Reality: the Latest Logical Error
August 17, 2011
For starters, I’m writing this post in response to the article which can be found here:
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/83/slow_revolution.html
Specifically, I opened up the editor to start writing when I read the lines
… an instance when an intellectual breakthrough suddenly changed reality. But applying this structure … is to imply that the world really is equivalent to our knowledge of it and the moment we change the principles upon which our knowledge is based, reality changes too. This is the sort of erroneous logic that developmental psychologists say we’re supposed to overcome in early childhood….
I will give due credit to the author. Much of what the article says is agreeable and an intelligent rethinking of the common ‘revolution.’ Generally writing, it’s not a bad article or message.
The statements I quoted above, however, are just plain wrong. The world (‘reality’) really is equivalent to our knowledge of it, and the moment we change the principles upon which our knowledge is based, reality changes too. It is the same fictions and oversimplifications which he goes on to discuss later as a necessary part of human knowledge which make up the reality of the world. Perhaps a listing of real things will help:
- War
- Poverty
- The USA
- Market-based Economies (capitalism)
- Discrimination
- Oppression
If, tomorrow, everyone everywhere woke up thinking differently (that is, each had a radical paradigm shift in his or her sleep), these could all vanish. Soldiers could simply lay down their arms without consequence; the poor could be fed and given opportunities for a better life; countries could be renamed or split or abolished just by popular agreement; capitalism could be replaced by a different economy; discrimination could be forgotten; oppression could end. These are all facts of our reality that could change in very real ways with only a ‘revolution’ of thought.
Perhaps more concrete things are still real though, and not products of our understanding. Sex, for instance, seems to be a very real, physical thing that we project a lot on to socially. If one reads enough Foucault, however, this seems less apparent (sex for him, is an artificial unity of pleasure, biology, physiology, and a number of other things. That is, sex exists as a construct that helps us understand things in relation to each other). Or maybe guns. Guns are real, right? They even have tangible physical effects and are built by labor in factories. Not so fast. Guns can be flower holders, too. All it takes is some re-thinking (mental revolution), and the reality of what a gun is has changed. Moreover, if we rethink politics and conflict, the idea of ‘shooting each other’ would never come up, and guns would cease to be a part of political reality. And in the most real sense of all, people would stop getting shot. The principles of physics might not change to prevent shootings, but if the principles by which we understand the world do, then the reality of war can change or vanish altogether.
Our understanding of the world is the most powerful instrument of change we possess. Shifting paradigms are The Revolution, its cause, its success, and its reality.
~ J. William Lockhart
