The Inner Light

Briefly, towards the end of another post long ago, I indicated that I felt some affinity to humanism. And in conversation comrade philosophers have expressed some surprise at my self-identification as a humanist. A going interest for me is how we formal philosophers relate to other parts of the field, so in the spirit of using one's blog for self-indulgent musings that one can pretend have wider interest, I thought I would use this space to clarify how and why I feel it appropriate to describe myself as a humanist.

(Not really going to dwell on it here, but folk interested in the relationship between formal philosophy -- especially logic -- and the humanities should also check out this essay by Greg Restall.)

I am a humanist in the following vague sense. I have great faith in people's capacity to peacefully come together and do better than we've thus far done. Not only do I hope for a better world that we can all share in, but I think such could be created by our own hands working in unison. I think that to a far greater extent than we presently do, we could arrange ourselves by rationally and collectively deliberating as equals to decide upon our purposes and means of satisfying those. This could be achieved, I think, in a way that would not only be consistent with the real freedom to be eccentric and think differently, but would to a significant degree enhance such liberties as we have managed to secure under the present socio-economic arrangement.

I think that our traditions of literary and artistic production are valuable in moving us towards this world. They refine our sensibilities, help us engage in empathetic identification, and vividly present both ideals and object lessons for us to learn from directly. Only those last need be directly political, the first two can often be achieved (may even be best achieved) by ostensibly apolitical works, which avoid didactically insisting upon some moral. For instance, the Miyazaki film Kiki's Delivery Service does wonders for encouraging empathy and solidarity and a kind of feminism, without this being the obvious or overt "message" of the film. 

That such things are useful is, to me, a consequence of a more general belief that there can be suasion by moral charisma and ostentatious decency. Beyond the more indirect methods of artistic moral suasion, there is also an importance to direct moral appeal. Doing this requires speaking hard truths to power, and making those who wield authority feel the human stakes of their actions. On such occasions what matters is the ability to bring emotionally affecting messages to bear in support of rationally supported action. This comes from a kind of Sentimentalist meta-ethics and theories of rhetoric I take to be grounded in various humanistic traditions of thought: I hope we can properly align the emotional cadence of one's message to the appropriate or fitting response that will benefit as many people as possible as much as possible. Ethical theory as well as aesthetic, psychological, and sociological analysis, will all play its role in doing this well.

Note in all this that my humanism is almost entirely and purely modal. It is a belief about what can be done, and what ought to be done. But it is not a belief about what is typically done or likely to come about. (The moral psychology is, it should be said, a descriptive belief about the actual drivers of our behaviour, and what they are responsive to; hence the "almost" qualifying the "entirely".) But, as I have outlined in a recent retrospective, I do think this aligns with the focus in the best of my work in formal philosophy. I have ultimately been trying to increase our capacities to achieve our collective chosen ends. I aim to bring closer to actuality the possibilities I believe through faith are available to us. 

Before concluding, I'll note that there is also a(n even more) boring and autobiographical answer as to why I say I'm a humanist: I've been educated within philosophy departments, which are themselves usually part of humanities divisions, and socially classified therein by the broader public. This isn't nothing. I think analytic philosophers sometimes do themselves a bit of a disservice when they publicly distance themselves from the rest of the humanities and disparage the other folk. When the culture war gets round to litigating just what should be funded in universities anyway, I don't think our good friends in the halls of power shall be using a scalpel fine enough to make such distinctions as: "we shall cut away these unnecessary humanists and spend the windfall on more welders; but make sure to keep the (analytic) philosophers since they are very rigorous and therefore cool, so they can definitely stay.'' It will be a big philistine hammer smashing down on schools of the humanities, and more generally anyone who can't clearly explain their worth in terms people with MBAs understand. ("The first thing this committee should know is that Kant was a really disruptive innovator in the field of synergistic left brain thinking; he might actually be the paradigm INTP knowledge-entrepreneur".) We shall regret not hanging together as we hang separately.