Albert Replies

 

in my original response about "Western Rationality," I addressed a few themes from Marcus Raskin. Mainly, I took Raskin's equation of scientists and shamans and @ assertion that science is just another story created by us with no independent claim to existence, and that it should therefore be imbued with values that we like rather than ones we don't like, and I asked why, then, Raskin or anyone else should turn to a doctor to treat a potentially fatal disease, or to a chemist or ecologist to discern the likely effects of some toxic waste. Why not just tell a preferred story? And I meant this seriously because it seemed the natural course of action implied by the claim that science, astrology, religion, and the N.Y Times (and Chomsky's) account of the Gulf War, are all just stories, none with greater claim on our allegiance than any other, save as we find it more pleasing. I also argued that though I assumed it wasn't his intention, I thought Raskin's view was perfectly consistent with Lysenkoism, creationism, and Islamic Science, including such things as study of "the angle of God." I now add, if we accept Raskin's approach, why isn't Elvis alive if millions say he is? Why should anyone care about the despoilment of nature if nature isn't really there, or is there only insofar as we tell a story putting it there? Similarly, if claims about existence are merely stories, what's false about "false advertising"? If it makes someone feel good to advertise that Ban deodorant makes you free, surely that's a cool story. I find nothing in Raskin's reply that bears on any of this. He makes no effort to explain how, or if, I am misreading his views, or what else his statements might mean. Nor does he offer any defense of the view I attribute to him, supposing it is actually the one he holds.

When Raskin talks about our criticisms, he is barely comprehensible and, in any event, off the point. For example, he says, "The question of astrology was raised by two of the ACES. It seems to me that the Gaia thesis of Lovelock is attractive as a story and serious astrologers of old would surely be comfortable with it...... Is this supposed to answer the query as to whether Raskin would as soon consult an astrologer as an astronomer regarding the tides or the composition of Sirius? Is it supposed to mean that he thinks Lovelock holds his views merely because he likes them, and not because he has extensively researched, experimented, and calculated?

Turning from his allusions to actual science, which are invariably strange, factually distorted, and in any event not particularly relevant when, instead, Raskin talks about my views, or those of Chomsky or Ehrenreich, if I am getting what he is saying, he is most often simply wrong. For example, Raskin says the ACEs seek to construct a wall which separate morals and science, values from fact." If he means we think there is a difference, he's right. If he means we think scientists should be amoral, come on. If Raskin wants to transmute the word rational to mean what everyone else means by rational plus moral, I suppose that's okay, but the point is there is a difference between being logically sound, not contrary to evidence, and internally consistent, and being mora or esirable. You can be all the former, and not the latter.

Raskin says, "one wonders if the ACEs see a connection between the habits of mind that are eager to get third world people to sell their body parts" and those composing science. If he means do I find that my attempts to be true to logic, consistency, evidence, etc., tend to propel me into proposing that people sell their kidneys no, they don't. Raskin repeatedly implies that Albert, Chomsky, and Ehrenreich get uptight when he says negative things about scientists or particular scientific institutions. In fact, the three of us are at least as critical of various scientific endeavors and institutions as Raskin, and have been for our entire political lives. Moreover, coincidentally, we three have been more concerned to explain the ills of monopolization of knowledge and methodology of the intellectual priesthood, of technocracy, of the PMC, of the coordinator class than just about anyone else I can think of. What gets us uptight, however, is when someone like Raskin confuses the ills associated with authoritarian, hierarchical monopolization of knowledge and decision making, or with the use of analytical techniques to disempower or oppress, with the underlying commitment of rational people and scientists to be true to evidence and logic. Nowhere in our comments did we deny that scientists often do horrible things. We only denied that those horrible things were propelled by trying to be scientific ie. logical, true to evidence, consistent and added that often, though not always, the horrible actions of immoral scientists involved a deviation from truthfulness, consistency, etc. Reciprocally, no "anti rationahst" in this debate, including Raskin, has made even the slightest attempt to show an operational connection between being true to the canons of science and being colonizing, authoritarian, sectarian, etc.

As another instance of error, Raskin says about me, "let us say that there are many people in the world who describe an institution as X including those who live the X. Albert is one of those who says that X is not X. Christianity is not Christianity, the socialism of the Soviet Union was not socialist." So far, so good, at least in principle (I never said anything about Christianity). It's true I don't think we determine the truth or the validity of claims by how many people say one thing or another. And so, if standards of rationality point to a claim's falsehood, then even if most people in some country believe that claim for example, that capitalism is eternal, that Black people are inferior, that women belong in the home, that John Kennedy was anti-imperialist I will say it is false. What Raskin sees, instead, is that "that which Albert doesn't like he calls bad science or non-scientific, although scientists have built their entire careers" on it. But this is obviously wrong as Raskin's own commentary makes evident. I call what atomic bomb builders do, science, and I hate it. It so happens I don't like neoclassical economics, but I say it is not scientific on the basis of piles of evidence that it deviates from experience, consistency, and even logic, not because I don't like it. Similarly, I don't say capitalist choices in the pursuit of profit are nonscientific. In fact, I generally find capitalists quite informed on contemporary knowledge and quite rational about their choices, once one accepts their odious goals. That is, of course, a part of the point. Rational, at least in the usual sense, need not be moral. Additionally, is Raskin saying that when many people hold a view it becomes true and we should assent to its truth? I know he doesn't do that, else how could he have been an early opponent of the Vietnam War? This, indeed, is one of the characteristic attributes of a rational (or scientific) orientation. The pedigrees of the advocates of a view don't matter. Their verbal skills don't matter. The number of their allies doesn't matter. What matters is consistency, accurate deductions, evidence, testability, etc.

 

Raskin suggests that our (the ACE'S) position may be "meant as a means of exclusion and as a means of separating form from the content of rational inquiry, thus robbing people of means to judge rotten content." Yet, we repeatedly focus attention on not only form, but also content, ie., that which can be checked experimentally and found to correspond to or deviate from experience. Someone makes a claim for example, cigarettes don't cause cancer, pi is a transcendental number, the sun gets its heat from nuclear reactions, the earth is 10,000 years old, you can kW a lot of people with a nuclear bomb and offers a supporting argument. For the ACES, any of these claims has weight to the extent that the advocate's supporting argument makes proper deductions and is consistent, as well as being based on a foundation of prior claims about reality that are well borne out by experience and testing. As a result, anyone can assess the truthfulness of these and other substantive claims by evaluating the "form" of supporting arguments for consistency and good sense and supporting facts or "content" for faithfulness to reality as we currently know it. And, of course, once a claim is assessed for its truth-value, anyone can then also look at attendant moral issues. In Raskin's approach, however, as best I can understand it, (a) neither form nor content matter because any claims are stories whose legitimacy rests, in the end, only on whether people buy it, and (b) in any event, only a story that is moral can be true, or rational, whatever we may think of its consistency or content.

Suppose telescopic evidence plus Newton's laws leads to the prediction that a large asteroid will hit the Earth on June 18, 2021, a conceivable prospect which has occurred with devastating results in the past. What would Raskin have us do? Consult an astrologer? Tell a nicer story? Or use the methods of science to develop a procedure for destroying or altering the trajectory of the asteroid?

Suppose someone tells me I have lung cancer. Or, suppose my child catches a debilitating flu. Should I tell myself it isn't so? Or should I get the best doctors I can, assessing their evidence for my condition and for alternative courses of action, then choosing the one that seems most likely to save my or my child's life?

Suppose a peasant in Guatemala evaluates the history of her country in light of her knowledge of human motivations and potentials and opts to become a revolutionary, thereby possibly shortening the span of her life by many years. Should we urge her to instead make things better by telling a different, more pleasing, story in which there is less inequality or in which she has more?

I think Raskin gives us no grounds on which to make these choices. Worse, his approach suggests that we should tell stories that deny asteroids, cancer, and poverty, if we so desire. Raskin says, pejoratively, "modern science ... convinces on the basis of probability and claims of verification." No need to quibble. That's about right. And what's the superior alternative? Force? Mystification? Artistic merit? Fancy rhetoric? Credentials?

I find it strange that it's okay for someone who says rationality isn't worth much to call others inquisitors, defenders of the national security state, etc., without a smidgen of evidence and contrary to the totality of what they say and do. But when other people who believe in evidence and consistency have the audacity to argue that a particular claim is "unfounded" or "wrong," or to argue that a particular approach might have harmful consequences by indicating precisely how they are "grabbing the conch of legitimacy while turning [their] adversaries into the illegitimate unwashed."

Although debating these matters at times feels entirely ridiculous, the issues are actually quite important. The various strains of thought which denigrate "science," "truth," and "rationality" have in common the dangerous notion that the poor and oppressed should cede the field of disciplined thought aimed at determining what is real and what isn't to their opposition. Although I know that further disempowering the already nearly powerless is not their intention, this seems aside from academic career definition and enhancement the main implication of the anti rationalists' positions.