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But holding a theory of justified dismissal also seems harmless. In fact, in philosophy it is almost obligatory.

Our problem as "civilized" inquirers is that we want philosophies complete enough to explain error, illogic, nonsense, and other grounds of justified dismissal; we expect believers to apply their beliefs with consistency and good faith to all the relevant contexts of life; and yet we do not want them to apply their grounds of justified dismissal to the critics and dissenters in the realm of debate who help us decide the theory's truth. Are we asking too much? Are we demanding inconsistent tasks of our opponents? Is debate a privileged process in which beliefs can be examined without the distortions introduced by believing, or (from the believer's standpoint) is it a damnable realm in which one is expected to give up one's faith to defend it?

(Note that I use "belief" and "faith" in a weak sense. Any claims to truth will be called "beliefs" or "faith", even if the proponent also considers them to constitute "knowledge".)

A theory may explain away the criticism or disagreement of critics descriptively or normatively. The first example in Section 1 above is descriptive, the second normative. If the critic's disagreement is put down to an unfortunate series of childhood buffets or to any other source independent of the merits or truth-value of the theory he criticized, then he is rudely treated. He is not answered, but reduced to ineffectual squealing from the standpoint of the proponent. Once stigmatized as suffering from the defect ascribed to him, a defect well-explained by the theory, the critic is put out of court. The well of discourse is poisoned. Nothing he says afterward can affect the theory, at least in the judgment of the proponent. If the critic's disagreement is put down to vice, sin, or a normative weakness, then he is equally not answered and relegated to limbo —a limbo either of well-explained incompetency or of well-explained ineligibility for our attention and answers. Descriptive rudeness imputes a foible, prescriptive rudeness a fault, to critics or dissenters.

The authority to be rude consists in heeding the terms of the theory that describe the foible or fault and that describe who deserves to be branded with it. The terms of the theory may be false or implausible, but it is futile to hope to persuade the rude proponent that that is so when our attempts only feed self-righteousness.

Rudeness of this type makes debate much like an unnamed childhood game I recall with pleasure and frustration. One player asks yes-or-no questions, and the other answers "yes" or "no" according to a secret algorithm. The object of the game is to guess the algorithm. It might be, "answer 'yes' whenever the question begins with a vowel or ends with a two-syllable word; otherwise answer 'no'." (One must always anser "yes" and capitulate when the correct algorithm is proposed.) In such a game the words "yes" and "no" are not used with their ordinary meanings. Hence the questioner will be seriously misled if she asks, "does the algorithm concern syllabification?" and takes the "yes or "no" answer in its ordinary sense. In the game, which I will call "Noyes" for convenience (for the pun on "no-yes" and the homonym of "noise"), "yes" and "no" are tokens of exchange, not signs of affirmation and negation. The questioner cannot begin to play meta-Noyes by asking, "seriously, is syllabification involved?" The questioner cannot get traditional "yes" and "no" answers as long as the oracle maintains his role and plays the game. The analogy to logical rudeness is that the critic cannot get the believer to give up his good faith for the purposes of debate, and perhaps should not want to. It is equivalent to asking the Noyes oracle to give up his algorithm for the sake of play. Because the believer is ruled by his beliefs in selecting responses in debate, as the Noyes oracle is ruled by his algorithm, the questioner is apt to find her questions and objections translated from the genre of criticism to the genre of noise, and dealt with as input to an unknown algorithm. The difference of course is that Noyes is plainly a game, and the refusal of the oracle to play meta-Noyes is part of his role in playing Noyes. Is debate equally a game, and are some believers equally bound to refuse to play meta-debate?



Noyes makes play out of what can be a serious problem. Consider the case of a rapist who believes that "no" means "yes" and that struggle indicates pleasure. Recent law in England has allowed rape defendants to argue good faith (that is, sincere) belief in the no-yes equation, and a few "rapists" have won acquittal with that defense. The effect is to equate a woman's consent with a man's belief in a woman's consent. The result is nothing short of evil in practice, though it rests on the slender theoretical reed that people are ruled, not by what is real, but by their belief about what is real. This is one case in which the "authority" one receives from good faith belief leads to intolerable consequences and should be barred by the criminal law. The Anglo-American criminal law occasionally (but rarely) excuses conduct or mitigates punishment for crimes performed in good faith error of the facts. But to prevent "good faith rape" and similar abuses, usually an objectivity requirement is added that the belief be "reasonable". The peculiarity of the English law is that good faith belief, no matter how unreasonable under the circumstances, suffices to acquit. (This astonishing doctrine was first asserted in Director of Public Prosecutions v. Morgan et al., 61 Crim. App. Reports 136 (1975).)

Some political regimes may be Noyes games writ large. Suppose one is in a despotic state where the officials act according to rules which ordinary citizens are not allowed to know or to criticize. These meta-rules about criticism are sometimes enforced against critics with imprisonment and other forms of violence, but for most people most of the time they are enforced by social pressure. If one engages one's neighbor in conversation on the wisdom of such policies, one will be surprised that one's very desire to examine the wisdom of the policies is considered suspect and criminal. If the topic of conversation shifts (it is not much of a shift) to the desirability of open discussion of every question, one will be more surprised to hear one diagnosed as "bourgeois" or "reactionary" or (from the other end of the ideological spectrum) as "anarchical".

One may be aware of theories of government according to which free discussion is inimical to good order, revolutionary initiatives, or reeducation; but one would at least like to debate the merits of such theories of government. The loyal proponents of such positions, however, like most loyal proponents, apply their beliefs to the context of their debate, as they apply their beliefs to all the contexts of history. From their own point of view this is only good faith and consistency. One cannot get such proponents to "jump out of the system" for the time and labor of a joint inquiry into the merits of their beliefs; and one should not expect to be able to. Much like the questioner in a game of Noyes or the victim of a rapist who believes that "no" means "yes", one's criticism of a rude state policy will be interpreted in that state as something other than a criticism to be answered as criticism. In this case it will be interpreted as a violation, and one's attempt to reach a meta-level at which one could discuss the propriety of such an interpretation will be interpreted as another violation. Like the critic of the demon theory of error, or the hapless victim of the tarbaby, one's struggles to escape the verdict of one's opponent only confirm his confidence in one's miserable fate.

The rude regime raises important issues of political theory, particularly the question whether commitments to principles or results should supersede commitments to method or process. This and related issues of "procedural" democracy will be explored to some extent in Section 5.

The Noyes regime and rapist suggest a closely related species of rudeness: the tactic of the proponent in disregarding the logical or illative dimension of the critic's words and treating them solely as behavior to be explained by his theory. The same effect is achieved when criticism is interpreted as a symptom of historical, economic, or psychological forces, or as ideology. In many ways this is merely a different perspective on the same species of rudeness considered above. If the proponent's theory contains an explanation of behavior (which we also expect a good philosophy or social science to have), then the critic may find herself unable to escape the object-language of the theory she is attacking and reach its meta-language. All criticism and disagreement may be seen as behavior, and to that extent fall into the arena of the subject-matter of the theory. Like birdsong or ritualistic dancing, they are colorful bits of the explanandum, logically subordinate to the explanation and incapable of refuting it except as counter-examples or anomalies.

The difference between disagreement as behavior to be explained and as criticism to be answered is at least partly a matter of perspective within the discretion of the proponent. Again we encounter the question whether his choice is ever fixed by the content of the beliefs he is defending and his general commitments to consistency and good faith. And again, we are reluctant to close off any option by normative force. Just as explanations of error are desirable, so are explanations of behavior. Even behavior with a logical or illative dimension is worth studying merely as behavior to such disciplines as anthropology, the sociology of knowledge, psycho-history, and the descriptive parts of comparative jurisprudence. But we want to discourage the sort of rudeness that studies critics as specimens to the exclusion of (rather than in addition to) hearing their criticism.

Religious belief has been studied as a psychological condition and social phenomenon. Some schools of linguistics study "verbal behavior". There is no epistemological or scientific reason why a social science could not study "argumentative or critical behavior". The theories of such a social science would be fraught with great potential, from birth, to license their proponents to treat their critics rudely. Such a science might use the term "refutationary behavior" to refer to arguments, refutations, criticisms, and polemics intended to demonstrate falsehood. Refutationary behavior is fascinating. People thrust and parry, advance and retreat, concede small points and lay traps on large ones, take disagreement personally, get angry, resort to ad hominem attacks, decoy the opponent with false camaraderie or uncertainty, sting in the heel with irony, trip up with sophisms and paradoxes, fall back on definitions, and refuse to fall back on definitions. In our large universe, any theory of refutationary behavior, like theories of other kinds, will encounter disagreement. If a sociologist of polemics proposes that refutationary behavior is motivated by class interests, then a critic may be as erudite as can be, but the proponent can study the proffered criticism as another example of refutationary behavior, perhaps as one that confirms the theory.

Rudeness that views arguments only as a special class of behavior for empirical study highlights a feature of all rudeness, which is that the rude believer is not summoned or elicited to be rude until criticism is expounded or uttered or made into behavior. A theory may be refuted in abstracto, in silence, in thought, in ideality, or in private at one's desk, but this kind of refutation does not put the rude proponent on the defensive or call on him to use his rude defenses.

The necessity of expounded criticism to trigger logical rudeness in turn highlights another feature of all rudeness, which is that the theory may "really" be refuted while the proponent is "justifiably" unconverted. Rudeness insulates believers, not beliefs. Rudeness suggests the presence of logical perspective: even sound refutations, those that might work at one's desk or in the journals, might fail to convert the proponent, and the proponent may have a "sufficient" warrant from this theory for his theory for this intractability. If good faith belief in a theory suffices to warrant the believer to act under its terms (a political, not a logical, principle), then the believer is "really" justified in disregarding the sound refutation. Rudeness drives a wedge in between logical argument and rhetorical persuasion, preventing the power of the former from aiding the power of the latter. The rude, insulated believer need not be illogical to be protected by the mantle of rudeness; he must believe a theory of a certain kind, with the sort of good faith devotion that seeks to preserve the theory's consistency and to apply it to all explananda within its domain. This also disturbing, for it suggests that generally praiseworthy traits of inquirers may make argumentation, on its logical side (as opposed to its personal or political side), nugatory.

We might be tempted to say that it is always rude to interpret criticism as unwitting confirmation of one's theory. A good example is the theory that the subtlest, and therefore most likely, action of the devil would be to deny his own existence and cause others to deny it. Opponents who doubt the existence of devils are hopelessly trapped; no objection can fail to confirm the believer in his belief. When this tactic is rude, it is like the empirical study of refutationary behavior in refusing to see a meta-level in the critic's criticism.

We should be careful here, however. Some criticism does confirm the theory being criticized, in which case a response by retortion is appropriate. Critics may resent this sort of intellectual judo, but we may not call it logically rude unless the critic is deprived of a response on the merits, or cannot have his criticism taken as criticism, although perhaps it is also taken as symptom, behavior, or confirming instance.

Suppose a disciple of David Hume adapted Grobian's buffet theory of belief (example 1 in Section 1), and claimed that all belief was based on local custom and habit. This theory might have met comparatively warm approval in late eighteenth century Britain. But contemporaneous Germans would have denied it in unison. The Humean could interpret the German choir as simple corroboration: their consensus and their Teutonism would explain one another. Like the student of refutationary behavior, such a Humean would be guilty of little more than applying her theory to its subject matter, which happens to include the context of its own debate. And that, by itself, is not blameworthy. But in each case we feel that such application is hasty. Before the critic is used against himself, he should be told why he is wrong. But while the student of refutationary behavior is clearly failing to explain the errors of his critics, the Humean is not. The former merely says, "That's about what I'd expect from a middle-class white male," while the Humean has found a putative cause of the opponents' error in Germanic national character.

Rudeness which twists objections into confirmations highlights a feature of all rudeness, which is that the proponent of a theory must struggle to avoid perceiving criticism as applicable to him or his theories, qua criticism. The proponent must see criticism as false, non-cognitive, meaningless, irrelevant, unwitting confirmation, undebatable, unknowable, self-contradictory, or generally inapplicable, ripe for justified dismissal.

Both the proponent of the class theory of refutationary behavior and the proponent of the custom theory of belief have traced the beliefs of their opponents to their supposed sources. The difference is that the proponent of the class theory of refutationary behavior does not (necessarily) believe that such a genealogy is equivalent to a refutation, while the Humean does. The former is constantly, even professionally, tracing refutationary behavior to its source. One may pursue such a course and still believe that the truth-value of ideas is not affected by their origin. No empirical study is per se guilty of the genetic fallacy. But the Humean relativizes any belief that she succeeds in tracing to its source; if the belief is not already self-consciously relativistic (as eighteenth century German philosophy typically was not), then it is subjected to a supposed refutation. A rude slap has been added to the initial reductionism.

But is not the Humean's own claim about custom relativized by itself? The Humean may evade this consequence by making the custom theory of belief an exception to its own tenets; the exception may be hard to justify, but at least to claim it avoids paradox. Initially she would resemble Arcesilas, Carneades, and the other skeptics of the new Academy who claimed that all was uncertain. They were urged by Antipater to make an exception for their very claim that all (else) was uncertain; but in fear of implausibility or in pursuit of mischief they refused.

This paradox and its avoidance raise an important point. Some kinds of rudeness are fallacious, and the inference of falsehood or inconsistency is justified. For example, the verificationist theory of meaning is meaningless by its own criterion. However, any objection along these lines is also meaningless by that criterion. Hence, the proponent of the theory may seem able to sit smugly on his criterion and refuse to allow any objection to enter his realm of debate. But that would commit a fallacy. The weapon raised by the verification theorist to slay his opponent slays himself. This is not always so with rude defenses, but it is so here and for the Humean proponent of the custom theory of belief, as well as for Grobian's buffet theory of belief in Section 1 (example 1). The verificationist apparently has two choices in the face of the charge of self-referential inconsistency: He may make his theory an exception to its own tenets, which would be odd and implausible but consistent, or he may try to fend off the objection by classifying it meaningless ab initio, which his theory apparently entitles him to do. But the latter choice is not really open, or it does not really preserve the theory's consistency in the face of the objection. If the theory is not excepted from its own standards, then it must suffer the very fate contemplated for the opponent.

We may generalize. Normally one may not infer falsehood from rudeness. But one may do so with rude theories whose grounds of justified dismissal properly apply to the theories themselves. One may at least infer the presence of a fallacious defense, beyond a merely rude one, and the presence of self-referential inconsistency.

The proponent of the custom theory of belief is rude; if she does not make her theory an exception to itself, then she will be fallaciously rude. Her condition should be distinguished from that of another kind of debater who likes to trace criticism to its source. If a religious fundamentalist objects to the theory of evolution, a biologist may say, "Ah, that is because he believes in the account in Genesis, and takes it literally." This would be rude only if the imputation of the cause of the objection is considered an elliptical refutation, shorthand for the claim "that is false because it derives from a system of superstition long disproved." But it need not be rude in this sense; it may be shorthand a more complex evasion. The biologist may believe that the origin of ideas is irrelevant to their truth-value; she is not rude if her statement is merely an elliptical way of postponing or deferring an answer on the merits.

Discovering that an objection to one's theories originated in a religious belief, or from any source other than the objectionable character of one's theories, is not a refutation; if it is not used as a refutation, then it is not rude to point out the discovery. For example, objections to certain theories of astronomy from astrology are often tossed aside because of their origin. This may or may not be rude. It is not rude if the astronomer is saying, "Astrology has been answered before; if I don't take this astrologer seriously it is only because the reasons are shared by all the members of my profession, and even if those reasons are inadequate, obsolete, or subject to the criticism before me now, they can go without saying."

To subsume an objection under the larger faith that gave rise to it, however accurately, does not help a bit in answering or disarming the objection. It is pure postponement. It serves communication, not refutation. In context it usually informs all interested parties of one's position, and even the source of one's counter-evidence and counter-arguments. But it does not actually answer the criticism or refute the body of beliefs that gave rise to it. Even when it is shorthand for a definitive refutation, it does not recapitulate the reasons against the position, but only alludes to them, and only indirectly, by alluding to the faith which is presumed to be long refuted. Logical courtesy (erudition) demands that the objection be answered on its merits, although no logics themselves demand it. To allude to a supposed definitive refutation without restating it is on the face of it nothing more than a weak display of disagreement. But to subsume a belief under a larger system as if that constituted refutation begs the question, and worse. It is like any other reductio ad absurdum in which the absurdum is not a contradiction but simply unacceptable or unheard of. One is not acting with the courage of conviction, which believes that truth is demonstrable, but only with the complacency of conviction, which believes that dissenters are pitifully benighted.

This discussion brings us back to the beginning. For a theory of justified dismissal may focus on a fault or foible of the believer, or on the body of beliefs which gave rise to the objectionable theory. Both can be rude; but the second can also be mere postponement. Both involve the explanation of the objection. If we explain the criticism of critics in a way that justified dismissal, then we have treated the critic rudely. But if we explain the objection as originating in a possible flaw in our own theories, then we are as polite as can be. We are then granting "for the sake of argument" that our beliefs might be objectionable or false.

Another type of rudeness arises when a proponent feels authorized in holding a theory independent of the authority that comes from correctness. Many government officials are guilty of this kind of rudeness, and seem to believe that their ideas are sufficiently authorized by the election results and thereafter need not be defended or debated. When critics or reporters ask why a course of action was not taken (requesting a reason), many officials will answer, "We decided it would not be appropriate at this time." This could be translated as, "I don't have to explain or defend myself as long as the people let me stay in office." Grobian's fourth response in Section 1 is of this type: he felt authorized in his faith, not by shareable evidence and reasons, but by a private inner light.

There are certainly many other kinds of logical rudeness. I do not mean to give an exhaustive taxonomy. One final type, similar to the government official's, may be mentioned. Suppose someone believes that (1) ESP exists, (2) only some people possess it, (3) it may be acquired but that doubt is an obstacle to its acquisition, and (4) it cannot be displayed in the presence of hostile or unbelieving witnesses. This theory is rude in two novel ways. First, it is unfalsifiable. All negative results from experiments may be answered with the all-purpose subterfuge, "The researchers must have doubted." Any unfalsifiable theory may be called rude in a weak or attenuated sense. Critics are teased, because they may disagree all they want, but no applicable or decisive refutation may be found. For ordinary empirical theories, amassing contrary evidence is never a conclusive refutation, but at least the strength of a negative inference mounts; amassing contrary evidence to such an ESP theory would not even strengthen a negative inference in the judgment of the proponent.

A stronger sense of rudeness derives from the first. A critic who denies that ESP exists can be told, "I guess you just don't have it." This reply makes the ESP theory a case of a more general type. Max Scheler's theory of value and value-blindness is another case. Probably the most infuriating case may be called the blessing theory of truth —the theory that knowledge is a gift from a god, that only some receive it, and that those receiving it know it when they see it by unmistakable internal signs. I suppose it is optional for a proponent of a blessing theory of truth to claim that the blessing theory itself is knowable only as part of such a gift.

The general feature shared by rude theories of this type is the belief that some valued capacity, relevant to truth-seeking or knowing, is either present or absent in one, and that possessors know they are possessors and nonpossessors do not (or sometimes cannot) know that the race divides into possessors and nonpossessors. This general type of theory takes two equally rude forms: (1) the "born loser" theories, according to which nonpossessors of the gift are doomed to remain nonpossessors, and therefore ignorant, and (2) the "one path" or "trust me" theories, according to which nonpossessors may become possessors only by following a regimen set for them by self-proclaimed possessors. The regimen may include a code of conduct as well as of faith, all of which must be taken on faith or without evidence in the beginning. Proof comes only to those who take the path to the end. A cross between the born-loser and the one-path theories may hold that the gift falls on possessors gratuitously.

The general type may be called "boon theories". We are all familiar with boon theories of knowledge, wisdom, virtue, and salvation. The first ESP example was a one-path boon theory. Max Scheler's view that some people "see" values rightly and others are value-blind is a one-path boon theory. A social Darwinist theory that held that males and whites deserve their privileged positions simply because they have acquired them is a born-loser boon theory. Note that in boon theories in which the boon is not gratuitous, nonpossession is a stigma. Hence the critic is not only excluded from grace and ignorant, but is blameworthy. The smugness of rude proponents and the rude immunity to conversion are thereby justified all the more.


Date: 2015-02-16; view: 741


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