Colin wrote:
> Yes society produces truths,
> Blacks we are told are intellectually inferior to whites. This is a socially
> produced truth, produced moreover by the powerful. But it is a lie. There is
> a distinction between reality (even social reality) and its descriptions.
This seems to me like a very strangely selected example. To say "blacks are
intellectually inferior to whites" is pernicious not because it is a lie
in the simple sense of being contrary to some empirically verifiable fact,
but because it makes free with certain words which do not have any socially
agreed-upon meaning. How can you say that the statement is a lie? Wouldn't
you first have to know exactly what I am asserting by it? Am I asserting
that blacks have not contributed much to the development of Western mathematics?
That a certain sample of blacks to which I gave a certain test did more poorly
on this test than a sample of whites? These may all be empirically true.
But the statement "blacks are intellectually inferior to whites" is _not_ like
the statement "my cat sleeps, on the average, 14 hours a day". And it is
precisely the way it is not, it seems to me, that gives it the potential to
function in damaging ways socially and politically.
> For example, England played a wholly socially produced football game the
> other day. England beat Italy four goals to nil in Milan. A truth? No, this
> description is simply not true. England beat Poland (Yes....) by two goals
> to nil in Poland.
Well, this is also not such a simple example, although in a different way than
the "intellectual inferiority" example. Have you been at the game or do you
know about it from the media? If from the media, then your truth claims have
to do not with simple descriptions of sense data about the game, but with
a complicated web of assumed credibility and authority that mediates the
relationship between a media report (or non-report) and the conclusions
we draw about "facts".
-m
> Yes society produces truths,
> Blacks we are told are intellectually inferior to whites. This is a socially
> produced truth, produced moreover by the powerful. But it is a lie. There is
> a distinction between reality (even social reality) and its descriptions.
This seems to me like a very strangely selected example. To say "blacks are
intellectually inferior to whites" is pernicious not because it is a lie
in the simple sense of being contrary to some empirically verifiable fact,
but because it makes free with certain words which do not have any socially
agreed-upon meaning. How can you say that the statement is a lie? Wouldn't
you first have to know exactly what I am asserting by it? Am I asserting
that blacks have not contributed much to the development of Western mathematics?
That a certain sample of blacks to which I gave a certain test did more poorly
on this test than a sample of whites? These may all be empirically true.
But the statement "blacks are intellectually inferior to whites" is _not_ like
the statement "my cat sleeps, on the average, 14 hours a day". And it is
precisely the way it is not, it seems to me, that gives it the potential to
function in damaging ways socially and politically.
> For example, England played a wholly socially produced football game the
> other day. England beat Italy four goals to nil in Milan. A truth? No, this
> description is simply not true. England beat Poland (Yes....) by two goals
> to nil in Poland.
Well, this is also not such a simple example, although in a different way than
the "intellectual inferiority" example. Have you been at the game or do you
know about it from the media? If from the media, then your truth claims have
to do not with simple descriptions of sense data about the game, but with
a complicated web of assumed credibility and authority that mediates the
relationship between a media report (or non-report) and the conclusions
we draw about "facts".
-m