It is cynicism.
The subject of much fashionable derision from our intellectual elite, C.S. Lewis is a large target because he has such an incisive grasp of human beings. His Screwtape explains the benefits of cynicism to a young tempter:
But flippancy is the best of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it. If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armor plating against the Enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy; it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practice it[.]Lewis is most clever because he recognizes that cynicism is rarely socially acceptable unless it is humorous. Only the wholly deranged or the truly sycophantic willingly subject themselves to rancorous tirade after tirade. But wait. What if our interlocutor entertains? Well, then. All is forgiven; (s)he's so goshdarn funny.
In this way, cynicism obscures the mature happiness brought on by a serious search for the Good, the True, and the beautiful, replacing it with infantile giggles and meanness at the expense of...whom or whatever. A social pressure is brought to bear against the very idea of serious human living, and this pressure--in the form of a joke no less--releases those of us who laugh from the hard work of virtue because it is, after all, so silly.
Atheist-turned-Catholic(!) Jennifer Fulwiler recommends this as a step to finding God:
Commit to a period of time during which you'll fast from all sources of cynicism: give up watching TV shows and reading websites that make jokes at other people's expense (even if it's about celebrities or politicians); try to change the subject or say something positive if such conversations come up in person; avoid making cynical jokes or comments yourself. You might be surprised at how much this fast will transform your heart.Mrs. Fulwiler assumes I might want my "heart transformed." How cute. And by cute I mean naive. If I wanted anything like that, why would I spend all my money rewarding stand-up comics and Hollywood writers and pop stars and talking heads for belittling it?
The opposite of faith is skepticism, not cynicism, cynicism being a belief about human beings and their motives, not a belief about claims or concepts. Skepticism is, instead, a preference for sound questions over potentially unsound beliefs. I am relucant to make any sweeping statements about whether it can transform hearts, it has perhaps the sole, humble virtue of not being a friend to falsehoods.
ReplyDeleteI have been thinking about skepticism for some time now and I think I am ready to consign it to its proper place: as a tool for scientific method rather than a way of approaching the world.
ReplyDeleteIn my post I am using cynicism (untechnically) as the marriage between Lewis' flippancy and skepticism-as-the-sole-arbiter-of-truth-claims.
You are right, of course, to make the distinction; this post merely inaugurates a rhetorical crusade.
I am going to have to agree with Nate on this one. I would classify both skepticism AND faith as epistemological stances, which exist on opposite sides of a spectrum. Neither are proper world views, but merely ways of constructing and holding together world views. I'm not sure where I would place cynicism, as it's primary utility doesn't appear to be constructive but more reactionary. You generally play the part of a cynic in response to something (or everything, as it may be).
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I appreciate your critique of cynicism, as it is something that is antagonistic to "serious" thinkers of all stripes (read: thinkers who haven't given up on the pressing problems of the world).
And I would add as a final note that I think cynicism and "flippancy" is much more prevalent in post-modernist circles than in the skepticism-as-the-sole-arbiter-of-truth-claims circles.
Mmm. I think the confusion here results from the rhetorical thrust of my first two lines.
ReplyDeleteYou guys are absolutely right that in a philosophical sense, skepticism IS the opposite of faith, as in, how we decide whether or not something is true.
My post is really not philosophical in that sense; my critique is more about how people manage to live lives without being affected by the Good, True, Beautiful. Lewis and Fulwiler are talking about how the non-philosophically inclined boy or girl can be inured to a serious reckoning with the divine. I am basically agreeing with them that cynicism is the 21st Century "tool of the devil" in that regard.
This is social commentary, not philosophical investigation. Fair, or am I still not getting it?
I'm not sure how a 'serious' skeptic wouldn't be led to cynicism, but, that aside, this is a good post. Cynicism goes hand-in-hand with a post-modern, ironic culture. It is, interestingly, also a luxury, one that can thrive only in the bubble of comfort and security created by past generations of serious, virtue-seeking men.
ReplyDeleteWhen the wolves are at the door, ridicule is treason.
I would reemphasize part of what Mr. Smith said in saying that skepticism is an epistemological tool, rather than one confined to the scientific method. I emphasize this because I'm concerned that your post might be trying to claim too much exclusivity for faith in the serious (non-"flippant") pursuit of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.
ReplyDeleteFaith, as many people understand it, is as much of an obstacle to substantial living as cynicism, which is one reason that the best Christianity tends toward the heavily anti-dogmatic. It resembles a life of genuine skepticism, too, in its growth toward greater and greater humility. The traditional description of Saints is that they grow more aware of their distance from God as, by their developing holiness, they are able to see God's more clearly. This resembles skepticism in that skeptics prefer to know clearly how little they know, learning more and more about their lack of understanding by virtue of their developing understanding.
Ultimately, though, Christianity is inextricable from some amount of dogma, which prevents its adherents from a certain level of epistemological honesty without abandoning the faith.
Regarding your social commentary, though, possibly one reason that I mention my reaction to what I perceive to be philosophical implications in your post is that I don't understand what you're getting at with the social commentary at all.
Also, skepticism, as it is actually practiced by human beings, is probably as much a friend of falsehood as faith, albeit in a somewhat more insidious manner.
ReplyDeleteBut, then again, the 'authentic' skeptic already knows that, or at least knows that it might be knowable, if anything at all is knowable.
Dan: It's hard for me to know exactly what you mean by this "actually practiced" version of skepticism. Do you mean a practice of skepticism that reflexively says things are not true or are unknowable, rather than merely considering things unknown until sufficient evidence has been brought forward?
ReplyDeleteIt is certainly a possible error to deem things unknown or even unknowable for inadequate reasons -- to deride things as necessarily false because one has not oneself been yet persuaded.
You're probably right, though, to push me back from any kind of speculation about what camps produce the least error-ridden practitioners: it's very hard to say anything remotely substantial to such an enormous generality.
I merely meant that, in labeling oneself a skeptic, one is, at very least, explicitly claiming a cautious approach to inquiry. Of course, what actually happens is that the skeptic practices a cautious approach that only applies to certain subjects, or that is of a limited scope. However, because he sees himself as a skeptic, he is blinded to the many areas in which he is actually dogmatic, probably to a degree beyond that of the 'faithful'. In other words, his skepticism acts as a psychological shield, protecting certain articles of faith from being known as such, even, or especially, to himself.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, because the skeptic explicitly claims to know only that which has been subjected to the rigors of a skeptical epistemology, that which he does put forth as knowledge (regardless of whether it has been subject to sufficient, or any, skeptical methodology) tends to be held with a force similar that with which the most devoted fanatic puts forth his dogmas.
Conversely, the man of faith may adhere to many false propositions, but is, by definition, aware that, on some level, he doesn't really know these things. That's why it is called faith. In other words, every article of faith held by a disciple is, by its very nature, a concept that, in the absence of faith, must fall before the force of skepticism.
This, of course, regards the human practice of skepticism and faith, and not skepticism or faith as such, but, the human practice is the only thing that interests me. I prefer to leave discussion of 'authentic' or 'true' skepticism (or communism, or Islam, or whatever) to the ivory tower.
Specifically, I am interested in how skepticism as practiced ought to be treated by society. My inclination at this point is that it should be discouraged generally, but celebrated in the event of a significant contribution to the polity. This would be, of course, a conservative approach.
With the exception of "probably to a degree beyond that of the 'faithful'", to which I don't have confidence in either of our ability to speak for reasons mentioned above, your first paragraph certainly describes the dangers of skepticism well.
ReplyDeleteI will bore you, however, in noting that your description of the skeptic in your second paragraph doesn't describe the practice of skepticism: skepticism is, as I have repeatedly described it, a tool, not a position, and would be strange and foolish to associate with things one claims to know.
Skepticism is, rather, the means by which one evaluates how solid one believes one's beliefs to be. No truth claim can be positively affirmed by a negation of evidence to the contrary and, as such, it's absurd to claim to skeptically assert something. The alleged difference between faith and skepticism in that respect is, therefore, an illusion, at least with regard to real skepticism.
I don't have much to say about your contempt for the ideal and the claim I infer from what you write that human practice is not related to the ideal, except to say that it strikes me as very strange.
Lastly, skepticism has at least one essential contribution the polity to make, which is to rid it of its gods.
Simple question: does a 'true' skeptic ever claim to know anything?
ReplyDeleteFollow-up: If the answer is yes, would the 'true' skeptic ever claim to know anything, the 'solidity' of which knowledge had not been previously tested by the 'tool' of skepticism? (Let's assume here that there was, at some point, evidence contrary to the claimed knowledge).
If it is helpful, the following example:
I know that this table is comprised of tiny particles, which are held together by invisible forces and between which there is space.
Would the skeptic make such a knowledge claim without first using the 'tool' of skepticism to address certain obvious contrary evidence (i.e., when I touch the table, I feel no forces; when I look at the table, it seems be a single, solid thing, etc.)?
To your first question: to call oneself a skeptic is to use an inexact term, like calling oneself a mechanic or a designer. In using these terms, we associate ourselves with the habit of a practice and a claim to some level of proficiency. It does not mean, however, that we claim to act only mechanically, or to only design.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, a skeptic associates himself with the habit of skeptically evaluating claims, but does not claim to only act skeptically.
One is acting outside of skepticism when and if one claims to know something, though one may well claim to have one's knowledge informed by skeptical practice.
Follow-up: As such, I think a wise practioner of skepticism would never pretend that he acts only skeptically.
As a side note, I would claim the term skeptic in a rough sense for myself, and I don't believe that one can know in the full sense. I suspect that all knowledge is contingent, a belief that is itself, of course, contingent.
Regarding the table, yes, anyone who called himself a skeptic is probably claiming a strong relationship of information between the practice of skepticism and one's knowledge of the table. They would say that your explanation about particles, forces, and space, seems to fit very well with the evidence we've been able to obtain so far.
Thank you. Can you help me understand, then, how to make sense of these remarks:
ReplyDelete"skepticism is, as I have repeatedly described it, a tool, not a position, and would be strange and foolish to associate with things one claims to know"
and:
"one may well claim to have one's knowledge informed by skeptical practice"
"anyone who called himself a skeptic is probably claiming a strong relationship of information between the practice of skepticism and one's knowledge of the table."
'foolish' vs. 'One may well claim'? No association vs. a 'strong relationship'?
You also call skepticism an 'epistemological tool'. Considering that the root episteme is frequently translated as knowledge, and that the word itself means 'study of human knowledge', you could perhaps see why I would, using your terms, be inclined to associate skepticism and knowledge, foolish though that association might be.
As you hinted at earlier, this is likely limited to anecdote, but my point was that those who practice skepticism tend to treat it as a necessary, but not a sufficient, grounds for many knowledge claims. As such, the skeptic believes that his knowledge claims are stronger than they would otherwise be, as they are 'informed' by skeptical practice. This increased sense of certitude then 'bleeds over' into the realm that you describe: knowledge claims that have zero relation to practiced skepticism.
I am glad that we at least seem to agree that thorough skepticism would prevent any knowledge claims whatsoever, but I find such thoroughness incompatible with human life.
A word of mediation, perhaps? Let Nate be classified as "critical" rather than "skeptical."
ReplyDeleteNate, you seem to want, rightly, it seems to me, to evaluate and consider, test and probe, snoop out deception. Maybe we can call this disposition "critical," using it in the same sense as scholars do concerning Critical Biblical Studies. Some practitioners of CBS are inveterate "skeptics"; their goal is to deconstruct any Jesus story until it has dissolved entirely (e.g. Bart Ehrman). Others approach the material from a stance of faith (e.g. Luke Timothy Johnson or Joel B. Green). For them, appropriating the highly incisive tools of Biblical Criticism is consciously tempered by dogmatic faith claims, but not in such a way as to constrain interpretative practice (i.e. they don't bow to the gods of inerrancy, Christology, soteriology, etc.). Their work is highly regarded as critical, but is not skeptical (in the technical sense).
In reading what you've said here, it sounds like the Johnsons and Greens are your fellows (along with the St. Theresas and St. Johns of the Cross).
All that said, this post was never meant to be an investigation into skepticism as such. I will be posting on skepticism soon, drawing largely on my readings from an atheism seminar (reading blokes like Feuerbach and Hume).
The only thing this post was meant to communicate is how detrimental cynicism is to faith. As a brutal cynic myself, I find my constant snarking makes it more and more difficult to take divine encounter seriously. Naivete seems almost entirely lost. Of course this is in some ways a good thing. But the endless string of jokes and rants tearing down, deconstructing, making myself appear so much better than, so superior to, well, it blunts the affections. It constructs the "armor" Lewis talks about. It distracts and deflects true generous human life from entering in to...human life.
Ours is a generation built out of sarcasm and snark (you'll find plenty on this blog); how many of us were shocked, shocked when Tiger was revealed to be a sexual fruitloop? I wasn't. I laughed. I still do. Of course he's fake. There's no such thing as a hero.
Ours is a generation of the walking dead. We laugh, we snark, we have turned human life into an affectation.
We are vampires.
Yeah, that's very helpful in pointing to some tangles in my language and explanation.
ReplyDeleteWhat I mean is that skepticism (a practice) is not the same as knowledge, nor is it the same as knowing. Just as studying what one knows (episteme) is not the same as knowing. The two are, however, in relationship.
That's why I tried to stress the relationship I described as "informing" between acting skeptically and knowing, first dividing the act of evaluation from knowledge at the joint, then explaining the nature of the joint.
As to your anecdote, I certainly have encountered similar examples, but I find it so hard to make any reasonably solid extrapolation from such anecdotes to claims about the practices as a whole that I'm reluctant to do so, and have some distrust of people who aren't reluctant. That's why I backed off my claim about "faith, as many people understand it".
Your last paragraph is the most significant issue for me, as it's a huge question for figuring out how to live once one has decided that a host of society's most popular claims about the nature of existence don't hold up very well.
I'm reminded of this quotation from Bertrand Russell in "Why I Am Not a Christian":
"...If you accept the ordinary laws of science, you have to suppose that human life and life in general on this planet will die out in due course: it is a stage in the decay of the solar system; at a certain stage of decay you get the sort of conditions of temperature and so forth which are suitable to protoplasm, and there is life for a short time in the life of the whole solar system. You see in the moon the sort of thing to which the earth is tending -- something dead, cold, and lifeless.
"I am told that that sort of view is depressing, and people will sometimes tell you that if they believed that, they would not be able to go on living. Do not believe it; it is all nonsense. Nobody really worries about much about what is going to happen millions of years hence. Even if they think they are worrying much about that, they are really deceiving themselves. They are worried about something much more mundane, or it may merely be a bad digestion; but nobody is really seriously rendered unhappy by the thought of something that is going to happen to this world millions and millions of years hence. Therefore, although it is of course a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out -- at least I suppose we may say so, although sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation -- it is not such as to render life miserable. It merely makes you turn your attention to other things."
Similarly, I'm tempted to suggest that it is not really so terribly difficult to go around not claiming to know things in a non-contingent way as we frequently think. The great world of Euclidean geometry has spun on, for example, quite happily working in its vast, sophisticated, beautiful way despite the discovery that it rests upon an unprovable postulate 5, despite the existence of equally legitimate systems existing alongside it.
I've begun digging into Wittgenstein recently, and I'm amazed at what a manageable, human world is unlocked by his explanation of all language as contingent tools. We think we have a great amount invested in KNOWING for CERTAIN, but none of us really DOES know anything for certain (I suspect), and what I suspect we like is not having prominent, painful contradictions in our interpretive schema of our worlds.
Have you seen or read the graphic novel Logicomix, by the way? It's a stunning book about Bertrand Russell and his search for mathematical certainty, his accidental discovery of the paradox that shattered it, and his attempt to rebuild it. One of the best things I've read in ages.
At some point I am going to organize this into a coherent post on Skepticism, but you brought up Wittgenstein first, so what the hell:
ReplyDeleteWittgenstein's later work is usually taken up by guys like Rorty, Putnam, Quine, and MacIntyre, all of whom reject Enlightenment (read: Cartesian) foundationalism to one extent or another (they are characterized as "Anglo-American Post-Modern" philosophers, or, in some circles, "Pragmatists").
They all subscribe to a more or less pragmatic epistemology, one that takes in to account two important revelations: (1) Wittgenstein's insight that we're not *really* working with "knowledge" as Modern philosophers had defined it (Hume was on this track but wavered); and (2) Heidegger/Gadamer's insight into the phenomenological process by which human knowledge is *actually* accumulated. This process is really more a "hermeneutical spiral" in which previous beliefs form a "horizon" which encounters the "horizons" projected by various objects of inquiry. Gadamer's Truth and Method (where he develops this theory), is ostensibly about interpreting texts, but by the third section we see that he is really taking "texts" to be any meaningful human encounter, since interpretation is necessarily involved (and interpretation is, by definition, informed by one's current "horizon").
Gadamer and to a lesser extent Wittgenstein both insist that the object "pushes back" against our interpretation, limiting and correcting it, and the "game" of interpretation is one in which we lose our former horizon in the interpretive ebb and flow, it becoming fuzed/synthesized/impacted by encounter with the object.
The upshot of all that is that once you reject foundationalism, you really can replace the word "skepticism" with "scientific method" and actually use skepticism as a tool without getting caught in the nihilism to which relentless skepticism always leads. Any of the AAPPs I mentioned would suggest that we should naively accept our current interpretive horizon as the definitive standard of truth, but that we should subject that horizon to various objects in interpretive encounter, and let the interpretive game itself alter our web of beliefs.
Living in the ebb and flow of interpretation is living "critically," rather than "skepticaly" and this is why I recommend it as a label which more accurately characterizes the way careful/serious thinkers go about things.
The other upshot of post Witt/Gad philosophy is that it rehabilitates in a very powerful way the notion of faith. Critical faith is never blind (it cannot be), but it is necessary and good. It opens the door for reflection and self-consciously applies a working epistemological standard against which new data may be tested and assimilated. It can fearlessly acknowledge tensions and allow itself to be reconfigured in order to alleviate those tensions in light of competing epistemological standards (This draws heavily on MacIntyre. Who is awesome.).
But more on this in a later post.
Tom,
ReplyDeleteI really like where this is going. I admit to being suspicious of the rehabilitation of faith, of course, but you've helped me better understand why you prefer the term critical to skeptical, and you certainly seem to have a grasp on the reasons and ways I want to talk about criticism and knowledge.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteTo speak briefly to an earlier point of yours, Tom, I'm suspicious of faith like that you ascribe to Johnson or Green, though I have only the brief amount you report to work from. At this point, I'm suspicious that faith is largely used to attempt to ennoble somewhat obviously poor reasons for belief.
ReplyDeleteMy current attempt to wrestle an understanding out of the word faith has it something like this: our reason is nimble, highly evaluative, and restlessly inquisitive. It makes us great problem solvers, but it can be dizzying for us and it also is focused to the point that it cannot access large amounts of data at the same time. As such, we create for ourselves a kind of framework that we try to make more solid than what strikes our reason as true at any given point in time. This is our faith, and we make it sacred in a way that only sustained, consistent arguments against it will demolish it, and even small changes are met with greater resistance than ordinary beliefs might.
It strikes me as something like a novel, that an author returns to again and again, compounding his efforts like layers of filo dough in baklava, picking up what is best and slowly dispensing with the parts that are unnecessary, or untrue.
I think many myths get made to prop up this faith, because we are all fearful of its destruction and anxious to guard it. And no one can dispense with the work of creating a faith for themselves and attempting to make it substantial and beautiful.
I have a very particular interest in picking apart its use for Christians, however, as I believe it is used for very intelligent people as the last gap to hide a god inside.
On the other hand, I am also anxious to find new and useful language to describe the faith that remains once the gods are dispensed with.