#55: Obama: Copernicus or Sitchin?

Way back when I was still teaching, I used to tell students that all enduring philosophical questions have the same form: a really powerful intuition that things are ONE way meets an equally powerful theoretical reason why it CAN’T be that way. For example, most people feel totally free in their decision-making, but, yet, the conclusion of an excellent argument (the causal determinist argument) holds that they are not. Most enduring paradoxes belong precisely to this pattern.

Now, in this collision between our strongest convictions and equally powerful contrary arguments we see a conflict that is rarely resolvable by reason. What actually happens is that the positions taken by people on these puzzles is almost always decided by their psychological dispositions. Thus, some people are more disposed to trust their instincts, others to trust arguments, while yet others are most comfortable suspending judgment altogether.

For example, Malebranche took the Cartesian doctrine of the beast-machine so seriously that, according to anecdote, he drop-kicked a little pregnant dog (of whom he was very fond) across the courtyard in the firm theory-determined belief that animals felt no pain (no more than did clocks). Even as there is no way of theoretically determining whether animals, like humans, feel pain or not, most people’s spontaneous inclinations are to believe that they do. But Malebranche was so much the philosopher that reason trumped inclination in his case.

On the other hand, while Hume was convinced that Berkeley’s skeptical arguments concerning the existence of an independently existing material world were irrefutable, he also thought that they couldn’t possibly overrule our dispositions to believe the contrary. He writes:

But that all his arguments, though otherwise intended, are, in reality, merely sceptical, appears from this, that they admit of no answer and produce no conviction. Their only effect is to cause that momentary amazement and irresolution and confusion, which is the result of scepticism.

Moore took the same line in his famous The Refutation of Idealism, in which he made the point, albeit indirectly, that at the end of an argument with an undesirable conclusion, we always have a choice: we can accept the conclusion, or we can reject it on the grounds that its negation is incontestably true. If the proponent of the argument objects that we have not shown how the argument fails, we can respond since we know the conclusion to be false, we also know the argument to be flawed. Precisely how it is flawed is not our problem.

Lest it be thought that this is only an issue in abstruse philosophical controversies, please note that exactly the same issue arises in science. Carl Hempel pointed out (in a book whose title I no longer remember) that when a researcher encounters an unacceptable result (he just doesn’t like it), he can always (in theory) choose to reject the theory underlying some key part of his experimental apparatus. Of course, this can be extremely expensive in that it inevitably also brings into question everything else in science that relied on that theory. Yet, some times people are fully prepared to do just that. And that’s often when we get scientific revolutions.

When the researcher’s bet pans out, we’re clearly happy with him. When it does not, we think he was an idiot for challenging so much of the existing system of beliefs. We still get all giddy about Copernicus, but about Zecharia Sitchin, not so much. Sitchin has been arguing for some time now that we are the engineered products of highly advanced extraterrestrials who came to earth roughly 450,000 years ago. This theory has not done terribly well within the astro-physics community.

What all this indicates is that there is no simple, easy answer as to when or why to opt either for intuition (or the mass of evidence or the mass of acquired belief), on one hand, or for theory-derived conclusions.

The reason I bring up this theme is that I had not noticed before that this paradigm extends even beyond the pale of philosophy and science; it extends to politics as well.

In particular, I noticed this extension when reflecting on the apparent immunity of leftist ideologues to the lessons of 20^th c history.

If there is one thing that seems apparent beyond argument, it is that socialism simply does not improve the lives of the people who live under it. We know this most dramatically from the failure of the Soviet Union, from the fact that Cuba has been a welfare client since its revolution, and we also notice that China is leaving classical communism behind. At the same time we notice that India is booming as a free enterprise economy. All around the world, we see the socialist states creating horrible living environments for their people and capitalist states doing significantly better. And this is as true of Europe, with its social democracies, as well as out and out commie states.

Yet, the true believers, those who live under the aegis of a “great theory”, they proceed as if none of this had ever happened.

As in the cases I discussed earlier, these true believers must do something in order to hold on to their privileged theories. In effect, they must reject 20^th c history or its apparent lessons in some way.

One way, of course, is to deny that those things ever happened. This is a tough one, since the U.S.S.R. is visibly absent, if something can be visibly absent (Sartre thinks it can!).

Another thing is to admit that they happened, but it’s not because the system sucks, but because a) the system was never fairly applied, or b) it was applied, but it was undermined by the evil capitalists.

The true believers are making a BIG bet, just as Copernicus made a BIG bet and Zecharia Sitchin made a BIG bet.

Copernicus’ bet paid off. Sitchin’s has not.

Time will tell whether Obama’s goes the way of Copernicus’ or the way of Sitchin’s.

My money is on the Sitchin way.