Eliminative Materialism and Bigoted Attitudes
A common theme in philosophy, especially in modern materialism, is the elimination of conventional concepts in favor of more precise scientific and empirical explanations. In Anglo-Analytic philosophy of mind, eliminative materialism became a popular explanation for the elimination of what were labeled “folk psychological concepts” , which included “propositional attitudes” or cognitive attitudes toward propositions, such as the *belief* or *intention* that P. The classic examples of folk psychological explanations being eliminated by empirical precision were so-called mythological explanations for natural phenomena, such as the elimination of the primitive explanation that the sea is angry when the waves are high. Ascribing a propositional attitude like anger to the sea led in turn to unproductive human behavior, like whipping the sea or committing more sacrifices. Eventually such explanations were eliminated with the development of modern physics and chemistry. We no longer need to deal with the sea in terms of propositional attitudes or even address the sea as a single, irreducible entity in itself, and thus we no longer need to whip the sea or sacrifice livestock to deal with rough chop.
Whether or not this is a correct philosophical approach to language and mind is not the focus of this post. Rather, I want to borrow the intuitive appeal of the angry sea example and employ it in an analogous investigation of modern political and moral language. From my perspective, modern political and moral discourse looks a lot like a primitive language that ascribes phenomena people don’t fully understand to mythological concepts. Such concepts prevent inquiry into the nature of the things they purport to describe and end up impoverishing political and moral discussions.
Bigoted Attitudes
In modern discourse, liberals use concepts that, depending upon context, can refer to mythological original causes, or be caused by and composed of other more simple forces. The set of concepts upon which I focus here is called “Bigoted Attitudes”, each unit of which usually, though not always, refers to a psychological state or belief that is both inherently bad and the cause of negative outcomes. The imprecision of these concepts has become most apparent in the last year through the crying wolf phenomena addressed by sane liberal commentators. A world in which everything is racist and x-phobic starts to feel a lot like a world in which everything is satanic and blasphemous, which is to say, it’s starting to feel like the world doesn’t match the descriptions conferred upon it by a declining elite.
On that note, here’s a shortlist of Bigoted Attitudes.
- racist
- white supremacist
- homophobe
- xenophobe
- misogynist
- hate
Note that two seem to represent a person who engages in a specific activity or harbors a set of beliefs (the first two -ists), two represent attempts to pathologize propositional attitudes (belief that immigration or homosexuality is bad is a phobia), and two represent overlapping concepts involving an emotion that can be wedded to a specific object (e.g., hate of women).
Everyone knows these terms, like the blasphemies and communists of yore, are invoked as “stop words”, incantations, or maledictions that seal off the possibility of deeper analysis. In order to get past these concepts and enrich our discourse, we need to understand why they’re so effective and be able to nullify their stop-word effects. Bigoted Attitudes are useful to modern elites because they prevent critical thought and serve a cynical political purpose by allowing moderns to easily identify political friends and enemies. For example, Clarence Thomas is an enemy because he’s a misogynist because he abused his secretary.
Eliminative Materialists pointed out that when science has sufficiently matured and you unpack something bundled under a folk psychological concept, you tend to find a host of different forces and elements at work. The sea wasn’t angry or even a homogeneous entity. Atmospheric pressure, tidal forces, and elemental interactions could explain dangerous waves better than ascribing an emotional state to the sea. Analogously, I believe that we’ve matured enough to move on from Bigoted Attitude explanations of historical phenomena. Just as a dying christian elite saw satanism and blasphemy everywhere, so a dying liberal elite now sees racisms and phobias everywhere. No one who uses the x-phobe terms is actually prepared to explain the pathology of x-phobia and its normative consequences. Very few who use the -ist terms are prepared to delve deeper into the causes of “racism” or “white supremacism” in a way that sheds light on our current socio-political environment. Without these explanations, it’s hard to share the modern intuition that these attitudes are inherently negative or accept them as meaningful explanations for what’s going on.
Back in 1994, Christopher Lasch observed that the “new racism” on college campuses was not at all like the old racism he fought during the Civil Rights movement. The new racism, he asserted, was more a reaction to academia constantly crying wolf about racism than it was an expression of the old, exclusive racism of southern elites and urban white ethnics. I’m not saying this is the explanation for 21st-century racism, by the way. What I want to suggest is that Lasch already understood that a deeper analysis was required to stay in touch with a world against which elites were revolting.
There exist today numerous scientific resources that would cause a reasonable individual to reconsider the proposition that all races are equal, that homosexuality is harmless, or that immigration is a phenomena that must only be addressed in emotive and moral terms like abortion. There exist today numerous economic and social forces that would cause a reasonable individual to recoil into white identity politics. Instead of prohibiting discussion of these issues and identifying anyone who does as a political enemy guilty of a Bigoted Attitude, it’s time to undertake a deeper analysis of contemporary political phenomena.
