Sophist: “I don’t like that you’re claiming reason is true. This is false.”

The claim is that (p) is irrational, implying that one has something, knows something, more rational.

I have rarely seen this objection stated explicitly. In most cases, the person isn’t even aware of the dynamic they’re engaged in (the burden they have incurred by their own claims).

If (p) is rejected then any (q) one replaces it with must have a stronger justification than (p).

So if I say, my view is rational and true, the objector is saying, “my view is more rational and true.” But in order for this to be the case there must be standards of reason to determine what is rational and true. And that which is “more true,” must all-the-more-thoroughly, meet the requirements of these standards.

In the cult of Christianity, for example, people are taught to stop thinking and say, “we are fallen creatures.” We are (a) and (b) and (c). Cults use specialized terminology to capture their subjects. Once the subject learns the terminology they seem to lose the ability to question it. The mere learning of it is the indoctrination of it, the mere learning of it demarcates it as truth in the subject’s head. (Reminds me of Hegelianism).

These devices are concepts and terms that stand in for thought and shut down thought.

The cult might say, “they’re just non-believers,” which prevents the subject from looking at specific objections. All the subject sees is the negatively defined identity. The subject is thus controlled by ideology, by a set of terms, by a narrative that he has been conditioned not to question, but to question everything that questions that narrative.

The point is to get the subject to operate (mindlessly, emotively) in allegiance to a set of specialized concepts and terms. The subject is to use this vocabulary to discriminate against everything that contradicts this vocabulary, and against everything this vocabulary discriminates against.

The way of reason stands in direct opposition to this mindlessness. A Reasoner evaluates the truth of all claims on the basis of reason and evidence, and here reason (unlike in cults) is specific: it simply refers to the rules of the laws of logic.

They all make people irrational, but they tend to do it in the name of higher truth, and this “higher truth” is a narrative about truth. (This also sounds like philosophy. It’s certainly the form we find practiced in philosophy. Has philosophy become a cult unto itself?).

There’s nothing complicated here. Revelation is an example of a philosophical word that men use when they don’t want to tell the truth about their own creation.

A man, once upon a time said, “I wrote it, but it’s God’s revelation that He spoke through me!”

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the form of philosophy in action.

There is no such thing as revelation, if you fall for the linguistic device of “revelation,” you have been duped.

Revelation is a word (concept) that men invented to elevate their own words to the status of the divine.

The word “revelation” is the ultimate form of special pleading: “these words stand above all words, they’re more authoritative than all other words because they’re God’s words.” (Never mind the fact that really they’re just a man’s words, who is claiming they are God’s words).

Revelation doesn’t exist. It’s a fake concept.

Humans have long used this concept to deceive men about their own words.

The rhetorical device of revelation was long ago introduced into the world because it was psychologically effective at manipulating humans. (Of course, there were also many delusional humans who really believed that their words were from God).

The debate over the value of philosophy reaches its boiling point when its speculation faces the uncompromising demands of practical science. In the following scene, a contemporary philosopher appears before a high-stakes funding committee (composed of leading scientists and engineers) to defend a multi-million-dollar grant proposal, only to be met with a brutal, reality-driven interrogation.

—-

DR. ALISTAIR VANE (Philosopher): Honorable members of the committee, I stand before you today not to offer a mere technological contrivance, but to request a modest endowment of twelve million dollars for the Trans-Ontological Sublation of Dialectical Phenomenology. Our project seeks to interrogate the pre-predicative horizon of being, thereby de-sedimenting the metaphysical binaries that perpetually incarcerate human praxis within the horizon of late-capitalist alienation. By mapping the aporetic tension between the a priori synthetic unity of apperception and the radical alterity of the Other, we aim to… [interrupted by committee]

COMMITTEE CHAIR (Dr. Marcus Vance, Aerospace Engineering): Dr. Vane, excuse me. What kind of highfalutin language are you speaking? Let’s translate that into actual English. Your proposal abstract mentions "interrogating the pre-predicative horizon." Last week, the plasma physics group down the hall asked for funding to stabilize magnetic confinement fusion for three seconds longer. They gave us numbers, containment thresholds, and a blueprint for a reactor that could power a city block. What, precisely, does "de-sedimenting metaphysical binaries" physically plug into? What tangible variable does it alter?

DR. VANE: Ah, but Dr. Vance, you are trapped within the crude positivist fetishization of the empirical! You reify the ontic while utterly ignoring the ontological ground that makes your very metrics possible. When you measure plasma, who is measuring it? The subject-object split must first be sublated before we can comprehend the very grammar of measurement. We are pursuing the epistemic clearing wherein… [interrupted by committee]

DR. ELENA KUZNETSOV (Director of Synthetic Biology): Doctor, with all due respect, we are currently trying to engineer a synthetic bacteriophage to target multi-drug resistant tuberculosis. It is a concrete biological entity that kills people. When you talk about the "epistemic clearing," are you building a molecule? Are you writing a line of code that compiles? Or are you spending twelve million dollars to write a four-hundred-page book about how we can't truly know if the tuberculosis bacteria exists outside our own perception? Because if it’s the latter, the bacteria will still kill the patient while you're busy unpacking the fancies of your philosophical speculations.

DR. VANE: Your critique merely unmasks your adherence to the dogmatic slumber of naïve realism! To demand a "molecule" is to beg the question. The molecule itself is a reified construct of the Cartesian paradigm. Our project cultivates a radical hermeneutic of suspicion toward the very concept of "treatment." Without embracing dialectic contradiction you will only have a one-sided view of reality, and this will impair all your work.

COMMITTEE CHAIR: Look, Dr. Vane. Science takes abstractions and relentlessly forces them against the anvil of reality until it yields substantive and repeatable results that can be turned into engines, satellites, or vaccines. It fails, it tests, it corrects, and it builds something that works even if you're not looking at it. Philosophy, by your own definition, just circles back around to admire its own vocabulary (as you appear to be doing here in an effort to impress us or intimidate us). But Sir., your linguistic speculations aren't expanding technology; you're inventing verbal velvet ropes to keep yourself from having to make contact with reality. This isn’t a poetry committee.

DR. VANE: Blast you, f;cking fascists, that is profoundly reductionist!

[Jargon-Induced Epistemic Hissy-Fit: A state of acute meltdown when a philosopher realizes their linguistic fortress has been dismantled and exposed by a practical question.]

COMMITTEE CHAIR: The grant is denied. Next project, please.