The Twilight of Bacon – Nietzsche on the Idols…

Say Bob was talking to Alice and asked “Do you know what ‘virtue signaling’ means?”, and that Alice replied in the negative. Say Bob attempted to define it by uttering this sentence: “Virtue signaling is a term for indications, to relevant others, of the sender’s excellence on some metric believed to have a positive valence.” Imagine, if you might, that Alice’s response was some variation on, “Huh?”. Assume that Bob, playing the memetic gardener here, is of the opinion that ‘virtue signalling’ is a useful idea and has the desire to implant it in other ‘minds’. In such a situation, it may behoove him to continue this line of conversation until he became convinced that the meme had been successfully replicated.

A tool that Bob may next employ in furtherance of this goal may be: Attempt a restatement that he has reason or hunch to suspect will connect with pre-installed conceptual latticework in Alice. So let’s pretend that he goes with, “Ok, for example, consider the famous case of the peacock’s tail. As far as we know, it seems not to confer direct survival value. In fact, it appears to have a cost to the peacock’s individual fitness. However, not only despite but because of this signalling cost, the peacock who sports a vibrant tail, it is hypothesized, signals to the other birds its high quality. You know what I mean? This whole ‘sexual selection’ stuff would be but a sub-type of the general class of virtue signals,” because he thinks that his interlocutor is familiar with and accepts ‘sexual selection’. It seems not entirely far fetched to assume at this point Bob can move Alice from an “Huh?” of incomprehension to an “Ohhhh…” of enlightenment. And thenceforth, perhaps, our charmed student may proceed, in their daily doings, to ‘discover’ instances of virtue signalling in their environments and perhaps, if inspired, to even point them out.

“Anything you can do I can do ‘meta’.” ~Daniel Dennett

This pedagogical procedure occurs often. I think it can be effective for the purpose of meme-farming. I will now attempt a diagnosis of its efficacy and then register a complaint.

“… the mind, by the daily habit and intercourse of life, has come prepossessed with corrupted doctrines, and filled with the vainest idols… all of which must be abjured and renounced with firm and solemn resolution, and the understanding must be completely freed and cleared of them…” ~ Francis Bacon

One may be forgiven for the opinion that cognitive bias literature is an artefact of the late 20th century. I perceive its roots much earlier. In 1620’s Novum Organum [from which all Bacon quotes in this post ibid] Bacon listed Four Idols which tend to be present in most unanalyzed human minds:

“The idols of the tribe are inherent in human nature and the very tribe or race of man; for man’s sense is falsely asserted to be the standard of things; on the contrary, all the perceptions both of the senses and the mind bear reference to man and not to the universe, and the human mind resembles those uneven mirrors which impart their own properties to different objects… and distort and disfigure them.”

This is pretty close to what I call ‘The Chimp’. Human beings reason on biological primate hardware. [Almost?] Everything we think, whether ‘in language’ [which was primarily learned and not individually developed] or ‘in images’ [whose elements, it seems, were once filtered through ‘the senses’], it seems to me, will be influenced by bodily contingencies. As I am not willing to trust that my particular evo-historical location has furnished me with optimized epistemological hardware, I have reason to suspect my judgments.

“The idols of the den are those of each individual; for everybody (in addition to the errors common to the race of man) has his own individual den or cavern, which intercepts and corrupts the light of nature, either from his own peculiar and singular disposition, or from his education and intercourse with others, from from his reading, and the authority acquired by those whom he reverences and admires, or from the different impression produced on the mind, as it happens to be preoccupied and predisposed… so that the spirit of man (according to its several dispositions), is variable, confused, and as it were actuated by chance…”

As finite and fallible as we are, each of us has a [unique] personal catalog of ‘experience’. These are the books I have read, those are the lectures I have consumed, here are the sights I’ve seen, and the foods I have tasted. Our brains/’minds’ each have been impacted to unknown degrees with uncountable influences which have shaped our doxologies and habituated our dispositions. As I am not willing to trust my particular world-line trajectory is one fated to encounter optimal epistemic influences, I have reason to suspect my judgments.

“There are also idols formed by the reciprocal intercourse and society of man with man, which we call idols of the market, from the commerce and association of men with each other; for men converse by means of language, but words are formed at the will of the generality, and there arises from a bad and unapt formation of words a wonderful obstruction to the mind… words still manifestly force the understanding, throw everything into confusion, and lead mankind into vain and innumerable controversies and fallacies.”

Sorry, Mr. Whorf, you too were scooped. At least our ‘intellectual’ institutions: our ‘philosophy’ and ‘science’ et. al., take place in the media of languages– natural and artificial alike; neither are significantly of our own making. Our ‘first language’ not chosen, but the result of our developmental situation. As languages too, are the resultants of a process of natural selection which I never trust to ‘track the truth’, I have reason to suspect my judgments.

“Lastly, there are idols which have crept into men’s minds from the various dogmas of peculiar systems of philosophy, and also from the perverted rules of demonstration, and these we denominate idols of the theater: for we regard all the systems of philosophy hitherto received or imagined, as so many plays brought out and performed, creating fictitious and theatrical worlds… which have become inveterate by tradition, implicit credence, and neglect.”

Altricial apes, dawdling to sapience, if we arrive at all to the bench of epistemic prudence we arrive late and laden, cloaked in layers of advice against our consent. None of us can help but be ‘recovering’ whatnot’s of our early imprinting and subsequent conditioning. Again noting our epistemological dasien, preceding our intentional evaluations are unacknowledged installations of dogma and doctrine seared into our synapses by the impressionability of youth. And since, of course, I don’t trust my tribe and my teachers to have included ‘the truth, and nothing but the truth’, I have reason to suspect my judgments.

I think that the pattern indicated at outset between Bob and Alice is primarily problematic because it takes pedagogical advantage of the Idols of the Mind and we have a tendency to conflate understanding with acceptance. And when we do, we have credited installation of more dogmas to behave towards in an epistemically idolatrous manner. This can, of course, be an unintended consequence of conceptual congress, not always nefarious but nevertheless hostile to construction and maintenance of a ‘well-ordered mind’.

Diagnosis complete, what’s the cure? As often, I turn to Nietzsche. From Twilight of the Idols:

“To stay cheerful when involved in a gloomy and exceedingly responsible business is no inconsiderable art… A revaluation of all values, this question mark so black, so huge, it casts a shadow over him who sets it up… Another form of recovery, in certain cases even more suited to me, is to sound out idols…. There are more idols in the world than there are realities: that is my ‘evil eye’ for this world, that is also my ‘evil ear’…. For once to pose questions here with a hammer and perhaps to receive for answer that famous hollow sound which speaks of inflated bowels – what a delight for one who has ears behind his ears – for an old psychologist and pied piper like me, in presence of whom precisely that which would like to stay silent has to become audible….”

I imagine here standing in a basilica confronting a plethora of sculptures, as within perhaps a great hall of Leibniz’s Mill of varying constitution, individually pedestaled. To the eye each appears as substantial as revered, carefully constructed. These, idols of someone’s mind. I, the physician of the evil ear, hammer in hand. My business, gloomy and responsible indeed, to tap each statue to find its stature with my method and tool. This, I think, should be noticed and elevated as one of the primary tasks of the ‘philosopher’: to “sound out idols” with the ‘hammer’ of argument. That each of us ought, ourselves or by proxy, owes the piper a visit from our evil-eared tuner. *CLICK* some idols resist, *BONG* some do clang their resonance of unreason. And once examined and purified, restored to a newfound sanity, to station at the entrance a Kafkaesque gatekeeper, stoically dismissing new idols from the door built only for you.

Ultimately, it’s up to Alice. Will she allow the presentation of a credential which reads “I’m with Idol 23” to admit the new conceptual apparatus to her Hall of Idols? Will she periodically roll up her sleeves and take out her hammer and make her Idols ring– making audible those secret recesses they so wish to obscure? Or will she play the doxastic ass, burdened with another straw; one step closer to a fully programmed automaton?