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				In Praise of Reason by Michael P. Lynch Edition: Hardcover Price: $14.96		59 used & new from $9.03
Is knowledge of reality just an incidental value for philosophy?, September 28, 2012 This review is from: In Praise of Reason (Hardcover) Michael P. Lynch expresses his concern for public discourse in his new book "In Praise of Reason." To that extent, it could be the liberal mirror image of the conservative The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse by Steven D. Smith. Both men think that reasoned discussion is necessary to the living public discourse which knits together civil society. Both men think that public discourse has broken down. Both men think that the break-down of public discourse has something to do with a crisis of confidence on the part of intellectuals, and perhaps the average person, who know longer think that reason can be defended. However, it seems that the agreement of Lynch and Smith end at that point. Smith seems to be a conservative who thinks that the crisis of confidence stems from the fact that people are engaged in a shell game that leads to a kind of cognitive dissonance. The shell game involves the fact that people "smuggle" in values from the sphere of religion, but they are prevented by public intellectuals from acknowledging that they are in fact making religious claims. When Smith talks about the poverty of public discourse, he includes the shrill, braying, irrational arguments of the left in his examples. Lynch seems to be a secular liberal. His theory is that people - intellectuals, and, maybe, the average person - knows that reason is floating free from any intellectual support, that when we seek to trace reason back to one ineluctable principle, we find only the question-begging assumptions that reason works. When Lynch talks about the poverty of public discourse, he trots out the familiar example of conservatives who think that "global warming is a myth" or who believe that "creationism should be taught in secondary science classrooms alongside the theory of natural selection. (p. 1.) Thus, it seems that their diagnosis and prescriptions are ultimately in conflict. Lynch's book is slim - about 150 "short" pages - and fairly accessible. He does tend to repeat himself, sometimes he uses jargon without explanation, but on the whole he writes in clear prose accessible to the layman. He organizes his argument into 5 chapters. Chapter 1 is "Hope and Reason." In this chapter, Lynch presents the problem of reason. The problem is that reason is subject to the successful assault of skepticism which accurately points out that we can't give reasons for our trust in reason without running into a vicious circle. (.4.) Reason, according to Lynch, in a broad sense is our ability to explain and justify our beliefs; in a narrow sense, reason is a particular method of logic, observation and logical inference, i.e., the scientific method. (p.3.) The problem is that most people are quite willing to dispense with reason in this narrow sense, if this kind of reason - the scientific model of reason - conflicts with their beliefs and a lot of people a skeptical about the possibility of objective knowledge, in any event. A broader social problem is that "democracy is a space of reason," which requires people to explain and justify themselves to each other. Lynch doesn't say this, but it seems inferable that reason is required because the alternative to reason is force rather than persuasion, and if people can't reason with each other, and therefore persuade each other, then they live in a mental universe where might makes right. The further problem is if people don't agree on their "epistemology" - their source of knowledge - they are going to look irrational to each other. (Again, Lynch doesn't say it in so many words, but if one person believes in making decisions from observations of the real world, and another from consulting a Ouija board, their discourse is going to break down pretty quickly.) Chapter 2 is "Neither Slave nor Master." In this chapter, Lynch further develops the problem by setting forth recent sociological findings that show that people make decision based on split-second evaluations of irrelevancies, e.g., they decide competence based on a split second evaluation of a face. Lynch then goes on to explain two models of who reason interacts with the will. The first model is Platonic and views the reason as the master of the will; the second model is from David Hume who wrote that "Reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."(p.20.) Lynch seems to side with Hume in that he points out that humans cannot be impassionate, literally so, in that people who have impaired emotions have been empirically shown to have impaired ability to make decisions. (p.19.) But Lynch doesn't want to go the whole hog with Hume, who argued that reason is completely subordinate to emotion, or, as Hume put it, Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching my finger...'tis a little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledged lesser good to my greater." (p. 21.) The problem with this, according to Lynch, is that we measure emotion relative to reason. We recognize when someone has shown inordinate anger or engaged in senseless acts. (p. 23.) What are we left with? Lynch talks about "intuition," which we experience and which seems to be non-rational and yet is not entirely independent of reason. (p. 30.) We recognize that intuitions of experts are somehow more trustworthy than those of novices or laypeople. Intuition may simply be tacit knowledge by which we collate a lot of information from different sources. So, apparently, from this Lynch concludes that "defending reason doesn't mean defending the idea that we dispassionate, unintuitive robots." Another anthropological view that Lynch brings into play is the "Quine-Durham hypothesis" which is that it is "our beliefs from a web or lattice-like structure" that is interconnected, with some at the core of our belief world, and generally well supported by other beliefs, and others at the periphery and subject to change. (p. 33.) This makes it very difficult for anyone to substantially change their beliefs.(p.34.) Consequently, when intuition is added into the Quine-Durham structure, what we find is that people's "intuition" makes the decision and then explanations are made up to justify the intuition. (p. 35.) The pay off for this chapter seems to be Lynch's conclusion that "epistemic principles" are beliefs like anything else and just as much a subject of "intuition" and impervious to movement as any other belief. I found this chapter unsatisfying. It seems that Lynch ended up with the same insights as those of Aristotle and Aquinas. Aquinas devotes a substantial portion of the First Part of the Second Part of the Summa Theologica to explaining how the will is an "appetite" that chooses the end or goal based on its perceived "goodness" to the will, and that reason involves the choice of the means. Aquinas also noted that there is a constant interplay between reason and will in that reason presents the will with a view of the goods which may be chosen and the will directs the reason to reason about what how to get to an end, and even, since every final end involves a series of intermediate ends which are means to that end, whether to reason about particular intermediate ends. So, Aquinas' anthropological model seems to find a middle ground between reason and emotion, and to explain how they interrelate. Aquinas also explains the stroke of "intuition" which is nothing less than the will making a decision based on the information "teed up" by the reason. It seems odd that a philosopher wouldn't note this thread of thought on the subject. The third chapter is "Nothing but Dreams and Smoke." In this chapter, the devastating effect of skepticism. Lynch starts by introducing Sextus Empiricus who taught the technique of demonstrating that any intellectual system has an epistemology that involves a vicious circle. How do you prove reason? By showing that it is consistent with reason? How do you prove your divine revelation is authoritative? By showing that the revelation says it's authoritative? According to Lynch, all claims of knowledge rely on assuming that the source of the knowledge is trustworthy and credible, which is the problem. The system of Sextus Empiricus is great fun when applied to the other guy's system, but it is not so much fun when it gets applied to yours. The history of skepticism, according to Lynch, has been the application of Sextus Empiricus' insights to everyone's system. The problem is ultimately a problem of epistemology. How can we know that we know anything since our knowledge about what we know presupposes that we know what we know, but this is a dicey proposition. Lynch points to Hume's critique of inductive knowledge. We induce things based upon our assumption that similar causes have similar effects, but how do we know that? Because in the past similar causes have had similar effects? How do we know that will occur in the future? We really don't know; we are just guessing, an educated guess, perhaps, but a guess nonetheless. (See p. 49 - 52.) We can't use inductive reason to prove inductive reason because that is just begging the question or making a circular argument. (p.52.) Chapter four is "Reasons End: Tradition and Common Sense." In this chapter, Lynch sketches what he considers to be a false start to the problem of epistemological uncertainty, namely "tradition." According to Lynch, some conservatives seek to put "tradition" into the role of the irreducible basis of knowledge. These people, including Alistair Mcintyre and Thomas Kuhn, start with the true observation that we understand only by virtue of understanding within a tradition, but understanding knowledge within a tradition is not the same thing as knowing that the knowledge is objectively true. This leads to an uncertainty about which tradition to follow and, more importantly, it opens conservatives up to the charge that they are the moral relativists with no external standards for determining truth. (p. 66.) It is in this section - in response to the perceived conservative insistence on tradition as the irreducible founding principle - that Lynch makes his argument about reason and democracy. In his view it is the conservative program of promoting tradition that is anti-democratic because it short-cuts the offering of reasons. (p. 69 - 72.) Democracy requires the furnishing of reason. Where reasons can no longer be furnished, then the alternative is manipulation and force. (Id.) If two people simply argue about their incommensurable traditions, they are not going to be able to reason.(p. 70.) If they are going to have a discussion, then they must found their discussion in something outside of tradition, utility, reason, something that is not tradition. (p. 71.) Lynch also attacks "common sense" and "presuppositions." The problem in Lynch's view is that these forms of knowledge amount to a statement of something that is not plainly and uncontrovertibly obvious as if it was, or of stating as dogma something that needs more explanation. (p. 77.) In this section, Lynch states the problem as, "the problem is whether we can show that we have such knowledge by giving public reasons - reasons that can be appreciated from a common point of view."(p.77.) Chapter 5 is "The `Sacred Tradition of Humanity.'" In this chapter, Lynch describes his solution to the problem of the foundation of knowledge. Lynch starts with the observation of W.K. Clifford - often quoted by on atheist web - that "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for any one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." (p. 79.) Although Lynch finds Cliffords' observation generally correct when it comes to religion, he thinks Cliffords oversteps the mark. Cliffords point, according to Lynch, is that people should commit to a life of reason, i.e., being open-minded and willing to subject one's views to scrutiny. Lynch makes a potentially powerful point at this section; namely, that living a life "committed to reason" is not something that a skeptic is capable of doing. A skeptic is someone who only asks questions, but who never commits, which is not a way to live a life. (p. 84.) Simply asking questions is not the key to reason; rather "questions rightly asked" is the "ideal of reason."(Id.) This is an insight that deserves some development. Lynch doesn't develop that particular insight, but rather uses the idea of "commitment to reason" as a matter of practical virtue to establish a guide to "practical reasoning." Commitment cannot be blind, it must be based on some open, transparent and articulable justification. With that insight, Lynch decides to find a way of justifying "reason." The "reason" he selects is science because scientific principles "get results." (p. 86.) With that insight, he abstracts principles from science that are not strictly epistemological. Hence, science is open, transparent, self-correcting, intersubjective, repeatable and natural to human beings. (p. 89- 93.) With that insight, he creates a "method game" along the lines of John Rawls method for determining the "original condition" behind a "veil of ignorance." He suggests that people imagine themselves going to an alternative universe where they don't know who they will be or what social position they will be in or what epistemological principles will work. With that in mind, what epistemological principles would such people privilege? Lynch believes that they would privilege a system that was - voila - like that which is found in science, namely open, transparent, self-correcting, intersubjective, repeatable and natural to human beings. On the other hand, he also posits an "epistemic difference principle" whereby people in this game would "allow those who have a developed palate (whether for modals or Malbec) to employ some methods that are closed to the rest of us." Allowed? That's big of him. The point of the "method game" is not to find a system that we know will provide us with truth. We simply can't know that. Rather, his system is compatible with democracy and has the best chance of being flexible and correctable to provide us with truth or something like it. We will have "epistemic trust" in the results afforded by the "method game" because we have more trust in things that are open and objective. Lynch's penultimate chapter is "Truth and the Pathos of Distance." In this chapter Lynch argues that a reason for the nihilism of leftist thinkers like Richard Rorty was an effort to defend the humanities from the imperialism of science. The humanities isn't as exact or dependable as physics, it seems, which leads to those engaged in the humanities to question the value of their life's work. The solution is to "deconstruct" science so that it is no more a guide to objective truth than humanities are, because there really is no objective truth. Lynch concludes from this analysis that the problem of Rorty's project is that he misconceives truth. Truth is not about whether an idea corresponds with the world. Such an idea is not the only idea of truth that exists, and such a model simply cannot apply to ideas like "torturing a prisoner is a violation of that person's rights" because "rights" do not really exist, which means that there is nothing on which to map the belief. (p. 127 - 128.) In such areas, Lynch thinks that "truth" ought to be determined by a different standard, such as whether the idea is "coherent" with other ideas. Coherence isn't enough, even if it is "supercoherence" in Lynch's terminology. (p. 130.) "Unless there are facts about what makes a belief-system coherent or incoherent - and facts that don't consist in supercoherence - then there is nothing to nail down that system. It will float free of reality." (p. 132.) So, Lynch's solution is to posit a truth of "concordance," where the belief system is both internally coherent and compatible with external facts. Lynch concludes that "[s]cientific rationality can be defended, in short, because it has virtues that are central to a just and civil society." (p. 138.) Skepticism is mistaken because it is not only a philosophical mistake but a political mistake. (p. 138.) Lynch concludes with a paean to the "one really inspired idea of the Enlightenment, that we share a common currency of reason with our fellow human beings. (p. 138.) So having got to the end of Lynch's book, what do we conclude? We have a defense of reason that seems to deny the purpose of reason, which is to find a way from our mind to the objective, external world. Truth is not even about transcendent, objective reality outside of our minds; if we have a coherent system of thought that is "compatible" with the objective evidence - however "compatibility" is defined and determined - that qualifies as truth. There might be a number of mutually contradictory, internally consistent, somehow compatible with the facts beliefs, and they all amount as true, which amounts to an illogical conclusion since it violates the basic principle of logic, the rule of non-contradiction. Lynch is clearly a man of the left. This kind of pluralistic illogic seems to fit in with the usual the typical program of the left, which is a broad pluralist multiculturalism. It would seem that Lynch's program fits this kind of view of democracy. One thing that annoyed me was Lynch's equivocal use of the term "reason." Reason was not really logic; on occasion it meant science, and on occasion it meant giving an explanation, and on occasion it meant being justifiable because of having politically good side effects. This book doesn't seem to be rigorously analytical; rather it seems to be an exercise in reasoning from ends to principles, a manipulation of ideas to an end determined by a political agenda, which, ironically, Lynch starts out condemning (when he sees it on the "Right," of course.) Another annoying feature is Lynch' seemingly limited about Scholasticism. For example, Lynch seems to think that the people in the middle ages believed the Earth was flat. (p. 43.) People from antiquity knew that the Earth was round. Thomas Aquinas explicitly identifies the Earth as round in the Summa Theologica. I've also mentioned how Lynch's "either/or" approach to reason as master or servant of the passions is confounded by a knowledge of Aristotle and Aquinas, but when Lynch ascribes to the Enlightenment the idea that we share a common currency of reason with our fellow human beings, this slights the Scholastics who were absolutely into the notion that reason was their currency with every other human being. That was the reason which motivated Aquinas to read and cite pagans like Aristotle and Muslims like Averroes. And that leads to the most annoying feature of this book, the strawmen that are assumed to be true throughout. Science is good, and religion is bad, because one purportedly is open, intersubjective, transparent, etc. Really? This is true of all things that call themselves "science" which are not physics? Is this true of sociology or anthropology or history? Furthermore, how is this not true of theology, which develops over the course of time through a lengthy dialectical process that weeds out the weak arguments and gives as much credence to coherence and compatibility with facts as Lynch likes. But we do not get a discussion of this; rather, we get a dismissal of religion as not being scientific. And what is this point about "allowing" someone to engage in private reasoning based on private insights or epistemologies so long as the net benefit outweights the costs? How is that kind of thing going to be prevented? Moreover, why would we want to prevent it? Aren't we better off with as many people thinking outside the box and offering ideas which can be considered and weighed and rejected or accepted? It seems that in the heart of liberal multiculturalism there beats the rhythm of fascism. Further, it is terrific that Lynch sets up a "method game" that results in exactly the kind of multi-cultural society anyone could wish for, but is it really the case that everyone would opt for an epistemology of the kind that he advocates. What about the role of experts? We rely on experts regularly without objection. How many of us really know how our lights work or that evolution is really, really true or that global warming is true? We don't. We believe in those things because we trust people who have studied those things. Further, people who are experts are experts because they have the time and resources - the privilege - to study those kinds of things. In short, it might well be the case that people playing the "method game" would come up with a system that favors an aristocracy of knowledge, kind of like the one that exists and has always existed. Lynch doesn't explain or argue or offer a plausible reason for discounting this option. This option simply doesn't get mentioned. On the whole, although it does offer some insights into reason, I can't really recommend this book. I would recommend the Smith book, but this one seems to have been written "for the choir" - if you already agree with the ideas set forth in the book, then - pace the Quine-Durham hypothesis - you will find that your beliefs are reinforced. If not, you will be unsatisfied. This is clearly a long review, but I wanted to walk through Lynch's arguments. Comment | Permalink