A Certain
Sort of Story

 

 

Important Concepts

 

Long Chains of Linear Reasoning

You are hopefully by this point, familiar with modus ponens and modus tollens. In case you need a refresher, however, I will reproduce them below in their most abstract form. First, let's cover some new terms. Recall that the modus ponens has two premises. The first is a conditional statement, i.e., an if-then statement, which itself is composed of two more basic sentences—the part associated with the "if" is called the antecedent and the part associated with the "then" is the consequent. Here are some examples of conditionals:

• "If Lisa is home, then Caroline is picking up the kids."
• "If the store is open, then the lights will be on."
• "If you drink coffee after 5pm, (then) you might have a hard time going to bed before 10pm."

Notice that the antecedent and the consequent are themselves stand-alone sentences. In the first sentence above, the sentences "Lisa is home" and "Caroline is picking up the kids" are by themselves perfectly good sentences. In other words, they are grammatically correct and they contain a subject and a predicate part. They are being "put together", however, into a conditional. This means that the conditional is actually a compound sentence, a sentence that is itself composed of one or more sentences that are connected by one or more sentence connectives. The sentence connective in a conditional is the "if...then"; it's what connects the two more basic sentences. (These basic sentences are sometimes called simple sentences or atomic sentences.) Other sentence connectives that you might be familiar are "and" and "or". For example:

• "Either Roxana is at the office or she went to lunch with Bob."
• "James lives in Los Angeles and Anthony works in San Diego."

Another connective that you are familiar with is "not". This connective gets added on simple sentences and changes its truth value. The result is technically called a negation. Although it doesn't look like "Either Roxana is at the office or she went to lunch with Bob", it's still a compound sentence. Take another look at the definition of compound sentence and convince yourself of this if you don't believe me. Here are some negations:

• "It's not the case that Lola's sister is pregnant."
• "It's false that Adam missed school today."

In both of these, the simple sentence in each is perfectly fine as a stand-alone sentence: "Lola's sister is pregnant" and "Adam missed school today". They are turned into negations, effectively switching their truth value from true to false, by the addition of phrases that deny the truth of the simple sentences: "it's not the case that" and "it's false that".

One more thing: these compound sentences don't have to be composed of only simple sentences. It can be the case that the antecedent portion of a conditional is itself, say, a conjunction, i.e., a compound where the connective is an "and". For example, here's a conditional where there is a conjunction in the antecedent place and a disjunction, i.e., a compound where the connective is an "or", in the consequent place.

"If James lives in Los Angeles and Anthony works in San Diego, then either Roxana is at the office or she went to lunch with Bob."

Never mind that the sentence is probably not true. The important part to notice here is that the antecedent is a conjunction ("James lives in Los Angeles and Anthony works in San Diego") and the consequent is a disjunction ("Either Roxana is at the office or she went to lunch with Bob"). If that makes sense, then we're ready to move on (although the student interested in the logical analysis of language should refer to Bergmann, Moor, and Nelson 1990, especially chapter 7).

With all the setup out of the way, let's return to modus ponens and modus tollens. Modus ponens is composed of two premises: a conditional statement and the antecedent of that conditional. The conclusion of a modus ponens is the consequent of the conditional. Expressed in an abstract way, we can say that a conditional is any argument that takes the following general form:

1. If P, then Q.
2. P is true.
3. ∴ Q is true.

The bold "P" and "Q" is simply to remind you that it doesn't have to be a simple sentence in the antecedent or consequent place; it could be another compound. (These bold letters, by the way, are called metavariables.) The "∴" simply means "therefore". I will use the "∴" symbol to mean all possible conclusion indicator words, like "therefore", "consequently", "as a result", etc.

Modus tollens takes the following form:

1. If P, then Q.
2. It's not the case that Q is true.
3. ∴ it's not the case that P is true.

Now that we know what a negation is, we can actually express the valid argument forms listed above in a maximally symbolic way. Although these may be cumbersome to learn at first, it will pay dividends to understand these. Once you learn these argument schemas, you'll have an easier time identifying these "in the wild". So, introducing the "~" to mean "not" (i.e., the connective for negations) and the "→" to mean "if...then" (i.e., the connective we'll be using for conditionals), here are modus ponens and modus tollens in symbols:

Modus ponens

1. P → Q
2. P
3. ∴ Q

Modus tollens

1. P → Q
2. ~Q.
3. ∴ ~P.

You will practice identifying these in the activity below. However, the arguments that will be featured in Republic are not always simply a conditional followed by the antecedent or a negated consequent. Plato makes use of chains of arguments, also known as sorites (pronounced suh-rite-eez). We will begin identifying these chains of linear reasoing in the Argument Extraction video for today.

 

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Argument Extraction: The constitution of the gods

 

 

 

Manufacturing consent

The type of censorship that Socrates appears to be advocating for his well-functioning ideal city is very disturbing to some. It seems a little bit like brainwashing—and it gets worse. However, it's not entirely clear that we're doing much better two thousand years later. As you will recall from the Informal Fallacy of the Day from last lesson, the phrase legacy media applies to newspapers, magazines, and news programs (or channels) that predate the Internet, while the phrase new media refers to the post-Internet media. Before the dawn of new media, almost everyone acquired their information from legacy media. Nowadays, it seems that most people acquire their news from the new media, in particular from news sources with high-visibility in social media networks. But do either legacy media or the new media actually inform us?

Let's first discuss legacy media. (In)famously, in Manufacturing Consent, Herman and Chomsky (2002/1988) argue that the mass communications media of the United States serves primarily a propaganda function. Some clarifications are in order. First, noting that this work was originally published in 1988, what the authors are referring to is, of course, legacy media. What are they really saying? Well, they concluded that, in short, the media of their day didn't inform; it simply was an attempt to persuade the masses to agree with what was in the interest of the political and economic ruling classes. This symbiotic nature between the state’s political and economic ruling classes and the media industry, by the way, is sometimes referred to as the politico-media complex.

If this sounds suspiciously like a conspiracy theory, then you're not alone in thinking this. Some academics have accused Chomsky in particular of conspiratorial thinking (Goertzel 2019). However, in the case of Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky and Herman displayed excellent scholarship. Their methodology was as follows. Herman and Chomsky had two competing models. The first we can call the communicative/informative model. According to this model, people that watched the news should be more informed—obviously. The second model Herman and Chomsky called the propaganda model. The propaganda model would, of course, inculcate individuals with the values/beliefs that promote the interests of the elite, i.e., the political and economic ruling classes. Next, they exhausitvely reviewed the news coverage of major events from their recent past and saw how informative the media actually was. In other words, they had the facts, they had what the media actually reported, and they compared. Stories that were reported with the aim to inform were catalogued under the communicative/informative model; stories that seem to deviate from the truth and veer towards the interests of the elite were catalogued under the propaganda model. Guess which pile was bigger at the end of the analysis! (Hint: It was the propaganda model.) More importantly, according to Chomsky and Herman, where the media deviated from the facts, it was always suspiciously to promote the viewpoints of the ruling classes.

One example of the propaganda function, according to Herman and Chomsky, was the unconditional support given to anti-communist regimes worldwide during the period they studied. This support was unashamedly paired with unremitting criticism of left-leaning administrations (especially in Latin America). In other words, no matter what kind of atrocities anti-communist regimes committed, news coverage of them tended to be favorable, reliably sanitizing their actions. On the other hand, left-leaning regimes were seen as illegitimate, no matter how much more legitimate they were relative to anti-communist regimes.

Consider the case of elections in Guatemala and El Salvador (where right-wing, anti-communist regimes were in power) versus elections in Nicaragua (where a communist regime was in place). Nicaragua was more stable at the time, and electoral conditions were more favorable according to election watchdog agencies. Guatemala and El Salvador were in the middle of great civil conflict; each country’s armies were participating in counterinsurgency and violent repression of the populace—conditions that are pretty clearly not conducive to fair and free elections. Nevertheless, since Guatemala and El Salvador were fighting leftist insurgencies, their elections were covered by the US mass media as legitimate. Nicaragua, since they elected a leftist (a Sandinista), were deemed illegitimate by legacy media.¹

Don't get the wrong idea. By presenting this information by Herman and Chomsky, I'm not advocating any particular political philosophy. The merits and drawbacks of capitalist and communist systems are another conversation entirely—and we will have it eventually. What's important to note here is that neither type of political regime had an unblemished record. In other words, both communist and anti-communist governments in Latin America committed atrocities. However, the US media, per Herman and Chomsky, reliably played down the bad behavior of anti-communist regimes while emphasizing the bad behavior of communist regimes. This is a clear double standard: two groups engage in the same behavior, but it's ok for the group that we're friendly with. At that point in history, of course, the US and the Soviet Union were engaging in a "cold" war where the conflict was primarily ideological—capitalism versus communism—even though they did fight several proxy wars (i.e., wars were one side would fund and equip forces to fight against the other side on their behalf). In any case, if the job of the media is to inform, then they would've informed. Instead, however, they promoted the interests of the (capitalist) elite.

 

 

 

Democratizing information. Yay?

Is the current state of affairs much better than what Chomsky and Herman were seeing in the latter half of the 20^th century? I'd say no, and various scholars agree with me. For example, in chapter 12 of The Strange Order of Things, neuroscientist Antonio Damasio discusses his concerns about the 21^st century democratization of information. One potentially detrimental state of affairs, Damasio argues, is that all citizens in industrialized societies have been given access to a tsunami of information but(!) not enough leisure time and wealth for reflection on this information, so as to intelligently sift through and organize the discoveries of science. This is compounded by the proliferation of misinformation in the guise of information and our natural tendency to resist changing our beliefs. In addition to all this(!), the software that runs on our electronic devices is designed to be maximally addictive. This increases the volume of information (and misinformation), further shrinking any hope of having enough time for reflection. Moreover(!), these citizens are encouraged to maximize their autonomy: vote, express themselves on social media, protest, etc. So, you have more information, you have less time to reflect on it, and you are encouraged to regularly express your opinion on this information that you haven't processed carefully. It isn’t difficult to imagine how this could be catastrophic.

Damasio reminds us that if we are faced with uncertainty, we turn to our in-group (i.e., the group that aligns with our social identity) for guidance on what to believe. But this is, in effect, a turn away from science; and this is true even if the in-group that one turns to does in fact endorse some scientific conclusions. This is because the true authority becomes the group and not the scientific process. So, we are perhaps tailspinning towards an increasingly non-scientifically-informed social life.

You might say, though, that social media is actually helping social movements. I'd beg to differ. I'll give you an example. Social media is sometimes lauded as having enabled the so-called Arab Spring, as if there were no Arabic pushes for democratization before 2010. But when protests erupted in Tunisia in December of 2010, Twitter didn't even offer its service in Arabic and there were only around 200 active accounts. It appears that simple text messaging was what enabled the protests—not social media. As Wired contributor Siva Vaidhyanathan reports:

It gets worse! Lanier (2018) provides ten arguments for why you should delete your social media account this very second. His 9th argument is that social media is making politics impossible. This is because our political dispositions are being studied and weaponized not so that we fight against each other—although that might be a by-product—but so that we spend as much time as possible glued to our devices, mindlessly scrolling through our social media accounts— entertaining ourselves to death. This is the same point that Damasio made: the algorithms that operate on social media platforms are designed to be maximally addictive. You have a super computer pointed at your face figuring out how to get you to stare at it longer—for the profit of someone that's already a billionaire.

Lanier also describes how social media is affecting truth in his fourth argument. First notice that the only currency in social media is attention. So, the way currency (i.e., attention) is acquired in social media makes one more performative, i.e., more likely to engage in actions with a specific audience in mind so as to elicit a response or garner a reaction. This process makes users lose authenticity, since they're just performing the whole time (sometimes orchestrating massive group efforts so as to carefully choreagraph a scene that looks like fun). In this environment, journalism becomes less truth-oriented as it becomes mere click bait. Bot accounts proliferate platforms with fake people (so as to produce more currency, i.e., attention). Your interactions and content become heavily-engineered, attention-seeking nonsense.

To make things even worse(!), social media giants like Facebook have no problem with co-opting social justice movements (like Black Lives Matter) so as to increase their revenue stream even more. This is because it turns out that negative emotions are much more useful for promoting engagement with the platform than are positive ones. And so, social media algorithms present more content that will give rise to negative emotions, e.g., anger. You know this already: users who provoke other users with mean or nasty comments get the most attention. One sure-fire way to produce negative emotions is with politically-loaded content. And so, Lanier alleges that the very large-scale social movements we see in society today, both on the right and the left, were actually in part generated by social media companies. Lanier explains:

In short, perhaps it was the drive for profit that drove the process which categorized whole sections of the population that were hitherto unidentified. Put straightforwardly, social media companies made social movements as a by-product of their business model. More importantly, once these social movements were identified, they were connected and empowered—through the very same social media platforms that created them. Eventually, they spilled out of social media platforms and into the real world. Since this happened on both sides of the political spectrum, both liberals and conservatives might have a problem with such a mindless process affecting our society the way it has. So I pose to you a question. What's better: the censorship of Plato's City of Words or the information anarchy of the 21^st century?

 

 

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FYI

Suggested Reading: Edward Herman, The Propaganda Model: a retrospective

TL;DR: Noam Chomsky - The 5 Filters of the Mass Media Machine

• Note: This video was produced by Al Jazeera English, which is funded in whole or in part by the Qatari government.

Supplemental Material—

• Video: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

Advanced Material—

• Reading: Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, Excerpt from Manufacturing Consent

• Book: Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent

  • Here is another format.

Related Material—

• Video: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Corn Polled Edition—Ron Paul and the Top Tier

• Video: TEDTalks, Quit social media | Dr. Cal Newport

• Video: Channel 4 News (UK), Jaron Lanier interview on how social media ruins your life

• Reading: The Intercept, Jeremy Scahill U.S. SUPPORT FOR MILITARY DICTATORSHIP IN EL SALVADOR

 

Footnotes

1. There might be other reasons other than those given by Chomsky and Herman for the propaganda function being served by the mass media. Given the context of the Cold War, it may be that the media outlets were unconsciously biased or they felt that too much was at stake to be unbiased. This appears to be true at least for some state officials (see Talbot 2015).