binary illusions

One problem that I've noticed around the world, in so many arguments, is the tendency for ideas to be readily classified into binary oppositions. Now, in philosophy and the academic circle it is not so obvious since most works are subject to steady critiques. But in the public sphere and much of the common-thinking world, there are many examples of such binaries, that is, the tendency for things to be categorized as either this or that.

There seem to be no middle ground for many of these examples. People are predominantly either Republican or Democrat, Opposition or PAP (Singapore's ruling party), Sexist or Feminist, Pro-nature or Pro-nurture, Pro-life or Pro-choice. The list goes on.

Now, this is not a problem in itself. Such categorizations provide useful summaries of what proponents/opponents in a strand of debate argue about. It provides a generalization.

But the problem arises when the common populace, often unwilling/unable to understand the details of arguments, begin to start generalizing from generalizations. You can see where that might lead.

As a result, we have people who support a cause without knowing what it actually entails. We have parents supporting the ban of violent games because they are well, violent. All these without actually knowing anything at all about the game. A argument position (i.e. Liberalism) is a mere placeholder for a whole bunch of concepts. What we need is the Tractatus notion of concept -clarification. We must understand the basic propositions that make up the position by breaking it down and thinking it through, instead of taking the argued position for granted as a basic proposition by refusing to analyze it thoroughly.

Once we decide not to break down the argued position and instead begin to cherry-pick only the idea which we can grasp easily, we make it a less-than-holistic proposition. We dumb down the position. Republicans are suddenly all Christ-obsessed Conservatives. In Singapore, all Chinese are suddenly all rude and loud. All foreigners are smart and rich. The over-generalizations goes on.

Therein we have a conundrum: people who misconstrue what the position in an argument actually entail, and as such, pointless and stupid confusion ensues. We have people who do not understand the argument thinking that they do. This may not sound bad until you realize many of these folks are the same folks making decisions for us!

We must dispel these binary illusions. There are never only two sides to an argument. Before jumping to any debate. READ UP. Don't give yourself the chance to fall into these binary categories and delude yourself. Also, what many don't understand is that there can be space for synthesis, if only people took the time to come together and clarify their concepts, rationally pit them against each other, instead of ad hominem insults and tricks like poisoning the well.

There can be so much possibility in advancing knowledge if everyone practiced intellectual humility instead of making dogmatic claims. Knowledge can only progress when we think together because one man is only so much.

 I propose dialectics and conceptual analysis as my tools of choice, but I am always open to suggestions. Only then can we progress, no?

Synthesis forthcoming?

Found this interesting and pretty insightful descriptive work on the Experimental Philosophy blog about what I had been thinking about for quite some time - that in creating a formal normative framework for ethics we will need to emcompass both the ends and the means.

strangely reminds me of the general Hegelian formula of:

Thesis + Antithesis = SYNTHESIS.

check it out here:
Experimental Philosophy - Of Trolleyology and Pedophilic Princes: The Psychological Inseparability of Acts and Consequences

An interesting question:

assuming that psychology and the cognitive sciences have in fact managed to locate the factors in our brain affecting our behavior and quantify it in terms of numbers and statistics - a probability. This number can be used to show if we are likely to commit crimes.

Do we then capture people who have a high propensity to commit crime even if they had not done so? Since by this statistic they are projected to commit crimes in the future, do we preempt this and just capture everyone who has criminal tendencies?

Ideality vs Reality

(From my Notebook)

I recently listened to a podcast on Plato's Cave by Simon Blackburn which raised several key issues (not necessarily intended by the speaker) in my mind again regarding ideals and reality.

In the Republic, Plato writes of the Philosopher-King, one who by virtue of his enlightened state of thought and knowledge deserves to be the undisputed ruler of the City State. Yet Plato, through the revived mouth of  Socrates, says that it in fact does not matter if such a person is real or not. It does not matter if he had existed, is existing or will exist in the future at all. It is, as one might put it, a completely utopian vision. Indeed, to become Philosopher-King one needs to attain all human knowledge which is attainable; Even in the 21st Century we aren't exactly quite sure of where those limits lie.

This separation of ideals and reality is especially important in my opinion. Too often we are faced with too many false dichotomies; when idealized theories (such as Immanuel Kant's deontological world - the kingdom of ends) come face to face with naturalistic theories like Hume's emotivism/intersubjectivism. These theories are then forced to pit against one another when it should be obvious that they belong to different realms to begin with. Ideal theories work themselves out in a different stage, one which arguably does not relate to our world. /Naturalistic/psychological theories on the other hand describe (at least, it attempts to describe) the world as it is, how human morality works in fact.What does this mean?

In my opinion, there will never be an end to moral debates purely because there will always be people believing in ideality as compared to reality. The debate between utilitarian/kantian ethics and emotivist/psychological systems of morality will never end as long as people continue to mistake what is with what ought to be.

To that end, what does normative ethics have to offer? Since it is contingent on a reality so bizarre from ours there seem to be no point in talking about it. Yet, if we simply abandon ideal normativity then the whole enterprise of ethics will begin to seem moot. Indeed, normative ethics seem to be all that is in philosophy now. But that is not the case. Because ideals provide a rational space for us to project what our lives could be if we acted in that way (as opposed to continuing the act how we act). Science is about induction, hence all it really does is show how things has always been. Yet, this does not mean that we should always be this way (the naturalistic fallacy). We can change and improve; This is the role of ethics in my view.

But first we must clear up the fog that surround ethical debates. Using ideal theories to debate with psychological theories about what is will always show psychological theories to be the triumphant one, simply because psychological theories show how things always have been. It is a past-projecting theory. But that should not be the role of modern ethics. While knowing what is helps us to project ideals, our role ultimately should separate itself from psychology.

1ST...(oh wait.)

Hi, I am Eugene, a pre-university teenager from Singapore who just loves to read philosophy. (I am actually intending to read philosophy in university, still waiting for offers and keeping fingers crossed though.) I current serve, involuntarily, in the Army, and this fuels me with a lot of thoughts about just how much free will we got.

In the future I will be posting pseudo-philosophical stuff. Why pseudo? Because I only had around 2 years of studies in philosophy during High School (epistemology, morals and philosophy of science/social science) and thus can scarcely be called a knowledgeable person on this subject matter when there are so many other professionals out there. But this is sort of a dumping ground for my thoughts, and thus all criticisms should be made in light of this.