.

In a different light we often today apply labels to intellectual or political or religious positions. We say someone is a Marxist, or a Feminist, a Christian or a Muslim, a liberal or conservative. In the religious sense, the label is somewhat helpful but it is misleading. Hilaire Belloc declared that there was no such thing as Christianity, or indeed Catholicism as such, but only 'the Thing', (the title to an excellent book by G.K. Chesterton), which is to say the Church, the mystical body of Jesus Christ. One was not 'a Christian' but rather a member of the body of Christ, which was in fact every-Thing. He would have had little time for C.S. Lewis' 'mere Christianity', seeing the Church not as a position to taken up but as a way of being, as the souls complete transformation into Christ.

In some ways many of the 'isms' we attach to things turn out not to be things, but merely arbitrary labels which categorise. The political 'isms' are another more obvious instance. Liberalism and conservatism are typical categories we use as labels for political positions as well as individuals. But the obvious verbal absurdity arises when the meaning of the words are brought out, for what 'conservative' is not also in favour of freedom, and what 'liberal' is not also in favour of preserving society, laws and the very freedoms that allow him to be a liberal. Rodger Scruton believes that these categories, liberal and conservative should be seen in a sociological, rather than ideological, light. This means seeing these things as elements of social discourse as well as saying something about the psychological makeup of the conservative or liberal mind. Seen in this light these categories might have some meaning, but otherwise they are unmeaning nonsense. In politics, as in all of the intellectual life, thought is far more important ideology and slogans. Actually applying the reasoning faculty and thinking is much more important than toeing party lines. After all, conservatism can't be all wrong, and liberalism all right, or liberalism be all wrong and conservatism all right (pun not intended).

And this, I think, should be applied in most cases were an intractable 'ism' pops up its ugly head. Darwinism (as opposed to Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection), while it is based on a powerful set of analytical tools and theory for understanding the origins of present day life, is false because it seeks absolute imperial control over every discipline of thought; as though appealing to natural selection will help to explain who is the hero of Pride and Prejudice, or what the basis of morality is. Materialism (indeed, all materialisms, including historical materialism, naturalism, empiricism and indeed Darwinism) is false because it seeks to reduce everything to an elegant theory. Marxism, while simplicity itself to understand, needs to subsume all contrary evidence showing its major premises and conclusions are false into itself. It becomes and system to fit evidence into, rather than tool to unlock the truth of historical happening. Clean theories, while simple to understand, are rarely, if ever, able to explain 'everything'. Scientific theories explain precisely that which they set of to explain in the narrow confines of the measurable and observable, nothing else. Ideological theories, including scientism, seek to reduce into themselves everything, and in the end explain more about the theorist than the world.

So what are we to do? Abandon the use of labels? I think probably not. For conventions sake as well as for clarity labels can be of some use. What should not happen though is the lazy habit of fitting with a label, rather than fitting a label to a situation. If our labels are to have any meaning, it is because they are dynamic, they are products of the human mind and they are reasoned.