When we talk about what knowledge is, we fall back on metaphors. Everyone does it. Plato, famously, used the metaphor of sight. To know what a thing is, you have to be able to see it clearly. Plato has been hugely influential. Most of us use that metaphor at least some of the time. Other people have compared knowledge to food, you have to chew it up and digest it to really have it.
What is Tyler Cowen's metaphor for knowledge?
Well, he is a post-Kantian; I know another confusing concept. What I mean by this is quite simple though. Cowen thinks what distinguishes what we really know from what we think we know is how we organize it. It's the way that knowledge is organized into a mental filing system that helps me determine what I really know versus stuff I am uncertain about.
The most important thing Cowen wants us to understand about knowledge is that it doesn't naturally organize. It sits there scattered all over the place and he wants to save us from believing knowledge is more organized than it really is.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
The moral claim
Tyler Cowen also claims that stories make us unhappy. Because stories lead us to imagine our lives in certain ways, they also try to lead lives that are appropriate to these stories. But, Cowen asks, are our lives really like that?
When asked to describe what their life was like, Cowen tells us that most people defined in terms of stories. The most common example of the stories people saw their lives in terms of a journey (51%), a battle (11%), the seasons (10%), novel (8%), a race (5%), a live performance like a play (5%), or a carousel (4%). There are a few undecideds and "other" as well.
Very few people, Cowen points out, see their lives as a mess. And yet a mess is, he insists, what it probably is. He goes on to ensure us that this could be a good thing; that we would be happier* if we just accepted that our lives are messes. That's the moral claim. We just make ourselves miserable pretending that our lives are journey's when they are actually messes and we should stop doing that.
* I can't help but notice that the specifically moral argument he uses is more akin to Aristotle than typical modern morality. Modern moral arguments tend to be about making the right choices. But when people just talk about what really matters to them, happiness always looms large just as it does for Cowen here.
When asked to describe what their life was like, Cowen tells us that most people defined in terms of stories. The most common example of the stories people saw their lives in terms of a journey (51%), a battle (11%), the seasons (10%), novel (8%), a race (5%), a live performance like a play (5%), or a carousel (4%). There are a few undecideds and "other" as well.
Very few people, Cowen points out, see their lives as a mess. And yet a mess is, he insists, what it probably is. He goes on to ensure us that this could be a good thing; that we would be happier* if we just accepted that our lives are messes. That's the moral claim. We just make ourselves miserable pretending that our lives are journey's when they are actually messes and we should stop doing that.
* I can't help but notice that the specifically moral argument he uses is more akin to Aristotle than typical modern morality. Modern moral arguments tend to be about making the right choices. But when people just talk about what really matters to them, happiness always looms large just as it does for Cowen here.
The epistemological claim
Cowen thinks stories mislead us in two ways.
First, he thinks they mislead us because they simplify matters. Stories, he says, cut out a whole lot of information. If you want to tell a story about Jesus, Alexander the Great, or Anne McCreary who lives at 231 Westmoreland Street, that story requires you to leave a whole lot of stuff out.
He's right about that.
Second, Cowen thinks stories can beguile us. He thinks they can present life in a light that is so compelling that we forget to pay attention to details that run counter to the story. Details we really ought to be paying attention to. I'm not so sure he is right about that.
First, he thinks they mislead us because they simplify matters. Stories, he says, cut out a whole lot of information. If you want to tell a story about Jesus, Alexander the Great, or Anne McCreary who lives at 231 Westmoreland Street, that story requires you to leave a whole lot of stuff out.
He's right about that.
Second, Cowen thinks stories can beguile us. He thinks they can present life in a light that is so compelling that we forget to pay attention to details that run counter to the story. Details we really ought to be paying attention to. I'm not so sure he is right about that.
What does Tyler Cowen get right?
I like to argue with people I think are very smart and who have something intelligent to say. I do this for selfish reasons. I think I learn more when I challenge people who strike me as intelligent and who maybe even intimidate me a bit. I am onto Tyler Cowen right now because I want to use his arguments about stories to get a better grip on the way Jane Austen uses stories.
Here is the question I am going to start with. What are the strongest parts of Cowen's argument? Or, to put it another way, here I am a Jane Asuten fan and , therefore, a guy who puts a lot of weight on stories—who thinks stories (especially her stories) are important and good ways to understand life—what is it about Cowen's lecture that should most shake me up? I think there are two things. There is an epistemological argument and a moral argument.
Okay, some may want to bail right now so as to avoid anything that features the word epistemological. It's a simpler and more complicated word than it seems. The simple aspect is all we need to know to get going on Cowen. Epistemology is about knowledge. It's about distinguishing what we really know from what we just think we know.
Here is the question I am going to start with. What are the strongest parts of Cowen's argument? Or, to put it another way, here I am a Jane Asuten fan and , therefore, a guy who puts a lot of weight on stories—who thinks stories (especially her stories) are important and good ways to understand life—what is it about Cowen's lecture that should most shake me up? I think there are two things. There is an epistemological argument and a moral argument.
Okay, some may want to bail right now so as to avoid anything that features the word epistemological. It's a simpler and more complicated word than it seems. The simple aspect is all we need to know to get going on Cowen. Epistemology is about knowledge. It's about distinguishing what we really know from what we just think we know.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Was Jane Austen one of us?
Of course not but, for reasons I trust do not need explaining, I highly approve of this attempt to connect Austen with pro-Catholic sympathies.
The beautiful and the picturesque
Another aesthetic concept floating around at Austen's time was the picturesque. Again, picturesque is a deep concept but at the simplest level you can get a grasp on it by asking what makes a good picture. I may have a beautiful Oak tree on my front lawn but only certain angles and framings and light conditions will make it picturesque.
I said a bit about picturesque when discussing Northanger Abbey and there will be a lot more to say as I go through Sense and Sensibility. For now though, I just want to say that in Austen the contrast is never between beautiful and the sublime; the contrast is always between the beautiful and the picturesque.
You might think of the picturesque as a sort of half-way stop to the sublime. It has power rather than inspiring love but it doesn't have the sort of quasi-religious power that the sublime might be said to have. As the Romantic era went on that quasi-religious power became a sort of ersatz religion.
Another way of thinking about the picturesque is to think of Pemberley. Remember how Elizabeth Bennett is supposed to go to the lake district with her aunt and uncle? The lake district one of the parts of England that inspired thoughts of the sublime. In the end, they take a shorter voyage to Derbyshire and visit Pemberley under the mistaken notion that Darcy is not there.
And what sort of moral character goes with people whose taste is built around a contrast between the beautiful and the picturesque? We'll see. But for now, back to Tyler Cowen and stories tomorrow.
I said a bit about picturesque when discussing Northanger Abbey and there will be a lot more to say as I go through Sense and Sensibility. For now though, I just want to say that in Austen the contrast is never between beautiful and the sublime; the contrast is always between the beautiful and the picturesque.
You might think of the picturesque as a sort of half-way stop to the sublime. It has power rather than inspiring love but it doesn't have the sort of quasi-religious power that the sublime might be said to have. As the Romantic era went on that quasi-religious power became a sort of ersatz religion.
Another way of thinking about the picturesque is to think of Pemberley. Remember how Elizabeth Bennett is supposed to go to the lake district with her aunt and uncle? The lake district one of the parts of England that inspired thoughts of the sublime. In the end, they take a shorter voyage to Derbyshire and visit Pemberley under the mistaken notion that Darcy is not there.
And what sort of moral character goes with people whose taste is built around a contrast between the beautiful and the picturesque? We'll see. But for now, back to Tyler Cowen and stories tomorrow.
The sublime and the beautiful (2)
If ethical judgments are analogous to aesthetic ones, then it isn't very far from that to saying that your taste (your habitual approach to aesthetic judgment) is a part of your moral character. And a whole load of people charged right out into the new form of argument that Shaftesbury had opened up here.
Edmund Burke was one of them and Burke was particularly inspired by the concepts of the sublime and the beautiful. Taking them in reverse order. The beautiful for Burke was everything that inspired us love. Again, when considered in a disinterested way. If Allyson Hannigan was your next door neighbour you might be too consumed with actually being in love with her to judge. The sublime inspired terror. Not actual fear. The Matterhorn might inspire terror at its sheer power and scale when seen from distance. You would be disinterested at a distance. If you were standing on top of the Matterhorn, your fear of falling off would prevent you from seeing it in a disinterested way.
The sublime was a lot like religious contemplation. God is really powerful and you don't think of him the same way you would a teddy bear. (Well, you shouldn't; there is no shortage of clergymen keen to reduce God to a cute stuffed animal.)
And, for no particular reason at all, a reminder of the moral implications of thinking of God as a as stuffed animal as opposed to thinking of him as God:
Edmund Burke was one of them and Burke was particularly inspired by the concepts of the sublime and the beautiful. Taking them in reverse order. The beautiful for Burke was everything that inspired us love. Again, when considered in a disinterested way. If Allyson Hannigan was your next door neighbour you might be too consumed with actually being in love with her to judge. The sublime inspired terror. Not actual fear. The Matterhorn might inspire terror at its sheer power and scale when seen from distance. You would be disinterested at a distance. If you were standing on top of the Matterhorn, your fear of falling off would prevent you from seeing it in a disinterested way.
The sublime was a lot like religious contemplation. God is really powerful and you don't think of him the same way you would a teddy bear. (Well, you shouldn't; there is no shortage of clergymen keen to reduce God to a cute stuffed animal.)
And, for no particular reason at all, a reminder of the moral implications of thinking of God as a as stuffed animal as opposed to thinking of him as God:
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