 Postmodernists are famous for denying the existence of objective truth, even if their claims are paradoxical They say things like the truth is that there is no truth that doesn't seem to dissuade them So does postmodernism come with a certain type of psychology? What do you do when you encounter contradiction is internal Consistency really that big a deal this is the topic. I'm discussing on the 58th episode of Patterson in pursuit Hello my friends and enemies and soon-to-be enemies Welcome to the 58th episode of Patterson in pursuit. I could not be more excited about this episode My guest this week is dr. Stephen Hicks who's making his second appearance on Patterson in pursuit last time we spoke was September 2016 and we talked about the topic of postmodernism the history the ideas and at the very end of our conversation We brought up this really interesting question What do you do when you encounter a contradiction if you say things like it is absolutely true that there is no absolute truth You've just contradicted yourself. And then what what do you do for somebody like me? I go Okay, well, I must have been wrong, but maybe for the postmodernists. They don't have this response They say okay. I contradict myself. No big deal. Maybe reality itself is contradictory If you've gone to college or you even interacted with professors or people have gone to college No doubt you've encountered this worldview people say. Oh well, everybody knows there's no such thing as truth everything socially constructed There's no such thing as Objective reality. That's what the conversation is about with dr. Stephen Hicks who's a philosopher teaching at Rockford University He is the director of the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship and is the author of Explaining postmodernism skepticism from Rousseau to Foucault the sponsor for this excellent episode is the excellent company Praxis like I said if you've been to a college campus or you've spoken with professors or students You know that this worldview is popular and the worldview also comes with a bunch of other really silly ideas like the only way You can succeed in the world is by spending four years of your life and over a hundred thousand dollars Getting taught by professors who've never engaged with a real world who have ridiculous world views and they'll teach you all the relevant information for how to be successful in life and if you don't go to college you will find success Impossible and all your friends will laugh at you for being a silly nincompoop Fortunately just like there is a pushback on the worldview of postmodernism There is also a pushback on this idea that college is essential for personal success. It's not Praxis is an apprenticeship program where instead of spending a hundred thousand dollars and four years of your life learning nonsense You spend three months working through their professional boot camp where you learn real-world job skills And then immediately you get placed for six months at a paid Apprenticeship this is very much a no-nonsense approach to real-world Education check it out Steve dash Patterson dot-com slash praxis PRA X is And before we start I do want to give just a special shout out to all the patreon supporters at patreon.com Slash Steve Patterson you guys have consistently valued the show you value the work that I'm doing We're constantly growing in numbers and I deeply appreciate the support that you guys are showing if you're listening to this and you also Value the content that's being produced head over to patreon.com Slash Steve Patterson and you can contribute just a dollar or two whenever a new episode is released Plus you get a bunch of awesome perks you get access to a private Facebook group You get a free copy of both the books that I've written and every book that I'll write in the future check it out All right, that's enough for me. Let's go straight to the interview So Dr. Steven Hicks, thank you very much for coming back on Patterson in pursuit It's a pleasure to have you again on the show for me, too The last conversation we had was about eight months ago and I want to pick up exactly where we left off and My guess is that it's probably not the very last thing that you've listened to so I will I'll get everybody up to speed the conversation that we had and I want to say to that last conversation We had is one of the most popular podcasts That I've released so far got a lot of good response. Everybody loved everybody loved it. So good to hear I've been looking forward to this follow-up for many months Because we had this good conversation that was about postmodernism and it was about the history and the ideas of postmodernism and then we talked about This specifically and near the end of the conversation about how postmodernism runs into Self-contradiction it runs into paradoxes things like if I were to say The truth is that there is no truth or I know that we know nothing or words mean nothing All of these things are self-contradictory and my position was if a Thinker is running into a self-contradiction That is a demonstration that The thinker is wrong in that particular way and if the thinker runs into a self-contradiction And is okay with the contradiction then they demonstrate that they are aren't a particularly deep thinker And maybe that their ideas shouldn't even be respected And you pushed back on that you said well it depends on the psychology of the philosopher and the thinker some people react to contradictions in different ways Let me jump in yes two things there. I pushed back on the second one, right? Yeah, the first one that the person is wrong. Yeah, I agree right entirely So you need to do some some work to show that explain why that is Second one. Yeah, we can talk more about that. Yes, that's and we we brought that up We had this dialogue and then we both had to go so it was like this perfect perfect segue But that's exactly where I want to pick up so my claim is still if somebody contradicts themselves and they accept the contradiction Right, they're probably not a deep thinker, but you disagree Yeah, so that raises again some deep questions right about about the the status of logic And the point I would make and start with the general claim here is that people who are very smart and Deep thinkers can when they're thinking about human cognition Which is an extraordinarily complicated process So as we logically and rationally argue themselves into various skeptical positions But they probably will find uncomfortable right along the way But as deep thoughtful people who engage with lots of other deep thoughtful people Come not to see how those conclusions so to speak are inescapable and One of those conclusions can be right that Logic doesn't matter that much right or it matters, but there are other things also that matter And on the basis of that one can deeply arrive at a conclusion where at some level you are comfortable with living with contradiction or living with at least logical tensions right within Your thought to varying degrees So do you think part of that is if you come to those Beliefs that you're comfortable acknowledging if we're playing devil's advocate here That the beliefs are false So are the would the people in this position be saying yes, I contradict myself But maybe contradictions are inescapable and I recognize my claims are false if you have a contradiction and you accept logic Then what you know at that point it is one of the contradictory claims at least is false But you would need to do more work to make the judgment call about which one it is So you know that there's a falsehood in there somewhere so if somebody is Pursuing truth let's say and They're they're making a positive claim about what is true. What is the case? And they're saying well in some circumstances. What is the case is not actually the case and I contradict myself and maybe that doesn't quite make sense But I'm gonna believe it anyway. Is there not Go ahead right. Yeah, I think that is that's possible right psychologically So I also at the tail you're adding another element right at the tail end Which is a decision about what your belief is going to be given the The awareness of at least attention or an outright contradiction right in your in your belief There's one thing that's possible right about belief is beliefs do Come in degrees You can say well, I'm going to you know say This is likely and that's a different kind of cognitive set from saying this is highly likely This is you know, I'm I'm convinced of this And it's also possible that one Takes a belief in a provisional fashion right and so this can take one in a more Philosophically pragmatic right direction. So we say I believe it But what that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm making you know a lifetime commitment to this but rather Given my current state of knowledge right including my awareness that my my system has some tensions or contradictions within it Given that I don't see a better alternative at this point, right. I'm going to believe it right but what that means is that I'm going to Use it as my dispositional set. I'm going to act on it right for now Until I perhaps change my mind at some other point So that tail end about the the nature of the belief commitment that the person makes also needs to be teased out Okay, so let's let's give a concrete example. Let's say the excellent example This is the liar's paradox comes up all the time when talking about logic and contradictions Let's say that somebody is Has there's a lot of tension in their mind when they think about this sentence is false. They think well, it's true It's false hmm there's one Psychological disposition which would say you know what I have a positive belief that it is true and false at the same time It is true and it's not the case that it's true, but I'm still going to believe that There's another psychological disposition which says well if if I'm bumping into an explanation for the liar's paradox Then implies what is true is not true Then it means I'm bumping into an error on my end that obviously Obviously more work needs to be done to resolve something so we're not claiming that what is true is not true right so in the case of a very a bald paradox or a Bold whatever matter for is the right one there like the like the liar's paradox Where you know within the space of two or three or four propositions you can hold all of those in your mind at one point and Grasp right the contradiction there If right at that point one says what you said that I believe that this proposition is both true and false Simultaneously or at least within the time of my mental grasp here and then I think one is Psychologically disintegrating right at that point. Yeah, what do you mean by that? Well, I I don't think That one is engaging in in cognition right at that point interesting that that yeah that your your your mental set right is not relating in any way to reality and Is not communicating even to oneself Anything significant right or meaningful The words I think stop being meaningful to you at that point And you're not Actually engaging in cognition anymore Interesting. Okay. I that is okay. I'm sorry keep going. Yeah, so You know, if you take the you know the a and not a right you're saying a not a What what if you try to put yourself in the psychological moment right what? What's going on in your mind, and I don't think anything meaningful except Sounds right is is going on in one's mind at that point. Okay. I completely agree with that I think that's an excellent way of putting it But if we take that example though and we say let's Can we conclude then that in the most extreme bald case of a and not a Then we can turn around and say it must be reflective of of a lack of Thinking or maybe a lack of intellect or there's a there's a lack of something in a literal sense It's a lack of cognition But if there's a thinker or a writer that is writing in a way in which their cognition dissolves Can't we say well, that's obviously not a very deep thinker. In fact, that might not even be a thinker at all I think you'd have to look at how that person right got to that conclusion And People can get there shallowly They can have a belief system that they've committed to for kind of not very intellectual reasons right that gives them emotional satisfaction Or they were just you know raised in that tradition So except that a number of beliefs and then when they start to think about it fairly quickly realize there are some contradictions there but because of the person's you know emotional commitment or Laziness doesn't want to have to change their minds or do any further thinking is willing to say yeah I just accept those contradictions fine. That's just of waving off the problem if by contrast and this would be at the other end of the spectrum and At least I think some of the thinkers who feed into post-modernism They can be very seriously engaged with trying to understand how the world works how the human mind works but to run into what I would call errors in some cases understandable errors right along the way and As a result of that right come to think that okay, I guess Contradiction has to be accepted. So, you know try some examples. I mean suppose you think of Cognition right in general and you start to think about it. What goes into cognition and we say well, there's sense perception Memory there's the formation of abstract concepts There's the integrating of concepts into propositions and Propositions then can be of some very complexity as well and the issues of syntax and semantics that we get into then we get into issues of Translations right across different languages and how different languages might be carving the world up at different places There's the issue of the how we take a number of propositions and integrate them into theories And then there's the whole issue of how we take our theories and in sophisticated ways using mathematical tools statistics and A complicated logical structures where we try to evaluate those theories There's the whole realm of the fictional narrative where we take proposition and integrate those into stories and stories as we know can be increasingly complex and so You know, you're trying to figure out all of this right or you have some area of specialty philosophy of language or scientific method or sense perception and As we know right, it's very easy to get a theory wrong there To encounter various kinds of skeptical arguments that can be, you know, initially well intended, you know Here's a real problem. How do we handle this phenomena? And if one is logical and Ruthlessly consistent But buys into one of the skeptical arguments then you can of course run into a contradiction And I would say that person right who says, okay, I Don't know to take a sense perception example take the Cases of you know, the relativity of perception, right? I look at something and I report That it's X and you look at something and you report that it's why right or that in some way, right, it's not X and Then we come to the conclusion. Well, therefore Perception is right subjective and If perception is subjective but our abstract concepts are based on our perceptions then conception itself right comes to be right subjective and So we're not then in a position of saying, you know, if you're saying that it's a and I'm saying that it's not a that there's any way that we can Decide who's right and who's wrong. You would just have to say it's a for you and it's not Actually, it was a for me and not a for you. You can see right someone Studying the arguments and studying the phenomena and coming to that right conclusion and that's not a shallow person that's not a person who's motivated by Emotionalism or a kind of laziness instead This is a you know, a smart literate hard-working person who has incorporated some errors that have led to a a conclusion that takes some sort of contradiction as built into Our circumstance. Well, I think there's that in that circumstance that we can make sense Those claims without logical contradiction. So it seems like to me I would I've been called both the kind of like a dogmatic Foundationalist, but I've also been called a radical skeptic In terms of my metaphysics, I do have a radically skeptical perspective throughout my philosophy But especially in metaphysics where I'm not sure of the exist I'm not certain of the existence of things outside of my mind I have a positive belief that they exist, but I am very much persuaded by similar skeptical arguments that you've mentioned, but there's a there's a very bright line between Propositions about sense perception and the right reliability of sense perception and The existence of actual logical contradiction in the world. So, right so the the point of the The analysis I'm making of where I was not talking about your views are in particular but if you have someone who's Views are different from yours. This is there's not a bright line between Where we get our logic from and where we get our sense perception from that our logic needs to be Based on our perceptual awareness of the world that person right would then come to believe That His analysis of sense perception gives rise to contradiction But I wouldn't we also say that person also demonstrates that they haven't meditated very deeply on the nature of logic and Why it's prior to sense perception? Well, what we would need to do is and look at that person how many articles Read right And you have to do a personal Right biographical study, but I don't think ahead of time or any a priori way that you can say right, here's a position who reaches a Conclusion that includes some comfort with logical contradiction and say oh that person just hasn't done his homework Well, what about something like the existence of Santa Claus if somebody has on their own? They've read books. Maybe they're a very articulate and they've concluded. Yeah, you know, I believe in Santa Claus wouldn't you say okay, well that person demonstrates by this the Elementary error in their belief system that they maybe they thought a lot about it, but They're not deep thinkers. They're not they're not clear thinkers, right? Yeah, I would agree with that because you know something like Santa Claus That's something you should be able to figure out by age 10, right or so I won't tell you that for me. It was it was later than that All right, well again, yeah, we have to bring in the developmental psychology But you're making an exception so you would say there is more there is more Reasonable to believe in the existence of actual logical contradictions like a and not a then it is to believe in the existence of Santa Claus I Think it is possible for right reasonable people to reason themselves into unreasonable Positions and then conclude their positive But it's but it everybody can do that and that's part of the nature of learning about the inconsistency in your own beliefs And then changing your beliefs because you've discovered them to be inconsistent But to discover an inconsistency in your beliefs and say oh well, I I'm not going to change that I've discovered a logical inconsistency and that just must be the way it is strikes me as somebody discovering that You know sent that actually their parents are going down in the morning and placing the gifts there and going okay Well, I still believe in Santa Claus. Anyway Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. All right, so in that case you've got direct right empirical evidence available to you If at that point you want to resist the direct empirical evidence and go with a continued belief in Santa Claus because it gives you emotional comfort Or fulfills the kind of fantasies that you have right that person is acting irrationally Yeah, I grant you that but I think that is Many degrees of difference from a person who does a sophisticated study of cognition and Reaches some skeptical conclusions there and then decides that Because he or she has tried really hard to resolve the problems that they are unsolvable and you just have to live with Contradiction at some point and they live with contradiction that can mean a lot of different things Let's try another Another example Suppose I don't suppose we start not from in a kind of an impurestess approach where we say We observe the world right with sense perception and on the basis of our sense perception we Derive concepts and then as we increasingly become abstract with our concepts. We are formulating logical concepts and logical principles but because I've got a Relativistic or subjectivistic view of sense perception. I see that as Infecting so to speak the whole chain right all the way up So if there are inconsistencies and tensions and perhaps contradictions in how we sense perceived the world that those are going to infect Whatever abstractions including logical abstractions that are based on that suppose instead we try to Go at logic right from the rationalist right perspective and we say No, no logic is not based on An empirical right awareness of the world instead logic is something pure or perhaps logic is something a priori That may be built into the structure of the mind right are certain inflexible ways of categorizing the world and logic is Is is that way and so in an a priori way? I completely independently of Any empirical input there are certain formal abstract principles that we right must believe Okay, okay, so then at that point you say okay, I'm committed to logic And I love the the beauty and the elegance and the power right of logic And I think it's inappropriate right on emotionalist grounds to To let logical contradictions right or an awareness of some sort of tension in one's thinking Just be ignored because you don't want to attend to it So suppose you take that approach to logic, right? You are you know broadly platonic or broadly Pushing it further back Parmenadean or coming into contemporary times more Kantian or GH Hardy like right in one's one's thinking about logic and and so forth now at that point All you've got is a Subjective right belief that psychologically this pure system of Logic right is something that we have to think in terms of But what we don't yet have is any connection between that and reality right with that and the world And so at that point we don't have any Grounds right for thinking that the way that we Must think if we are thinking Matches or maps on to the way Reality independent of our minds is And that then is to say we don't have yet any grounds for thinking that Logic is connected to truth right in any way if we think of proof as some sort of Mapping between what's going on in our minds and an external reality now at that point All right, if you start probing that right set of connections, okay how can I make a connection right between this abstract right set of principles that are internally consistent inside my mind and My corresponding belief that when I am thinking I should avoid contradiction How can I establish that that? Means I can believe that reality independent of my mind is Non-contradictory That's a very hard project and I think most This is take this back to the post modernists that we talked about last time right most right of the epistemological story after conned is Reaching the conclusion that if you start in a pure a priori way, there is in fact no way to get to An independent world that one ends up trapped in a kind of subjectivity and then it becomes merely a choice whether one Believes that external reality Is in fact logical and non-contradictory or that external reality is Perhaps contradictory That's an excellent way of framing the discussion. This is Literally the point of my first book on philosophy square one the foundations of knowledge And the way the way that we I would answer that is to say the way you make the connection between the mind and the world The way you recognize that the world must be Logical is by understanding that logic and existence are in separable for the following reason that any type of existence Is Exactly the way that it is Which means that it must not be the way that it is not That's not a claim just about the contents of my mind. That's a claim about anything which meets the criteria of existing Mental physical abstract all that that is a Right a kind of argument first enunciated by parmenides Sometimes credited for being like a founder of logic. Okay, so right so then you build Logicality so to speak into the concept of existence or Starting from your first person psychological perspective you unpack the concept of existence and see that it you know has to have a certain kind of identity And that identity Is captured in the law of identity which is a logical principle and out of that as a corollary you get non contradiction Okay, and all that's fine But the standard skeptical response to that then it's just to say well all you have shown is that it's impossible for you right to think of exit existence as not being logical and You haven't yet shown that it's anything other than this is how your mind has to work and That and the second step would be to say If you take all the follow-up skeptical arguments series seriously, and this is a Kantian point here That is in fact impossible right for you to know that Because for you to say that all of existence right necessarily must be logical You have to so to speak confront existence in a way independently of how You psychologically must think about existence and that's impossible So you're stuck with just saying that for me. I think of logic and existence as inextricably bound up with each other My claim would be the idea that there is some kind of Existence that that means that word has a meaning that In could be In a contradictory type so something being and not being That doesn't even make any sense that to think otherwise isn't simply false I'm saying it is is literally incoherent that you cannot make sense of saying oh Well, there might be some existing thing outside of your mind that doesn't exist That doesn't make sense if it exists it exists. That's what we mean by it exists, right? And I think there is something to that argument and right now you're Putting me in a position of defending my earlier claim which is to say that smart people can get to Skeptical conclusions about whether reality is contradictory or not Not saying that I agree with this position And one of the ways of getting there is to say well if all you're doing is in this rationalistic way starting from the subjective contents of your mind and saying I can't conceive of reality any other way than in terms of these definitions That are meaningful to me and if I start to Try to conceive of reality as violating those definitions and my cognition breaks down Well, then you are getting in the position right close to The postmodernist which is to say well, right? You know We are in a subjective position and When we start to play around with our concepts we do get into meaninglessness Things stop having meaning a blends into not a and all of the various Deconstruction methods are you know ways of playing around with this But what does that show right that just then shows? that Either I have to think in terms of being a certain way being logical Right or I have to say that Concepts abstract formulations ultimately are meaningless and kind of beside the point and From the postmodern perspective again not agreeing with it right at that point They just say well, that's just a subjective decision and We make a different subjective decision. I think maybe Yeah, go ahead. I was gonna say I think it comes down to the third subject That's not a way that I would I wouldn't use that term I would say it's very much objective objective and universal. I had a conversation at the very beginning of Okay, hang on. Just go ahead hang on just a sec. You just introduced right the two more concepts right objective right, which is to say that it has a connection to an objective reality as to say in a reality independent right of my consciousness or your consciousness and So the question would be how you establish right that objectivity. That's I guess necessarily what I would say right here are the contents of my formulation right in my mind that we can use that analogy and here is Objective reality and I'm comparing the two and I'm seeing that there's a match So that gap needs to be bridged and then the universality point would also then be to say it's not only my mind right that does it this way that all minds right do it this way and must do it this way and Then you have the project of showing well, how you know right that what goes on in the minds of other people Is what is going on in your mind as well in order to get universality flame off the ground And again, I'm not agreeing with these skeptical points, but they're going to say those arguments You know, we've tried and tried really hard and by mid 20th century We just don't think you can do it. So we're we're trapped in a kind of Subjectivity in the more postmodern sense. Well, let me take try to take a stab at it And if you can keep playing devil's advocate, I'd love to know what the what the response would be to this so It is true. So I could say something like Chopin is the best piano composer who ever existed That is something I'd be comfortable saying that is a subjective truth. It's true for me But it's not necessarily true for anybody else. I'm comfortable using the label subjective truth for that Yeah, I would use the the word personal personal truth. Okay. Yeah, here. We're getting into Right definitions. I mean, there's a there's a more neutral use of subjective Which is just to say that it involves a subject and we're talking about what's going on on the subject side of the relationship Okay, and that doesn't necessarily mean it has nothing to do with there is out of connection with objective reality and then there's a Right a narrower right use of subjective which philosophers Typically like to do which is to say if it's subjective then it Comes only from the subject and has no connection to any sort of intrinsic or objective relation to reality Right, so to do yeah to go to your example of Chopin What did you say is the best composer? Yeah, piano composer. Yeah, right now? I'm willing to say yeah, that certainly is an arguable position By that I mean as to say that it's something that you can do subjective evidence for and against and Assess the strength of it and reach a reasonable conclusion or not, but I wouldn't say it's it's subjective I would say it's subjective right if you were new to music and this is the narrower right philosophical sense And you heard a piece of Chopin right being played and you say That's you know just so beautiful and that's the best piece of music I've ever heard and therefore It's the best piece of music ever and whoever composed this must be the best composer ever Right that would be a subjective right conclusion in that point because at that point You know even if you're new to music that there are other composers and that your range of data is relatively literal And you're perhaps over generalizing given the amount of data right that's available to you. Yes, and I mean that I actually I Am just using that sentence to essentially state of preference I'm saying I like Chopin the best and I in my own world You know I'm actually very uncomfortable with the idea of saying Chopin is the best composer I wouldn't say things like that. I would just say I'm stating my preference Just like you know vanilla is the best flavor of ice cream. Well, that's true for some people. It's not true for other people but but Work on that sure I would say if in fact Chopin is your Favorite composer then he is the best composer right for you And I would also say that we're once we do our work here that that is an objective fact in the sense that I Steven Hicks, right would also recognize if I did my investigation that Chopin is the best composer in the world for Steve Patterson. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. If we localize the claim that's being made and that's to say that your personal preference preferences are real and I When I'm looking out at the world I have to recognize that it's a fact that other people have preferences And if I were to say no in fact Chopin is not Steve Patterson's best composer and I would be wrong. I would be objectively wrong Yes, that's exactly where I was going I have a turn that I do that I call the objectivity of subjectivity well Then I exactly I would do that say well I can say something like you know Villain vanilla is the best flavor of ice cream But I can also say it is the case that what exists in the world is at least one Evaluation of vanilla as the best flavor of ice cream That's something that I'm saying bridges the gap between subjective and objective or even in even in the state where you can state Preferences in the contents of your mind you can still state them from an objective standpoint There is the feeling that there is sensory experiences going on in the world as an objective claim that I seem to know to be true Right. Yes, that's right human beings are a part of the world and everything that goes on inside of them Right psychologically also biologically. That's part of the world Including their preferences right for ice cream So, yeah, so the way to deal with that kind of subjectivity is to make sure that you're formulating the proposition Exactly, so it's Steve Patterson, right who was saying I Prefer ice cream to all others. So it's a claim that is localized to you so you end up with As an implication of that where I can say Strawberry right ice cream is the best ice cream in the world. But what that means is for Stephen Hicks, right? Strawberry is the best ice cream in the world And that also is true, right? It's objectively true And you should recognize that right if in fact right it is true And I think Stephen Hicks is objectively wrong actually with that one But then also we get into lots of relativity issues because Uh, you know on other weeks, I might say no no no it's it's butter pecan. That's the best ice cream in the world Then you would be more wrong with that one But so but so how in the in the In the devil's advocate, I know this isn't your position, but in the postmodern perspective what we've just done I like the term the objectivity of subjectivity. That's just the way that I've been putting it What is the response to that? Uh, okay, so now I put you're asking me to put my devil's advocate right hat back on Yeah, I think all of those Right points about subjectivity They would already have nested them within a broader framework That diverse divorces rather the the subjective right from the from the objective so, uh Once you start talking about things being relative If you're coming from a perspective that says Objectivity requires universality to be built into it You know if that's your assumption Uh, then relativity of any sort is already undermining right objectivity So people's subjective tastes about ice cream right or about, uh, boyfriends and girlfriends right or about Music right and so forth. They've already Robustly right categorize those in a non objective way So in one sense, you know the power of philosophy because then it becomes an operative Right premise right all through the thing all through the thinking Right anything that is subjective is then by definition alone Not uh, not objective But but oh this is the the subjectivity thing though. It's it's it's trivially wrong though I mean it I think it's going to be hard not to come back to the logical contradictions because they've said Well, okay, well all of these truths are subjective. Well, that itself is a contradiction that immediately Smacks the of the paradox everything is relative. Well, that's not a relative claim So right off the get go and and this is really just pointed to my claim my my point is to say Because it's the case that those type of contradictions I think are inescapable And it's the case that they're obvious That children children would be able to say There's something that doesn't make any sense. There's something fishy going on here. They would be able to sniff that out then it then then Unless we are going right down to the okay. Well, sometimes there are logical contradictions. Doesn't that mean This is a this is a ridiculous. This is of course. This is trivially trivially wrong right Well, there's any number of ways that they will do I mean One is of course the the global philosophical point that we were making if you Already divide subjectivity from objectivity then the kind of analysis that you and I were just giving about musical tastes and ice cream Right and so forth You'd have to do a lot of work right to get them to the point where they're willing to say, okay Maybe there can be kind of an object of relativity and for many people that's already right mind blowing That that that relations can be right objective Uh, because you know for various philosophical reasons, they've already divorced right the subjective from the objective But probably what they would do, you know any clever postmodernist would say all right fine. Let's uh, let's say I don't know choose an ice cream flavor right take vanilla, right? What do we What do we mean by vanilla and so we start talking about? definitions and the meanings right of concepts And then they would start to say well, you know you travel around the world and you have vanilla ice cream Or what's called vanilla ice cream in some places? And it's really quite different right so You know what to take another example, you know what new yorkers call pizza and what chicago people call pizza Well, those are you know, maybe just overlapping family resemblance II right kinds of concepts And so even before we can get to you know is ice cream of a certain flavor the best or not We have to have an agreement about what that flavor means And given the indeterminacy of language and the shifting evolving nature of language We're just not going to to get there So we start then using, uh, you know the skepticism about semantics Coming out of sometimes technical philosophy of language Then to undermine The claim that you and I were making that we can then say there's such a thing as an object of relativity But these but these arguments are not coherent Like the the language arguments fail and and they fail on an elementary level that the pizza example is an excellent example It it takes five minutes that takes 35 seconds To resolve what's going on with pizza That that that yes language is ambiguous that doesn't imply Ambiguous reality it doesn't imply that we can't clear up what we mean by our our terms Right, but then they would just say yeah, of course we can clear things up and we can remove the ambiguities But that's going to be a subjective Right decision. So, uh, you know, if you're a bureaucrat in washington dc And they do this all the time right when they're regulating the language that advertisers can use Right, you can use the word organic this way Right, but they draw the line right where they draw the line But there's kind of nothing in reality that said the line had to be drawn there But that's how words work Uh, right, but what they're saying the way words work is it's a subjective decision Right So, you know take another example. This is used in uh, in a slightly different context But if you think about say the color spectrum, we've got our standard Color spectrum. This is not a semantics issue. This is a uh, a perception issue Although I guess it ties into a semantics down the road But you look at the standard color spectrum and then you and I might agree that we should At one end of the spectrum start with red and then shade the orange and then yellow green Or get your blue violet and so on Um, but then this is I'm just borrowing from nelson goodman kind of example here That's to say, you know, we're drawing a line between blue and green and we're saying everything To say the left of this line is going to be green everything to the right of that line is going to be blue You know goodman's point was to say well, you know, why did you not, you know, to Um Shift the line a little bit to the left and a little bit to the right and call that overlap area between blue and green A different word, you know Blean so you just blunt blue and green And that would have been fine, right? Or you could have called it to grew right Blending the blue and green So yes, we have this word blue and we have this word green and they do pick out parts of the color spectrum and we've removed the ambiguity right by even perhaps very precisely right defining Where we're going to do so but that's just a subjective decision because you could have Carved up the color spectrum in different places be using different words And not be using the word blue or the word green at all So you just get into yeah the semantic Indeterminacy and then the more sophisticated Skeptical people coming out of language will then just push on to that Well, let me just take a very quick stab at that and my Attempt at taking a stab at this is to try to demonstrate. I think we can do this in 30 seconds On the color spectrum There are all kinds of different colors Each point in the color spectrum is individual and unique It is whatever it is and it will be slightly different from the position right right next to it If we're going to be super precise every single tiny gradation of color Would get another name. It is another type of thing. There's another and in this case I would say we're actually describing phenomena in our Conscious mind when we're talking about colors, but regardless whatever whatever colors are Each gradation is itself a unique Thing And all language is doing is just saying okay. Well, I'm me individually going to group On top of the individual smaller colors the green one green two green three green four I'm just going to call all these green And if you if you agree with where I've put up those arbitrary boundaries Then we can have effective communication Okay, then question you so then we have a hypothetical here. I'm again Wearing my devil's advocate skeptical hat you say if I agree. Well, what if I don't agree? Then we'd be we'd be using language different. Okay. Yeah, okay, and what's wrong with that? If our point is to have effective communication Then what if I don't want to have effective communication? But then what if I just want to beat you up right or or you Well, then we're not participating in any kind of rational understanding of the world It doesn't imply the world isn't the way that it is. It just means you don't want to talk to me Well, then we've gone in a circle, right because then we're saying The commitment to rationality right is is I'm saying in the devil's advocate position right based on a subjective commitment There are certain goals or values that you would like to achieve Uh, but you know, maybe other people don't have those goals or values Well, then so let me ask your devil's advocate here Is the would the person then what we're saying is right in order to Solve the problem of semantic ambiguity Right, their argument is going to be yeah, but that is all ready to Presuppose a subjective value judgment. Okay. So so would the skeptic agree with this if I were to say that you We might actually have fine agreement between your devil's advocate and and my position and maybe your position That if you're willing to abandon rationality making sense trying to explain the world and effectively communicating with anybody Then I grant you can refuse to communicate I'll grant that And they they would agree with that you think Sure But that doesn't that and what my then I I this is great And then I would turn around and say therefore I have you have demonstrated This devil's advocate has demonstrated That that person is not a serious thinker because they've just abandoned rationality explicitly Yes, and at that point though the question is how they got there right if they got there through long theorizing and sophisticated study as some people do then The person is yes abandoning rationality, but they're not doing it in a shallow way Now there is the old the old cliche right that Right philosophy is a self-destructive enterprise because it's so complicated and the the more you think about it the more you end up Ending up in in paradox right or more questions that you come to think that just can't be answered so What we're doing then is just coming back to the initial point of the conversation is I don't agree right as you don't agree right with the people who ultimately want to abandon rationality right we reach a decision point Where we say uh, here's a contradiction or attention in my theory That means something has gone wrong And I need to continue to do the hard work of trying to find out Where in my you know 300 step chain of reasoning I made a mistake right Or do we want to say as some people do well It's pointless right. We're never going to do this. So How I live my life It's not going to be primarily by the guidance of philosophy understood as the rational right person of truth So we see for example, you know someone like uh, david hum who You can't call him a shallow person. Uh, you know who thought deeply right and read widely And write the conclusion that one of his works is to say you know after he's reached skeptical conclusion after skeptical conclusion Let's look at these metaphysical issues these value issues these epistemological issues is just to say well, you know Everywhere I turn right philosophy leads me to a dead end And his response is then to say well, you know I have got my life to live for essentially always goals right and values to live and so uh, I'm just going to reach the conclusion that philosophy is really not A primary tool for helping me do that It must be that there are other things that uh, that are more important more with my time Other ways that I'm going to make my decisions about how to spend my time how to make my decisions and so on Well, maybe a human is an excellent example and maybe they the fundamental Disagreement maybe between you and I And I have to think more about this is what we mean by Being rational and what we mean by being a deep thinker Because hum is definitely a deep thinker But I do think it's also the case that if if there is an individual who by other criteria seems to be a deep thinker Maybe a great chess player a great inflect But is confused by the semantic stuff So confused that they turn around and think well, maybe logical contradictions exist in the world Then I it is hard for me to shake the idea that that that they've made the santa claus error That they wake up discover that their parents are putting the kid the gifts under the under the tree and go Oh, well santa claus still exists Yeah, I think the better way to do it would be to put yourself in the position of an intelligent undergraduate philosophy student Who goes to a university? And is taught by you know 20 or so Very sophisticated philosophy professors all of whom are skeptical right in varying degrees Uh, my view is that that is going to be overwhelming even to a very intelligent, you know 20 to 22 year old And by the time uh, he or she has gone through his 40 years of university Has heard, you know 60 sophisticated skeptical arguments If the education has been one sided and that person hasn't heard the other side of the argument And so when uh, you know, that person sits down to talk with you another intelligent person Who's got more optimistic conclusions and beliefs about objectivity rationality and so on um You might then very successfully in a one hour conversation Be able to open that person's mind to say oh on these three issues You know, maybe there is something to the objectivity right point Right or the importance of logic right point But still right in that person's mind are the other 57 Skeptical arguments you haven't experienced those yet And so the conversation Ends you guys go about your merry ways and that person then is still you know, uh Then you know 94 a skeptic But open to The possibility of objectivity in a certain way and I don't think that's a that's a shallow person I think that's a that's a person right who's tried very hard and my point only is That's uh, that's a possibility and I think it's a possibility because I meet them a lot In my in my my line of work Well, that's a perfect note to end on This has been a just a fantastic conversation. Thanks again so much for sitting down and talking with me My pleasure steve all good stuff. All the best to you and your show All right, that was my conversation with dr. Stephen Hicks of rockford university I know you guys enjoyed it so much more to say on this topic It's such a hot button issue and it's so relevant and so fundamental Questions about the existence of objective truth Objective reality and our access to it are fundamental to your world view whether you like it or not And more often than not these ideas get coupled with political beliefs if reasoning is actually Ineffectual and we can't get access to objective truth. Well, then politics isn't really about principles politics is about power It's about group identity not surprisingly. I think this world view has been most popular with those on the left It also immediately affects your position on social issues Another hot topic is the transgenderism debate and your perspective on the fundamentals of philosophy about objective truth Identity and how we know it is going to affect how you answer the question What is the metaphysical status of a transgender person? Is it their biology? Is it their mindset? Is it how they self-identify? Can they identify themselves in a way that they aren't? Can you be wrong about your self-identity? All of these are as far as I can tell pure philosophy But that's enough for me for now Lots more to say on the issue. I'll talk to you guys next week