Thanks for this very interesting post. Lots to think about, both the first-order content and the second-order question of what philosophers should be doing.
It does seem to me that philosophical definitions are usually boring as a main attraction.
Jonathan Dancy once said something like this to Craig Ferguson:
One shouldn’t think we’re always looking for definitions. When you’re trying to understand something, a definition wouldn’t give you the understanding: it would *be* the understanding that you already have.
I guess I don’t buy the idea that we have some sort of implicit grasp of what propaganda is that the philosopher can bring out. And even if we do I’m not sure what’s so valuable about bringing it out. This might be a point of difference between studying something that is clearly in some sense a social phenomenon and studying basic concepts of ethics or metaphysics.
Totally agreed re: propaganda. But I guess I feel the same way about lots of things, not just social phenomena.
In general, if you don’t yet understand some topic, trying to do conceptual analysis won’t get you far. Your “intuitive grasp” is so weak that it doesn’t give you much to go on. You’re better off just going and doing some non-philosophy first.
Yeah I agree. I was just being concessive—there are reasons not to extend this methodology from “core” philosophical topics that should be persuasive even someone who adopts the traditional conceptual analysis approach to these core topics.
This is a really insightful piece, and I appreciate the focus on Ellul and Lippmann's sociological lens. It strikes me that their approach gains even more power when we consider the neurological dimension of propaganda.
While philosophy, by its nature, strives for logic and reasoning, the human brain, frankly, seldom operates in such a pristine and rational vacuum. Our brains are complex adaptive systems, often prioritizing survival and social cohesion over pure logical consistency. Perhaps the true litmus test for whether something is propaganda lies less in whether it is "epistemically defective" and more on how it's designed to interact with our neurological wiring. Is its primary aim to bypass critical thought and trigger a response from the amygdala (regardless of veracity)?
This isn't to say philosophy isn't vital for ethical considerations and deconstructing arguments. But to understand why propaganda works so effectively, and perhaps to better guard against it, we need to grapple with the often-irrational, emotional, and biased ways our brains actually process the world.
Thanks for this very interesting post. Lots to think about, both the first-order content and the second-order question of what philosophers should be doing.
It does seem to me that philosophical definitions are usually boring as a main attraction.
Jonathan Dancy once said something like this to Craig Ferguson:
One shouldn’t think we’re always looking for definitions. When you’re trying to understand something, a definition wouldn’t give you the understanding: it would *be* the understanding that you already have.
I guess I don’t buy the idea that we have some sort of implicit grasp of what propaganda is that the philosopher can bring out. And even if we do I’m not sure what’s so valuable about bringing it out. This might be a point of difference between studying something that is clearly in some sense a social phenomenon and studying basic concepts of ethics or metaphysics.
Totally agreed re: propaganda. But I guess I feel the same way about lots of things, not just social phenomena.
In general, if you don’t yet understand some topic, trying to do conceptual analysis won’t get you far. Your “intuitive grasp” is so weak that it doesn’t give you much to go on. You’re better off just going and doing some non-philosophy first.
Yeah I agree. I was just being concessive—there are reasons not to extend this methodology from “core” philosophical topics that should be persuasive even someone who adopts the traditional conceptual analysis approach to these core topics.
This is a really insightful piece, and I appreciate the focus on Ellul and Lippmann's sociological lens. It strikes me that their approach gains even more power when we consider the neurological dimension of propaganda.
While philosophy, by its nature, strives for logic and reasoning, the human brain, frankly, seldom operates in such a pristine and rational vacuum. Our brains are complex adaptive systems, often prioritizing survival and social cohesion over pure logical consistency. Perhaps the true litmus test for whether something is propaganda lies less in whether it is "epistemically defective" and more on how it's designed to interact with our neurological wiring. Is its primary aim to bypass critical thought and trigger a response from the amygdala (regardless of veracity)?
This isn't to say philosophy isn't vital for ethical considerations and deconstructing arguments. But to understand why propaganda works so effectively, and perhaps to better guard against it, we need to grapple with the often-irrational, emotional, and biased ways our brains actually process the world.
Gramsci?