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readoldthingsPrompted by a discussion of logical errors on JMG's blog, I wrote the following essay on the current political impasse in the United States, especially regarding race:
When I began writing this little essay, I was calling it the "Three Fundamental Errors of Identity Politics." Three became four, and four quickly became five; after the fifth, three more suggested themselves; then I went for a walk, and quickly saw the ninth, and a tenth. For that reason I'm calling this "The Many Errors of Identity Politics." Really, though, it ought to be called "Many of the Errors of Identity Politics." As the computer people say, Garbage In, Garbage Out: if you attempt to construct a moral or political system based on nonsense, the result will be nonsense compounding upon nonsense indefinitely-- and in the spheres of morality and politics, nonsense nearly always amounts to violence.
The Many Errors of Identity Politics
Most of our political discourse is, at this point, complete nonsense, especially regarding race. When I say "nonsense," I mean it in the literal sense of "words that have no meaning." This is because popular narratives around race are based on a series of simple, logical errors. The result of these errors is quite simply that our understanding of the world, especially regarding race, is completely false and cannot help but be false.
Two things are worth noting before we continue: First, I'm especially referring to the radical left-wing position currently known as "Critical Race Theory," but that's only becuase this is the narrative currently ascendant-- the fact is that these errors apply to all forms of racial identity politics, left or right. Second, while I'm specifically discussing racial poiltics, most of these errors appear in other forms of identity politics as well, especially gender politics.
With that said, here are what I've come to see as the fundamental errors of racial identity politics.
1. Category Confusion. Among animals, the word "cat" refers to a species. "Canine" is a family group, which includes many species, including dogs, wolves, coyotes, foxes, jackals, and others. "House pet" is a different type of category, which includes some but not all cats, some but not all canines, plus guinea pigs, hamsters, goldfish and tarantulas, among others. If you attempt to compare cats to canines and both of these to house pets, the data you come up with will be nonsense. In the same way, if you compare blacks, a discrete ethno-cultural group; with whites, a broad category including many, many different ethno-cultural groups; with Hispanics, which is a different type of category altogether; the data you come up with will be nonsense. And yet, these three incomparable categories form the basis of our political discourse around race.
2. Conflation of Individuals with Categories. This is a sub-set of the first error. Here, an individual is incorrectly understood to be the category of which it is a part-- whatever category that is-- and treated accordingly. I have three cats. They all behavior more or less like cats, but there are major differences between them. One in particular was raised with dogs, and behaves very much like a dog-- she is highly social, goes on walks, greets strangers at the door, and has made friends with all the children in the neighborhood. Although the only female of the three cats, she's absolutely the alpha of the cat group-- as the male cats will tell you. If you attempt to predict her behavior based simply on the fact that she's a female cat, you will be completely wrong. How much more wrong will you be if you attempt to predict an animal's behavior when the only thing you know about it is that it's a canine? You could easily end up treating a toy poodle as a wolf, which is wrong but not that destructive-- or a wolf as a toy poodle, which will have rather more unfortunate consequences. If all you know about an animal is that it's a house pet, and "house pets like to be cuddled," you're going to get quite a shock when someone drops their pet trarantula on your lap. Similarly, in identity politics, individuals, with their unique experiences, are treated simply as the statistical category of one particular category, which consequences ranging from the foolish to the disastrous.
3. Logical Fallacies. Suppose that you read a book in which the author gave a highly emotional, detailed description of every time a cat bit, scratched, or hissed at them. Would you be justified in concluding that all cats attack humans, and that the only animals that attack humans are cats? Of course not. The logic here is: Some X Are Y, therefore All X are Y, and All Y are X. Some cats bite, therefore all cats bite, and all animals that bite are cats. Some whites have power, therefore all whites have power, therefore all people in power are white. Some whites are racist, therefore all whites are racist, therefore all racists are white.
4. Ignoring Categories. Is an animal wild, feral, tamed, or domesticated? Is it male or female? What breed is it? If you compare barn cats to toy poodles, and try to generalize the results to you will come up with an understanding of cats and dogs that is completely wrong. Similarly, if you compare the average cat with the average dog, and it turns out that you're in in a city with no feral cats and in which the majority of the domestic population is neutered, but in which there is a big problem with stray dogs-- you're going to get inaccurate information about cats and dogs, because you're ignoring categories. In the same way, identity politics compares already-nonsensical (See Error 1) racial categoreis, while ignoring other important categories, like region, class, religion, and the rural-urban divide. Do we really think that, all other factors being equal, someone raised on a farm in the Appalachians has the same opportunities as someone raised in the Los Angeles suburbs?
5. Inappropriate Application of Powers. There's probably a better way to say that, but what I mean is this: What if you treated all cat scratches as examples of feline behavior, but dog bites as behaviors of individual dogs-- and in fact prohibited discussion of biting as a dog behavior? What if, at the same time, you insisted on celebrating all individual instances of dog cuddling as examples of dog behavior, while treating cat cuddles as individual events, and prohibited the celebration of cats? It's easy to treat this as a moral failing. Resist that temptation, and stick solely to the logic-- if you have decided that "biting" is an activity or power in which a category of animals is capable of engaging, then it makes sense that any similar category of animals could engage in biting. If you're going to treat bites by individual cats as cat bites, then you either need to treat bites by individual dogs as dog bites, or you will come up with nonsense.
The first five are what we could call the fundamental errors. The second group of three builds on these.
6. Compounding Errors. This isn't a specific error, but rather the consequences of all the preceding errors. If the only relevant category for dogs is canines, and a wolf kills a sheep, does that mean that poodles in Boston are a danger to Texas livestock? And that, furthermore, local mountain lions, rattlesnakes, and poachers pose no danger to livestock? This is more nonsense, and it leads, also, to the next bit of nonsense:
7. Intractability. Because of the compounding of errors, our problems become that much harder to solve, even if we want to. For example, suppose you agree with me about point 5. If we're going to discuss animal bites, we need to discuss animal bites generally, you say. And so we need to compare cats, canines, and house pets to see what animals are most likely to bite and what the consequences of animal bites are. Again, this will result in nonsense, because Error Number 1 is still in operation. Or suppose you decide that it's very important to rid ourselves of Error Number 4, and come up with as many ways to categorize animals as possible. But for whatever reason, you still record some animal bites as representative of category-behavior, but others as only representative of individual behavior. You will still come up with nonsense.
8. The Dissident Reversal. This is also a different type of error, but it needs to be discussed. It's very common for people to notice that our way of discussing racial and other category differences produces nonsense, and to become angry and want to do something about it. But very often, all they do is reverse the terms of the error. Rather than compare cats with canines they compare dogs with felines, with equally nonsensical results. Rather than discussing cat bites and celebrating dog cuddles, they condemn dog bites and celebrate cat cuddles. This goes on until pressure builds up on the other side, and the situation reverses again. Like an image caught between two mirrors, the errors bounce back and forth, back and forth, and we're all left screaming nonsense at one another forever.
If the preceding three errors were secondary errors, the next are tertiary errors, compounded of primary and secondary errors.
9. David Vs Goliath. The ninth error is compounded of the third and the eighth. In this error, all of one's opponents are treated as representing a monolithic and hegemonic power, while oneself and one's allies are treated as individuals and dissidents. To return to the barnyard for a moment, it's as if the mere existence of a book, no matter when it was written and no matter its general popularity, celebrating cats and calling for the extermination of canines was treated as evidence of an all-powerful hegemon dedicated to the celebration of cats and extermination of canines. Meanwhile one's own book, demanding the celebration of dogs and extermination of felines, despite being the exact same type of medium (a book) calling for the same type of approach to animal husbandry (celebration of a species, extermination of an order), is treated a mere isolated example of dissidence in the face of overwhelming power.
10. Category Confusion. Another tertiary error, in which the first set of errors are applied to objects in entirely different categories. "Ungulates," "livestock," and "animals that have been spayed or neutered are not different levels of categories, as species, genera, families and orders of animals are. Rather, they are different types altogether, and comparing them can only result in nonsense. In the same way, "blacks," "Muslims," "gays," and "the disabled" are different types things altogether, yet are regularly placed alongside one another in Identity Politics discourse.
10. Category Confusion. Another tertiary error, in which the first set of errors are applied to objects in entirely different categories. "Ungulates," "livestock," and "animals that have been spayed or neutered are not different levels of categories, as species, genera, families and orders of animals are. Rather, they are different types altogether, and comparing them can only result in nonsense. In the same way, "blacks," "Muslims," "gays," and "the disabled" are different types things altogether, yet are regularly placed alongside one another in Identity Politics discourse.
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Date: 2021-09-09 03:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-09 06:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-09 04:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-09 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-09 11:31 pm (UTC)(kidding!)
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Date: 2021-09-10 03:28 pm (UTC)And then you can do things like take the average weight of all felines in the world and come up with around 10 pounds, because even though lions weight 300-400 pounds, there are 20,000 lions and 400 million housecats. And so you can say things like "While Felines weigh 10 pounds, the average weight of an Australian Stumpy Tale Cattle Dog is 40 pounds. As our culture increasingly privileges smaller pets, felines are thriving but Australian Stumpy Tale Cattel Dogs are once again in danger." Then when someone points out that lions weigh 300 pounds and are on the verge of extinction in the wild, you just start screaming at them.
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Date: 2021-09-10 04:07 pm (UTC)Essentialism Fallacy
Date: 2021-11-20 05:30 pm (UTC)I want to tell you that I have been reading through the Matthew posts over the past few days and finding much to think about in them, even though I have no specific replies to make on anything as yet.
However, on this identity politics post, for which thanks, I too have given much thought to identity politics, from way back when "racism" constructed itself as the original politics of identity, based on legislating differently depending on a person's skin colour.
And what I concluded is this. If there is moralising to be done, it cannot be done on the basis of what a person IS, because they have no power to change that, never have, and never will.
The only useful moralising that can be actually applied, is to ground it on the basis of what a person DOES, because a person has power over what they do, and can choose to act for the better as well as for the worse.
On this basis, racist laws themselves never made any sense. But what has developed out of that, as a metastatic reversal of it, somehow has doubled, tripled and quartrupled down on the same essentialist fallacy that what a person unchangeably IS. is what either condemns or exonerates that person.
And this whole fallacy based framework effectively prevents us from simply addressing what people do, and asking, maybe, could they do it better.
Anyway, on to your next Matthew post...
Thank you, Scotlyn
Re: Essentialism Fallacy
Date: 2021-11-22 03:01 pm (UTC)This is a great point, and ought to be added to the list. "Morality consists entirely in actions, and is therefore located in the Will in human beings. Neither racial nor ethnic nor sexual identities are rooted in the Will, but rather in circumstance. Therefore, any morality rooted in unchosen circumstance can only be a false morality. Therefore identity politics is immoral."