By Captain Fogg
(with an afterthought from Octopus)
One of the things I have liked about Congressman Ron Paul is that he's often been on the side of deregulating private life and consensual behavior, but either he doesn't mean what he says or he is willing to say what he doesn't mean in order to curry favor with the Great Regulators of the Religious right.
Speaking in Iowa recently, Mr. Paul said:
"The Defense of Marriage Act was enacted in 1996 to stop Big Government in Washington from re-defining marriage and forcing its definition on the States. Like the majority of Iowans, I believe that marriage is between one man and one woman and must be protected."That resonates in my ears as a statement of his religious persuasion and of course he was speaking to a group of religions conservatives representing denominations opposed to letting people decide for themselves about such matters. Other religions might have other ideas and indeed some do. In other words these are people quite open about forcing their definition on Americans.
I find it curious that proponents of defining marriage according to religious definitions always use the word "is" where one expects "should be," "ought to be" or "must be" and there must be a reason for it. Marriage, after all is a human institution and marriage customs vary amongst groups of humans. Perhaps "is" is a way to pretend that it's written into the fabric of the cosmos like general relativity or the uncertainty principle. It isn't.
Of course Paul couched his opposition to doing away with the Defense of Marriage act in terms of states rights and whether or not he was following in the tradition of all the other "states rights" defenses of so many other things we now see as unjust, it's a defense of something with as limited a future as our embarrassing misogyny laws of recent memory. A minority of the country oppose preventing people from marrying whom they will and I can't help but find my feeling that the history of humankind's progress toward democracy is once again being thwarted by the notion of a divine will that opposes our allegedly innate liberty.
When someone who has been so stalwart in defending the Constitution and restraining government power, promotes such peremptory views on the most personal of choices, it seems a jarring discontinuity that makes on question the man and everything else he's described as being unconstitutional. It's hard to understand why he's willing to use government power to defend a certain Faith when that is something the government is expressly forbidden to do.
Yes, I know. I've been talking a lot about religion of late, but to me, there is no other force in American affairs more intractable than the movement to force compliance to religious standards on people who have or wish to have no affiliation with those standards and prefer the right to make personal choices according to their own consciences. That ability, that kind of freedom is the beating heart of liberal democracy. If we lose that, we lose it all.
It's sad to see Congressman Paul speaking this way. I once had high hopes for him, if not as Presidential material, certainly as a voice of reason and restraint at a time when the Republican party seems increasingly controlled by anti-democratic, anti-libertarian influences. Now he seems far less of a libertarian, far more of an authoritarian and indistinguishable from any other politician groveling before the powerful.
An afterthought from Octopus, who picks up where Captain Fogg leaves off: “indistinguishable from any other politician groveling before the powerful”
When we construct a hypothesis to explain any observed phenomena, the idea is to find the simplest possible construct that best fits the data. If you accept the premise that “pandering and political opportunism” is the motive that drives the Elder Paul, there is a good chance this hypothesis will withstand scrutiny. If you attribute religious belief in the broadest possible context as his motive, there are too many hypothesis-challenging exceptions to pass muster.
Not all religious denominations, for example, share the views of the Elder Paul. Look no further than the Reverend Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, President of The Interfaith Alliance, who has long criticized the abuse and misuse of religion in our public life.
Politicians are known to contradict themselves when stoking the fears of key constituencies and stakeholders, and Ron Paul is no exception. Inasmuch as the base of his party is right leaning and reactionary, why should his tilt towards authoritarian social control surprise us? The bogeyman behind the words is the bogeyman of wedge politics as candidates jockey for position and influence. I hope this clarifies Captain Fogg’s point.
Permit me this brief digression. Last night, I sent these links to Captain Fogg as ideas for a future discussion: The Ashtray: The Ultimatum (Part One) and The Ashtray: Shifting Paradigms (Part Two). Readers may want to read these links first to brush up on the issues before continuing. Here is the first analogy.
You have two fish in a fishbowl. One of them is golden in color; the other one is not. The fish that is golden in color, you name “Goldie.” The other fish you name “Greenie.” Perhaps you use the description “the gold fish” and point to the one that is golden in color. You are referring to the gold fish, Goldie. Over the course of time, however, Goldie starts to change color. Six months later, Goldie is no longer golden. Goldie is now green. Greenie, the other fish — the fish in the bowl that was green in color — has turned golden (…) The description theory would have it that Goldie means the fish that is golden in color, but if that’s true then when we refer to Goldie, we are referring to the other fish. But clearly, Goldie hasn’t become a different fish; Goldie has merely changed … appearance.The flaw in the "Goldie" analogy is the misuse of semantics, of identifier and modifier merged into one and used interchangeably in the sense that: (1) a proper name identifies “Goldie” as the subject of this thought experiment, and (2) a modifier describe the properties of said subject such as color. In common parlance, a proper name is not subject to changes in appearance; whereas our choice of modifiers tends to be mutable and subject to revision as we observe change. Nice idea. I get the historical persistence point: Fishy example. In fewer words, if a very tall couple - well over six and half feet tall - plan to have children, they should never name their firstborn “Tiny Earl.” We need look no further than historical and comparative linguistics and the Brothers Grimm in search for better examples.
Similarly, Kuhn’s “paradigm shift” may have a certain revolutionary allure and Che Guevara appeal, but it fails to account for context and continuity, and the best example I can give is the difference between Newton versus Einstein. Although Kuhn may cite Einstein as an example of paradigm shift, the proper context is to view Newton as a subset of Einstein, not merely within the timeline of history but in how we observe the same phenomena at different velocities. Thus, there is nothing incommensurable in the shift from Newton to Einstein.
It seems the writer of the NYT article (Morris) understood these issues intuitively but could not articulate them with sufficient explanatory adequacy. Rightfully, Kuhn threw an ashtray at Morris who did not completely think through his homework.
All this brings me to a challenging subject. When we apply pure reason to various disciplines, we find that reason is time delimited, i.e. a snapshot of what we perceive at fixed points in time. Inasmuch as reason has been exalted as a reliable and trustworthy source of truth, such is not necessarily the case. The words that inform thought are plastic and malleable; the tools of reason are themselves flawed and forever changing; and the products of reason (i.e. the conclusions derived thereof) are subject to revision upon revision. If there is an evil genius at work, at least these preoccupations keep the Wunderkinder employed.
Perhaps another way of looking at things is not to pit religion against science, or reason against its presumed opposite, whatever the opposite of reason is, but to acknowledge all aspects of mind in more holistic terms – that consciousness is an adaptation leading to the more successful regulation of life. The conscious mind infuses human beings with an instinct to probe the unknown, and these faculties of mind take many forms: Sensory experience, emotions, inspiration, intuition, epistemology, phenomenology, logic and scientific observation … all contributing to a human penchant for speculative imagination. Why prejudice one aspect of mind against another when we should start this inquiry within the context of our long and tortuous journey that began ages ago in the Great Rift Valley.
Start your engines. Are we bursting with ideas?
Octo:
ReplyDelete"The conscious mind infuses human beings with an instinct to probe the unknown, and these faculties of mind take many forms: Sensory experience, emotions, inspiration, intuition, epistemology, phenomenology, logic and scientific observation … all contributing to a human penchant for speculative imagination. Why prejudice one aspect of mind against another when we should start this inquiry within the context of our long and tortuous journey that began ages ago in the Great Rift Valley."
Speculative imagination makes us human and as a spur to our creativity, it's taken us out of the mud and into other worlds. We would never have seen the sun rise on Mars without it, or had our hearts stirred by Bach but we would never have had the means to do so had we been restrained by those who dictate what "man's place" is as determined by any particular God either.
But it's not speculative imagination that's pitted against science or freedom itself, it's codifying someone's speculations as law and forbidding further investigation.
As I pointed out, some cultural codes permit multiple marriages and using our speculative imagination we can't possible tell which culture has the real, the best answer; we need something else and that something else is what is being forbidden, or at least held at bay by the fossilized speculations and political polemics of past ages.
The only things in our history of thinking that have stood against further creative speculation are religions both theistic and atheistic. It isn't God who is the enemy, it's the uses he's put to by people. That's why the wisdom of our constitution shines brightly in the first amendment which allows us to choose our own source of inspiration without being forced by the government as the agent of the Christian trinity.
I'm not an enemy of religion, but perhaps it's ingrained in our culture to suspect anyone who questions it's value or use and application of insidious intent. What I am is an enemy of the enemies of free choice. I do not wish to be or have my country be bound by contemporary Christian views or Jewish or Muslim views or by political views sanctified by someone else's God or even secular deity like Marx or Rand. This is a cornerstone of American democracy and I would have expected Mr. Paul to recognize it and to act accordingly.
Excellent last paragraph, Octo. Couldn't agree more.
ReplyDeleteTwo paragraphs stand out for me:
#1
"When someone who has been so stalwart in defending the Constitution and restraining government power, promotes such peremptory views on the most personal of choices, it seems a jarring discontinuity that makes on question the man and everything else he's described as being unconstitutional. It's hard to understand why he's willing to use government power to defend a certain Faith when that is something the government is expressly forbidden to do."
Maybe being ambushed and totally humiliated in the Borat movie had something to do with it. Nice liberal humour, that. Free speech and all.
#2
"Yes, I know. I've been talking a lot about religion of late, but to me, there is no other force in American affairs more intractable than the movement to force compliance to religious standards on people who have or wish to have no affiliation with those standards and prefer the right to make personal choices according to their own consciences. That ability, that kind of freedom is the beating heart of liberal democracy. If we lose that, we lose it all."
All of law forces compliance. We constantly adjust. To be contrarian, what's the big deal about marriage, either same sex or otherwise? We can all just live together. Has anyone noticed the planet is going to hell in a handbasket? We have more important things to occupy our attention... or perhaps it's all an enormous setup turning us all into bit players in a Borat movie.
As Jay Gould used to say, “I can always hire half the working class to shoot the other half.”
ReplyDeleteI'll return later with more commentary.
Edge
ReplyDelete"All of law forces compliance."
That's irrelevant to the question of whether the law is just or constitutional.
"what's the big deal about marriage, either same sex or otherwise? We can all just live together. "
We can in some states, but I'll remind all that laws concerning marriage, "cohabitation" Sodomy and Misogyny are of the same nature: limiting one's behavior not so as to prevent harming the rights or property of another, but to please the gods of a particular religion. I have to assert once again, that upholding a religious precept or those of a group of religions is beyond the just and legal purpose of the United States Government. I will add that marriage conveys benefits regarding property, custody and other things not always available by other means.
"We have more important things to occupy our attention... or perhaps it's all an enormous setup turning us all into bit players in a Borat movie."
It does seem that we're treated to such diversions precisely to distract from the failures of Republicans -- remember these are the fellows who told us for dismal decades that our biggest problem was pornography while we plunged into debt.
Days after I attached an afterthought to the end of Captain Fogg’s post, it occurs to me that there was aspect of off-topic trollishness in the attempt. My intentions, of course, were honorable: To invite and further facilitate a discussion, or so I thought.
ReplyDeleteAnticipating this comment from Captain Fogg, “it's codifying someone's speculations as law and forbidding further investigation,” my instinct is to search for a generalized hypothesis to explain this tendency. If the cog in the wheels of progress is attributed to religious dogma alone, I would counter with, “not in every instance.”
I would have cited Gregor Mendel, André-Marie Ampère, Niels Bohr, or Erwin Schrödinger as exceptions, whose practiced spirituality did not impede their contributions to science. If religious dogma alone were the culprit, I would have cited Trofim Denisovich Lysenko, another cog in the wheels of science whose Lamarckian views were motivated more by polemics than empiricism. My point: If we attribute this “cog phenomenon” to religious belief alone or politics alone, there will always be exceptions, too many, to achieve explanatory adequacy.
Earlier to day, I was reading this Amy Goodwin interview of Naomi Klein, who says:
“[Climate change] didn’t used to be a partisan political issue. You wouldn’t know whether somebody believed in climate change or not just by asking if they were Republican or Democrat. That’s completely changed. Democrats overwhelmingly believe in climate change. Their position hasn’t changed. Republicans now don’t—overwhelmingly do not believe in climate change. So that drop has been split along partisan lines. Now, it seems kind of obvious that that would be the case, but still it’s remarkable, because what it means is that it no longer really has anything to do with the science. And the environmental movement has just been shocked by how it would be possible to lose so much ground so quickly when there is so much more scientific evidence … And the reason is that climate change is now seen as an identity issue on the right.”
“Identity issue” is a term that embraces any number of underlying attitudes whether they are religious, ideological, political, or social in origin. Perhaps this “complex of underlying attitudes” better captures this sense of “cog phenomena,” a perception of profound threats that challenge old assumptions in a period of pending change. In a sense, we perceive the angry reactions of “indignant desert birds” as examples of paradigm shift, as something revolutionary. Is this necessarily the case? Is revolution incommensurate with evolution? Is “incommensurate” synonymous with “impasse?”
A revision to the last sentence in the last comment, let it read: "Has “incommensurate” become synonymous with “intolerance?”
ReplyDelete"If the cog in the wheels of progress is attributed to religious dogma alone, I would counter with, “not in every instance.”
ReplyDeleteI'm mystified. Shall we forgive church/state interference because it's not the only interference? You can't be arguing that.
If we're in any kind of era at all, I think it's one in which that separation is being questioned and re-examined. I'm also mystified that discussion of the role of religious law in secular life is constantly taken as a criticism of private belief and private church affiliation. Protecting private practice of religion is what that wall of separation is all about.
I'm also one who believes that nothing we do needs to be regulated for reasons having to do with religious precepts (if that deed harms no one or their property) and I believe this is a core American principle. Sin is not the government's business and I would call Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Washington and even old Thom Paine as witness -- nor were they more temperate than I am in expressing those feelings.
"Shall we forgive church/state interference because it's not the only interference? You can't be arguing that."
ReplyDeleteMy apologies if my words missed the mark. I am not forgiving ANY form of authoritarian thought control. In my commentary, I tried to make a point that NOT ALL religious denominations engage in church/state interference … citing The Interfaith Alliance as a specific example of an interdenominational group that discourages this practice. In fact, this what I said:
“Look no further than the Reverend Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, President of The Interfaith Alliance, who has long criticized the abuse and misuse of religion in our public life [my bold].”
I am merely stating that religion is not the only source of the “cog in the wheels of progress” phenomenon. There are others. One does not have to be Elmer Gantry to engage in excess. There are doctrinaire ideologues and pedants everywhere – in religion, politics, even the sciences. To clarify the set of all possible authoritarian mindsets is not to dismiss culpability or imply forgiveness. It is merely an attempt to fine-tune our definitional parameters.
Lets think in terms of Venn diagrams. The largest circle we shall call “authoritarian mindset.” Inside this circle are smaller circles, each a subset embodying the main idea. Off the cuff, we can name examples: Authoritarian communism, nationalist fascism, authoritarian religious cults that seek to install a theocracy, and certain scientists who base their work on charlatanry or polemics rather than independently verifiable and repeatable data. We understand these nuances intuitively. All represent variations of one theme: Forms of authoritarian control.
What I am trying to avoid: A Venn diagram that includes, unjustifiably, those sets that do not belong under the main idea. In other words, I am trying to avoid catching air-breathing creatures in the same net as edible fish, i.e. by-catch.
I fully agree that the blending of any religious belief with secular government is inappropriate. The establishment clause is about protecting the right to believe as one wishes including not believing at all. Religion is not the province of government. Neither to impose it nor restrict its practice providing that such practice doesn't result in the imposition of a religious belief on those who choose not to share that belief, which makes it a bit complicated at times.
ReplyDeleteI find the article by Morris most intriguing and I don't think that Kuhn's ashtray throw was justified.
Kuhn's philosophical context and his concept of the paradigm shift are at the heart of the relativity that characterizes so much modern discourse and leads us to thinking that all perceptions are equally valid because reality is determined by perception, or in other words that Goldie is no longer Goldie because now she's green. Such thinking results in what Morris summarizes thusly, Ultimately, there is no way to determine reference. Or truth. For Kuhn, we are trapped inside a fog of language. And there is no way out. For Kripke, there is such a thing as reference; for Kuhn, there may be no such thing. For Kripke, there are necessary truths (and essential properties); for Kuhn, there are no truths, let alone necessary ones.
Reality is not relative and neither is truth. Galileo's support of Copernicus' heliocentric theory that the Sun and not the earth was the center of our universe wasn't a paradigm shift; it was a refutation of a false belief that was not supported by scientific evidence.
I think that Morris gets at the major flaw in Kuhn's philosophy--it supports the relativism that presents that all beliefs are equal. Kripke's referential based philosophy offers a perspective that is more solidly grounded in reality.
Thanks Captain and Octo for an intellectually challenging discussion.
Sheria,
ReplyDelete"Reality is not relative and neither is truth. Galileo's support of Copernicus' heliocentric theory that the Sun and not the earth was the center of our universe wasn't a paradigm shift; it was a refutation of a false belief that was not supported by scientific evidence."
BINGO. Not supported by and actually contradicted by. No, I won't bring up general relativity or even Heisenberg. We're bigger than and slower than photons, after all. But I'm talking about accepting statements like "marriage is," when "I think, according to my beliefs, marriage should be" is the legitimate role of religious teachings. "You will act according to my official, state sanctioned interpretation of God's will" is quite a different thing than the freedom of religion we're supposed to have.
Anybody is entitled to an opinion, but they're stepping on my freedom when they try to make it law based on what they think their God would say, if only God understood what is going on in our bedrooms and could speak for himself. It reminds me of people who need to defend poor defenseless God because, of course, his arms are too short to reach the ground and he doesn't see too well these days.
"it supports the relativism that presents that all beliefs are equal."
And between which beliefs, with only reason or only faith or only speculation, we may not discriminate, Amen.
Octo:
Yes, I realize that Zen, unlike Shinto doesn't try to take over the government and force actions or inactions on all of us. Neither, as far as I know, do the Amish or the Society of Friends or the Unitariansor their cousins the atheists, among others. But it;s undeniable that over all the years of human history, men and institutions concerned with religion have had a grip on our thoughts, our politics, our language, our morality, our laws and our very form of government and that our country was founded with the radical idea that this must stop, that all thoughts, religious and otherwise must be kept free and based on the will of the people if mankind is to retain its innate freedom.
Nothing new here. No condemnation of anyone's religion here, just another reminder that the price of freedom is tolerance of each others freedom. I see little difference between "marriage is between one man and one woman" and Marriage is between one man and one woman of the same race, as one minor example, or "a woman's place is in the home" for another. As a great philosopher once said: "Sez who?"
I think that's so simple that I'm embarrassed to have to spell it out and I don't think we need need to go fishing to make it all seem otherwise. I would cite Orwell about clear speech and deconstructionism, but I've done it too often already.
Captain,
ReplyDeleteThere is no essential difference between us on church/state interference. I am merely trying to point out that the Holy Mackerel of the United Church of Cod have no position on marriage since they spawn by other means. A tolerant species, they do not even impose their ideas on matters of Skates. From what little I know of land-based creatures, only human beings and bunny rabbits get defensive when splitting hares.