RE: The DIM Hypothesis of History

http://www.socialmatter.net/2015/10/27/book-review-on-objectivisms-sweeping-theory-of-history-the-dim-hypothesis/

The basic logic sounds familiar to me, interestingly, another influential group of people who tend to say distrust in Reason being able to grasp the actual truths of the world, and who also tend to consider civilizational rot is about distrusting Reason, are Catholics. Most famously Chesterton, who made the the following argument in Orthodoxy:

“If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, “Why should ANYTHING go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?” The young sceptic says, “I have a right to think for myself.” But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, “I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all.” There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped. That is the ultimate evil against which all religious authority was aimed. It only appears at the end of decadent ages like our own: and already Mr. H.G.Wells has raised its ruinous banner; he has written a delicate piece of scepticism called “Doubts of the Instrument.” In this he questions the brain itself, and endeavours to remove all reality from all his own assertions, past, present, and to come. But it was against this remote ruin that all the military systems in religion were originally ranked and ruled. The creeds and the crusades, the hierarchies and the horrible persecutions were not organized, as is ignorantly said, for the suppression of reason. They were organized for the difficult defence of reason. Man, by a blind instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first. The authority of priests to absolve, the authority of popes to define the authority, even of inquisitors to terrify: these were all only dark defences erected round one central authority, more undemonstrable, more supernatural than all—the authority of a man to think.”

But there is one problem. The radical doubting of Reason does not necessarily have to lead to this kind of modern rot. It only has to do so if people use it in a hypocritical way – they put a lot of trust into the Reason that does not trust itself. In other words, if people still give high prestige and status to intellectuals, if they still value books of philosophy, political manifestos, slogans, abstract concepts like equality and so on.

I mean, isn’t it weird that increasing doubt of Reason did not lead to the intellectual class losing power and status, in fact it led to them gaining more? Isn’t it weird how intellectuals can get more status by denying their job matters?

My point is that modernity sounds like a sham denial of the powers of Reason.  A true denial leads one back to practical experience (custom-conservatism) or emotion (Romanticism) or instinct (barbarism). When a Princeton professor (Rorty) denies Reason, somehow it is not to mean that the world should stop listening to Princeton professors and they should get a job as a carpenter instead.

Many great conservatives used to have a strong skeptic strain in them, and still do – Derb, Oakeshott, Burke, just from the top of my mind. Note how they were all British. There is something in British culture that cherishes the unthinking, unreflexive following of custom and tradition, which is far closer to true skepticism that this above mentioned sham. This is perhaps why we see dear old Scruton focusing more and more on rural life, hunting, and wine tasting – perhaps he is trying to demonstrate that essentially British thinking that one should live life, not analyze it.

(This made a certain impact here in Continental Europe around the 1980’s when leftie French Intelligentsia seemed to have started to run out of steam.)

Thus true skepticism is basically conservative. Not believing in Reason, the most basic thing we can believe in is experience, pattern recognition, and its accumulation called tradition.

And this skeptical conservatism has led many to turn off from modern dogmas. This was also my first steps on the path of the “heretic”.  Scruton, Burke and similar thinkers taught me how to trust experience more than logic. A liberal could give me a hundred and one logical arguments and I could simple point out the window and ask “Look, does it look like it is actually working?”  It explained me, for example, that while reading a million books often fails to make you more conservative, actually lived life experience can. Many liberal books taught me the world looks by clean rules of logic, actual life experience taught me life is messy, complicated, and pattern recognition works better than logic and anti-fragility works better than elaborate, detailed plans. In other words, life experience taught me to value sanity over reason or logic, and that is how I started to get fed up with modern ideology that is simply not rooted in hugging reality.

So, as a skeptic, I don’t think skepticism is responsible for the modern rot. It is more like sham skepticism, insincere skepticism being responsible for it, the kind where denying the efficacy of Reason does not lead to a healthy dose of skepticism towards intellectuals as a class and trusting experience (such as tradition) instead.

Perhaps, if we would examine more closer this kind of sham skepticism that made modernity, we would find that it is entirely inverted. Perhaps we would find the edge of sham skepticism was turned not so much against Reason but against experience. After all one typical modern Progressive thing is assign low status the kind of people who are called rednecks in America or Deep France in France. “Peasants” tend to typically those people who value experience (tradition) over Reason.  Respect for experience often means a certain respect for wise old farmer who perhaps cannot express his opinion in a sophisticated way but “he saw everything already” i.e. collected enough input from life to match the most important patterns.

And… perhaps we would find that the modern sham-skeptic  loves to argue.

To make it clear, what the conservative skeptic dislikes most is arguing. Arguing is all about appearing smart and knowledgeable about a thing by saying the right words about it and connecting them with brilliant logic – but to actually know a thing, it is better to look at it. Arguing is a far more a status game than anything else, and when a conservative is skeptical about Reason and logic, he is skeptical about their uses in arguing, not their uses in individual investigation. We are inherently social creatures, and a conservative way to distrust logic and Reason is to say we  humans tend to terrible poor at detecting seductively logical and reasonable-sounding, but still false arguments.  “Being reasonable” is a statement about our social, communicational behavior,  it’s not about lone minds wrestling with reality. It mostly means “arguing by the agreed rules”. And then the conservative skeptic says “Don’t argue – look!” So the kind of conservative skepticism I described approvingly tends to distrust Reason and logic primarily because of the role they play in arguing.

And now notice how the typical modern sham skeptic loves to argue.  This was true even of Kant. From Kant on they were absolutely great at arguing and this was their main weapon… how does a skeptic of Reason love to argue? What does he argue with?