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| 2021 publication,.It will remain relevant for a long time |
The Scottish philosopher David Hume, writing in the 1740s, completed the skeptical demolition of absolute certainty begun by Montaigne. In a tour de force of reasoning which stands unrefuted to this day, he showed that no prediction or causal attribution can ever be certain, even in principle; and that no invocation of miraculous or supernatural causes could ever be justified rationally, even in principle. If no naturalistic explanation can be true beyond any possibility of doubt, and if no supernatural explanation is within bounds, what basis for knowledge could there possibly be?
sng: Great question. Pursue the answer.
The new Bigs [tech giants] were more efficient at converting information into dollars than, say, a reputable statewide paper such as the Arizona Republic was in its heyday, and they could move content in quantities and at speeds which mocked traditional media. But with a crucial difference: they trafficked in information, not in knowledge, and in content rather than truth. They monetized eyeballs and clicks without pausing for reality checks, so that virality and profitability were a closed loop. The economic advantage of real news vaporized.
Anti-intellectualism, Richard Hofstadter wrote in his study of the subject, has been a defining American trait from the Puritan beginnings: “It made its way into our politics because it became associated with our passion for equality.”
sng: Anti-intellectualism & resentment of the educated elite have always been a part of the American experience, but in some periods, such as now, it's much worse. And, as Packer argues in his book, not without some justification.
The shining city on a hill was supposed to replace remote big government with a community of energetic and compassionate citizens, all engaged in a project of national renewal. But nothing held the city together. It was hollow at the center, a collection of individuals all wanting more. Free America measured civic health by gross domestic product. It saw Americans as entrepreneurs, employees, investors, taxpayers, and consumers—everything but citizens.
sng: See the MacIntosh quote following & compare.
Moral systems are the product of collective agreements enforced through social norms, peer pressure, and the expectations of the larger community. And the effectiveness of these cultural agreements depends on a communitarian ethos—a binding sense of solidarity that emphasizes the sacrifice of the self for the sake of the larger group.
sng: Cf. Packer above and, for instance, Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue) and William Ophuls.
Disagreements among sovereign states,” Kissinger starkly put it, “can be settled only by negotiation or by power,” and as for those whose instinctive preference in the Cold War was for the second he also said, “The nuclear age has changed both the significance and the role of power.”
sng: True in some measure, but a limited concept of "power." Cf. Hannah Arendt on power & James Hillman's Kinds of Power.
The earth’s resources are also being plundered because of short-sighted approaches to the economy, commerce and production. The loss of forests and woodlands entails the loss of species which may constitute extremely important resources in the future, not only for food but also for curing disease and other uses.
Puzzling as it sounds, conservatism’s ultimate reward for compromising with liberal democracy was domination of liberal democracy.
And the “chorus”—not so much public opinion as expert opinion—can fall victim to a different set of biases: the craving for certainty (randomized controlled trials, peer-reviewed papers), the habit of debunking any novel theory, or the sunk cost of being invested in “settled science,” not to mention the temptation to make countless false prophecies on opinion pages and talk shows.
sng: To wit, science is a human enterprise subject to all of our foibles & fallibilities.
Jung defines ‘consciousness’ in a much more specific and restrictive manner. For him, consciousness is a relatively small subset of phenomenality, defined on the basis of three key properties. The first we have already encountered when discussing the psyche proper: only mental states under the control of deliberate personal volition are conscious. But then Jung adds: because of its empirical freedom of choice, the will needs a supraordinate authority, something like a consciousness of itself … Volition presupposes a choosing subject who envisages different possibilities. (ONP: 110, emphasis added) This is an allusion to what modern psychology calls ‘meta-consciousness’ (Schooler 2002) or ‘self-reflection.
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