Choose Your Dogma Carefully

an essay for my project on human interdependence

About a hundred years ago, A.J. Ayer was a leading philosopher. His project was to clarify thinking by ruling out dogma. He proposed that we could dismiss as dogma any claim that could not in principle be verified using either logic or empirical study.

Unfortunately, Ayer’s very proposal could not be verified using either logic or empirical study. It is not logically implied by the word “dogma.” Nor can one empirically test it. Therefore, his proposal itself is dogma. Call it Ayer’s dogma.

As dogmas go, Ayer’s dogma is pretty good. It can improve your thinking. Other dogmas tend to be worse.

Consider Freudian dogma. Many people once believed in what he called the Oedipus Complex, which is that you secretly view yourself as a rival with your same-sex parent for sexual relations with your opposite-sex parent. Believers in the Oedipus Complex had no way to test whether it was true or false. As far as I can tell, the Oedipus Complex is dogma that did not improve the thinking of the people who held it. If you applied Ayer’s dogma to Freud’s dogma and as a result dismissed the Oedipus Complex as an analytical tool, you were probably better off.

A less pejorative term than dogma might be “foundational beliefs.” Mathematicians work with foundational beliefs, which are called postulates. Scientists work with foundational beliefs, which Thomas Kuhn called “paradigms.” Kuhn equated a scientific revolution with a change in paradigm.

I think of post-modernist political activism as resting on a foundational belief that power relations govern everything in the world, including what you believe. For example, the laws of supply and demand are not necessarily true. But powerful people find it in their interest to get us to believe those laws.

If post-modernist political activism is what I think it is, then it says that we cannot use either logic or empirical observation to test any claim. Beliefs come from power relations, not from anything objective.

This ideology as I have characterized it not always wrong. There are some beliefs that serve those in power. Power relations probably had a strong effect on the belief expressed by some white Southerners prior to the Civil War that slavery was positively good.

But I would treat “2+2 = 4” or “as the price goes up, consumers usually demand less” as true regardless of power relations. It is only when beliefs fall in the category that Ayer labels dogma that power relations are potentially important. And I think that power relations only matter for a small subset of dogma.

Some of my beliefs about the nature of human interdependence are bound to include dogma. One of my foundational beliefs is that our attempts to arrive at complete empirical truth always fall short. Thus, dogma is an element in any attempt to make sense of the world. If you are put off by the term “dogma,” then please substitute “foundational beliefs.”

Choosing dogma carefully means dealing constructively with events or other people when they challenge your foundational beliefs. You need the wisdom to know when to let go of some dogma. To know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em, as it were.

Most of my (dogmatic) advice for choosing dogma involves what to avoid. Your foundational beliefs will be more helpful if you pay attention to these:

Beware of any dogma that does not allow itself to be questioned. Belief in the Oedipus complex is dogmatic because it is non-falsifiable—what evidence could you come up with to disprove it? But it would be made much worse if questioning the validity of Oedipus Complex were taken as proof that you have the Oedipus Complex.

You cannot question anti-racist dogma without being accused of being a racist. I see that is the worst sort of dogma.

Beware of any dogma that worships a living person. Cult figures demand total worship. Be able to spot flaws in any public figure, no matter how much he or she is on “your team.”

Beware of any dogma that treats dissenters as enemies.

Beware of any dogma that treats disagreement as having no rational basis. Do not embrace attempts to explain away someone else’s views as stemming entirely from a psychological propensity or emotional defect.

This essay is part of a series on human interdependence.