Reading Peter Kreeft's "Jacob's Ladder: 10 steps to truth"

[CompSciGuy]

I recently received this book but I’ve had to stop at the second dialogue because I can wrap my head around almost nothing that he says in that dialogue. The purpose of the second dialogue is to refute skepticism. Different forms of skepticism are addressed, including relativism, and each is “shown” to be self-refuting. Here is the first excerpt from this dialogue I have issues with, it is on page 25:

Libby: “So where do I go from here? How do I know skepticism won’t turn out to be my home too? How do I refute it?”
Mother: “That’s easy.”
Libby: “Easy?”
Mother: “Yes, easy. It contradicts itself. It says ‘The truth is that there is no truth’, or ‘I know that I don’t know’, or that ‘I’m certain that there is no certainty’.”

The first statement obviously contradicts itself. The second two I don’t understand. Sure, they contradict themselves if applied universally, as in “I know that I don’t know anything” or “I’m certain that I am not certain about anything.” But this isn’t what I’ve understood skepticism to be, nor is this the way it has ever been described to me. Skepticism as I understand it is choosing not to believe in something unless there is positive evidence of its existence. Is this an incorrect understanding of skepticism?

The second part that confuses the heck out of me is the refutation of deconstructionism. Kreeft introduces Nietzsche at this part. Here is the excerpt:

Libby: “What’s [deconstructionism]? I’ve heard of it, but I can’t understand it. I can’t get it in focus. It looks like a blur.”
Mother: "Maybe it is a blur. But it says something about truth that’s terribly important and importantly terrible. It claims that truth is only the hypocritical mask painted on the face of power; that truth is only whatever other people of your class or race or gender or sexual orientation or ideological group let you get away with saying. It’s basically Nietzsche’s shtick about everything coming down to the will to power.
Libby: “That IS terrible. But that doesn’t mean it’s not true. Racism is the gas that powers a lot of engines in our society, and that’s a ‘will to power’.”
Mother: “But if all truth is just the will to power, that truth is too. So when Nietzsche or some Deconstructionist or some racist - or some anti-racist - says it to you, that can be nothing but their will to power over you. So why should you listen to them? And why should you listen to anti-racism any more than racism if they’re both only the will to power?”
Libby: “No, no, that can’t be. Racism can’t be equal to anti-racism. It’s people that are equal, not ideas.”
Mother: “Gotcha! And here’s another thing about racism. Deconstructionists condemn racism, but if everything comes from racism, even truth, then that’s the most radical racism you can imagine.”
Libby: “Suppose they say it’s all a matter of gender? That it’s sexism instead of racism?”
Mother: “Same argument: then that’s the most radical sexism.”
Libby: “And if it’s heterosexism, that’s the most radical heterosexism. Then gay and straight are farther apart, not closer together.”
Mother: “You’re getting the gotchas.”
Libby: “And if it’s all economic class - that’s what the Marxists say - then that’s the most radical classism, the total class system. So they all end up doing exactly what they condemn.”

The bolded statements make no sense to me. Maybe I don’t understand deconstructionism/Nietzsche well enough to understand the argument. What is meant by “everything comes from racism” and can it be that believing two views, such as racism and anti-racism, are nothing more than a will to power, cause them to be equal to each other? I don’t understand.

 

[Warandpeace]

Do you understand logic? The branch of philosophy that is concerned with reason?

It is a bit confusing, especially taken out of context, but deductive reasoning is what should be applied here.

 

[Contra_Mundum_1]

The bolded statements make no sense to me. Maybe I don’t understand deconstructionism/Nietzsche well enough to understand the argument. What is meant by “everything comes from racism” and can it be that believing two views, such as racism and anti-racism, are nothing more than a will to power, cause them to be equal to each other? I don’t understand.

The mother is saying that position A and position B are essentially the same. The content is different but both are rooted in the same principle, which is power and will. So forget about the content of the given example and look at the bigger picture, at the operating mechanism, at the structure.

To go back to the given example of race, sex and class: if people see race/sex/class as the root of all the problems in society,then they are revealing their true attitude to race, sex and class, namely that they matter a lot, that they are the most important things. So at the same time they are engaged in the narrative that wishes to erace the race, sex, class divisions in the name of equality, and in doing so they carry on with stressing sex/class/race as the most important point of difference. That makes them radically racist/sexist/classist.

May I use the gender/sex example further to illustrate this point? Feminists go on and on and on about inequality and how women are victims of a patriarchal system and they need empowerment. But what would happen if women finally got so empowered as they imagine and there was no more inequality? Let me tell you: the feminist narrative would end. They can’t have that happen, right? So the feminist ideologues carry on with the women-victims narrative because they need it in order to keep their ideology alive. Kreeft would argue that that makes them radically sexist.

 

[CompSciGuy]

To go back to the given example of race, sex and class: if people see race/sex/class as the root of all the problems in society,then they are revealing their true attitude to race, sex and class, namely that they matter a lot, that they are the most important things. So at the same time they are engaged in the narrative that wishes to erace the race, sex, class divisions in the name of equality, and in doing so they carry on with stressing sex/class/race as the most important point of difference. That makes them radically racist/sexist/classist.

I don’t see how this follows. Isn’t the essence of this view that there should be equality between race, sex, and class and not the opposite? This is what defines the movement. I also don’t see how all of this ties in to deconstructionism where truth is just a “will to power.”

 

[polytropos]

The purpose of the second dialogue is to refute skepticism. Different forms of skepticism are addressed, including relativism, and each is “shown” to be self-refuting. Here is the first excerpt from this dialogue I have issues with, it is on page 25:

Libby: “So where do I go from here? How do I know skepticism won’t turn out to be my home too? How do I refute it?”
Mother: “That’s easy.”
Libby: “Easy?”
Mother: “Yes, easy. It contradicts itself. It says ‘The truth is that there is no truth’, or ‘I know that I don’t know’, or that ‘I’m certain that there is no certainty’.”

The first statement obviously contradicts itself. The second two I don’t understand. Sure, they contradict themselves if applied universally, as in “I know that I don’t know anything” or “I’m certain that I am not certain about anything.” But this isn’t what I’ve understood skepticism to be, nor is this the way it has ever been described to me. Skepticism as I understand it is choosing not to believe in something unless there is positive evidence of its existence. Is this an incorrect understanding of skepticism?

I’ll start by saying that although I am an atheist, I am not a relativist. I think it can be reasonably argued that there is truth. Through the senses certain things can be apprehended with certainty (ie. the existence of a desk that I am touching right now). There are cases where this sense information could be questioned (optical illusions, people with diseased mental states, etc. might receive faulty sense info). But there are some things we can be virtually confident about. Other things can be confirmed by testimony to reach nearer certainty.

That is part of my problem with this argument that Kreeft is making. It is a caricature and in some sense a straw man. People do not really (or at least sensibly) deny that there is truth. They deny its intelligibility or the capability of humans to apprehend particular truths (but not necessarily all truths). There is a reality that we can attempt to describe with language - relativists are not really claiming that every claim about reality is wrong, just that there are limitations to the description of reality (Catholics also don’t claim that reality is fully intelligible by humans), and that truth claims should not necessarily be trusted.

So there is not actually a motivation for a relativist to make a claim, “The truth is there’s no truth,” and in another sense there isn’t much motivation for a Catholic to refute it. I’m not saying relativism is right, but I am saying that this handling of it is simplistic and superficial.

The real problem with skepticism, as an ideology, is really just the fact that it isn’t airtight logic. I have been a “skeptic” for a long time, and for me that means that I have tried to think of any natural alternative to God. When I was introduced to the Big Bang and evolution in science class I thought they disproved God. That’s simply illogical. I was just already averse to religion (as a child I was bored at mass and religious ed, and I had misconceptions about Catholic damnation) that motivated me to interpret the implications of these issues illogically.

The extension of this is that when I started taking more advanced biology and was introduced to the idea of abiogenesis, I would not entertain the possibility of God because, technically speaking, chemical interactions are very random, and some organic molecules (though not all of the necessary ones) can be generated from the earth’s early atmosphere. That’s not an airtight alternative to God - I am basically saying that some of the blanks have been filled in and I’m assuming the rest of them could also be filled in naturalistically. This is just not logical. It’s inductive and necessarily uncertain.

So I don’t really think anyone is a relativist (if you meet one, feel free to use these arguments on him). What I think “anti-relativist” arguments unfairly simplify are skepticism and naturalism, which reject the possibility of metaphysics or anything that is not natural.

 

[Warandpeace]

I’ll start by saying that although I am an atheist, I am not a relativist. I think it can be reasonably argued that there is truth. Through the senses certain things can be apprehended with certainty (ie. the existence of a desk that I am touching right now). There are cases where this sense information could be questioned (optical illusions, people with diseased mental states, etc. might receive faulty sense info). But there are some things we can be virtually confident about. Other things can be confirmed by testimony to reach nearer certainty.

That is part of my problem with this argument that Kreeft is making. It is a caricature and in some sense a straw man. People do not really (or at least sensibly) deny that there is truth. They deny its intelligibility or the capability of humans to apprehend particular truths (but not necessarily all truths). There is a reality that we can attempt to describe with language - relativists are not really claiming that every claim about reality is wrong, just that there are limitations to the description of reality (Catholics also don’t claim that reality is fully intelligible by humans), and that truth claims should not necessarily be trusted.

So there is not actually a motivation for a relativist to make a claim, “The truth is there’s no truth,” and in another sense there isn’t much motivation for a Catholic to refute it. I’m not saying relativism is right, but I am saying that this handling of it is simplistic and superficial.

The real problem with skepticism, as an ideology, is really just the fact that it isn’t airtight logic. I have been a “skeptic” for a long time, and for me that means that I have tried to think of any natural alternative to God. When I was introduced to the Big Bang and evolution in science class I thought they disproved God. That’s simply illogical. I was just already averse to religion (as a child I was bored at mass and religious ed, and I had misconceptions about Catholic damnation) that motivated me to interpret the implications of these issues illogically.

The extension of this is that when I started taking more advanced biology and was introduced to the idea of abiogenesis, I would not entertain the possibility of God because, technically speaking, chemical interactions are very random, and some organic molecules (though not all of the necessary ones) can be generated from the earth’s early atmosphere. That’s not an airtight alternative to God - I am basically saying that some of the blanks have been filled in and I’m assuming the rest of them could also be filled in naturalistically. This is just not logical. It’s inductive and necessarily uncertain.

So I don’t really think anyone is a relativist (if you meet one, feel free to use these arguments on him). What I think “anti-relativist” arguments unfairly simplify are skepticism and naturalism, which reject the possibility of metaphysics or anything that is not natural.

While this is off topic, my experience is that the idol of “skepticism” is then replaced by another idol called “scientism,” where everything can be proved by science.

 

[polytropos]

Yes, they are related. I mean, skepticism in a strict sense of not trusting everything you hear without reason is not the issue. The issue is when one alternatively rejects everything that is not understood. Scientism is sort of the next step, a more formal version that elevates a specific body of thought and assumes that what falls outside of it is false.

 

[Contra_Mundum_1]

I don’t see how this follows. Isn’t the essence of this view that there should be equality between race, sex, and class and not the opposite? This is what defines the movement. I also don’t see how all of this ties in to deconstructionism where truth is just a “will to power.”

Yes, that is what they aim for. But if you continually stress race, race, race and more race, then you are stuck with race as the key point of reference. There is no way to overcome it. In that way the equality ideal never reaches its goal because race remains the focus. (There would be no racism if people simply stopped noticing that there are different ethnic groups in a given community, and they would stop giving certain attributes to them. If we lost concepts such as ‘white’, ‘black’, ‘hispanic’, etc. and just discussed people withiut that category of race, then we can talk about true equality.)

The same goes for class and gender.

As for truth being power. This position holds that there is no objective and universal truth. There are only expressions of truth, ie. ‘truth’ depends on the context and it is subjective. That means that those who have power are the ones who determine what truth is. Just look at a number of history books across a number of countries and you will see how they differ - the truth depends on the author.

A way to connect the two is to reveal how certain groups construct ‘truth’ in relation to race, sex and class. Deconstructivism (the French stuff from the 1960s) is about duality that is necessary for things to exist: in order to describe the light we need to have dark as an opposing element. Good and bad, short and tall, man and woman, worker and capitalist. The list goes on. These thinkers say that power relations are at the centre of these combinations. That means that by looking at the way these concepts are connected (man-woman, good-bad, etc.) and constructed in a political discourse we will reveal the power relations behind them. And power relations will show us how ‘truth’ is constructed.

 

[John_Savage]

My feeling is that skepticism is the battering ram for an invading philosophy.

 

[John_Savage]

By the way, I used the two atheist posts here as examples of smart, respectful atheists.

 

[prodigalson2011]

I recently received this book but I’ve had to stop at the second dialogue because I can wrap my head around almost nothing that he says in that dialogue. The purpose of the second dialogue is to refute skepticism. Different forms of skepticism are addressed, including relativism, and each is “shown” to be self-refuting. Here is the first excerpt from this dialogue I have issues with, it is on page 25:

Libby: “So where do I go from here? How do I know skepticism won’t turn out to be my home too? How do I refute it?”
Mother: “That’s easy.”
Libby: “Easy?”
Mother: “Yes, easy. It contradicts itself. It says ‘The truth is that there is no truth’, or ‘I know that I don’t know’, or that ‘I’m certain that there is no certainty’.”

The first statement obviously contradicts itself. The second two I don’t understand. Sure, they contradict themselves if applied universally, as in “I know that I don’t know anything” or “I’m certain that I am not certain about anything.” But this isn’t what I’ve understood skepticism to be, nor is this the way it has ever been described to me. Skepticism as I understand it is choosing not to believe in something unless there is positive evidence of its existence. Is this an incorrect understanding of skepticism?

I think your confusion with the phrase “I know that I don’t know,” is a case of mistaken syntax. The “know” of “I don’t know” should not be taken in the particular but the absolute sense. That is, when Kreeft says “I don’t know,” it should not be read as saying “I don’t know these certain things” or “I don’t know anything at all,” as the implication of such statements is that this state of ignorance is conditional and remediable, but rather, “It is not in my nature to know,” in the same way you might say that “It is not in my nature to breathe underwater.” In such a case, the individual is claiming knowledge of their inability to claim knowledge, in principle, which is indeed a self-contradicting assertion.

The second part that confuses the heck out of me is the refutation of deconstructionism. Kreeft introduces Nietzsche at this part. Here is the excerpt:

Libby: “What’s [deconstructionism]? I’ve heard of it, but I can’t understand it. I can’t get it in focus. It looks like a blur.”
Mother: "Maybe it is a blur. But it says something about truth that’s terribly important and importantly terrible. It claims that truth is only the hypocritical mask painted on the face of power; that truth is only whatever other people of your class or race or gender or sexual orientation or ideological group let you get away with saying. It’s basically Nietzsche’s shtick about everything coming down to the will to power.
Libby: “That IS terrible. But that doesn’t mean it’s not true. Racism is the gas that powers a lot of engines in our society, and that’s a ‘will to power’.”
Mother: “But if all truth is just the will to power, that truth is too. So when Nietzsche or some Deconstructionist or some racist - or some anti-racist - says it to you, that can be nothing but their will to power over you. So why should you listen to them? And why should you listen to anti-racism any more than racism if they’re both only the will to power?”
Libby: “No, no, that can’t be. Racism can’t be equal to anti-racism. It’s people that are equal, not ideas.”
Mother: “Gotcha! And here’s another thing about racism. Deconstructionists condemn racism, but if everything comes from racism, even truth, then that’s the most radical racism you can imagine.”
Libby: “Suppose they say it’s all a matter of gender? That it’s sexism instead of racism?”
Mother: “Same argument: then that’s the most radical sexism.”
Libby: “And if it’s heterosexism, that’s the most radical heterosexism. Then gay and straight are farther apart, not closer together.”
Mother: “You’re getting the gotchas.”
Libby: “And if it’s all economic class - that’s what the Marxists say - then that’s the most radical classism, the total class system. So they all end up doing exactly what they condemn.”

The bolded statements make no sense to me. Maybe I don’t understand deconstructionism/Nietzsche well enough to understand the argument. What is meant by “everything comes from racism” and can it be that believing two views, such as racism and anti-racism, are nothing more than a will to power, cause them to be equal to each other? I don’t understand.

As I understand it, to grasp what he means by “everything comes from racism,” review the first exchanges in this segment, where it is explained that deconstructionists believe that “truth is only whatever other people of your class or race or gender or sexual orientation or ideological group let you get away with saying. It’s basically Nietzsche’s shtick about everything coming down to the will to power.” According to this view, every social narrative is the product of prejudice, including that of the deconstructionists. Furthermore, as the notion of “truth” is here defined as simply whatever arbitrary narrative a given group chooses, there is no more inherent truth-value in the anti-racists’ notions of racial equality than the racists’ of racial superiority. They are both just the attempts of each group to hoist their own opinions on everyone else; it is their “will to power.” But, of course, the deconstructionist’s theory backfires because their claim that “truth is simply the will to power” means that the deconstructionist position is itself nothing more than the deconstructionists’ will to power and holds no greater value than any other.

 

[CompSciGuy]

I think your confusion with the phrase “I know that I don’t know,” is a case of mistaken syntax. The “know” of “I don’t know” should not be taken in the particular but the absolute sense. That is, when Kreeft says “I don’t know,” it should not be read as saying “I don’t know these certain things” or “I don’t know anything at all,” as the implication of such statements is that this state of ignorance is conditional and remediable, but rather, “It is not in my nature to know,” in the same way you might say that “It is not in my nature to breathe underwater.” In such a case, the individual is claiming knowledge of their inability to claim knowledge, in principle, which is indeed a self-contradicting assertion.

Ah, so what is really meant to be said here is “I know that I can’t know.”