Why Commitment to the Objective Truth is Important

Let's continue talking about laying the foundations for a culture and politics rooted in shared values. Last time, we talked about compassion. This time, I think we should talk about commitment to, and respect for, the objective truth. One reason why an extreme and toxic politics has proliferated on both the left and the right, is because of a lack of commitment to the objective truth across the board. Postmodernism, which has strongly influenced the Western left in recent times, openly rejects pursuing the objective truth, and sees speech, discourse and knowledge itself as fundamentally manifestations of oppressor vs oppressed power dynamics. There is clearly no room for respect of objective truth in this worldview. Meanwhile, the right is at least equally, if not even more, disrespectful of the objective truth, in its pursuit of power. In the past few years, the right has demonstrated a sickening level of 'will to power', never letting a crisis go wasted, trampling on both scientific and social truths in their attempt to create a politically advantageous narrative. Together, in slightly different but ultimately similar ways, the left and the right have buried our previously long-standing commitment to the objective truth, to the extent that people basically don't live in the same environment of objective facts anymore. This has made society and politics fundamentally dysfunctional, and is one of the biggest reasons for the polarization and tribalism we have right now.

Why is the objective truth important? It's because only when we know and acknowledge the objective truth can we begin to make fact-based decisions and take reality-based actions to improve things. Of course, knowing the objective truth is only the beginning. What decisions we make, and what actions we take, will also depend a lot on our values. Two people with different values can and will act differently even if they agree on the same set of objective facts. It is our values that make us want to rectify injustices where they exist, or resist tyranny in all its forms. If people with a different set of values were in charge during World War II, for example, they might not have had the will to stop fascism, even if they otherwise had the same facts available to them. They might have decided to make a peace deal with Hitler instead, not caring about how many people would suffer and die under his rule. Therefore, it is ultimately our values that determine our course of action. However, those values would only be able to be applied accurately if we know the objective truth, and know it accurately, in the first place. Knowledge of, and agreement with, the objective truth also forms a fair basis on which we might judge the ideas being sold to us in the marketplace of ideas. I think a major reason why some ideologies wantonly distort and obscure the objective truth is because they want to distort the marketplace of ideas. It's really about forcing their ideas down our throats, when a fair appraisal of such ideas would always lead to their rejection.

Postmodernism and New Left critical theory clearly have a problem with the objective truth. Their view that knowledge and discourse is fundamentally and inevitably shaped by power dynamics is incompatible with a commitment to freely pursue the objective truth, both in theory and in practice. In theory, such a worldview necessarily leads to the selective censorship of ideas, as argued by Herbert Marcuse in his Repressive Tolerance essay. In practice, this worldview has led to the phenomenon of cancel culture, and has clearly made many people afraid of speaking their mind. Some people have asked me, what if they acknowledge there is some truth in what postmodernism is saying, while not following it to its logical conclusion, is that OK? I think the important thing here is whether you are critiquing power dyanamics for distorting the marketplace of ideas, or dismissing the validity and necessity of the marketplace of ideas altogether. Far too often, the postmodern project is clearly of the latter worldview. It is clear that most adherents of postmodernism are not out to critique power dynamics so that the marketplace of ideas can be even freer. If that were the case, we wouldn't have cancel culture, so-called 'progressive stack' speaking systems, and the ostracization of people who don't toe the party line in many leftist spaces. The problem with the postmodernism-influenced left is that they don't trust the marketplace of ideas to arrive at the best understanding of the objective truth, and that the application of our long-standing values to the objective truth will result in fairer and more just outcomes in society. Old school liberals and progressives have long trusted this process, but postmodern critical theory ideology has destroyed that trust, to our collective detriment.

While members of the political right have enjoyed criticizing the left's lack of commitment to the objective truth and the scientific method, as if they hold the moral high ground here, there is actually a similar crisis happening on the right as well. For at least a generation now, the right has had a strong distrust of expert scientific opinion in many areas, simply because such opinion is usually not in line with the right's increasingly reactionary ideology. From the fact that LGBT people are 'born this way', to the rejection of 'intelligent design' in favor of evolution, to the strong evidence in favor of man-made climate change, scientific facts derived from empirical observation and the scientific method have been a thorn in the side of right-wing politics since at least a generation ago. Therefore, the right has indeed been anti-science for even longer than the left. This attitude informs the anti-academic stance of ideologies like neoreactionism, which has become more and more influential on the right in recent years, after fully breaking into the mainstream at the time of the pandemic. The post-pandemic right is essentially post-truth, and this is really not an exaggeration. Just look at how Trump and his allies have campaigned and governed. From spreading fake news about immigrant communities, to the drastic cuts to the funding of scientific research, the right is really waging war on science and truth right now.

Given that both the left and the right, as they exist right now in the 2020s Western political landscape, have substantial problems with respecting the objective truth, I believe that those of us who remain committed to the free and unbiased discovery of the objective truth must remain independent of the dominant political discourse of both the left-wing and right-wing echo chambers. In an age where partisan politics has been fundamentally corrupted by anti-truth forces, independent thinking is the key to restoring the truth.
 

The Post-Woke Case for Bringing Science and Philosophy Back Together | TER Post Woke

The Divorce Between Science and Philosophy is Causing the West to Lose Its Mind

Welcome to TaraElla Report Post Woke, where we consciously aim to move beyond the woke vs anti-woke culture wars, and towards a post-woke model of culture and politics.

Today, I want to talk about an overlooked reason for the woke vs anti-woke mess we are in: the historical divorce between science and philosophy. Historically, philosophy preceded science, but included it. That is, before science existed as an independent area of study, it was included under philosophy, in the Western tradition. Much of what we now think of as the scientific method originated within philosophy. However, science, mathematics, and several other disciplines eventually separated out from philosophy, so that by the 20th century, philosophy basically no longer included many areas of study that have a strong empirical basis, or have a strong emphasis on objectivity or logic. This is what I would call 'post-science philosophy'.

Post-science philosophy's exclusion of science naturally meant that it developed further and further away from empiricism, objectivity, and logic. Throughout the 20th century, some parts of philosophy also came under the influence of politically motivated thinking, like critical theory, postmodernism, and Marcuse's pseudo-Freudian view of psychology. Eventually, those parts of philosophy became irreconcilable with objective reality, and incompatible with what the science actually says. Yet, the fact that philosophy preceded science seems to have given supporters of these philosophies justification to dismiss scientific facts that disagree with their worldview. This is why, when you try to get them to acknowledge certain scientific facts, they might tell you to read some Foucault! As many of you would know by now, the point of bringing up Foucault in this context is that knowledge is constructed by power, and is in the service of the oppressors against the oppressed. Hence those raising objective fact not only need to be dismissed, they need to be resisted as agents of the oppressive system. This is the point of view much of the philosophy underpinning so-called woke thinking is coming from, and this explains why it has such a resistance to open debate and acknowledging objective facts.

As I have said before, the anti-woke movement has evolved to become just the opposite of woke, and that is a very bad thing. Like some people might say, the whole point of that movement seems to be just to 'trigger the woke'. Logically, this would mean that the anti-woke is merely a mirror image of the woke, and therefore inherits many of its faults. Hence, it is unsurprising that the anti-woke is similarly anti-science. Especially in the past year, it has become more and more common for the anti-woke to be dismissive towards, or even assign ulterior motives to, those who hold scientific educational credentials. This is basically the same 'power bad, so experts bad' attitude that is found on the postmodern Left, even if it targets different kinds of experts. It is just as anti-objective and anti-intellectual. [ For an example of how unscientific the anti-woke Right has become, just look at Matt Walsh's recent documentary 'What Is A Woman'. There is no sincere, in-depth exploration of genetics, biology, neuroscience or evolutionary psychology. It is all about reinforcing a certain black-and-white view of gender that is not well justified objectively. ] Therefore, in a way, it has the same 'philosophy overrides science' attitude that is at the root of the postmodern Left's thinking. If we let this trend continue, the West will eventually become a place where science is shunned, and subjective, tribalist philosophy that provides different 'truths' to different people will become the new normal. The post-woke aim should be to stop us from going down that road.

To fix this mess, I think we need to actively work to heal the divorce between philosophy and science. As I have suggested before, the solution of encouraging multi-disciplinary intellectuals, who are trained in three or more very different disciplines at the postgraduate level, can be a first step. Such intellectuals will help bridge the gaps between the very specialized disciplines, and reduce the echo chamber effect that ultra-specialization has caused. In the longer term, I also think that a more empirical and quantitative perspective needs to be re-introduced into philosophy. The supporters of this perspective need to be unafraid to challenge the currently established views, and be committed to providing a truly objective alternative.

The REAL Antidote to Critical Theory: Consensus Theory and Empiricism | TPWR by TaraElla S9

Today, I want to talk about the conflict problem critical theory is creating, and the natural antidote to that problem. As you would probably have heard of by now, various social justice movements that draw heavily on various critical theories, including most famously critical race theory and gender critical theory, have caused a heightened sense of conflict across Western society in recent years, leading to an increase in zero-sum us vs them thinking. Many of us believe this is a negative development, and are trying to counter it. However, as I have described in the past, many people are essentially taking a 'fight negativity with negativity' approach, criticizing criticalism without offering much of an alternative positive solution, and that doesn't appear to be working.

To see what works, I think we should look at, what could be the opposite of criticalism. The various critical theories are grouped under the umbrella of 'conflict theory' in Western academic sociology. The opposite of 'conflict theory' is called 'consensus theory'. So there you have it: consensus theory is literally the opposite of criticalism. While conflict theory has dominated Western academic sociology in the past few decades, consensus theory was in fact the more dominant force before the 1960s. I think it's time we revived the practice of consensus theory. I don't mean to say that conflict theory has nothing to offer us. But what we have in Western sociology right now is a heavy imbalance, a very heavy tilt towards conflict theory, and this is making society sick. To cure society, we need to restore the balance. Conflict theory criticizes the current state of society, while consensus theory examines why things work when they work well, and what makes them work well. Conflict theory is good at finding fault, while consensus theory is good at appreciation. I certainly think the 21st century West could do well with a bit less finding fault and a bit more appreciation.

There are many forms of consensus theory, but the most famous and influential school of consensus theory has to be Talcott Parsons's functionalism. Indeed, back in the post-war era, sociology and Parsonian functionalism were almost synonymous. Parsonian functionalism examines society using a functional lens. It is based on the idea that society needs to fulfill certain functions, namely adaptation, goal attainment, integration, and pattern maintenance. Parsons showed how institutions like families were important systems that allow society to fulfill these functions. Although Parson's analysis of the family was criticized for being too focused on the typical middle class nuclear family, I think we can apply a similar analysis to the diverse family types we have today, and still come away with a similar conclusion about the importance of the family to society. The thing I like most about functionalism is how it understands that every society needs to fulfill certain functions, how complex systems are required to make it all work, and how important it is to appreciate things when they work well.

So why did functionalism cease to be influential? Part of it was a deliberate attempt by those with certain political agenda to discredit it. Part of it was that Parsons's ideas were perhaps too America-centric, and also too centered on 1950s middle class America. This needs to be addressed, and can certainly be addressed. However, perhaps the most important criticism was that it was not empirical enough. That is, it was not evidence-based enough, it was not rooted enough in the reality of society, and the real lived experiences of people. As someone with a science-related background, I certainly believe that everything has to be evidence-based to be valid. As I've said before, just like how we expect doctors to practice evidence-based medicine, we should demand that those in disciplines that aim to influence our social sphere, disciplines like sociology and philosophy, be as evidence-based as possible. And I believe we can certainly fix functionalism and update it for our current context with a good dose of empiricism.

There has also been a movement called neofunctionalism that aims to revive the framework of functionalism whilst fixing its faults. However, I have mixed feelings about neofunctionalism because it aims too far to incorporate other schools of thought, including conflict theory, which ultimately helps the tilt towards conflict theory. Instead, I believe we should keep functionalism firmly rooted in consensus theory, so that it can provide a contrast to conflict theory. I believe that conflict is certainly not the only way to change our society to be more just and humane. Having a good appreciation of how things work when they work well, also gives an insight as to what is needed to build good families and societies, and we can demand that these ingredients be available to everyone, regardless of their race or socio-economic class.

How to End Racism Without Critical Race Theory | TPWR by TaraElla S9

Today, I want to talk about how we can effectively deal with racism, how we can effectively end racism, without drawing upon critical race theory. With the recent controversy surrounding critical race theory, those in support of that theory have often painted those of us who don't support it as not being serious about racism. However, as I have said multiple times in the past, CRT, as with critical theory in general, has multiple fundamental assumptions about the world, which may end up being counterproductive. Among these are the tendency to see power and oppression everywhere, a hostility towards traditional things, an emphasis on systemic racism over individual moral responsibility, and skepticism towards free speech. Later in the video I will go over why these are counterproductive tendencies. But let's start with how we can address racism without CRT.

The main problem with CRT, and much of critical theory thinking, is that it is not very evidence-based. Indeed, criticalism and postmodernism, the main influences behind CRT, have an inherent bias against the philosophy of empiricism, which has contributed greatly to the scientific method. Empiricism emphasizes obtaining knowledge about the world through observation, and it is essentially what keeps science evidence-based. Therefore, if we want a sound approach to tackling racism, we need one that is based in empiricism and evidence. I mean, you would expect that your doctor practice evidence-based medicine, right? In a similar way, I believe we should demand that anyone giving supposed solutions to treat societal problems be as evidence-based as possible.

If you study the history of critical theory, you will know that it is heavily influenced by the old-school psychoanalysis of Freud, and perhaps others like Lacan. That's why all forms of critical theory, including critical race theory, put so much emphasis on unconscious thoughts and beliefs. The problem with the Freudian influence is, old-school psychoanalysis was very much not evidence-based. It is therefore considered questionable in modern psychology.

Instead, we may want to draw on a more modern approach to psychology, one that has a much more empirical, evidence-based, and hence scientifically sound, approach. And from modern psychology, particularly from cognitive psychology and cognitive science, we know that our brains are prone to particular cognitive biases. That is, we are all prone to seeing things in biased ways, due to the ways our brains are programmed. This programming is actually often an evolutionarily adaptive mechanism to help us think faster, especially when living in the jungle, but in the context of modern human societies, it can lead to social biases and discrimination. Therefore, we should recognize what these biases are, and hopefully it will lead to everyone treating everyone in a fairer way. Note that there is no division of people into 'the oppressors' and 'the oppressed' here. Every human being suffers from cognitive bias, and it is our individual responsibility to prevent it from affecting our judgement about other people, regardless of race.

The cognitive biases I'm talking about are many, and they can often interact with each other too. I think some of the most important biases relevant to a discussion about racism include priming, substitution bias, the mere-exposure or familiarity effect, in-group favoritism, and the out-group homogeneity effect. These effects cause people to prefer the familiar over the less familiar, prefer people they perceive to be in-group over those out-group, and apply stereotypes to those they are less familiar with.

Indeed, the cognitive biases I'm talking about can be used to show that critical race theory itself is biased. CRT amplifies our inherent cognitive biases because it encourages us to see racism everywhere, and because it reinforces the idea that racism is everywhere. And from what we know about cognitive biases like congruence bias, confirmation bias, the framing effect, and the bizarreness effect, this can certainly lead us to seeing racism where there is none. And this is not helpful for anyone.

In conclusion, a cognitive based view of racism and discrimination in general demands an active approach towards ending racism, that requires equal commitment from everyone of us, regardless of race. It is much better than critical race theory, because it is evidence-based, it can improve things in a practical way without over-philosophizing the problem, and it can be practiced and applied regardless of anyone's race, which makes it much less divisive, and hence more acceptable to many people.