Late; uncorrected foot notes, highly provisional, incomplete. Worth rewriting to publishable standard?
I could think up a ëlinkí to this conference. It is worth it? Most people fit what they want to say into whatever theme opportunity offers.
But my apologies for more or less ignoring my original title.
1.1 Puzzles
I am daily astonished at what my fellow humans appear to find persuasive, at what some of them clearly are prepared to claim they know, to assert as ëtrueí - that is, at what people ëbelieveí. The field work which constantly renews this astonishment is not avoidable; family, friends, acquaintances, enemies and strangers; radio and TV; newspapers, books, articles, studentsí essays, a seminars.
But I am immediately back with a range of puzzles - ëproblemsí 1 - as old as the foragers, and perhaps homo erectus. I am astonished at human gullibility, because I think that I know that people believe things that are obviously false, or at least unproven. Which raises the question of my own gullibility, and my own criteria of truth. It also raises the question of cognitive social control. How do people get other people to ëknowí things? What happens to non-learners and ëdissidentsí? Notice that already I have used a lot of ëbigí words; used commonly in a variety of interconnected (or sometimes unconnected) meanings.
A small digression. One of common sources of confusion in essays, broadcasts, discussions, and I fear collegial writings is the word ëweí. No space to argue this here; but I recommend that I myself and all others never use it without stopping to ask - and answer - who is included.
Anthropologists talk and writing is never - well hardly ever - crystal clear. For those who think that they are ,ìscientistsî, the maximum possible clarity is plainly desirable. But for good reasons and not just because of anthropologistsí collective laziness and incompetence, ëweí can seldom get things really clear, and then often trivially.
What are we - no,no, what am I - trying to achieve? I claim to belong to a profession which studies comparatively all human societies and cultures. Wow! What arrogance! What for? Well, to ëexplainí, to resolve puzzles, to make them ëunderstandableí.
1.2 Causal Models
We do this by using words, and occasionally numbers and other symbols, to produce ëmodelsí of ëprocessesí. Though some colleagues vociferously deny it, I argue that as a matter of testable ethnographic fact, overtly or overtly, most anthropologists most of the time imply and are profoundly interested in some kind of causal connection - things are as they are because of something else, usually a large collection of interacting something elses. 2 ëWeí present models, which are always approximate and always too simple, and therefore always open to the criticism that ërealityí is more complicated; there are, or appear to be, some counter instances. The opportunities for mutual misunderstanding, for talking past each other, for ëindirectioní, for arguing about the meaning of words are legion.
I suggest - a typical oversimplification - two kinds of models. One is descriptive. In Sakaltutan in 1950, with two exceptions, all women had been born in the village or in a similar village within four or five hours walk; only one adult woman, and about six or seven school girls, could read. When a girl married for the first time, it was universally expected that she would move into her new husbandís home, and show a high degree of obedience and deference to his parents.
The second kind of model is in some sense ëtheoreticalí. In Sakaltutan, I found that a ëpatrilinealí model of kinship explained a lot of both talk and observed conduct. In writing and talking, I used - with explicit unhappiness - ideas about ëgroupsí, ësocial structureí and ësocial controlí acquired in four terms of study in the Oxford Department of Social Anthropology.
1.3 Anthropological Error
Why are we anthropologists always to some degree wrong? Three main reasons, among others. Words have fuzzy boundaries. The word ëambiguousí is quite inadequate, because important words, like brother, clan, plough, funeral, marriage, gift, weapon let alone words like classification, corporate, species, structure, love, modernity, clarity, theory, boundary, ëindigenous knowledgeí, core, meaning, and so on and so on, normally have several core meanings, and any given specific use of a word in a given sentence is likely to have at least some penumbra of possible imprecisions.
Second, ësociocultural processesí are infernally, hideously complex. I heard someone say on the radio that physics is appalling complex, chemistry vastly more so, and biology another huge leap more complex; largely because at each step the role of accident increases by quantum leaps. The complexities of human conduct are another quantum leap towards accident, towards the fortuitous interactions of systems. It seems to me that we have hardly begun to come to terms with this complexity. So many factors are in fact relevant to producing any given human outcome - say the marriage of Hasan and Elmas in Sakaltutan in 1950, the Homeric poems, or the divinity of Augustus Caesar, or inflation in Turkey, or Dianaís funeral - that no one can know enough. All social models are provisional and approximate; which is why the almost universal criticism of any statement about human conduct- factual or theoretical - is that it is too simple.
Third, - an issue too difficult to discuss here - we all suffer from ëfalse consciousnessí. Almost all of the ëimportantí and ëprofessionalí words used by anthropologists are morally or politically loaded; and very often anthropologists, like other social scientists, confuse the ëanalysisí - the construction of models designed to solve puzzles about socio-cultural processes - with their wish or self imposed duty to be social moralists, even technologists, to solve problems 3, to achieve certain moral purposes. Innumerable discussions - virtuously - confuse rejecting arguments because of errors of evidence and logic, with rejecting them because of alleged moral or political unacceptability. 4
1.4 Fantasy
Humans have an amazing, an almost infinite capacity for fantasy, for imagining, for invention. I heard recently a well illustrated seminar paper on Yoruba masquerades; what structures of invention. I, Frazer (all twelve volumes), all of us, know of a huge variety of stories, assertions, practices and institutions; we also know that many - not the majority - of them become accepted as true, valid, normal; even as morally or cosmically obligatory.
Tylor, Frazer, Levi Bruhl, Evans-Ptitchard and a myriad others asked the question, why do primitive and ignorant people ( including ancient Greeks and Romans) believe so much palpable rubbish? Why do they treat as beyond question, even as sacred, things which ëweí the rational see as so foolish that one established usage of the word ëmythí is ëfalse nonsense which others foolishly believeí. Why do they credit people, plants, animals, objects, actions, words and so on with such a variety of ëmagicalí powers? A good question. What they did not seem to notice is that this kind of credulity is no less prevalent in ëmoderní society than it is, or ever was, in other societies; and that many people whose profession entails tough rationality are as prone to credulity as all the rest of us.
The evidence for contemporary non rational credulity is all round us. One of my older Turkish village friends remarked, sitting among his goggle eyed young, with his back firmly to the newly acquired television screen, ìItís all liesî. In a profound sense, so it is. Millions buy products advertised by blatant and totally irrelevant sex. . Even serious, argumentative, educational programmes use conscious trickery as well cliche ridden fallacies to get their messages accepted. Humans are no less given to fantasy and credulity because they a few of them play the internet, manufacture nerve gases, send space craft to Jupiter, engineer genes, and argue in mathematical detail about the Big Bang.
1.5 Reality
When I assert that humans are credulous, I am saying that they often accept all kinds of ideas and stories on insufficient evidence or on faulty logic. So I am implying that sometimes evidence and logic can be cogent. And rightly so.
Relativism is fashionable. I actually heard a colleague shout from the back in serious indignation at an ASA conference ìThere is no such thing as truthî. (A parallel with ìAll Cretans are liarsî? Is ìThere is no such thing as truthî itself true?) A marvellous example of fashionable modern absurd credulity by a respected intellectual. 5
But there is truth, there is reality, and there are accepted criteria for judging. First, all day and every day, all humans deal with unquestioned reality; they are perfectly capable of talking about it to each other in comprehensible language. The timetable states there is a 10.19 a.m. train. If I go the station, either a train will arrive close to 10.19 a.m. or there will be massive evidence that one was expected, usually with an explanation of why it has not come. There is obvious truth, masses and masses of it. Of course, humans misperceive, misremember, draw false conclusions, are socially and culturally conditioned, are gifted with fantasy and confuse constantly their fantasies with reality. The boundary between experience of reality and experience - for example, delusions - of something else is massively fuzzy, so there are many puzzling cases. But minute by minute, there is reality and there is truth.
The natural sciences pose more complex problems. Human fantasy constructs models of reality, and tests them out. All foragers survive by socially tested and accumulated practical models of reality, many of them true, more or less, and many of them false. Once humans invented writing, and could record, pass on, revise, and replace complex practical models, including mathematical models, ëscienceí became a possible activity of a small elite in a few human societies who talked to and wrote for each other . The idea of systematically questioning, and testing by evidence and logical controversy, all ideas current in a society, however authoritative, became, by accident, acceptable to political authorities in the sixteenth century in Europe. (Gellner 1986). The discoveries that have followed with accelerating rapidity since are not arbitrary social constructions. The central core ideas of the natural sciences are true; and well tested procedures are agreed for dealing with the huge penumbras of doubt. Scientific knowledge is cumulative, interlocking and largely mutually consistent, and confirmed by results.
Science in this sense lends four handles to relativists. First, a questioning scepticism implies, even insists on, provisionality. On certain issues, what yesterdayís scientists took as scientific truth , todayís scientists today massively amend or even reject; who knows what scientists will say tomorrow? This applies only to the peripheral areas of new research. The major areas of basic science are certain.
Secondly, in some areas scientists currently ( Does anyone know of serious professional natural scientists who are radically relativist ?) do not yet agree about the line between what is explicitly provisional and what is established fact. So relativists - see Tylor on belief in magic - concentrate attention on areas of sensational doubt and dispute - the big bang, consciousness, breast implants, BSE, oceanic pollution, and ignore the main areas of certain knowledge.
Thirdly, scientists like other humans are fantastical, commit mistakes, sometimes lie, are unconsciously biassed, are sometimes mad.
Fourthly, both within science, and certainly in the understanding of science by non scientists, the fuzziness of the words we use makes all kinds of phoney arguments and misleading models plausible. Scientists with axes to grind, or money to make - and relativists - exploit such loopholes.
Although experts in a given field of science know some truth, the rest of us have to accept this truth on their authority, including all the other hard scientists in different fields. So while ëcommon senseí is potentially open to any normal human, science depends on the authority of an intellectual minority, an intercultural, potentially universal elite. The word ëscientificí then becomes popular rhetoric for ëtrueí, a claim for persuading other people; just watch the ads. Most have to be credulous about science, so scientific ëtruthí looks not unlike other socially, religiously and politically authoritative ëtruthí
Reality, most day to day common sense, and almost all scientific truth about reality, are beyond question. Two quotes. One, a paraphrase from a recent BBC broadcast by a physicist - if minds at least comparable in intelligence and social organisation to human ones exist in societies out there on the planets of other suns, which seems highly probable, they will discover the similar basic structures to those which human scientists have discovered, because that is what is there. And secondly, a paraphrase {check} from Gellner ( 1994 p.31)í intercultural truth is one of the glories of human achievementí.
I acknowledge that the boundaries between common sense and natural science, and between ëtrueí knowledge and other kinds of what passes for true knowledge are open and fuzzy and undecided. But this existence of fuzzy boundaries does not in any way refute my claim that truth palpably exists. 6
1.6 Untruth: ëKnowledgeí and ëBeliefí.
But while large amounts of human ëknowledgeí, are evidentially and logically true, larger amounts of what in any given social context passes for knowledge is either doubtful, or downright false 7.
This next step lands me in a typical trouble with ëfuzzyí words - in this case the words ëknowí and ëbelieveí. I have just asserted (as evidential and logical ethnographic fact) that a huge amount of what daily ëpasses for knowledgeí in every human society is unconfirmed, wrong or fantasy. Why do I say ëpasses for knowledgeí ? Because it is not ëknowledgeí? Because it is ëonlyí belief? I attempt to clarify some questions about some of the uses and implications of the two words ëknowledgeí and ëbeliefí.
In normal usage, ëknowledgeí implies that what is known is universally true. To be more accurate, it implies that the speaker or writer accepts that whatever it is that the people he is reporting ëknowí is in fact universally true; that is, it belongs either with common sense truth or with natural science. On the other hand, ëbeliefí normally immediately implies at the very least some degree of doubt.
In some religions, although what is believed is held to be sacredly and absolutely true, it is still implied that common sense evidence is not enough; faith is a moral duty, and belief takes some degree of moral will and of virtuous obedience to authority, some degree - as Needham (197 ) emphasises - of trust, of love. It is a duty to believe, precisely because to deny is possible without contravening evidence and logic. Faith is the way to enlightenment and salvation.
But mostly, ëbeliefí implies quite sharply that what is believed is mistaken, misleading, or simply false; and often that those who believe are out of date, inferiors, outsiders, enemies, conspirators, fools, villagers, peasants, primitives, ignoramuses, or at least mistaken. 8
Because of the implication of inferiority or hostility, some liberal intellectuals and especially anthropologists use ëknowí where others might more conventionally use ëbelieveí. They do this in order to make implicitly two distinct points; first, that the knowers/believers in question are not inferior or hostile, and secondly, that their cognition is as worthy of respect as everyone elseís.
The first of these implications is praiseworthy and acceptable, and is the reason why I also often use ësocial knowledgeí rather than ëbeliefî myself. The second implication is ambiguous. It is true that a belief in witchcraft in a witchcraft believing society is of much same order as a belief of many in the divinity of Jesus, the superiority of the Labour Party over the Conservative Party ( or vice versa), or the necessity of using Latin to train the young in logic. But it is absolutely untrue that a belief in any of these things is of the same order as say biologistsí acceptance of the theory of evolution or the double helix, a physicistsí acceptance that the universe is not in a steady state, or a doctorís acceptance that there is statistical correlation between secondary smoking and lung cancer.
So when I write that a huge amount of what passes for knowledge is not knowledge but rests on human credulity, I could equally say that a huge amount of what any given individual treats as their own knowledge is in fact their own belief, being at best unproven, and at worst wrong. They experience it as knowledge, but it does not rest on the kind of first hand rigorous and public testing by logic and experience which makes universal truths true. They think they know, but they are wrong; it passes for knowledge but it is not knowledge.
I see no satisfactory way out. If I use the word ìknowî,some unwary readers or listeners (assuming I have any readers) might assume that I imply that whatever is known is true; even if they realise that my estimate of truth, which they may not share, is involved. If I use the word ëbelieveí, some will join in an unstated ëweí the modern rationals who know these silly people are wrong and inferior. So both words are treacherous.
A simple example. Do I say people ëused to knowí that the earth is flat? Or do I say ëused to believeí?
One further corollary of this argument. The boundary between my ordinary non-professional use of ëbeliefí and ëknowledgeí varies with my own ideas about my own knowledge. But since neither I (nor anyone else) can ever know for certain which bits of what I think I know for certain are in fact universally true; and since I know that very large amounts of what most humans think they know for certain is by strict criteria highly doubtful or downright false, I argue that I certainly do know for certain that a large proportion of what I assume to be knowledge and thus true, is in fact ëbeliefí and thus at best doubtful, and at worst false. This also applies to all other humans.
For example, I know that witches - itself a fuzzy word used to translate a host of different ideas from a vast range of human ëculturesí - do not exist. There are many well attested cases of people knowing for certain that witches do exist; and there may be surprisingly well attested cases of evil falling on people apparently as the direct result of malice or rites by persons known to be witches. Yet it is still true that witches do not exist in anywhere near the precise form in which any one given witch-believing society describes and believes in them.
It follows that what people in any given situation assume themselves to ëknowí, what passes for knowledge, may or may not be true. Whether I, or any other outsider, also knows it, is irrelevant to the fact that the knower knows with the conviction that he or she knows it. The individuals, and the groups or networks, who share a given item of certain knowledge are ësubjectivelyí unquestioning.
1.7 Summary
By my argument to date, I seek to establish four points. First, that there is a large amount of shared human knowledge which is totally reliable, true and intercultural; and recognised procedures for checking that reliability. Second that all human individuals and all groups and networks assimilate to this body of universal truth a whole lot of other knowledge, that is, ëbeliefsí or ësubjectively certain knowledgeí which is not universal, and not totally reliable and true. Three, knowers can never themselves know, individually and as social beings, which bits of what they experience as certainty are totally reliable, true and intercultural and which are not. I add a fourth point; that the overwhelming majority of humans, in practice, would not accept that much of what they accept as totally reliable and true is in fact not so
1.8 Anthropologistsí view of knowledge
Anthropologists are professionally aware that ideas and beliefs socially accepted as totally reliable and true in ëother societiesí are not so. They share the cognitive stance of eschewing ëethnocentricityí. Any humans who grasp this point, - including non-anthropologists - develop a special tolerance towards othersí ways of thinking. Most professional anthropologists and some other people also realise, as I have argued, that a lot of what they themselves once assumed was totally true and reliable is not. If we think of the totality of knowledge and belief in all human societies, it is obvious that vast amounts of what is known for certain by people is indeed true and fully shared.It is also obvious that some people because of advantages they have in education and access to ideas and evidence are correct in defining large areas of truth as universal, even though large sections of humanity do not accept them. It is also obvious that huge amounts of what some people perceive as totally reliable and true are not. And I am arguing that it is also obvious that no one can ever by sure exactly where the boundaries come between the many varieties of valid and certain knowledge, and doubtful and unproven ë knowledgeí or ëbeliefí.
1.9 Why relativism?
I had hoped to use these arguments to explain why relativism is plausible, and
why highly intelligent colleagues are capable of espousing in all seriousness (and
sometimes with a nauseating air of intellectual and moral superiority) an all out
relativism which ethnographically is palpably false, and is philosophically absurd.
But I have only succeeded in alluding to this puzzle.