I'm always showing up to the game a little late.
This morning I discovered Maximilian Pakaluk, associate editor at the National Review Online. Given that he's an associate editor, I suspect I may not be the first to discover the man, but his recent review of Michael Bérubé's latest book, What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts, was a rare example of the art of rhetoric.
One of his comments, though, took me in a completely different direction. Here it is:
Whatever disagreements one might have with his philosophical views, Bérubé does come across as a thoughtful and fair teacher. If it were not for the outrageous polemic, his book would be an enjoyable read. Alas, his view of conservatives hardly rises above a caricature, which explains, perhaps, how he can describe the “intractable” nature of the debate over postmodernism thus: “[T]here’s no way to negotiate between people who insist on the scientific evidence for evolution and people who insist on the scriptural evidence for Armageddon”; or: “[T]he liberals believe that the religious conservatives will craft social policies that will hurt gay men, atheists, and rape victims, whereas religious conservatives believe that a just and omnipotent deity will consign liberals to unending torment in hell, where they belong.”
Now, anybody who has spent any time at The Dead Hand will agree that I am a conservative, at least on the issues that matter (see here for an example of one that doesn't). And I couldn't agree more that many liberals—particularly those who lock themselves into ivory towers with the rest of the choir—have a somewhat less than nuanced picture of who conservatives are and what they believe. So imagine my surprise when I found myself in cautious agreement with Professor Bérubé (at least, with Pakalik's characterization of him) regarding the "intractable" nature of certain ideological debates between otherwise reasonable, well-meaning people.
See, yesterday I had an argument with my girlfriend.
The topic was selective reduction, the practice of reducing the number of fetuses in a multifetal pregnancy, typically applied when fertility treatments result in unusually fecund pregnancies. Jenna—an evangelical Christian and a staunch Pro-Lifer—opposes the procedure, whereas I—a pragmatic Jew with little regard for the intrinsic value of the blastocyst—do not.
Here's how the argument proceeded:
Jenna: I think it's wrong.
Jason: [10 minutes of supremely rational argument in favor of the procedure]
Jenna: [Silence]
Jason: I'm sorry.
My apology was heartfelt, and sprang from an epiphany rooted in—because this is where I go mentally when girls get mad at me—mathematics.
Mathematics is, among other things, a language. Because of its rigorous structure, though, mathematics is unique among languages in the way it deals with isomorphism, which describes the situation that arises when (loosely speaking) two things that appear to be different turn out to be described by the same set of symbols.
In math, two isomorphic structures are equivalent, to the degree that they are isomorphic. This has all sorts of useful consequences. For example, if the equations that describe the respective dynamics of an electrical circuit and a hydraulic system look the same, then there is at least one way to measure the behavior of both that will produce identical results... guaranteed. In fact, one could assert that this behavior under isomorphism is a categorical test for math-ness: if isomorphic statements in a given language don't describe the same thing, then the language isn't a mathematical one!
It should come as no surprise that most human languages are not mathematical. Dr. John Gray built an empire on this concept, starting with his popular relationship manual Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. Gray's concept is simple: men and women may speak the same language and use the same words, but the things they're describing with those words—their respective referents—are often wildly different.
The same thing happens in other arenas as well... the abortion debate, for example.
When Jenna talks about abortion, she approaches it from a moral perspective. Her point of view—whether explicitly or implicitly—is based on tenets of faith, the axioms, loosely speaking, of the semi-formal system that constitutes her religion. When she talks about abortion, the words she uses have religious referents.
When I talk about abortion, I approach it primarily from an economic perspective. My point of view is based on the axiomatic notion that all men are not created equal, and that—compared to the needs of an adult human, or a child, or even the family pet—the requirements of an eight-cell blastocyst are so trivial as to be entirely beneath consideration. When I talk about abortion, the words I use have secular referents.
Both of us derive our positions by following a mental calculus that proceeds, via rules of transformation, from the small set of axioms that constitute our core beliefs. Both of us use the English language—and use it well, I might add—to express to one another how we traverse this path. But these calculi—these rules of transformation that get us from A to B to C—are not isomorphic.
Not even a little bit.
At this juncture one might be tempted to offer a value judgment, to point out that since my process uses logic, and Jenna's process uses... well... something else, that mine is better. The trouble with that argument, though, is that it just isn't true.
One way to characterise logic—in a hand-wavy sort of way—is as a set of transformations that, given the same point of departure, reliably get you to a consistent conclusion. What non-logicians often don't appreciate, though, is that this is a pretty loose definition. In fact, there are lots of logical systems, just as there are lots of algebras that bear no resemblance to the one you learned in high school.
There is only one mathematical logic because in mathematics, by definition, all logics are isomorphic and thus equivalent. Start expressing logic in a non-mathematical language, though, and the isomorphism constraint goes away... and the sky's the limit.
One consequence of this is that virtually every field has its own logical system, which only resembles "real" logic to the extent that the field is mathematical. Since religion, by and large, is not mathematical at all, it should come as no surprise that religious conclusions often derive from religious axioms in a manner guaranteed to set a mathematician's teeth on edge. This isn't a shortcoming of religious logic, though, so much as it is the consequence of unreasonable expectations on the part of the mathematician.
So: intractable debates. When two intelligent people are discussing a topic, and neither one credits as legitimate the path whereby the other proceeds from A to B, there's a good chance that apparent linguistic isomorphisms (i.e., the fact that both are using the same words) have misled each to assume that the other's logical system is isomorphic with his own. In the case of my argument with Jenna, this was a completely unwarranted assumption... hence my apology.
If this is generally the case, though, then how can intelligent people have meaningful, conclusive discussions about substantive issues without completely adopting one or the other set of core values and logical system and abandoning their own?
I don't have an answer to that.
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