Thoughts against presentism (and an intro to critical study of Hume)

In my calling David Hume a racist or Aristotle sexist, professional philosophers such as Massimo Pigliucci have accused me of "presentism." (That said, I think Massimo seems to be softening, at least on Hume.)

I reject the charge because I reject the concept.

Briefly, here's why.

As I see it, "presentism" is an absolute adjective.

All I have to do is find one non-sexist in Aristotle's Greece, or one non-racist in Hume's Great Britain, and the idea is undermined.

And, while I may not think of particular Britons, some of the French philosophes were certainly anti-racist. And, I point to Aristophanes' "Lysistrata" as anti-sexist.

And, a quick Google let's me go straight to a contemporary of Hume's, per this piece:

Hume was challenged on his racist views in his own time, including by the Scottish philosopher James Beattie, who wrote: "The empires of Peru and Mexico could not have been governed, nor the metropolis of the latter built after so singular a manner, in the middle of a lake, without men eminent both for action and speculation.

"Boom," in a word. (That said, Beattie only challenges his anti-Indian racism directly. Of course, White Europeans knew little about Timbuktu and even less about the Great Zimbabwe at that time.) THAT said, per this philosophical essay, Hume revised his original racism agasint Blacks and American Indians to just an anti-Black racism in specific response to Beattie.

THAT said, the IEP, in its article on Beattie, reports that his magnum opus, "An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth," made Hume mad in general. Wiki, in its piece on the essay, notes Beattie had a habit of slash-and-burn attacks on opponents. And, a note: The essay, in German, was part of what "awoke Kant from his dogmatic slumber."

Read the whole IEP article. Beattie offers a good refutation of racism in general.

Of course, Hume wasn't alone among Enlightenment philosophers, and said philosophers, while writing about morals, did little for practical moral advancement in their societies.

A second way of refuting Massimo, Dan Kaufman, Julian Baggini (added, see below) et al would be to hoist Hume by his own petard.

If nobody at the time of Aristotle were anti-sexist, and nobody at the time of Hume were anti-racist, than to use Hume's own phrasing, anti-racism or anti-sexism must have arisen "viz a miracle."

On anti-racism, the third way of refuting Massimo and Dan is to refer to any number of recent insightful books of social history which show the rise of "race" as a social construct in early Enlightenment Europe. 

So, I have three refutations of presentism in the charge of racism against Hume. (And, against Locke, Kant, Voltaire and others of this era.) I have two refutations of presentism in the charge of sexism against Aristotle.

And, bonus? One is directly philosophy-connected, via linguistic philosophy. (Sidebar: I wonder how much the issue of what is an absolute adjective and what is not has been studied in modern linguistics and philosophy of language.)

QED.

Update, Feb. 12: Baggini, per a new post in my series about Hume that I'm adding in response to him, wants to make "presentism" a non-absolute descriptor. I reject that, for the reasons above. Even if I accepted that the idea of presentism, empirically, should be defined in majoritarian terms, per the logical side, specifically, psychological logic, I would reject his claim that the minority side in 1700s Scotland was so small that we can essentially ignore it. This statement applies not just to him, and not just to the issue of presentism vis-a-vis Hume and racism.

Update, Feb. 18: Per a discussion of that Baggini post at MeWe, bringing up vegetarianism to defend charges of presentism while talking about slavery in general, rather than race-based slavery, as "race" is basically a human construct and "race" as understood in the modern West is an Enlightenment-times European intellectual construct, is a way to lose your argument from the start in my book.

As for the the analogy in general? I don't think it flies, for various reasons. One, science can never give us a straight, set-in-stone answer on what animals are sentient or not, if "sentience" is part of what drives vegetarianism. It's a philosophical demarcation problem, but one that philosophers won't agree on. Ditto on what animals suffer pain or not.

That said, vegans score vegetarians for inflicting pain on animals through milking, egg-stealing, etc.

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Schedule of related blogging (now updated and expanded):

1. A more in-depth look at Harris' bio of Hume than my Goodreads review, Jan. 14;
2. A more in-depth look at Mossner's bio of Hume than my Goodreads review, Jan. 21;
3. Hume, racism and general bigotry, and ultimate rank hypocrisy, Feb. 4;
4. Julian Baggini goes in the tank to defend Hume, Feb. 18
   
5. Le bon David: David Hume as litterateur, March 4;
6. Is David Hume just a bundle in my mind? Or just a petard hoisting? March 18;
7. Young Hume vs Old Hume: The passions and more,  March 25;
8. And, an add-on, on the issue of Hume, race and slavery: Exposing what seems to be willing lying on his part in "Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations," June 12.

The addition of the Baggini piece is the key change from the original number of posts, and in turn affects the full schedule. Given that I've been on an alternate-weeks schedule, the last post may move to April 1. 

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More here on Hume's racism, which also notes that Hume believed in polygenesis.

Is intelligence really about being a better bullshitter?

Or, more politely, about learning to be a better motivated reasoner?

So says Diana Fleischman in the pages of of Nautilus. 

Two caveats.

One, she's an ev psycher.

Two, she's working in part off work by Richard Dawkins.

Nonetheless, this delayed nutgraf:

Intelligence is associated with coming up with more convincing bullshit and with being a better liar, but not associated with a better ability to recognize one’s own bias.

Rings largely true in my book. (With caveats!)

First, one cannot say that intelligence, long before the syllogisms of Hellenic Greek philosophy, evolved "for" human rationality.

Second and related, per Kahneman and Tversky, "slow" thinking has high evolutionary cost, so intelligence wouldn't have evolved for that.

Third, per anecdotes, partially related to Julian Jaynes' book, intelligence probably did evolve in part for us to talk to ourselves better. Including couching our lies better.

So, there you are.

Sadly, sociopaths will read this as a huge self-justification.

That said, Fleitman is missing a page. Or two or three.

The first missing page? That is Goleman's varieties of intelligence. Especially when we get to the whole nine types idea, shown in one form here, emotional intelligence and interpersonal intelligence both offer the ability, even if not evolved for that, to detect others' bullshit.

Second, of course, as I've written many times, much of ev psych is pseudoscience. If Fleitman's ideas about why intelligence evolved are based on things like the Era of Evolutionary Adaptation, well, then they're also pseudoscience.

Finally, of course, we're NOT an ev psycher in this corner, nor are we Aristotelian final causers. Human intelligence did NOT evolve "for" better bullshitting, or "for" anything else. It was adapted "for" certain things after it evolved, and that adaptation was part of cultural evolution.

(Doorknob help us if the Ev Psychers try to trump this with a full-on ev psych based version of cultural evolution. Not that that's not already half their program.)

I will give Fleischman credit for not overstating her case, mainly through using the phrase "associated with."

For my take on Jaynes?

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's been what, a decade or nearly so, since I last read this, so this review (I thought I had done one, but guess not) is from memory.

That said, I first read it in the early 1990s, when finishing up a graduate divinity degree and transitioning into a secularist.

Academics largely savaged the book at the time, but it's made somewhat of a comeback with them as well as the general public since then. In the world of philosophy, Jaynes' ideas somewhat parallel Dennett's subselves. Similar ideas have taken further root in psychology.

But, the biggie? Jaynes remains less than fully convincing in the when and why of how consciousness originated, both on general anthropology and on philosophy of religion.

The idea that god(s) might originally have been inner voices? Yes, not a totally unreasonable hypothesis.

But, why did these voices become "god(s)" when, as more and more cave paintings showed, some sort of religious experience may well have paralleled, not followed, the development of human language? Not really answered.

Also not really answered is why they STOPPED being internalized and instead became externalized.

Finally, although Jaynes doesn't go heavily into New Agey left brain/right brain stuff, he does drift a bit that way.

At the same time, the book remains provocative enough to get four stars, not three.

View all my reviews

Per Jaynes, and per Fleischman, to the degree she's on to something? Many people often tell themselves the best bullshit. And, per Goleman et al, they are highly lacking in intrapersonal intelligence. As a result, they can often get themselves wrapped around their own axle by someone who is transparent and guileless. Some of the greatest short stories in literature and parables in philosophy are about exactly this. 

What is "agency"? What is Aristotle's influence on defining it?

These are both issues relevant to Jessica Riskin's 2016 book "The Restless Clock," first brought to my attention by Barbara Ehrenreich's "Natural Causes."

In a recent review of Christopher List's book on free will, I first thought her definition of agency might be the same as his of "intentionality," especially since he seemed to use both words almost interchangeably. Then I recognized my definition may not be Rifkin's. She leaves it a bit fuzzy, as noted in this very good review of her book and may overstate the empirical case that justifies her idea, or does not. Additional reviews, like this, make me wonder if she isn't partly down the rabbit hole of Aristotelean causes, especially with her stress on the theological background of mechanistic agency, and of course, Aristotle dominating late medieval Europe's intellectualism. I halfway think she is trying to thread her way between final and efficient causes, wiht her talk of pass-mechanical and active views of nature.

So, if all of Western philosophy is, to riff on Whitehead, but footnotes to Plato and Aristotle, we have yet another example of needing to burn the original books and throw away most of the footnotes. Tinbergen's Four Questions would be a good start on this vis a vis Aristotle's four causes.