White Priviledge Ad Hominem

I was recently told by a (now former) Facebook friend that I didn't have the right to ignore the "situation with Trump" (now a month into his presidency), and the problems of the disadvantaged people in the US have - all because of my white privilege. My white privilege insulates me from bigotry and, in fact, makes me part of the problem. I have studied this type of argument for a long time - it was introduced about 60 years ago during the early days of the Post Modernist philosophical movement as a debating technique that would allow anyone or any out-of-power group comprising non-Whites / non-Americans / non-Males to shut down any input from the in-power group - usually White Western Men (sometimes referred to as "dead white males"). It was used effectively by the Civil Rights, Women's Rights, Third-World Rights, and many other rights movements in recent history when a weak socio-economic group or nation was trying to unseat the dominant socio-economic group or nation.

Here is a very short article on the topic that is easy to read, and does a good job explaining at least one reason (it is an ad hominem attack) that it is a bad way to present an argument - "Privilege". We live in an era where body shaming, gender shaming, race shaming, and any other type of condemnation based on factors beyond one's control have become unacceptable. In this era of "identity politics", the one remaining group on which it is still "open season" is white American men.

But wait! Doesn't White Privilege actually exist? Yes, this does exist in U.S. Caucasian people (on average) do have an economic and social advantage over Black, Hispanic, and Native American people (not necessarily Asians, though). Does American have a racism/inequality problem? Absolutely! This country is far from perfect, and with the recent election of Trump, many racists and bigots in the U.S. are feeling freer about expressing, rather than hiding, that attitude. Yes, that is happening. However, there is great variation among individuals in this country. There are plenty of poor, uneducated, unemployed or underemployed, disadvantaged white people, just as there are well-off and educated people from the minority populations. The U.S. is not unique in racism and privilege-based inequality. In fact it ranks with Northern Europe in its racial and ethnic tolerance. See "Most Racist Countries". The multicultural U.S. is among the least racially intolerant countries, according to the data.

"In-group" favoritism exists all over the world. India, probably the most racist country in the world, has its in-group (light skinned Hindus). In Russia, you really need to be of pure Russian descent to have a chance at success. China prefers ethically pure Chinese over Koreans, Japanese, and its many tribal ethnicities. In all Islamic countries, one or the other of the several Islamic sects will be the in-group, depending on the country (and forget about being a non-Moslem in a Sharia-law Islamic country). Particularly racist are Indonesia, Iran, and Pakistan. Ethno-centrism and racism is the norm across most of Africa. Practically all of the countries and parts of the world just mentioned treat women as second class citizens and tightly restrict their rights. And with the influx of Islamic immigrants into many European countries, the world is seeing an Islamic backlash from those countries. Case in point - the recent Brexit vote and the rising popularity of Nationalist parties in Austria, France, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, and others. What makes America different from these is that we see it as a problem, and we talk about it - a LOT. We reflect and make attempts to self-correct - thus all the talk about white privilege in the US, but not Russian privilege in Russia or Chinese privilege in China. America is better than that. I think America is exceptional, in the traditional sense of American Exceptionalism. We don't hold ourselves this low standard. Racism and inequality are problems in this country, and we are slowly dealing with them.

There are other reasons also, which I mention in one of my other blog posts on "What's Wrong with PostModernism". Telling some one or some group that their have "invalid" or "inauthentic" opinions because of who they are poisons the well against them. It is a form of "genetic fallacy", judging an opinion based on its origin rather than its merit. This is all inspired by an insulting Facebook post which specifically targeted white, middle class, college educated, employed, not-in-prison men (like me) in the US. It attempted to saddle us with a "yuppie guilt" that is totally underserved:

I want my friends to understand that "staying out of politics" or being "sick of politics" is privilege in action. Your privilege allows you to live a non-political existence. Your wealth, your race, your abilities or your gender allows you to live a life in which you likely will not be a target of bigotry, attacks, deportation, or genocide. You don't want to get political, you don't want to fight because your life and safety are not at stake.

It is hard and exhausting to bring up issues of oppression (aka "get political"). The fighting is tiring. I get it. Self-care is essential. But if you find politics annoying and you just want everyone to be nice, please know that people are literally fighting for their lives and safety. You might not see it, but that's what privilege does.

...etc

I reject the assertion made by this facile blurb. It amounts to the following "Either you see the political situation just as I do and are fighting alongside of me, or you are an irresponsible upper-class wretch who should be ashamed of yourself". It leaves no room for dissent. Implicit in this statement is the assertion that those who are NOT privileged ARE politically active and always thinking about these things, which is very, very far from fact.

This is a technique originated in the 1960s by the early Post Modernists, and first deployed on the political stage during the Afro-Asian Conference in April 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia. Hosted by President Sukarno, it launched the modern “Third World” movement, heralding the end of the dominance of the West, with its “rapacious capitalism” and overbearing colonial hegemony. It trumpeted the beginning of a new world order, a pacific, non-aligned, virtuous utopia, free from the colonial past and from white, Western dominance. These ex-colonial states were inherently “righteous” by the fact of their history of victimization. This shared experience united the new non-aligned nations under the flag of oppression. White former colonial powers were inherently evil, and poor third world countries were inherently virtuous.

Mainstream Philosophy has largely abandoned Post Modernism. It was chic for a few decades, but now it considered a failure. It is one of many half-thought-out and inadequate attempts at new philosophical schools (the same is true of Ayn Rand's Objectivism). Post Modernism is not taken seriously by other philosophers, but is still practiced in niches where out-of-power groups and the academics who support them continue to try to wrest power from the dominant group. It is a thin philosophical veneer overlaying what would otherwise be a naked power play. For an example of how it is currently being expressed, see this Harvard Law Record article describing how "Critical Race Theory" is justified by this same "White Privilege" excuse.

Scientific Certainty

I recently had a conversation with a fellow skeptic regarding scientific certainty, specifically that we cannot be 100% sure of the correctness of our theories. He was adamant that nothing in science is certain, and that some level of skepticism regarding scientific knowledge was always appropriate. I, however, argued that that was an overstatement, possibly dogmatic. I felt that some things are certain (such as the mathematics used by scientists, for reasons stated in the last paragraph of this section), and many things are almost (though not completely) certain, such as what are sometimes called "our best theories". Admittedly, we lack full certainty for things "of the world" - the world of experience - for well known philosophic reasons. Anything based on empirical evidence, collected through repeated observations, and accounted for by theory, is subject to some level of uncertainty. Conclusions reached through inductive reasoning and evidence, rather than deduction, will always be subject to potential future updating, modification, or even disproof through new observations and tests, or revamped theories. We can't say, for example, that we have "proved" that all copper transmits electricity, because we haven't tested all instances of copper. We can only infer that all copper probably conducts electricity because we have never seen a case where it doesn't, and because our theories about the properties of copper and of how electricity works supports this idea.

A Bayesian approach can shed light on this. We assign very high prior probabilities and confidence in the correctness of our best and most rigorously tested theories and hypotheses. The likelihood of encountering counter-evidence given that these hypotheses are true is very low (will we find a crystal sphere of stars in the heavens? will we find rabbit fossils next to trilobite fossils?). Given how Bayes Theorem works, the probability of discarding our existing theories is extremely low - low enough not to waste much time thinking about.

So, some theories are so well supported that they are "practically" certain. The confidence we can have in some well supported theories is very high, asymptotically approaching 100%, and is established to such a degree that no one spends any research time trying to find alternate explanations (e.g., there is no serious research into Flat Earth, Phlogiston, Geo-centrism, Astrology, or Young Earth Creationism). But, philosophically, the level of confidence cannot be 100%. To put any weight on the lack of certainty for quantum theory, evolutionary theory, atomic theory, or the helio-centric model of the solar system would be perverse, arbitrary, contrary, and unproductive. These are among our best theories, and until something better comes along, they are best treated as being essentially correct (though, of course, subject to continued refinement and elaboration).

I am confident (though not certain) that 100 or 1000 years from now there will be some logical entity that occupies the concept that we currently call an "atom", and that two oxygen atoms and one hydrogen atom will continue to be the basis of a wet substance called water. The basis of the feeling of certainty is the knowledge that, although the details of what makes up the entity we call an "atom" have changed, the "placeholder" for an atom-like thing persists. The model of the atom has evolved, and will probably continue to change in the future (i.e., the models proposed by Democritus, Dalton, Thompson, Rutherford, Heisenberg/Chadwick/Bohr, up to the current quantum mechanical "cloud" model). Atomic theory may be subsumed as a special case of some more comprehensive theories of matter and energy. But it will still have applicability in chemistry and normal daily living, just as Newtonian physics, though extended by Relativistic physics, is still appropriate in a subset of cases. "F=MA" is probably not going away, though exceptions outside the bounds of normal human experience can be found. Newton will almost certainly continue to be applied in low-mass, low-velocity scenarios for which it is appropriate, while more sophisticated models will be used for cases outside those environments. As Stephen Jay Gould wrote,

In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

As mentioned above, there are some things in which we do have 100% confidence. These involve "analytic statements" (Kant), also called "relations of ideas" (Hume), where a statement is true or false based on its meaning or definition. For example - no bachelors are married, 2+2=4, and triangles have 3 sides. These statements are "analytically true", by virture of their meanings. When the premises are true, and valid logic is used, then the conclusion is fully contained in the premises and 100% certainty is established.