Brain-washing and Human conditioning

Amy writes:

Hannah Arendt, who is a proper philosopher, said it in proper philosophical language: "This is why men, no matter what they do, are always conditioned beings.  Whatever enters the human world of its own accord or is drawn into it by human effort becomes part of the human condition"  (The Human Condition).

One might say that there is not much difference between 'human conditioning' and 'brain-washing'.  Except that 'brain-washing' is a derogative term and therefore attributes a negative moral value to what has no more to do with morality than the law of gravity.

But then we are conditioned by our judeo-christian culture to pass moral judgments whether or not morality is involved.   Do we not make of our all-powerful god an all-loving god?  Which is something of an oxymoron.  The Greeks did not have such problems, their gods being a rather nasty lot.  

Whether or not we approve of our upbringing we have to be brought up.  And let us not forget that our children will judge their upbringing just as we do ours,  i.e. according to the dictates of their generation!  For, if there is a 'conditioning' which may be qualified as 'brain-washing' it is that of the 'isms' of each generation.  I have known a fair number of them during my long life: marxism, freudism, feminism, atheism, multiculturalism, rights of man, climate change, etc. all of which is very honourable as long as it does not ossify into its 'ism'. 

My 'isms' being mainly determinism, relativism and scepticism.  Not very constructive, I confess.  But that's who I am.

Amy 

Brainwashing?

Amy writes:

At the end of Saturday's discussion about controlling others it was mentioned that we brainwash our children from the time of birth.  A flippant though fashionable remark not to be taken seriously.  Do we qualify the care with which we choose the food we give our children as gutwashing?  (Being French, according to my children I gave them too much salad and fruit and not enough Irish fries or English puddings.  Though now, while considering themselves as British, they feed their own children salads and fruit and I am the one who brings the pudding).  

I have tried since Saturday to make a joke by putting together the 2 metaphors of 'brainwashing' and 'throwing out the baby with the water of the bath'  Could not do it.  Would somebody cleverer?

Another idea while taking in my wet washing.  Should a mother not nurse her baby because he/she will absorb her ideas with her milk?  3 metaphors.

Amy

Islanders & God

Dear philosophers,

our conversation last Saturday centred on the subject of God.  Most of you would say, Come on! Not again! How many times have we approached the very same topic?   But the question is asked in a different way this time: How to describe God to a people on an island?  - sounds like a title for a creative writing course, that would trigger vivid imagination.  As explained by Paul, who proposed the question, it is inspired by a book he read: Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes by Daniel Everett.  The book is about an isolated tribe of Amazonian Indians (Hence the idea of an island) whose language Everett had learned in order to translate the bible for them.  At the end Everett concluded that these people had no need for a god.  In fact he lost his own faith - a proselytizer has become a proselyte himself.

Our friend Amy writes: 

I had a strange experience recently.  I watched the dvd of a film I had seen some 30 years ago, had much admired and had quoted frequently ever since: Jacques Tati's Playtime.  Well, none of these episodes of which I had such a vivid memory were in fact as I remembered them.  Slowly but surely my mind had twisted the images to make them fit my argument.

I observed the same kind of distortions at last Saturday café-philo.  The question was how to describe God to people who had no notion of him/her/it.  While I was moderately interested in the answer to such a question I was fascinated by the way it was interpreted.  The majority of comments were about religion,  conversion, domination, none of which had to do with the subject. 

I was brought up in a French protestant family in which religion was strictly confined to Sundays when my parents went to church and the children to Sunday school.  God was never mentioned during the week.  My atheism is in the image of my parents' religion: mild and tolerant.  I am always surprised by the strident atheism I keep encountering in G.B. (never in France, which does not mean it does not exist).  I can only wonder if such atheists have been force-fed religion in their childhood.

Amy

La tolérance fait-elle progresser la paix?

Les actualités ont-elles influencées le choix de notre conversation de Samedi 26 Mars ? Probablement. Face aux récents événements en Libye et la prise de position française, on se demande encore pourquoi, mais aussi comment, le régime dictatorial de Mouammar Kadhafi a pu être toléré depuis si longtemps. Etait-ce dans l’espoir de faire progresser la paix ?

Il est bien établi dès le départ de notre conversation que tolérer ne veut pas dire être naïf, s’abstenir ou encore cautionner certains actes ou propos. Marc, fervent défenseur de la non-violence, défini la tolérance éduquée et active comme essentielle à la progression vers un but, sinon elle risque de devenir « […] un recul avant d’être une lâcheté » (Reine Malouin). On a tendance à penser que si tout le monde était tolérant, on pourrait éviter des situations difficiles, liant ainsi la notion de cohésion sociale à celle de tolérance collective. Julien quant à lui propose l’hypothèse qu’une société tolérante envers l’intolérance, serait un nid à problèmes sociaux. Tout est-il tolérable ? Doit-on être tolérant envers l’erreur par exemple ? L’artiste certaines fois dérange pour s’exprimer, mais trop de liberté comme l’usage de la violence ou de la pornographie pourrait également être nuisible à la société. Alors, jusqu’où être tolérant ?

Tolérer a ces propres limites : tout d’abord, il faut sortir le mot « intolérance » de sa connotation négative, et l’appliquer à des idées ou des situations, non pas à des individus. On peut considérer que le mot lui-même est une contradiction : on ne peut pas tolérer des valeurs que l’on ne respecte pas. Dans le cas de la Libye par exemple, on tolère que la France intervienne, mais on ne tolère pas les morts. Inversement, être tolérant avec les ennemis de la paix ne fait pas avancer la paix. Julien et Ramon argumentent que notre société est basée sur l’intolérance, et même qu’elle la cimente en ayant en place une démocratie, des lois, et des institutions pour réglementer la vie en société. Faut-il alors être intolérant et activiste pour s’opposer efficacement au relativisme et, tout comme Voltaire, clamer « Je ne suis pas d’accord avec ce que vous dites, mais je me battrai pour que vous puissiez le dire » ? Que faire dans le cas ou les protagonistes se trompent sur ce qui est vraiment dans leur intérêt ? Doit-on les défendre contre eux-mêmes, tels les volontaires au championnat du monde de lancer de nains dans le sud de la France au début des années 90, ou encore les candidats à la vente d’organes?

D’après Christian, ce sont les règles de bases pour la cohésion de la société qui prévaut, dans ces deux cas,le droit de propriété. Quand on demande à quelqu’un qui est propriétaire de son corps, la première réponse est « moi ». Il semble en effet complètement immoral d’imposer à quelqu’un la volonté d’autrui dans ce cas. Cependant, l’état ne le considère pas : il a le droit de propriété sur le corps de ses citoyens et peut le mobiliser en cas de conflit. De même pour les mères porteuses, les dons d’organes à but lucratifs, ou encore l’euthanasie c’est l’état qui définit les limites de chacun quant à l’usage de son corps, même si le sujet est consentant. Au contraire, les sociétés occidentales sont individualistes, et donc il y a séparation du « je » et de ces idées : mon corps est a la fois mon socle, et ma pensée. Mais qu’est-ce qui détermine la responsabilité de « je » ? A quel moment ce « je » deviens responsable et jusqu’où ? Même si les idées sont personnelles, le créateur n’est pas sa création, tout comme « Dieu crée l’univers mais n’est pas l’univers» (La Bible). Si mes idées sont critiquées, elles le sont pour elles-mêmes.

Une distinction peut être faite entre le monde des valeurs (la morale), et celui de la réalité (le droit), qui lui ne représente qu’une petite partie de la morale. Les droits de l’Homme sont une cause légitime de conflit, mais il n’y a pas intervention armée dès qu’ils sont bafoués.

Evidement, l’histoire a vu la passivité du monde face au massacre de Tiananmen Square, ou encore les répressions politiques en U.R.S.S communiste. Deux critères sont déterminants dans la décision d’intervenir: la possibilité de gagner, et surtout l’importance des dommages nécessaires à cette victoire potentielle. Pour la Russie et la Chine, une guerre juste n’était pas possible car les dommages seraient important que les résultats. Avoir raison ne suffit pas, et ne donne pas de droits.

Néanmoins, depuis que le capitalisme est à son apogée, il existe une autre arme de persuasion : l’argent. Marc mentionne le rôle capital qu’a tenu la politique non violente mais efficace de Margaret Thatcher dans l’effondrement de l’URSS, la contribution des boycotts dans la fin de Apartheid, et la politique de Gandhi qui a précipité la chute de l’empire Britannique. La non-violence de cette méthode est efficace dans la durée, mais malheureusement, tous les pays n’agissent pas dans l’intérêt du monde, mais du leur. Qui sait, peut-être que dans le futur, la morale fera partie du droit et que l'homme se rendra compte qu'il est responsable pour le monde entier….

Sommes-nous tous des philosophes?

Avant de tenter répondre à cette question, il est nécessaire de définir ce qu’est un philosophe. En effet, l’étymologie de ce mot grec signifie amour du savoir ou encore amour de la sagesse. Le philosophe est donc un amoureux en quête de connaissance.

Plus précisément, un philosophe pose des questions et essaie de chercher des vérités, mais souvent ces interrogations restent sans réponses. Nous pouvons ainsi dire que nous sommes tous philosophes puisque, enfants, nous posions des questions telles que « combien y-a-t-il d’étoiles dans le ciel ? ». Karl Jaspers n’affirmait-il pas que « faire de la philosophie, c’est être en route ; les questions en philosophie sont plus essentielles que les réponses » ? Peut-être le philosophe n’est-il pas intéressé par la réponse en elle-même, mais peut-être est-il plus intéressé par le cheminement qui conduit à la conclusion logique de sa question ?

Durant notre café philo nous avons discerné 3 types de philosophes : Ceux qui cherchent la vérité dans la nature, ceux qui cherchent à raisonner (ou à induire une moralité) dans les phénomènes sociaux et dans nos vies quotidiennes, ou encore ceux qui prennent les choses de manière philosophique, en d’autres mots, qui, blasés du tohu-bohu des trivialités mondaines, cherchent refuge dans la spiritualité (« La philosophie sert d’antidote à la tristesse. […] », Emil Michel Cioran)

Peut-on dire alors que le prêtre est-il un philosophe ? La réponse semble être négative parce qu’il a déjà les réponses à chacune de ses questions : c’est la bible ou les écritures saintes qui apportent les solutions a toutes ses interrogations ; il n’a pas besoin de chercher la vérité ailleurs. Et le politicien ? Chaque parti se base toujours sur une philosophie pour justifier ses actions. Le banquier ? La « philosophie » des bonus auto-générés comme motivation afin de créer encore plus de richesse pour la société lui permet de s’enrichir encore plus. Quant à l’artiste, alors que le philosophe cherche des réponses rationnelles à ses questions, lui crée des œuvres imaginaires en explorant la partie irrationnelle de son psyché. Pierre Baillargeon renchéri sur cette opinion en ajoutant que « le philosophe recherche la vérité, l’artiste, la beauté ». Cependant, dans l’art moderne ou post-moderne, l’art qualifié de « conceptuel », vise à faire de l’art une déclaration philosophique dénuée d’éléments émotionnels et irrationnels souvent présents dans l’art romantique. L’art moderne représente une cassure délibérée avec le romantisme et l’impressionnisme. Très philosophiquement, nous pouvons conclure notre réflexion par cette pensée d’Aristote qui déclare que « Le philosophe est celui qui possède la totalité du savoir dans la mesure du possible. »

Dilemmas

Related article by Céline: Dilemme... (in French)

Posted on behalf of Peter:

1. APPROACHING DILEMMAS – VIA CRITICAL THINKING (LOGIC)

Dilemma as valid argument form

A dilemma can be an acceptable type of argument. We are offered alternative courses of action, each of which entails a certain set of consequences. We have to take one of the alternatives, so have to accept one set of consequences. If the consequences are true, and it is a matter of a straight choice between them, this is a valid dilemma.

Bogus dilemma
However, if there are other alternatives and / or the consequences are incorrect, then the dilemma is bogus. It can then be refuted as follows:

1. Denying that the consequences of the choices as stated are correct. This is called ‘Grasping the dilemma by the horns’.
2. Showing the choice is false – there are other options.  This is called ‘Going between the horns of the dilemma’.  

It often occurs with the fallacy of ‘bifurcation’ (‘either / or’, ‘black / white’). Example: ‘you are either with us or against us’…

Source
How To Win Every Argument. The Use and Abuse of Logic (Madsen Pirie). Pub: Continuum.

2. APPROACHING DILEMMAS – AS CONSCIOUS DECISION PROCESS
Dilemmas can also be considered as complex decisions.

One of the best methods I’ve come across is the following:
1. Define the problem.
2. Specify your objectives.
3. Create alternatives.
4. Understand the consequences.
5. Grapple with tradeoffs between choices.
6. Clarify uncertainties.
7. Think about your risk tolerance.
8. Consider linked decisions.

Future prediction
It was pointed out in the meeting, quite rightly, that one cannot know the future. Some things are largely unpredictable e.g. the explosion of Facebook and other social networking sites, the Irish bank crisis etc.

However one can improve one’s odds in many decisions by using informed estimates on the probability of events happening: the whole purpose of the ‘risk industry’, in all its permutations, is to try and work out the best way to approach an uncertain future.. So in the sequence above, steps 4, 6 and 7 would entail some sort of (informed) probability estimation.

There’s a quote I like from the source book I have used here. “You can make a good decision and still get a bad outcome, due to something unpredictable / unpleasant happening. You can also make a bad decision and get a good outcome, due to pure luck” (e.g. you made a decision based on the flight pattern of starlings as they flew past your window, and it worked....)

Apples and oranges
Some dilemmas require choice between things that have no common base of comparison. If the question is ‘what holiday should I choose ?’, then comparison can be made on cost, weather etc. But what about ‘should I go on holiday, or get a new kitchen ?’ A good decision process will allow some weighting factors, to help prioritise (step 5 above).

Uncertainty (Donald Rumsfeld).
He was widely pilloried for his ‘things we know’ speech, given in the context of dealing with political uncertainty. It’s about the one thing he said I agreed with…I haven’t got around to checking the exact words, but it was broadly along the lines of:
1. There are things we know
2. There are things we think we know
3. There are things we know we don’t know
4. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.
e.g. (1). Al Qaida are planning attacks (2) Possibly by end of the year (3) Don’t know the target (4) We ought to be paying attention to who is training in flying schools in the southern US.

Source
Smart Choices (Hammond, Keeney, Raiffa). Pub: Harvard Business School Press.
 
3. APPROACHING DILEMMAS – AS UNCONSCIOUS DECISION PROCESS
This is the ‘sleep on it’ method. You get all the facts, try to come to a decision consciously, come to an impasse, then deliberately turn it over to the subconscious and forget about it. The answer may then come unexpectedly when you are driving, showering, making love, ironing, fleeing a burning building, performing neuro-surgery etc…

The issue here is: how does one trust one’s intuition ? The conventional wisdom is to ask yourself: ‘Did I put in enough prior work to give my subconscious the information it needed to work on?’ If I buy some shares based on decent research, it’s worth listening to my subconscious intuition. If I buy some shares based on one newspaper article I may lose money (I did…).

4. APPROACHING DILEMMAS – AS MORAL CHOICE
Some people will resolve some dilemmas by referring to their internal value system. ‘Should I give money to a street beggar ?’. A Christian will probably think ‘yes’.

However sometimes this leads to disaster – case the Credit Crunch. The dilemma was (and is): ‘How should we run the world’s financial systems ?’. For the last 20+ years the Chicago School inspired Efficient Market Hypothesis held sway, with unregulated markets being regarded as leading necessarily to the public good. This became conflated with the political view ‘state always bad, individuals always good’. It took the world economy to come within an inch of imploding for the moral position ‘leave it to the unregulated market in all cases’ to be questioned.

Peter

Related article by Celine: Dilemme... (in French)

Religion, Suffering and the Pursuit of Wealth (2)

Posted by Peter:

Some Critical Thinking issues
This entry is one of an occasional series to raise Critical Thinking issues associated with Café Philo topics, or other discussion threads. The origin for this entry comes from Café Philo on 28/08/10, and subsequent blog ‘Religion, Suffering and the Pursuit of Wealth’.

1. Straw Man fallacy
Statements criticising the pursuit of wealth often produce apoplectic responses from free-market fundamentalists, economic neo-conservatives and similar demographics. A typical response is to accuse the speaker of wanting everyone to go back to living in caves, repudiating the technical / medical advances of the last two centuries. This is an example of a Straw Man fallacy i.e. deliberately mis-representing someone’s position, and then attacking this distorted position. In fact it is perfectly consistent to wish for a basic standard of living for everyone, taking advantage of core benefits of modern science, while still criticising the pursuit of money as the ultimate goal. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is an example of a more balanced view of what it means to be human.

Two associated ideas aiming to justify the pursuit of wealth are also open to challenge, but are not developed here for space reasons. (1) Trickle-down effect (2) Facilitation of philanthropy.

2. Cognitive Dissonance (holding inconsistent thoughts) / Information Bias
Particularly popular amongst certain sections of the American religious community, the theory of the Prosperity Gospel takes wealth as a sign of God’s approval, thereby attempting to square the unsquareable circle between right-wing economics and the Christian ethic ‘love of money is the root of evil’. It provides the glue between religious fundamentalists (representing God…) and the Republican Party (representing wealth and privilege…). There is no shortage of Biblical references for the polar opposite to this view, so Information Bias (ignoring these embarrassing counter-examples) has to be used in order to avoid Cognitive Dissonance (the Bible can’t be both pro and against the pursuit of wealth).

3. Slippery Slope fallacy
An interesting recent example of the Catholic Church’s attitude to material wellbeing comes from the Liberation Theology movement in Latin America during the 1970s/1980s. The motive power for this came from a core of brave Catholic priests, looking to improve the economic situation of their people in the face of huge disparities of wealth and power, under oppressive right-wing regimes. Their natural allies were left-wing parties. Led by Pope John Paul, the Church institution (allegedly) suppressed this movement, on the basis it would inevitably lead to atheistic left-wing governments, if successful. The Slippery Slope fallacy says that taking one step on a certain path will inevitably lead to a (worst-case) scenario. Better to support repressive right-wing regimes, nominally Church supporting.

Critical Thinking 1 - Argument Structures

Posted on behalf of Peter:

Critical Thinking provides a set of tools to assess the truth of arguments (argument = ‘attempt to persuade by reason’). Arguments that we need to analyse are everywhere: media commentators, financial advisors, business proposals – in fact anywhere where we need to decide if we should believe someone’s line of reasoning (including our own…).

Argument composition
An argument has one or more premises leading to a conclusion. Premise and conclusion are types of statement. Assessing an argument basically involves asking the following two questions. (1) Can I rely on the information used in the premises i.e. is it true, false, biased, complete etc. (2) Can I rely on the way the argument structure is used ?

Argument structures
There are two major types of argument: Deductive and Inductive. There is also a third type, Abductive, that tends to be used mostly in relation to scientific enquiry. Each major type has a set of associated thinking errors, or ‘fallacies’.

Deductive arguments
Deductive arguments deal in certainty. A ‘valid’ deductive argument is one where, if the premises are true, the conclusion must also be true. If the premises are in fact true then the argument is also ‘sound’. A deductive argument can be ‘invalid’ (even if the premises are true, the conclusion could be false) or ‘unsound’ (the premises are objectively false). An example of a valid, but unsound, argument would be: ‘All Greeks are green. Socrates was a Greek. Therefore Socrates was green’.

Inductive arguments
Inductive arguments are those seen most often in daily life, and are based more on probability / rational expectation than certainty. The equivalent of deductive validity is ‘inductive force’ (probability of conclusion being true greater than 0.5). The equivalent of deductive soundness is ‘inductive soundness’. An argument is inductively sound if its premise(s) are true and the structure is inductively forceful e.g.: ‘John rarely hands his homework in on time. Therefore it is likely to be late again tomorrow’.

Abductive arguments
Much scientific development is based on inductive reasoning i.e. if an experiment is testable and repeatable, then a general rule may be able to be built. However abductive reasoning is also used. Here, faced with an event or set of circumstances, a number of possible hypotheses are developed to explain the event. The most plausible explanation is then taken as a provisional explanation (subject to further testing).