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Re: Re: Post-Modern
I think that Markus and I are probably talking at cross-purposes, and I also think that what I said doesn't really match up with what I meant. I said:
The government must operate under the premise that truth is knowable, or government, policy is governed by nothing but competition to see which narrative is the most compelling.
That was wrong. What I should've said is this: "The government must operate under the premise that facts support conclusions, as opposed to a government where conclusions are constructed and then supported by narratives."
Markus said it this way: "Various theories are posed about how something operates, they are compared with evidence, and the theory that most closely approximates the evidence is assumed to be correct -- with the understanding that a better theory may come along at any time." I couldn't agree more with this view. Perhaps my headline could've been 'Bush vs. the scientific method'
What I object to most in today's conservative movement is the way in which orthodoxies, such as Mankiw's doctrines, such as the case for the Iraq war, are put forward, and then placed in a hermetic, circular system where people pump each other up and reinforce their own view points while ignoring or attempting to discredit contradicting evidence.
I suppose "there is no such thing as Absolute Truth" is a post-modern viewpoint, and I agree with it. What I object to is the perversion of this useful realization into a worldview where facts and evidence are disregarded; where a Bush aide can say "we make our own reality," and seem to mean it. That's why I said 'in the sense of counter-enlightenment'--but perhaps that's wrong as well.
I should have known that when I started bandying about 'truth' I was getting myself in trouble. Hopefully I won't make these sort of errors once I've taken a philosophy class or two. Until my own Enlightenment, then, bear with me.
Neat conversation, guys --
Neat conversation, guys -- and welcome to Harvard from a fellow blogger, Sam!
A couple brief thoughts. Two major realities put a wrench in the whole process of trying to approximate truth through competing narratives in our political system. Both exist irrespective of which party is in power.
First, some people's narratives automatically count more than others' just by virtue of their assigned status as social/epistemological outsiders in some way. People of color, white women, and the poor have historically been excluded from knowledge-making processes (and democratic participation) because they were deemed incapable of full human rationality -- big philosophical players from Kant to Hume, Voltaire, Mill, Locke, and others all believed non-white people to be incapable of self-governance, and most of them thought the same regarding white women. Times have changed, of course, but this remains our country's political philisophical heritage, and even today, certain people's narratives are automatically suspect, even before wealthy white guys test them for empirical validity.
More specifically, in Washington, money, not truth, often directs policy. We all know this. Lobbying groups give donations to politicians who then vote on legislation that determines the donors' fate. So we can talk post-modern truth all we want, but until we eliminate the corruption inherent in the status quo (and I'm lifting this idea from speeches by David Cole and John Nichols on a panel earlier this week), talk of pure, truth-seeking, fact-based political discourse is simply fantasy.
That's my take, anyway. Thanks for giving me some great food for thought!
-katie
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I completely agree; we've
I completely agree; we've been on the same page from the beginning, I think, it's just been a semantic difference. This is especially true--
--and it sums up the problem of this administration and of conservative thought generally very well.