Valid Pragmaticness 2
Actually written NOVEMBER 6, 2022
So, as per my writing titled “Valid Pragmaticness”, the forms of our percepts are desire-laden, or desire-entangled, or what have you. [See my writing about form versus object.]
This seems a bit different from what postmodern/pragmatists claim, for they want to claim that it is not just the form of our precepts that are desire-laden, but the very objects we so perceive that are value-laden – the objects of our consciousness depend on our desires. Desires determine truth, desires determine that which exists.
To the extent that pragmatism = postmodernism, I am prompted to contemplate the relevance of Jordan Peterson’s story about the postmodernists in the context of my views on valid pragmaticness.
Peterson’s story is that the postmodernists claim 2 points:
1. There’s no canonical/objective way to experience existence.
And
2. That the way we select a way to experience existence is by way of “social power hierarchies”, and not just any social power hierarchies, but specifically malevolent and callous power hierarchies (and Peterson says the postmodernists adopted this second point from the Marxists).
So anyway, Peterson professes to agree with postmodernists on the first point, but disagrees with the second point.
This bit about social hierarchies selecting the way we experience existence can be applied to my idea of valid pragmaticness as well, as long as we see social hierarchies as reducible to desire. A social hierarchy is a type of desire hierarchy. The more you can evoke and command the desires of others, the higher you rank on the social hierarchy. And the desire you command need not be limited to admiration and approval of you. You can also be a jerk that nobody actually wants, but you still rank high because people fear you. What they want is not you, but the absence of your tyranny.
An interesting point here is that Peterson apparently has no problem with a pragmatism that selected the way we experience existence based on a benevolent social power structure instead of a malevolent one. Peterson often tells the story of scientific studies showing that we humans are much less prone to malevolence and callousness than the Marxist-persuaded postmodernists claim. And this at least agrees with Peterson’s apparent alignment with pragmatism as the “overarching” truth theory (into which are embedded absolutist sub-truth realms). Pragmatism applies, according to Peterson, as long as it makes way for absolutist sub-truth realms selected by a social power hierarchy that is at least benign, rather than malevolent.
My reaction to all this is, well, first of all, that pragmatism can’t be any sort of theory of truth, whether “classical” or “overarching with sub-realms of absolutist truth”. It is just more anti-realism that refutes itself. And second of all, I’m skeptical of the evidence suggesting we are more benevolent than some Marxists would claim we are. Well, at least I’m skeptical of it as described by Peterson in the videos I saw him speaking of the evidence.
What bothered me is that Peterson’s argument seemed to go like this: Malevolent people with any influence on the rest of us only comprise about 3% of us. And when that percentage gets up around 5%, the rest of us more civilized folk dis-empower them until they’re back around 3% again. And that seemed to be the extent of the argument.
So only 3% of us are jerks. But maybe 3% is enough to validate the Marxists. Maybe the kind of malevolent social hierarchy posited by the Marxists only needs 3% jerks, specifically those exceptional jerks cunning enough to back-stab their way to the top of the power pyramid.
Well, my fantasies about the ultra-power class is always some vision of some 50 or so people who meet in some super-secret inner sanctum and plan the cruel fate of the world, a la “Number 1” and his court in the final episode of The Prisoner. I suspect most folks share my fantasy vision of the power elite here – that these harmful jerks comprise only a tiny percentage of us.
Against this intuitive fantasy vision of the select few running the world to hell, Peterson’s argument that only 3% of us are such jerks seems like a moot point. Like, well, duh!
And of course the Marxist postmodernists could insist that the 3% jerks who dominate the top of the social hierarchy are powerful enough to create whatever reality they want for everyone.
I suspect that Peterson has a sound argument to address this objection of mine, and he just never offered the argument in the videos I saw.
Lacking that sound argument, I just want to express the need for it here.
But anyway, I also just want to again make the point that, regardless of whether the Marxists are right, or whether Peterson is right; that is, regardless of whether our social hierarchies are malevolent or benevolent, the idea that a social hierarchy selects the way we experience existence is compatible with my idea of valid pragmaticness – again, with the understanding that social hierarchies are just a matter of desires.
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