EPISTEMOLOGY AND GARVEYISM

I'm guessing I might have to stick with this subject till I can get it clearer. I'm working on it the way one works on a painting. It has to come together in a way that resonates. This is just the messy struggle part. I hope to get it together soon. Help, comments and suggestions are also welcome

EPISTEMOLOGY AND GARVEYISM

By Trevor Burrowes

INTRODUCTION: I apply "Foundational" epistemological metaphors to the study of Marcus Garvey, leaving out for now the fact that there are other metaphors, as well as composites of the various ones. I have been posting images of Edward Hopper paintings as a way to get at Foundational Metaphors from a more sense-related perspective, while universalizing the issues of Garveyism, and pointing toward integration of European culture and philosophical understandings within the discussion of a Garveyite agenda. I have been assisted by a paper by Paul Thagard and Craig Beam

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Epistemological Metaphors and the Nature of Philosophy
Paul Thagard and Craig Beam

Abstract. This paper examines some of the most important metaphors and analogies that epistemologists have used to discuss the structure and validity of knowledge. After reviewing foundational, coherentist, and other metaphors for knowledge, we discuss the metaphilosophical significance of the prevalence of such metaphors. We argue that they support a view of philosophy as akin to science rather than poetry or rhetoric.

2. Foundational Metaphors

The Oxford English Dictionary (second edition) defines a foundation as "the solid ground or base (natural or built up) on which an edifice or other structure is erected". Many philosophers have sought a ground or base on which knowledge could be erected. To say that knowledge has or needs a foundation is to use a metaphor based on a systematic analogy between the development of knowledge and the construction of a building. Descartes (1984, vol. 2, p. 366) explicitly endorses this analogy:

Throughout my writings I have made it clear that my method imitates that of the architect. When an architect wants to build a house which is stable on ground where there is a sandy topsoil over underlying rock, or clay, or some other firm base, he begins by digging out a set of trenches from which he removes the sand, and anything resting on or mixed in with the sand, so that he can lay his foundations on firm soil. In the same way, I began by taking everything that was doubtful and throwing it out, like sand; and then, when I noticed that it is impossible to doubt that a doubting or thinking substance exists, I took this as the bedrock on which I could lay the foundations of my philosophy.

Just as the architect who wants to build a stable house must find a firm base for it, so Descartes who wants to establish stable knowledge must doubt everything in order to find a firm base for his beliefs. This analogy involves many interconnected correspondences, including: architect/epistemologist, house/knowledge, build/justify, base/indubitable knowledge, and sand/dubitable beliefs. See Newman 1999 for a discussion of Descartes' foundationalism.
Descartes (1984, vol. 2, p. 324) also used another analogy in defending his method of doubt, responding to a critic as follows:

Suppose he had a basket full of apples, and being worried that some of the apples were rotten, wanted to take out the rotten ones to prevent the rot spreading. Would he not begin by tipping the whole lot out of the basket? And would not the next step be to cast his eye over each apple in turn, and pick up and put back in the basket only those he saw to be sound, leaving the others? Like the foundation analogy, this one serves to justify Descartes' procedure of trying to start from indubitable beliefs, which correspond to good apples, while abandoning dubitable beliefs, which correspond to rotten apples. A third metaphor used by Descartes (1984, vol. 1, p. 120) to expound his epistemology is that of a chain of reasoning:

The long chains composed of very simple and easy reasonings, which geometers customarily use to arrive at their most difficult demonstrations, had given me occasion to suppose that all the things which can fall under human knowledge are interconnected in the same way.

3. Coherence Metaphors

In 1860, Charles Peirce published an incisive attack on Cartesian epistemology, rejecting the method of universal doubt. Peirce criticized the idea of a chain of reasoning that Descartes derived from mathematical proof. According to Peirce, (1958, pp. 40-41) reasoning should be understood as a cable rather than a chain:

Philosophy ought to imitate the successful sciences in its methods, so far as to proceed only from tangible premisses which can be subjected to careful scrutiny, and to trust rather to the multitude and variety of its arguments than to the conclusiveness of any one. Its reasoning should not form a chain which is no stronger than its weakest link, but a cable whose fibers may be ever so slender, provided they are sufficiently numerous and intimately connected.

The cable metaphor is a powerful antidote to the chain and foundation metaphors that have dominated much of epistemology. What matters is not the strength of a particular proposition, but its connections with numerous other propositions. The metaphor that reasoning is a cable is based on a complex analogy that involves interrelated correspondences: fiber/beliefs, cable/set of interconnected beliefs, and strength of cable/validity of knowledge. These elements are causally related, in that just as the number and interconnection of fibers is what makes a cable strong, the number and interconnection of beliefs is what makes them justified. Justification is then a matter of coherence rather than foundations.

http://cogsci.uwaterloo.ca/Articles/epistemological.html…

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MARCUS GARVEY

1) Garvey is the foundational thinker for the African world. He didn't make a distinction between Africans at home (African continent) and Africans abroad (African Diaspora). This applies the "separate rotten apples from the good ones by throwing them all out so you can see which ones are rotten and which ones are good" metaphor that Thagard/Bean uses . Garvey throws out the rotten ideas--like Africans' false attachment to colonial memes that they were nationals of some place other than Africa. Then you are left with a clear foundational idea that we all form a single unit which is African. This eliminates the rotten apples of rivalry within colonial-derived fracturing of the diasporic unity.

2) Garvey led the largest mass movement of blacks in history (said to number some four million souls at its zenith in 1920). Garvey was charismatic and brilliant almost beyond comprehension, but was not perfect. And business failures, bad apples within his organization (United Negro Improvement Association, aka UNIA) and racist policies within the US government, led to his deportation to his native Jamaica, and the gradual decline of the UNIA. His historical nemesis within the US was W.E.B. DuBois, an academic and privileged black, who disregarded working class and poor black people in favor or the elite classes.

Here we have more rotten apples in the African basket. Acceptance of colonial memes of worth; disparagement of the vast majority of blacks (the working class and poor), who were less qualified within the European value and status system than the elites. By thus reducing the numbers and the energetic force of engaged blacks, you get a blighted and servile black movement.

3) Shameless scoundrels with the UNIA also worked to bring down Garvey. And once he was discredited, the DuBois wing of the black movement held sway, and has continued to do so till today. Within the American black movement, the Civil Rights faction, epitomised by Dr. King, generally falls withing the DuBois tradition of trying to make peace and fit in with the American system, while the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X faction leans more toward the Garvey side of independence and self help. The African Independence movement of the 1950s and 60's was inspired by Garveyism.

This clearly has contributed to the tragic situation we see with black communities in the Western world today, and probably has been contributed to by the rotten apple factors mentioned in 1) and 2). Garvey was not able to solve this problem, which have more to do with the Coherentist metaphor than Foundational. We should attend to this next.

COGSCI.UWATERLOO.CA
Epistemological Metaphors
Paul Thagard and Craig Beam Abstract. This paper examines some of the most important metaphors and analogies that epistemologists have used to discuss the structure and validity of knowledge. After reviewing foundational, coherentist, and other metaphors for knowledge, we discuss the metaphilosophic...

COGSCI.UWATERLOO.CA

Epistemological Metaphors

Paul Thagard and Craig Beam Abstract. This paper examines some of the most important metaphors and analogies that epistemologists have used to discuss the structure and validity of knowledge. After reviewing foundational, coherentist, and other metaphors for knowledge, we discuss the metaphilosophic...