On the New Alexandria

This is where I believe we are in analytic philosophy. Contrary to the scholastic charge analytic philosophy is not really characterised by formalised debates around niche propositions got from pernickety yet rigorous deductions from esoteric and ultimately pointless theories. For one thing I think the rigour of analytic deductions is much overstated. For another it just misses what has been apparent about analytic philosophy for a number of years, it is an outdated stereotype of the field from a time (perhaps in its recent past, late 20th century for instance) when the field was quite insular and self-satisfied. But nowadays it is apparent that widespread naturalism and the practical turn have each in their own way broke down those doors. Analytic philosophers nowadays are typically very keen to show their work is in good scientific standing, and will have practically interesting consequences for the pressing issues of the day. And what that means is syncretising.

Our political and ethical theories often involve drawing on a mish-mash of sources. First, there is the pertinent philsophical tradition. In analytic philosophy this usually means at least one of Rawls or some other great liberal, Rawls' students, or their students; feminist theory of the recent past; or, in some quarters, libertarian thinkers whose connections to Pinochet were, we are assured, much overstated. These are shown to be able to accommodate or refine views that are taken from the vanguard of very online downwardly mobile frequent social media users ("activists", as academics will refer to them), the common sense of the Euro-American middle class, salient results from legal theory or social psychology, and increasingly nowadays maybe AI or machine learning in its more socio-politically salient aspects. Along the way one may well get some argument or deduction of one part of the framework for the other -- but the energy, the impetus, comes really from the fact that bourgeois common sense, comprehensible bits of social science, shouty people online, and the recent philosophical tradition of one sort or another, are all felt to be authoritative. The payoff is the reconciliation, the sense that one can have one's cake and eat it.

I have a very similar sense for contemporary epistemology and metaphysics. Once again we admit bourgeois common sense, pertinent sciences - again sometimes psychology, but here also linguistics, statistics, physics, biology (more rarely chemistry I do not know why) - and the authoritative works of highly respected recent philosophers, typically Lewis or Kripke, increasingly Carnap, more rarely Wittgenstein, Brandom, or McDowell. Once again arguments can sometimes be had, but they are really in the service of proving coherence rather than anything akin to deduction from accepted first principles. The emotional pay off is, I believe, the achievement of synthesis. We are in a syncretic age.

And I believe that is why we will soon be forgot. The common sense of the bourgeois (which may not even be that common), social science that shan't survive the replication crisis, AI and machine learning (and thus statistical and reasoning capacities) that are manifestly in their infancy, and the theoretical works of people who happened to be good at placing their students in the latter quarter of the 20th century? I just see zero reason to predict that anyone will care what we make of this. It matters to us - we may well have reason to continue to try and organise it, this is our zeitgeist and anyway attempts to make it make sense will probably reveal its weaknesses and thus generate real progress. But we are a syncretising era working with elements whose nature and interrelations no-one shall care about within the space of a generation. 

This is more hopeful than the polemical claim that the present age is scholastic. I think there is more room for creativity in this activity. The attempt to rationalise new socio-ethical movements in the face of decaying empire mean that we join the Alexandrites in trying to provide comfort to a time that needs it. The failures and frictions of our attempts to syncretise will no doubt reveal anomalies that are worth attending to. But I think it is less likely to be of lasting interest than ambitious derivations from first principles. These sort of projects are designed to gain attractiveness from the inner plausibility of their premises, and thus gain a sort of independence from the immediacies of their age. Descartes, Hume, and Spinoza have far more secure places in history. I think this will be felt as a loss because for whatever reason lasting influence does seem to be sought after.--Last Positivist "The New Alexandria" January 28, 2023

If you are not laughing when you learn inter alia that we are a repetition of an out of Africa episode, the joke is on you. But if you are only laughing you may be missing some of the bite here. Before I get to that, I agree with Bright that it is time to retire a whole bunch of external critiques (that we are scientistic and/instrumentalizing, scholastic, deneutered cold war puppies, or speech policing servants of the carceral state) that stem from an unwillingness to read the much more thoroughgoing self-indictments of analytic philosophy (or so I argue).

It is quite natural that on social media the claims about syncretism, scholasticism, and historical memory past and future received much attention. But I call attention to three unpleasant aspects of Bright's analysis: first, our cultural or intellectual world is doomed. For, while we like the Alexandrians may have "hope of righting course" and not yet despair despite the "clear signs of turning for the worse," if the analogy is strict enought, the game is up (and one worries for the fate of our Hypatia). This makes it puzzling why anyone would accept the "zeitgeist;" any "real progress" we generate will be futile. I return below to consider how we should treat this rhetoric.

Second, there is a ludicrious mismatch between our self-image as fearless aimers for truth (or, as Bright allows, fighters for social justice) who follow the argument come what may  and our unwillingness to pay a price for it: in our reflective equilibrium we become reconciled to, even consoled by, our world, but this is no better than a stale confirmation bias if you are bourgeois (or adapted preferences if you are from another class.) While twentieth century continental philosophy was too addicted to the smells and sights of decomposing corpses in the imagery of Baudelaire, we are, in reality, the true decadents who reconcile ourselves by our inability to see our own corpse ahead.

Now, it is quite possible that this is all intended as sober diagnosis. But it is worth noting that there is a subtle connection between these two aspects. The more doomed we are in reality the more our self-imposed aspirations our out of touch with it. We lack, that is, third, self-knowledge. History repeats, as farce only.

Now, it's possible that Bright is preaching quietism in light of our fate; maybe we should keep our heads down and achieve the progress we can. But, this rhetoric can also be a call to arms -- or philosophical prophecy -- in two ways: first, he is baiting us to find within our umwelt the paths that lead to our equivalent of  St. Augustine. That is, some of us must throw our lot in with africana philosophy. (Another route goes to Al-Farabi, and the East). This is The Dream of Scipio as retold by Iain Pears. 

The other possibility is to rebel against our fate and that we really change course and unlearn the many bad intellectual habits that are diagnosed by him; a painful emendation of the mind. For, the intellectual revolution that the moment requires is, if we take his diagnosis seriously, the overthrow of our common sense. And in so far as our intuitions are shaped by our material conditions and practices of social recruitment this is a call to arms to destroy the modern research university, of at least philosophy's place in it. 

Not unlike MacAskill, one wishes to say, Bright is playing the long game for high stakes. But rather than betting the farm on engineering the right sort of population (human or robotic) given existing institutions and philanthropy by the wealthy, Bright is hinting at a different approach less beholden to Mammon. After all, I can't help but notice that his narrative echoes rather neatly Friedrich Engels' variations (see here; and here) on Bauer on the rise of Christianity. We might say, then, that the last waltz is about to be played.