Epistemology and Jokes
Abstract speculation should choose the tools that provide the most rigorous possible criteria, but not more rigorous than possible. Trying to be harder than possible usually leads to scientific reductionism, which is essentially a case of bad analogy. Sometimes a subject can be very very mushy, but it’s still a question worth asking. When things are mushy, the best mushy criteria must be selected, but no mushier!
Can a Physicist define life? Can a Political Scientist generalize and apply the concept of Fascism across history? In both cases, I assume the answer is no, for epistemological reasons. Intellectual humility pulls in both directions: 1) to allow that someone might discover something I didn’t expect, while 2) denying the hubris of Reason, which tries to fit everything into some crystal castle or vice versa. “Believe those who seek truth, doubt those who find it.”
Though the lines are always blurry, and sidestepping religion entirely for a moment, in order of rarefaction we have:
the hard sciences > philosophy > “theory” > art
It is via art that we “talk about” all the things we lack even provisional criteria for understanding. We can understand a Chagall without a single proposition, and we cannot understand a Chagall with propositions.
But Socrates banned poets from the Republic. With good reason! Poets tell the most pernicious lies, lies about the Gods, and teach us to fear death. Comedians deal with similar subject matter, and they also lie. But Plato includes the comic poet Aristophanes in the Socratic dialogues. I don’t remember anything from Plato’s Symposium beyond Aristophanes’ obviously allegorical and untrue account of love. He said what many poets have also said: love is when two people fit like puzzle pieces. The tale was poignant and ironic, shamelessly suggesting that each person has exactly one soulmate. Socrates, as a philosopher, cannot speculate about soulmates, though the concept of a soulmate is certainly something and not nothing. Only one who lies can talk about soulmates. Poets and Comedians both lie about soulmates, but with Comedians you know they are lying, which is of course more epistemologically pleasing.
see also, The Professor of Logic