Genealogy is concerned with family trees. It is useful for two different reasons- firstly, it can help avoid marriages between people closely related by blood which may result in unhealthy progeny. More generally, it can help predict likely genetic diseases. The second reason genealogy may be important is because it can affect inheritance rights and other such entitlements.
At one time there was a 'Lamarckian' theory that genealogy mattered a great deal in determining mental abilities and ways of seeing the world. That theory has been completely abandoned. We don't think the son of a pair of Doctors will be a good Doctor whereas the daughter of a pair of field hands will be wholly incapable of entering the medical profession.
Thus Genealogy doesn't greatly matter. DNA analysis is getting cheaper and better at an exponential rate. Doctors may soon stop asking about a patient's family history of certain ailments because genetic vulnerability would be directly observable. Similarly, as 'entailed estates' become a much smaller part of inheritable wealth, one's lineage becomes less and less important in comparison with one's educational attainments and entrepreneurial or other work skills.
Thus 'Genealogy' is not important. It has no philosophical content. The World is changing rapidly. People are not just more geographically and occupationally mobile, they are also culturally and linguistically mobile. One's grandchildren- though of similar lineage- may chose different languages as their mother tongue and have different loyalties.
Amia Srinivasan should know this. Some of her cousins or second cousins, at the very least, are probably more fluent in Tamil or Hindi than in English. Often, this is as a result of early childhood choice which parents find themselves powerless to combat. I have a cousin who refused to learn English and insisted on going to a Tamil medium school. He has done very well for himself. Another cousin identified with American culture at an early age and is flourishing there. Some people make a self-conscious choice to switch language and milieu. A friend of mine gave up a successful career in America- where he had begun to publish articles in literary magazines- to return to Chennai. His now writes scripts for Tamil movies and looks like Periyar.
All of this is perfectly rational. Indeed, it is what Economic theory would dictate. Amia believes otherwise. She thinks genealogy is philosophically important. However, she has nothing to say about actual genealogy. All she is talking about is suddenly finding oneself alive in the world. Furthermore, she thinks that things which aren't biological at all also have a genealogy. This is foolish. The reason sexual reproduction exists is because it is a good error correcting mechanism. Inorganic things don't need sexual reproduction- indeed, they are incapable of it. They have no genealogy.
Yet Amia writes
- 'Locke and Hobbes offered accounts of how
the state – liberal in the case of Locke, authoritarian in the case of Hobbes – emerge
out of a hypothesised state of nature. Crucially, Locke and Hobbes took their
genealogical accounts to not only explain the emergence, but moreover
demonstrate the value and legitimacy, of their favoured political arrangements.
These are not genealogical accounts. No Daddy or Mummy are identified. No Grandparents are named. At best we can say this is a historical account- such as that given by geology. The absence of sex and little babies means it can't be genealogical.
Consider the opening paragraph of her monograph 'On Genealogy'-
Genealogy tells us we have a Daddy and Mummy and they made whoopie and 9 months later we were laboriously delivered into the world. We weren't thrown into it at all.
What happens when we 'find ourselves' somewhere? Is it different from 'losing ourselves' elsewhere? Yes. Of course it is. Provided we are dimension hopping Secret Agents from the the Thirty First Century seeking to repair the Time Line and capture Randall Savage. It might be argued that we actually are astral projections used by Dr. Strange to trap Galactus in a Mirror World Infinity Loop. However this argument is especially vulnerable to ad hominem attacks for being like Last Airbender level Gay.
Nobody is 'thrown into the world'. The birth canal doesn't work that way. Our representations of the world don't depend on contingent facts about
where we find ourselves. They depend on our own choices and the choices of those who foster and befriend us. If we have 'beliefs, values and concepts', it is because we have human genes and were brought up by humans, not wolves. However these beliefs, values and concepts- for a reason Evolutionary Game Theory elucidates- vary considerably and have a chaotic trajectory. Only 'Revealed Preference' gets pruned by Scarcity. 'Values, Beliefs and Concepts' may or may not exist independently of some juristic or pedagogic process affecting us. However, they can change discontinuously. Indeed, they must do so if neoteny is prevalent in our species.
The justification for believing one has a belief and then having another belief that that belief is true has to do with the way internalised 'common knowledge' changes the valency of 'mutual information' and makes better correlated social equilibria focal and justiciable. In other words, a public signal can embody that mutual information and use it like a ratchet or a collective Parrando game.
If correlated social equilibria are impossible, language too would not exist. Thus, believing human beings arose by natural selection on an uncertain fitness landscape is sufficient to consider everything Amia has written to be worthless gibberish. But what is her motivation? Is it not that she is seeking to show a genealogical relationship between her hack work and 'Western Philosophy' from Xenophanes to Heidegger?
Could she write differently from
this?
Xenophanes lived at a time when some people claimed descent from a particular God. This might incline them to fight with people descended from some other God. The thing had great potential for mischief. Far better to imagine the Creator as without Form but nevertheless embodying Universal Principals of Justice and Compassion- 'isonomia' of a constructive kind.
Genealogy, for the Greeks, was expressed by the notion of 'true descent' as in oikos and was linked to oikonomia. However 'values, beliefs, and concepts' were not immutably fixed. They did not represent a rigid 'akrebia'. Rather they were defeasible in an eusocial manner and thus part and parcel of 'economia'. But, this 'economia' was a correlated equilibrium based on (at least potentially) public signals which require rigid designators which pick out one and only one person who owns x rather than conjure up a panorama of all those people who
might own x in some possible Universe.
Amia is making the same mistake as Amartya Sen does in his parable of the flute. One kid made the musical instrument. Other kids may have a claim to it on the basis of playing it better or having no other toys. However 'best player of the flute' is a movable feast. I play the flute better than Hari Prasad Chaurasia when he is asleep. So I get to take it away from him while he naps. Similarly, if I am awarded the flute on the basis of my not having any other toys, then I have to surrender the flute the moment any kid without even a flute turns up.
There is no 'genetic fallacy' in saying 'ownership' should rigidly designate, by some protocol bound specification of 'just acquisition', one and only one actual person. Rather this is a requirement for a correlated equilibrium to be established. The thing pays for itself by its usefulness.
By contrast, casting doubt on 'ownership' by saying 'oh! you're just being selfish or narcissistic or so not woke & like an non player character' is mischievous because it can be immediately countered with equally
ad hominem charges of stupidity, malice, hypocrisy and OMG you are gas-lighting me because you want to rape me! Help! Title IX!'
Human narcissism might invoke human like Gods but those Gods would be inferior to humans and spend most of their time providing sexual or sycophantic services. There is no genetic fallacy here because there is no pretence at a protocol bound method of reasoning.
Nothing is consistent with 'Greek theology having its roots in human narcicissim' save the postulation of some magical power which some humans are endowed with such that they can conjure up Gods of the description given above. But that is a matter of physics, not metaphysics. Either some human can create a 'God' or the thing is impossible. Only a successful experiment can confirm the possibility.
Christians believe the son of a Jewish carpenter is God. How is this an example of 'human narcissism'? Few Christians are of Jewish descent. Historically, some Christians have considered Jews, and humbly born people, to be inferior to themselves. Yet, Christ's message is the opposite of narcissistic. It has enabled countless millions to rise above
ressentiment & embrace an ennobling Truth. There is no feeling here that this happens 'by mere accident'. It is certainly true that many Christians feel they don't live up to Christ's message and that their 'beliefs are not, in some important sense, as they ought to be.' But this gives rise to no great scandal. On the contrary, we feel that Christianity is a living force, its God is truly a 'Personal Lord God and Saviour', precisely because metanoia is so signal a feature of the operation of the Church in this World. Why? Oikos- true descent- is related to Oikonomia and rejects rigid 'akrebia' in favour of metanoiac, equitable, economia. If I have wronged you, I or my legitimate heir may have a change of heart and offer you equitable reparation. At the very least, I should submit to the judgment of a Court, in such a case, more especially if I myself rely upon that Court to right wrongs done to me.
A 'vindicatory genealogy' is just 'cheap talk'. It does not create a separating equilibrium. For that a 'costly signal' is required. If you already think Norah Jones has extraordinary musicality, you mention her genealogy. If not, you might say 'well, these things skip a generation' and look hopefully at her progeny.
Cain and Abel have the same genealogy. Ajax's pedigree is not inferior to Achilles. So what? Only their own choices matter. Plenty of people were descended from King David. Only Christ was considered the Messiah- but it was because of his own actions and teachings.
Amia says she has a certain belief regarding a computer. Does that belief have a Mummy? Did that Mummy get jiggy with the Daddy of her belief? If not, how can that belief have a genealogy? It may have a genesis- but, for Theists, so does the Universe.
What of Amia's claim that the explanation she gives 'vindicates' her belief? How does it do so? She would say the same the thing if she were the victim of a hypnotist or was subject to a psychotic break. This isn't really an explanation at all because it does not increase the information set with respect to its explanans. This is just cheap talk. A costly signal would be something like- 'I know this is a computer in front of me and not a psychotic delusion or something conjured up by a hypnotic suggestion because I have electrodes implanted in my brain which are being monitored by an A.I. If this computer were an illusion, the A.I would alert me because such and such anomaly in such and such brain region would be detected.'
To be fair, Amia did not invent this nonsensical usage of the term 'genealogy'. But she didn't inherit it either. She chose to pick this rubbish out of an Academic skip.
People like Bernard Williams and Foucault grew up in a very different, very racist, world. They used the pseudo-scientific term 'genealogy' for stupid 'just so' stories. But then, they weren't smart enough to follow the breakthroughs in evolutionary game theory and genetics and so forth that were occurring in the Sixties and Seventies. But, this failure of theirs meant that the University Departments where they flourished declined greatly in prestige and became adversely selective. Only very stupid people with bizarre world-views now acquire credentials in that brand of imbecility.
Consider the following statement-
Edward Craig has offered a vindicatory genealogy of the concept of knowledge, and Bernard Williams has offered a genealogical vindication of the value
of truthfulness.
Is this true? Does anyone anywhere in the world say 'OMG! I see it know! Knowledge is really nice. We should get more of it and set up Knowledge Based Industries. Thank you, Edward Craig for your vindicatory genealogy of the concept of Knowledge which showed its Daddy was an Angel and its Mummy was an Apsara so now we all know Knowledge is very nice and cute.
Similarly, 'the value of truthfulness' scarcely needed any 'genealogical vindication' from some English gasbag.
Like critical genealogies, vindicatory genealogies can be at once
intuitively compelling and mysterious. We can feel, instinctively, that a ‘good’
pedigree reflects well on a person, object or institution.
We ought not to feel any such thing. There is no scientific warrant for it. A 'Just So' story may be 'intuitively compelling'- if you have shit for brains- and it may be 'mysterious'. But it is just a story that is all. It isn't a genealogy anymore than it is a geology or a geometry or a bottle of Famous Grouse.
I suppose, the fact that Norah Jones's dad is Ravi Shankar 'reflects well on her' as far as I am concerned. But Amy Winehouse's dad isn't Ravi Shankar and I listen to her even more. This does not conflict with my intuitions at all. However, it represents a different 'cheap talk' availability cascade. I might say 'Amy Winehouse is the spiritual daughter of Billie Holliday'.
But why should the causal
origins of a thing be capable of conferring value or legitimacy on it?
Protocol bound juristic, administrative or market processes can confer value and legitimacy so as to solve coordination or concurrency problems. If the thing pays for itself, it is incentive compatible and sustainable. If not, the thing crashes or is captured for a corrupt purpose.
That
something has a ‘good’ causal origin does not entail that it is (still) of value, and
vice versa.
Quite true. Mummy and Daddy may be good but baby may grow up to be very naughty.
For example, ‘holistic’ admissions policies might have had their genesis
in good faith attempts to increase diversity and address social inequalities, but that
hardly means they are not deployed as tools of discrimination today. Conversely,
the current widespread availability of the birth control pill might have had its
origins in eugenicist programmes, but that hardly makes it a bad thing. Indeed,
why should a genealogy have any sort of normative significance at all, either of the
undermining or legitimising kind?
It does not have any normative significance. Also it is not alethic. There is no 'genealogy' here at all. There is only a 'just so' story.
Perhaps our tendency to think it does is
irrational, simply a product of our unjustified fetish for origins – a fetish from which
philosophy should seek to set us free.
But Econ and STEM subjects are free from this fetish. Only shite Uni Depts. continue to genuflect to it.
This book aims to show that the intuitive power of genealogy does not rest
on mere historicist fetish: that where things come from, and how they came to be
the way they are, can and does matter for how we should think of their
contemporary significance.
If this were true, we should think about where Amia Srinivasan came from and how she came to be the way she is. Did her ancestors do anything very wonderful? No. They were benighted casteists whom their own people have turned against. What about Amia herself? Has she discovered the cure for cancer? Has she made billions from a new algorithm which she has used to raise up hundreds of thousands from poverty? No. She studied and now teaches a wholly worthless subject.
Another way of putting this is to say that history, in the
broad sense, matters for philosophy.
But the lesson of history is that Philosophy is shite.
In putting forward this case, my focus will be,
as I have already intimated, on a certain subclass of genealogies, of which
Xenophanes’ genealogy of Greek theology is a paradigm case: that is, critical
genealogies of our representations – in particular, our beliefs, values, and concepts.
Santa Claus is depicted as a fat white men. This is deeply unfair to fat black people like myself. We must tear down every poster of Santa Claus because 'representations' matter a great deal. Look at how the progressive Philosophers of the Taliban and ISIS and Boko Haram have mobilised their people to destroy such representations! They are bound to overtake us scientifically because their philosophy cares about 'representations' and their genealogies. We, on the other hand, think this sort of talk is childish and silly. Indeed, most educated Greeks thought Xenophanes was being a bit silly for banging on about something wholly obvious which posed no great scandal or stumbling block to the proper development of the mathematical and natural sciences.
Still, I suppose, if there is empirical evidence that market share or profits are adversely affected by advertisements or other commercial representations which exclude a specific group, then it is rational to pay attention to such matters. But, that is a problem of information asymmetry- it is not essentially philosophical. Still, as I said, it might be useful.
Thus I will not have much to say about genealogies that intuitively vindicate what
they explain, nor about genealogies of things that are not representations, e.g peoples practices and institutions. This is in part a pragmatic choice, one meant to
keep the present study contained.
However, it also means that the present study can't say anything useful at all.
But it is also driven by my sense that there is
something especially interesting in critical genealogies of representations. For they
have been advanced, and pressed into both theoretical and political service, by a
wide range of thinkers, both historical and contemporary.
So what? They backfired completely. The STEM subjects will have no truck with them which is why they have burgeoned whereas the Liberal Arts have turned to shit.
And yet, in a sense, we
still do not know what they are.
Mereticious shite is what they are. Everybody knows that.
. The revelations of history
I have said that this book can be thought of as an attempt to show why
history, in a broad sense, matters for philosophy. So it is appropriate that I begin
with history – specifically, a brief historical study of genealogical anxiety.
I don't believe you. History is vast and your scholarship is shallow.
Apart
from what strikes me as its intrinsic interest, this history will help me fix my topic
– i.e. critical genealogies of representation – by way of example. It will also begin
to give us a sense of what the power of such genealogies might consist in, by
reconstructing the uses to which critical genealogies have been put in the distant
and recent past.
Writing about thirty years after Xenophanes’ death, the Greek historian
Herodotus echoed his predecessor’s anti-theological argument in support of his
famous pronouncement that ‘custom is lord of all’. Just as all animals, according to
Xenophanes, would depict the gods after their own likeness, all the different nations
would, according to Herodotus, call their own culture superior. ‘For if it were
proposed to all nations to choose which seemed best of all customs’ he wrote, ‘each,
after examination, would place its own first; so well is each convinced that its own
are by far the best….’. He goes on:
I will give this one proof among many from which it may be inferred that
all men hold this belief about their customs. When Darius was king, he
summoned the Greeks who were with him and asked them for what price
they would eat their fathers’ dead bodies. They answered that there was no
price for which they would do it. Then Darius summoned those Indians
who are called Callatiae, who eat their parents, and asked them (the Greeks
being present and understanding through interpreters what was said) what
would make them willing to burn their fathers at death. The Indians cried
aloud, that he should not speak of so horrid an act…
Did the Greeks believe Herodotus? No. They thought he was entertaining but gullible and a 'great lover of barbarians'. The Greeks reached India soon enough and saw that Herodotus had been telling porkies. Moreover, they could themselves testify from their own experience that customs were eminently defeasible and plastic for wholly economic reasons.
Herodotus’ point is not merely that each culture prefers its own customs. It is
moreover that each culture believes its own customs superior, and the customs of
other cultures to be inferior, a violation of the natural order.
But this is 'Preference Falsification' merely. On the campaign trail, a politician is careful to appear as folksy as possible and as full of prejudice as the deplorables whose votes he canvasses so as to resume his comfortable existence in the Capital.
However, that same politician will make highly pragmatic decisions. Thus, a U.S President might project an anti-Islamic image while quietly cuddling up with the Saudis.
What we learn from a
cross-historical study, of the sort that Herodotus’ account of the origins of the
Greco-Persian Wars affords us, is that every culture shares this belief about its own
case, suggesting in turn that belief in one’s own cultural superiority is an inevitable
by-product of having a culture at all.
Sheer nonsense! What we learn from 'cross-historical studies' is that smart people make smart decisions whatever culture they come from. The Japanese, according to Titsingh, believed in their own superiority. However, a few decades later, they made some very smart decisions which involved importing foreign technology and mores on a wholesale basis. India went in the opposite direction and sank into squalor. Why? Because its leaders were stupid, not smart at all. They may have pretended, from time to time, that Indians had some spiritual greatness but their actions belied any such belief.
Beliefs in cultural superiority are caused not
by the facts about which cultures are or are not superior – any more than the
Greeks’ beliefs about the gods are caused by the gods – but instead by humans’
propensity to project their own contingent attachments onto the world, as if they
were of objective value.
But it isn't and so economic forces prune it back though, no doubt, the incorrigibly stupid go to the wall.
Xenophanes’ and Herodotus’ genealogies, of Greek theology and humans’
beliefs about cultural superiority, respectively, share a parallel structure.
They also shared an incredulous reception because, though entertaining, they were shite.
Both
identify a systematic pattern across beliefs in a certain domain, which in turn
supports a particular causal explanation of those beliefs.
Which however common sense immediately refuted.
Xenophanes’ pattern is
counterfactually established: by imagining that cattle and horses can paint, we
realise that they would depict the gods in their own likeness, horses like horses,
cattle like cattle.
We realize no such thing. This is a fairy story. It is entertaining. It is comic. But it is also meaningless.
From this we can infer that the Greeks’ beliefs about the gods are
caused by a basic narcissistic impetus common to all animals.
We can infer no such thing. A 'narcissistic impetus' would depict Gods as sedulous providers of sexual and sycophantic services.
Importantly, this
narcissistic impulse is indifferent to the truth, in the sense that – in advance of
learning what theological beliefs are produced by human narcissism, and without
presupposing that the Greeks’ theological beliefs are largely true – we have no
reason to believe that human narcissism has a tendency to produce true beliefs in
the domain of theology.
Imperative statements- e.g. those expressive of one's wishes or desires- have no alethic content yet may bring about desirable results.
A person with a normal psychological constitution does not confuse alethic and imperative statements.
There is no reason for Amia to say 'we have no reason' to do something we don't anyway because we aint stupid and know the distinction between imperative and alethic statements.
Herodotus establishes a similar pattern in human beliefs about cultural
superiority, though he does so empirically, rather than through counterfactual acts of the imagination.
Nonsense! He was telling stupid lies. There were no Indians who eagerly devoured the corpses of their parents. Instead, as Amia should know, they cremated them.
Each culture judges itself superior, in turn suggesting a unified
causal explanation: that humans have a psychic propensity to believe in their own
cultural superiority, or alternatively, that cultures that inculcate in their members
a belief in cultural superiority are those most likely to take hold and thrive.
Nonsense! We make imperative statements like 'my baby is the bestest baby ever', 'Mum's cooking is the tastiest in the world' etc. but we listen attentively to alethic information and are careful to change our behaviour accordingly.
Either
explanation, like Xenophanes’ implied explanation of the Greeks’ theological
beliefs, is indifferent to the truth about cultural superiority, again in the sense that
we have no antecedent or independent reason to believe that this causal mechanism
will tend towards true beliefs. Intuitively, this indifference to the truth – what I
will call its alethic indifference – bears negatively on the epistemic standing of the
belief.
And yet we know that the fact that a belief is based on an alethically
indifferent method is not enough to show us that it is false. For the belief that the
gods are human-like or that my culture is superior could be, as it were, accidentally
true. So in what sense could these beliefs be epistemically flawed? The answer lies
in the distinction between truth and epistemic justification.
No. It lies in the distinction between imperative and alethic statements.
A true belief might fail
to be a justified one. (I may, for example, truly believe that Trump won’t be reelected,
but if I so believe on the basis of wishful thinking, it won’t be a justified
belief.)
It also wouldn't be a true belief.
And since justifiably believing a proposition is a necessary condition on
knowing a proposition, this is also to say that a belief that happens to be true might
yet fall short of knowledge.
Nonsense! It is a sufficient, not a necessary, condition. A belief that is true is part of knowledge. What isn't part of knowledge is the method by which it was arrived at. That belongs in a second order 'epistemological' realm.
This appears to be the epistemic upshot of Xenophanes’
and Herodotus’ genealogies: even if the gods are human-like, or my culture
superior, these beliefs cannot amount to knowledge. For their genealogies are
indifferent to the truth.
There was no epistemic upshot here at all. People thought Xenophanes was being silly and that Herodotus told stupid lies. Their writing may have had some entertainment or other imperative value. It was not alethic.
Al Ghazzali was a master of the 'insha/khabar' (imperative/alethic) distinction which he used to demolish 'falsafiya'. Let us look at how Amia butchers him-
Genealogical anxiety reverberates long past the Greeks.The eleventh
century Persian philosopher and theologian Al-Ghazali describes an intellectual
awakening prompted by a recognition of the genealogical contingency of religious
belief:
the fetters of servile conformism fell away from me, and inherited beliefs lost
their hold on me, when I was still quite young. For I saw that the children
of Christians always grew up embracing Christianity, and the children of
Jews always grew up adhering to Judaism, and the children of Muslims
always grew up following the religion of Islam. I also heard the tradition
related from the Apostle of God — God’s blessing and peace be upon him!
— in which he said: ‘Every infant is born endowed with the fitra: then his
parents make him Jew or Christian or Magian.’ Consequently I felt an inner
urge to seek the true meaning of the original fitra, and the true meaning of
the beliefs arising through slavish aping of parents and teachers.
Fitra is similar to the Christian concept of synderesis and opens the door to a mystical soteriology and hermeneutic. In practice, this cashes out as saying anything you don't like is 'majazi' while stuff you like is 'haqiqi'. Thus, praying in the mosque is 'majazi' while drinking in the tavery is 'haqiqi' eusebia.
The value of Ghazzali's approach is that it enables us to say that Revelation is wholly imperative and thus there is no reason to constrain any Rational system of enquiry because its findings will be merely alethic. This is perfectly sensible. On the other hand, it also means that Gazali could demand that heretics be put to death. This is because Ghazzali is embracing a type of Occassionalism which features 'causationless aetiology'. In other words, the thing is 'anything goes'.
For Al-Ghazali, religious beliefs are the result of a childhood indoctrination that is
both parasitic on and distorting of children’s natural inclination towards the divine.
But only if God has pre-ordained it so.
The alethic indifference of the origins of such creedal beliefs (viz. familial
inheritance) to the theological truth means that these beliefs, epistemically
speaking, ought to be discarded, and replaced by beliefs based on more secure
grounds.
No. This should only be done if God wills it in which case it happens anyway.
Al-Ghazali’s critical genealogy of religious belief not only anticipates the
opening passages of Descartes’ Meditations, but also a twentieth century debate in
the philosophy of religion about the rationality of ‘exclusivist’ religious belief.
Ghazali does not 'anticipate' anything. He shuts the gates of Philosophy so the Ghazal might flourish. Occassionalism can have that effect.
Antiexclusivists
insist that it is irrational to hold on to particular creedal beliefs – that
Jesus is the son of God, say, or that Mohammed is God’s prophet – once one
recognises the way in which those beliefs are formed by the contingencies of one’s
particular religious upbringing. On the anti-exclusivist view, such creedal beliefs
are all equally unjustified.
So what? If casting doubts on the Virgin birth of Jesus or on the final Prophethood of Mohammed will get your head chopped off then some creedal beliefs are perfectly justified.
Imperative propositions can have instrumental justifications. In any case, it would be folly to treat them as if they were actually alethic statements. Thus when Mummy says 'my darling, you are so nice', you are not justified in saying 'you lie in your teeth, woman! I am an inveterate farter and all round bad egg'.
Meanwhile, religious exclusivists argue that Christians
(and only Christians) are justified in maintaining their creedal beliefs in the face of
genealogical revelations about the contingency of those beliefs – and indeed, that
so doing is consistent with having knowledge of the Christian truths. They do so, in
effect, by denying the truth of the proposed genealogy: Christian beliefs, they argue,
are unique in being the products of divine rather than natural causes.
However, they may hold that Revelation includes alethic statements- e.g. prophesies about the imminent end of days. In this respect, they differ considerably from Ghazali or Liebniz.
In other
words, non-exclusivists agree with Al-Ghazali that there is an (epistemically)
critical genealogy to be given of creedal belief
No. Ghazali's position is more complex than that. He does not deny the validity of Sufi ordination and chains of transmission. He merely impugns a mechanical type of pedagogy productive only of 'munafiqat' (outward show, or hypocrisy) - but this was a perfectly orthodox proceeding.
, while Christian exclusivists insist
that this genealogy leaves Christian belief, at least, untouched.
Like Al-Ghazali, religious exclusivists and non-exclusivists alike take it for
granted that there is some divine reality: the question is whether we can know
which representations of that reality are correct, given the genealogical
contingency of our particular creedal beliefs.
There is no such question. There is a mystery as to why some are elected for Grace- including knowledge of that Grace- and others are abandoned to eternal Hell fire.
If Amia is ignorant of theology, what of modern European philosophy? Let us turn to her discussion of
'the most famous critical genealogy, indeed the
genealogy that gives us the metaphorical use of the word ‘genealogy’: the account
of the emergence of modern morality that Nietzsche offers us in On the Genealogy of
Morals. Here Nietzsche tells us that our system of morality – a system that
valorises kindness, meekness, sympathy and other values of the ‘herd’ – has its true
origins not in human goodness or an omnibenevolent divine, but in a complicated
and ugly interplay of forces: the ressentiment of the slave class against their masters,
the paying of debts through the extraction of pain, and the will to power of the
priestly caste. While the psychic force of Nietzsche’s critical genealogy is clear, it
is no straightforward task to say what it is that Nietzsche is up to in offering his
genealogy – in particular, whether he is interested in offering an epistemological
argument against our claims to moral knowledge, a practical argument against
the oppressiveness of bourgeois morality, or perhaps something else altogether.
So Amia admits that Nietzche's writing has a certain imperative force. Why not stop there? The fact is that drooling lunatic was incapable of offering any sort of 'epistemological argument'. He was too stupid and ignorant. As for 'practical arguments'- who in their right mind would look for any such thing in the work of a crazy philologist?
What is clear is that Nietzsche is offering us, perhaps for the first time, not
simply a critical genealogy of a belief or value, but also a genealogy of a concept.
Amia admits that 'genealogy' as used here is a 'metaphor'. She must know that a 'concept' exists only in a Platonic world. There is no figure of speech which could link biological engendering and Platonic being except perhaps in some purely scientific discourse concerned with the evolution of the brain.
The
first essay of the Genealogy tells us that our current concepts of good and bad
displaced an older set of concepts, evil and good, through a conceptual revolution
perpetrated by the slaves against their masters: the ‘slave revolt’ in morality.
Where had this 'slave revolt' succeeded? Ancient Greece? Rome? Israel? Germany? The thing had never happened. It may have been entertaining to read about this non-event just as it may have been entertaining for young people, in the late Sixties, to believe that the world would be a better place if only everybody took enough LSD.
In
this, Nietzsche anticipates many of the most prominent critical genealogies of the
twentieth century, which take as their target not particular beliefs – e.g. in the
existence of God – but particular concepts or conceptual schemes, variously
referred to as forms of consciousness, epistemic paradigms, world-pictures, episteme,
ideologies, and so on. I am thinking here of the critical genealogies of the ideology
of industrial capitalism as offered by Weber, the Frankfurt school critical theorists,
and other post-Marxists; of our concepts of sex, gender and sexuality as offered by
Beauvoir, Foucault and Judith Butler; of Eurocentric ideologies as offered by
Edward Saïd and Dipesh Chakrabarty; of liberalism as offered by Carol Pateman,
Susan Okin, Charles Mills and Uday Mehta; and of Zionism as offered by Jacqueline
Rose. These critical genealogies – influenced variously (and sometimes
simultaneously) by Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, scientific naturalism,
Marxian dialectical materialism, and the constructivist tendencies of German
idealism – are united in subjecting not just individual beliefs but whole
representational schemes to what Ricoeur called the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’.
Very true. But our suspicion that these wankers were talking bollocks amounted to a certainty decades ago. Weber was an idiot and the German 'Institutional School' produced nothing but turgid imbecility which is why Harvard dropped the requirement to learn German for PhD students 55 years ago. Freudian quakery was dismissed by the American Psychiatric Association in the Seventies. There is no such thing as neurosis. The whole thing was a swindle to get healthy people to pay for some wholly imaginary cure. Beauvoir wasn't even part of second wave Feminism. She achieved nothing. Butler is a joke and helped fuel what Susan Faludi called the 'backlash' against Academic Feminism. Foucault literally 'died of ignorance'. Said- like other Christian Palestinians- was disintermediated by the rise of Hamas and the hopeless corruption of the PLO. Dipshit Charkrabarty is without honour in his own land and has now been accused of sexual harassment. The rest are equally shite and wholly irrelevant.
We should also include in this list the critical genealogies (of e.g. liberty, the state,
democracy and human rights) offered by intellectual historians who are explicitly
committed to the amelioration of contemporary politics by way of historicist
inquiry: Quentin Skinner, J.G.A. Pocock, John Dunn and the other Cambridge
School historians, as well as ‘Berkeley School’ historians like Samuel Moyn.
Skinner was a smart guy who did genuine research. He was not a charlatan peddling some crazy paranoid theory. I know a student of Skinner who is a sound Constitutional lawyer. Pocock, similarly, was- if somewhat strident- not crazy at all. One could read him from a Law & Econ perspective. Moyn is more recent and reflects the sharp decline in the intellectual quality of History Departments. Still, he isn't an out and out nutjob- yet.
I suppose the common thread here is that these guys got things wrong because they thought History- that is hysteresis- mattered. It doesn't at all so they were barking up the wrong tree. Still, this was not obvious when Skinner & Pocock were starting out. However, it has become obvious since.
Whereas a genealogy of belief intuitively calls into question the epistemic
justification of that belief,
Nonsense. A just so story about how the giraffe got its neck does not 'call into question the epistemic justification' of our belief that giraffe's have long necks. Nor would tracing the giraffe's ancestry to a one night stand between a donkey and the Eiffel tower.
a genealogy of a concept intuitively calls into question
the concept’s ability to limn the contours of reality, or what we might call it aptness.
Rubbish. Suppose we find out that the true motivation behind Voevodsky's 'univalent foundations' was not, as we suppose, to make computerised proof checking easier but rather some abstruse Kabbalistic consideration. This would
not call into question its aptness for 'carving up reality along its joints' at all. Rather, it is its consistency and usefulness which inclines us to wish to push it forward as a Research Program.`
Genealogies of racial thinking reveal, for example, that our racial categories, and
the concept race itself, were introduced relatively late in human history, in order to
legitimate forms of segregation and exploitation.
False genealogies may 'reveal' stupid lies to stupid people who like telling lies. Consider the concept of 'White Man' common to my and Amia's ancestors. Its genealogy has nothing to do with 'legitimating forms of segregation and exploitation'. Indeed, the reverse occurred. The Tambram- like Gandhi, the Gujerati bania- decided that the Indian caste system was an abomination precisely because Whites had no truck with things like untouchability in their own, technologically more advanced, homelands.
Things which are already profitable and convenient may be 'legitimated' by some hack trying to earn a crust of bread. But that 'legitimation' is worthless. Only economic forces matter.
This might well prompt us to ask:
do concepts like race or black person pick out anything in the world – or are they in
fact empty concepts, like witch or unicorn?
Of course they do! If I were of Dutch, rather than South Indian ancestry, I would not be classed as morbidly obese. My race matters because my genealogy puts me at risk of all sorts of horrible medical conditions because I'm a fat fuck who greedily eats a European diet rather than subsisting on the humble lacto-vegetarian fare of my forefathers. Also, I should be doing Yoga and walking more and not devouring every cow I chance to meet.
For it might seem that the grounds on
which our racial concepts were formed are, again, alethically indifferent:
Rubbish! To say 'you are a black person' is alethic. On the other hand saying 'you are a black hearted person' is imperative. I happen to be a particular type of black person- one who has a 'thrifty gene' which means I should avoid a Northern European diet. It is actually very helpful when my Doctor- a young white woman- explains to me that my racial origin means I should do some things and avoid others for medical reasons. It may also be helpful to me when my Mum shouts at me and accuses me of 'being black hearted' because I am dodging paying my share of a philanthropic contribution traditionally made by my family. Both imperative and alethic statements may have a positive instrumentality. Thus we have 'independent reasons' to value the receipt of good faith statements of either sort from those who care about our welfare.
Amia believes otherwise-
we have
no independent reason to expect that developing concepts on the basis of what will
legitimise oppressive political practices is a reliable way of producing apt concepts.
Anything can legitimise anything- but legitimation does not matter. Suppose Amia had attended my fortieth birthday party. She may well have protested when I pulled her pig-tail and made off with her share of cake. I, being a very learned mathematician, may have legitimised m-y oppressive act by saying '12 times 8 is 95. This proves I was right to pull your pig-tail and eat your cake.' Amia, who would only have been three or four years old at that time, may have not been able to counter my argument. However this does not mean 12 times 8 is not 95. As I said, I'm a great mathematician so just take my word for it already.
If so, then just as critical genealogies of beliefs can undermine their epistemic
justification, critical genealogies of concepts can undermine their aptness.
So, if I said 'Philosophy Departments came into existence because the Vampire Lestart copulated with the Ghost of Christmas Past. Thus they are completely shite.' Would this 'critical genealogy' really undermine anything?
What about if I said the concept of a Prime Number is flawed because its Daddy was a drunk and its Mummy plied a nefarious trade? Would the foundations of Number theory quake and crumble?
Barring my brief mention of contemporary evolutionary debunkers of
theism, I have not yet discussed the place of critical genealogies in analytic
philosophy.
It has none.
Indeed, for much of its relatively short history, analytic philosophy has
opposed itself to genealogical inquiry. The logical empiricist Hans Reichenbach
warned against confusing the ‘context of discovery’ with the ‘context of
justification’: where a theory came from, and whether it was in good epistemic
standing, were two distinct questions. (Reichenbach’s distinction itself has a
fascinating context of discovery. It appears that Reichenbach, who wrote Experience
and Prediction in Istanbul after being dismissed from his Berlin post in 1933, was
motivated by a desire to counter the Nazis’ condemnation of ‘Jewish’ theories,
including his own.)
Why not simply say that this guy's motivation was to write the truth? How is his Religious heritage relevant?
This distinction, which has served as a presupposition of much
of the philosophy of science, has also served as a pre-emptory defence against the idea that philosophy – as the inquiry into timeless truths – should care about the
context from which its own representations emerge. Karl Popper went further,
joining the conservative political theorist Leo Strauss in arguing that historicist
inquiry was not only irrelevant to the pursuit of truth, but also morally pernicious.
Fair enough. Talking stupid shite
is morally pernicious.
In its opposition to critical genealogical thinking, analytic philosophy has
bucked a trend in the rest of the humanities.
But, the humanities turned into the sub-humanities and have been flushed down the crapper. Analytical philosophy too turned out to be a wank. Only Maths matters.
The influence of Nietzsche, Freud and
Marx has loomed large over post-war research in literature, modern languages,
political theory, sociology, anthropology, gender and sexuality studies, cultural
studies, and so on.
All of which won't even fit you to get ahead as a barista.
In turn, analytic philosophy’s dismissal of genealogical anxiety
goes some way toward explaining its isolation within the humanities.
Analytic philosophy just wasn't mathsy enough and died a death. The Humanities turned coprophagous and were shunned by all sensible people. No one doesn't know this.
From the
perspective of many outside the discipline, philosophers’ seeming failure to
recognise their objects of inquiry – and indeed philosophy itself – as contingent
products of culture and history makes the discipline seem preciously antiquated at
best, and virulently dogmatic at worst.
The tide, however, is turning. Contemporary analytic philosophers are
increasingly in thrall to critical genealogical reasoning.
So, there are now some coprophagous zombies mangling Analytical philosophy. But they are all as shite as Amia. I suppose, there is an element of epistemic affirmative action to this. We should congratulate Amia for not being a suttee or having to wear a burqa and let her enjoy the freedoms of the West with a modest stipend in return for babysitting our drug-addled sons or idiot daughters on their way to getting a similarly worthless credential.
This is no doubt in part
due to the newfound availability of genealogical accounts from the cognitive and
evolutionary sciences, rather than what philosophers tend to think of as the more
speculative genealogies of psychoanalysis or Marxism. Many ethicists have claimed
in recent years, for example, that the naturalistic/evolutionary origins of our moral
judgments demand that we abandon those judgments, or (on pain of nihilism) adopt
an anti-realist construal of their contents, including Gilbert Harman, Peter Singer,
Alan Gibbard, Philip Kitcher, Richard Joyce, Sharon Street, Josh Greene, Michael
Huemer and Alex Rosenberg.
These are the guys who got left behind by progress in the STEM subjects because they weren't good enough at Math.
Still, since the job of Ethics is to counsel the most mischievous course of action that is conceivable, these guys justify the three drink minimum at that Comedy Club.
With the same logic but in a very different spirit,
Thomas Nagel has argued from the putative incompatibility of the evolutionary
origins of moral judgment with moral realism to the conclusion that the
evolutionary explanation of our moral judgments is false.
Actually, Nagel thinks evolution is rigged in a particular way. But, sure, Nagel is a poster-boy for how analytical philosophy fucked up coz it wasn't mathsy enough.
After all, minds can do maths, so the Mind Body problem has a mathematical representation. Either a contribution to the subject has some new bit of math- which can be used to make cool stuff more cheaply- or it can't 'pay for itself' and thus isn't really a genuine contribution at all. It is mere 'hand waving'.
A subject may look 'mathsy'- like Development Econ of the Sukhamoy Chakraborty sort- but if it can't pay for itself, then it is hand waving simply. That's why the subject died- or, rather, was spoon fed to people like Rahul Gandhi as part of some bogus 'Development Studies' M.Phil program for retards.
James Ladyman and
Don Ross have argued that the contingent evolutionary origins of our metaphysical judgments should make us suspicious of their capacity to get onto the mind independent
truths about what exists – an argument presaged by Nelson Goodman
and Hilary Putnam, who both argue from the cultural contingency of our
ontological schema to different forms of anti-realism about ontology.
But Putnam and Goodman fucked up. There was a time when they looked smart. But they discovered nothing useful. Still, they were cultured men and good pedagogues in their day.
And finally,
the recently emergent sub-discipline of ‘experimental philosophy’ is largely
devoted to arguing that people’s intuitive judgments about epistemology, ethics,
philosophy of language and metaphysics systematically vary with culture, gender,
socioeconomic status and extent of philosophical training – and thus that these
armchair judgments should be cleansed from philosophical practice.
This is nothing but clickbait Junk Social Science.
In other
words, experimental philosophers seek to offer a critical genealogy of philosophy
itself. For better or for worse, analytic philosophy is no longer innocent of
genealogical anxiety.
Because it is a coprophagous zombie. There were some smart people who took it up sixty years ago, but they failed to find anything worthwhile and are now dead and buried. Only idiots stepped into their dead men's shoes.
Genalogical anxiety is shite 'Identity Politics' whose only political role is to fuel a Trumpian backlash against the Academy. But, it does not matter since STEM subjects continue to burgeon in a manner transformative of local economies and global value chains.
Genealogical Scepticism and Genealogical Luck
Two central themes emerged from our examination, in the previous section, of the
history of genealogical anxiety. The first is the thought that critical genealogies
can be epistemically powerful, showing us that our beliefs in a particular domain are
unjustified and thus fall short of knowledge, or that our concepts likely fail to map
the world as it really is. (For the sake of simplicity, I will focus here on the epistemic
threat to beliefs posed by critical genealogies, though much of what I say can be
applied, mutatis mutandis, to the case of concepts.) The second is the thought that
critical genealogies can be practically powerful, revealing the oppressive nature of
our representations.
Neither theme 'emerged' from anything. They were put there by the ignorance and stupidity of the author.
It has never been the case that beliefs, as opposed to economic forces, determined outcomes. Stupid beliefs led to stupid decisions which led to extinction events. However, mimetic effects trumped beliefs, stupid or otherwise, so such events were rare or almost immediately ameliorated.
In this section I will very briefly address the epistemological
significance of critical genealogy.
It has none. It is stupid.
In the next I turn to a more extended discussion
of genealogy’s practical significance.
When I ask whether a critical genealogy of some belief can be epistemically
powerful against it, I mean to ask whether the genealogy can rationally undermine
the epistemic standing of that belief.
It could only do so if it were believed. But, we don't believe 'critical genealogies'. They are just-so stories with a transparent motivation. We may, strategically, indulge in 'Preference Falsification' with respect to them- or use them as a means to stalemate a discussion, or just beat our adversary over the head with them- but we don't really lend them any credence such that a purely conceptual tie to action is created.
For it is uncontroversial that, as a
psychological matter, a genealogy can undermine our doxastic confidence.
It is equally uncontroversial, that it can't at all. That is why Psychoanalytic 'Resistance' ultimately prevailed against that brand of gaslighting.
I want
to know not whether a critical genealogy will cause me to abandon my belief, but
whether it should.
A reasonable person wants to know whether they should abandon a belief of theirs which impacts on their life. I want to know whether I should abandon my beliefs about the direction in which the Stock Exchange is going. I don't want to know whether a 'critical genealogy of Capitalism' should cause me to do so. This is because this 'critical genealogy' is no friend of mine. It is paranoid nonsense. I don't care what it should or should not do because all it actually does is mutter to itself while pissing its pants and rolling in the gutter.
Further, when I ask whether a critical genealogy of some belief
can be epistemically powerful against it, I want to know whether it can rationally
require me to abandon the very belief it explains.
If something is 'epistemically powerful' against something else, then that other thing is pushed out of the epistemic circle. So Amia's question amounts to 'If x, then does x obtain?' The answer is- of course it does.
For it is also uncontroversial that a genealogy can undermine the truth of our beliefs about our representations.
Rubbish! Either our belief is true or it is false or meaningless. Truth can't be undermined by anything. It either is or isn't.
Insofar
as we falsely believe that we acquired some belief or from some particular origin
(from God, say, or the clear light of reason), a genealogical excavation can
straightforwardly show us that we are in error.
Nonsense! Go up to Terence Tao and try doing a genealogical excavation of the Green-Tao theorem to convince him of his error. He will laugh in your face.
Consider, for example, Raymond
Geuss’ account of Nietzsche’s project in the Genealogy of Morals.
Why? Nietzche was a drooling imbecile. This Guess guy is a Professor of a shite subject..
Geuss says that
the point of Nietzsche’s genealogy is to reveal that common beliefs about the
origins of Christian values are false: that Christian values emerge not from a good
and sacred place (e.g. Christ’s life and teachings) but instead from the ‘violent and
bloody’ interplay of dark psychological forces. This genealogical revelation,
Geuss claims, will have the predictable psychological effect of undermining the
Christian’s belief in his own values, in turn destabilizing Christian forms of life.
Whatever its merits as a reading of Nietzsche – I will go on to offer an
alternative take – Geuss’ account is not, I think, particularly satisfying as a general
account of the epistemic power of genealogy.
Because it is shite. But so is every other account. Why? Talking shite about shite is still just a great stinky pile of shite.
First, unlike Geuss’ Christians, we
very often do not have beliefs about the origins of our representations. Rather, we
simply find ourselves with various beliefs, values and concepts, whose origins we
have never thought to investigate.
So, we have no genealogical anxiety whatsoever. Good to know.
Second, on Geuss’ account, the epistemic force
of genealogy operates by way of a psychological trick.
No psychological trick is involved in reaching into your pants and pulling out something which smells like shit and tastes like shit, even if you explain its genealogical origin as chocolate cake.
For, as Nietzsche himself
noted, there is no forced rational march from the discovery that one is mistaken
about the origin of one’s representations to the jettisoning of those representations.
(That one’s meta-beliefs are false generally does not entail that one’s first-order
beliefs are also false; to think otherwise is to commit a version of the genetic fallacy.)
As Geuss himself says, insofar as the falsity of my meta-representations disrupts
my attachment to my first-order representations, this is ‘as it were my problem’, not a problem with which the genealogy has saddled me. This makes the epistemic
force of genealogy, on Geuss’ account, contingent on my own psychic weakness. By
contrast, I am in search of an account that will vindicate the epistemic force of
critical genealogies without presuming any irrationality on our parts.
Can a genealogy of a belief ever undermine its justification? And if so,
which sorts of genealogies, and of which beliefs?
If Amia really had discovered a sensible answer to this, she could also have made billions on the Stock Exchange. But she hasn't. So all we are going to get is stuff she pulls out of her pants and calls chocolate cake.
That we can give a genealogy of a belief presumably does not itself suffice to cast the justification of that belief into
doubt.
If Evolution is a true theory then every mental event has a true genealogy. We know we can't give this genealogy because if we did we could not have evolved under natural selection. Why? Either the genealogy is 'compressible' in which case it could be hacked by a predator or a parasite and so evolution would ensure it was inaccesible; or else genealogy is uncompressible and thus greatly exceeds our cognitive capacity.
It is not reasonable to believe we can give a genealogy of a belief. Rather we can talk ignorant shite. But talking shite does not cast anything into doubt. It is a nuisance is all it is.
For we can, in principle if not in practice, offer a genealogy of every belief
ever held.
No we can't. Not unless we live in an Occassionalist universe of a momentary kind.
Everything I believe, and everything you believe, we believe because of
various contingent background features about ourselves:
Sheer nonsense! Evolution militates for 'mixed strategies'- i.e everything about us, including our beliefs, have a probabilistic component and thus are not determined by 'contingent background features'.
because of what we have
been taught to believe, the arguments and evidence to which we have been exposed,
the languages we have been taught to speak, the concepts we have been trained to
use, the claims that (because of our historical, cultural or evolutionary formations)
strike us as intuitive, the workings of our evolutionarily-inherited perceptual
systems, and so on.
If Amia is right i-languages would exist and it would be an easy matter to devise a 'Babel Fish'- i.e. a universal translator. However, i-languages don't exist. All we have is e-languages which is why Google Translate mangles things so badly.
If the mere in principle availability of a doxastic genealogy were
sufficient to deprive a belief of justification, then none of our beliefs would turn out
to be justified.
In principle availability of doxastic genealogy means, in principle, that Evolution is false. We live in an Occassionalist Universe. Either that or life is but a dream. Let us talk any old shite rather than pursue STEM subjects.
We would arrive immediately at a place of global scepticism, in
which no belief is justified, and thus no knowledge is possible.
Beliefs aren't justified they either have or don't have an instrumental value. Knowledge is possible without belief. A Mayavadi Iyer might be a good Astrophysicist even if she believes the Universe does not really exist.
Perhaps that is where we do indeed find ourselves. I have nothing much to
say against such a view, except that it strikes me as false.
So what? Has anything novel or useful ever struck you as true?
I know, for example, that
I am not alone in the world, that I share the world with other persons and creatures,
who really are valuable, and who call on me to treat them with love and respect. I
know that there are beautiful things, and sublime things too, and that they are part
of what make life worth living. All of these beliefs of mine can be given causal
explanations – they can, we might say, be genealogised – but an epistemology that
says that any genealogisable belief is unjustified proves, in my view, too much.
But only because you think 'justification' is important in other than juristic, protocol bound, contexts. This is very foolish. It is mischievous to take a word which is meaningful in one context- for e.g. the word rape- and use it in a wholly different context- like OMG, that chocolate eclair just totally skull fucked me! Quick! Call the Police and ask them to bring a rape kit! A DNA test will show that eclair was actually Chief Justice Kavanaugh!. At last, those frat boys will get their comeuppance!'
In
any case, the genealogical sceptics we encountered in the previous section – from
Xenophanes and his attack on anthropomorphic theology, to contemporary
evolutionary debunkers of morality – are not global sceptics, though they are
sceptics of a kind.
No. They are simply self-aggrandising hacks with books to sell.
While genealogical sceptics think that the genealogy of some
beliefs reveal those beliefs as unjustified – our theological beliefs, say, or our moral
beliefs – they do not tend to think all our beliefs unjustified.
Theological beliefs are not genealogical at all. Nor are Moral beliefs speaking generally. Both may find reinforcement in contemporary Evolutionary Game Theory. But, this is not necessarily the case.
Only those of our beliefs which are subject to juristic, administrative, or other overview, require justification. But, in general, we are trained to formulate our beliefs in accordance with the relevant observational protocols so as to show that we properly discharged a duty of care.
However, most of our beliefs are not subject to any sort of review and so justification does not matter. Pretending it does is foolish- it is like saying a chocolate eclair orally raped you when the truth is you greedily devoured it.
This is unsurprising.
For genealogical sceptics are, on the whole, naturalists.
No! They are naturists! Totally nude underneath their clothes! OMG, it is so shocking! Won't somebody please think of the children!
They are interested in the
causal explanations of our beliefs, and moreover think that we can come to know
the right (or at least plausible) causal explanations of our beliefs through empirical
(scientific, historical, psychological, etc.) investigation.
To vindicate the claims of genealogical sceptics, we need to give an account
of just why it is, that certain genealogies, e.g. of our moral, theological or
metaphysical beliefs, show their objects to be unjustified.
This is quite unnecessary. Things you can't be held to account for, because you had no duty of care, are, quite properly, unjustified. Since cognitive resources are scarce and costly, the greater number of beliefs must be wholly unjustified.
Specifically, we are in search of an epistemic principle that is capable of taking us from an empirical
premise about the origins of a belief (or set of beliefs), to a negative normative
conclusion about the justificatory status of that belief (or set of beliefs).
The epistemic principle is economic. Cognition is costly. It makes sense not to waste it on doing things which are not called for.
But such a
principle, must not overgeneralise to global scepticism. Can such a principle be
found?
Yes. The thing is as plain as the nose on your face.
One reason for optimism is that it is overwhelmingly intuitive to think
there are at least some cases in which the genealogy of a belief undermines its
justification.
Is Amia smart enough to actually come up with such a case? Let us see-
Suppose that you take a drug that causes you to hallucinate a goat in
the quad. On this basis you come to believe that there is a goat in the quad. In fact,
there is a goat in the quad, brought in to graze by some eccentric academic with a
love of barnyard animals. Nonetheless, you clearly don’t know that there is a goat
in the quad. Your belief, while true, has the wrong sort of causal formation, since it
was based not on your seeing the goat, but instead your hallucination. Thus the
answer to our first question – whether a genealogy of a belief can ever undermine
the belief’s justification – is a clear yes.
Actually, the answer is a clear no. Why? This is because a drug
can't cause you hallucinate a goat in the quad. It can cause you to see things which aren't there but not some specific thing in a predictable and reliable manner. If it could, then a genealogy of the belief in the hallucinatory goat would not, by itself, undermine that belief's justification. This is because if the number of drug users rises while the number of sober people falls then by the hallucinatory goat is part of consensual reality while the Don's goat is relegated to an occult realm.
Some genealogies of belief show their objects
to be unjustified.
But only with respect to a specific juristic or quasi-juristic procedure. However, in that case, the Condorcet Jury theorem applies. That is why economic forces weed out such procedures where the likelihood of a given agent being wrong is more than half. Notice that 'cascading undertainty' would still be subject to such procedures- indeed, they would have a utile 'ratchet' effect- whereas if heterogeniety is too great there will be no 'channelisation' and only 'capacitance diversity'. Chicilnisky's work can be explicated in this way.
Hallucinogenic drugs, brainwashing, visual illusions, unreliable
testimony, wishful thinking, shots in the dark, pseudo-clairvoyants: if these are the
grounds of your beliefs, then your beliefs (even if true) fall short of knowledge.
No. They are knowledge of a certain type.
The real question raised by genealogical scepticism is thus not whether a
genealogy of a belief can undermine its justification (it can), but which sorts of
genealogies, and of which beliefs?
Genealogical scepticism does not raise any questions. It mutters to itself while pissing its pants and rolling in the gutter.
Specifically, can the sorts of (historical, cultural,
evolutionary, etc.) genealogies offered by genealogical sceptics undermine the
justification of the sorts of beliefs (moral, theological, metaphysical) they wish to
target?
No. However Economic forces can.
Another way of putting this is to ask whether a belief’s being caused by
certain historical, cultural or evolutionary forces is ever epistemically akin to a
belief’s being caused by hallucinogenic drugs, brainwashing, visual illusions,
unreliable testimony, wishful thinking, shots in the dark, or pseudo-clairvoyants?
If you are so stupid as to believe that a drug could exist which would cause a specific hallucination- e.g. a goat in the quad- then you are probably also stupid enough to believe that your upbringing has conditioned you completely.
What is the general features of these aberrant belief-forming methods that makes
them incapable of producing knowledge – and is this general feature also to be
found in the cases of moral, theological, mathematical or metaphysical belief?
The general feature is one you share with 'these aberrant belief-forming methods'. We may term it 'having shit for brains'.
Here is what I take to the most promising case for vindicating the
genealogical sceptic’s claim that our moral, theological and/or metaphysical beliefs are undermined by their genealogies. These beliefs – like beliefs that have their
origins in hallucinogenic drugs, brainwashing, visual illusions, and so on – are
based on an unreliable mechanism. For (as I said above) our moral, theological and
metaphysical beliefs are caused by forces – of culture, history or evolution – that
are alethically indifferent. And such belief-forming mechanisms, even if they happen
to get me onto the truth, could easily not have done.
Amia thinks there are 'belief forming mechanisms'. Why is she bothering with Philosophy when she could do research into these mechanisms and use them to make the world a better place?
We know there are 'mechanisms' for securing Justice and Economic Well Being and for funding alethic research in STEM subjects from which Humanity can greatly benefit. Such 'Mechanism Design' is studied in Economics. It is very useful. Ken Binmore secured ten billion pounds for the British Exchequer by his astute design of the 3G spectrum auction. That sort of thing 'pays for itself'. Genuine mechanisms have that property.
We also know that 'moral beliefs' are 'imperative' not alethic. They are not 'true' or 'false' though the actions that they prompt may be ranked according to the value they encode. In certain contexts, it is worthwhile for Society to invest in 'mechanisms' to provide juristic overview of actions undertaken on the basis of 'moral beliefs'. However, this only happens where there is a 'duty of care' arising out of a 'missing market'. In other words, the thing has an economic dimension.
Even if, say, my particular
cultural formation endows me with true moral beliefs, there are nearby possible
worlds in which I had a different cultural upbringing, and thus different (and false)
moral beliefs.
A different moral belief is not false. Only alethic propositions can be true or false. The 'nearest possible world' with respect to any specific criterion- in this case a particular moral belief- would feature someone identical in that respect but, it may be, wholly different in every other.
Thus having true moral beliefs based on the contingencies of culture
is like having a true belief that Trump won’t be re-elected on the basis of wishful
thinking.
If 'contingencies of culture' can determine 'true moral beliefs' then wishes would be horses. Trump would never have been elected. Instead, my neighbor's cat would be President. Of course, we must first establish the right sort of culture- but I leave that to my readers as a homework exercise.
In epistemological terms, the basis of my moral beliefs fails to be safe,
where a belief-forming mechanism is safe just in case it doesn’t lead to false beliefs
in nearby possible worlds.
Amia is saying a belief forming mechanism should be 'robust'- i.e. immune to small perturbations in the information set. However, in that case, beliefs
ought to be homogeneous. But, from a result by Chichilinisky & Heard, we know that there wouldn't be enough preference diversity to drive markets. The Economy would collapse. Innovation would cease. Language itself would cease to have any alethic value and degenerate into phatic grunts and moans.
There is a good reason why Evolution shunned robust 'belief forming mechanisms' even when it comes to things like differentiating particular colours or phonemes. If I had been raised by Khoi-San bushmen- something which would have saved Mum & Dad a lot of money and heartache- I would have a different colour palette. Had I been raised in North India, I would hear 'z' as 'j'.
The safety principle is, I think, the genealogical sceptic’s best hope. It is
generally agreed that safety is a necessary condition on knowledge, and there is a
plausible case to be made that the genealogy of our moral, metaphysical and
theological beliefs show them to be unsafe.
Generally agreed? By whom? The safety principle is ludicrously unsafe. It says you should stick with your beliefs no matter what happens.
However, it offers no hope to 'the genealogical sceptic'. Rather, it tells them in advance that their efforts are utterly futile.
What can we say in response? Rejecting
the safety principle outright is not a promising option.
Only if you are stupid and ignorant.
Thus the only option is to
argue that the genealogy of these beliefs does not in fact show them to be unsafe.
This is easily done by saying beliefs don't have a genealogy. If they did, actual genealogy would be all people would bother with. Only Caste would matter- not one's accomplishments or aspirations.
There are two general ways to so argue. First, I can argue that the possible worlds
in which my belief-forming method leads me into error are too modally distant to
undermine their reliability. I might argue, for example, that the possible world in
which a different cultural upbringing led me to have moral beliefs different from
the ones I actually had -- the world in which I was raised in a conservative town in
the southern United States, or in the 17th century rather than the 20th – is simply
too distant to render my actual moral beliefs unjustified.
This is a foolish argument. It is saying 'the closest possible world' is not the closest possible world. The fact of the matter is that we can find someone pretty much like Amia in almost all respects with different beliefs. Indeed, we suspect, Amia herself would have had different beliefs if only she'd chosen to study something worthwhile.
. Second, I can argue that the genealogical sceptic has
mischaracterised the method on which my beliefs are based – that the method I use
to form my beliefs is not the same as used by my possible world counterparts with
contrary beliefs. This is, recall, the response favoured by defenders of religious exclusivism. Thus Alvin Plantinga argues that Christian beliefs are justified,
despite their cultural contingency, because the Christian’s beliefs are formed on the
basis of a special method, namely the method of believing in accordance with the
deliverances of the Holy Spirit. Meanwhile, those who grow up in non-Christian
households have the bad genealogical luck of being endowed (through no fault of
their own) with believing-forming methods that do not reliably put them onto the
theological truth. The fact that people from non-Christian backgrounds do not tend
to believe in the Christian truths, Plantinga would say, is no more threat to the
Christian’s justification, than is the fact that a colourblind person cannot
distinguish between red and green to the colour-beliefs a threat to those who are
lucky enough to have full powers of colour-discrimination.
This is nonsense. Plantinga thinks I can become a Christian despite growing up Hindu. He also understands that a lot of people who grew up in Christian homes will reject Christianity. I may, by the inscrutable mystery of Grace, be of the elect while a more virtuous scion of a Christian family is consigned to outer darkness.
These two anti-sceptical responses rely, crucially, on judgments that are
inseparable from the very issue at hand.
Nonsense. They are wholly independent of it. There are good Scientific reasons to reject robust 'belief forming mechanism' and, furthermore, Belief systems founded upon a mystery- like that of Divine Grace- are immune to 'possible world' arguments.
First, what counts as a ‘nearby possible
world’ for the purposes of assessing the reliability of our belief-forming methods?
Second, how should we individuate belief-forming methods for the purposes of
assessing their safety? The problem for the present dialectic is that there are no
principled, independent answers to be given to these questions.
Yes there are. What's more they are as obvious and as plain as the nose on your face. You choose not to see them in order to write worthless shite.
Any judgment
about what does and does not count as a nearby possible world, or what do and do
not count as the same method, will have to be informed, in a circular fashion, by
whether we judge the relevant case to be a case of knowledge or not.
So why bother with it?
Where does this leave us? That there is no independent, principled way to
settle the question of what counts as a sufficiently ‘nearby’ possible world, or the
‘same’ method, for the purposes of safety, is not itself a devastating blow against
the safety principle.
No. But the fact that it is obviously unsafe devastates it entirely.
One can think of this as a kind of benign circularity, in which
our judgments about epistemic justification and our judgments about modal
proximity and methods mutually inform each other. But this benign circularity
transforms into a serious problem whenever we look to the safety principle in the
hope that it will tell us conclusively whether a given belief is or is not justified,
given its genealogy. This means that the genealogical sceptic who appeals to safety
will risk begging the question against his opponent.
So what? The genealogical sceptic is putting his hands down his pants and fetching out something he claims to be chocolate cake. What greater disgrace does petitio principii entail for him?
For he will have to make
assumptions about which possible worlds are nearby, or which methods are in use,
which will in turn be informed by his judgment that the beliefs in question are not
justified.
But, such assumptions are already implicit in his opening salvo. Getting more air-time to state them explicitly is exactly the reward he desires.
Consider the sort of genealogical sceptic we all met with in our first year at College. The guy says you only think you are attracted to nice looking people. Actually, what you really want to do is suck his cock. You kick his head in but he later sidles up to you to explain how your violence towards him masks your burning desire to suck his cock. You kick his head in once again but this time you are alarmed to find you actually quite enjoy the satisfying thunk your Doc Martins make when making contact with his cranium. Anyway, you give him a wide berth thereafter. Then the fucker gets elevated to the Supreme Court and you regret not using his head as a football more frequently.
But this is to presuppose precisely what must be proven.
Which is what Amia does when she speaks of 'belief forming mechanisms'.
We arrive thus
at a dialectical impasse.
But things are more complex still. For genealogical scepticism is faced with
a threat of self-defeat.
Quite true. The gaslighter may himself have been gaslighted. This does not mean it isn't fun to use his head as a football even if this means you are actually some complicated kind of gay.
If the genealogical sceptic is right that our genealogically contingent
beliefs in moral, theological or metaphysical propositions are
unjustified,
If beliefs are genealogically contingent then they are genealogically justified.
it would seem to follow that our genealogically-contingent beliefs in epistemological propositions are unjustified.
Epistemological propositions
are unjustified in the first order language they refer to unless they are purely juristic. Nothing wrong with that. One can still have 'univalent foundations'.
For our epistemological beliefs appear
to depend on the contingencies of culture, history and evolution in just the same
way as our moral, theological or metaphysical beliefs.
How can they have that appearance unless they are justified genealogically in the first order language? Stare decisis is an epistemological principle. It is enjoined by its own first order language. Indeed, it has some bogus mythology featuring Greek speaking Druids.
If the evolutionary
contingency of our moral beliefs entails that our moral beliefs are unjustified, does
not the evolutionary contingency of our epistemological beliefs entail that our very
belief in the safety principle is unjustified?
Yes. If x, then x. Next question.
If so, the evolutionary debunking
argument of our moral beliefs entails that we ought not believe one of its own
premises.
So what? The fact that a premise is superfluous and can be discarded doesn't weaken an argument, it makes it stronger.
Of course, that the genealogical sceptic’s argument is self-defeating is
not to say that its conclusion is false.
But it is to say it can't be true. Nonsense has no alethic value.
But it is to say that the genealogical sceptic
can offer his opponent no reason to accept his conclusion.
This is false. Amia means no compelling logical reason.
For if his argument is in
fact sound, it appears to follow that we are not justified in believing that it is.
This is nonsense. If x then x. Either an argument is sound or it isn't. To mention a 'unsound sound argument' is to indulge in ex falso quodlibet. Any nonsense at all can be predicated of this impossible object.
Where does this leave us?
It leaves us thinking you have shit for brains.
Some epistemologists have suggested that if we
can show that there is no dialectically compelling argument for genealogical
scepticism, our work will be done.
Which is why epistemologists aren't pulling down big bucks the way endocrinologists are.
For then we will have shown that such
scepticism, to use Schopenhauer’s image, is ‘an impregnable fortress but from which
the garrison can never sally forth’, which we can ‘pass by it and leave…in our rear
without danger’. But this, I think, is a mistake. Just because the sceptic cannot
rationally compel us to abandon our beliefs does not mean that he exercises no
epistemic power over us.
Yes it does. If he has 'epistemic power' then he gets to gaslight us. If not he has to suck his own cock.
Insofar as we are untroubled by genealogical anxiety, we
are free to dismiss the genealogical sceptic, and carry on with our doxastic lives as
usual. But for those in the grip of genealogical anxiety, this is not a real option.
Very true. But then this grip of genealogical anxiety is probably causing one to give blowjobs to hobos.
For
such people, the sceptic is not inside an impregnable fortress, but lurking in our
own hearts, feeding our darkest suspicions that the beliefs we hold most dear are
the mere quirks of circumstance.
These dark suspicions are probably well founded if you find yourself regularly having to wash hobo jizz out of your hair.
Perhaps the genealogical sceptic can provide me no
compelling reason to think I am unjustified. But what reason do I have for thinking
that I am in fact justified? Insofar as my beliefs are justified, the genealogical sceptic
reminds me, it must be because they are formed on the basis of a reliable mechanism.
There is no such requirement. It is sufficient that one's beliefs answer to a juristic mechanism of a certain sort. It is not necessary that they were formed on the basis of any mechanism whatsoever.
It must be, in other words, that there is something special about the belief-forming
method with which the contingencies of evolution, history, culture and upbringing have endowed me: a specialness that does not characterise those who do not share
my evolutionary, historical, cultural or familial formation.
No. It is sufficient to show that you are aware of what your beliefs ought to be given such contingencies for you to justify your actual beliefs by showing how they are better. Thus, if accused of negligence, a Surgeon on the witness stand must first show that he knows what existing 'best practice' is and why he departed from it. During the course of cross-examination, the surgeon will seek to show why a reasonable man, in his position, would have done as he did and that this represented a higher fidelity to his calling- as conventionally understood- than taking any other course.
The judgment the Surgeon is looking for is that he exceeded, not fell below, the standard of care he had been taught to show.
Put another way, if I am
committed to the claim that my genealogically-contingent beliefs are justified, I am
ipso facto committed to the claim that I am the beneficiary of what we might call
good genealogical luck.
Nonsense. A thing may be contingent on a number of other things. I may say I have genealogical luck in terms of my physique while also exhibiting pride in my own efforts to maintain it. However, I am not ispo facto committed to mentioning the subject at all. There is no need for me to say 'thanks to being born in a nice Solar system, I have a cool six-pack.'
Thus the genealogical sceptic exercises what we might think
of as a kind of metaepistemic power:
only if we did actually give the guy a blowjob- not otherwise.
a power to reveal just what we must believe
about ourselves if we want to consistently believe that our genealogically contingent
beliefs are in fact justified
as is the huge dry-cleaning bill we keep running up for getting hobo jizz stains off our suits.
In order to maintain that belief – in order
not to merely dismiss the genealogical sceptic but to positively contradict him – one
has to believe oneself to be genealogically lucky.
But only if hobos keep jizzing on us and we believe that's justified.
Of course, there is no in principle prohibition on thinking oneself
genealogically lucky. For example, because I had the good fortune of being born
well after Darwin, and being taught his theory of evolution by natural selection, I
know that the appearance of intelligent design in nature is just that: mere
appearance. William Paley, who died four years before Darwin would be born, was
not so genealogically lucky, which is why he (falsely but quite understandably)
believed in intelligent design. There feels nothing odd or illicit in saying that I and
others like me are genealogically lucky vis-à-vis the truth about intelligence design,
whereas Paley and others like him are genealogically unlucky.
Lots of people like Amia believe in Intelligent Design. Some are proper Scientists. Furthermore, going forward, we are going to see Intelligent Design in more and more living things. It may be that, as a species, we will migrate to another Universe whose design we ourselves perfected.
Genealogical luck will have nothing to do it. What matters is useful Research.
And yet, it can feel
– to some of us, at least some of the time – problematic to think of oneself as
genealogically lucky in the cases of moral, theological and metaphysical beliefs.
First, it can seem as if one has no suitably independent reason for thinking oneself
genealogically lucky in such cases. Take for example Plantinga’s defence of
Christian exclusivism. It is obviously circular: only if Christian theology is in fact
true could it be that the Holy Spirit reliably guides Christians towards the truth.
Nonsense! Some Christian theology must be false (because it contradicts other Christian theologies) but this does not matter in the slightest. Salvation is by Grace alone. Some may know this through a sense of conscious election. Others might not. The thing is a mystery. There is no justification by works in this realm.
Plantinga has no reason, independent of the Christian beliefs that are at issue, to
think that he and other Christians are genealogically lucky.
The elect are not 'lucky'. God's reasons are inscrutable to us.
By contrast, it appears that I do have independent reason for thinking
myself genealogically lucky vis-à-vis the truth about intelligent design.
Nonsense! You don't know the truth about it at all. Otherwise you'd have made a new type of cat to which I'd not be allergic and which would do the washing up when I can't be arsed.
For I have
good reason to believe that Paley would have rejected intelligent design had he
been exposed to all the relevant evidence, most importantly the elegance and power
of Darwin’s theory.
Darwin's theory was only given an 'elegant and powerful' mathematical representation in my own lifetime. However, I have to admit, that the mathematical arguments I find compelling for it might be undone if quantum computing takes off in a currently plausible trajectory. In that case, irrespective of how we evolved, our species will spend eternity in an 'Intelligent Design' Universe where Paley will have displaced Darwin as Prophet.
After all, the vast majority of thoughtful people who have
carefully considered all the relevant evidence agree with me, and not with Paley.
Plantinga appears to have no similar reason for thinking that those who disagree
with him – those, for example, who believe in the tenets of Muslim or Jewish theology – would come to agree with him if only presented with more evidence.
While religious conversion is certainly possible, it rarely if ever suffices to simply
explain the tenets of Christian theology to the would-be convert. This matters
because, in the case of religious (or moral or metaphysical) beliefs, there appears to
be a deep epistemic symmetry between me and my counterpart with a different
genealogy – a symmetry that does not obtain in cases of other genealogically contingent
beliefs, like my belief in evolution. In cases of such symmetry – in which
me and my counterpart are equally apprised of the relevant evidence, and equally
sincere and diligent in our pursuit of the truth – it seems that I can have no noncircular
reason for thinking that I am the lucky one, and she unlucky.
All this is naive. There is a huge epistemic asymmetry between people like me or Amia and people who do useful research. Neither of us are lucky. We are stupid and ignorant and driven by a masochistic desire to exhibit these twin traits in our worthless scribbling. On the other hand, Amia is a well groomed young person who does not arouse feelings of disgust and revulsion in her students. All them Iyengars are like that only. What is the point of teaching Philosophy if you don't smell like a drunken bum? It's false advertising is what it is.
- i.e. it has increasing, not decreasing returns. Now if a function starts from zero, is convex and increasing then its sequence is superadditive. But a superadditivity does not imply convexity. Thus, the cause of concavity can't be superadditivity. On the contrary, a convexity, under certain conditions, implies superadditivity but the reverse is not the case. Furthermore, there is no mathematical reason to tell a bunch of beginners in Econ that superaddittivity causes anything or, indeed, has anything to do with the assumption of diminishing returns.
