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Re: Truth and power

Posted by diogenes on 2026-June-15 10:49:56, Monday
In reply to Re: Truth and power posted by Pharmakon on 2026-June-15 06:05:07, Monday
I am trying to understand your point of view, because, with the best will in the world, I find it all rather difficult, to be honest.

(I shall leave to one side, for the time being, your unorthodox interpretation of Plato.)

Let us take your statement that:
Majority rule has always been treated with suspicion because opinions differ and it has long been recognized that some degree of respect for the diversity of opinion is necessary to avoid the error into which majority opinion is liable to fall.
The very notion of “error” presupposes that of truth. If the belief that boylove is harmful is erroneous, this implies that boylove's not being harmful is true. Without the notion of truth, therefore, there is no ground for the respect for diversity of opinion that you support, since without truth it is not possible for majority opinion to be mistaken as to the truth.

You write “Limited government is not a theory based on our limited capacity for attaining true knowledge”, but this, on the face of it, contradicts your statement that “respect for the diversity of opinion is necessary to avoid [...] error”, because attaining knowledge and avoiding error are clearly two sides of the same coin.

I can't help thinking that you are confusing quite distinct and separate issues. To say that there is objective truth that is independent of the enquirer is not to say, or imply, that certain knowledge of this objective truth is possible.

To maintain that there is objective truth is not the same thing as to claim that science alone answers all social and political questions. Besides the complexity of the factual issues, questions of what is to be done rest ultimately on values, and science is not fitted to answer questions of fundamental values. Nevertheless, there is some broad agreement on values, which makes argument possible.

To say that there is an objective truth about the matter of boylove (or anything else) is not to say, or imply, that we will win because of this truth, or because we bring it to others' attention. Those are wholly separate issues. It is quite possible for someone to be completely right, and still not win, and to never win. Whether, and how, “we will win” is, therefore, a completely separate question from whether or not there is objective truth as such, and whether it supports our side (which, as it so happens, it does).

Now instead of arguing for the social utility, or harmlessness, of boylove, you might instead want to argue for it based on the more general principle that “humans of all ages should be free to choose their sexual attachments and detachments without government interference”. Fine, but this does not in the least show that truth is ambiguous or does not exist. It does not show that there was no truth whatever about whether boylove was experienced as traumatising in the past (it wasn't). Personally, I think the fact that boylove was not experienced as traumatising in ages past is very useful to know since it provides a powerful argument for leaving humans of all ages “free to choose their sexual attachments”; but whether this is so or not, it remains an objective truth that before modern ideology took over, boys did not always, or even normally, experience their childhood sexual experiences, including those they had with men, as traumatising.

I don't think you have even remotely answered (or attempted to answer) the point I made in my original reply. When A. J. P. Taylor wrote his classic The Origins of the Second World War, for example, it caused a great deal of controversy, with many historians contesting his claim that Hitler was simply pursuing the same policies that Germany had pursued under Weimar, and that the war itself was a kind of accident unintended by Hitler himself. But amid all this debate and controversy, the assumption was that there was a reality there to be investigated. History is of such complexity that it might be difficult for any of us to know for certain the truth of any important historical issue. Nevertheless, if there is no truth, then there would be nothing for historians to disagree about.

On the question of whether recognising truth helps or hinders those who contest hegemonic power, I would say that it is absolutely essential. Once we abandon the arena of truth, and just assert our “rights” or the “rights” of youngsters, we are left with no further argument if others do not recognise those rights. If, however, there is a truth about boylove - that it has been socially functional, that it has been experienced as positive in ages gone by - then it will be a fact that its suppression in the present causes immense harm to both men and boys, and here it seems we have a very strong argument against our detractors.

It seems to me that the possibility of holding truth to power depends crucially on their being something called truth, and truth in the ordinary sense, not 'my truth' or 'your truth', but just plain truth which exposes the myths (not 'alternative truths') of those who wield power.

What you are proposing is essentially American Pragmatism, and my feelings about it are the same as Bertrand Russell's, that it is a philosophy perfectly suited to imperialism and fascism. I would recommend the whole of the chapter on Pragmatism in Russell's Philosophical Essays (available from Anna's Archive). Here is his conclusion:
The hopes of international peace, like the achievement of internal peace, depend upon the creation of an effective force of public opinion formed upon an estimate of the rights and wrongs of disputes. Thus it would be misleading to say that the dispute is decided by force, without adding that force is dependent upon justice.

But the possibility of such a public opinion depends upon the possibility of a standard of justice which is a cause, not an effect, of the wishes of the community; and such a standard of justice seems incompatible with the pragmatist philosophy.

This philosophy, therefore, although it begins with liberty and toleration, develops, by inherent necessity, into the appeal to force and the arbitrament of the big battalions. By this development it becomes equally adapted to democracy at home and to imperialism abroad.

Thus here, again, it is more delicately adjusted to the requirements of the time than any other philosophy which has hitherto been invented.

To sum up: Pragmatism appeals to the temper of mind which finds on the surface of this planet the whole of its imaginative material; which feels confident of progress, and unaware of non-human limitations to human power; which loves battle, with all the attendant risks, because it has no real doubt that it will achieve victory; which desires religion, as it desires railways and electric light, as a comfort and a help in the affairs of this world, not as providing non-human objects to satisfy the hunger for perfection and for something to be worshipped without reserve.

But for those who feel that life on this planet would be a life in prison if it were not for the windows into a greater world beyond; for those to whom a belief in man’s omnipotence seems arrogant, who desire rather the Stoic freedom that comes of mastery over the passions than the Napoleonic domination that sees the kingdoms of this world at its feet—in a word, to men who do not find Man an adequate object of their worship, the pragmatist’s world will seem narrow and petty, robbing life of all that gives it value, and making Man himself smaller by depriving the universe which he contemplates of all its splendour.




diogenes
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