I was taking a look at wikipedia today and learning about the study of angles, circles and triangles. To study a system like that, you have to get your hands into the business. You have to measure things and study them as they are.
Yesterday, I was having a long discussion at reddit about the polemics of Andrea Dworkin with two men who were avid fans of her work. I can see one thing so clearly in her work: hatred, stereotype, sexism (and even deception)..
These two men were admonishing me that if I don't read Dworkin's work in depth, I don't have the right to discuss her impact on society, or the quality of her reasoning.
And it dawned on me today that the way I'm approaching studying gender issues is like folks who study circles angles and triangles... I look out there and see things, and study the system. It's not at all constructive to go out and start reading someone's quaint polemic about odd shaped lines in order to learn how the systems of standard triangles, circles and angles work.
Imagine someone writing a book about scattered lines and curly cues, who presents ideas that look similar to the effects you see when looking at standard arcs, and circles and triangles. Then, that writer tries to reason with the reader, saying "Because my concepts look similar to the things that we see when looking at standard circles arcs and triangles, therefore that's logical proof that I am right."
So this is the very profound error that academics in the West have made in the 1900s and in this first decade of the new century:
They reason that: "Because something looks analagous, there is logic to prove a point."
To say that men make war, and men are in positions of governmental power, therefore Dworkin is right about men being inherently violent is like saying a circle spins over on its diameter 4 or 5 or 6 times. It simply wouldn't be true. A circle spins 3.1415926535897932384626433832795... times. And you can't simplify that, or you will be seriously in error, and your models will have no value - you won't be able to apply them anywhere to tasks you wish to engage in.
Seems a little silly to reject all the forms of reasoning articulated e.g., here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy
The complaint that you haven't read Dworkin is a distinct objection; I'd imagine reading Dworkin certainly helps one understand what claims she makes, and understanding what claims she makes is a precondition for engaging with her.
Of course, you may decide it's not worth the trouble. But if that's the case, you're no longer arguing with her (as opposed to dismissing her, which may be a perfectly reasonable thing to do).
Thank you for that wikipedia article. Yes, I certainly am criticising exactly that method.
My point, in this blog entry we're talking about, was to point out to people like yourself, that it is a flawed way of reasoning to point to analogy as if it were proof. Yes, I AM dismissing what Dworkin says, because of this (of course, I also see the types of conclusions she has reached in what little I have read of her work as being quite absurd).
I probably should have linked to the companion blog entry in that post, which is here.
I have thought further about scientific inquiry since I penned those blog entries... and my latest realisation is that science is about observation... and that I see where academics ought to bring to bear the lessons of philosophy on the various scientific fields; particularly they should test the reasoning behind the conclusions of researchers.
You sound like a person who is fond of puzzling things out using reason... but indeed, I think that most people are not inclined to this endeavor... they tend to see the world as something that is self evident... and they're just going to pursue their life course within this world that we all see around us.
Now, it seems as if that type of personality adheres to different ethics when they muse about things, depending on where they live. In the States, these kind of people tend to form their conclusions sometimes with their emotions, or more often by looking around them to see what the consensus is. In Canada, that type of person reveres science - where things are observed, and conclusions are made based on observations.
Such face-value people see those who go into long reasonings about things as being those who are engaged in vain, in a crazy endeavor. But those of us who realise that the riddles of the world need to be figured out with much earnest musing, see that oftentimes what cause and effect can be something which plays in a counterintuitive way.
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