Clarifying My Comments on Lindsay, Pluckrose, and Boghossian

“The picture of science that they defend, however, is what merits the most attention.”

In my last article for Merion West, I addressed the work of the authors of the Grievance Studies or “Sokal Squared” hoax. This essay is a follow up to the last one with two purposes. First, I want to clarify, as specifically as possible, what my criticisms of their work are. Some of this could have gotten lost—maybe understandably—in discussions of the analytic/synthetic distinction, paraconsistent logics, and mathematical pluralism. Second, I want to address what I think they get right and why it matters for a socialist left. In the previous essay, I mentioned in passing that I do agree with some of what they have to offer, but I did not elaborate. I will do so here. These are not two separate goals; they are necessarily intertwined. The reason why it is important to critique the aspects of their work that are inaccurate is because the things they get right are important and, thus, have a very broad appeal. In that sense, what I am trying to do in these two essays is analogous to what the late Michael Brooks did in his excellent book Against the Web: A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right. In it, he critiques figures in the Intellectual Dark Web, such as Jordan Peterson, while acknowledging that the questions of individual meaning and anxiety in young men that Peterson seeks to address are highly important—and are responsible for his popularity. As such, the Left would be unwise to dismiss them. In the same way, I think Pluckrose, Lindsay, and Boghossian’s claims about knowledge and science touch on fundamental issues.

Before moving on, there are a few issues that they bring up that I think are correct in such an obvious way that I will not discuss them. The main examples of this, in my view, are cancel culture and freedom of speech. The former is obviously bad, and the latter is obviously good. We may disagree, I suspect, about how much of an existential threat cancel culture really is—or whether it is possible to cancel outgroup members, for example. However, we agree on its fundamentally bad nature. To begin, then, I will re-state the basic claims of my critique, expand on them, and then explain how they relate to what they get right.

1. The structure of claims made by Social Justice scholarship is not unscientific.
2. The basic pictures of science and truth that they present are overly simplistic and contrary to actual scientific theory and practice.
3. While I take them at their word when they claim they are secular liberal humanists, their picture of science and truth ends up being highly useful for those holding reactionary views.

The second one is, in my view, the most important because it is the one that serves as the basis for all their other claims and critiques. Now, in regards to this, there are two things that I am not arguing: I do not think that science is Western, white, male, or anything else of that nature. Nor do I claim that to be their position. To me, their position is that science and reason are common to all humans and cultures. I agree with this position and, in fact, this is at the heart of what I think they get right. Related to this is the place of science in the West. I have written before why the idea of Western Civilization, Western Society, or the West (as something more than a mere geographic location) is not very helpful. But, for now, let us sidestep this and just take it as a given. In my view, claiming, as Peter Boghossian has, that undermining science in favor of alternate ways of knowing is among the steps toward the destruction of Western Civilization, necessarily implies that science somehow underpins Western Civilization. Saying this, however, does not imply that science is Western. By way of analogy, one could claim that classical Greek culture underpinned Roman civilization. Yet, it would be ridiculous to infer from that statement that classical Greek culture is actually Roman. So, in terms of whether science underpins Western culture, I could even admit it is somewhat accurate, insofar as the legacy of the Enlightenment continues to be strongly felt today.