[begin transmission]
There is hardly anything more that can burden my heart with hate and turn my blood into ichor than the self-satisfied spoilsport. You know the kind; there probably exists one within your group of friends. The kind of person that, when discussing the nuance and wonder of romantic love, will inevitably lead the conversation to that tired and terrible cliché: 'Love is nothing more than a chemical reaction in your brain'. When discussing metaphysics, they'll assert that metaphysics is pointless. If describing the nobility of an action, the accolades that come with honor, or the allure of beauty , they'll claim such concepts are relative values that ultimately have zero meaning in the world.
It's akin to witnessing the most sublime sunrise at 5:20am on a chilly Winter morning at the Grand Canyon, only to have Neil deGrasse Tyson interject mid-spectacle to pedantically lecture you that there is no such thing as a sunrise. We get it. You're smart. Now please shut the hell up and let people enjoy things.
It's akin to witnessing the most sublime sunrise at 5:20am on a chilly Winter morning at the Grand Canyon, only to have Neil deGrasse Tyson interject mid-spectacle to pedantically lecture you that there is no such thing as a sunrise. We get it. You're smart. Now please shut the hell up and let people enjoy things.
More often than not this type of person is blessed with an above-average intelligence, might possess years of textbook learning under their belt, and are probably quite accomplished in their academic or professional careers within a technical field. These credentials ostensibly give this particular individual license to rob the joys out of life on their whim, and take their views on life as self-evident because those very principles have made their own lives very successful.
Whenever these types of people make themselves known, it is often in an attempt to demonstrate intellectual superiority. They attempt to debase others while elevating themselves; such displays do not impress me. On the contrary, they disgust me and smack of callowness. I say disgust because, to observe this among my peers or my subordinates, is a travesty. The youth are not supposed to be this cynical or hard-hearted. Firstly, ones younger years are characterized by a certain splendor that ought to be relished and later cherished through memory in ripe old age; to not partake in that is nothing short of a regrettable waste. Secondly, that level of 'hardness' is unearned since it is highly doubtful that they'd suffer through something so terrible that would drain the world of its color.
Whenever these types of people make themselves known, it is often in an attempt to demonstrate intellectual superiority. They attempt to debase others while elevating themselves; such displays do not impress me. On the contrary, they disgust me and smack of callowness. I say disgust because, to observe this among my peers or my subordinates, is a travesty. The youth are not supposed to be this cynical or hard-hearted. Firstly, ones younger years are characterized by a certain splendor that ought to be relished and later cherished through memory in ripe old age; to not partake in that is nothing short of a regrettable waste. Secondly, that level of 'hardness' is unearned since it is highly doubtful that they'd suffer through something so terrible that would drain the world of its color.
In essence, what drives these types of people is an overcommitment to verificationism and reductionism. Let us examine these two doctrines and see how they're misapplied by our dearest spoilsports.
------- Verificationism -------
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the doctrine of verificationism was borne from the tradition of British empiricism-- it's philosophical lineage can be traced back to Locke, Hume, and A.J. Ayer. The central idea behind verificationism is the verification principle, which states that the meaning of a sentence is given by the procedure for establishing it as true (verifying it).
So, if I were to say "It is currently my 3:00pm coffee break and this medium roast is delicious.", you could establish that half of that sentence was meaningful and the other half was functionally useless. The first clause "It is currently my 3:00pm coffee break..." is meaningful because it can be verified to be true. You could consult with a clock to verify that it is indeed 3:00pm in the afternoon, and witness for yourself that I am currently at my desk having my coffee. Now, the second clause of the sentence "...and this medium roast is delicious." is meaningless becauseno one cares about your coffee preference you snob there is no established way to verify deliciousness; it is a purely subjective evaluation.
Of course, verificationism was not intended to simply spoil any coffee drinker's mid-afternoon break. The doctrine was meant to reformulate several serious philosophical problems (particularly the existence of God, metaphysical theorizing, and the moral principles underlying ethics); ultimately, it concluded that philosophical inquiries were incoherent and meaningless. While the philosophical theories themselves were interesting, they were all irrelevant since none of them could be verified. Thus, the aim of philosophy was to abolish itself: there was nothing worth pursuing if science couldn't offer an answer. It is from this point in history (late 19th century) that philosophy split into the analytical and continental traditions. The analytical tradition was focused on, well, analysis. It's primary focus in the 20th century was on logic, language, and thought. Contrast this to the continental tradition, which is wonderfully synthetic and rich with theories about the self, experience (phenomenology), existence, and politics. In the former tradition you'll find philosophers like Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore, and the infamous Ludwig Wittgenstein; in the latter your Martin Heidegger, Søren Kierkegaard, and of course Friedrich Nietzsche.
Arguably the most important problem that verificationism resolved was the scourge of Descartes: systematic scepticism. Everyone is familiar with this problem on a superficial level. How do we know what is real? Verificationism renders the concern into a non-issue by establishing the following:
If the only evidence I have for my statements about physical objects consists in the truth of other statements about experience, that is what I mean by my statements about physical objects. Notice here that there is no gap between evidence and conclusion, so as a consequence scepticism never arises. To take it back to our example, if I assert that it is my afternoon coffee break, and the clock reveals the fact that it is 3:00pm, then my afternoon coffee break means it is 3:00pm. Armed with verificationism, it is revealed that philosophy, with its musings about 'things-in-themselves' and 'forms' creates most of its own problems because of its own inventions. In reality, these things aren't problems much at all were one to stick to the verification principle.
The problems I have with verificationism are two-fold. One, it breaks down in certain domains, particularly when it comes to the harder philosophical questions. Take philosophy of mind, for example. In this domain, the verificationist adopts a behaviorist framework: the mind is a system that receives an input stimuli and produces an output behavior. The evidence a behaviorist can have about a subject's mind is only observations of their behavior. So when a behaviorist is referring to your mental process, all they can mean is your behavior. To put it into a concrete example, suppose I sit at my desk and close my eyes, stating "I am thinking.". When I utter this phrase, I am referring to my mental process, not my behavior. But to the behaviorist I am necessarily referring to my behavior, since the only evidence I have for my assertion is my outward behavior. As you can probably tell, this is fallacious, since the outward behavior of sitting at a desk with closed eyes does not automatically mean "I am thinking.". I could be asleep, resting my eyes, or meditating. To condense this elaboration more succinctly, phenomenon that include an amount of unobservability throw a wrench into the verificationist framework.
Second, there is the problem of recursion when it comes to the verification principle itself. Once again, the verification principle states that the meaning of a sentence is given by the procedure for establishing it as true. Okay, so the verification principle itself is a sentence. How do we go about establishing it as true? By its own standards, the verification principle fails to pass its own test and is thus itself meaningless.
------- Reductionism -------
The quintessential principle that informs a reductionist worldview is, I would say, Ockham's Razor. The principle states "entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity", meaning that we should only suppose the existence of things we need to assume in order to explain our experience. Everything else is extraneous and can therefore be discarded or can be reduced even further to things that are necessary.
I often encounter this worldview when it comes to the nature of free will, so we'll use that as an example. A common argument against the existence of free will is that the action of making a choice is either precluded or very nearly synchronous with the agent entering a particular cognitive state. This cognitive state is formed by particular neurons firing and others not firing; this in turn is determined by electro-chemical gradients, which is determined by particle movements, which is determined by physics, which follow particular laws that can lead you to the first event of the universe should you possess enough information and computational power (see: Laplace's demon). This is the basis for a scientific determinism account of free will. The choice, the exercise of free will, isn't a true choice but rather yet another link in the causal chain of events of particle interactions. Modern spins on the argument incorporate quantum indeterminacy, but the outcome is the same: you don't have free will because it can be explained away by physical determinism or quantum indeterminacy.
Towards this argument I have a few questions: does it follow from this account that there is no activity of neurons that exist above the particles that compose it? From this, does it follow that there are no facts about neurons which are not facts about particles? If it does, are we entitled to say that neural activity does not exist? Clearly it does exist, so there must be some kind of quantitative difference between the activity of neurons and the activity of their constituent particles. A reductionist will say that we can posit neural activity exists, so long as we have reduced it to its constituent particles and interactions. Why must this be? Why couldn't neural activity be born of simpler, underlying processes and take on unique properties of its own that it does not necessarily share with the underlying processes?
To put it simply, the property of being more than the sum of constituent parts is known as emergence. And this is seen EVERYWHERE in nature and in all complex systems. Right off the top of my head I can think of the orderly, single-rank marches of ants following a pheromone trail, the self-perpetuating Glider in Conway's Game of Life, or the trends of the S&P 500 offering clear examples. In all of these systems a grander phenomenon emerges that has special properties of it's own that are not shared by the individual components that comprise that phenomenon. The reductionist worldview is simply not compatible with even our scientific understanding of the world.
------- Verificationism -------
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the doctrine of verificationism was borne from the tradition of British empiricism-- it's philosophical lineage can be traced back to Locke, Hume, and A.J. Ayer. The central idea behind verificationism is the verification principle, which states that the meaning of a sentence is given by the procedure for establishing it as true (verifying it).
So, if I were to say "It is currently my 3:00pm coffee break and this medium roast is delicious.", you could establish that half of that sentence was meaningful and the other half was functionally useless. The first clause "It is currently my 3:00pm coffee break..." is meaningful because it can be verified to be true. You could consult with a clock to verify that it is indeed 3:00pm in the afternoon, and witness for yourself that I am currently at my desk having my coffee. Now, the second clause of the sentence "...and this medium roast is delicious." is meaningless because
Of course, verificationism was not intended to simply spoil any coffee drinker's mid-afternoon break. The doctrine was meant to reformulate several serious philosophical problems (particularly the existence of God, metaphysical theorizing, and the moral principles underlying ethics); ultimately, it concluded that philosophical inquiries were incoherent and meaningless. While the philosophical theories themselves were interesting, they were all irrelevant since none of them could be verified. Thus, the aim of philosophy was to abolish itself: there was nothing worth pursuing if science couldn't offer an answer. It is from this point in history (late 19th century) that philosophy split into the analytical and continental traditions. The analytical tradition was focused on, well, analysis. It's primary focus in the 20th century was on logic, language, and thought. Contrast this to the continental tradition, which is wonderfully synthetic and rich with theories about the self, experience (phenomenology), existence, and politics. In the former tradition you'll find philosophers like Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore, and the infamous Ludwig Wittgenstein; in the latter your Martin Heidegger, Søren Kierkegaard, and of course Friedrich Nietzsche.
Arguably the most important problem that verificationism resolved was the scourge of Descartes: systematic scepticism. Everyone is familiar with this problem on a superficial level. How do we know what is real? Verificationism renders the concern into a non-issue by establishing the following:
- If the evidence for p is q.
- q is the only evidence there is or can be.
- Then p means q.
If the only evidence I have for my statements about physical objects consists in the truth of other statements about experience, that is what I mean by my statements about physical objects. Notice here that there is no gap between evidence and conclusion, so as a consequence scepticism never arises. To take it back to our example, if I assert that it is my afternoon coffee break, and the clock reveals the fact that it is 3:00pm, then my afternoon coffee break means it is 3:00pm. Armed with verificationism, it is revealed that philosophy, with its musings about 'things-in-themselves' and 'forms' creates most of its own problems because of its own inventions. In reality, these things aren't problems much at all were one to stick to the verification principle.
The problems I have with verificationism are two-fold. One, it breaks down in certain domains, particularly when it comes to the harder philosophical questions. Take philosophy of mind, for example. In this domain, the verificationist adopts a behaviorist framework: the mind is a system that receives an input stimuli and produces an output behavior. The evidence a behaviorist can have about a subject's mind is only observations of their behavior. So when a behaviorist is referring to your mental process, all they can mean is your behavior. To put it into a concrete example, suppose I sit at my desk and close my eyes, stating "I am thinking.". When I utter this phrase, I am referring to my mental process, not my behavior. But to the behaviorist I am necessarily referring to my behavior, since the only evidence I have for my assertion is my outward behavior. As you can probably tell, this is fallacious, since the outward behavior of sitting at a desk with closed eyes does not automatically mean "I am thinking.". I could be asleep, resting my eyes, or meditating. To condense this elaboration more succinctly, phenomenon that include an amount of unobservability throw a wrench into the verificationist framework.
Second, there is the problem of recursion when it comes to the verification principle itself. Once again, the verification principle states that the meaning of a sentence is given by the procedure for establishing it as true. Okay, so the verification principle itself is a sentence. How do we go about establishing it as true? By its own standards, the verification principle fails to pass its own test and is thus itself meaningless.
------- Reductionism -------
The quintessential principle that informs a reductionist worldview is, I would say, Ockham's Razor. The principle states "entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity", meaning that we should only suppose the existence of things we need to assume in order to explain our experience. Everything else is extraneous and can therefore be discarded or can be reduced even further to things that are necessary.
I often encounter this worldview when it comes to the nature of free will, so we'll use that as an example. A common argument against the existence of free will is that the action of making a choice is either precluded or very nearly synchronous with the agent entering a particular cognitive state. This cognitive state is formed by particular neurons firing and others not firing; this in turn is determined by electro-chemical gradients, which is determined by particle movements, which is determined by physics, which follow particular laws that can lead you to the first event of the universe should you possess enough information and computational power (see: Laplace's demon). This is the basis for a scientific determinism account of free will. The choice, the exercise of free will, isn't a true choice but rather yet another link in the causal chain of events of particle interactions. Modern spins on the argument incorporate quantum indeterminacy, but the outcome is the same: you don't have free will because it can be explained away by physical determinism or quantum indeterminacy.
Towards this argument I have a few questions: does it follow from this account that there is no activity of neurons that exist above the particles that compose it? From this, does it follow that there are no facts about neurons which are not facts about particles? If it does, are we entitled to say that neural activity does not exist? Clearly it does exist, so there must be some kind of quantitative difference between the activity of neurons and the activity of their constituent particles. A reductionist will say that we can posit neural activity exists, so long as we have reduced it to its constituent particles and interactions. Why must this be? Why couldn't neural activity be born of simpler, underlying processes and take on unique properties of its own that it does not necessarily share with the underlying processes?
To put it simply, the property of being more than the sum of constituent parts is known as emergence. And this is seen EVERYWHERE in nature and in all complex systems. Right off the top of my head I can think of the orderly, single-rank marches of ants following a pheromone trail, the self-perpetuating Glider in Conway's Game of Life, or the trends of the S&P 500 offering clear examples. In all of these systems a grander phenomenon emerges that has special properties of it's own that are not shared by the individual components that comprise that phenomenon. The reductionist worldview is simply not compatible with even our scientific understanding of the world.
What I think makes reductionism so in vogue with the modern intelligentsia is two reasons: one, it allows for the simplification of a terribly complex reality into nothing more than the material realm. The ability to reduce this overwhelming multi-dimensional complexity offers a great deal of comfort, but also confidence as reductionist claims are often made to affirm some foregone conclusion. So there is definitely a pitiable humanistic element to it all.
However, the second reason is anti-humanist, far less pitiable, and even deserving of contempt. People that hold reductionist world views purport to be 'revealing the truth' of the human condition and our experiences on this Earth. They smugly trot out scientific evidence with the aim to disenchant and dismean others for believing in the sublime and the transcendent. However, it can easily be seen that what they are positing is not true of the human condition and experience at all, and they only proclaim it to be true only because it is shocking. They are cheap provocateurs that get a thrill out of spoiling things for others and self-congratulatory displays of knowledge. Anyone that has ever been in love knows damn well that there is some ineffable quality to it. Anyone that has ever felt the compulsion to protect something knows that there is more to honor than reason reveals. The main point here is that, although 'chemical reactions in the brain' may hold some explanatory power towards the phenomenon of romantic love, that does not entitle us to make the statement that 'romantic love is nothing but chemical reactions in the brain.' Afterall, our beliefs in mathematical abstractions are explained by chemical reactions in the brain, but I don't think the intellectually consistent reductionist would hold that mathematical abstractions are nothing but chemical reactions in the brain.
So...knock it off. Quit being a self-satisfied prig. Add some dimensionality to your theses. Become sophisticated.
[end transmission]