Postmodernism 3: Brute Facts, Social Facts

To recap: one of the more fascinating trends in US evangelicalism today involves "worldview analysis," a mode of apologetics and outreach that classifies human beliefs and philosophies into competing "worldviews." For the evangelical worldview analyst, "Biblical Christianity" serves as the only proper and true (i.e., comprehensive, productive, and non-contradictory) worldview. All others, from Marxism to Hinduism, function as some form of intellectual and spiritual folly.

Particularly vexing for worldview evangelists is the "Postmodern" worldview, which they more often than not define in terms of a refusal to believe in Absolute Truth. Instead (according to much of the worldview literature I've read), postmoderns believe that Truth is what you as an individual make of it and that everyone has the right to make their own truths. Such a view isn't only antagonistic toward biblical Christianity (where God as revealed through the Bible is the very essence of Truth); it's a logical non-starter (i.e., the truth is that there's no truth? But isn't that a truth statement? etc.).

I've suggested that this representation of postmodernism is spurious, a straw man that critics can set up and topple easily so as to win rhetorical points. Moreover, this view dismisses out of hand a whole (and growing) sector of Christian faith that actively seeks to articulate Christian belief alongside and within postmodern views. As a part of that sector, it behooves me to correct what I consider to be an inaccurate view of my beliefs.

When I describe myself as postmodern (I would likely prefer a related-but-more-specific term like antifoundationalist or post-structuralist), I do not suggest that Truth is whatever I want it to be. Obviously this isn't so. I can't ignore gravity and fly around like Superman, no matter how hopeful or deluded I get.

That being said, though, I do have problems with the notion of capital-T Truths, "facts" about the way things are that are presented as simply and incontestably so regardless of when, where, by whom, or in what context they are encountered. My problem isn't so much that Truth doesn't exist. As a Christian, I do at the end of the day affirm a number of Big Truths. My problem lies more with the human tendency (pride, one might say) to think that we have an accurate handle on that capital-T Truth.

Michael Berube, a critical theorist and self-avowed antifoundationalist, once related a question he posed to John Searle (a language philosopher who leans more to the foundationalist side). In a public lecture, Berube recounts, Searle made a simple distinction between "brute facts" and "social facts." Brute facts, he explained, are solid, verifiable realities that simply are whether we like it or not. The sun appears to rise in the east and set in the west. Fire burns you when you touch it. People eventually die. These are simply true things, and believing otherwise doesn't make them not so.

Social facts, by contrast, involve elements of human existence that are context-dependent. The definition of what kind of clothes are most fashionable, for example, depends not upon timeless Platonic ideals of fashion but upon the exigencies of time, place, and culture. Fashion is a social fact. You can't ignore it without consequence (fashion and other social facts obviously matter), but neither can you set a stable description/definition of it without being extremely specific as to time/place/context. They lack the Eternal epistemological status of brute facts.

So far, so good, right? Nothing here requires anything like the postmodernism I've defined. Indeed, you could say that all I've done via Searle is suggest that there are in this world big-T Truths (brute facts) and little-t truths (social facts). Both of them matter, but the latter shift over time and place, whereas the former do not.

I'd agree but for Berube's question to Searle, which I paraphrase here: "What about the distinction between brute fact and social fact?" he asked. "Is that distinction itself a social fact or a brute fact?" (source: Berube, Michael. "The Return of Realism and the Future of Contingency." What's Left of Theory? Ed. Judith Butler, John Guillory, Kendall Thomas. New York: Routledge, 2000: 137-156.).

And there's the rub. I know, I know--it sounds like a too-clever-by-half wordplay, but think about it: how ultimately do you know whether a fact is social or brutal? Do you ultimately know? Can you?

To be sure, I can be utterly convinced that X is brute-fact True--unalterably, objectively so regardless of time or place or culture. I can live my life out on the basis of that conviction. What I cannot do, however, is guarantee that others will, after considering my case, agree with me about X's brute-truthfulness. To believe with me as strongly as I do in fact X, others would have to buy all my reasons for believing in X. They'd have to agree to the terms, the meta-arguments, the criteria, by which I define and verify X as true (e.g., empirical evidence, lived experience, sincerity of belief, miraculous powers, survival of ordeals). I have not only to present a cogent, convincing argument; I have to make sure that others share the same ideas of proof and argument as I do.

All of that meta-argumentation implies work (imagine trying to convince a medieval European peasant to accept string theory). Moreover, the necessity of convincing people opens the door to the possibility that others may not buy into my criteria of truth. Even if they do buy my criteria, they may not navigate the evidence/argument to my same conclusion. In short, others may disagree with me. I would think (I would know!) they are wrong, of course (delusional, heretical, immoral, stubborn, whatever), but nothing I can do as a human lets me tap into some reservoir of Veracity and display Proof so universally obvious that other humans have no choice but to agree with me. Even the most brutal fact must ultimately have a social dimension, and yes--this includes the brute fact/social fact distinction, which relies on a whole set of assumptions about culture, science, epistemology, etc. (imagine trying to convince a medieval European peasant of the fine difference between brute and social facts).

The sick, sad truth is that even if we believe in brute facts, even if we accept that some capital-T Truths exist, we as humans lack any reliable means to establish with 100% certainty whether X fact enjoys such a capital-T status. Certainly we can be 99.999999%+ sure about a whole host of facts (e.g., gravity, cellular mitosis), but as any philosopher of science will tell you, even "scientific" statements remain technically open to the possibility that they may be refuted, disproved, qualified, modified, articulated differently, etc. in the face of other discoveries or new paradigms. Indeed, one of science's strengths is not that it arrives at or uncovers final Truths and holds on to them dogmatically but that it offers a useful, consistent system for investigating and constantly modifying "truths" of nature.

But of course I'm not a scientist, and this isn't a science blog. Consider a statement like this, then: "X is the will [or, we could say, the Word] of God." Brute fact? Social fact? Capital-T True? Here's where we wade merrily into some of the choppiest waters in twenty-first century Christendom. Navigating these seas, I argue (pace Stanely Fish), makes the question of foundational versus antifoundational commitments quite relevant.

More tomorrow,

JF