There's no rule. But that's half the problem: the equivocation and indistinction, intended or not, between the two senses of 'identity politics'. I mean, you can almost describe the pattern in which this plays out: some idiot - say, Jonathan Haidt - rails on about identity politics, and then some well-meaning lefty chimes in with 'but all politics is identity politics!', and then the Haidt gets flustered, and by this point the audience is thoroughly confused, and everyone is worse off. — StreetlightX

I think I'd offer another alternative reading, here. I'd say that the intent behind calling all politics as identity politics is to call into question those sorts of politics which are claiming to be identity-neutral. So it's not a well-meaning sort of intent, but rather a challenge to the notion that identity can be escaped when dealing with politics -- as is often claimed. But generally this sort of politics does have some identity that it privileges: to use Deleuze's terms you've introduced, there is a majority which does not need to express its identity, and so can appear formal, but which is everywhere always expressed, and so it is not a strict formality.

So calls to go back to our constitutional democracy, for instance, are seen as white and male, as are calls to focus on the real problem, that of overthrowing the bourgeoisie.

So if we are to move beyond identity politics I think the target has to be this challenge -- can we demonstrate that in this move that we aren't just re-establishing an invisible, unspoken identity at the center of our new political language?

Well, a bit of both. The confusion itself is dangerous, insofar as it makes people politically incapacitated. But, so too is there alot of danger in identity politics itself, which is reactionary in a literal sense: identity politics becomes a primary mode of political engagement when other avenues of such engagement dry up - deprived of any meaningful ability to engage in the process of creating or participating in the creation of identity (shaping the power relations which give rise to them - Deleuze's 'minority becomings'), one falls back upon shoring-up and entrenching already established identity labels. — StreetlightX

But does it actually politically incapacitate, or is it just this facile sort of appeal to identity politics that is politically incapacitating?

I think that identity politics can be a primary mode of political engagement regardless of what other avenues are available -- because recognition is an important part of doing politics. If one is not recognized for what they are then they won't be treated as they feel they should be treated -- not that recognition necessarily implies appropriate treatment, but it's a part of the process. Hence why you had Marxists interested in raising class consciousness. Coming to be recognized, and even more fundamentally, coming to recognize yourself as a certain sort of identity is a part of the political process. Else, you'll be making bourgeois appeals for why you are worth more money when that language is saturated in standards that are more or less rigged against someone in your position as a proletarian.

This is more than a off-hand recognition that identity must always be a part of our political lives. Building a proletarian class who knew its historic mission was a part of the political program before what we tend to call identity politics today was a "thing".

So I guess I'd lay the challenge out as two-fold: One, we have to address the person who is speaking about the ubiquity of identity and demonstrate how this new approach is unlike political tendencies which claim, on its surface, to be non-identitarian while silently privileging a certain identity. And, two, we have to look at what identity politics actually has to offer such that people are mobilized by it, rather than writing it off as a mere conceptual mistake -- there is something to it that is talking to people, and its talking to people, at least on its face, because they feel their identities are objects of political persecution or privilege, depending on which side you fall upon.

How do you move beyond identity politics when its an object that speaks to people? When it's been used to mobilize even supposedly identity-neutral programs?

If the thread has so far focused more on 'what' identity politics is over the nature of it's effects, that's mostly because there's been confusion over the former, even though the latter is important and interesting too. — StreetlightX

It's all good. I agree the latter is interesting too.

There's a lot of silly talk about what knowing means (justified true belief theory as the prime example) that I find evaporates when I look at how it really works while I'm thinking. It struck me how often I talk about my experience of how mental processes work in my posts. From responses I've gotten, that appears to be alien to a lot of people on the forum and, I assume, in general. — T Clark

I don't know if it's totally alien, though of course all of our experiences are likely different to some degree too -- and its this mixture of agreement and disagreement that produces some confusions and difficulties in talking about such things as how we come to think, how we come to know, and so forth -- plus some more basic operating beliefs too, I'd wager.

I think you're onto something, though, in saying that there's a lot of silly talk that evaporates when we look at how it all really works. I like this approach a lot. But, in part why I wouldn't go so far as to call this knowledge, what we perceive doesn't necessarily have the same structure or feelings associated -- that doesn't mean it can't be insight, of course, nor that it is fruitless to share what we perceive when we just look how it works, bracketing away beliefs about the world about us.

As to where to go from here, I think I've gotten out of it what I wanted. — T Clark

Cool. :) I think that my interests were perhaps more tangential to yours, then. I think I was coming at this from the perspective of "OK, having established this, that, and the other, then. . . "

Because what happens is basically a confusion of process for product: identities (black, woman, gay, American) are results, products of an articulation arrived at in the course of complex social, historical, and cultural negotiation and development. One of the (necessary) means by which this negotiation takes place is politics, making it one (inescapable) ingredient that goes into the final, baked cake that is identity. Now, politics does alot more than just bake identity-cakes (not all politics, not most politics, aims merely to shape identities), but that it does, is inescapable. In is in this sense that one might say that 'all politics is identity politics': if you engage in politics (or if politics engages you), you end up, whether you like it or not, articulating the contours of identity (among other things). — StreetlightX

Do you believe that a person who ascribes to the belief "All politics is identity politics" thinks of identity politics in this way, or in the other way:

But this is very different from taking identity as the explicit site of political action, of taking identification itself as a kind of political process: "I am woman, therefore, vote for me"'; "We put rainbow flags on our advertisements, so buy our products". This obscures process for product: this is what it means to engage in 'identity politics', where identities themselves are taken for (stand-in for) the very process which produce them. — StreetlightX

?

This confusion of process for product is what confuses so many people about identity politics, which is in many cases just assumed to be 'any kind of politics which has any bearing at all on identity'. Which is completely stupid because it's a confusion that ends up just equating identity politics with politics tout court, and then you end up in the disastrous situation where politics itself is taken for 'the problem' (because 'everyone knows' identity politics = bad boogeyman). This is why anyone who thinks this is just merely a verbal dispute is pretty dumb, insofar as the stakes for thinking politically - for understanding what it is we are even talking about when we talk about and of politics - are pretty high. — StreetlightX

I take it that your target is not a person who ascribes to identity politics, then, but a person who -- perhaps on the periphery of political action -- calls this mistaken move of flipping process for product identity politics. Am I right?

I don't think that this is merely verbal. Just because there are, in my way of framing the issue, translation rules between different instantiations of power which allow us to reframe historical facts into different frames that does not, at least as far as I'm concerned, imply that these are merely verbal disputes. I think history is important, though I believe we can translate facts into different frames.

The act of translation, I'd say, does not occur in some realm of thought alone -- but has real consequences too.

I don't think knowledge is necessarily a social phenomenon. . .

All in all, I don't think you and I are far apart — T Clark

I don't think we are far apart with respect to what I might term hyper-rationalists -- I take that to be the target of your thread. But the devil is in the details, especially when we are close. That's where the interesting disagreement lies, I think -- at least philosophically.

Here's my basic take -- introspection does not yield knowledge, but is an observation of our own thought. We come to have beliefs about ourselves, but since knowledge is a social product -- we produce it together -- the beliefs we come to have about ourselves through introspection (observing our own thoughts) cannot become knowledge just by the fact that introspection is only a self observing their thoughts and moods.

Though this line has an interesting way of throwing a wrench in my basic take:

Two psychologists meet:
How am I?
You're fine, how am I?

Some of us are so radical as not only to rely on our own introspection, but also on that of others. — unenlightened

And is probably related to what you say here:

Also, what I know from introspection can be social. This thread is good evidence for that.

So, which of these two forks sound more interesting to explore, to you? Characterizing knowledge, or intersubjective introspection?

It may not be what you're talking about -- but doesn't that make sense of why someone might say "All politics are identity politics"?

I don't know if I'd say that assumptions about groups -- like "Gays are against Trump" or "We are a progressive bank because we have a picture of women playing rugby" -- are exactly what I'd call identity politics either. But there is a sort of short-circuiting going on when all that we have are the display of identities linked to some kind of political support. But, as I said, I'd say that this sort of mistake -- and I'm willing to call it a mistake -- isn't what identity politics is about.

So how are we moving beyond identity politics then? Or do you just mean to point out this as a kind of mistake?

Could you unpack it? — StreetlightX

Sure.

Let's take distributive power. We can divide the world up into income brackets, say, and look at what these people care about or what their life spans are or how many of them are in jail or some such. But then we can also do the same with identity -- and even, on the basis of said identity, point to distribution as a mechanism for discriminating against certain identities.

So we have two ways of looking at a groups and their power, but depending on the emphasis we could look at Race : Distribution, or Distribution : Race -- the one could serve a bolstering point for the other, just depending on the directionality of our function between the two sets. (to make this a little more formalistic)

If that be the case then depending on the historian -- or in the case you cited, an activist -- they can look at the exact same historical facts, but come away with a different story -- one in which those who have less must deal with x, or in the other case where those with this identity have to deal with x.

At least that's what I had in mind. There are cases where it is more obvious to apply a certain interpretive lens than another interpretive lens, but then we can always -- through the relation between instances of power, or as I'm putting it here through our interpretations of historical facts and the relationships that can be established between these interpretations -- describe a historical situation in one set of terms or another: identity, decision-making, distribution, etc.

In my experience, all the ways of gaining knowledge are generally working together all the time. In my experience a good therapist or a friend who knows you well helps you improve your self-awareness, make your introspection more effective. — T Clark

Cool. Then I think our main disagreement is just in our characterization of introspection. I don't really think of it as a method for gaining knowledge because knowledge is a social phenomena -- it's something we produce together. Whereas introspection is looking in at the self, so it necessarily could not be knowledge (if my characterization of knowledge is held to, at least -- obviously there's other ways of parsing knowledge).

Funny. I would say the same thing about rationality. Just look at all the people who tangle themselves up with their words here on the forum and elsewhere. I can't deny I've done it myself. — T Clark

I'd agree with this, though I don't think I'd pit introspection against rationality either. But yes we can get a little too caught up in the rational mode -- to a point that one might even claim that a person is behaving irrationally.

Right! And so we have a distinction between high-grade and low-grade exercises of power. Now, could these different grades of power have relationships between one another, do you think -- or no?

I would say "yes" -- in which case we could say that low-grades can depend upon high-grades, and high-grades can also come to depend upon low-grades (Why is it the police officer can resolve conflicts with a talk? Because they have the authority to wield violence in the name of the state).

And if that be the case then we could say that a symbiotic relationship could form between grades of power in particular, historical cases -- and a description would depend on the historical facts as well as the interpretation of the historian.


To bring this around to the beginning -- if we can form relationships between instances of power, then it becomes even easier to understand the formulation that all politics are identity politics -- the relationship gives us a sort of interpretive rule between instances of power (violence : race : identity : distribution).

But why? — StreetlightX

Well, if power is flat, then violence is just another instance of power, one of many expressions of our social world. I haven't posited that power acts upon or is outside of a social world. I've targeted violence as having a relationship to other forms of this flattened power -- a power where violence is not a necessary correlate or property.

Violence would not be impotent, from a theoretical standpoint. It would just be another form of power - unless there was some relationship to a different, potent form a power that spells out its impotence.

Good point. I don't really think I'd say introspection is a way of thinking, but maybe I should have said that it is a good way of gaining knowledge. — T Clark

Cool. I think this speaks to a lot of underlying disagreement, where I was more than happy to agree with some of your conclusions -- because now I think I'd say definitely no. :D Even self-knowledge, I think, is better understood in conjunction with other ways of gaining knowledge. Not that you could have self-knowledge without introspection, but rather that speaking to others -- be it friends or priests or therapists -- helps one to gain self-knowledge better than introspection alone.

I'm not sure to what extent I'd include introspection in other kinds of knowledge. And some of this comes down to the big buggaboo: knowledge, and its characterization.


All that being said I do agree that introspection can be valuable. I also think that we can get a bit too caught up in ourselves by introspecting, though perhaps you'd call that something other than introspection.

This strikes me as at odds with your expression that violence is impotence, that power brings about circumstances where people do as you will and violence is the band-aid upon a failure of power.

I'd say that even if we flatten power that different interations of power can develop relationships with one another. So violence can develop a relationship to, say, identity -- and has done so historically. There are conditions of violence -- one of which, if it be political violence, is organized activity. It is merely a kind of organized activity. And so violence is a symbiote to this larger body -- closely, even physically related, enmeshed in our social lives, but would not exist without our social lives, without surplus energy to fuel a new kind of organism.

So it's not so much a base/superstructure type of description, but rather a description of different instances of power and the relationships they can or do develop.

Let's try stripping out the moral language then and speak more descriptively.

Rather than "leach" let us say "parasite" -- and what is a parasite? An organism who benefits from another organism. The host has surplus energy and the parasite re purposes said surplus energy into their own reproductive line -- rather than the reproductive line of the host.

Now is "parasite" quite right to say, if we are stripping the moral language? Perhaps we could say that it is a kind of symbiosis. We have certain qualms about allowing tapeworms to continue living in ourselves, but in a descriptive sense the tapeworm is a symbiote to the human. The human, and other animals as well, are host to its lifecycle.

In this way, perhaps, we could imagine that violence is a symbiote to (What is the genera? Perhaps not social action or mutual activity. But then is the amorphous power the genera? Or what?)



Because it seems to me that there's something here. There's the rhizomatic power, and there's the notion that violence does require something from us that's more basic than the political act of violence. It needn't be an essence.

should we depend less on introspection than on ratiocination? Love that word. Means, more or less, rational thinking. If so, how do they compare in terms of their credibility? — T Clark

Seems a different sort of question than the titular question :D. I don't think they are separable, even in matters of fact, as you put it. So there's an interesting bundle of alternating answers in there, between yourself and myself, while still agreeing that they are not separable.

But is introspection a kind of knowledge at all, or if it be a kind of knowledge is it a valid one? I don't think that I'd agree that introspection is a kind of knowledge, but rather is way of thinking. We look into ourselves, and try and identify -- make into words -- different parts of our mind. This is the belief that is based on a gut feeling. This is the belief that is based on an observation. The terms "gut feeling" and "observation" are products of a way of thinking about our beliefs and classifying them -- the introspective way.

But then you say this:

I include feelings, values, impressions, and personal experience - both internal and external - in my arguments. — T Clark

And I wonder -- is this more of what you mean by introspection? Because the inclusion of feelings, values, impressions, and personal experience within an argument -- so I would say -- does not invalidate it as knowledge. Knowledge is made by people, after all, and people are motivated by feelings. So the inclusion of what moves us to make knowledge is only honest -- and in fact is often asked after when someone does make an argument or provide some chain of reasoning.



Which is a dizzying sort of way to say that I think there's a lot to untangle.

Then I'd like to posit that what I understand of @unenlightened and yourself are not so much at odds with one another, at least at first blush.

If violence is impotency, and power is getting others to do, and there's a distinction between coercive power and other sorts of power -- then that gets along quite well with the notion that coercive power leaches upon societal action; something that can be broadly understood as mutual activity, where we agree to something or work together.

No?

My dear friend always said that politics begins the moment you have people together, because whenever people come together there are power relations between them. However. . .

The tricky word here is "power". If power be the fundamental unit of identity, then as your OP suggests this would make sense of why someone might claim that all politics is identity politics -- because power makes up identity.

If power is a system of ownership, as your distributive model would have it, then insofar that we believe ownership and identity are different then we might have some leverage to say that there is at least a difference in emphasis, even if identity is always involved.

But "power" is one of those words that is easily reified and not easily defined -- kind of like freedom, or a host of other concepts that are so simple they become hard to describe or speak of.

We might even go so far as to say that "power" has different forms -- distributive power, identity power, decision-making power, bodily power. . .

And then one thing I'd like to posit is there is a difference between coercive power, and power tout court -- power is not a dirty word, because there are more forms of power than hierarchical and violent flows or foundations. Power flows from the barrel of a gun, said a man wise in the ways of doing politics, but not all power does -- hence why things like petitions, demands, marches, and strikes can work to effect change.

((that being said, I do believe that coercive power is part of doing politics, but there's still a meaningful distinction to be made))

Man I'm gonna need more to go off of. Sorta seems ineffable. Which means . . .

I think I agree with @Wayfarer's characterization --

It's not 'fuzzy' or warm feelings or anything of the kind. It's an outcome and you know how to make it happen or you don't. — Wayfarer

Which is to say that my instinct is to say there is no feeling to knowledge. My feeling says that knowing feels the same as believing falsity. But perhaps this is off topic?

I've always understood "radical" in the political sense as referring to advancing a complete reform of a political body. — thewonder

You're not wrong. After all if you believe there is a root cause to many problems, what else would you do other than act to make a complete reform of a political body? If there is some root problem, then the very political institution you are railing against grows from that root problem -- hence needing to dig it up and start anew.

Just slating Anarchism against heirarchy is fine by me. I had thought that it was more of a problematic concept than it actually is as I had assumed that heirarchy implied that there was just one person at the top.I don't really think that President of the United States of America can be held to be responsible for all of the plights within the current geopolitical situation — thewonder

Maybe hierarchy needs to be clarified more. My preferred conception is to say that hierarchies are established when there are people who have decision making power when others are effected by said decision making power. What is decision-making power? I hope, at least, that this is clear: merely the ability to make decisions. But if you want to question me on this then we can. I merely mean that there are people who can say "Yes" or "no" or have the ability to formulate creative responses to questions, and those responses -- yes, no, or otherwise -- effect other people who do not have ultimate say in the decision. As an example: Voters may contact their representatives, and tell them the reasons they believe their representative should vote such and such, but the representative is the one who can vote "yay" or "Nay".

I've posted this before, but maybe it deserves a reposting. In spite of the ironies of having an authoritative resource for anarchy I recommend the Anarchist FAQ. -- looks like it changed since I posted it last. Damn it's almost like a bunch of folks who hate rulers are fine with changing shit on the fly. ;)

But it looks mostly the same. It's just a bunch of writing on the notions of anarchy. Hopefully it proves educational.

I'd say that this is an impoverished view of anarchism. Anarchists are against both state and capital because they are against hierarchies -- it is a radical philosophy in the sense that anarchists believe that the root of many social problems comes from hierarchical social organization.

Though perhaps this isn't the focus of your thread -- I just wanted to point out that unless one is aligned with the right-wing libertarian sorts, that anarchists are opposed not just to states, but to capital because they are both instantiations of hierarchical social organizations.

I am what makes me do any particular activity in my life. I don't believe there is some deeper entity than that from which my actions stem.

I have often wondered about your notions of identity. And I think I begin to understand it here when you would rather substitute(is that the right word?) "identity" for "subjectivity" -- and "self-aggrandising" for "self-defensive".

And I think I understand the notion of self-defense being more of an advertising slogan -- but I will say, as a person in the US who lives in Republicantopia without R sentiments, that "self-defense", as a word, is a thing here that is not like Coke saying "Be happy, fun, and free!". Not that that makes it not-a-slogan, per se -- but it has more cultural weight here. I hope that makes sense.

All that said I think that self-aggrandising, at least as defined by the dictionary, is the appropriate word too. Self-aggrandising is self-defensive, at least in accord with the Chad Kautzer paper I linked.

I want to ask you -- who do you think, in the case of these acts, are the demagogues?

You say that demagogues will arise when therer develops a large gap between the social body and individual identity -- are they the news organization, the people in power, the people on 8tran posting, the imagined people in the actors head, all of the above, or something else?

According to you at least. You are an observer of these things. I'd like to know what someone not-here thinks.

I *think* I agree with you in saying we are not supposed to notice (in a subjective sense, as a normal person) is that the real power doesn't have guns -- but has others do the shooting, or grows others, through education, to do the shooting. I often feel that way about America, at least.

I may have linked this paper once before. I don't remember. But I thought you'd find it interesting @unenlightened -- it seems to get along with what you've written.

But then if the speaker of those statements does not define what she thinks science is, then we don't know exactly what it is that she thinks will answer all our questions and solve all our problems, or what she thinks it is that can answer any coherent question and why she thinks a question that cannot be answered by it is incoherent. — Janus

True. What do you think of the broader definition of science with this consideration? That basically all empirical thinking is a kind of scientific thinking? Would those statements count as scientism with science broadly construed?

I'm tempted to say it would not, but that the understanding of science is too broad.

Fair enough. I thought maybe I was missing something :D.

I don't think scientism is a testable "theory", and I don't think we have to define science before understanding it either. At the very least we can clarify what a speaker means, of course, and move on from there.

A thought I had today: What if scientism is more how one comes to believe a scientific proposition? Rather than just classifying what is or isn't science with a criterion, or stating something about one's character -- we could say scientism is coming to believe a scientific proposition by poor means, like "Scientist so and so said this is true, therefore it is true"?

So we could have the same belief -- that evolution is true -- but one person does so simply because a scientist said it was so, and another does so because they had a look at the argument and found it persuasive?

In "X is true" there is implicit idea that X is infaillible, that it cannot possibly be false, that it is something that applies to everyone even if they don't believe in it, whereas in "I believe X is true" one at least acknowledges a belief and presumably the idea that X is possibly faillible. — leo

Alright so you're just saying if someone states that a scientific theory is infallible then that is an example of scientism.

I don't think Dawkins made that claim about evolution in your quote. Not that I'm a big fan of Dawkins, but he's talking about how evolution is very well supported -- not that it's proven and infallible. And it is very well supported. So well supported that calling it a fact is warranted.

Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact. The evidence for evolution is at least as strong as the evidence for the Holocaust, even allowing for eye witnesses to the Holocaust. It is the plain truth that we are cousins of chimpanzees, somewhat more distant cousins of monkeys, more distant cousins still of aardvarks and manatees, yet more distant cousins of bananas and turnips…continue the list as long as desired. That didn’t have to be true. It is not self-evidently, tautologically, obviously true, and there was a time when most people, even educated people, thought it wasn’t. It didn’t have to be true, but it is. We know this because a rising flood of evidence supports it. Evolution is a fact, and this book will demonstrate it. — leo

Here he is talking about common descent, one of the novel predictions of evolution. Now it could be the case that we discover, say, two or three or five or whatever common ancestors -- that the tree of life does not come down to a single point. That would be a modification to the original prediction, but we'd still be related to chimpanzees. And it would be a fact. This would be a warranted statement because of the evidence we have now to make that inference.

Now, in accord with the problems of induction, naturally we could be wrong about all this. Science is fallabalistic, by my lights, always open to revision -- does Dawkins believe that? I don't know. He honestly doesn't say in these quotes, though it would surprise me if he, when pressed, said that evolution is infallible. Biology gets a lot more blowback than, say, chemistry and its theory of the atom, so I can understand frustration when others are given respect but you're always in the spotlight. But, then again, I think that biology is better for it -- I can just understand feeling frustrated.

OK, I understand you better now.

What does this notion of testability do for our understanding of scientism? Or is it more a matter of evaluating the truth of theories? Or what?

No I wouldn't say that. However if you start saying that a scientific theory is true because the evidence is convincing, or you start saying that the evidence only supports that theory, or that if it's not scientific then it can't be true or real, or that a scientific consensus is truth or the closest thing to truth, or that something is true because scientists say it, or that if scientists have refuted or falsified something then it's false, or that knowledge can only be gained through the scientific method, or that there are no beliefs in science, I would say it's scientism. — leo

Those all seem very different to me. I would agree that if we say something is true just because a scientist says it's true that that seems to be a solid example of scientism in the pejorative sense, as something to be avoided. But I don't see how saying that a scientific theory is true because the evidence is convincing is an example -- I also don't see what removing "belief" from the statement changes. In the sentence I gave I am referring to my relationship to a statement, but if I do believe such and such a statement it's not like I have a problem simply stating that the statement is true too.

So I believe my keys are on the desk. "My keys are on the desk" is true.

I believe evolution is true. Evolution is true.

What's the difference?

Well it's definitely different from say chemistry or physics. There isn't a lab where we isolate variables or some such. But I'd say that evolution makes novel predictions about the sort of evidence we'd expect to see in the world, and that this evidence has been found. There are similar predictions in other sciences like geology -- it's not a controlled experiment, but there are facts you'd expect to find if a proposition is true, and many of said facts have been discovered and explained by the theory, such as the theory of plate tectonics.

It's not a lab, but it's still science. It's just a different kind of science than many of the physical sciences.

A physical science that kind of mirrors this approach is actually astronomy, now that I think of it -- not that I know much of astronomy. But they don't exactly perform experiments in a lab either.

What would it mean to say that a scientific theory is true? That its predictions are confirmed by observation or something more than that? — Janus

It would mean that the propositions of a theory are true. I'd also qualify that any proposition could actually be false. That's part of the whole kit and caboodle. So at some later point, with more evidence, it may be shown that the propositions of evolution are not true -- but it's warranted to believe they are true given what we know at the moment.

True, but with fallabalism "Baked in" so to speak.

The way I read you was with an emphasis on proof rather than truth.

I think I'd say I believe "X" because there is evidence that supports it implies that the evidence supports "X" is true.

But then I'd ask again: Is it scientism to believe that a scientific theory is true because the evidence is convincing?

So they don't believe in science, they believe in the evidence for science. Dawkins says evolution is true because there is evidence that supports it, so he believes that evidence proves scientific theories are true. Which is scientism in disguise. — leo

That doesn't follow at all. I believe "X" because there is evidence that supports it does not imply that evidence proves "X" is true.

Is it scientism to believe that a scientific theory is true because the evidence is convincing?

Let's check what the top search results are for e.g. "I believe in science". — alcontali

Is the answer just a google search away? That seems odd to me. At least it's unconvincing for myself because, supposing a google search finds me an example of scientism this would not then support the inference that scientism is widespread. It would just be an example of scientism.

But let's take your notion of scientism -- that there is only one knowledge-justification method -- and look at these examples.

Why I Don’t “Believe” in “Science”. or some years now, one of the left’s favorite tropes has been the phrase “I believe in science.” Elizabeth Warren stated it recently in a pretty typical form: “I believe in science." So what Warren really means by saying “I believe in science” is “I believe in global warming.” They use it as a way of declaring belief in a proposition which is outside their knowledge and which they do not understand. It is meant to use the reputation of “science” in general to give authority to one specific scientific claim in particular, shielding it from questioning or skepticism. In support of one particular political solution: massive government regulations. — alcontali

Believing in science, or as this person puts it, believing that global warming is a real phenomena is not the same thing as believing that there is only one knowledge-justification method. I believe that anthropocentric caused global warming is real. I also believe that there is more than one knowledge-justification method. This isn't inconsistent. So it is possible to believe a scientific thesis while at the same time not subscribing to scientism, and therefore simply stating "I believe in science" to mean "I believe global warming is real" is not evidence of scientism.

“I Believe in Science!” – Something No One Should Say. “I believe in science,” said Hillary Clinton. “We should not have people in office who do not believe in facts and truths and modern science,” said Leonardo DiCaprio.

The same analysis applies here, though with other scientific theories. These come closer to your notion of scientism because they don't express just one proposition with the phrase, but at the same time both of these persons exhibit a belief that there are more ways of knowing than science only. They are also a politician and an actor, and know how to go about their profession in those fields -- they have a knowledge of their field which is not-scientific. So I don't think that these qualify as scientism as you describe it.

What these two have in common with the general public is their misunderstanding of the nature of science. The physical sciences are not, cannot possibly be the only means of gaining knowledge. The view that science (physical sciences) is the only means of gaining knowledge about reality is called scientism – a patently false proposition. It’s an unsettling sign of an imminent idiocracy – incredibly naive statements made by public officials and laymen who increasingly believe that science is the new god – the new idol of worship and infallibility. It is a sad day when science becomes an idol of worship – a compulsory belief system with its own initiations, rites, and hymns.
I Believe in Science. It implies that I can’t be a believer in science and also believe in God. In other words, science has disproven God. Or science and God don’t go together, or science and religion are mutually exclusive. It’s strange in part because science is tasked with studying the way the natural world works and is thus not even capable of disproving something beyond its scope. So why is this such a popular view in today’s society? There are certainly also many in the scientific and academic community who propagate this view as well.

That's just a bias of the authors. "I believe in science" does not imply that the author cannot be a believer in God, even in the examples cited.

There are undoubtedly other search terms that can shed light on the world of that fake scientist religion, its media-clergy, and how the manipulative political class seeks to handsomely benefit from further deceiving the already delusional unwashed masses.

So, yes, the fake religion of scientism is incredibly widespread.

I'd say "widespread" is a large chunk of the population. It doesn't have to be a majority, but let's just say 20% of people believe in scientism is the benchmark for widespread. We can restrict our claim to, say, Europe, North America, and Australia because that's where a lot of us come from and that's the sort of culture we're trying to analyze. Now a google search might supply examples of scientism, but it does not demonstrate that 20% of the people believe that science is the only knowledge-justification method.

So how do you get from some examples of scientism to widespread?

This applies to your gathering of more search terms as well, and is a response to this:

So, yes, the fake scientism religion is literally everywhere. Wherever you find the delusional, unwashed masses, you will be able to admire the artifacts, ceremonials, and rituals of scientism. They simply believe it. They don't care that they shouldn't, because they find solace in the false promise of the omnipotence of science — alcontali

Even the quotes you supply don't say scientism religion is literally everywhere. They qualify that there are "strands of thought", or "good many scientists and some philosophers" or something along those lines. They certainly don't make claims about the "delusional, unwashed masses" -- a phrase that I don't particularly like, but hey, we all have to be the target of insults sometimes. ;)

Also I'd say that your second post is more in line with what @Metaphysician Undercover is calling scientism, which is different from what you started out calling scientism. Would you agree with him in saying there are at least two kinds of scientism?

Sure. We're in agreement about the value of things which are not-science, then.

But I would at least say that while of course you can double down on your theory, you are in the curious position of calling canonical papers in the history of science as being something other than science. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing -- my own position has its faults, in particular it doesn't really give a definition of science as much as rely upon our intuitions of what counts as a scientist and encourages people to look at what those people are doing to get a feel for it.

But for me, at least, calling that paper philosophy rather than science isn't a bullet I can bite.

In that case, mathematics is also not valuable, because it is also not-scientific, and staunchly so.

This kind of fake morality ("not-scientific knowledge is not-valuable") is a mainstay in the vulgarizing and ultimately also vulgar, pseudo-scientific mainstream press. You will see CNN journalists displaying their amazing ineptitude -- the blind leading the blind -- when they further mislead the already delusional unwashed masses.

As long as it has the trappings and superficial appearance of science, the delusional populace will swallow it all. Of course, they will never ask to repeat any inexistent experimental tests, because they do not even understand the nature of their own fake religion.

Scientism is a mental disease. Seriously. — alcontali

I think you missed a "not" my statement. I said the opposite of what you're responding to here. Granted it was a confusing way of wording things, but we are in agreement -- not-scientific knowledge is valuable.

Scientism is so incredibly widespread, and its fake morality so prevalent with the unwashed masses, especially in the West, that it cannot merely be a character trait. There is an entire, organized media-clergy preaching its heresies. The political class loves it too. The political manipulators happily subscribe to it, because it increases their power. Scientism is a fake religion that comes with its own fake morality. It is simply obnoxious. — alcontali

How do you know it is widespread?

So yes, plumbers, machine operators, lighting technicians, cooks know a lot of things that were never systematized scientifically. They may have stumbled upon them through sheer serendipity, through trial and error, and possible also by experimentally testing them. These things have never been documented or otherwise formalized into science or engineering, because nobody has ever bothered to do so. I personally suspect that the entire industry would collapse if this knowledge does not get transmitted from one generation of workers to the next. — alcontali

Of course. To say that their knowledge is not-scientific is not the same as to say that their knowledge is not-valuable. In fact, in terms of our day-to-day lives, such knowledge is more valuable than systematic theories about how the world works -- at least I believe so.

But do you see how, if we admit that these professions have knowledge that is not-scientific, the point you were trying to make originally is simple to make? That not all knowledge is scientific after all?

In which case the kind of scientism you are arguing against would be unjustified.

Though I don't know if anyone would agree to that belief, as @S states above. Still a worthwhile point of reference in situating ourselves, I suppose. What do you think of my notion that scientism is not a set of beliefs as much as it is a character trait -- the trait of feeling too strongly about science?

So, to yourself, science is knowledge plus the beliefs which could become knowledge should they withstand the test of falsifiability -- and if something is not falsifiable at all then it can't count as science of either kind.

I don't think that science is getting blurry "these days", but that it's always been at least a little blurry -- when we put the question of demarcating science from not-science up, at least. And whence the importance of such a question? What does the charge of scientism denote?

To myself, at least, philosophy seems to be a kind of cure to scientism -- which I think of in a more relational manner. Rather than making an epistemic mistake of saying that science is the one and only knowledge, I think scientism is more about how an individual feels about science -- and given that the word is a pejorative the person in question feels too strongly that science gives us the best answers to questions.

So it's kind of a charge against one's character, really, rather than a fallacy. At least as I construe these things. And philosophy (of science) is a cure because I think that philosophy is just doing what philosophy does best -- making us all a little less confident in what we thought was certain and beyond needing explanation.

Well we can set aside our disagreement on Popper for the moment, I think. Another time perhaps.

Would you say that the methods of a plumber, a machine operator, a lighting technician, or a cook are based on his criterion? I wouldn't.

As long as we clearly distinguish between hypothesis/conjecture (no experimental test available) and theory (experimentally testable), I am ok with the hypothetical-theoretical discussions.

We need to be able to black-swan a scientific theory, i.e. search for a counterexample, otherwise it is not a scientific theory.

Since all scientific theories obviously start their life cycle as mere conjectures, I am certainly not against the activity of conjecturing. So, yes, it is "pre-science". Conjectures are the staging area for science. They are therefore necessary. — alcontali

Hrm. Pre-science? Alright. I guess I would just call it science, but that's OK. So to you "science" is knowledge specifically, it seems. Yes?

First I just want to say that what you're replying to was directed at @Terrapin Station -- not that you aren't welcome to answer the question, but there is a flow to the conversation that I'm following with him that would be different in your case -- because you two both clearly have very different beliefs about science.

Let's put this to you, then: You wouldn't call theoretical discussions scientific knowledge. But would you still count theoretical publications in physics as doing science? It is still science, even if it is not knowledge, right?

I'm afraid I do not believe what Karl Popper believed about science. And if that be the case then whether or not mathematics is grouped with science depends on our beliefs about what science is, rather than on what Karl Popper thought was proper.

I group math with science because they have the similar resonances to one another. Mathematicians create knowledge by publishing and having peers review their work. Scientists are similar. I don't think that the emphasis on reasoning vs. empirical matters much in treating it as something different because all knowledge requires us to reason as well as sense. It's just the way our mind works.