Policy (and philosophy) Bites: Multiculturalism is anti-enlightenment?

In a recent review of what seems to be an interesting book, neo-enlightenment apologist (a type after my own heart) and intellectual dark web reviewer T. M. Murray seems very much to want to link BLM and social justice multiculturalism with anti-enlightenment ideals.

I give the IDW some schtick, but I am in fact quite fond of them, positive-scientistic and neo-positivist souls that they are.

However, I have my doubts that multiculturalism - even (especially?) in its BLM format - is anti-enlightenment. The psycho-social and social psychological landscape is almost certainly not that simple. It is not simple at all, at any rate.

Lehman (and the equally astute Helen Pluckrose) are undoubtedly right about the nature of atavistic megacults like Islam, and about their memetic narratives. However, if there is one thing the IDW and new atheist movement have not yet understood, it is that any kind of objective moral realism is probably impossible (Pluckrose is probably an exception, as are Steven Law, A.C. Grayling, Daniel Dennett, and Russell Blackford). This applies to both deontologies with a supernaturalist basis, and to using naturalism to try to deliver either consequentialist or deontological normative moral imperatives (although there is probably more hope for consequentialism in this connexion).

Recommended readings for IDW bodies: anything on moral philosophy by A.J. Ayer and J.L. Mackie. Commentaries might be the best place to start.

The IDW-Quillette axis forget (or are not familiar with the admittedly esoteric philosophical material) that Kant the transcendental idealist (very probably, for the most part) failed to overturn the sceptical arguments of the greatest British Empiricist: Hume. This can be argued against, and Kant 'simps' frequently do so, but Bertrand Russell certainly thought Hume came out of the arguments better). Hume's moral theory was sentimentalist and his epistemology significantly emotivist. (Is 'simps' a contraction of 'simpering sycophants'? I cannot Google-find any etymology that makes sense.)

Humans by and large are not rational, said Hume (how this fits with his empiricism about epistemic content, or knowledge acquisition, is a complex matter). His preoccupation with responding to and rejecting the rationalism of Catholic Descartes guided this intellectual trajectory.

Murray seems to have the idea (perhaps I am mistaken) that Locke (one of the British empiricists) was pro-enlightenment by dint of his elevation of reason. However, it is not clear that Locke was not too conservative to be properly considered an enlightenment figure. His Christian megacultist status don’t help him in this respect either.

Locke was an establishment anti-absolute-monarchist (certain kinds of Puritan Protestant at the time were very much anti-Monarchist) who nonetheless delivered the foundation for the property rights laws of The Crown: put a fence around it and thus own it by application of one's labour. This was the ideological and philosophical basis/motive for the genocidal attribution of Terra Nullius to the Australian continent by the British Admiralty. First Nations Australians had not put a fence around anything - being, as they were, largely nomadic-tribal, and with only traditionally established tribal boundaries.

No one in the Admiralty or Crown cared about those traditional cultural, social, and territorial boundaries. Admittedly, social science wasn't really a thing then. Yet these were, nonetheless, not very enlightened attutitudes. Not at all.

Terra Nullius was not enlightened. Just because Locke is called an enlightenment empiricist does not mean that his theory of property is enlightened. It was rather just a stereotypical concession to his wealthy patrons. Sure, Locke thought that parliamentary democracy was the supreme form of government, but only if parliamentarians were prominent men (specifically men, of course) of position and property.

Sounds like a duopoly in the making to me. Not very enlightened at all, Mr Locke. What is if the smartest person in the room happens to be a peasant, or a woman? Or a peasant woman?

Gosh, John.

The IDW also seem to have an undying conservative (Liberal-conservative? Do they even know themselves?) faith in the idea that they can use science to provide a naturalistic basis for overarching set of moral and ethical rules. I doubt this will work even for fancy kinds of utilitarianism like rule-consequentialism (rule-consequentialism says that to do a right/good act, one follows the rule that leads to the minimisation of suffering, and the maximum happiness, for the most people). It is a typical application of what philosophers call the naturalistic fallacy (among other things).

Someone like the wonderful Sam Harris cannot get normative (ought-to) moral (nor ethical) principles from neuroscience and evolutionary psychology any more than the Pope can get them from his imaginary omniscient friend and a million tonsured, monastic scribes. He gave it a damned good try, however.

The enlightenment is not a dogma. Not even a dogma of reason. If the enlightenment has any essence (it probably does not) then anti-dogmatism is it. Moral an ethical relativism at the individual level - individualism - is precisely what Hume espoused in the form of sentimentalism. I doubt we'll do better than enlightenment-Empiricist Hume's sentimentalism. Kant's magical transcendental 'good will' certainly isn't real. As in - it's clearly a constructive fiction, not able to be grounded in any scientific premise or fact. Consequentialism is the only real contender, since virtue, and the standards for paradigmatic virtuous beings, are clearly just as much a constructive fiction (constructive fictions and metaphors can certainly be useful in science, but they're not a sound form of scientific evidence or grounding).

Multiculturalism will not undo the enlightenment if we embrace positive scientism and reject megacults and their atavistic delusional memes. Globalism and multiculturalism go together, and globalism is an enlightenment-positive value (Locke agreed, but that was probably because he was a Christian global-dominionist, which is not really multiculturalist).

Objective moral and ethical realism - deontological or otherwise - qua either liberal or conservative 'reason' will deliver no help. It is no more use than the effective Catholicism of Adorno and Horkheimer and the Frankfurt School. Rule consequentialism or utilitarianism of some form might be of use, since it is about the minimisation of suffering. alleviating and preventing suffering are an indirect and direct motive and outcome of medical science and transhumanism also. These are, themselves, arguably natural consequences of the enlightenment.

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