Two Dogmas of Empiricism
TWO DOGMAS OF EMPIRICISM
A Lesson in the Power of Philosophy
I was having coffee with the DC
representative of a big consumer group,
trying to explain to him their advocacy
of an APR-based rate cap
was sheer idiocy. It harmed
the poorest consumers disproportionately:
it was inherently discriminatory.
He seemed to think I was lying.
He wasn’t biting or buying, so
I had another go.
“Isn’t it your mission
To help the poor?
Then drop the caps! Low
rate loans cost more
than the reverse. I know
it’s counter-intuitive,
like telling the Inquisition
that the earth goes round the sun,
but it’s also true. Don’t be a flat-earther.
History won’t be kind to you –
it’s like being an Obama birther!”
Still no action. Nothing gained.
He was a lawyer, of course, trained
to counter, not to give, at any cost,
even when his argument was lost.
He was glancing at his watch,
mumbling something about a lunch
appointment…Thinking back
to what I’d read about him, on a hunch,
I tried a different tack.
“What was your major in college?”
“Philosophy.” “Really? So was mine.
Do you remember an article,
Two Dogmas of Empiricism,
by Professor Quine?”
He didn’t but his cynicism
if not quite ended, was at least
temporarily suspended.
It was worth a shout.
“Why? What was it about?”
“People used to say that there were two
kinds of true statement, analytic and synthetic.
An analytic truth was true
in all possible worlds. Examples were
the Laws of Euclid and the Laws of God.
Synthetic truths, on the other hand,
were merely contingent,
like saying “This mug is on the table.”
Now it’s true. And now it isn’t.
This sort of truth is obviously unstable.
I studied his face.
“Are you following me so far?” He nodded.
“Carry on,” he prodded.
“Well, a man called Riemann showed that in space
parallel lines do meet, thus refuting
one of Euclid’s Laws and creating
Riemannian Geometry,
which paved the way for Einstein’s Theory
of General Relativity.
The implications were shocking.
Quine proposed that there was no such thing
as analytic truth. Instead,
there was one huge field of statements
that were true: those on the edge
were most contingent,
joining and leaving the field every moment,
while those in the middle never moved,
until the contrary was proved.
It would take a powerful wave
to shake the field up to the point that peace
could only be achieved,
and some stability retrieved,
by changing one of these
more central truths. But every
now and then it has to happen.”
“So, absolute truth is absolute crap and
the Laws of Religion
are all contingent.
I get it,” he said. “But what
does it have to do with rate caps?”
“I think, perhaps,
you already know. All along
your group has proclaimed a doctrine
in a way which is quasi-religious.
It brings donations in –
it’s popular, prestigious.
But all the evidence is showing you it’s wrong.
APRs are a function of the size
and length of a loan. That means that no
rate could be fair for all loan sizes.
Simple logic. Second, the surprise is
there’s an inverse relationship between cost and rate.
That means a rate cap kills the loans
that cost the least, the only loans
that poor consumers can afford.”
The prize pugilist was staggering now:
I wanted him floored.
“Open your eyes. The only way
to restore stability to the field
is to abandon the dogma
you believed was analytic.”
The next day he emailed
me to say he’d bought
the book. I told him
I looked forward to his thoughts.
“Any day,” he promised. “Any day.”
Instead, next time I made it up to town,
he’d left the organization altogether.
Presumably, lacking the ability
to change their policy on his own,
he’d had to leave to restore
his own stability.
I even felt a bit remorseful, since before
his life had meaning, had a mission
as an honored member of the Inquisition.
Then, one day, on the road to Damascus,
Pentheus encountered Philosophy
and everything that was clear
was suddenly cloudy,
and all that had been comfortably dark as night
was now blindingly bright.