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We live in a world where as many distinct perceived realities coexist as there are individuals. It is not only that our opinions differ and that we draw different conclusions from what we perceive with our senses and grasp with our intellect; our perspectives are different, literally and figuratively, because none of us have the exact same experiences.
The inevitable result is a tremendous diversity of beliefs, thoughts and opinions. However, this diversity, whether we like it or not, represents a social peril, because it makes discord and conflict inevitable given that any attempt to decide who is right and who is wrong or to separate truth from falsehood will inevitably winners and losers.
How to prevent these conflicts from fomenting division into divergent and mutually hostile factions is a thorny problem that every society must resolve in one way or another. Peace, prosperity and social cohesion depend on the chosen solution, but also the structure of one of the main social systems: the knowledge production system.
Liberal science
The social system of knowledge production of liberal capitalist democracies is necessarily vast and complex. Consequently, no one can aspire to make a complete description of it with infinite precision.
Nevertheless, as long as we apply ourselves to it, tells us the American journalist Jonathan Rauch in an essay which has achieved both critical and public success entitled kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought (University of Chicago Press, 1993), it is possible to identify certain fundamental principles. In this seminal work, Rauch describes in particular what he considers to be the two cornerstones of what he calls liberal science.
The first rule is what the great philosopher of science Karl Popper (1902-1994) called the principle of refutability: a claim is established as knowledge only if it can, in principle, be contradicted by empirical test and only in the extent to which it resists systematic attempts to refute it. Contrary to what one might believe at first glance, this principle does not require us to renounce knowledge. However, it requires giving up certainty.
The second rule is intended to be an empirical principle: we can only maintain that an assertion has been established as knowledge to the extent that the method used to verify it gives the same result, independently of the identity of the verifier. When two separate auditors obtain different results, the results of one do not take precedence over those of the other; they are simply considered inconclusive.
Principle of refutability
The two aforementioned rules are among the most accomplished and fruitful social conventions that humanity has ever built. They primarily concern scientists, intellectuals and academics, but they do not concern only them, because they arise from an ethic — the ethic of critical examination, liberal inquiry and civilized disagreement — which befits every citizen of a democratic state and which all our institutions of higher learning should aim to impart.
At the basis of Rauch’s epistemological stance is an attitude of intellectual humility that could be summarized as follows: we must all, at all times and in all respects, seriously consider the possibility that one is wrong, that we are in error.
Another important corollary of the aforementioned refutability principle and empirical principle is that sincere public criticism is always legitimate and hence no idea or opinion should be immune from critical scrutiny. This last precept, crucial for understanding the thought of Jonathan Rauch, deserves further attention.
Over the last decades, the essayist asserts, the attractive idea that liberal science must promote sensitivity, tolerance, self-esteem and respect for the opinions of others has become established throughout the West. This impression, he adds, is seriously ill-founded. Indeed, the quest for truth and the advancement of human knowledge sometimes require us to see our feelings trampled upon and require us to cause strong annoyance in others, or even inflict deep wounds of self-esteem.
Test of facts
It is, after all, natural to feel very embarrassed when we have to lay ourselves bare before the tribunal of the decentralized community of critical auditors and have to watch helplessly as our ideas and opinions are weighed and scrutinized. magnifying glass, examined from every angle and be cavalierly subjected to the test of the facts. But intellectual honesty and a sense of responsibility and accountability still require playing the game in good faith and listening attentively — even if it may be vexing, hurtful, overwhelming or frustrating — to the arguments put forward. by our critics, our opponents, even our detractors.
Of course, if our ideas and opinions are rejected by critical consensus, we remain free to ignore the unfavorable verdict and, by virtue of the right to freedom of belief and freedom of expression, to continue to adhere to it and to promote it. On the other hand, we are certainly not entitled to expect that these convictions enjoy the status of knowledge, because, argues Rauch, if liberal science absolutely insists on freedom of belief and expression, it absolutely rejects any notion freedom of knowledge.
In his writings, Rauch does not miss an opportunity to emphasize the fact that intellectual liberalism is not intellectual egalitarianism. We cannot claim knowledge simply because the community to which we belong has been historically marked by discrimination.
Our opinion only deserves respect, he adds, if it withstands prolonged exposure to the ionizing radiation of public, free and decentralized critical verification. This therefore means that it is only entitled to respect to the extent that it earns its stripes against the test of facts within the framework of the merciless game of liberal science.
Furthermore, one can only claim knowledge to the extent that one’s opinion is generally recognized as having stood up better than any competing opinion to most of the high-intensity shock tests to which it has been subjected.
Intimidation
Any approach aimed at intimidating potential critical reviewers (by treating them, for example, as racists, XYZ-phobes, white supremacists, colonialists or champions of patriarchy), the essayist still tells us, must be be detected and recognized for what it is: an attempt to substitute ideological-political power for the scientific method.
Liberal science cannot exercise discipline if — through sentimentality or through intimidation and threats of reprisals — certain doctrines, notions, theories, ideas, opinions or ideologies, certain dogmas, concepts, words or paradigms are permanently protected from examination and free and critical intellectual expression.
Granting safe passage to certain ideas, opinions or theories has the effect of deactivating the mechanism of liberal science allowing to marginalize lame, unsupported, false or completely ridiculous ideas, and to refine or perfect partially founded ideas. It is then the entire vast system of knowledge production which risks atrophying and becoming ossified.
It is imperative to constantly keep in mind that sooner or later (and sooner than later), Rauch continues, we will have to pay a heavy price if we persist in elevating the humanitarian principle to the rank of social imperative and enshrining it in law. (apparently harmless, even admirable, since it is rooted in good manners) according to which, on the one hand, certain words and certain ideas constitute a form of violence and, on the other hand, that it is immoral and reprehensible to offend the sensibilities of others or hurt people through insufficiently smooth, subdued and sanitized words.
Lockdown
In fact, a well-known side effect accompanies the desire not to offend: the rise of the idea that people who claim to have been hurt are entitled to an apology and, for the good of society, people who have committed the offense must be called upon to retract and must then be held accountable before the public, the courts or any other form of authority.
In short, this humanitarian principle leads straight to the blocking of public debate, to the supervision and regulation of numerous areas of existence by a meddlesome bureaucracy, to censorship and preventive self-censorship, to intellectual authoritarianism. and, ultimately, to the criminalization of criticism and totalitarianism without the gulag (to put it in the words of a well-known sociologist).
It is essential to realize and understand, Rauch finally tells us in defending the morality of liberal science, that embracing the principles and precepts of humanitarian doctrine is intrinsically highly detrimental to freedom of expression, the intellectual freedom to seek theories describing and explaining reality, to the productive pursuit of truth and the peaceful resolution of disagreements.
Consequently, people who tell themselves that the comments that upset them represent a form of harassment, intimidation or violence have no moral right to anything other than this single and uniform response: “Besides your wounded pride and your agitated feelings, are there other victims? No ? In this case, it’s a shame that you feel this way, but you will get over it. »
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