Rational Philosophy

On the negative swing in the Democratic primary campaign, global warming, and deconstruction.

Campaigning in Pennsylvania today, Barack Obama had this to say about the increasingly negative tone of the push for votes: “if you get elbowed enough, eventually you start elbowing back.” He labels the cause — “elbowing” — and the effect — “elbowing back.” I like Barack Obama, from what I know of him, and his analysis of the cause and effect of retaliation has some emotionally appealing weight to it — generally we don’t like to be pushed around — but it makes me wonder about the psychology of retaliation in a presidential candidate.

As fears rise of dire consequences from global warming, so does the noise of debate about what each of us can and should do to respond. Michael Pollan argues that although personal choices to, for instance, walk instead of drive, eat less meat, plant our back yard, may seem to be ineffective ways to generate the desired effect, they form a critical part of the only response that can help save our ecology in the long term — a change in attitude.

And Stanley Fish, in a typically dogmatic piece, insists that deconstruction didn’t change anything. After outlining the tumult in academia and the careers of academics post-deconstruction, Fish blithely dismisses the effect as something disconnected from its cause: “these effects, good and bad, happy and unhappy, did not flow from deconstruction as a matter of right and property; they were effects of which deconstruction just happened to be the occasion.”

(Tangentially I wonder whether Fish’s pattern of defending a hypothesis rather than challenging and investigating it has an overall beneficial result — because his topics and positions provoke thought and response — or not — since by lending the air of authority to his unswerving style, the Times does an implicit injustice to the practice of sound thinking… Unfortunately, I think, the latter.)

Nothing ‘just happens’ to be the occasion for an effect. Or, to put it another way, every cause is inevitably the occasion for its effect.

Obama speaks emotively but not convincingly when he says that Clinton’s elbowing caused his elbowing. We all know that the response to an an elbow in the ribs can be for us to present our other ribs for more elbowing. To unpack Obama’s words, what he meant was: “wouldn’t you eventually do the same thing if someone was needling you?” And he’s counting on most people saying, “well, yes, I believe I would.”

It’s a clever and appealing piece of rhetoric, but not an honest one. Obama knows that it would have been possible to keep the higher ground, but he’s been advised that he needs to strike back, and perhaps he also feels that it’s right to strike back. I, for one, would dearly like to know whether Obama believes this or not. How deep and strong is his belief in doing the right thing? That’s the reason to want to vote for him.

Michael Pollan presents at a subtle and important insight into the cause and effect of global warming — if we don’t change our attitudes, we won’t change the outcome. In itself, his journalism acts as a cause of changing attitude, informing and swaying opinion. He arrived at his opinion through reading and reflection. His reading and reflection wouldn’t and couldn’t have happened without the work and reflection of scientists and educators who went before him… This chain of cause and effect leads us back to the evolution of human consciousness, which also leads us back to the cause of global warming. This is, all at once, ironic, comforting, and somewhat alarming. Ironic: Global warming and the hope for averting disaster have been caused by the evolution of human consciousness. Comforting: If we broke it, we can fix it. Alarming: If this can happen, what’s in store for us next?

Philosophically speaking, the phenomenon of cause and effect is central to our cohesive experience of existence. Given the same conditions, we expect the same outcomes. Manifestations of existence (physical objects, energy fields, etc.) in time and space operate predictably to the extent that we have sufficient information to make those predictions. Even quantum mechanics results in predictable behaviors that reflect the probability of different outcomes.

We take cause and effect for granted. We’re so accustomed to its operation that we find it hard to imagine the world working in any other way. Because of this, perhaps, I think that we devalue the all pervasive workings of causality. We allow ourselves to believe that a stand-in for a reasonable cause (elbowing) is good enough. And that a well defended opinion (a la those of Stanley Fish) is as good as a rigorous and skeptical exploration. But, fortunately, we also recognize the real thing when we see it.

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

On causality, with specific reference to the hatred of Hillary Clinton, and muscle fatigue.

When I first read Stanley Fish’s pieces about those who love or live to despise Hillary Clinton — All You Need Is Hate, and A Calumny A Day To Keep Hillary Away — I resisted the temptation to respond to Fish’s comments. After all, wasn’t he standing up for rationalism and logic? Wasn’t he speaking out against the rude jibes of the senseless masses? And didn’t Hillary deserve his defense?

But in the end I came to realize that I should respond. Again, I found in Fish’s purportedly rational column an absence of thoughtful inquiry. Couched in the language of rationalism, his analysis bashed the Hillary bashers without offering up a viable explanation for the phenomenon. Perhaps by understanding the reason for the hatred we can better counter it. “Perhaps nothing accounts for it,” Fish says, and again I feel myself confronting the same kind of lazy thinking that brought Fish to claim that the humanities as a field of study serves no purpose.

Does rootless ill-will toward Hillary engender the bashing, engendering more bashing? Or does the ill-will result from some other cause, with a side-effect being the bashing?

Research toward the causes of enlarged hearts has yielded interesting information about the way in which muscles fatigue. Scientists have found that when we use our muscles to the point of fatigue, they leak calcium. The calcium leaks cause weakness and stimulate an enzyme that eats away at the muscle fiber. When given a substance that blocks the calcium leaks, mice can swim and run further without experiencing muscle fatigue.

In considering whether there could be value in blocking calcium leaks to enhance athletic performance, Dr. Ligget, a heart-failure researcher says, “We have to ask whether it would be prudent to be circumventing this mechanism.”

Hear, hear. If we give evolution any credit we would have to think that creatures with muscles, ourselves included, experience muscle fatigue for good reason. The cause of muscle fatigue is not calcium leaks, it is the valuable feedback mechanism that has evolved to prevent us from pushing ourselves beyond exhaustion. (Being a person whose muscles tend to fatigue quickly, on the other hand, I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on some of those mice pills…)

Back to Hillary Clinton. Why didn’t Fish want to explore the possibility that the Hillary bashing is an end result of some other phenomenon? Clearly, this would bring him onto thin ice. He would need to confront the idea that perhaps there was a cause for it, whether it was rational or not, defensible or not. Effects must have a cause, after all.

Fear and anger cause hatred. With Hillary Clinton, I think the likely cause is fear, whereas with George Bush (Fish’s counter-foil) the cause is anger.

Why would we fear Hillary Clinton? Here are three reasons.
1. She has demonstrated ruthlessness.

2. She doesn’t hide her sense of superiority well.

3. She strives but fails to demonstrate that she is not ideologically rigid.

We find it difficult to express these fears rationally, in part because each of them has a perfectly acceptable and reasonable corollary — commitment, brilliance, and consistency. But we do fear the ruthless, those who hold themselves up as superior, and those who are rigid.
For good measure, here is why we would be angry with Bush.

1. He’s lazy when he has work to do.

2. He makes life and death decisions based on an arbitrary will to exert his power.

3. He’s ignorant but touts his sway over us.

What’s not to be angry at?

Sure, Hillary Clinton is committed, brilliant, and consistent. And Bush is a life loving, god fearing everyman. But, when we’re talking about the country’s highest office, we have good reason to fear the former and be angry with the latter.

Every effect begins with a cause. Just as our muscles fatigue to prevent us from overtaxing our bodies, so, too, we lash out with seemingly irrational hatred and bias when we fear or resent a greater ill. And, just as it would be good to spare our bodies the fatigue and wasting that comes from calcium leaks, so, too, it would be good to spare society the vitriol of hateful criticism by recognizing the onset of symptoms and directing our feelings of fear and anger toward a more constructive end.