Is the Intellectual Dark Web as “Reasonable” As It Claims?

“Once one actually delves into the positions put forward by many of members of the Intellectual Dark Web, it becomes clear they are just as fallible as their intellectual opponents.”

Introduction

Earlier last week Nathan J. Robinson of Current Affairs published a provocative analysis of Steven Pinker, author of Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress. The op-ed went by the provocative title “The World’s Most Annoying Man.” Robinson made the case that Steven Pinker was prone to presenting contentious political and social claims as though they were self-evidently reasonable. He castigated Pinker and affiliated thinkers for the bad habit of simply assuming that their conclusions would be acceptable to all individuals who think reasonably and concurrently suggesting that anyone who disagrees with them is simply being unreasonable.

As a matter of full disclosure, I should highlight that I haven’t read Pinker’s latest opus. But Robinson’s analysis did strike a chord with me, since the characteristics he described with impressive bite were all too familiar. Pinker is often associated with the other members of the “Intellectual Dark Web,” who made a name for themselves by challenging certain conventions and belief systems typically associated with post-modern leftism. Individuals associated with the Intellectual Dark Web hold a variety of substantive political positions. But what is common to many of them is an insistence that their arguments are based on “reason” or “logic,” while their political opponents are apparently relying on more specious modes of justification. A characteristic statement of this position was given by Sam Harris in an interview with The Sun magazine, which included over a dozen invocations of the notions of reason, reasonableness, and factual reasoning:

“So we need a language that expresses a reasonable awe at the nature of the cosmos and our existence in it. And we need to make this language emotionally moving for people. I think it would be thrilling if we had a temple of reason that presented through ritual our growing scientific understanding of ourselves in the cosmos. Surely we could think of profound, uplifting, scientific things to say at the occasion of somebody’s death.”