Reification of Left and Right (was Status of Superrationality)

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat May 17 2003 - 15:01:20 MDT

  • Next message: spike66@attbi.com: "Re: Reification of Left and Right (was Status of Superrationality)"

    James writes

    > > Just out of curiosity, do you consider Hot and Cold to be
    > > reified Things?
    >
    > Yes, in the sense that they are useful simplifications of reality. The
    > Left, like Hot, is not a real thing, but unlike Hot, it isn't useful
    > either.

    The reason that it seems useful to me (or, at any rate has up
    until now) is that by saying "He leans towards the Left", one
    has said

      he probably favors strict gun control
      he is probably supports a minimum wage
      he probably is for socialized medicine
      he was probably against the Iraq incursion
      he is probably not a free market enthusiast
      he is probably tolerant of sexual deviancy
      he's probably in favor of increased socialism

    and so on(!). While perhaps few particular leftists subscribe
    to everything I've just written, if a "Leftist" does not subscribe
    to at least five of the seven, he's a pretty poor excuse for a
    Leftist ;-) and I think that my list could be extended to 20
    items without too much work.

    So this seems to me to be a brief way to summarize all this knowledge,
    namely, by referring to a position on "the" political spectrum.

    > In my (lack of) experience, I've found that the particular labels Left
    > and Right are used solely as weapons in a fight, not tools in an
    > argument.

    Yes, so you say. How strange. Normally, among the people I talk to,
    even the television programs I see, it's mostly mentioned the way that
    hair color or race might be, as a kind of fact of life. IMO, someone
    has to have led a kind of sheltered existence to consider the statement
    "X is a leftist" to be an insult, or "X is conservative" likewise.

    Importantly, "X is a right-winger" is an insult, because few of those
    who are self-admittedly on the Right ever use this term to describe
    themselves. Perhaps this is true of "left-wing" too.

    > Lumping somebody in with, say, The Right, implies they support
    > a whole lot more baggage than may be the case, usually in the
    > attempted construction of a straw man.

    Hmm. As I say, our experiences differ.

    Now let's examine a case in which we would agree that a bad sort of
    reification has occurred. The one that comes to mind is "Evil".
    What does it mean to say "he is evil"?

    Unlike the case for the list I made above, I don't really think that
    anything is connoted by "he is evil", unless some very religious
    people who embrace certain doctrines are talking, for among them,
    this may be a perfectly reasonable statement, and be shorthand for

      he has allowed Satan into his heart
      he has ceased following the way of the Lord
      his behavior is anti-social and corrupt

    etc. In their case, then, I would say that they know what they
    are talking about (at least to each other). Now, what is the
    harm? Well, from our point of view, this reification has only
    one problem, doesn't it? Namely that we don't think that many
    of the references in those sentences have referents in reality.

    Lee



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