The Good Captain of the U.S.S. Clueless, Steven Den Beste, recently posted two engrossingly rich posts on the clash of philosophies that currently informs and sustains the current global struggles. His thumbnail sketches of religious idealism, philosophical idealism and philosophical realism in Three Way Struggle and Teleology and Solipsism are as good as any I've ever seen. And while he does jettison orthodox taxonomy regarding these systems of thought, leave it to an engineer to improve on your area of study with an elegant and tidy edifice. An accomplishment of which he is fully aware of, and factors into his argument!
Religious Idealism, which he rightly identifies not with Islam, but with Islamism, (i.e. an ideology of religiosity, in this case, Islam), takes as its arche (principles), the theological doctrine of its informing religion. Which in the particular instance of Islamism, is a reawakening to God's Will and the human need to submit before it.
Philosophical Idealism often places priority on the principles that lie beyond reality, but which are discernible to the human mind, i.e., metaphysics. Mr. Den Beste describes this metaphysics in terms of teleology:
[W]hich refers to a basic assumption that there's a fundamental elegance of design to the universe, a deep sense in which things are related so that outcomes are intellectually and esthetically pleasing. When things happen, it's not just the result of localized cause-and-effect; there's also a "final cause", a deeper meaning and source of it. And because of that, it all relates; everything is of a piece, and it's all part of an elegant overall pattern.
This is the cornerstone of the Western tradition, begun by Pythagoras, explored by Plato, and systematized by Aristotle. Often what this means, is that because the pattern is discernible through the mind, ideas and concepts can be given greater weight than reality itself (and in the case of Plato, the latter was elaborated as a deficient copy of the former model). This of course led to things like Geometry, Natural Philosophy, Astronomy, etc. in the Ancient world, and contributed to the development of the Scientific Method.
Philosophical realism, according to Mr. Den Beste,
[S]tarted with the question, "What is the universe like?" and came up with the answer, "I dunno; let's go look and see." It posits that there actually is an objective universe, and doesn't automatically assume that it has any kind of underlying purpose. If such a thing is present, it will become clear in due course, and in the mean time let's all look around to see what kind of place we're living in.
This turn away from the mental delights of assumption and purposing led to things like engineering, and later still, economics. One could even call it a "worldly philosophy", because, as Mr. Den Beste rightly points out, philosophical realism is the framework for "making a whole lot of money".
In this reduced cosmos, Philosophical Idealism comes to mean not only dogmatic justification for the divine rights of kings, but also the dogmatic impediments to scientific breakthroughs in the Enlightenment, and even the Marxist insanity of later years. There is truth to this claim, although it does gloss over the non-monolithic nature of science.
Philosophical Realism stands for scientific progress, engineering prowess, Enlightenment, Capitalism, consent of the governed, and Truth Justice and the American way (OK, I'm being facetious with the last one, but not by much). Also, there is truth in this claim but it also glosses over the idealistic nature of most of these enterprises. Moreover, in the scientific method, last I checked, relies on induction, not deduction, and induction is by definition matching a presumed pattern to the observed phenomena, and then revising the assumption to best "fit", becoming a "theory", which is then tested anew, until some day when it can take its place next to those teleological models of elegant simplicity and harmony -- Newton's Classical Mechanics.
In a nutshell, Mr. Den Beste claims:
The three modern forces who are now contending with one another are all deeply different from one another. Each is enormously varied internally. One of them is Islamism, the second is idealist, elitist and socialist, and third is humanist, realist and capitalist. And all of those descriptions are inaccurate, alas.
If equality is one way to tell these three apart, responsibility is another. The Islamists believe that Allah is responsible for it all; the duty of believers is to follow His will, and leave all else in His hands. For the idealists, responsibility lies with the state. Citizens should rely on the state for all things, and let the state be responsible for taking care of it all. For the realists, everyone has primary responsibility for their own fate, and though they may rely to some extent on others, or on the state, or on God, ultimately each person should look out for themself [sic] as much as they can. And these summaries are also, alas, generalizations which are not totally accurate.
Two points: this strikes me as giving Islamism short shrift and I'm not sure that his conception of Philosophical Realism is humanist. But let's leave that for later.
What is at stake in this global struggle is the future, and it pits Islamists, Teleologists, and Empiricists in a war of sorts. One's a shooting war and the other seems to take place in academic journals of sorts. His second essay is, in particular, a savage skewering of the pretensions of critical theory that rings true from my studies (which, for the last time people, is not postmodernism, lit crit is reheated Marxism, and about as valuable).
All-in-all, his two articles constitute a tour de force treatment of the subject, which, while partial to the philosophical realist (i.e. empiricist) side are definite reads. As for these posts' short treatment of Islamism... well any creed that advocates suicide as a means to political ends deserves what its adherents will get: nothing. What Islam needs is a reformation, a rejuvenation, not the Big Sleep. It does not deserve to have fundamentalist death cults as its primary interpreters. That is to say, the best thing for Islam is the discrediting of Islamism.
However, these two posts' strengths also constitute they're weaknesses. While it is necessary to conflate differences into three über-worldviews -- something which Mr. Den Beste does with great skill -- to make his argument in such a way that it not get bogged down in the quagmire of nuance and minutiae (as most philosophers all too often do), his conflation ignores reality for the elegant simplicity of his taxonomy.
In three way struggle, he correctly diagnoses the teleological nature of Marxism, and how it is a response to the successes of philosophical realism. The idea of a universal direction of history that serves their end is par for the course for teleological thinking, and seems to serve as the real model of philosophical idealism than his treatment of the Greeks. Aristotle coined the term "teleology" and first described it, even as his Ethics and Politics trumpeted precisely the need for us to take heed not of high-falutin' theories, but instead to pay attention to what is good for the human and the human life. Moreover, his political theory was the first to be based on the empirical observation and analysis of the constitutions of Greek city-states.
Mr. Den Beste does attribute the origins of philosophical realism to the Greeks, but seems to ignore the essentially conceptual nature of empiricism. As you might have noticed, that's why I've attached "philosophical" to realism. Why? The basis of scientific thought is mathematics and it axiomatic principles are manifestly not "real". Recalling Pythagoras, he found that the qualitative differences in natural phenomena could be expressed quantitatively. He thought that these numbers were real. We now know that numbers are descriptive. What mathematics describes in science and engineering is the "elegant pattern" of nature, a pattern that is not really "real".
Galileo and Kepler, prominent figures in the history of science and in Mr. Den Beste's post revolutionized, well, everything. Personally, I dig them both and consider them heroes. But it would be foolish to assume that in their description of the celestial bodies and their motion were accomplished free of the idealistic mathematical assumptions of Euclidean geometry, or without the urge to posit teleologies themselves. Which is to say, while the idealogical impetus of science (and other quantitative disciplines) is toward the real, hence realism, its tools are in fact, idealistic in nature.
Now, that's why I believe that science et. al. are so successful, because if all you did was observe phenomena without the ideality of mathematics, we would be stuck in pre-scientific times, where qualitative differences defined things, and not quantitative. Realism is still a philosophy and one who is indebted to its more idealistic antecedents.
Secondly, science as practiced today is not truly empirical. In fact, it might be said that, as of late, abandoned fidelity to testing reality, and has entered into a teleological, theological mode. Mr. Crichton's speech at Caltech diagnoses the intellectual rot of science today, starting with the example of Drake's Equation in SETI:
N=N*fp ne fl fi fc fL
Where N is the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy; fp is the fraction with planets; ne is the number of planets per star capable of supporting life; fl is the fraction of planets where life evolves; fi is the fraction where intelligent life evolves; and fc is the fraction that communicates; and fL is the fraction of the planet's life during which the communicating civilizations live.
This serious-looking equation gave SETI an [sic] serious footing as a legitimate intellectual inquiry. The problem, of course, is that none of the terms can be known, and most cannot even be estimated. The only way to work the equation is to fill in with guesses. And guesses-just so we're clear-are merely expressions of prejudice. Nor can there be "informed guesses." If you need to state how many planets with life choose to communicate, there is simply no way to make an informed guess. It's simply prejudice.
As a result, the Drake equation can have any value from "billions and billions" to zero. An expression that can mean anything means nothing. Speaking precisely, the Drake equation is literally meaningless, and has nothing to do with science. I take the hard view that science involves the creation of testable hypotheses. The Drake equation cannot be tested and therefore SETI is not science. SETI is unquestionably a religion. Faith is defined as the firm belief in something for which there is no proof. The belief that the Koran is the word of God is a matter of faith. The belief that God created the universe in seven days is a matter of faith. The belief that there are other life forms in the universe is a matter of faith. There is not a single shred of evidence for any other life forms, and in forty years of searching, none has been discovered. There is absolutely no evidentiary reason to maintain this belief. SETI is a religion.
Crichton goes on to elaborate that much of today's science is quasi-religion (especially environmentalism and its Marxist teleological computer generated models that predict future climates):
To an outsider, the most significant innovation in the global warming controversy is the overt reliance that is being placed on models. Back in the days of nuclear winter, computer models were invoked to add weight to a conclusion: "These results are derived with the help of a computer model." But now large-scale computer models are seen as generating data in themselves. No longer are models judged by how well they reproduce data from the real world-increasingly, models provide the data. As if they were themselves a reality. And indeed they are, when we are projecting forward. There can be no observational data about the year 2100. There are only model runs.
This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right. Because only if you spend a lot of time looking at a computer screen can you arrive at the complex point where the global warming debate now stands.
Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we're asked to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future? And make financial investments based on that prediction? Has everybody lost their minds?
While his conclusions are unsatisfactory (we need a public sector solution to shape scientific research), his challenge has merit. To what extent, Mr Den Beste, do you think that science is religion? How much of what constitutes science is "faith"?
Additionally, Mr. Den Beste assumes that philosophical realism is humanist. I'm not sure that I agree with this claim, if only because I'm not sure what Mr. Den Beste means by humanism. Is this used in an "orthodox" manner, or is this a re-configuration of the idea to suit the tri-partite struggle? Assuming that he means it in an orthodox manner, it would seem to mean the Enlightenment idea of humans as the measure of all things (which I subscribe to). I concur wholeheartedly with Mr. Den Beste that this is an agnostic -- e.g. beauty is not divine, but it is human thing -- ideal. While it emphasizes the human at the expense of the divine, it does not either affirm nor negate it. It also leads to the political philosophies of our founding fathers, and their claim to the self-evident rights of man.
Yet, I cannot see how the idea of natural rights or man being the measure of all things can be determined from an empiricist standpoint. At this point, I would like to remind you, the empiricist Berkeley could not posit that gravity was a "real" thing solely from observation and deduction. I'm sure that Mr. Den Beste, a brilliant articulator of common sense principles and ideas would never submit to this kind of radical skepticism and purist thinking. That's why I would like to ask him this question:
How does an empiricist arrive at humanism? Might somebody guide me along this path? Moreover, is any empiricist exposition of humanism following from "there's an objective reality, and you can only determine the nature of that reality by looking at it" without contamination from any form "philosophical idealism"?
I mention it, because I agree with Mr. G.K. Chesterton who said:
America is the only nation in the world that is founded on creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just.
The founding fathers might have been Enlightened empiricists, but I cannot see the path of empiricist observation "of how the world really is" that leads to a creed of natural rights and legitimacy as consent of the governed. So, exactly how is it that the idea of America is philosophical realist in nature? And, in this question I would ask that we not think anachronistically -- the founding fathers did not know that it would work so splendidly as we can now all bear witness to 228 years later.
Lastly, and this is of greatest concern to me, how would a philosophical realist explain morality? Is an ethics of philosophical realism (as elaborated by Mr. Den Beste) possible? Can we "go look and see" the place where it lies? Market pricing seems to me to be the ultimate consummation of philosophical realism -- and something which I wholeheartedly believe in -- but how can market pricing determine the value of morality? What about credit ratings? What assumption underlies them? That we have cataloged men's hearts and can predict the behavior of men from our observation of some? Or that some people just have a substandard character and its important that we keep track of their inability to meet their responsibilities so as to avoid entering into contracts with them? Common sense, right? But is it empirical? Wherefore then virtue, Mr. Den Beste? Where do we find it? How can we study it? How can we measure it?
I ask all these questions because it seems to me that if we lump all of philosophical idealism with the devil Marx, we lose too much. And those loses are not met by philosophical realism. The very strength of humanism, natural science, democracy, capitalism, and yes, America itself comes from a fusion, a cross-pollination of idealism with realism. The animating ideas that shape the reality we forge do not come from that very same reality. Using a crude spatial metaphor, they come from someplace "else". Where? You've got me. Ideas recombine and fuse in the most fascinating way, and it is important that we not schematize them into neat camps, but instead that we remain open to the various truths which they proclaim, and even assume the risk that our minds might be changed by them. But do not mistake me: this very freedom for an orientation toward openness -- an entrepreneurial risk of intellect -- is realizable only within the Liberal (not leftist) Western tradition. We must defend our heritage not only from dogmatic religiosity and soulless dialectical materialism, but also from a empirical, reductionist ideal of science that bites the hand that feeds it.