Are Human Beings Reasonable By Nature? Does it Matter?
By Repair Man Jack Posted in Contra Tyrannum — Comments (4) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Columbia University created quite a stir this week by having Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad address members of their student body. In some respects, it was more of a stir than University President Lee Bollinger had bargained for. Columbia wanted attention and passion. They got it in spades.
However self-serving and sensationalistic Columbia’s motives may have been, an argument has been put forward that the invitation is valid. Today, the Wall Street Journal described the reasoning that would justify a dialogue with the anti-American ideologue under the belief that "even the enemies of reason cannot be the enemies of reason. Even the unreasonable must be, in some fashion, reasonable."
Seen in this light, Columbia can be defended for serving two motives. They have presented Ahmadinejad an opportunity to dialogue and have reopened an academic debate that crosses terrain from the philosophical disciplines to the hard sciences. This may be how the Political Science and International Relations Academics ask us how to discuss whether there is really such a thing as totally random chaos.
What Columbia should be thinking about instead is whether or not there is such a thing as evil. If so, what characteristics would result from a manifestation of such? J. R.R. Tolkien’s proxy for the good, Gandalf, the White, would not “bandy words of insolence with The Mouth of Sauron.” Some individuals defy rational discourse through the ruse of disingenuous and degenerative semantics. Does any serious student of human nature actually believe “"In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country?”
One popular form of mathematical and philosophical argumentation involves inductive reasoning. When used to formulate a mathematical proof, induction requires an example, a second example and an assumption without loss of generality that the fact being claimed applies in all cases. This is inductive reasoning on cattle steroids and may not appeal to all students of reason well-schooled in the graduate school indefinite. Distaste for induction may have a similar logical wellspring as the belief that the first guy to use Hitler in an argument loses.
However, a fan of this methodology can say many things about Ahmadinejad in defense of a deductively reasoned thesis that the man lies each every time his lips move. The current Iranian President may have given the slang phrase “on the down-low” a whole new intensity amongst Iranian homosexuals, but his secret police haven’t gotten them all. That’s lie number one. Base case established.
When asked if he favored the destruction of Israel, Ahmadinejad offered the following dialogue.
”"We are friends of all the nations," he said. "We are friends with the Jewish people. There are many Jews in Iran living peacefully with security."
The argument now moves to the level of establishing lie n+1. Does the Iranian President really want to militarily destroy Israel? (The question of whether he can should be directed to Israel’s Secretary of Defense.) The evidence is somewhat more murky, but circumstantially damning.
“Ahmadinejad has in the past called for Israel's elimination. But his exact remarks have been disputed. Some translators say he called for Israel to be "wiped off the map," but others say that would be better translated as "vanish from the pages of time" - implying Israel would disappear on its own rather than be destroyed.”
An impassioned defender of Iran’s current regime would suggest Ahmadinejad merely recommends an LBO of the West Bank. A more logical interpretation suggests Iran has friends in every nation minus one. The veracity of his statement that Iranians are friends with the Jewish People probably hinges on just exactly what we all think the definition of “is”, is.
Assuming our exercise goes forward and we establish that Ahmadinejad produces nearly as much dishonesty as he does CO2, Columbia then has to reexamine the rationale that every human being is interested in honest, intellectual dialogue. Ahmadinejad may be more rational than Columbia’s President. After Dr. Bollinger’s desperate and panic-stricken harangue, some are making that case.
The question now becomes. “At what point does inviting a known liar, with a disingenuous agenda, contra the tenets of basic decency, to a Socratic dialogue profane the quest for enlightenment and reason?” At what point does academic tolerance become a joke bromide of right wing talk radio? (Perhaps that question should go to perspective ROTC candidates now attending Dr Bollinger’s University.)
To his credit, Dr. Bollinger confronted Ahmadinejad with his brazen denial of the holocaust.
"In a December 2005 state television broadcast, you described the Holocaust as the fabricated legend," Bollinger told Ahmadinejad said in his opening remarks. "One year later, you held a two-day conference of Holocaust deniers."
"When you come to a place like this, it makes you simply ridiculous. The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history," he said.
This wasn't a topic that the Iranian President desired an open, rational dialogue about. Ahmadinejad clearly has mastered the rhetorical non-answer. He parried the fusillade as follows.
"assuming this happened, what does it have to do with the Palestinian people?"
He went on to say that he was defending the rights of European academics imprisoned for "questioning certain aspects" of the Holocaust, an apparent reference to a small number who have been prosecuted under national laws for denying or minimizing the genocide.
"There's nothing known as absolute," Ahmadinejad said. He said the Holocaust has been abused as a justification for Israeli mistreatment of the Palestinians.
"Why is it that the Palestinian people are paying the price for an event they had nothing to do with?" he asked.
The questions remain for Dr. Bollinger and the open-minded, tolerant community of Columbia University. Does it really matter whether President Ahmadinejad is a reasonable man? With the level of respect implied by his answers and the fundamental lack of honesty in many of his replies, what good was served by our highly publicized dialogue with evil?
There is no such thing as 'reasonable'. It is a concept. Concepts do not exist in a visual concoction that can be understood by people who cannot fathom the parts make up a whole that is greater than the sum of them. Come to think of it, concepts like loyalty, patriotism and faith escape those who cannot comprehend something they cannot see in their heads. Explains a lot.
I don't have an example at hand, but I know that there are a whole lot of legal matters where the court is directed to look at what a 'reasonable person' would conclude.
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(Formerly known as bee) / Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community
Jonah Goldberg discusses what you were talking about. AKA The Prudent Man Theory. One of his more inspired efforts.
Freedom Fighter in Occupied VA
would accept that there is truth in the mathmatical form you espouse here. There is only my truth in this momment for this purpose. Likewise, none would accept that evil exists as I suspect most here would define it.
Most here do subscribe to archaic, Eurocentric notions like reason and absolute truth; it is a major part of what distinguishes us from the "educated" Left. The audience in the main did not hear what most here heard and will not reach the same conclusion. Tellingly, the only thing they really reacted negatively to was the line on homosexuality; they understood that in their PC world, being antigay was not a good thing. I doubt they understood much else.
I took a 400 level class on the Holocaust at the U here a few years ago. It required something like 9 hours of history as a prerequisite and was mostly college juniors and seniors with a smattering of adults. Most of the true college students couldn't have put WWII in the right century, named the major combatants or causes, nor placed the Holocaust in it. To the extent that they knew anything at all about it, they had a generalized notion of it having been something bad that the US could and should have prevented but didn't because we are an uncaring nation that only protects the interests of rich white people. It was that bad!
In Vino Veritas