Trump-ing Thought

As I write this, more than a year and a half prior to the next presidential election, things, as the headlines say, are heating up. This is especially so since Donald Trump announced his quest to be the republican

nominee. His supporters keep repeating a regular refrain: “he says what he thinks” or “he says what we are all thinking.”

The emphasis on “thinking” can’t help but get the attention of a philosopher.  For Socrates, thinking was inseparable from dialogue.  In other words, what goes on inside an individual’s head is just initial raw material, not the activity of thinking.

The French have a saying La musique, c’est du bruit qui pense.  Music is noise that has engaged in thinking. Initial notions floating around in consciousness are noise. Such noise is often misguided, false, self-interested and downright mean-spirited. Plenty of us have notions like the nasty ones from Trump floating around in our heads. That is exactly why we need thinking--to move from noise to music (or in information-speak, to sort out signal from noise).

Where Socrates emphasized dialogue, Plato insisted on the distinction between doxa and episteme.  “Doxa” was his name for the notions that float around in consciousness, i.e. mere opinions, unfounded beliefs, fantasies, sweeping generalizations, noise.  Episteme, knowledge,  could only be achieved via effort.  The result would be justifiable, warranted, reasonable assertions. The effort at moving from doxa to episteme demands some attitudinal pre-requisites not especially evident in the case of Donald Trump.  First, humility in light of facts.  Second, a genuine commitment to truth, rather than to self-satisfaction, power, or manipulation.  Doxa, especially self-satisfying noise, gets along quite well, indeed thrives, without the trio of effort, humility, commitment to truth. This makes it especially tempting for the lazy and self-serving.

There is a straightforward food parallel.   Our biological label homo sapiens, often rendered as the man the “wise” or “rational” man, has a more interesting etymological sense: man the taster. The taster, is the tester, the one who, faced with multiple options, must select among them. In other words, the taster/tester moves from nutritional noise to music.   

The thinking/tasting parallel emerges when we consider the case of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His advice on how to raise children suggested that, when it came to food, they should just be allowed, in an unfiltered way, to follow their natural tastes.  This is another version of the “embrace noise, forget about making music,” position.   The problem is that there are many tastes, they often conflict, and by themselves they represent a disorganized muddle.  Human responsibility, in the sense of applying experimentation, thought, and experience, thus needs to intervene. Neither good nutrition, nor truth can emerge without effort.

The French word for thinking penser is related to peser,  to weigh, to put in the balance, to evaluate.  In other words, out of all the noise, which combinations make the most sense, which can best be justified?  But this takes work and humans tend both toward laziness and evading responsibility. Saying “I’m simply following my natural tastes”, is just another way of saying “I refuse the difficult work of acting responsibly, i.e. deliberating, in light of experience, evidence and good sense.”  Similarly anyone offering praise by saying “he is just saying what he thinks” should rephrase the assertion:  He doesn’t think. He just says whatever is in his head.