Last week's three entries had a common theme: the liberation of the mind, or "bodymind," which has always been the spirit moving this newsletter. The first entry was on midwits, urging intellectual humility. The second entry was on intellectual servitude
"Sometimes, perhaps many times, those who enjoy having an intellectual life can have their words oriented toward something other than truth-seeking."
This brought to mind the distinction made by the Maori philosopher Carl Mika, which Vanessa Machado de Oliveira brings up in the opening chapter of Hospicing Modernity, between "wording the world" and "worlding the world". These are two ways of using language. In the first, we seek to describe reality as if from above, pinning down the truth (like a butterfly?); in the second, we use language to participate in the world, allowing words, ideas and stories an agency that will sometimes be working through us, rather than under our control. There's a time for each of these, although the first may work better when done within a frame of "acting as if" (we can observe and describe the world from a position of detachment). In the context of your discussion of humility, "worlding the world" seems the humbler (literally, closer to the ground) mode of using language. And when Vanessa introduced me to the distinction, what struck me was that I had always gravitated towards writers who used language to world the world, without having a way to name this. John Berger, for example, whose words have offered shelter to many of us, and served as a meeting place.
I sense an tendency similar to the Dunning-Kreuger effect, where the people who should do more cross-checking are unlikely to care/get intellectually captured, while the people who'd gain from relaxing self-imposed constraints are less likely to do so.
I think we need more ”raw food" thoughts, and also a higher degree of loving dissent/critique. Distributed opponent processing
It feels to me what this piece is gesturing towards is the territory that can't be named. To create anything from scratch is to be in dialogue with the mystery. That's the nature of concepts like the Muses, 'inspiration' etc. I don't think there is any contradiction between rationalism and immersion-in-mystery: I think they are necessary opposites. Most truth-seeking leads eventually to paradox. I sometimes think of Genly in The Left Hand of Darkness doing what is called 'far-fetching'- part of his job as Envoy is to game out his impressions and intuitions: a science of feeling.
Why do correspondence theory and scientism have to be so tightly coupled? We can get into the "what is truth" dance, but can't we look for ground truth through non-scientismic means? Through McGilchrist and others, we can see the limitations of that form of thinking. As you note, we want to keep the miracles that an Enlightenment focus brings, but integrate it within a more wisdom-oriented framework. Then we can pursue all the Transcendentals within one inquiry.
I agree with Jonathan M that we need more “raw thoughts” AND a higher degree of loving dissent/critique.
Raw thinking without critique will lead to bad modeling of reality and, in turn, foolish decision making. I agree with Peter that Beauty should play a role in our theorizing and explorations, but I think the post-rat motto is just a trendy aphorism to justify insight porn addiction.
Vervaeke often recounts a survey he performs with his students, asking them to raise their hands if they would want to know that their partner has been lying to them and cheating on them. Everyone raises their hand because people would rather have an ugly and hard model of reality which is true rather than have a pleasant and pretty model which doesn’t correspond to reality.
So I think there is an imperative to solve the problems of intellectual capture and scientism without creating a complex of justifications which would ask us to turn away from correspondence. Otherwise, we risk not only foolishness in the particular, but also of being captured by a foolish circular logic wherein dissent and critique aren’t afforded any rhetorical space to challenge a given premise.
It’s not hard to imagine how a seasoned “bullshitter” would use such logics to guard their claims from scrutiny, including the scrutiny of their own conscientious instincts.
Here’s how I would imagine it playing out:
Theorizer: *Puts forward some argument which shows signs of bias or fails to correspond with reality, while still being very stimulating or appealing to virtues*
Debugger: *Offers a perspective on the possible critical failings of the theory.*
Theorizer Option 1: “Wow, yeah I hadn’t thought about it like that’ll before. Good catch!”
Theorizer Option 2: “Hmm, that’s a good perspective but I think I disagree. Here’s why:…”
Theorizer Option 3: “Your critical offerings are boring and are merely a consequence of scientism and intellectual capture, and they are stifling my pursuit of beauty”.
Of those archetypal simplifications, I think Options 1 and 2 are ethically sound, while 3 is dangerous at best.
So I leave this open question: How can we better encourage people to use their instincts and intuitions to explore new theoretical space without the shadow of scientism (and other forms of intellectual tyranny) scaring them away from the important work of integrating correspondence-with-reality and critical dialogue/feedback.
I think answering this question will prove especially difficult for the population of smart “vulnerable narcissists” who signal intellectual humility but are incredibly sensitive to critical feedback. They will be prone to adopt any superficially insightful justification for avoiding challenges to their ideas/actions. And so the pursuit of Beauty and Goodness in theory must be facilitated in such a way which does not lend itself to intellectual stonewalling. And we must also love our vulnerable narcissists and be concerned with the problem of effective therapies being designed and made available to help them overcome their core fears.
"Sometimes, perhaps many times, those who enjoy having an intellectual life can have their words oriented toward something other than truth-seeking."
This brought to mind the distinction made by the Maori philosopher Carl Mika, which Vanessa Machado de Oliveira brings up in the opening chapter of Hospicing Modernity, between "wording the world" and "worlding the world". These are two ways of using language. In the first, we seek to describe reality as if from above, pinning down the truth (like a butterfly?); in the second, we use language to participate in the world, allowing words, ideas and stories an agency that will sometimes be working through us, rather than under our control. There's a time for each of these, although the first may work better when done within a frame of "acting as if" (we can observe and describe the world from a position of detachment). In the context of your discussion of humility, "worlding the world" seems the humbler (literally, closer to the ground) mode of using language. And when Vanessa introduced me to the distinction, what struck me was that I had always gravitated towards writers who used language to world the world, without having a way to name this. John Berger, for example, whose words have offered shelter to many of us, and served as a meeting place.
I sense an tendency similar to the Dunning-Kreuger effect, where the people who should do more cross-checking are unlikely to care/get intellectually captured, while the people who'd gain from relaxing self-imposed constraints are less likely to do so.
I think we need more ”raw food" thoughts, and also a higher degree of loving dissent/critique. Distributed opponent processing
It feels to me what this piece is gesturing towards is the territory that can't be named. To create anything from scratch is to be in dialogue with the mystery. That's the nature of concepts like the Muses, 'inspiration' etc. I don't think there is any contradiction between rationalism and immersion-in-mystery: I think they are necessary opposites. Most truth-seeking leads eventually to paradox. I sometimes think of Genly in The Left Hand of Darkness doing what is called 'far-fetching'- part of his job as Envoy is to game out his impressions and intuitions: a science of feeling.
Why do correspondence theory and scientism have to be so tightly coupled? We can get into the "what is truth" dance, but can't we look for ground truth through non-scientismic means? Through McGilchrist and others, we can see the limitations of that form of thinking. As you note, we want to keep the miracles that an Enlightenment focus brings, but integrate it within a more wisdom-oriented framework. Then we can pursue all the Transcendentals within one inquiry.
This is tricky terrain.
I agree with Jonathan M that we need more “raw thoughts” AND a higher degree of loving dissent/critique.
Raw thinking without critique will lead to bad modeling of reality and, in turn, foolish decision making. I agree with Peter that Beauty should play a role in our theorizing and explorations, but I think the post-rat motto is just a trendy aphorism to justify insight porn addiction.
Vervaeke often recounts a survey he performs with his students, asking them to raise their hands if they would want to know that their partner has been lying to them and cheating on them. Everyone raises their hand because people would rather have an ugly and hard model of reality which is true rather than have a pleasant and pretty model which doesn’t correspond to reality.
So I think there is an imperative to solve the problems of intellectual capture and scientism without creating a complex of justifications which would ask us to turn away from correspondence. Otherwise, we risk not only foolishness in the particular, but also of being captured by a foolish circular logic wherein dissent and critique aren’t afforded any rhetorical space to challenge a given premise.
It’s not hard to imagine how a seasoned “bullshitter” would use such logics to guard their claims from scrutiny, including the scrutiny of their own conscientious instincts.
Here’s how I would imagine it playing out:
Theorizer: *Puts forward some argument which shows signs of bias or fails to correspond with reality, while still being very stimulating or appealing to virtues*
Debugger: *Offers a perspective on the possible critical failings of the theory.*
Theorizer Option 1: “Wow, yeah I hadn’t thought about it like that’ll before. Good catch!”
Theorizer Option 2: “Hmm, that’s a good perspective but I think I disagree. Here’s why:…”
Theorizer Option 3: “Your critical offerings are boring and are merely a consequence of scientism and intellectual capture, and they are stifling my pursuit of beauty”.
Of those archetypal simplifications, I think Options 1 and 2 are ethically sound, while 3 is dangerous at best.
So I leave this open question: How can we better encourage people to use their instincts and intuitions to explore new theoretical space without the shadow of scientism (and other forms of intellectual tyranny) scaring them away from the important work of integrating correspondence-with-reality and critical dialogue/feedback.
I think answering this question will prove especially difficult for the population of smart “vulnerable narcissists” who signal intellectual humility but are incredibly sensitive to critical feedback. They will be prone to adopt any superficially insightful justification for avoiding challenges to their ideas/actions. And so the pursuit of Beauty and Goodness in theory must be facilitated in such a way which does not lend itself to intellectual stonewalling. And we must also love our vulnerable narcissists and be concerned with the problem of effective therapies being designed and made available to help them overcome their core fears.
Love. Christian.