Psychology and Personality Typology – Page 5

Islam and the Perils of Psychological Projection

I have found that it is dangerous to assume that others are essentially like oneself.

Psychologists speak of projection. As I understand it, it involves projecting (etymologically, throwing outward) into others one's own attitudes, beliefs, motivations, fears, emotions, desires, values, and the like. It is classified as a defense mechanism. To avoid confronting an unsavory attitude or trait in oneself, one projects it into another. Suppose one is stingy, considers stinginess an undesirable trait, but doesn't want to own up to one's stinginess. As a defense against the admission of one's own stinginess, one projects it into others. "I'm not stingy; you're stingy!"

I once had a superficial colleague who published a lot. He was motivated more by a neurotic need to advance himself socially and economically, a need based in low self-esteem, rather than by a drive to get at the truth or make a contribution to his subject. He was at some level aware that his motives were less than noble. Once, when he found out that I had published an article, he told me that my motive was to see my name in print. It was a classic case of projection: he could not understand me except as being driven by the same paltry motives that drove him. By projecting his motives into me, he warded off the awareness of their presence in him, or else excused their presence in him on the spurious ground that everyone has the same paltry motivations.

Most of the definitions of projection I have read imply that it is only undesirable attitudes, beliefs, and the like that are the contents of acts of projection. But it seems to me that the notion of projection could and perhaps should be widened to include desirable ones as well.

The desire for peace and social harmony, for example, is obviously good. But it too can be the content of an act of psychological projection. A pacifist, for example, may assume that others deep down are really like he is: peace-loving to such an extent as to avoid war at all costs. A pacifist might reason as follows: since everyone deep down wants peace, and abhors war, if I throw down my weapon, my adversary will do likewise. My adversay is histile out of fear; if I remove the reason for his fear, he will be pacified. By unilaterally disarming, I show my good will, and he will reciprocate. But if you throw down your weapon before Hitler, he will take that precisely as justification for killing you: since might makes right on his neo-Thrasymachian scheme, you have shown by your pacific deed that you are unfit for the struggle for existence and therefore deserve to die, and indeed must die to keep from polluting the gene pool.

Projection in cases like these can be dangerous. One oftens hears the sentiment expressed that we human beings are at bottom all the same and all want the same things. Not so! You and I may want

Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind's true liberation

as expressed in that characteristic '60s song, Aquarius, but others have belligerence and bellicosity hard-wired into them. They like fighting and dominating and they only come alive when they are bashing your skull in either literally or figuratively. People are not the same and it is a big mistake to think otherwise and project your decency into them.

I'll say it again: people are not the same. We are not 'equal.' Or do you consider yourself the moral equal of Chechen Muslim ingrates who come to our shores, exploit our hospitality, go on welfare, rip us off, and then detonate explosives at the finish line of a great American event that celebrates life and self-reliance? I am referring to the Boston Marathon.

I said that the psychologists classify projection as a defense mechanism. But how could the projection of good traits count as a defense mechanism? Well, suppose that by engaging in such projections one defends oneself against the painful realization that the people in the world are much worse than one would have liked to believe. Many of us have a strong psychological need to see good in other people, and this can give rise to illusions. There is good and evil in each person, and one must train oneself to accurately discern how much of each is present in each person one encounters.

This brings me to a penetrating passage from Sam Harris that illustrates my theme:

Our humanities and social science departments are filled with scholars and pseudo-scholars deemed to be experts in terrorism, religion, Islamic jurisprudence, anthropology, political science, and other diverse fields, who claim that where Muslim intolerance and violence are concerned, nothing is ever what it seems. Above all, these experts claim that one can’t take Islamists and jihadists at their word: Their incessant declarations about God, paradise, martyrdom, and the evils of apostasy are nothing more than a mask concealing their real motivations. What are their real motivations [according to these experts]?

Insert here the most abject hopes and projections of secular liberalism: How would you feel if Western imperialists and their mapmakers had divided your lands, stolen your oil, and humiliated your proud culture? Devout Muslims merely want what everyone wants—political and economic security, a piece of land to call home, good schools for their children, a little leisure to enjoy the company of friends. Unfortunately, most of my fellow liberals appear to believe this. In fact, to not accept this obscurantism as a deep insight into human nature and immediately avert one’s eyes from the teachings of Islam is considered a form of bigotry.

Harris has put his finger on a mistake that too many in the West, whether you call it psychological projection or not make, namely, the mistake of assuming that everyone, deep down, cherishes the same values and has the same motivations. This mistake is one of the planks in the platform of political correctness.

And as we should have learned by now, political correctness can get you killed.

Mass Race Delusion: Bruce Levenson’s ‘Racist’ E-Mail

Recently I have been pinching myself a lot, figuratively speaking, to see if I am awake and not dreaming all the delusional race nonsense I keep hearing about. Herewith, a very recent example.

Bruce Levenson, owner of the Atlanta Hawks, sold his controlling interest in the NBA franchise because of this piece of 'racist' e-mail that he very foolishly sent in naive ignorance of the climate of the country. I excerpt the 'offensive' part, bad writing, bad punctuation and all. Emphasis added.

Regarding game ops [operations?], i need to start with some background. for the first couple of years we owned the team, i didn't much focus on game ops. then one day a light bulb went off [went on?]. when digging into why our season ticket base is so small, i was told it is because we can't get 35-55 white males and corporations to buy season tixs [tickets] and they are the primary demo [demographic] for season tickets around the league. when i pushed further, folks generally shrugged their shoulders. then i start looking around our arena during games and notice the following:

— it's 70 pct black
— the cheerleaders are black
— the music is hip hop
— at the bars it's 90 pct black
— there are few fathers and sons at the games
— we are doing after game concerts to attract more fans and the concerts are either hip hop or gospel.

Then i start looking around at other arenas. It is completely different. Even DC with its affluent black community never has more than 15 pct black audience.

Before we bought the hawks and for those couple years immediately after in an effort to make the arena look full (at the nba's urging) thousands and thousands of tickets were being giving away, predominantly in the black community, adding to the overwhelming black audience.

My theory is that the black crowd scared away the whites and there are simply not enough affluent black fans to build a signficant season ticket base. Please dont get me wrong. There was nothing threatening going on in the arean [arena] back then. i never felt uncomfortable, but i think southern whites simply were not comfortable being in an arena or at a bar where they were in the minority. On fan sites i would read comments about how dangerous it is around philips yet in our 9 years, i don't know of a mugging or even a pick pocket incident. This was just racist garbage. When I hear some people saying the arena is in the wrong place I think it is code for there are too many blacks at the games.

Now could any reasonable person, as opposed to a person in the grip of a delusion, take offence at any of this? Of course not. Levenson is a business man who is offering an explanation of why ticket sales are low. His explanation is two-fold. First, the black crowd scares away the southern whites who are uncomfortable with being in a minority and who do not enjoy black entertainment (hip hop, all black cheerleaders) and do not want to be in a family-unfriendly environment (few fathers with sons). Second, there is a lack of affluent black fans.

Now whether or not Levenson's explanation is correct, it is surely plausible. But the main thing is that there is nothing racist about it. To report that certain whites are scared by certain blacks is to report a fact about the way those whites feel. It is not to imply that the whites are justified in feeling the way they do. Maybe they are and maybe they aren't.

The mistake that liberals (whether white or black) make is to confuse a racial explanation with a racist explanation.

It is a special case of the confusion of a racial statement (a statement whose subject-matter is race) with a racist statement. For example, the statement that blacks are 13-14% of the U. S. population is a racial statement, but not a racist statement. Capiche?

Suppose I state that men, on average, are taller than women, on average. Is that a hateful thing to say? Is it sexist or 'tallist'? Does it express a 'bias' that I need to overcome? Of course not, it is true.

Now here is another distinction that is probably wasted on a liberal. It is the distinction beween the content of an assertion and the asserting of that content. I see a man with no legs. His name is Joe Blow. I assert within earshot of Joe Blow, Joe Blow has no legs! The content of my assertion is true and unobjectionable. But my asserting of it in this context is morally objectionable and for obvious reasons. But in other contexts both the content and my asserting of it would be unobjectionable.

What is going on here? How do we explain the mass race delusion of liberals? Some possibilities:

Liberals are in general very stupid people who cannot think but only emote and associate.
Liberals are not, on average, any dumber than conservatives, but on certain topics they stupefy, or perhaps I should say enstupidate themselves consciously and willfully and in a way that makes them the just recipients of moral censure.
Liberals are not, on average, any dumber than conservatives, but on certain topics they stupefy, or perhaps I should say enstupidate themselves unconsciously — they are infected with a PeeCee virus but are unaware of being infected.

UPDATE: A reader comments:

I don’t know if you saw it, but after the remarks came out Levenson stated that he’s not worthy of owning an NBA franchise. Now, I assume you know about the recent kerfuffle about Donald Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers (another NBA team). He made some racial comments in a private conversation that were leaked to the broader world, and as a result was forced to sell his team.

That’s the background, and now a theory: Levenson did all of this as a trick to be forced to sell his team as profitably as possible. Because the league is forcing him to sell, they have to assure him of getting the price that an auditor deems it to be worth rather than what it would get in the real world. In other words, it may just a cynical trick to make more money/divest himself of what he perceives to be a bad investment.

The reader may have something here. Levenson's grovelling is suspicious. Businessmen in a position to buy a controlling interest in an NBA franchise tend to have big egos. One expects them to fight and not act the part of a pussy, especially when the accusations made against him are so palpably absurd.

Philosophers Who Compartmentalize and Those Who Don’t

For many philosophers, their technical philosophical work bears little or no relation to the implicit or explicit set of action-guiding beliefs and values that constitutes their worldview. Saul Kripke, for example, is an observant Jew who keeps the Sabbath and rejects naturalism and materialism. But you would never know it from his technical work which has no direct relevance to the Big Questions. (Possible qualification: the business about the necessity of identity discussed in Naming and Necessity allows for a Cartesian-style argument for mind-body dualism. See here.)

So I would characterize Kripke as a compartmentalizer. (My use of this term does not have a pejorative connotation, at least not yet.) His work in philosophy occupies one of his mental compartments while his religious convictions and practices occupy another with little or no influence of the one on the other. It is not that his technical work is inconsistent with his religious worldview; my point is that the two are largely irrelevant to each other. No doubt some of Kripke's examples 'betray' his religious upbringing — e.g., the fascinating bit about Moloch as a misvocalization of the Hebrew 'melech' in Reference and Existence, p. 70 ff. et passim – but his technical work, or at least his published technical work, is not a means to either the articulation or the rational justification of his worldview.

You may appreciate my point if you compare Kripke with Alvin Plantinga. He too is a religious man and a theist, an anti-naturalist, and an anti-materialist. But all of Plantinga's books that I am aware of contribute directly to the articulation and defense of his theistic worldview. He is out to explain and justify theistic belief and turn aside such objections to it as the ever-popular arguments from evil. This is clear from the titles of God and Other Minds, God, Freedom, and Evil, Does God Have a Nature. But it is also clear from Nature of Necessity the penultimate chapter of which treats of God, evil, and freedom, and the ultimate chapter of which is about God and necessity. The same is true of his two volumes on warrant one of which includes a critique of naturalism, not to mention his last book, Where the Conflict Really Lies.

The late David M. Armstrong is an interesting case. While he respects religion and is not a militant naturalist or atheist, his technical work articulates and defends his thoroughly naturalist worldview, where naturalism is the thesis that all that exists is the space-time world and its contents. The naturalist worldview comes first for Armstrong, both temporally and logically, and sets the agenda for the technical investigations of particulars, universals, states of affairs, classes, numbers, causation, laws of nature, dispositions, modality, mind, and so on. Broadly characterized, the agenda is to show how everything, including what appear to be 'abstract objects,' can be accounted for naturalistically using only those resources supplied by the natural world, without recourse to anything nonnatural or supernatural.

For Plantinga, by contrast, it is his theistic worldview that comes first both temporally and logically and sets the agenda for his technical work.

And then there is an acquaintance of mine who attends Greek Orthodox services on Sunday but during working hours is something close to a logical positivist.

This suggests a three-fold classification. There are philosophers whose

A. Technical work is consistent with but does not support their worldview;

B. Technical work is consistent with and does support their worldview;

C. Technical work is inconsistent with and hence does not support their worldview.

I will assume that (C) is an unacceptable form of compartmentalization, but I won't try to explain why in this post. Brevity is the soul of blog. This leaves (B) and (C).

Now it has always seemed obvious to me that (B) is to be preferred over (A). But do I have an argument? But first I should try to make my thesis more precise. To that end, a few more distinctions and observations.

I distinguish philosophy-as-inquiry from philosophy-as-worldview. (And you should too.) Roughly, a worldview is a more or less comprehensive system of more or less precisely articulated action-guiding beliefs and values. (Transfinite cardinal arithmetic is not a worldview: you can't 'take it to the streets.') Obviously, there are many philosophies in this sense, and therefore no such thing as philosophy in this sense. There is the philosophy of your crazy uncle who has an opinion about everything, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, the philosophy of Kant, the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. Observe also that a philosophy in the sense of a worldview need not be arrived at by rational inquiry. Philosophy-as-inquiry, by contrast is rational inquiry by definition. To put it paradoxically, there needn't be anything philosophical about a philosophy. I trust my meaning is clear.

Note too that philosophy-as-inquiry need not result in a worldview. It can end aporetically, at an impasse, the way a number of the Platonic dialogs do, in Socratic nescience, even if the intention was to arrive at a worldview. And sometimes even the intention is lacking: there are philosophers who are content to devote their professional hours to some such narrow topic as counterfactual conditionals or epistemic closure principles, or anaphora. They can be said to engage in hyperspecialization. There are also those less extreme specialists who are concerned with ethics or epistemology but give no thought to the metaphysical presuppositions of either.

We should also distinguish between engaging in philosophy-as-inquiry in order to arrive at a worldview versus engaging in philosophy-as-inquiry in order to shore up or defend a worldview that one antecedently accepts. This is the difference between one who seeks the truth by philosophical means, a truth he does not possess, and one who possesses or thinks he possesses the truth or most of the truth and employs philosophical means to the end of defending and securing and promoting the truth that he already has and has received from some extraphilosophical source such as revelation or religious/mystical experience. The latter could be called philosophy-as-inquiry in the service of apologetics, 'apologetics' broadly construed.

It should now be evident that (B) conflates two ideas that need to be split apart. There are philosophers whose

B1. Technical work is consistent with and supports an antecedently held worldview whose source is extraphilosophical and whose source is not philosophy-as-inquiry;

B2. Technical work is consistent with and supports a worldview the source of which is philosophy-as-inquiry.

My main thesis is that (B2) is superior to (A), but I also incline to the view that (B1) is superior to (A). But for now I set aside (B1).

But why is (B2) superior to (A)? I am not saying that there is anything wrong with satisfying a purely theoretical interest either by (i) hyperspecializing and concentrating on one or a few narrow topics, or (ii) specializing as in the case of Kripke by working on a fairly wide range of topics. What I want to say is that there is something better than either of (i) or (ii).

My thesis: Since philosophy is a search for the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters, one is not true to the spirit of philosophy in the full and normative sense of the word if one is content to theorize about minutiae that in the end have no 'existential' relevance where 'existential' is to be taken in the sense of Kierkegaard, Jaspers, et. al, and their distinguished predecessors, Socrates, Augustine, Pascal, et al. One's own existence, fate, moral responsibility, and existential meaning are surely part of the ultimate matters; so to abstract from these matters by pursuing a purely theoretical interest is, if not logically absurd, then existentially absurd. In philosophy one cannot leave oneself out and be objective in the way the sciences must leave out the subject and be objective.

Of course I am not a narrow existentialist who rejects technical philosophy.

What I am maintaining is that one ought not compartmentalize: one's technical work ought to subserve a higher end, the articulation and defense of a comprehensive view of things. As Wilfrid Sellars says, "It is . . . the 'eye on the whole' which distinguishes the philosophical enterprise." (SPR 3) "The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term." (SPR 1) But I am saying more than this, and words like 'view' and 'worldview' don't quite convey it since philosophy as I 'view' it ought not be purely theoretical. Somehow, oner's theory and one's Existenz need to achieve unity.

I still haven't made my thesis all that clear, but it is perhaps clear enough.

One argument for my thesis is that specialization gets us nowhere. It is notorious that philosophers have not convinced one another and that progress in philosophy has not occurred. And the best and brightest have been at it for going on three thousand years. That progress will occur in future is therefore the shakiest of inductions. Given that shakiness, it is existentially if not logically absurd to lose oneself in, say, the technical labyrinth of the philosophy of language, as fascinating as it is. Who on his deathbed will care whether reference is routed through sense or is direct? The following may help clarify my meaning.

Fred Sommers, The Logic of Natural Language (Oxford, 1982), p. xii:

My interest in Ryle's 'category mistakes' turned me away from the study of Whitehead's metaphysical writings (on which I had written a doctoral thesis at Columbia University) to the study of problems that could be arranged for possible solution.

The suggestion is that the problems of logic, but not those of metaphysics, can be "arranged for possible solution." Although I sympathize with Sommers' sentiment, he must surely have noticed that his attempt to rehabilitate pre-Fregean logical theory issues in results that are controversial, and perhaps just as controversial as the claims of metaphysicians. Or do all his colleagues in logic agree with him?

If by 'pulling in our horns' and confining ourselves to problems of language and logic we were able to attain sure and incontrovertible results, then there might well be justification for setting metaphysics aside and working on problems amenable to solution. But if it turns out that logical, linguistic, phenomenological, epistemological and all other such preliminary inquiries arrive at results that are also widely and vigorously contested, then the advantage of 'pulling in our horns' is lost and we may as well concentrate on the questions that really matter, which are most assuredly not questions of logic and language — fascinating as these may be.

Sommers' is a rich and fascinating book. But, at the end of the day, how important is it to prove that the inference embedded in 'Some girl is loved by every boy so every boy loves a girl' really is capturable, pace the dogmatic partisans of modern predicate logic, by a refurbished traditional term logic? (See pp. 144-145)

As one draws one's last breath, which is more salutary: to be worried about a silly bagatelle such as the one just mentioned, or to be contemplating God and the soul?

Pew Research Center Political Typology Quiz

I started to take the quiz but then quit in disgust after the first two questions.

Here is the first question:

Which of the following statements comes closest to your view?

Government regulation of business is necessary to protect the public interest.

Government regulation of business usually does more harm than good.

I would say that both statements are true. That some government regulation is necessary is obviously true. But that many types of regulation makes things worse is also the case, though it is not as obvious. What does it even mean to ask which of these comes closest to my view? The rational thing to do is reject the question as poorly defined.

Here is the second question:

Which of the following statements comes closest to your view?

Most people who want to get ahead can make it if they're willing to work hard

Hard work and determination are no guarantee of success for most.

Again, both of these statements are true, at least in the USA at the present time. The second statement is obviously true. Success is not guaranteed for anyone. You could be doing everything right and be killed by a drunk driver. In every success there is some element of luck. The first statement is not as clearly true, but it too is true. Again, there is the problem of what 'comes closest' even means. I am a conservative and so you will expect me to plump for the first statement. But the second is one that every sane person must accept. So in one sense of 'closest' the second is closest to my view. In another sense, the first is closest, because it is more characteristic of my view. A near-certainty that everyone must accept on pain of being irrational is not characteristic of any political view. Capiche?

Not all of the question pairs display the faults of the first two. They display others such as false alternative. And a few, I grant, are well-formulated. #20 for example:

Which of the following statements comes closest to your view?

Our country has made the changes needed to give blacks equal rights with whites

Our country needs to continue making changes to give blacks equal rights with whites.

These statements cannot both be true, and there is no false alternative: it must be that one of them is true.

Cognitive Dissonance or Doxastic Dissonance?

From what appears to be a reputable source:

Cognitive Dissonance Theory, developed by Leon Festinger (1957), is concerned with the relationships among cognitions. A cognition, for the purpose of this theory, may be thought of as a ³piece of knowledge.² The knowledge may be about an attitude, an emotion, a behavior, a value, and so on. For example, the knowledge that you like the color red is a cognition; the knowledge that you caught a touchdown pass is a cognition; the knowledge that the Supreme Court outlawed school segregation is a cognition. People hold a multitude of cognitions simultaneously, and these cognitions form irrelevant, consonant or dissonant relationships with one another.

[. . .]

Two cognitions are said to be dissonant if one cognition follows from the opposite of another. What happens to people when they discover dissonant cognitions? The answer to this question forms the basic postulate of Festinger¹s theory. A person who has dissonant or discrepant cognitions is said to be in a state of psychological dissonance, which is experienced as unpleasant psychological tension. This tension state has drivelike properties that are much like those of hunger and thirst. When a person has been deprived of food for several hours, he/she experiences unpleasant tension and is driven to reduce the unpleasant tension state that results. Reducing the psychological sate of dissonance is not as simple as eating or drinking however.

The above, taken strictly and literally, is incoherent. We are first told that a cognition is a bit of knowledge, and then in the second quoted paragraph that (in effect) some cognitions are dissonant, and that if one cognition follows from the opposite of another, then the two are dissonant. But surely it is logically impossible that any two bits of knowledge, K1 and K2, be such that K1 entails the negation of K2, or vice versa. Why? Because every cognition is true — there cannot be false knowledge — and no two truths are such that one follows from the opposite of the other.

The author is embracing an inconsistent pentad:

1. Every cognition is a bit of knowledge.

2. Every bit of knowledge is true.

3. Some, at least two, cognitions are dissonant.

4. If one cognition follows from the opposite (the negation) of another, then the two are dissonant.

5. It is logically impossible that two truths be such that one follows from the negation of the other: if a cognition is true, then its negation is false, and no falsehood follows from a truth.

The point, obviously, is that while beliefs can be dissonant, cognitions cannot be. There simply is no such thing as cognitive dissonance. What there is is doxastic dissonance.

"What a pedant you are! Surely what the psychologists mean is what you call doxastic dissonance."

Then they should say what they mean. Language matters. Confusing belief and knowledge and truth and related notions can lead to serious and indeed pernicious errors. A good deal of contemporary relativism is sired by a failure to make such distinctions.

Antagonize Parsimoniously

Brian Leiter would do well to consider and live by the following prudential analog of Ockham's Razor:

Do not multiply enemies beyond necessity.

Why not? Well, it is just foolish, especially for a vain and status-obsessed careerist who craves name and fame, to attack people who, it can be expected, will expose his petty and absurd behavior.

One of the puzzles of the Leiterian psychology is that he does things that are quite plainly not in his self-interest. When he attacks those who are above him on what he perceives to be the Great Ladder of Success, he reveals his envy. When he attacks those he perceives to be below him, he reveals his pusillanimity.

In Aristotelian terms, what Leiter lacks is magnanimity (megalopsychia, great-souledness). The sphere of magnanimity is the sphere of honor and dishonor. Magnanimity is the mean between the extremes of vanity and pusillanimity. The magnanimous person knows himself and is capable of honest self-evaluation. This self-knowledge keeps him from both vanity and pusillanimity.

The vain man pegs himself too high: lacking self-knowledge he fancies that he deserves honors and emoluments, perquisites and privileges far above what he actually deserves. So we could say that vanity involves an excess of self-love together with a lack of self-knowledge. Leiter is clearly vain in this Aristotelian sense. His vanity is at the root of his envy of those who are his betters, such as Thomas Nagel whose superiority is evident and unsurpassable by the likes of Leiter no matter how hard he climbs.

The pusillanimous person pegs himself too low: lacking self-knowledge, he fails to aim at goods he is worthy of. He occupies himself with matters that ought to be beneath him such as slandering and defaming opponents.

So it appears that Leiter, lacking self-knowledge and with it magnanimity, oscillates between vanity and pusillanimity. When his vanity is in the ascendancy, he attacks those above him on the Ladder. When his pusillanimity reigns over his psyche, he attacks those below him. This is yet another proof of the appositeness of the 'Ladder Man' label. It is not just that he obsessively likes to rank things. He himself is obsessed with his rank, and thus obsessed by those above him and below him in the Rangordnung. He cannot accept with gratitude the rung upon which he is perched, however precariously. He burns for more in the way of name and fame while denigrating those he considers unsuccessful.

Leiter is a fascinating study, not qua token, but qua type. The Ladder Man type is what elicits scientific interest. There is no science of the particular qua particular, said Aristotle. Individuum ineffabile est.

For Aristotle on magnanimity and pusillanimity, see Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book IV.

Introvert or Extrovert?

Do you need solitude to recover from society or society to recover from solitude?

Can a Sane and Morally Decent Person be a Liberal?

My title is intentionally hyperbolic and provocative, but not without justification given the outrageously vile (e.g., Martin Bashir) and breathtakingly mindless (e.g., Melissa Harris Perry) commentary encountered at liberal media outlets such as MSNBC. Here is a measured formulation of my question: To what extent does liberal ideology militate against sanity and moral decency in those who imbibe it, people who otherwise are basically sane and decent?

A philosophy doctoral student at an Ivy League institution e-mails,

In a recent post, you wrote:

Can one be both a liberal and a decent and sane human being? Or is scumbaggery as it were inscribed into the very marrow of the contemporary liberal? Or perhaps it is more like this: once liberalism infects a person's mind, the decency that was there is flushed out.

Actually, I have struggled with relatives of these questions for some time, and honestly don't know what to think. Many of the people I rub shoulders with are liberal to the bone. But I know well enough to say they're genuinely nice people–and smart people (some, for instance, are brilliant philosophers). At the same time, I find most of the liberal claptrap so intellectually inane and morally repugnant that I have a genuinely hard time seeing how anyone–much less these seemingly smart and decent people–can believe it. I don't know how to reconcile the two observations. Surely you know at least one intelligent, morally decent liberal. How do you fit their existence into your ontology? Or do we have an argument from queerness motivating us to become liberal error theorists? Would such a creature–assuming they can exist–present a peer-disagreement scenario, or cause you to lower your credence in your own beliefs?

My correspondent poses the puzzle of reconciling

1. Some liberals are genuinely nice and highly intelligent people

with

2. These same liberals subscribe to intellectually inane and morally repugnant beliefs.

What makes this aporetic dyad truly puzzling is that the limbs are individually plausible but appear collectively inconsistent. Let's consider an example.

I don't know Robert Paul Wolff personally, but I was favorably impressed by a couple of his books and I read his blog, The Philosopher's Stone, despite the fact that he often comes across as a stoned philosopher. He is no doubt very intelligent, and he seems like a nice guy. But he says things so preternaturally moronic that I am left scratching my head. Here is just one of several examples:

Why Do Conservatives Oppose ObamaCare?

Robert Paul Wolff has an answer for us. Ready? The bolding is Wolff's own and is twice-repeated:

Because Obama is Black.

Is Professor Wolff serious? I'm afraid he is. But given that the man is neither stupid nor the usual sort of left-wing moral scumbag, how could he be serious? What explains a view so plainly delusional? How account for an emotion-driven mere dismissal of the conservative position the arguments for which he will not examine? How is it that a professional philosopher, indeed a very good one, can engage in such puerile ad hominem psychologizing? Wolff himself provides an answer in a later post:

My knowledge of the beliefs and sentiments of those on the right is based entirely on things I have read or have seen on television. I have never had a conversation with a committed right-wing opponent of the Affordable Care Act, nor have I even, to the best of my knowledge, met one. You would be quite correct in inferring that I live in a left-wing bubble [called Chapel Hill — before that, I lived in a left-wing bubble called Amherst, MA, and before that I lived in the right wing bubbles called Morningside Heights, Hyde Park, and Cambridge.] If this strikes you as disqualifying me from having an opinion, you are free to ignore the rest of this post.

Need I say more?

…………

This is a perfect illustration of my correspondent's puzzle. In Robert Paul Wolff we have a man who is intelligent and (I will give him the benefit of the doubt) morally decent, but who maintains a thesis that is both delusional and morally repugnant in that it constitutes a slander on conservatives. What explains this? Wolff himself provides what may be the best explanation: he lives in a bubble. He doesn't know conservative positions, nor interact with conservatives. But isn't it a moral failure in one who is supposedly a truth-seeker simply to ignore whole swaths of opinion that run counter to one's own? Is that not a mark of intellectual dishonesty?

But the best explanation, in terms of his 'bubbly' isolation, is still not very good. How could anyone of his maturity and experience with the world of ideas, even one unfamiliar with conservatism, imagine for even a second that the cheap psychologizing he engages in could be on target?

It is Christmas time, and so, to be charitable I won't accuse Wolff of a moral failing; I'll just say that he and so many of his ilk are topically insane: their leftism has rendered them incapable of rational thought with respect to certain issues, race being a chief one among them.

For further discussion of Robert Paul 'Howlin'' Wolff, see below.

Does Anyone Really Believe in the Muslim Paradise?

I dedicate this post to Peter L. and Mike V. with whom some of the following ideas were hashed out over Sunday breakfast at a Mesa hash house.

Sam Harris reports on the curious views of one Scott Atran, anthropologist:

According to Atran, people who decapitate journalists, filmmakers, and aid workers to cries of “Alahu akbar!” or blow themselves up in crowds of innocents are led to misbehave this way not because of their deeply held beliefs about jihad and martyrdom but because of their experience of male bonding in soccer clubs and barbershops. (Really.) So I asked Atran directly:

“Are you saying that no Muslim suicide bomber has ever blown himself up with the expectation of getting into Paradise?”

“Yes,” he said, “that’s what I’m saying. No one believes in Paradise.”

This post assumes that Harris has fairly and accurately reported Atran's view. If you think he hasn't then substitute 'Atran*' for 'Atran' below. Atran* holds by definition the view I will be criticizing.

If we are to be as charitable to Atran as possible, we would have to say that he holds his strange view because he himself does not believe in the Muslim paradise and he cannot imagine anyone else really believing in it either. So Muslims who profess to believe in Paradise with its black-eyed virgins, etc. are merely mouthing phrases. What makes this preposterous is that Atran ignores the best evidence one could have as to what a person believes, namely, the person's overt behavior taken in the context of his verbal avowals. Belief is linked to action. If I believe I have a flat tire, I will pull over and investigate. If I say 'We have a flat tire" but keep on driving, then you know that I don't really believe that we have a flat tire.

Same with the Muslim terrorist. If he invokes the greatness of his god while decapitating someone, then that is the best possible evidence that he believes in the existence of his god and what that god guarantees to the faithful, namely, an endless supply of post-mortem carnal delights. This is particularly clear in the case of jihadis such as suicide bombers. The verbal avowals indicate the content of the belief while the action indicates that the content is believed.

Now compare this very strong evidence with the evidence Atran has for the proposition that "No one believes in Paradise." His only evidence is astonishingly flimsy: that he and his ilk cannot imagine anyone believing what Muslims believe. But that involves both a failure of imagination and a projection into the Other of one's own attitudes.

The problem here is a general one.

"I don't believe that, and you don't either!"

"But I do!"

"No you don't, you merely think you believe it or are feigning belief."

"Look at what I do, and how I live. The evidence of my actions, which costs me something, in the context of what I say, is solid evidence that I do believe what I claim to believe."

Example. Years ago I heard Mario Cuomo say at a Democratic National Convention that the life of the politician was the noblest and best life. I was incredulous and thought to myself: Cuomo cannot possibly believe what he just said! But then I realized that he most likely does believe it and that I was making the mistake of assuming that others share my values and assumptions and attitudes.

It is a bad mistake to project one's own values, beliefs, attitudes , assumptions and whatnot into others.

Most of the definitions of psychological projection I have read imply that it is only undesirable attitudes, beliefs and the like that are the contents of acts of projection. But it seems to me that the notion of projection should be widened to include desirable ones as well. The desire for peace and social harmony, for example, is obviously good. But it too can be the content of an act of psychological projection. A pacifist, for example, may assume that others deep down are really like he is: peace-loving to such an extent as to avoid war at all costs. A pacifist might reason as follows: since everyone deep down wants peace, and abhors war, if I throw down my weapon, my adversary will do likewise. By unilaterally disarming, I show my good will, and he will reciprocate. But if you throw down your weapon before Hitler, he will take that precisely as justification for killing you: since might makes right on his neo-Thrasymachian scheme, you have shown by your pacific deed that you are unfit for the struggle for existence and therefore deserve to die, and indeed must die to keep from polluting the gene pool.

Projection in cases like these can be dangerous. One oftens hears the sentiment expressed that we human beings are at bottom all the same and all want the same things. Not so! You and I may want "harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding" but others have belligerence and bellicosity as it were hard-wired into them. They like fighting and dominating and they only come alive when they are bashing your skull in either literally or figuratively. People are not the same and it is a big mistake to think otherwise and project your decency into them.

I said that the psychologists classify projection as a defense mechanism. But how could the projection of good traits count as a defense mechanism? Well, I suppose that by engaging in such projections one defends oneself against the painful realization that the people in the world are much worse than one would have liked to believe. Many of us have a strong psychological need to see good in other people, and that can give rise to illusions. There is good and evil in each person, and one must train oneself to accurately discern how much of each is present in each person one encounters.

From Religion to Philosophy: A Typology of Motives for Making the Move

People come to philosophy from various 'places.' Some come from religion, others from mathematics and the natural sciences, still others from literature and the arts. There are other termini a quis as well. In this post I am concerned only with the move from religion to philosophy. What are the main types of reasons for those who are concerned with religion to take up the serious study of philosophy? I count five main types of motive.

1. The Apologetic Motive. Some look to philosophy for apologetic tools. Their concern is to clarify and defend the tenets of their religious faith, tenets they do not question, or do not question in the main, against those who do question them, or even attack them. For someone whose central motive is apologetic, the aim is not to seek a truth they do not possess, but to articulate and defend a truth, the "deposit of faith," that they already possess, if not in fullness, at least in outline.

2. The Critical Motive. Someone who is animated by the Critical Motive seeks to understand religion and evaluate its claim to truth, while taking it seriously. To criticize is not to oppose, but to sift, evaluate, assay, separate the true from the false, the reasonable from the unreasonable. The critic is not out to defend or attack but to understand and evaluate. Open to the claims of religion, his question is: But is it true?

3. The Debunking Motive. If the apologist presupposes the truth of his religion, or some religion, the debunker presupposes the falsehood of a particular religion or of every religion. He takes the doctrines and institutions of religion seriously as things worth attacking, exposing, debunking, unmasking, refuting.

The apologist, the critic, and the debunker all take religion seriously as something worth defending, worth evaluating, or worth attacking using the tools of philosophy. For all three, philosophy is a tool, not an end in itself.

The apologist moves to philosophy without leaving religion. If he succeeds in defending his faith with the weapons of philosophy, well and good; if he fails, it doesn't really matter. He has all the essential truth he needs from his religion. His inability to mount an intellectually respectable defense of it is a secondary matter.

The critic moves to philosophy with the option of leaving religion behind. Whether or not he leaves it behind depends on the outcome of his critique. Neither staying nor leaving is a foregone cnclusion.

The debunker either never had a living faith, or else he had one but lost it. As a debunker, his decision has been made and his Rubicon crossed: religion is buncombe from start to finish, dangerous buncombe that needs to be unmasked and opposed. Strictly speaking, only the debunker who once had a living faith moves from it to philosophy. You cannot move away from a place where you never were.

4. The Transcensive Motive. The transcender aims to find in philosophy something that completes and transcends religion while preserving its truth. One way to flesh this out would be in Hegelian terms: religion and philosophy both aim to express the Absolute, but only philosophy does so adequately. Religion is an inadequate 'pictorial' (vortstellende) representation of the Absolute. On this sort of approach all that is good in religion is aufgehoben in philosophy, simultaneously cancelled and preserved, roughly in the way the bud is both cancelled and preserved in the flower.

5. The Substitutional Motive. The substitutionalist aims to find in philosophy a substitute for religion. Religion, when taken seriously, makes a total claim on its adherents' higher energies. A person who, for any reason, becomes disenchanted with religion, but is not prepared to allow himself to degenerate to the level of the worldling, may look to invest his energies elsewhere in some other lofty pursuit. Some will turn to social or political activism. And of course there are other termini ad quos on the road from religion. The substitutionalist abandons religion for philosophy. In a sense, philosophy becomes his religion. It is in her precincts that he seeks his highest meaning and an outlet for his noblest impulses.

Some Questions

A. What is my motive? (2). Certainly not (1): I seem to be constitutionally incapable of taking the religion of my upbringing , or any religion, as simply true without examination. I can't suppress the questions that naturally arise. We have it on high authority that "The unexamined life is not worth living." That examination, of course, extends to everything, including religion, and indeed also to this very examining. Note that I am not appealing to the authority of Socrates/Plato since their authority can be validated rationally and autonomously.

Certainly not (3): I am not a debunker. Not (4) or (5) either. Hegel is right: both religion and philosophy treat of the Absolute. Hegel is wrong, however, in thinking that religion is somehow completed by or culminates in philosophy. I incline to the view that Athens and Jersualem are at odds with each other, that there is a tension between them, indeed a fruitful, productive tension, one that accounts in part for the vitality of the West as over against the inanition of the Islamic world. To put it starkly, it it is the tension between the autonomy of reason and the heteronomy of obedient faith (cf. Leo Strauss). Jerusalem is not a suburb of Athens.

Nor do I aim to substitute philosophy for religion. Philosophy, with its "bloodless ballet of categories," is not my religion. Man does not live by the discursive intellect alone.

My view is that there are four main paths to the Absolute, philosophy, religion, mysticism, and morality. They are separate and somehow all must be trod. No one of them has proprietary rights in the Absolute. How integrate them? Integration may not be possible here below. The best we can do is tack back and forth among them. So we think, we pray, we meditate and we live under the aegis of moral demands taken as absolute.

This theme is developed in Philosophy, Religion, Mysticism, and Wisdom.

B. Have I left any types of motive out?

Psychological Projection and its Dangers

I have found that it is dangerous to assume that others are essentially like oneself.

Psychologists speak of projection. As I understand it, it involves projecting into others one's own attitudes, beliefs, motivations, fears, emotions, desires, values, and the like. It is classified as a defense mechanism. To avoid confronting an unsavory attitude or trait in oneself, one projects it into another. Suppose one is stingy, considers stinginess an undesirable trait, but doesn't want to own up to one's stinginess. As a defense against the admission of one's own stinginess, one projects it into others. "I'm not stingy; you're stingy!"

Most of the definitions of projection I have read imply that it is only undesirable attitudes, beliefs and the like that are the contents of acts of projection. But it seems to me that the notion of projection could and perhaps should be widened to include desirable ones as well.

The desire for peace and social harmony, for example, is obviously good. But it too can be the content of an act of psychological projection. A pacifist, for example, may assume that others deep down are really like he is: peace-loving to such an extent as to avoid war at all costs. A pacifist might reason as follows: since everyone deep down wants peace, and abhors war, if I throw down my weapon, my adversary will do likewise. By unilaterally disarming, I show my good will, and he will reciprocate. But if you throw down your weapon before Hitler, he will take that precisely as justification for killing you: since might makes right on his neo-Thrasymachian scheme, you have shown by your pacific deed that you are unfit for the struggle for existence and therefore deserve to die, and indeed must die to keep from polluting the gene pool.

Projection in cases like these can be dangerous. One oftens hears the sentiment expressed that we human beings are at bottom all the same and all want the same things. Not so! You and I may want

Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind's true liberation

One mistake I have made, more than once, is to assume that since I value truth above many other things, others do as well. But there are plenty of people who do not value truth at all, or else assign it a rather low priority. There are many, for example, who value human feelings over truth. Truth is nothing to them; feelings everything. That makes no sense to me; to me it is self-evident that, although both are values (to be precise: things that ought to be valued), truth is a higher value, if not the highest value. But reality forces me to accept that others hold to the opposite value-prioritization. It is folly to project one's own values into others.

There are other people for whom truth counts for nothing, but power for everything. They interpret every type of interpersonal transaction as a power struggle. Thus if you calmly try to persuade such a person of the truth of some proposition by appealing to facts and reasoning correctly from them, he will interpret that as nothing but an attempt to dominate him psychologically. Such people are utterly blind to the value of truth and to the fact that truth can sometimes be attained by dialectical means. They project their own lust for power into everyone else interpreting everything that is manifestly not a power-move as latently a power-move.

There are plenty of leftists like this. Taking their cue from Nietzsche, they assume that everything is power at bottom. Die Welt ist der Wille zur Macht und nichts anders! "The world is the will to power and nothing besides!" Supported by this assumption, they set out to unmask (deconstruct) phenomena that manifestly are not power-driven, for example, attempts to state what is the case. Power-mad themselves, these leftists project lust for power into everyone and everything. It is a curious pars pro toto fallacy: one takes a phenomenon one finds in oneself, lust for power, and then interprets everything
else in terms of it. The idea might be worth exploring that Nietzsche's doctrine of the Will to Power arose by projection. He saw the lust for power within himself and excused its presence there by projecting it outward thus transforming a psychological peculiarity into a fundamental trait of beings qua beings.

You say I'm psychologizing. True enough. But false views are legitimately psychologized. It would be the genetic fallacy to dismiss as false a proposition just because it arose from a need or serves a need or results from projection. But once a proposition has been shown to be false, it is legitimate to inquire into the genesis of the belief.

Introverts and Inwardness

Whereas the extrovert finds himself in socializing, the introvert loses himself in it: he experiences the loss of his inwardness, which is precious to him, a pearl of great price, not willingly surrendered. The clearest expression of this dismay at self-loss that I am aware of finds expression is an early (1836) journal entry of Søren Kierkegaard:

I have just returned from a party of which I was the life and soul; witty banter flowed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me — but I came away, indeed the dash should be as long as the radius of the earth's orbit ——————————————- wanting to shoot myself. (The Diary of Søren Kierkegaard, ed. Peter P. Rohde, p. 13)

When to Psychologize

You are free to psychologize your opponent when his position is demonstrably false or incoherent. If his reasons are worthless, then you are justified in exposing the motives that drive his commitments.

Be Gracious

Does someone want to do something for you? Buy you lunch? Give you a gift? Bring something to the dinner?

Be gracious. Don't say, "You don't have to buy me lunch," or "Let me buy you lunch," or "You didn't have to bring that." Humbly accept and grant the donor the pleasure of being a donor.

Lack of graciousness often bespeaks an excess of ego.

We were re-hydrating at a bar in Tortilla Flat, Arizona, after an ankle-busting hike up a stream bed. I offered to buy Alex a drink. Instead of graciously accepting my hospitality, he had the chutzpah to ask me to lend him money so that he could buy me a drink!

Another type of ungraciousness is replying 'Thank you' to 'Thank you.' If I thank you for something, say 'You're welcome,' not 'Thank You.' Graciously acquiesce in the fact that I have done you a favor. Don't try to get the upper hand by thanking me.

I grant that there are situations in which mutual thanking is appropriate.

Some people feel that they must 'reciprocate.' Why exactly? I gave you a little Christmas present because I felt like it. And now you feel you must give me one in return? Is this a tit for tat game?

Suppose I compliment you sincerely. Will you throw the compliment back in my face by denigrating that which I complimented you for, thereby impugning my judgment?

Self-Effacement and Self-Importance

To what extent is it a sign of self-importance that one regularly draws attention to one's own insignificance? I am thinking of Simone Weil. In self-effacement the ego may find a way to assert itself. "Do you see how pure and penetrating is my love of truth that I am able to realize and admit my own personal nothingness face to face with Truth?"

The ego, wily 'structure' that it is, usually (always?) finds a way to affirm itself.