Laura Day, Popularizer of Intuitionism

Laura Day is an intuitionist. She is fifty-three years old, and she lives in New York City. The location matters. It is a financial hub of the world economy, and Laura Day offers advice and trains individuals in the financial industry as well as other fields, such as medicine. She herself uses intuition; she teaches others to use intuition; and, in six mass-market books she has published since 1997, she advocates for intuition.[1]

THE BOOK. This post, the third in a series of initial looks at intuition, draws information from Day's most recent book: Laura Day, How to Rule the World from Your Couch, Atria Paperback (Simon & Schuster), New York, 2009, 270 pages.

HER AUDIENCE. Day presents information in this book that she has "been teaching ... for nearly thirty years." (p. 86) "I have had the honor training so many different kinds of people, from surgeons, engineers, psychologists, and college students needing a clear path, to teachers, future authors, and artists." (p. 24) However, she writes in large measure to individuals in business: "As with everything in this book, the idea is for these tools [of telepathy in particular] to translate easily to use in the business world." (p. 77) For example, under the subheading "You Can Use Mediumship in Countless Ways," she lists: "To know how to sell your product from the market's point of view." (p. 52)

HER PURPOSE. Day aims to teach skills that will "really bring miraculous change to peoples' lives," she says. "There is a lot of science behind, actual proof of, the powerful, amazing abilities that intuition can yield." (p. xiii) Day is an altruist: "... I am nothing if not someone who desperately wants to give others what they ask of me. So here it is. This is my tool kit for using your intuition everyday in your life and business." (p. 24)

My goal is that the advice written in this book will prove itself to you, once applied. I'll give you an example: the best first-time student I ever had told me that he didn't believe in intuition. He attended my workshop as a favor to his wife and scared himself silly when, within thirty minutes, he got detailed, accurate information about someone he had never met just from holding the person's name in a blank, sealed envelope. (p. 9)

STRUCTURE OF HER BOOK. The structure and style of the book are befitting an activist who is appealing to a literate mass market. Chapter 1 is an "Overview." As the Table of Contents (pp. ix-x) shows, the remaining seven chapters are each devoted to an intuitive skill:

- Gathering information: "Flashes of insight gained without using traditional sources of 'information'."

- Mediumship: "The ability to become someone or something else and view the world from that perspective."

- Telepathy: "The ability to send and receive information from a distance."

- Body Heat Telepathy: "The ability to connect physically and emotionally with another from a distance."

- Remote Viewing: "The ability to perceive a scene when separated by space or time."

- Precognition: "The ability to move a person or situation forward in time and accurately experience what will happen."

- Healing: "The ability to have an effect on people or situations using the remote transfer of energy."

One can use these abilities to solve any problem in one's life.

If you seek intuitive information on a particular question, you may start with your remote viewing to get the physical layout of the problem but quickly use mediumship to experience the issue from the inside out; simultaneously, you may call on telepathy to hear the many positions on the topic, while also using healing to introduce a catalyst for a better outcome. (pp. 40-41)

Each chapter devoted to a single intuitive skill begins with a "Quick Hit Exercise" for experiencing that innate skill. The chapter continues with "What You Experienced in the Quick Hit," to explain the experience. The remainder of each chapter is a detailed explanation of pitfalls to avoid and techniques for gaining the most benefit from using the skill. Day is not a scholar writing to scholarly readers. The book contains no footnotes, bibliography, or index. The book is, in effect, a training handbook. Besides serving her professional goals -- earning an income from training -- it also serves her activist goal of spreading intuitionism:

I have ... included group exercises for those of you who wish to teach these techniques or experiment with them in your company training programs, as well as 'initiations' to use as class icebreakers, training evenings, or community experiences. Intuition is a powerful way to demonstrate to people how useful we all are to one another. (p. 18)

HER METAPHYSICS. Day is focused on the practical use of intuition, not on theory. She is not a philosopher of intuition, in the sense of creating a broad, integrated set of abstractions about the nature, foundation, and application of intuition, as Professor Robert Audi is. (See the June 27, 2012 post.) Day does, however, philosophize, that is, she does occasionally employ broad abstractions about the nature of intuition and the world in which it operates.

Day characterizes our world as one in which "[l]ife is full of miracles ... but they do not happen to us, they are of our own creation" (p. 23). There is in the world "an infinite field of information and communication" which we can "tap" into (p. 30),  a field of information-carrying "energy that we all share, the energy that knows no difference between the past, present, and future." (p. 86)

In summary, "[l]ife is an interactive crapshoot, but intuition gives you an edge." (p. 20)

WHAT IS INTUITION? Day says (p. 4) intuition is an ability. It is a means to an end, which is to create the world that you want." (p. 4) "Intuition gives you information ... in an immediate, accessible way." (p. 113) You already have this ability. "Intuition, you see, is innate. It is part of our human hardwiring." (p. 8) Intuition, which "is designed by evolution to give us immediate, accurate, effective tools" (p. 22), is "instant knowing" (p. 23). You need to refine it through training, which is what the book provides. (p. 7)

Intuition is accurate insight and information that you have not gained through the everyday use of your five senses, intellect, or experience. It is a higher octave of your five senses. (p. 29)

Intuition is not the subconscious, though the subconscious can use the information you gather intuitively and the subconscious can place roadblocks in the way. (p. 6) Rather, "[y]our information [gained through intuition] ... is stored, as it is gathered, mostly by your subconscious." (p. 28)

Nor, Day says, is intuition the same as: wishful thinking; an emotion (such as fear); belief; or intellect.  (p. 35) Consider the first item. Intuition is not wishing-makes-it-so.

A note of caution regarding the abuse, or misunderstanding, of intuition: do not get carried away and think that intuition is a way for you to will your desires into actuality. You do actually have to play things out, take the necessary course of action in any given scenario, and not use intuition as an excuse for idleness and self-deception. (p. 20)

A word of caution: Day uses the one term "intuition" in several separate, though related meanings, even on the same page. First, sometimes it means the information-gathering ability or skill. (For example, see p. 34, where she says "intuition uses storytelling as an information-finding sense.") Second, she sometimes uses the term "intuition" to mean, broadly, a capability of not only gathering information but also performing functions such as guiding memory in the search for information. (See p. 34, where Day says, "Intuition ... alerts you when an area in your life needs attention and gives you tools to address the given situation successfully.") Third, at times the term "intuition" names the information itself. (See again p. 34, where Day says "intuition is data that already exists.")

INTUITION AND ITS COMPETITORS. What is the relationship between intuition and its alternatives for acquiring information -- reason, faith, and following an authority?

REASON. "Intuitions give you a trail to follow. You can and will, automatically, think it through later." (p. 113) Here, with her reference to automatic thinking, Day uses the term "think" to refer to subconscious processing of information. "The information your intuition provides and your subconscious allows will come in bits and pieces that you must weave together to understand, and then you must verify it all against what your logic and knowledge tell you." (p. 208) So, reason, as a sort of handmaiden to intuition, can provide coherence ("weave together") and verification.

Reason is also helpful, Day says, in shaping the information for presentation to an audience expecting a logical chain of argument.

There are times when you want the details of the future on demand. Especially in business, you often need to present rational data-based arguments to justify your actions. The rest of this chapter will give you some simple ways to tell the future and fill in enough of the details so that your intuition is based on logic, and logical to those around you. (p. 202)

However, Day says, though reason is useful in verifying knowledge gained intuitively and helpful in shaping that information for presentation to others, do not make the mistake of trying to reason and intuit at the same time. Reason impedes intuition. (p. 168)

FAITH. Rather than using intuition, why not simply have faith in any particular idea that occurs to you? "You don't even need to have faith when you have an effective process that you follow without fail." (p. 21)

AUTHORITY. Nor do you need a guru.

I find that people often want a guru, and this is probably because we are conditioned to obey and accept others' perceptions of the world and what they believe is correct/moral/the way. The truth is that everyone has access to all of his or her own answers, resources, and truth. There are no secrets or experts. When you use intuition, you are your own guru. (p. 21)

EXAMPLE USES OF INTUITION. How might a practitioner of intuition use his ability? Consider two examples, one from medicine and one from business.

Let's say that you are a doctor and you have a few drug choices to treat muscle soreness. You don't know what the patient's chronic muscle soreness is from, but you want to resolve it in the least toxic and most helpful way. You might use mediumship ['The ability to become someone or something else and view the world from that perspective," (p. ix)] to become your patient and experience how she would react to each drug, taking notes as always. (p. 63)

If you want to raise money for your company, you use your telepathy and mediumship to find out what investors would respond to; your embodiment to experience yourself and your product as the desired person or group; your remote viewing to direct you to investors; and your body heat to draw them to you. (pp. 248-249)

DAY'S ACTIVISM. As a careful reading of How to Rule the World from Your Couch shows, Laura Day spreads her views on intuition in a variety of ways. Her books sell well, with at least How to Rule appearing on the New York Times bestseller list. Her satisfied clients recommend her and her ideas, for example, when actor Brad Pitt says, "I believe in the gut, and I believe in Laura Day" (back cover), and when Dr. James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA, claims that "Intuition is logic" (back cover) and lauds Day's work. Her training programs (which the book distills) explicitly promote intuition, and her private healing sessions (pp. 225-226) demonstrate it.

In conclusion, Laura Day, as a popularizer of intuitionism, is an intellectual and activist complement to academic philosopher of intuitionism, Robert Audi.

Burgess Laughlin

Author, The Power and the Glory: The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith, at http://www.reasonversusmysticism.com

[1] See "About" at howtoruletheworldfromyourcouch.com. See also the brief, partly documented Wikipedia account: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Day.

An Academic's Intuition and Intuitionism

Intuition is one kind of mysticism common in the USA in our time. Becoming familiar with intuition may help to arm advocates of reason for the long war ahead.

OVERVIEW OF THE SERIES ON INTUITION. The first post in this series on intuition was a book review (June 5, 2012) of The Good in the Right: A Theory of Intuition and Intrinsic Value, by philosophy professor Robert Audi. (Unless specified otherwise, page citations below refer to Audi's book.) That first post introduced the idea of intuition as it has been used by some academics working in the field of ethics, as a branch of philosophy. For cultural contrast, a later post, the third in the series, will present the idea of intuition advocated not by an academic but by an author who writes to a mass audience.

This post, the second in the series, further considers the academic concept of intuition and distinguishes it from intuitionism, which is a theory of intuition -- describing not only what an individual intuition is, but the manner in which individual intuitions relate to each other and to other ideas. The source for this post is Audi's The Good in the Right. This post will cite the views of intuition that Audi, partly a rationalist, has originated or has adopted from earlier intuitionists such as W. D. Ross, an empiricist.

Readers of this post should keep in mind its limitations: (1) The brief notes here are my simplified interpretation of one academic's complex presentation. (2) Academics who advocate intuitionism disagree with each other on many aspects of intuitionism. (3) Academics are only one set of voices speaking in favor of intuition in our culture today. Thus, this post is a sampling.

WHAT IS AN INTUITION? Consider an example of an intuition in the field of ethics. You see a man beating a child with a belt. A thought -- "Beating a child is wrong!" -- appears in your mind. That thought is the product of an intuition. (p. 60) In this case, the thought is a narrow principle, where "principle" means an idea upon which other ideas can stand. (For example, a broader abstraction -- such as the generalization, "Harming others is wrong" -- could stand on multiple narrow principles such as "Beating a child is wrong," "Hurting a parent is wrong," and "Injuring a spouse is wrong.")

The intuitional sequence is simple. You look at a particular social situation, and a thought appears in your mind. (p. 60) In epistemology, this sequence is an instance of epistemological "realism," the view that things outside the mind directly give rise to ideas in the mind.[1] More technically, the "natural properties" of things (the "is" of a child and a belt) somehow give rise to the "moral properties" (the "ought"); and the moral properties -- received by the mind's "moral sensitivity" (pp. 57 and 58) directly produce a narrow moral principle in your mind: "Beating a child is wrong." This sequence is a "reliable belief-generating process" (p. 57). Apparently this is the manner in which intuitionists bridge the "is-ought" gap. 

DEFINITION. An intuition is a "non-inferential cognition" (p. 8). An intuition, as a product of a "process" that has no steps, is a proposition, that is, a statement, a sentence. An intuition is not an individual concept. (p. 9) An example intuition, from the field of ethics, is this proposition: "Everyone has a duty to keep promises" (p. 43 for the duty of promise-keeping).

REQUIREMENTS. Not every thought that pops into the mind can qualify as an intuition. "One may not ... simply insist that someone has a [moral] duty, or ought to do something, and claim that one 'just sees' it.  ... The intuitionist thesis that some knowledge of what we ought to do is intuitive and non-inferential implies neither that it is not reflective nor that it cannot be supported by argument or refuted by relevant consideration to the contrary," Audi says (pp. 38-39). Intuited knowledge might be supported by or reached independently by "reflection," that is, thinking about the subject and making inferences from other, already acquired knowledge.

For an intuition to actually be an intuition, it must have these characteristics: (1) directness -- an intuition cannot be based on a premise;  (2) firmness -- the intuitionist has a "definite sense that the proposition ... holds [true]"; (3) comprehensiblity -- an intuition must be understandable by appropriately prepared, intelligent observers; and (4) pretheoreticality -- forming or understanding intuitions comes directly from observation and therefore cannot depend on a theory, which is a broad abstraction induced step by step from evidence. (pp. 33-35)

FALLIBILITY. While "firmness" of belief is one characteristic of an intuition, as Audi presents it, he and some other intuitionists do not claim that intuitions are infallible. Intuitions can be mistaken. Audi offers (pp. 8, 9) this analogy: Scientists rely on sense-perceptions of the world as starting points for their scientific conclusions. Scientists know, however, that sense-perceptions -- or our initial understanding of them -- can be mistaken. Seeing a "bent" stick in a pail of water is an example. The same idea, Audi says (p. 8), holds for intuitions. Misunderstanding the facts of a situation can lead to a false intuition -- but it is still an intuition. An intuition can never lead to a false proposition as a result of a defective process of intuition. The reason is that intuition is not a process. There are no steps in any particular intuition. You look and the proposition appears in your mind.

If that is the nature of any particular intuition that arises in observing a moral situation, then in what way do intuitions, once acquired, relate to other knowledge?

WHAT IS INTUITIONISM? The term "intuitionism" names a certain philosophical view, the conviction that intuitions in some form play some role in creating knowledge. At least among some academics, intuitionism is a theory that explains the source of intuitions, the limits of intuitions, and the relationship of intuitions to other elements of knowledge. Intuitionists disagree with each other about the details.

EXAMPLE: AUDI'S INTUITIONISM. In the field of ethics, intuitionism is "the view that at least some basic moral truths are non-inferentially known" (p. 5). The theory of intuitionism described by Audi has three characteristics. (pp. 20, 21, and 40)

First, Audi's intuitionism is pluralistic, which means that the foundation of this ethics is made of a set of narrow, individual moral "principles," like tiles in a floor. In contrast, in other ethical theories, a single broad principle -- such as the Golden Rule or the Categorical Imperative -- serves as a foundation (or sky hook) from which narrower ethical guidelines can be deduced.

Second, each particular, narrow moral "principle" (such as "Keep your promises") is "grounded" in one of these three sources: (a) an observable action (such as making a promise); (b) an item of knowledge (a bleeding man will die); or (c) an accessible fact (such as the fact that one individual can benefit others).

Third, each narrow, intuited "principle" is "knowable by ordinary moral agents," that is, individuals who are concerned about acting properly.

Audi is a syncretist. He weaves together elements from various sources into one intuitionist theory of ethics. For example, he melds (1) the idea of a set of intuited moral principles (the narrow kind) such as "Keep promises" and "Do no harm to others," with (2) Immanuel Kant's overarching moral rule of the categorical imperative.

TYPES OF INTUITIONISM. There are various theories of intuitionist ethics (and ethics is only one field in which intuitionists work). Some are rationalistic; others are empiricist; and still others (such as Audi's) are a combination of the two. (pp. 2 and 19) Some forms of intuitionism are "contextualist," that is, the intuitions are grounded in the context of a moral situation and arise automatically without inference and without reflection. (p. 59) Some forms of intuitionism are radical; their advocates accept only the intuitions themselves as guides and reject any form of reasoning about them. Other forms of intuitionism are moderate, as with Audi's theory, in which intuitions provide elements of the moral theory but "reasoning" weaves them into wider generalizations or at least connects them with an overarching principle such as the categorical imperative. (pp. 6 and 54)

CONCLUSIONS. On many issues, intuitionists in academia disagree among themselves, but they agree that intuition -- a claim to immediate cognition, from whatever source -- plays or should play some role in our knowledge of what we should do in the world. These intuitionists are commanding a seldom-seen but powerful battalion of soldiers in the war of mysticism against reason.

Burgess Laughlin

Author, The Power and the Glory: The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith, at http://www.reasonversusmysticism.com

[1] For epistemological realism, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_realism and Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 2nd ed., p. 2.

BkRev: Intuitionist Robert Audi's "The Good in the Right"

This is the first in a series of posts on intuition as one form of mysticism common in our culture today. My plan is simple: examine at least two instances of the advocacy of intuitionism -- one theoretical, formal, and academic (in the best meaning of that word); and one "practical," informal, and designed for a mass market.

The source I will use for a look at a sample theory of intuitionism is: Robert Audi, The Good in the Right: A Theory of Intuition and Intrinsic Value, Princeton University Press, 2004, 244 pages.

I plan three posts. The first, below, will briefly review Audi's book to provide background information for later posts. The second post will briefly characterize intuitionism in one of its many versions, as described by Professor Audi in The Good in the Right. The third post will examine the "practical intuition" advocated by a best-selling author who writes for the mass market not academia.

ROBERT AUDI. The author of The Good in the Right is a professor of philosophy and business ethics at the University of Notre Dame: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Audi. According to the back cover of his book, he has also been the Editor in Chief of the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. He knows philosophy, as the index of The Good in the Right suggests. He cites major and minor philosophers such as Aquinas, Aristotle, Kant, J. S. Mill, G. E. Moore, Plato, John Rawls, and W. D. Ross; and he draws from numerous modern philosophical scholars such as Lewis White Beck and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Audi's book is thus an appropriate choice for someone who wants to take a first step in seriously studying intuitionism.

Why study the role of intuition as it is used in any particular field? Doing so allows us to see not only an outline of intuitionism itself, but its effects when applied.

Why study intuitionism in the field of ethics in particular? "Appeals to intuitions in resolving moral questions are a pervasive strategy in contemporary ethical discourse," says Audi (p. 24). I would add that ideas are causes of human actions. As a branch of philosophy, ethics provides the concepts and principles that guide all human behavior -- such as an individual's actions in his career, in his relations with friends, and in the sort of political system he supports.

INTENDED AUDIENCE FOR THE BOOK. Audi writes to "nonspecialists," that is, anyone who is seriously interested in ethics but does not work full time in studying or developing ethical theory. One example, perhaps, is the sort of academic who mostly teaches a particular subject outside of philosophy, such as business, but also, part-time, teaches the ethics of that subject. Universities now offer courses in ethics for business students, medical students, and others. Because Audi is aiming at such an audience, he aims to "confine [philosophically] technical matters and some responses to contemporary critics of intuitionism mainly to the notes" (p. x).

AUTHOR'S PURPOSE AND THEME. Audi's overriding purpose is to present a theory of morality that answers all of the major questions a thinker about ethics might ask. To do so, Audi proposes a theory that is a synthesis of elements from other theories.

The theme of the book is that in ethics a syncretistic system of "value-based Kantian intuitionism" (p. 173) answers the main questions we face. Intuitionism is "the view that at least some basic moral truths are non-inferentially known" (p. 5). Audi weaves together three threads: a system of intrinsic values as general guides to action (Chapter 4); the Kantian principle of the categorical imperative as an integrator; and intuitionism as the source of particular ethical principles (Chapters 1 and 2). Audi takes on the task of extracting these three elements from their historical sources, fixing their errors, and then tying them together into one system (Chapter 5).

"Particularly in recent years," Audi writes, "intuitionism has re-emerged as a major position in ethics. Appeals to intuitions in discussing moral questions have long been common -- even if not always so described -- but there has also been renewed exploration of intuitionism as an ethical theory that uses intuitions as data for moral reasoning and makes a basic commitment to the power of intuition as a rational capacity" (p. ix).

Professor Audi's statement above contains key elements of his theme, which is to propose a theory -- a broad, structured abstraction -- of ethics that draws in part from "intuitions as data," as well as from other sources. His theory is syncretistic. It fuses elements of:

(1) Narrow ethical "principles" formed directly from observing situations around us, such as abuse of a child, (as formulated by 20th Century philosopher W. D. Ross).

(2) Values and virtues for guides (as in Aristotle).

(3) An overarching ethical command (Kant's categorical imperative, to treat others as you would expect to be treated).

(4) Systemization, to make all the elements work together.

Audi devotes part of his book to defending intuitionism from its critics, who raise questions such as: Why are there disagreements about morality if moral principles arise self-evidently through intuition? (p. 2)

ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK. The Introduction identifies the problems that this book answers: In ethics, why has intuitionism become more prominent? Are there answers to the objections that critics of intuitionism have raised? Can intuitionism provide both a comprehensive theory and a practical guide to ethical behavior?

Chapter 1 traces the roots of intuitionism from Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900, English) to G. E. Moore (1873-1958, English), H. A. Prichard (1871-1947, English), and finally W. D. Ross (1877-1971, Scot), who was the creator of "the most prominent intuitionist view throughout most of the twentieth century" (p. 3). Chapter 2 further describes Ross's intuitionism, extends it, and corrects it. Chapter 3 then integrates the corrected Rossian intuitionism with an overarching guideline, the categorical imperative formulated by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). The provisional result, in Audi's system building, is a Kantian intuitionism. In Chapter 4, Audi takes the next step in system building by integrating the duty-based Kantian intuitionism with "a theory of value that" unifies "all of the moral principles ..., from the ... general categorical imperative  'downward' to quite specific standards of conduct" (p. 3). Last, Chapter 5 reviews Audi's own theory overall.

STYLE. Sentence by sentence, Audi generally writes clearly -- compared to such philosophical obscurantists as Kant, Kierkegaard, and Derrida. Audi helpfully previews and reviews. He defines -- or at least describes -- key ideas, though not always on their first appearance. However, his book requires slow reading. First, he has chosen a difficult approach that attempts to weave together three threads: historical development of intuitionism in ethics, critical analysis of each successive philosopher, and exposition of his own position. Second, he presents no reader aids such as a chronology or a glossary. Third, he often writes sentences that have so many qualifications and neologisms that the main point can be lost. Here is a mild example:

"Despite Ross's in some ways unfortunate analogy between moral principles and elementary logical and mathematical ones, he leaves room for reflective equilibrium to enhance -- or for its unobtainability to reduce or defeat -- justification for an 'intuitive' moral judgment" (p. 66).

For sufficiently motivated readers, however, Robert Audi's The Good in the Right, can be a rewarding first look at the complicated world of intuitionist ethics.

For other reviews of the book, see:

- http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24816/?id=3041

- http://ethicalrealism.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/review-of-robert-audis-the-good-in-the-right/

Common Sense as a form of mysticism

The phrase "common sense" symbolizes various ideas. Some of those ideas are objective -- that is, formed logically from facts of reality -- and one of those ideas is mystical. Following are my first notes on "common sense."

ARISTOTLE'S USAGE. My secondary sources say an early usage of the term "common sense" appears in the writings of Aristotle (384-322 BCE). He wrote of  "common sensibles" in the human mind. This use of "common sense" refers to an ability of the mind to combine individual senses (such as sight, sound, smell). An example is sensing motion through our eyes and through our sense of touch. This "common sense" is a combining faculty. It is preliminary to -- and not a replacement for -- full, conscious, explicit reasoning.[1] It is not mystical.

2. LOCKE'S USAGE. In Book IV, Chapter XVIII, Paragraph 11, of his long treatise, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke (1632-1704) mentions "common Sense" (capitalizing the noun, in the style of his time):

For Men having been principled with an Opinion, that they must not consult Reason in the Things of Religion, however apparently contradictory to common Sense, and the very Principles of all their Knowledge, have let loose their Fancies, and natural Superstition ....[2]

3. AN OBJECTIVE MODERN USAGE?. Locke's use of "common sense" is the same as one of the modern usages of the term: a human ability available to all mentally and physically normal individuals, an ability to look at objects in front of one's eyes and make simple, but implicit logical connections or distinctions. What is an example of "common sense," in this meaning? Two water glasses having the same shape -- but one small and one much larger -- stand on a table. The larger one is filled with water, to the brim. It is common sense to know the water in the larger glass will overflow if poured completely into the empty smaller glass.

To the person who holds it, this knowledge seems to arise automatically from inside his mind. This person cannot immediately identify all the many facts and generalizations he has accumulated through a lifetime, facts and generalizations he has identified subconsciously. Because those facts and generalizations are held subconsciously they are not immediately available for identification, articulation, and testing. This common sense knowledge comes from and only applies to observable objects frequently encountered in one's culture. 

If John Locke in 1700 had been shown a notebook computer, no amount of "common sense" would have told him what it is and what it does. Likewise, common sense does not apply to abstract issues such as the objective basis for ethics; the origin of the stars; the validity of a theory of evolution; or the nature and desirability of capitalism.

"Common sense," in the meaning defined above -- simple but subconsciously formed and held inferences drawn about objects widely familiar in one's culture -- is, in a few characteristics, analogous to the formation and use of first-level concepts (such as "table" and "dog").[3] First, we can usually recognize a particular, directly perceptible object as a table or a dog, even though if we might have trouble offering a formal definition of either concept; the same observation holds for "common sense" solutions to problems in that we can immediately see them. Second, we form and use first-level concepts in a manner similar to accumulating and using common sense: from direct observation of perceptible objects in reality, supported by words, concepts, and propositions supplied by the dominant culture in which we live. Third, usually both defining first-level concepts and justifying our common sense conclusions are difficult. Both seem "obvious."

4. AYN RAND'S USAGE. Philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982) has succinctly characterized "common sense" in a way similar to the usages outlined above:

Common sense is a simple and non-self-conscious use of logic.[4]

That which today is called 'common sense' is the remnant of an Aristotelian influence.[5]

Americans are the most reality-oriented people on earth. Their outstanding characteristic is the childhood form of reasoning: common sense. It is their only protection. But common sense is not enough where theoretical knowledge is required: it can make simple, concrete-bound connections—it cannot integrate complex issues, or deal with wide abstractions, or forecast the future.[6]

The key points of her comments are that common sense can reasonably be expected or relied on in solving problems that are simple (involving one or two steps of reasoning), involve directly perceptible objects, and apply generalizations widely available in one's culture. No conclusion, I think, is "common sense" if it follows only from a chains of inferences or if it deals with abstractions from abstractions.[7]

5. A MODERN MYSTICAL USAGE. I personally have heard the term "common sense" used to name another notion: There are ideas -- usually judgments (propositions stating something about reality), not individual concepts -- that are already (or should be) embedded in the human mind.

Consider an example of this usage of the term "common sense." A legislator calls for a local government in the USA to require smoke-free homes for foster children.[8] The multiple issues involved -- Does "second-hand" cigarette smoke cause health problems? Should government require foster parents to avoid smoking around their foster children? Should government place orphaned or abandoned children in foster homes? -- do not involve directly perceptible objects alone, the thought process are long, and the context is technical (involving medical expertise and legal training, for example).

In my personal experience, an appeal to "common sense" that involves abstractions from abstractions and chains of exact reasoning is a false appeal to common sense.  Worse, if someone asks the person making the claim of "common sense" to spell out his reasoning, and the person making the claim denies the need to do so or is unable to do so while still maintaining his position, then the person making the claim is mystical. He is, in effect, claiming "knowledge" from some source other than reason.

CONCLUSION. Appealing to common sense is a form of mysticism when the claim is arbitrary, that is, when the "common sense" position has been challenged but the speaker cannot or will not articulate his position as a reasoned argument based on evidence and an explicit chain of inferences.

Burgess Laughlin

Author, The Power and the Glory: The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith, at www.reasonversusmysticism.com

P. S. -- I should also mention Thomas Reid (1710-1796), the main founder of the movement called "Common Sense Realism" or "Scottish Common Sense Realism." I did not want to feature him above because I, so far, have seen no reason to think he contributed directly to our contemporary uses of the ideas named by the term "common sense." (I have so far read only secondary sources.) However, he and his followers might be worth further study if I need to look for the explicit philosophical roots, if any, of the modern idea of "common sense."

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article, "Thomas Reid," says:

Reid is a staunch defender of “common sense”, or, as he sometimes puts it, the opinions of “the vulgar”. In fact, in almost every arena of philosophical inquiry, Reid's positions are in various ways tied up with his overall project of defending common sense. Common sense, for Reid, are those tenets that we cannot help but believe, given that we are constructed the way we are constructed.

If the secondary sources I have read are correct, Reid supported "common sense" epistemology as a way of countering skepticism arising from Locke, Hume, and others. The reason Reid opposed skepticism was that skepticism threatened religion. In sum, then, Reid apparently advocated a philosophy of common sense to protect religion. For this reason, common sense philosophy was very popular among some theologians. As a movement, it died quickly by around 1900.

Besides the SEP article on "Thomas Reid," see also the SEP article. "Scottish Philosophy in the 19th Century," for an intriguing look at the rapid rise and fall of a philosophical movement. Also, the Wikipedia article, "Common Sense Realism," as of April 23, 2012, offers useful bibliographic leads.


[1] G. E. R. Lloyd, Aristotle: The Growth and Structure of His Thought, Cambridge University Press, 1968, p. 194, briefly describes Aristotle's view of "common sensibles," as presented in Aristotle's On the Soul (titled De Anima in Latin and Peri Psuche in Greek), 418a20f. For a more recent, introductory discussion of Aristotle's psychology, that is, his theory of the structure and function of the mind, see: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-psychology/. The bibliography for that essay includes references to specialized works on "common sense" in Aristotle's writings. [2] The mention of "common Sense" appears on p. 696 of John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, editor Peter H. Nidditch, 3rd edition, New York, Oxford University Press, 1975. If in ECHU Locke discussed "common sense" in some other meaning, as one secondary source claimed (without a citation), I am unable to find it. [3] As always, criticisms are welcome. For forming concepts and for the nature of first-level concepts: Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, second edition, pp. 13, 15-16, 49-50, 167-174, 180-181, and 204-215. [4] Ayn Rand, question period following the lecture, "The Philosophy of Objectivism" lecture series, Lecture 11. [5] Ayn Rand, "For the New Intellectual," For the New Intellectual, hb, p. 45, pb, p. 41. [6] Ayn Rand, “Don’t Let It Go," Philosophy: Who Needs It, p. 211. [7] For abstractions from abstractions: Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, second edition, Chapter 3. [8] For an example claim -- at least by a headline writer -- that creating a new law is common sense: http://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2012/04/smoke-free-foster-care-common-sense-state-should-act.

Rorty, mystic activist

Richard Rorty (1931-2007), a postmodernist mystic, was primarily an academic activist.[1]

His academic career was a railroad track. The major stations along the line were the University of Chicago (where he earned a B.A. and M.A. in Philosophy, 1946-1952), Yale (Ph.D., 1952-1956), Wellesley College (1958-1961, after two years in the U.S. Army), Princeton (1961-1982), and the University of Virginia (1982-1998). During his time with the University of Virginia, Rorty also delivered series of lectures at University College, London (1986); Trinity College, Cambridge (1987); and Harvard University (1997).

The crossties, so to speak, were the lectures he presented to thousands of listeners; the articles (including book reviews) he wrote for philosophical journals; the books he published (some of which were anthologies of his articles); and the interviews he granted.

All along the route, he met and conversed with individuals who were philosophically receptive. That method of dissemination was appropriate for the philosopher whose anti-epistemology is "conversation" as a source of "justified belief."

Related posts:

- "Richard Rorty, a postmodernist mystic," April 11, 2012.

- "Postmodernism on reason and mysticism," February 21, 2012.

- "BkRev: Explaining Postmodernism," February 11, 2012.

- "BkRev: The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism," February 7, 2012.

- "The Tragedy of Reason (Bk. Rev.)," September 27, 2009.

Burgess Laughlin

Author, The Power and the Glory: The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith, at www.reasonversusmysticism.com

[1] Unfortunately no scholar has yet written a full-length, life-spanning, intellectual biography of Richard Rorty. My source for this biographical note is Bjørn Ramberg, "Richard Rorty," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, substantively revised June 16, 2007, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rorty.

Richard Rorty, a postmodernist mystic

BACKGROUND. The February 11, 2012 and February 21, 2012 posts present my preliminary notes on the general nature of postmodernism. This post looks at the ideas of one postmodernist in the USA, Richard Rorty (1931-2007). The fourth and final post in this series will examine Rorty's activism.

MY SOURCES. I have only sampled Rorty's writings. For this post, which is merely a collection of notes, I am drawing mainly from his first book: Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Thirtieth-Anniversary Edition, Princeton University Press, 2009 (adding material to the original 1979 edition), 439 pages.

For a partial summary of Rorty's main points in PMN, see Michael Williams, "Introduction to the Thirtieth-Anniversary Edition." Williams's "Introduction" also provides historical background information that makes this difficult book easier to understand. For an overview of Rorty's ideas and life, consult Bjørn Ramberg, "Richard Rorty," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, substantively revised June 16, 2007, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rorty.

Among Rorty's many writings, why focus on Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature? Michael Williams, an admirer of Rorty and the author of the "Introduction to the Thirtieth-Anniversary Edition," says:

[Rorty's first book] Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature sent shock waves through the ranks of professional philosophers. ... Rorty's book is a visionary work that challenges us to rethink our understanding of the philosophical enterprise. It is the single greatest influence on the revival of American Pragmatism, one of the most exciting developments in philosophy today. [The book's] influence has been felt far beyond the confines of academic philosophy. (p. xiii)

OVERVIEW OF THE BOOK. In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature Rorty examines philosophy as performed by academics in the 1970s. He sees philosophers making false assumptions. His main target is a certain set of related ideas, which Descartes created: (1) each person has a mind, (2) the mind is like a mirror reflecting reality ("nature"), and (3) truth is ideas corresponding to that reality. Rorty's intention is to destroy that set of ideas and that metaphor. Rorty's approach, through most of the book, is to critique in detail the ideas (and the accompanying metaphor) as presented by a range of philosophers, including Descartes, Locke, Kant, and a train of post-Kantians such as Ludwig Wittgenstein. In this way, most of the book is negative. Rorty devotes one chapter, the last one (Ch. VIII, "Philosophy Without Mirrors") to a presentation of his own views.

ATTACKS ON REASON AND REASON'S PRODUCTS. The index to Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature has no entry for either "reason" or "mysticism." Readers must collect clues as they read.

Rorty is determined to destroy reason. About his own book, he says:

The aim of the book is to undermine the reader's confidence in "the mind" as something about which one should have a "philosophical" view, in "knowledge" as something about which there ought to be a theory and which has "foundations", and in "philosophy" [centered on epistemology] as it has been conceived since Kant. (p. 7, emphasis added)

This passage is typical of Rorty's writing style. Clause by clause, it is moderately clear, but the sentence as a whole is hard to assimilate. It is long, but more importantly rational readers who are new to Rorty's philosophy will have trouble believing he means what he says. His statement is radically destructive of reason, but expressed banally. Let's take the sentence one section at a time. He says that he is writing for the purpose of destroying your confidence. In what? In four objects.

First, he intends to destroy your confidence in the idea of mind. He means what he says. He wants to obliterate "mind" from philosophical discussions. He does not say so, but without mind there is no reason, which is a faculty of the mind.

Second, he says that he wants to destroy your confidence in the idea of knowledge, in two ways. There is no value, Rorty is saying, in having a theory of it -- that is, a systematic accounting, an epistemology: What it is, where it comes from, how it relates to reality, and how the elements of it interconnect.

Third, Rorty holds, there is no value in looking for the foundations of knowledge -- which actually means elements of knowledge that cause and therefore explain other elements. He attributes foundationalism to Kant and praises Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Dewey for abandoning the "Kantian conception of philosophy as foundational." (p. 5) Integration of elements of knowledge -- concepts, propositions, and theories -- includes establishing the relationships among ideas, with some being more fundamental, that is, more causal than others. Integration is a function of reason. If there is no need for integration, there is no need for reason.

Rorty is both broad and deep in his approach. He evaluates philosophy as a whole; he also probes the foundations. For the latter, Rorty says: "... I have been trying to isolate more of the assumptions behind the problematic of modern philosophy, in the hope of generalizing and extending ... criticisms of traditional empiricism" (p. xxxi) Here, "traditional empiricism" seems to mean the view that we abstract concepts of things from sense data of things. (There is no entry for "empiricism" in the index.) If that is the meaning of "empiricism" here, then Rorty's target is again reason, the faculty that forms, connects, and distinguishes concepts drawn from sense-perception.

Fourth, Rorty says that another one of his purposes in writing the book is to destroy your confidence in philosophy as centered on epistemology. Epistemology is the branch of philosophy focused on the study of the origins and nature of knowledge. Wanting to destroy philosophy as an enterprise centered on epistemology is anti-reason. If philosophers do not know what and how they know, then all of their other conclusions -- such as principles of ethics -- are in doubt. To reject philosophy dedicated at least initially to epistemology is to reject philosophy, that is, any attempt to use reason to develop a worldview as a guide to living.

Michael Williams, the author of the Introduction to the Thirteeth Edition of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature elaborates:

Rorty sees philosophy, as it came to be understood in the last century, as an attempt to work through the consequences of a conception of knowledge as accurate representation, a conception rooted in the metaphor of mind as the mirror of nature. From its seventeenth-century origins, principally in the writings of Descartes, this metaphor leads to the emergence of what Rorty calls 'philosophy-as-epistemology', with its canonical list of textbook problems: the mind-body problem, [the problem of answering] skepticism, [the problem of] the nature of truth, and the rest. (Michael Williams, p. xiii)

[A]ntirepresentationalism -- the rejection of the idea of mind (or language) as the mirror of nature -- is the leitmotiff of Rorty's book. (Michael Williams, p. xv)

MOTIVE FOR OPPOSING REASON? What might be a motive in rejecting the idea of causation in ideas -- that is, for example, having foundations of one's ideas and having theories which set a context for evaluating ideas? One possible mystical motivation is rebellion against the "constraints" of objectivity. Rorty says:

I have argued (in chapter three) that the desire for a theory of knowledge [an epistemology] is a desire for constraint -- a desire to find "foundation"' to which one might cling, frameworks beyond which one must not stray, objects which impose themselves, representations which cannot be gainsaid. ... "On the contrary, hermeneutics [the interpretation of texts, as a substitute for philosophy] is an expression of hope that the cultural space left by the demise of epistemology will not be filled -- that our culture should become one in which the demand for constraint and confrontation is no longer felt. (p. 315)

RORTY'S MYSTICISM. Rorty advocates mysticism in at least three forms.

1. SOCIETY AS SOURCE. Rorty is a mystic through his view of the nature and origin of knowledge. He shares Dewey's view that knowledge is "what we are justified in believing." (p. 9) Rorty sees "[the act of ] 'justification' as a social phenomenon rather than a transaction between the 'knowing subject' and 'reality'." (p. 9) For example, Rorty defines "incorrigible knowledge ... as a matter of social practice -- of the absence of a normal rejoinder in normal conversation to a certain knowledge-claim ...." (p. 96) The position that Rorty takes is that "incorrigible knowledge" is "just a matter of what practices of justification" are "adopted by one's peers (the position which I shall call 'epistemological behaviorism' in chapter four) ...." (p. 99)

If we see knowing not as having an essence, to be described by scientists or philosophers, but rather as a right, by current standards, to believe, then we are well on the way to seeing conversation as the ultimate context within which knowledge is to be understood. (p. 389)

Rorty's view of objectivity illustrates his social mysticism. It is, Rorty says (p. 338), "a property of theories which, having been thoroughly discussed, are chosen by a consensus of rational discussants." Rorty says there is no need for epistemology, that is, theories of knowing. Instead of epistemology, "we need to turn outward rather than inward, toward the social context of justification rather than to the relations between inner representations." (p. 210) Further, Rorty says:

We have to drop the notion of correspondence [to reality] for sentences as well as for thoughts, and see sentences as connected with other sentences rather than with the world. (pp. 371-372)

2. EDIFICATION. What does Rorty offer as an alternative to systematic philosophy, that is, philosophy that uses reason, sees epistemology as the central concern, and strives to establish a secure foundation for its conclusions? He seeks "edification" rather than knowledge ("getting the facts right"). "From the educational ... point of view, the way things are said is more important than the possession of truths." (p. 359)

Rorty says that "edifying philosophy aims at continuing a conversation rather than at discovering truth .... I shall be claiming that ... the cultural role of the edifying is to help us avoid the self-deception which comes from believing that we know ourselves by knowing a set of objective facts." (p. 373)

Systematic philosophers want to put their subject on the secure path of a science. Edifying philosophers want to keep space open for the sense of wonder which poets can sometimes cause -- wonder that there is something new under the sun, something which is not an accurate representation of what was already there, something which (at least for the moment) cannot be explained and can barely be described. (pp. 369-370)

Rorty clearly states his theme:

[T]he point of edifying philosophy is to keep the conversation going rather than to find objective truth. Such truth, in the view I am advocating, is the normal result of normal discourse. Edifying philosophy is not only abnormal but reactive, having sense only as a protest against attempts to close off conversation by proposals for universal commensuration through the hypostatization of some privileged set of descriptions. (p. 377)

3. EPISTEMOLOGICAL BEHAVIORISM. What then is philosophy to be, according to Rorty? His "way out of philosophy-as-epistemology turns on a broadly pragmatic outlook that he calls 'epistemological behaviorism'. ... As an epistemological behaviorist, he examines human thought and knowledge from a public, third-person standpoint [not from introspection] ... treating knowledge as the result of argument and discussion." (Michael Williams, p. xiv) That means what it says: The source of knowledge is society. Knowledge arises from conversation with others.

Rorty is a "behaviorist" because he looks at behavior: what goes into a person (statements others make) and what comes out (statements directed to others). The behaviorist does not speculate about what goes on inside the person. The behaviorist does not seek to understand the essential nature of a thing, only its behavior. (p. 17)

CONCLUSION. Richard Rorty is a mystic in two main ways. Negatively, he attacks reason, mostly by disintegrating it. Positively, he also promotes mysticism in the form of "knowledge" ("justified belief") coming from the social world around us. Rorty's mild manner and understated style camouflage his power of destruction.

Burgess Laughlin

Author, The Power and the Glory: The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith, at www.reasonversusmysticism.com.

Postmodernism on reason and mysticism

This post summarizes my notes on two secondary sources on postmodernism -- reviewed here and here.[1] I am not documenting every statement. Consult the sources I have cited. In a much later post I will summarize my notes on Richard Rorty (1931-2007), perhaps including his book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, as an example primary source.

WHAT IS POSTMODERNISM?. Postmodernism is an anti-worldview worldview. Postmodernists reject systematization in both philosophy and religion (specifically theology), but the pieces of their implicit worldview can be assembled into an explicit worldview.[2] It is neither a philosophy (distinguished by at least a claim to use reason in developing it) nor a religion (distinguished by reliance on mysticism). It is, I think, best described as a creed of radical skepticism, the claim that we can know nothing.

Postmodernism's advocates started to appear as the worldwide socialist movement began to falter, and evidence for socialism's inevitable failure began to accumulate in the USSR, China, and elsewhere. The "leading strategists" of the postmodernist movement -- the social movement advocating postmodernism and applying it to contemporary culture -- were Jacques Derrida, Michael Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, and Richard Rorty. (Hicks, p. 1) Other postmodernists have specialized in particular fields such as architecture or psychology. For example, "[t]he architectural theorist Charles Jencks [b. 1939] has done more than anyone else to popularize postmodernism as a theoretical concept, particularly in a series of editions of his best-known book The Language of Post-modern Architecture (1st ed., 1977)." (Sim, 3rd ed., p. viii)

POMO TARGETS. One way to characterize postmodernism is by identifying its targets. Postmodernism is anti-modernism, where "modernism" means a collection of the most objective ideas of the Enlightenment period (c. 1700-1800) and their positive effects on 19th and 20th Century culture (especially in law, business, technology, and science). In philosophically hierarchical order, postmodernism's fundamental targets are:

- In metaphysics, naturalism (the idea that everything has a definite nature).

- In epistemology, reason (the faculty of understanding the nature of things, through observation and logical thought) and products of reason such as particular, integrated systems of thought, which postmodernists call "meta-narratives"). (Sim, pp. 272-273)

- In theory of man, the individual is born tabula rasa.

- In ethics, individualism.

- In politics, capitalism.

POMO PRINCIPLES. In direct opposition to its targets, postmodernism supports these ideas:

- In metaphysics, anti-naturalism, that is, the belief that we should not expect everything to have a definite, identifiable nature.

- In epistemology, linguistic social subjectivism, the idea that the language each of us learns from the society around us determines our view of reality.

- In theory of man, social determinism, the idea that individuals are constructed by their society.

- In ethics, collectivism, the belief that the individual is foremost a unit of a collective.

- In politics, socialism. (Hicks, pp. 5-15, for targets and principles)

These fundamental principles lead to particular themes advocated by specialized postmodernists. One example is an academic position such as "deconstruction," a form of literary criticism in which the postmodernist reader claims to discover multiple meanings in a particular text, meanings that the author may not have intended. (Sim, pp. 245-246). A second example is a cultural (ultimately political) theme such as denigration of Christopher Columbus. (Hicks, pp. 18)

WHAT ARE ITS HISTORICAL ORIGINS? The fundamental elements of the culture of the Enlightenment (c. 1700-1800, in Western Europe) -- its naturalism, devotion to reason, and individualism -- were a seedbed. From that seedbed, modernism grew, particularly in Anglo-American culture. Enlightenment values and incipient modernist values provoked an anti-Enlightenment reaction among mystics, particularly in Germany. (French culture was mixed.) That reaction eventually fueled postmodernism. (Hicks, pp. 21-22 and 24-29)

The two main roots of the Counter-Enlightenment were Rousseau (1712-1778) and Kant (1724-1804). Rousseau contributed a collectivist social philosophy. (Hicks, pp. 99, 100, 106, 108, and 109) Kant undermined reason. (Hicks, pp. 27-42)

The anti-Enlightenment road ran from Kant (and to a lesser extent, Hume, 1711-1776) through Hegel (1770-1831), Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Marx (1818-1883), Nietzsche (1844-1900), Heidegger (1889-1976), and Wittgenstein (1889-1951) to primary postmodernists -- Lyotard (1924-1998), Foucault (1926-1984), Derrida (1930-2004), and Rorty (1931-2007) -- and then to secondary postmodernists in our time. (Hicks, pp. 21-22, plus Chs. 2 and 3)

WHAT IS THE POSTMODERNIST VIEW OF REASON?. Reason is the faculty of perceiving things in reality and conceptualizing their nature. At its most fundamental level, the postmodernist rejection of reason is metaphysical: Postmodernists reject the idea that things have a nature. (Hicks, p. 2, citing Foucault and Rorty) This position immediately undercuts reason.

For some postmodernists, the justification for rejecting reason is political. Western Civilization -- defined philosophically as a complex of cultural elements, such as science and objective law, that grow from a foundation of reason -- oppresses women, homosexuals, the poor, and nonwhites, the postmodernists say. Therefore, to oppose oppression, postmodernists oppose its foundation in reason. (Hicks, p. 3)

Other postmodernist attacks on reason appear in different forms. One is polylogism, though postmodernists apparently do not use that term. Postmodernists hold one's class, race, wealth, or sex to be a guiding factor in interpreting the world and in deciding what actions -- especially political ones -- to take. (Hicks, pp.15-16)

Still other postmodernists purportedly do not completely reject reason or its applications, such as the scientific method, but propose "alternatives," which means mysticism in some form. (Hicks, p. 17)

WHAT IS THE POSTMODERNIST VIEW OF MYSTICISM?. Postmodernists are not usually outspoken champions of mysticism in its various forms (faith, revelation, intuition, and so forth). Rather, they support mysticism indirectly. For some postmodernist writers, their style of writing is their statement of support for mysticism. Their styles are generally not comprehensible; reason can learn nothing in reading nonsense. (Try "reading" Derrida, Of Grammatology.)

Other postmodernists seemingly do write clearly, but they supplant reason with some other persuasive value such as "attractiveness," as when Richard Rorty says:

Conforming to my own [postmodernist] precepts, I am not going to offer arguments against the [modernist] vocabulary I want to replace. Instead, I am going to try to make the vocabulary I favor look attractive by showing how it may be used to describe a variety of topics. (Quoted by Hicks, p. 177)

Some religious mystics, particularly those who are members of the emerging Christian Radical Orthodoxy movement, have embraced postmodernism "as a critique of a particular secular framework, that of universal reason." (Pamela Sue Anderson in Sim, p. 80) The distintegration of thought brought by postmodernist skepticism creates a vacuum that religious "meta-narratives" (worldviews) fill with conventional forms of mysticism (revelation, faith, traditionalism, and reliance on holy scripture).

CONCLUSION. The general payoff of postmodernism is disintegration of reason and all the values that grow from it; mysticism rushes in where reason dies. There is also a particular payoff of postmodernist attempts to supplant reason with mysticism. In Stephen Hicks's words, postmodernists can use their rejection of reason "to justify the personal leap of faith necessary to continue believing in socialism" despite the accumulating historical evidence of socialism's failure. (Hicks, pp. 179 and181)

Burgess Laughlin

Author, The Power and the Glory: The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith, at http://www.reasonversusmysticism.com

[1] In addition to Stephen R. C. Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, 2nd ed., and Stuart Sim, The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism, 3rd ed., another general, introductory resource is: Gayl Aylesworth, "Postmodernism," The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2010 edition, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/.

[2] Hicks, EP:SSRF, shows the assembled result, particularly in Ch. 1. For other, but lightly critical discussions by postmodernists about postmodernists' views of religion: Pamela Sue Anderson, "Postmodernism and Religion," in RCP, Ch. 7. For their views on philosophy: Stuart Sim, "Postmodernism and Philosophy," in Sim, editor, RCP, Ch. 1.