Cocoa Puffery

The Sophistry of The Intellectual Cadre

When it comes to the "educated elite" nothing is surprising.  Ignorance, prejudice, and superficiality know no bounds.  We came across this recently, which caused not a little chortling into the cornflakes.  The headline in BreitbartNews gave us a hint at what was to come:

The Big Question: How Silly Can a Philosopher Be?

Well now.  Let's see.  The appellation, "philosopher"  is usually taken to mean, at root, a lover of wisdom.  But when that wisdom is cocooned within the narrow confines of cotton wool, sometimes it degenerates into a "love of sophistry" which is an entirely different kettle of fish.  In this case, the sophist is one Daniel Dennett, who writes in Atlantic now and then.

The Atlantic magazine contains a section called “The Big Question” that’s sometimes humorous and occasionally idiotic. This month’s issue manages to wrap both into one answer.  “Which current behavior will be most unthinkable 100 years hence?” the magazine wonders. Daniel Dennett, a philosopher who occasionally contributes to the magazine, offers a gem of an answer.

“Unsupervised home schooling,” Dennett writes. “When we come to recognize that willfully misinforming a child—or keeping a child illiterate, innumerate, and uninformed—is as evil as sexual abuse, we will forbid parents to treat their children as possessions whom they may indoctrinate as they please.”  And he’s not even finished. “They may teach their children any religious creed they like, but only if they also teach the uncontroversial facts about the world’s religions so their children can make an informed choice when they grow up.”

So there.

Mmmm.  Wilfully misinforming a child, eh?  By whose lights, we tentatively inquire?  By Dennett's of course.  Dear old Danny wants us to understand that daring to disagree with his particular sophist prejudices is morally equivalent to the sexual abuse of children.   Behold the wondrous works of the educated elite, our esteemed and noble superiors.

Let's think this through.  Sally has been homeschooling little Jane for a number of years.  They are presently working through a module entitled, "The Foolishness of Unbelief".  Jane's teacher points out, from the Bible, that Unbelief is always trading in lies and suppression of the truth.  Unbelief is unable to escape the resulting inevitable rational-irrational dichotomies that occur when the finite attempts to define and control the infinite.  Faced with its own internal contradictions, and forever having to draw upon Christian presuppositions in order to build its case, the reflexive response of Unbelief  is to use force against its opponents, suppressing and punishing any ideas contrary to its own.  Sally offers up the scribblings of one Daniel Dennett as a case study in reflexive oppression, explaining that it is what the Bible calls foolishness. 

To whom do children belong? we inquire.  In Dennett's world we are left in no doubt.  Clearly children do not belong to parents.  To whom then?  To humanity in the abstract.  These days humanity in the abstract always takes the concrete and particular form of the state.  But if you are a sophist, like Dennett, you are interested in a particular kind of state--one controlled and guided by philosopher-kings, like Dennett himself.  Unless one is teaching a child according to the foolish prejudices of Dennett's beliefs, one is necessarily guilty of misinforming--that is, abusing--the child.  Sophistry, pure and simple

Behold the wondrous chutzpah of today's educated elite.