Part 3 Live Blog: Postmodern Religion & the Faith of Social Justice

Here's the third instalment of my "live blog" of James Lindsay's Aero article, Postmodern Religion & the Faith of Social Justice

• Part 1
• Part 2

Pocket Epistemologies

I’m looking forward to this section. What is the epistemological justification for Social Justice religion, and how closely does it match religious epistemologies. 

James is definitely applying a Stephen Gould non-overlapping magisteria frame to things here. Based on his objective, I can see why he chose this. Personally, I'm not big on Gould's idea. As per Stuart Kauffman, I tend to be more pragmatic (in the technical sense) and see there being multiple espitemolgoical paths for different types of questions, none of which are ever completely pure.

James lays out pocket epistemologies as a method religionists use to justify dear moral preferenes/stances/ideologies. As per Haidt's motivated reasoning, desire precedes justification. Thus pocket epistemologies come after a desired moral solution space is occupied.

I think Lindsay overstates his case a bit here. Rationalization via pocket epistemologies may just be a case of pragmatically coming to the truth. But, that depends on how much of your core moral foundation you’re willing to erode. Hence the fundamental role analysis of sacred value protection plays in determining the extent to which something is or is not religious.

This is a good point, but I’m not sure one can conclude “chances are good it’s a faith-based project”. I really think you need a multi-factor behavioural dynamic approach for accurate religious characterizations. Of course that should intersect a bit with epistemological and reasoning methodologies. But I don’t think there is ever one “smoking gun” to be found in this game. Even subtle connotations of silver-bullet signals are, to me, counter-productive. This is especially valid in obviously contentious topic such as this one.

A Focus on the Unconscious

Perhaps James is going to get to an analysis of reasoning methods… ? I’m not sure how well one can see into people’s heads. But, perhaps I’m just underestimating what well-informed academics might know...

As an aside, I find it interesting how Jame’s comment here resonates with Canadian legal jurisprudence on the issue.

I like the definition James uses for "spiritual ". He basically defines it as morality with purpose. I’d suggest that the word purpose needs beefed up and refined, though. Perhaps it should relate strongly back to adaptive-group purposes which are fitness enhancing due to group cohesion effects and environmental niche construction effects. Maybe you can get by with just the environmental niche construction bit? Aren't group cohesion effects (within a loose sub-level of selection) just environmental niche constructions? While one doesn't have to think this way. One certainly can...

Looks like he got to the same spot I thought he needed to get to. 

I think James hits the nail on the head here. One of the more prominent (but not always necessary) factors of religion is a narrative that gives meaning to life. One caveat; Shamanism doesn’t give meaning to life per se. Rather it embodies people’s existential angsts. Thus is it meaning making or angst embodiment?

Shamanism doesn’t have to give people purpose. it just has to alleviate existential stress by helping people with awareness or catharsis. For instance does cognitive therapy provide meaning or does it just help people with personal issues?

I’m not sure I like Jame’s use of Haidt’s definition of divinity. It certainly makes some qualitative points. But just because people apply a term in a certain way does not mean it is applicable to the item under discussion. Thus labelling social justice elevation as “divine” co-opts religious language, but does so with only appeal-to-authority validity. I’d much rather see something more falsifiable. In that sense, the general idea of moral purpose elevation is correct, but it should be defended via multi-factor match-ups with religion more than by finding other academics who use religious labels for things.

But, I will concede, this is a good explanatory strategy for people who may be coming into this topic somewhat cold.

The “coolness” argument falls flat for me.

Ritual, Redemption, and Prayer

Funny to see social media posts analogized as prayer. I hadn’t thought of that before.

I guess the big question I have is, why are we matching religious phenomenon to things? Is it because these particular cultural solutions reflect similar underlying phenomenon? This analogous structure approach (whales have flippers, fish have fins), doesn’t reflect a common phylogenetic tree. Rather, it reflects common environmental landscape design constraints. 

This issue is important because Jame’s argument infers that, as a re-invention, social justice religion should reproduce analogous structures. The argument of social justice as a major evolutionary transition would posit homologous structures (with a very few major novel structures that have run-away via punctuated processes (rapid growth once divergence occurs)).

I don’t know how, in practice, one teases these things out. But it is interesting to see the progress in my thinking on this topic since the first post in this series. I guess there is a purpose to close reading responses…

I do like how James frames the protest-as-ritual problem. Protests become ritual once they lose their focus and become general events meant to unify participants rather than effect any pointed change or communicate any specific message. This is the best formulation of this equivalency that I’ve seen.

You still get left with the question of whether occupying space in order to show you have rights is or is not a ritual. For example, Proud Boys conduct some of their rallies to show that free speech isn’t dead, and that everyone has a right to walk and be together unmolested. In some ways these things have no point. It is sort of like a dog marking their territory. So, are these events generalized religious ritual, or a space marking game? 

For Proud Boys who are always under antifa attack, I’d say such "focusless" events are more space marking than ritual. For social justice activists who don’t get attacked and confronted when they rally, I’d say such "focusless" events are less space marking and more ritual.

Gender Nuns and the Grand Wizards of the Diversity Board

Who cares about content. This is just a wonderful title!

In terms of content for this section, I suspect a framing of complicated language in terms of slightly counter-intuitive belief optimization would have been more rigorous. Religions tend to maximize memetic fitness at the expense of factual validity. Of course you need to caveat this a bit. Immediate factual validity isn’t tossed out willy-nilly. It is replaced by meta-narrative validity; lessons that matter on long time frames and which derive value from continual intersection. Of course, sometimes the factual accuracy part just gets replaced by supernaturalism which, strictly speaking, is not necessary for narrative lessons. But, it is useful for Big Brother comprehension and respect….

Don’t underestimate the utility and optimization of religion….

The End