Witness for the Prosecution: On Mary Midgley's "Are You An Illusion?"

In addition to anticipation of divine presence in everyday living, witnessing also involves an affirmation of understanding among Black women, as a collective group, that God had and would work in the lives of church women. On a community level in religious services, church members may take time to give a testimony of how God has moved in their lives. Then, after telling their story, the speaker engages the audience by stating, "Can I get a witness?" 

Within this context, the speaker is asking if anyone has experienced the move of divine intervention similar to her own experiences. In turn, members within the audience express affirmation through hand clapping and shout of "Amen!" 

(A Cultural Case Analysis of the Works of Nannie Helen Burroughs, emphasis mine)

The act of witnessing is not the same as the act of observing. An observer can be silent. A witness can 'be silent no longer'. An observer makes something an object of record. A witness makes something an object for discussion. Mary Midgley, it seems, can be silent no longer.

Her new book, "Are You An Illusion?" (Acumen 2014) is best read as a cry for someone to come forth and stand witness. What has moved in her life is not divine, but it is no less moral for that. What she wishes is to have it acknowledged that we are daily 'told we are mere peasants...:and we may well hear this dictum as a simple insult: "you are nothing"' (Midgley 2014 p.138). This is a message that might be, wrongly, ignored if it was coming from the people of Ferguson, a person with Downs syndrome, a Palestinian. It is interesting, however, to hear this coming from a widely published European thinker of Midgley's standing. Surely she, at least, enjoys the privilege of not needing a witness!? Yet she says not, and what prompts her to do so, in this book, is a philosophical "gap" which she perceives operating in unjust, bullying behaviour.

What this gap is is the "remarkable gap that has opened up between common sense and today's scientific orthodoxy" (ibid. p.1). This, she believes, is becoming a scientistic religious doctrine taken on absolute trust. Much as the wilder parts of Scientology's doctrine, like Xenu the alien overlord, are referred to as a "ring of fire" to separate true believers/zealots, so the "secret knowledge" of some rational materialists runs directly contra common sense and divides the merely intrigued from the high priests. Amongst those she puts in this latter camp are Crick, Greenfield and (of course) Dawkins. The most outlandish claim she identifies is that the self "is not really there", a statement which runs so roughshod over common sense it can surely be wrongfooted by the playground rejoinder, "Who says?"

Midgley's guiding metaphor is of a "garden of knowledge". Humanity, she claims, should be concerned like any gardener lest one "plant" overrun the rest. Science, she says, is a "subculture" which should be kept within bounds. In this she follows thinkers like Williams (1995) in saying "There is no physics but physics": a statement which empowers even as it limits. Meanwhile, Williams says, "morally unimaginative kind of evolutionary reductionists" are "the people I really do dislike." This is presumably because extreme cases like "Less Wrong" certainly seem to contain elements of fanaticism including end-of-the-world elements. Google "Lesswrong cult" if you're interested in this.

Midgley takes pains to defend her argument against the most predictable criticisms, which I will mention. Her target is not, she says, "science" but "scientism". The substance of this debate can be followed in this RSA discussion (Q and A follows a brief presentation). In a brief discussion, Carl Gardener (@carlgardener, well worth following) and I differed on whether she had in fact selected this target as precisely as she claims. Certainly there are criticisms that can and have been made of Midgley's understanding of science especially the old Left/Right brain distinction and her handling of natural scientific concepts (Everitt 2014) but it is in the innovative step she takes to address bullying and injustice that I believe this work becomes interesting. In identifying cyberbullies (p.22) and the specific bullying 'mood' which says or implies "You are nothing", something she conflates with the denial of selfhood, I believe she makes a hugely important point. In three areas she is especially sharp: Testimony, Misogyny and Shame. I'll briefly cover them

The Assault on Testimony

One of the main weapons used in the struggle for civil rights, as well as in the less reported everyday battles of humans to live with dignity, is testimony. However, this is endangered by the ideology which attacks testimony as such. As she puts it, ""Anecdote" is used to discredit any account of concrete events" (Midgley 2014 p.95). That the particular set of behaviours that involve someone who has been bullied opening up their heart are volatile, emotional and not always logically sequenced explicitly should not discredit it. Yet saying "they're just sounding off" is to attempt to do exactly that.

Saying "don't get upset", or recollecting Cameron's "Calm down dear" is not to be seen as harless 'banter', according to Midgley. Rather it is called part of a wider project where everything is "reducible to matter". This makes criticism of the intangible, the 'social' that much harder. This is what Midgley calls, "the assumption that the direct deliverances of our own experiences are worthless" (p.54).

Can I get a witness? No. You can get an observer, and they will watch you closely, and make notes which you will not be allowed to see.

Misogyny

The book is full of striking insights into women in science, and their struggles. Jane Goodall, for example, was apparently discouraged from naming the apes she was observing at first because it was considered to endanger her objectivity. This is now a common practice.

Yet this book does more than just cherry picking some "girls done good". Consider this statement from Joseph Glanvill:

"The Woman in us, still prosecutes a Deceit like that begun in the garden, and our understandings are wedded to an Eve, as fatal as the mother of our miseries. And while things are judged according to their suitableness, or disagreement to the gusto of the fond Feminine, we shall be as far from the tree of knowledge as from that guarded by the Cherubim" (quoted ibid. p.119)

This indifference to the "fond" feminine side of our nature, which seems to be a sort of "secondary" or subjective quality of the world, does two things. Firstly it genders experience in opposition to reason, and secondly imposes a hierarchy on it which denies that equality can ever be. In other words, it is the very substance of what feminism disputed. Even this, however, does not take the new and novel step which we now see taken of saying that experience is "mere nothing". The struggle, therefore, which we see in terms of the "objective" search for access to resources or jobs is not enough. If an essential part of your being, whatever gender you identify as is considered lesser or even "nothing", then we are all mutilated, damaged.

To respond to this, as per the "Testimony" discussion is to become "emotional" and therefore not to be regarded. But we actually can regard this bullying scientism and, perhaps, must.

Shame

The final infamous strategy which struck me on reading this book was the idea that we should be ashamed. Of what, precisely? Of our subjectivity. On this point  her call to arms to those who suspect the rot of bullying has penetrated deeper than we suspect is unequivocal:

"Subjectivity is not a shameful secret" (p.56)

That is to say, we need not feel that our "fond" natures make us weak, pitiful or pathetic. To make another person feel ashamed of what they feel themselves to be ought not have any place in our dealings with one another. What's more, shame becomes terror so easily: our careers, our social standings can feel in danger because we love, feel, dream, intend and fear. Besides which, she says, this is not even the case where people like Dawkins are concerned! For they enjoy a very strong right to command the voice of their own mad God:

"The universe contains, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference"

(Richard Dawkins, quoted Midgley 2014 p.82)

That this voice of "pitiless indifference" is precisely the rhetorical mood Dawkins adopts should give you some idea of who or what he thinks he speaks for.

Conclusion

I have gone on longer than I intended, and I intend to say one thing more. The scientist cause as Midgley paints it is surely lost before it has begun. After all, losing the ability to interact with a majority of people without causing them shame, loss of confidence, and disgust at one half of humanity is not just morally loathsome, it must surely fail a first test of the materialist philosophy that this book criticises, which is that of remaining in touch with the real world. For attitudes are real features of human subjects. If we cannot act in a way which interacts with these, then we're out of touch with a reality! Midgley is not, then, dealing with very thoughtful opponents. She is asking that we join her in witnessing a very particular kind of madness which has some people in its grip, rather than sounding a call to arms. What is needed is not, she seems to think, aggression but honesty.

When, late at night, I flicked through the responses to Dawkins amongst his supporters after his bizarre attack on people with Downs syndrome and saw in their fawning responses the words "sheeple", "idiots", "stupid" flickering on and on, I could not help hearing Midgley's words again: "a simple insult: You are nothing".

I am not. Now, can I get a witness?