On False Consciousness Arguments: Examples (Column 204)

With God's help

In the previous column I discussed false consciousness arguments. There we saw that this is a Marxist mode of thought, according to which the oppressed masses unwittingly adopt conceptions that they themselves do not really believe in. Forces stronger than they are (the wealthy classes, the tycoons, the elites) implant modes of thought within them out of various interests, causing them to identify with them even though inwardly they oppose them, or ought to oppose them (something like Stockholm syndrome). We saw that postmodern and liberal discourse enthusiastically adopts this device as a tool for imposing its positions on the ignorant and “disempowered” masses. If I know better than you what you yourself think, and strangely enough, entirely by coincidence of course, it is exactly what I believe, then nothing prevents me from imposing my positions on you, since you yourself believe them deep down. Your declarations are the result of a false consciousness instilled in you by the wicked (= those who do not think as I do).

In the course of my remarks I said that I am not opposed in principle to such arguments, and in my opinion they can be used under two conditions: 1. that they be based on reasonable logical and empirical considerations that show how this consciousness was formed and indicate that it is indeed false. 2. that these arguments not be used as a basis for forcing those positions on the other person (= the bearer of the false consciousness). In this column I will present two examples of false consciousness arguments with which I completely agree: belief in God (as grounded in moral commitment) and rationalism (as against empiricism). This column is divided into two chapters: the first deals with morality and faith, and the second with empiricism.

A. The Argument from Morality

In the third part of the fourth notebook I present the argument from morality for the existence of God. I will not spell out the entire move here, since it is described there. For our purposes here, it is enough to say that my main claim there is that without God there is no possibility of valid and binding morality. The validity of moral principles requires some authoritative external source, beyond the individual or human society. And certainly in a materialist world there is no room for moral principles (collections of atoms are not supposed to be obligated to anything. The very concept of “obligation” cannot exist in such a worldview). The argument is based on the fact that every person stands at a crossroads and must decide in favor of one of two directions: a. atheism, which does not accept the existence of morality. b. accepting the thesis that moral principles are valid, together with belief in God. One thing is clear: one cannot be a moral atheist, since that is an inconsistent position. I explained there that this is a “theological” and not a “philosophical” argument, meaning that a person is not required to conclude that God exists. He can remain an atheist, but then he will have to give up his moral commitment (that is, the view that moral principles are valid and binding), or vice versa.

The Empirical Difficulty

At first glance this is a very widespread claim in the Christian world as well (and perhaps even more so there). Some hang this on the well-known saying of the moralists, who use the verse from Genesis, “For I said, "Surely there is no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me."” (“For I said: surely there is no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me”), that is, that among people without God there is reason to fear that they will murder me. A quick search online will produce many sources in Hebrew and English that raise this claim.

Against this position, many argue, and with considerable justification, that it is hard to deny the fact that there are atheist individuals and groups who behave morally. Those who go further will say that there is no clear difference between believers/religious people and those who are not, in terms of their morality. How does this fit with the assumption underlying the argument from morality? We can plainly see that one can be moral even without belief in God.

In fact, in atheist circles it is customary to turn this argument on its head. They explain that believers behave morally because of fear of God and His punishments, and that is precisely not moral behavior. Only an atheist who does these things autonomously, out of his own pure moral commitment, and not out of fear of divine wrath and punishment, can be considered a moral person. In their view, God only interferes with morality, and belief in Him actually hinders moral behavior.

Between Moral Behavior and the Claim About the Validity of Moral Principles

I think those atheists (and also some of the believers who rely on the verse “There is simply no God…”) do not interpret this claim correctly (without getting into the meaning of the verse specifically). The point is not that without fear of God one cannot trust that a person will behave morally. We can plainly see that one can indeed behave morally even without fear, and perhaps it is even true that moral behavior born of fear is not wholly moral. The claim underlying the argument from morality is altogether different: without belief in God, moral principles have no validity. An atheist who behaves morally is not really a moral person in the full sense of the term.

Above, I was careful not to claim that it is impossible to behave morally without belief in God. It is a fact that it is possible. What I claimed is that one cannot hold a view according to which there are valid moral principles without belief in God. My claim is not factual-empirical (about what does or does not exist in the world), but a philosophical or ethical claim. I claim that even if there is an atheist who behaves morally (and there certainly are many such people), he is not consistent. Atheism does not allow one to maintain the position that morality is valid and binding, and therefore the atheist’s moral behavior is inconsistent. Alternatively, it is really behavior that appears moral (benefiting others and refraining from harming them) but not genuinely moral behavior (respect for the imperative, in Kant’s formulation). Such a person may act this way because it is pleasant for him to do so, or because of some conditioning, but not by virtue of a decision grounded in the fact that one must act this way. These are two different possibilities, and we shall return to them immediately.

And Yet the Difficulty Remains

But if we ask many of those people, we will hear that they definitely do speak about valid morality. They will describe themselves as acting this way because of a principled commitment to moral laws, and they will condemn those who do not act this way, even calling for sanctions and punishment to be imposed on them. They fully embrace Kantian morality. On the contrary, it is commonly thought in the world (mistakenly; see the discussion in the fourth notebook) that according to Kant morality must be humanistic-secular and not religious. That is, there is a philosophical claim here and not only a factual one.

If I accept the claim underlying the argument from morality, according to which an atheist position that is committed to moral principles and sees them as valid and binding cannot exist, then this phenomenon requires explanation. Those people claim that despite their atheism they do indeed see morality as valid and binding. Here we arrive at the issue of false consciousness.

Two False Consciousness Arguments

If the claim underlying the argument from morality is correct (that moral atheism is impossible), then the situation of an atheist who behaves morally requires us to draw one of two conclusions (these are the two possibilities I described briefly above), and both reflect a kind of false consciousness argument:

• That person is not a true atheist. His commitment to morality indicates that he is a covert believer, even if he himself is not aware of it. His atheism is a false consciousness, for deep down he believes in God. He interprets his lack of awareness as lack of belief, perhaps under the influence of secular propaganda, his environment, or simply because of a mistake. As I explained in the fourth notebook, the argument from morality addresses only such a person (a covert believer), and therefore it is an argument of the type I called there a “theological argument.”
• That person is not truly moral. His atheism indicates that he is not really committed to moral principles, but merely acts in accordance with them because it is convenient or pleasant for him to do so. His morality (and his willingness to judge others who do not behave morally) is a false consciousness, for deep down he does not really believe in the validity of moral principles. He interprets feelings and instincts that have been implanted in him as normative obligations, perhaps under the influence of education and moral propaganda, or perhaps simply because of a mistake by which he identifies instincts as binding norms. Such a person in fact will not be persuaded by the argument from morality. The argument will only force him to give up morality, but not to become a believer.[1]

So here we have two false consciousness arguments, and I certainly accept the possibility of each of them. On further reflection, one may say that every person who lives in contradiction—that is, who espouses two principles that contradict one another—lives in false consciousness. One of those principles is not really accepted by him, and the experience in his consciousness as though he believes in that principle is nothing but false consciousness. A fine example of this can be seen in one of the comments to Column 203, where Phil raised an amusing argument in this direction. He determined that liberals who coerce others to act in accordance with their liberal beliefs live in false consciousness. They think of themselves as liberals even though their behavior blatantly contradicts liberalism (see there the example I gave regarding gender separation in academia). I will only note that he chose one of the two directions above. One can of course also say the opposite: their coercion is rooted in false consciousness, while deep down they are genuine liberals (unless liberalism is not a belief but a behavior).

Similar Phenomena

In the columns on implicit beliefs (191, 194, and 199) we dealt with people who behave in a way that does not fit their declared beliefs, and concluded that perhaps other beliefs are nesting deep within them, in which case their declarations of belief are an expression of false consciousness. Thus, for example, regarding the atheist pioneers who sacrificed themselves for the settlement and conquest of the Land of Israel, Rabbi Kook and those who follow him describe this in terms of a hidden Jewish spark that moved them to self-sacrifice for the commandment of conquering and settling the Land. What they are really describing here is a false secular-atheist consciousness.

There is of course also the possibility that they were genuine atheists, part of the Springtime of Nations and the awakening of nationalism, and that the pseudo-religious discourse around them (which usually was not theirs but a description of them by religious people) reflects the false consciousness of the person describing them. Incidentally, I prefer this interpretation, if only because it does not require us to speak of false consciousness on the part of the pioneers. According to this description, those pioneers were genuine atheists, inwardly and outwardly. Their self-sacrifice for the conquest and settlement of the Land does not contradict this, so long as one does not force religious motives into the description. They acted out of purely secular-modernist and national motives. Just as a Belgian sacrifices himself for settling and conquering Belgium, with no connection whatsoever to religious motives.

When it is possible to adopt a reasonable account without elements of false consciousness, there is no reason to choose a false-consciousness account specifically. Usually this should be a last resort. In my opinion, the description offered by Rabbi Kook and those who follow him, as though the pioneers were covert believers (the Jewish spark that exists in each of us), is one that, in my estimation, stems mainly from wishful thinking and from the beliefs of the person describing them.

B. Empiricism and Rationalism

Rabbi ha-Nazir, in his book Kol HaNevu'ah, in the essay “Ha-Shem Ha-Elyon Ha-Nishma,” from section 34 (p. 109) onward, discusses the development of British empiricism, from Locke through Hume to Berkeley.[2] He describes there the process of emptying out that empiricism undergoes until it reaches complete skepticism. As I shall argue below, empiricism is another example of false consciousness.

Rationalism and Empiricism

The background to this is the ancient Aristotelian conception that dominated until the end of the Middle Ages, according to which one can learn things about reality through thought. Aristotle admittedly did not ignore facts and observations, but neither did he see them as a necessary condition. From his perspective, thought too can be a tool for knowing reality.

A good example commonly brought in this context is his assumption that the rate at which an object falls to the ground depends on its mass, a claim that was refuted by Newton’s law of gravitation (which states that the rate is the same, regardless of mass). This is a very simple experiment that does not require particle accelerators in order to perform it. Just take two stones of different weights and throw them down from a high place. You can see that they arrive approximately together. Why didn’t Aristotle perform this experiment? Because it seemed highly reasonable to him that the speed depended on weight, and he assumed that if it was reasonable in his mind then that was probably what also happened in reality. Why do an experiment whose outcome is self-evident?!

During the fifteenth century, criticism of the rationalist assumption began to develop. Claims arose to the effect that the fact that we think in a certain way does not necessarily indicate that this is how reality itself operates. As Mark Twain, of blessed memory, said: “The world does not owe you anything; it was here before you.” This criticism intensified during the sixteenth century, and it was what led Descartes to formulate the cogito argument (“I think, therefore I am”), whose purpose was to show that one can prove a claim about reality (= I exist) on the basis of logical reflection alone. Later, the empiricist approach developed, offering an alternative to rationalism. Empiricists assume that thought says nothing about reality. Facts can be learned only from observation. Empiricism proved itself with extraordinary success, and it is chiefly responsible for the development of modern science and its achievements to this very day. It is therefore no wonder that many people, laymen and scientists alike, still believe that rationalism is an error that has been refuted, and that experiment is the exclusive basis for science and for knowledge of reality. All these people are unaware of the problematic nature of empiricism, which was uncovered not long after it had crystallized. Rabbi ha-Nazir follows the standard description of the development of British empiricism and its progressive emptying of content in three stages: Locke, Hume, and Berkeley.

Locke

John Locke (1632-1704) was a British physician, thinker, and philosopher who worked in a great many fields. Among other things, he dealt with epistemology and is considered one of the founders of philosophical empiricism. His empiricist doctrine is described mainly in his book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, whose third and final edition was published in 1700. Locke was already familiar with Newton’s scientific discoveries and even referred to them in his books. That is, in his day modern science had already begun to appear. Locke’s goal, as he writes in his book, was “to clear the foundations of knowledge of mistaken conceptions and nonsense,” most of which are entirely the product of our thinking, and therefore adherence to experience and observation is the main means he proposes for doing so.

Locke assumed that a person is born tabula rasa, that is, a blank, smooth slate devoid of information. All our information is formed through experience, and only through it. Everything beyond that is speculation that should not be regarded as knowledge. Locke was well aware that not all the information we possess is the product of direct sensory observation. In particular, the laws of nature are general principles, whereas direct observations give us particular facts. According to Locke, the laws are formed as a result of accumulated experience. Our life history gives us tools embedded within us, and these are what help us process the information and extract from it insights that do not arise directly from it.

According to him, the objects themselves possess qualities that are transmitted to us, and thus ideas arise within us, such as persistence, time and space, causation, soul, and infinity (including God). His empiricist claim is that even if it does not seem so, in the final analysis everything comes from experience, through inward and outward reflection, and through the combination of simple ideas that creates complex ideas. Locke developed an entire taxonomy of the system of ideas, divided into different genera and species, and everything is the fruit of our experience as it enters us through our system of cognition and processing.

Hume

The next thinker (in terms of content) in the empiricist chain after Locke is David Hume (1711-1776). Hume’s thought is very confusing, because he is a committed empiricist and at the same time a great skeptic. People generally see a contradiction between those two things, but in Hume they appear together. And indeed, when one follows his doctrine, one understands that this is no accident: empiricism is skeptical by its very nature. Everything that is not the product of empirical observation is cast into doubt and regarded by the empiricist as baseless (we have no reason to assume that it is true). Therefore, alongside complete trust in observation and in our sensory faculties comes a profound skepticism toward everything beyond that.

For Hume too, our thoughts are combinations of impressions and concrete images. But Hume understood that Locke erred in assuming that this involved deriving ideas from reality, that is, a complex experiential process. In his view, these are only imaginings, products of our imagination and intellect, but they do not necessarily have a source in reality itself. Thus, for example, we noted that Locke saw causality as the product of combining and abstracting from concrete experiences and observations, whereas Hume argues that we have no way to construct the idea of cause out of our observations. All that can be seen by the senses is a temporal relation between cause and effect. For example, one can see that immediately after I kick a ball, it flies away, at least in that particular case which I observed. But we have no way of seeing that the kick is what caused the ball’s flight (that is, the causal relation between them), nor do we see the generalization that a kick will always cause a ball to fly (the problem of induction). All these are interpretations that we produce in our thought, and they have no genuine empirical basis. Hume therefore denied the ontic significance of the causal relation in general, and of a causal interpretation of the connection between two specific events (such as a kick and the flight of a ball).

Hume concludes from this that the causal relation as we understand it is a subjective illusion, the product of our thinking and imagination (in his language, the causal relation is “a bastard of our imagination and experience”). In truth, what we have here is temporal succession and not causation. The kick comes before the ball’s flight, and that is a matter of observation. But the conclusion that this is causation is mere imagination, or a manner of speaking. And of course the conclusion that this is also how things should occur in the future (the principle of induction) has no basis whatsoever. According to Hume, this is merely the result of a form of thinking that is implanted in us, nothing more. From his perspective, what comes “after this” appears as though it comes “because of this” (post hoc ergo propter hoc), but only “as though.”

Hume pointed out that Locke’s doctrine smuggles a rationalist (conceptual) element into the supposedly “empirical” picture. Locke accepts almost all the products of thought exactly as the rationalists do (except for those that seem to him misleading), but he “launders” them by saying that they are the fruit of accumulated experience and combinations of sensory data. But what is the nature of those “combinations” and that processing that takes place within us? If we are honest, we will have to admit that these are acts of thought and not of sensation and observation, and therefore a consistent empiricist ought to abandon them as well. Hume cleans these impurities out of Locke’s empiricist doctrine and leaves us with an empiricism that accepts only sensory data. Everything beyond that is subjective discourse, and it does not necessarily reflect factual reality itself. Needless to say, Hume also denied the existence of miracles, prophecy, and providence, things that contradict our experience.[3] This is the meaning of Hume’s skepticism, which does not contradict his empiricism but follows from it.

Berkeley

The third in the British empiricist chain is Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753). In his book A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, and especially in his most important essay, “esse est percipi,” he takes the empiricist emptying-out process one step further and argues that there is no real basis for our trust in sensory data. For him, what exists is what is perceived, and in fact we have no indication whatsoever for the assumption that anything exists outside our perception (in light of his method, one is naturally led to discuss the question of what basis there is for the assumption that other consciousnesses exist besides our own. This is the problem of other selves, or other minds). This view is nowadays called idealism (that is, there are no objects, only ideas that are thought and “perceived”).

Here empiricist skepticism reaches its fullest realization and total emptying out (although, as I noted, one could still continue the process and leave in the world only myself, without other people and other consciousnesses). Note that with Berkeley even the sensory data, which remained acceptable after Hume, lost their validity. From the rich and varied rationalist worldview we are left with a world in which all that exists is our personal consciousness. Nothing more. Interestingly, Rabbi ha-Nazir at the end of his discussion (p. 111) connects this to the Chabad conception that the entire world is nothing but an illusion (the tzimtzum is not literal).

Summary

We have seen, then, that the crystallization of empiricism is inherently bound up with skepticism. At first, one casts doubt on every product of thought and focuses on observation, but in the end it turns out that observation itself is vulnerable to that very same skepticism. Empiricism cuts off the branch on which it sits. Locke stripped away metaphysics (except for God, faith, and soul), along with fantasies and delusions. After him came Hume, who continued stripping away everything that is not direct sensory data, including the laws of nature, causal relations, and our generalizations (as well as God and miracles). Finally, Berkeley strips away even the sensory data themselves and leaves us with nothing but a solitary subject.

In the process described here, empiricism itself gradually discovered that it has no real alternative to rationalism. All the unfounded claims in the rationalist doctrine remain unfounded in the empiricist worldview as well. Anyone who is unwilling to accept products of thought as tools for understanding the world will have to forgo almost every claim that deals with reality, and will end up with bizarre mysticism like Berkeley’s, and with scientific claims and laws emptied of factual content. And here once again we return to the issue of false consciousness.

False Consciousness

Very few empiricists are willing to go all the way to Berkeley-style idealism. Most are stuck somewhere between Locke and Hume. They accept sensory data, and idealism seems to them a delusion. And how do they relate to the laws of nature? This can already be seen in Hume himself. After he rejects causality and induction, the expected conclusion should have been that the laws of nature are claims about us and not about the world. But Hume himself attacks what later came to be called the “witness argument,” that is, traditions about the occurrence of miracles or divine revelation, on the ground that these contradict the laws of nature.

Very few empiricists will be prepared to say that the laws of nature, which are clearly the product of thought and not merely of observation, do not describe reality itself. That is indeed how it was with Locke, but he did not yet know Hume’s arguments. What do those who are aware of Hume’s arguments say—arguments according to which this view is not really compatible with empiricism? Hume taught us that, contrary to common opinion, pure empiricism is incompatible with the scientific worldview. Whoever accepts science as a description of reality must give up empiricism and adopt rationalism to some degree. And yet the ordinary empiricist, even today, does not doubt his senses or the existence of an objective world.

Until Hume and Berkeley, empiricists lived with the feeling that they had seen the light and found a fitting alternative to (irrational) rationalism. They believed in all the findings of science and thought they were based on observation alone, without any admixture of the dross of thought, heaven forbid. At that stage, were they genuine empiricists or not? But as noted, the same is true of post-Humean thinkers and indeed of the great majority of empiricists today. Many of those who call themselves ‘skeptics’ uphold a scientific worldview and, together with it, empiricism.

Here too we have an example of a doctrine that includes two contradictory principles, just as we saw regarding faith and morality, and people hold both of them together. But because of the contradiction, it is clear that if they really believe in science, they are not true empiricists. Alternatively, if they are empiricists, then necessarily they cannot have any genuine trust in science. When one pushes such an empiricist into a corner, and when he understands that he must decide between trust in science and empiricism, one encounters the same two forms of response that we saw above regarding faith and morality:

• Skeptical-empiricist. Indeed, all discourse beyond the particular facts that I have observed (and perhaps even those, according to Berkeley) concerns ourselves and not the world. I give up the view that these claims describe the world, and empty them of their factual content. Such a person is an empiricist who lives in the false consciousness of trusting the scientific worldview.
• Rationalist. I believe in science and admit that this involves giving up empiricism (that is, admitting that there are things that are products of thought and yet we still accept them as tools for understanding the world itself). Such a person is an unwitting rationalist who lives in the false consciousness of empiricism.

As in the previous example, here too one can see that simultaneously holding two contradictory principles conceals behind it a false consciousness, at least with respect to one of them.

[1] As I explained there, a theological argument does not transform a person’s worldview at all. At most, it exposes a worldview that had previously been implicit within that person.

[2] This is not their chronological order. But in terms of content (as we shall immediately see), it is customary to describe British empiricism in this order.

[3] His arguments on these matters include a deep internal contradiction, and I discussed this at length in my book Emet Ve-lo Yatziv, chapter 15.