Una ciencia sobre la mentira social INDUCIDA; ¿es acaso posible?
Constituye "un lugar común" decir y dar por cierto que en la vida social resulta usual que la mentira reine una y otra vez. Es más... que la mentira sea inducida, no casual, no inocente. En este artículo se presenta el tema a tenor del trabajo teórico que varios filósofos (de diferentes facturas ideológicas) han venido haciendo en los últimos dos siglos aproximadamente. Presentamos también un entremés cuidadoso para la sana y fértil crítica.
It is "commonplace" to say and take for granted that in social life it is usual for lies to reign over and over again. It is more ... that the lie is induced, not accidental, not innocent. This article presents the subject in light of the theoretical work that various philosophers (of different ideological accounts) have been doing in the last two centuries or so. We also present a careful hors d'oeuvre for healthy and fertile criticism.
It seems like a lie! Yes. It seems incredible that it is so difficult that in the middle of science and university academia, an object as interesting as the induced socio-relational lie, is assumed in not high enough grades; and when, almost by exception, such matter is treated with noticeable notoriety, since the results are usually subjected to simplifications of different ideological marks. Ideological simplifications that paradoxically do not usually honor the differential conceptual strengths of theories such as Marxism, functionalism, in short.
Not a few people easily dismiss the matter by foolishly assuming that social lying is a matter that can be inferred on the basis of turning sociological truth "upside down." Seeing things like this, it would almost suffice to walk along the path that John Stuart Mill (British philosopher, 1806-1873) raised with some insight through what he called "the principle of the residue" ... Subtract you from a phenomenon, that part of which it is clear previously that it has in effect to do with its development; in the residue of the phenomenon in reference, then, the factor or factors that generate the phenomenon must reside.
The good book by the American philosopher Irving Copi (1917-2002), Introduction to Logic, especially the chapter that deals with fallacies, also embodies a significant reference for the reflection that we are doing here. As it is known, the recently alluded topic of fallacies endorses a classification of those arguments that present to the common mortal a shell of "impeccable logic", but in truth they are a scam of reason.
Some time ago we presented an article on the point on this same Hive network. We titled it The Fallacies or Lies with Perfume. Copi Classification ". It is available to all users of the Cervantes Community and in general of the Hive social network, by clicking here: https://hive.blog/castellano/@alexandermoreno/falacias-o-mentiras-con-perfume-clasificacion-copi
All right. We can clearly say that Copi's work on fallacies has been proving relevant, pedagogically useful. In the 1960s, when we studied at the Central University of Venezuela (*) the career that teacher training gave us, we had the opportunity to analyze it and later, value it. It is that the author, at the time in which he identifies this type of reasoning, removing the traps that it carries from the sides, makes a kind of taxonomy; all tracing sharpness. We recall without much blurring of the case that Copi brings up, of a young man who once carries out a homicide to the detriment of his own parents. When the organs of justice take him to court, he exercises his defense arguing that he deserves forgiveness, compassion, pity, since he was a cornered orphan.
The taxonomic work that Copi does with regard to fallacies in his book is, therefore, an important reference both in the precise topic that concerns us, the induced socio-relational lie, and in its pedagogical property -which is noticed given the continuity that the presence of the text continues to have in the current university environment.
Ludovico Silva (Venezuelan philosopher, 1937-1988), embracing one of the versions that Marxism possesses on the subject, maintains that any culture that denies or conceals the terms that tax the production of surplus value in the material, economic field, unfailingly embodies the Induced falsehood, provoked lie, intentionally generated fiasco. This cultural dimension of the eidetic, emotional and behavioral trap is, viewed in this way in the light of Silva's approach, an effect of material surplus value and has to be called, without half measures, "ideological surplus value" or, simply, "ideology ". Curiously, this author suggests that Leninist expressions such as "ideological clarity of the working class" would be part of the deformations of Marxism.
Karel Kosík (Czech philosopher, 1926-2003)), embracing another of the versions that Marxism possesses on the subject, argues that concrete social reality is not presented to the eyes of the everyday observer, as it is, but rather offers a certain intermittence between what is and what is not. Kosík admits that those areas that the concrete real hides are associated in a complex and dialectical way with economic exploitation, but that such concrete reality, because it is concrete, shows its essence to some extent. Such a zigzag between lies and truth, as the sharp philosopher used to say (persecuted, by the way, by the invading hosts that the USSR executed his country, Czechoslovakia, in the '60s), he called "pseudo-concretion".
Benjamin Whorf and Edward Sapir were two American language philosophers who teamed up on theoretical work in the first half of the 20th century. At the same time, the Russian professor Valentín Voloshinov had to produce in themes of a more or less analogous invoice. It must be said that the work carried out by the Whorf / Sapir team and the work carried out by Voloshinov, were developed each on their own. Despite the fact that analyzes in the philosophical and linguistic orders are linked -often- with some depth and sharpness, one and the other effort was developed separately.
Whorf and Sapir argue, as a conceptual foundation, that natural and social reality does not present itself to our eyes as much as it objectively is, but as the language we use (especially the mother tongue) allows it. They add that since each particular linguistic structure carries in its symbolic entrails (its constitutive signs) a particular vision of reality, and that such singularity of signs and notions is different from those corresponding to other linguistic structures, then there is! an evident notional relativity in the vision that one has of reality, the difference in the language used being the deciding factor!
Voloshinov argues that the psyche is a sign-filled entity. Of course, the psyche contains ideas, but these come into existence as long as - as the thinker himself would say - they stay in the chamber of signs. Now these signs, as raw material of the psychic, are not royal; no. They move by tracing an order that honors a corresponding and determined sense of social power that one social class exercises over another or others at a given moment in history.
We note a virtuous coincidence between the Whorf / Sapir team and Voloshinov in terms of estimating that language is a factor that exercises complex determination in the relationship that human beings develop with reality. Now, following Voloshinov, beyond or beyond the ideological differentiality that may exist between linguistic structures throughout history, it is the invoice of class power that exists in the internal fabric of languages that determines the vision about reality and the other objects that the human being deals with in order to relate (thought itself, emotionality ...). Thus, induced social lying is a kind of "our daily bread" as long as we use language, which is the same as using ideas and emotions.
There have been many authors who have devoted themselves to rejecting "the theories of linguistic relativity" of Whorf and Sapir. Perhaps it is Ferruccio Rossi Landi (Italian linguist, 1921-1985) who has done it in a more profound way. He said that every language has in itself an undeniable expansive capacity; expansiveness coupled with the action exerted by reality itself. For this reason, he said, the borders of which Sapir and Whorf speak are transcended by this phenomenon of expansiveness.
In relation to Rossi-Landi's criterion about "the expansiveness of every language" we see some plausibility; this at the time in which we also see in terms of the criteria of Whorf and Sapir about what is called "linguistic relativity", some verisimilitude (perhaps, a lot, a lot).
We think that the work of Karel Kosík (expressed in the philosophical notion "pseudo-concretion" and in his book Dialectics of the Concrete) and the work of Valentín Voloshinov (expressed in his book Marxism and Philosophy of Language) constitute - hermeneutically united! - The most significant contribution that throughout history has been made in the matter of materialist-dialectic gnoseology (materialist-dialectic philosophy of knowledge), prevailing in all of this -of course-, what is here called "the induced social lie".
Ah, to finish ... Perhaps what we present below is useful for something, given the relevance that it carries with the subject discussed here, and given, in addition, the sustained pains and anxieties that they embody. It is about Voloshinov. There is in the academic and scientific circles here, there and there ("Western" and "non-Western") the captivating wave of ignoring, blurring or putting mutes to the work of the brilliant philosopher of language Valentin Voloshinov (1895-1936). Some say that he is Mikhail Bakhtin (another philosopher of the Russian language -proliferous, for the rest-, 1895-1975) or "more or less Mikhail Bakhtin". Others say that he died of tuberculosis in 1936. Serious biographers such as Ladisdav Matieyka and I. R. Titunik have argued that Voloshinov was forcibly disappeared under Stalin and his body has never been found ...
He wrote one of the most demystifying books ever created on the philosophy of knowledge. It may be for this reason that societies try to ignore it or to overlap the pristine veins that it offered to establish the prolegomena of a science on the induced social lie. Honor and glory, Voloshinov!
- Fuentes de imágenes:
https://pixabay.com/es/illustrations/dibujos-animados-pintura-fantas%C3%ADa-5124002/
https://pixabay.com/es/photos/negocio-professional-1219868/
Caricatura de Rubén Díaz Castañeda (artista plástico venezolano, 1946-2019).
economipedia.com (Foto Mill)
ecured.cu (Foto Copi)
aporrea.org (Foto Ludovico S.)
marxismocritico.com (Foto Kosík, foto Voloshinov)
psicologiaymente.com (Fotos Sapir y Whorf)
hender.com.mx (Foto Voloshinov) - (*) Universidad Central de Venezuela:
http://www.ucv.ve/sobre-la-ucv/resena-historica.html
Su post ha sido valorado por @ramonycajal