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Off Piste: Reality check
24 April 2008
In the first in a series in which academics range beyond their area of expertise, philosopher Simon Blackburn proffers his top ten modern myths
Every week, Times Higher Education receives hundreds of non-fiction books from publishers for possible review. Over the years, more of them have been written by non-academics, particularly journalists. Most are perfectly well written and some are even thoroughly researched. None lacks confidence. Few areas of intellectual endeavour, with the possible exception of the hard sciences at their hardest, are deemed too challenging for the gifted amateur to attempt.
Conversely, as non-academics fearlessly explain the cosmos, Islam and Napoleon's love life, academics range ever less widely. The reasons for this are understandable - the nature of doctorates, the restrictions of the research assessment exercise, the comparative ease of mastering a narrow field, the arched eyebrow of the specialist contemplating the interloper, the modesty of an expert who measures his or her worth by the unknown mountain still to be scaled rather than the molehill already climbed.
But academics and the rest of us are losing out from this natural reluctance to claim insight beyond the familiar. University scholars have a methodological soundness that is often lacking in their off-campus peers and is certainly foreign to Fleet Street's finest. They have the chance to rub shoulders with other disciplines and modes of thought as few others do, most wear their learning lightly and many, it is rumoured, can write. In a perhaps reckless attempt to swim against the tide, we are starting a new fortnightly series, "Off-piste". The rules are simple - academics can write on any subject as long as it is not higher education or their principal research interest. We might balk at recipes and football chants in Latin but as long as the author writes with intellectual passion, any subject will be considered.
Simon Blackburn is the first to take the plunge ...
— Gerard Kelly, editor, Times Higher Education.
1. The myth of meaning
People think words mean things and that they know what they mean. Both claims are often untrue. When the Government of the day talks of change, reform, choice, progress, the social contract, radical new initiatives, going forward, transparency, accountability and the like, they mean nothing. But people are expected not to realise that, and even cynics may not realise it fully. George Berkeley said: "I entreat the reader to reflect with himself, and see if it doth not often happen, either in hearing or reading a discourse, that the passions of fear, love, hatred, admiration, disdain, and the like, arise immediately in his mind upon the perception of certain words, without any ideas coming between." The whole art of politics, just as much as the art of management (qv), or of teaching subjects such as divinity or French theory, depends on this being true. But it is wrong and unkind to think that the people who use these words realise that they mean nothing. They are as much victims of the illusion as their audience. The test of whether someone is talking like this is whether you can imagine successful action based specifically on what they say. When we cannot, Berkeley's process is under way.
2. The myth of religious belief
This is delicate ground because lots of people believe themselves to have religious belief, and some can even get quite huffy about it. But David Hume, who was usually right about these things, said that nature "suffers not the obscure, glimmering light, afforded in those shadowy regions, to equal the strong impressions, made by common sense and by experience. The usual course of men's conduct belies their words, and shows that their assent in these matters is some unaccountable operation of the mind between disbelief and conviction, but approaching much nearer to the former than to the latter."
People say they believe in life after death but still grieve when people die. Christians try to get rich and Muslims gamble. The state of mind here is unaccountable in the same way as that of the child who pretends that the tree stump is a bear and then becomes genuinely frightened of it, while knowing all the time that it is a tree stump. Like the child's game, the grown-up one deserves no special respect, but provided it keeps away from the serious side of life it can remain harmless enough. Unfortunately, it is apt to break out, giving bearded men in skirts an amplifier with which to spread one or another arbitrary set of attitudes and demands.
3. The myth of British values
This holds that there is a special system of British values, of 24-carat export quality. This often coincides with the myth of religious belief. Fair play is supposed to be an essentially British value, although our school bullying is the worst in any country with indoor plumbing. Of course, even the British have values in a fairly thin sense: our first toddle into the social world tells us that when people call us lazy, cowardly, indecisive, mean, bitter, foolish and dishonest they are not speaking well of us; conversely, we blush with pleasure to be described as kind, fair, open and generous.
Beyond that, talk of values is mainly a catalyst for becoming really, really angry and indignant, and is one of life's great pleasures. An absolutely unspeakable variant of this myth is talk of shared values, declaimed by politicians while they entertain dignitaries from, say, Saudi Arabia or Russia, China or Africa, and oddly supposed not to refer to obvious examples, such as a mutual liking for propaganda, deceit, power, war and bribery.
4. The myth of the scientist
This claims that there is an expertise, science, and that people who are good at it deserve a lot of attention. This is almost wholly false. There is no such thing as a scientist, and it is a shame that William Whewell, a rather patchy philosopher (although a Cambridge man), invented the term. There are only biologists, chemists, physicists, mathematicians and so on. These may be very bright people, but the moment one of them steps a millimetre or two outside their special area of expertise, they are no better than the rest of us.
Problems such as foot-and-mouth disease, global temperatures and badgers, to name but three, need different baskets of expertises, if indeed there are any to be had. A fortiori, there should be no such thing as The Government Scientist. A version of this myth is that something called science is a self-propelled self-governing activity of special virtue, dedicated solely to truth. This ignores the huge proportion of physical scientists who work for the misnamed Ministry of Defence, and the biological scientists who work for big pharma, trying to get around the patents on drugs that do little for the disease burden of the world but that can be sold to the rich. Scientists have one catch-all answer when confronted with such unfortunate facts, which is to claim that the critic must be some kind of relativist. This is a Berkeleian term: nobody knows what it means, but everybody knows it is bad.
5. The myth of management
This claims that people can be managed like warehouses and airports, and that some other people are especially good at it. This is entirely wrong, although it has spread over the UK like the grey goo that some fear nanotechnology would unleash (manotechnology, perhaps, and just as lethal). People can be persuaded, and ordered, given incentives and penalties, suppressed and killed, but not managed. Human affairs can be administered, but administration is not management. One administers to people and their needs. One tries to manage them by ignoring whichever of their needs is inconvenient and by treating them as a mere means to your own ends. But, mirabile dictu, people treated like that become irritable and subversive and quite quickly unmanageable.
Marxists and Hegelians would say that management thus contains its own contradiction, or deconstructs itself, although this is disguised by free use of the myth of meaning (qv). The usual response is to hire more managers to manage the mess, and more layers of managers to oversee the managers. The criminal justice system is a wholly ineffective attempt at managing people. An extreme kind of manager is called a consultant, whose claim to expertise is that he costs more. There are, however, three good reasons for employing consultants: it passes the buck; it is public money; and it is easy to justify such expenditure to auditors, who lunch with consultants and are interchangeable with them.
6. The myth of democracy
Politicians preaching democracy as a value forget the two things wrong with democracy: the "demos" bit and the "cracy" bit or, in other words, the people and the system whereby they are supposed to govern themselves. By and large, even in systems with advanced educational resources, the people cannot do better than take their news and opinions from the likes of Rupert Murdoch (and according to Nick Davies's Flat Earth News, the British Government employs some 1,500 press officers whose job it is to manipulate the people). This is when things are going well. When they are not going well people naturally suppose that disagreement deserves death. It is tempting to think that the only solution is the Hobbesian sovereign with his monopoly of power, but as John Locke said: "This is to think that men are so foolish that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by polecats or foxes, but are content, nay, think it safety, to be devoured by lions."
For Icelanders, Scandinavians and Europeans, with our long parliamentary traditions, democracy may be the least bad system of government, but it is a long way from being any use elsewhere.
7. The myth of culture
As it occurs in phrases such as multiculturalism, working-class culture and the like, this is the myth that there is a definite, admirable, rooted traditional way of being, and that it must be valued and cosseted and, above all, respected. All this is poppycock. Tempores mutant et nos mutamus in illis - the times change and we change with them. Nostalgia for the days before some change or other is usually fake and always embarrassing, like folk dancing or trying to preserve the Irish language.
What is usually known as culture is a set of symbols enabling people on the inside to recognise and dislike those on the outside. British culture is obviously an oxymoron, a label for the most uncultured pursuit imaginable, such as reading the Daily Mail, getting drunk and loudly voicing contempt for anything that smacks of culture. Multiculturalism, on the other hand, usually indicates a craven willingness to be polite when some of the population ship their daughters into forced marriage or get their brothers to murder them if they resist.
Alongside the myth of culture go myths of history, nationhood and tradition. (See also myth of religious belief.)
8. The myth of equal respect
The belief that everyone deserves equal respect and that anything else is discriminatory and elitist. The truth is the exact opposite: discrimination is a virtuous activity and elites are to be admired. The very few human beings who are good at anything, whether football or playing the violin or writing or painting, form an elite and deserve respect for their excellence. Other people either deserve sympathy for trying and failing, or should be ignored if they have not even tried.
Respect is not the same as toleration. I am lucky if my neighbours tolerate my singing when in the garden, but they would have to be tone deaf to respect it, and if they did then of course they in turn would forfeit my respect as music critics.
There are people whose chosen lifestyle disqualifies them from any respect at all, such as celebrities, although a more charitable view is that they deserve respect for the amount of publicity they can bestow, which is why they get into nightclubs and Downing Street. Religionists know in their hearts that they are always teetering on the edge of being ridiculous, and are therefore nervous about respect and constantly insist on it.
9. The myth of choice and competition
This is the idea that people are better off, more free, more liberated, if they can choose which of two equally toxic hospitals they can use, instead of being offered just one good one. The myth of competition supposes that because consumers will prefer the less toxic hospital, the managements (qv) will have no option but to get into a benign arms race of detoxifying their beds and wards. This ignores the fact that the easier and cheaper option will be to detoxify any unfortunate public relations coming out of the wards: manipulate the press release, discredit the ungrateful dead, plant sentimental stories of success, rubbish the critics, skew the statistics. After all, this is what press officers are for.
10. The myth of the public service ethos
The idea that sometimes people will do something because it is the right thing to do, not because it affords them any advantage. This was once true, but constant repetition by politicians and economists that it is a myth has successfully made it one.
Simon Blackburn is professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge.
On 8 May: Geoffrey Alderman on the intellectual stupidity of punishing athletes for taking "banned substances".
Readers' comments
"People think words mean things and that they know what they mean. Both claims are often untrue" (myth 1). I'd replace "often" by "always". The word "meaning" is just a useful shorthand way of referring to what happens when people perceive words. Meaning is not something that already exists along with words. And certainly it is not something possessed by words. In other words, words haven't got meanings, that is to say, they don't mean anything in themselves.
The expression of such views has been known to lead to death by hemlock poisoning of the expresser. It would be safer to be quiet and leave the press officers, spin doctors, advertising agencies, lobbyists, and so on, to get on with their work.
<p>"9. The myth of choice and competition" <p>Myth 9 indicates quite ably that myth 4 applies to some extent to philosophers as well as scientists. The concepts of "choice and competition" often fall foul of the myth of meaning and the myth of management, it must be acknowledged, but they are not myths in themselves because there is evidence that it works. <p>Competition, when it works, is what has ensured that everyone in the UK has decent access to food (a problem that is still a problem outside of market economies), and ensured that everyone has a "good, local optician". Myths don't usually feed people or cure their poor sight effectively. For sure, health care has some features that make it difficult to integrate into a competitive market system, but that doesn't make those who advocate it myth-mongers, just the politicians who pretend they are implementing it.
"These may be very bright people, but the moment one of them steps a millimetre or two outside their special area of expertise, they are no better than the rest of us." <p>The same could be said of philosophers. In fact, one could say that there is no such thing as a philosopher. Discuss.
On scientists: 'These may be very bright people, but the moment one of them steps a millimetre or two outside their special area of expertise, they are no better than the rest of us.' <p>Rather like philosophers talking 'off-piste'?
This is juvenile stuff. We were spouting it in student unions back in the 1970s. It is false in virtually every respect and Blackburn should be ashamed of publishing such puerile, childish rubbish - in fact, a bright child wouldn't give such stupid views houseroom. Or are we really to believe that everyone else in public life is thoroughly wicked except for Blackburn, the enlightened one?
This is absolutely laughable. I thought old/professional media was supposed to be beyond this sort of unreferenced blaggish rant? And this is only one in a series of the more of the same?
What half-baked nonsense! Any one of his points (and all of them) are demonstrably untrue on any level you want to look at them. Numbers 4 and 8 are especially weak for a professor of philosophy to be spouting. Science is not always some siloed-up undertaking; broad knowledge is often rewarded in the lab. As far as personal respect, I feel pity for someone with his attitude. What a drab and second-rate place the world must seem to him!
Maybe I should be a little more direct than I was in my previous comment, and state that what we have here is philosophy turned misanthropy. Needless to say I’m unimpressed with this display of intellectual petulance, and do hope that the THES is not attempting to create its own version of the Guardian's Comment is Free.
It is particularly bizarre, in myth 4, that the author should berate the notion of anyone in science having any meaningful authority outside of their professional microspecialty, whilst throwing around poorly thought-out generalities himself. <p>"In the first in a series in which academics range beyond their area of expertise."
"People think words mean things and that they know what they mean. Both claims are often untrue." <p>Then why did you bother writing this? <p>Why did I read it? <p>And why on earth am I writing back? <p>For all I know, our words merely signify a disagreement about the proper condiments for a roast beef sandwich.
<p>Cool. The only reason that there is so much Col. Blimpish harrumphing ("half-baked nonsense", by gad!) is that it's all absolutely true. Religion stinks, people are stupid, the smart 10% are better in every way than the rest of humanity, and so forth. <p>Touché, Mr. Blackburn.
I fear those leaving negative comments may have misjudged some of the intentions of the piece. <p>For example, Ben Goldacre (big fan, by the way): Prof. Blackburn isn't attacking the idea that scientists can make a valuable contribution to public discourse, but rather the notion that somehow the contribution they make is sacrosanct or specially privileged by virtue of them being scientists. That is to say, he's taking aim at a more attenuated form of the fallacy of appealing to authority which appears to have snuck into public discourse by the back door. Of course scientists can have meaningful authority outside their specialty, but they need to be expected to present the same clarity and rigor of argument as though they were a non-specialist. It does no good to fall back upon 'well, they must know what they're talking about, after all they're a /scientist/'. The target isn't the Richard Feynmans of the world but rather the retired physicists doing 'bold work' on the relationship between quantum physics and consciousness. <p>Nick Cowen: The claim is not that competitive forces never work, but rather that they don't necessarily always work and that justifications of some policy or other being good simply by virtue of the fact they might 'bring market forces to bear on the problem' are misguided. The question is how best to promote the public good the policy aims to promote and 'the market' or 'competitive forces' aren't always the optimal solution. As Blackburn points out, one of the key problems is that while utilizing market forces might seem to increase public sector expenses on paper as we've seen recently it often just leads to inefficiency as people in the middle try to game the system meaning one either needs to 1) acquiesce to the waste this causes or 2) introduce a new level of bureaucracy to counteract the exploitation which itself costs money to run. You don't have to posit malice on the part of policy makers to say that if you view the system at a few steps removed it looks like it's founded upon an error and the most likely candidate is the conviction that market forces will always lead to an increase in efficiency. <p>Overall, I might have to go with Michael Cowling and say that by insulting in a single piece the religious, the scientistic, the non-elite and the politically invested Prof. Blackburn has failed to emulate Hume's meticulous caution in setting forth his arguments. On the bright side there are no public executions for blasphemy these days and few lynch mobs so I guess a few insulting comments on the internet are the worst he has to concern himself with by way of reprisals. I'll simply note it down as proof that his much loved aphorism 'Write not so that you can be understood, but so that you cannot be misunderstood' might be harder to live up to than seems at first glance, and feel better by consequence about the more obscure passages in my tripos essays. <p>My best to all, <br>Duncan.
the myth that philosophers are interesting
"2. The myth of religious belief....their assent in these matters is some unaccountable operation of the mind....Like the child's game, the grown-up one deserves no special respect" <p>Either there is a God or there isn't, and we only need to align ourselves with a view that reasonably establishes itself. This article is wrong where it implies that there is no evidence for God; that belief is only irrational, wishful thinking. <p>Do you want a tangible artifact that demonstrates God's reality? The Book of Mormon is compelling, concrete evidence for God, from God. If analysis shows that it was written in 19th century America, then Mormonism is a fraud; but, if the facts show that it did originate in ancient Mesoamerica, then, since Joseph Smith was able to find and translate it, (and that could only be done with divine inspiration) God must be real. <p>With the outcome so possibly definitive, I'd invite all with an interest in the subject to study it carefully. The many solid facts that demonstrate the literal, historical veracity of the Book of Mormon may be found at www.MormonEvidence.com. <p>Some of the most striking items include: its frequent use of non-bibilical Hebrew grammar and poetry that weren't discovered until after Joseph Smith died; its dozens of legitimate Hebrew and Egyptian root words; its accurate descriptions of Arabian trade routes, burial sites, and oasis areas, which were all unknown to any Westerners in the 19th century; the sobering life stories of the eleven witnesses who saw the plates; and the deep profundity, complexity, and consistency of a 600-page text itself, which was dictated in about two months without any reviewing or editing. And this is just the tip of the iceberg! <p>The Book of Mormon, and God, cannot be dismissed until this evidence is analyzed and accounted for. Do all the research and conclude, as many intelligent people have, that belief in God is logical.
To those commentors who took this piece to be dead serious, I figure you missed the point. If we can't laugh at ourselves and the situation which we as a species are wholly responsible for, then life becomes pointless. <p>That said, I must comment with words intended to convey meaning. Myth 3 applies equally to us Americans, with the addition of the concepts of liberty, freedom, and justice for all, which we seem to think we hold the patent on. Trouble is, we seem to be treating these as mere words, taking care to strip away any semblance of meaning when attempting to use these words as descriptors of American foreign policy, or even with regard to actual human interactions on the domestic front. Of course, the fact that both our adversaries and our administration are laboring under the myth of religion (#2) doesn't help matters much. <p>Actually, as I think about it, this package of myths functions as a synergetic whole, helping to explain the worst and most illogical of human behavior, as long as one doesn't take human behavior too seriously. We are, in the final determination, all bozos on this bus. <p>All for now, Doug
As a scientist, I have to agree with Mr Blackburn's assertion that the vast majority of scientists have no exceptional scientific expertise outside their particular speciality. But that does not mean that someone with scientific training in, say, optics, is not better qualified to discuss, say, global warming, than an Al Gore. The abillty to think clearly in sound scientific terms is always valuable.
Good clear thinking, nice to find an island of thought free of bullshit once in a while.
11. The myth of the philosopher <p>This claims that there is an expertise, philosophy, and that people who are good at it deserve a lot of attention. This is almost wholly false. There is no such thing as a philosopher, and it is a shame that the Greeks invented the term. There are only logicians, rhetoricians, historians of thought and so on. These may be very bright people, but the moment one of them steps a millimetre or two outside their special area of expertise, they are no better than the rest of us.
Rather sophomoric -- "wise fool" -- wasn't this?
You forgot #11: The myth that anything an educated person prefers to look down on must be a "myth".
I see many comments here which completely FAIL to understand the concious irony of a specialist in one area of human knowledge, when writing the first article in a series about specialists discoursing outside their chosen areas, states that anyone discoursing outside their chosen area is to be given no more attention than anyone else doing the same thing. <p>You're all trying to point this out to the author! Why? He knew it when he wrote it! You have utterly, completely, missed the point! <p>I despair. <p>Oh, and bravo Professor Blackburn.
Misanthropy comes when a man with no knowledge or skill has placed great trust in someone, believing him to be altogether truthful sound and trustworthy and a short time afterwards, finds him to be wicked and unreliable. Then this happens in another case. When one has frequently had this experience, especially with those whom one believed were ones closest friend, in the end, after many such blows, one comes to hate all men and believe that no one is sound, at all. <p>This is a shameful state of affairs and obviously due to an attempt to have human relations without any skill in human affairs. Such skill would lead one to believe what is in fact true, that the very good and the very bad are both quite rare and most men are between those extremes. <br>... <br>but arguments are not like men in this particular. The similarity lies rather in this. It is as when one who lacks skill in agruments has put his trust in an argument, believing it true and a short time afterward he believes it false, and so with another argument and another. <p>--Phaedo, Plato <p>We should not blame words or arguments for our lack of skill in their use.
'For Icelanders, Scandinavians and Europeans, with our long parliamentary traditions, democracy may be the least bad system of government, but it is a long way from being any use elsewhere.' <p>I don't know about those cod-eating Icelanders but in some quarters Scandanavians are actually considered to be Europeans but presumably Mr. Blackburn knows better. <p>The suggestion seems to be that Europeans are somehow fit for democracy but the rest of the world isn't. This sounds rather racist. In most European countries the parlimentary traditions are not particularly longstanding, no more than a century or two. So you don't have to go very far back to find a time when democracy as we understand it now in Europe was a brand new idea. If the idea of democracy could stick in Europe, there's no reason why it couldn't stick anywhere else.
Cor, Simon's spot-on points have obviously touched some raw nerves. In particular, a chemist's criticism of a biology paper will depend on the chemist's generalist ability, if any, to detect bullshit and evasion, not on any mythical expertise as a 'scientist'. Likewise, Simon's evisceration of these myths depends on clear thinking, not ideas from any philosophy. And I loved "Huston"'s satire on religionists' apologetics, in the comments.
"People say they believe in life after death but still grieve when people die." <p>Well, of course they do - but it is the promise of an afterlife that helps many religious people work through the grieving process and to find solace and peace. When an atheist grieves, well, what solace is there? When an innocent person is murdered - without faith, there is no hope. <p>Religion is not in denial that despair, sadness, anger, hate, and hopelessness exist, nor that they are natural human emotions. It is through faith in God that we may find hope to overcome despair.
I don't understand the hostility this article has generated. Simon Blackburn seems broadly on the money to me. More to the point, many of his critics seem to be responding to straw-man versions of his arguments. I second Duncan Crowe's admirable elucidation.
This is a depressing display. In my short career following college, I have never regretted the decision not to become a professor of philosophy. It'd be like imprisoning myself with the idiots in my sophomore year college dormitory, forever. Thank you Mr. Blackburn for the refreshment.
He forgot the "Myth of Myth", which ought to have been placed right after the Myth of Culture, perhaps in replacement of the nihilist "Myth of Meaning" one, which doesn't make sense anyway unless you're a disappointed Platonist. <p>The Myth of Myths is the myth that results when you regard meaning as myth, but not myth as meaning. The mistake being demonstrated here is currently being given a body by the evolutionists (not "scientists"!). Culture shapes bodies in the long run. But academics, who have "seen through" culture will not be the ones shaping the bodies of future people, it will be the chattering classes -- those people who understand all too well why no one wants to read the books written by academics.
An interesting piece. Unfortunately the author has inadvertently declared his own piece of writing a myth by claiming to know the truth about such varied fields as science, religion, market economy, culture, democracy,.... It does not take a philosopher to figure that no single individual can speak authoritatively on all these, let alone identify myths in these fields. What is said in the article about all these fields can be said about virtually any abstract concept in the world. There is nothing that is perfect. Every concrete evidence will fall off the mark. Every field of study is a myth because what falls under a field is arbitrarily decided and broadly defined. In any case, the article can only point out the inherent illogicality of human behavior. How about a myth of love? of 'humanity'? of 'rational behavior'? <p>Al Gore is no more right about Global Warming than Blackburn is about these myths. Both can claim broadly similar 'authority' in these fields. Why does it seem to me that Blackburn may have stepped more than a meter away from the field of his expertise? <p>By the way, what meaning could one attribute to the word 'myth' when reads the list of the 10 myths: myth as a belief that is 'never true', or as a belief that is 'not always true'? Whichever meaning one chooses, calling these 10 as myths easily qualifies to be a myth in itself. Mark Blackburn's own words, "the test of whether someone is talking like this is whether you can imagine successful action based specifically on what they say. When we cannot, Berkeley's process is under way." It must be clear that 'Berkeley's process is under way' in formulating these myths too.
Number 11 - In response to some of these comments - <p>Myth of Judgement <p>Many people believe that their personal opinion as to whether something is good or bad, wise or hogwash, commendable or detestable, possesses inherent interest for others. This view, which emanates from the imperatives of advertising and is largely stoked by the mass media, is erroneous. For the perspective of a perfect stranger, the only thing that matters is whether one can add something interesting and insightful to the object under collective discussion, and nothing is more boring then opinions.
"...nothing is more boring then opinions." <p>Unless they agree with one's own, I take it. <p>Correct me if I'm wrong, Daniel, but I assume that you (a) disapprove of the existence of this feedback forum, and (b) make no claims as the worth of your opinion that Simon Blackburn is "broadly on the money", and that Duncan Crowe's elucidation is admirable. As for others' claims that the author is being ironic, the problem with this argument is that irony does not come across well in print when it is anything other than superficial. Then it can be a useful if somewhat crude rhetorical device. Taking it further may be regarded by some as an entertaining intellectual game; for others it is tiresome. For us to "add something interesting and insightful to the object under collective discussion" requires that the subject and/or object be interesting and insightful.
This guy Blackburn knows not even the meaning of the word "myth". He once wrote a silly newspaper piece on Plato's Republic, without even understanding that Plato's "city in speech" is a "myth", i.e., a concept created to clarify thought, not to implement political change directly. Blackburn just doesn't get--and that's in his area of "expertise": philosophy! <p>His ignorance is even shinier on these other 10 subjects of "myth"....
"For us to "add something interesting and insightful to the object under collective discussion" requires that the subject and/or object be interesting and insightful." <p>But this is plainly not the case, Francis. It is possible to say very interesting things about objects that are not themselves interesting - just ask Oscar Wilde. Furthermore, I don't quite know how you managed to conclude that I "disapprove of the existence of this feedback forum." How did you fall into into this peculiar thought? To my mind, your comment supplies further evidence of the mania for opinionated judgment which I believe I just diagnosed.
Much of what Blackburn says is to the point. <p>He is right that words by and large do not have meaning, we merely think they do. What Frege called "color" is much more important than denotation which is why certain words "push our buttons" without our brain being engaged at all. <p>I also agree with him about the myth of respect. We pay too little attention to communities which do well, and moan too much about communities which are "falling behind." <p>I disagree about religious belief. I think it exists. Don't we all know Muslims who never drink or Hindus who never eat meat? I have even heard of religious people who refuse to take bribes or to lie. As for mourning for the dead, even if you believe in the afterlife, you could still mourn a relative if you have a pretty good idea of where he/she is going! :)
"Nostalgia for the days before some change or other is usually fake and always embarrassing, like folk dancing or trying to preserve the Irish language." <p>A crude and clumsy simile. The Irish language is now in quite an interesting position - it might be just as useful to think of it as a manifestation of a post-modern sensibility than an excercise in nostalgia. The version of the language to be found on, say, Irish-language TV, or on the internet (or in text-messaging) bears little resemblence to the Irish spoken 100 years ago. Irish is now largely an urban phenomenon - there's nothing remotely nostalgic about it. <p>(On the other hand, this man uses 'poppycock' without irony.) <p>And how can anyone take seriously such tautological laziness as: "The myth of religious belief?" Has he bothered even to consider the meaning of the word myth? Isn't it incredibly lazy to use the word 'myth' as a term of abuse? <p>John Gray's job is safe, I think.
S.B. and the responders: why say "myth" rather than "falsehood"? <p>There's the rub.
Great essay! Hey wait a minute- if there is no God, no meaning, no nothin'--how come Simon Blackburn still expects a paycheck from THE and we don't?
Late now, but perhaps not too late to comment that the idea this is ironic won't hold water. Consider the occasion: a series where academics are asked to go beyond their expertise, when, as Blackburn tells us, they are just like the rest of us. So here is Blackburn as man rather than professional philosopher, although one would hope there is a relation between the two. And what is revealed is an unreconstructed naive student activist from the 1970s. Nor should this be surprising: Blackburn's writings are scattered with cheap political sneers issued from an eminence of lofty certainty. Ironic: no. Would that it were.
Simon Blackburn gets my respect and agreement. <p>To lose or be not obligated to culture is one of the minimal proofs of evolution. Surely, I personally find it absurd, Beena, that preserving culture is a cardinal aspect of humanity. Shall we revert ourself to cavemen just to preserve our history? Evolution defined by science is a characteristic of life, hence I think the fanatic belief to preserve culture is invalid in all and every way.
Very good article, very fun. One critique: if philosophy is "study of the ultimate reality, causes, and principles underlying being and thinking." then Mr. Blackburn skirts very near discussing his field of expertise, especially considering how much discussion and discourse has resulted. All the same, I quite enjoyed it.
So when Simon Blackbird says meaning does he mean r(n)=r(s(n)) or refer to or mean something else? Is this going to be on the test?
Whether you agree with him or not, you should admit that this essay is hilarious and there are some good points in it. I truly enjoyed reading it. The ones who hate it seem to have missed the irony and humor. Why do people take it so seriously?
You sad sarcastic man....I wll pray for you. Irony and humor in the service of lies is just not funny.
9. The myth of choice and competition <p>While this was completely true in the time before the internet, it seems a bit off now. Companies and governments are having a much harder time containing bad press now with masses of bloggers and independant commentators reporting every little indiscretion. In todays age, even with "professional bloggers" corporations realize that they are better off cleaning up than covering up.
Amusing if it had been the words of, say, a pop artist. But from a professor of philosophy one can expect something less superficial and generalizing. "People think words mean things and that they know what they mean." Except from whom? "People say they believe in life after death but still grieve when people die." Shallow critique of religious people. "...administration is not management." But management is not exploitation.