When is Philosphy just Bolstering the Status Quo
How do we know when philosophy is just justifying the status quo of whatever is considered important for society to function. For example, work is necessary to keep society going, so the idea goes, so it must be a good that people need to participate in. The hidden context is it’s beneficience for society, the stated one is it is good for the person. The one dies not necessitate the other though; it is an excuse to keep the status quo. It is then furthered by stern messages of there’s no other way and common sense, and the like. It is just assumed in other words.
Comments (39)
I think the problem with philosophy is that it is not radical enough and like most other things suffers from bias.
There have been radical philosophers but their ideas have been downplayed or not taken seriously.
It is kind of ironic now that some scientists have more radical ideas than philosophers whilst philosophers have pandered to an archaic notion of science.
I am currently a moral nihilist because I have not heard a satisfactory defense of morality and I think it is much healthier to accept moral nihilism or moral skepticism than pander to moral prejudices that are probably indefensible. Moral nihilism can be like agnosticism.
It doesn't favour anyone's moral claims or actions and then we can make rules which we know are fallible and provisional.
Whether or not the status quo on any topic is justified is conditional on other premises, like your example of collectivism vs. individualism, and common sense is another example. So, if you find out what they are, then you can at least make some progress towards an answer. But these other premises aren't necessarily "just assumed", even if a lot of people might do so.
This looks to me like epistemic and value claims hiding within a tautology hoping to go unnoticed. Either we ignore it and some notion of truth self-justifies by refusing to scrutinize itself further or we're off to the races with "What is truth?" and "What is the value of truth?".
As important, ideas that challenge the status quo (in an incompatible way), almost by definition, meet with resistance: censorship, counter-propaganda etc.
In the propaganda context, it's easy to use philosophy either as sophistry or then an appeal to authority (this philosopher developed "just war theory", and you better believe our leaders are taking all that really seriously, so nothing more to say about that). Of course, in another context where the justification for the war is clearly absurd, then the opposite strategy of simply dismissing any analysis as superfluous and even childish (certainly to act on one's analysis), so phrases will be used such as it's "human nature" or "we felt threatened, so very understandable" or just "we needed the oil and we should be grown up about it and not whine" and of course the timeless "support the troops" etc.
So, in other words, philosophy (or the appearance as such) will serve the status quo when it serves the status quo, and it if doesn't it will be dismissed.
A great example of this playing out in practice is Noam Chomsky, who has probably the highest name recognition of any intellectual today, but never appears on mainstream TV. Whereas a scientist playing the roll of a "real intellectual", like Neil deGrasse Tyson, appears on TV all the time. The difference, Chomsky challenges the status quo and asks uncomfortable questions, makes detailed investigations and provides hefty backup for his conclusions. If you observe Tyson, you will see sometimes he does mention something a bit "political serious", but it will be always be in the form "some people would say" and no substance of the arguments behind why those people are saying it, nor ever taking risk in what he's saying (other than he believes in science), which of course implicitly legitimatizes whatever talking-heads status quo view of the matter is, as it's all just opinion, none better than another. Chomsky on the same subject would call out the talking heads for being dishonest and duplicitous, just pushing propaganda and making the audiences dumber; more grievous, Chomsky can provide lists of details proving his point as well as the abundant evidence the talking heads ignore all the inconvenient facts, even ignoring whole regions of world history or current affairs if it's easier than making even a cursory white-wash (case in point, Yemen), and can also list ample times the talking heads contradict themselves whenever it suits their pay-masters and clearly have no legitimate intellectual framework they are overtly working within (covertly they may have a very sophisticated framework where it's justified in detail why manipulating the public is good, and also money).
In even more other words, imagine if there was some prime time tv show called "philosophical inquiry" and Chomsky, as a prominent intellectual -- as well as Marxists like Richard Wolf, journalists like Chris Hedges, and the most concerned climate scientists -- was on it often, along with talking heads and whomever, would such a show support the impression that philosophy supports the status quo? Even if one watched this imagined show, and concluded Chomsky and other "leftists" were wrong, I don't think one would conclude philosophy as-such is conducive to maintaining people docile and unquestioning.
I am glad you didn't ignore and had that trippy first sentence roll off your tongue.
And the third horse in the race: 'What is philosophy ?' Perhaps the heart of the OP ?
When that philosophy is popular.
Wow, yea, what he said. Nice post, standing ovation.
I do think it is the role of philosophy to explore the boundaries of the group consensus, but it's probably good that the project is rarely successful at rocking the group consensus boat, because...
Quoting John Doe
The same is probably true for a society. Hopefully philosophy can help in knocking the edges off of some of the wild excesses of the group consensus, but too much challenging of the group consensus becomes another form of excess.
Would you kindly point out what I'm making my case against? I don't really wish to debate a tautology. It's one of the coolest sentences I've read on this site, but it's really wonky and I hope you see that. I probably can't be of much help if you don't.
:up: :up:
How can this possibly be so when the question "what is 'truth'?" is purportedly within the purview of philosophy? Wouldn't that beg the question?
Quoting Isaac
It's a perfectly valid question to ask. I don't see how a bias towards truth should prevent such questions from being asked.
How can you ask "what is truth?" but only persue the investigation with a bias toward truth? What would be the point of the question if you already know what 'truth' is sufficiently to determine a bias toward it? It's like saying you're going to begin an investigation to find the lost city of Eldorado by heading unswervingly in the direction of the lost city of Eldorado.
Maybe, but you weren't referring to the objective, but the method, that's my point. 'Truth' cannot be both objective and method. One cannot say that a philosopher is not perusing his quest for the meaning of 'truth' in a way that is biased toward truth.
Then whose view of it is he to take, if not his own?
Yes, my question was (in your terminology) how would one know one is facing facts without predisposition? Do predispositions come to us clearly labelled as such, or even cryptically so?
In striving to see facts this way, what is it that you think we should use to identify where we are going wrong?
There's a difference between tasks which are not easy (climb a high wall) and tasks which are impossible (climb a wall despite not knowing what 'a wall' is)
One device that might assist this process could be for all philosophy to be done anonymously. No names attached to any statements. This would help remove extremely distracting agendas like ego and career advancement etc.
I recently spent a few months on a group blog for academic philosophers. It was almost entirely about chanting the politically correct group consensus so as to develop one's career by seeking affirmation from one's peers etc.
What complicated that realm almost beyond hope of redemption is that the academics are very articulate and well endowed with authority credentials such as the PhD. So the writers, especially the younger ones, were very sincerely convinced they were doing advanced philosophy when really they are just running a business built upon chanting the group consensus.
Anyway, remove all the names and there is little left to do but real philosophy.
Indications that one may be on a wrong trail depend on what the person is trying to understand.
It could be argued that if a person needs to be restrained in order to make him engage in true philosophy, he does not yet have the capacity to be a true philosopher. Anyhow, I tend not to worry myself with how others practice philosophy. For me it's a very personal endeavour.
But to strive one must have a direction and to critique one must have a conception of right/wrong, good/bad. So one cannot strive honestly nor critically toward truth without having first, a direction to head in (what 'truth' looks like) and second, a knowledge of what the wrong direction might be (what bias looks like). So you haven't answered the question about how one carries out the initial investigation into what 'truth' is (or indeed how to distinguish a bias).
I think my point might have been that it's the human condition that we all have egos and so if our names, even anonymous screen names, are attached to our thoughts then a distracting agenda is introduced.
Perhaps there are those who can attach a name to their writing without their ego becoming engaged, but in 20 years of doing this dance I've yet to meet them. :smile:
Hey everybody, look at this post! It's by Jake! Isn't Jake incredibly wise? :smile:
How would you know?
I have know what I have observed, a significant pile of evidence. But you're right, I surely can't claim that NOBODY could escape their philosophical ego.
In fact, I have escaped my ego. Yes, it's true. In fact I won the 2018 Most Humble Man Competition, having trounced my pathetic competitors. What a bunch of losers, nowhere near as humble as me! :smile:
It is a matter of what the status quo is defined, but we can say broadly defending the current social, political, ethical, and even metaphysical ideas without much change. The OP explains what I meant. Thus, for example, pick any philosopher that says hard work is good or meaningful in itself, and then analyze whether this is somehow done as a means to keep institutions of society perpetuated. Businesses need productive workers, ideologies that promote people to value hard work would clearly be favorable to manager/owner interests. In a broader way, it is good to maintain the current social institutions, in these philosophies.
Edit: Usually there is little reflection as to whether society itself is harmful for the individual. This would be considered too radical. Rather, what already exists is assumed to be correct. There is no thinking outside what is about keeping society going with minor tweaks. Where it may be rightly assumed major catastrophic actions taken by social institutions would harm an individual, the daily grind of what is current (and perceived to be the "real") is harmful as well, albeit more diffusely and less obvious. The very fact of the individual being used by society, being a part of just what is "real" is telling, for example.
Well yes, but that's trivially true and I can't see anyone disagreeing, who's going to argue that being knowingly prejudiced is a good thing? The reason why such arguments never work is that they presume one person's view (usually the protagonist) is sufficient for defining prejudice. If one person thinks all Italians are lazy, it is rarely because they have drawn what they themselves consider a hasty prejudice, at least not when we extend this metaphor to actual philosophical positions. So an argument which should be about the utility of each position instead dissolves into a rhetorical game of being the first to apply the label of 'bias/prejudice' and get it to stick.
The op is just another example of such rhetoric. I don't deny that some philosophers are prejudiced, and I don't deny that many are only interested in the maintaining the status quo, but I would argue that we do not have any reliable means of determining which.
When is Philosphy just Bolstering the Status Quo?
When it's primary concerned with what should be, instead of what is. Or in other words, good philosophy starts with accurate description, not with proscription.
Yes we do, if they make bad arguments or weird assumptions just to come to certain conclusions. Then we know they just want to prove their prejudices. Kant for instance, was evidently very troubled by Hume, and pulled out all the stops just to retain the idea of God.
It is exactly this process of dismantling one's false sense of reality that led Descartes to his famous proposition "I think, therefore I am", which was the only thing he felt he could be certain of. Similarly when the Oracle of Delphi proclaimed there was no Greek wiser than Socrates, she was right. For Socrates knew just as much as any other Greek; Nothing. Paradoxically, Plato's account famously stated Socrates saying "I know that I know nothing", and later "I seem, then, in just this little thing to be wiser than this man at any rate, that what I do not know I do not think I know either."
Long story short; We have a lot of illusions about what we think we know, and one cannot build philosophy upon illusions.
We're going round in circles. You keep talking about "false" assumptions, I'm just asking how you know they are false prior to determining what 'falseness' actually is.
In science, if I predict a phenomenon will act in a certain way and it consistently does not, I discard my theory because consistently failing to act as I predict is my definition of 'false'. If I continued to believe in the theory as a scientific truth despite this failure, I could be said to have a prejudice.
What is the equivalent test in philosophy, and what is the proper field of investigation responsible for determining what this test should be?
Much is socially constructed...to wit, if you must believe in the existence of something before it exists (money, say)...it is a dubious claim on the truth, a false etymological position, which leads to blank, mimetic imitation of what everyone believes without any good reason (status quo). Most of what our species collectively takes for reality, can't possibly be reality because it is based on invisible, untenable systems of rule (money as a medium of social construction) (when an individual has invisible beliefs, or idiosyncratic motivations, that no one else has, he is considered deviant or perverse; but when a group of people agree to live by an agreed upon system of unassailable beliefs, it becomes the neurotic norm). Mechanistic science and peer-review, insofar as these beliefs are utterly deterministic to the perspective of the scientists, is redolent of how the collective belief in money makes it real. Where does social agreement (status quo) fall on a spectrum of "wisdom of the crowd"......to, say Freud's or Le Bon's views on the "popular mind/crowd psychology" (social constructed reality tending to lead to mimicry and diminishing of mental powers instead of being responsible for having a fecund, original mind)?
Lately, it has become apparent to me more potent philosophy is mainly pessimistic and skeptical inasmuch as it is all too easy to fall into an intellectual cul de sac of unexamined, collective agreement (derived from mindless groupthink without any close scrutiny to the content or context of such mores). Thus, fitting in socially precludes any real philosophizing. Sociocentrism, with its irresistible gravity to distract oneself from alienation, is all too often the first step away from philosophy concerned with subjective and objective veracity as a whole ( a phenomenon rampantly increased by impersonal communication, viz, telecom). An example, take scientism: starting with the enlightenment, the majority of people, perhaps straying from truth, don't accept reality unfiltered through logic and metrology (this being the status quo up to current). If we all have the same ruler, it's impossible to miss the truth, right? Or does it become impossible for us all not to miss exactly the same aspects of truth? People are ignorant of the same facets of truth as a result. This facet swells over time.
What's logical is informed by what's illogical; what can be measured is informed by what can't be; what's impossible is the context of what's possible; the thinkable is surrounded by the unthinkable, and so on. Believing apprehensibility of the truth is limited to one side or the other of these mutualisms is to project a standardized system (of agreement) onto the truth and thereby overlook it.
But what's an example of that, for example? Maybe you're reading different philosophy than I am, but I don't see anything about "hard work" pro or con very often. The only thing I can think of offhand in that regard is Russell's "In Praise of Idleness", and even with that, we're talking about something almost 85 years old already.
Honestly it is what I've seen on these forums. This type of response inspired me:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/241534
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/241539
Basically it is not questioning what is the given. Even the idea that "society must flourish and continue" is not a given. You must question every perspective. Perhaps society is always a harm to the individual. The consequence of course is to not use an individual for society's benefit, even if there is a symbiotic relationship. That leads to other conclusions, etc. But that would be radically challenging what is thought to be dear, that is to say, the status quo.