Francis Bacon's idols
Habits of mind that cause people to fall into error.
Idols of the tribe
The habit of expecting more order in natural phenomena than is actually to be found.
The need to create an impression of order in chaos is at the root of all mythologies. Human nature is transposed into natural phenomena in such a way that nature seems to be governed by human rationale. The forces of nature are personified as we see in Greek and Roman mythology, as opposed to a scientific approach where other kinds of logic, causality and interdependence enter into consideration. Scholastic efforts, such as those by Thomas Aquinas, have been made over time to attempt forms of synthesis between mythological and scientific understandings of nature’s workings – without much success. The two approaches to understanding are of different types and operate in different spheres of human perception.
The Guardian Weekly’s article (“Rationality can’t win emotional arguments” 22.10.10) comments on the blight that now afflicts every good cause from welfare to climate change. Progressives have been suckers for a myth of human cognition labelled “the enlightenment model”. This holds that people make rational decisions by assessing facts, and that all that has to be done is to lay out the data. A host of psychological experiments demonstrate that it doesn’t work like this. Instead of performing a rational cost-benefit analysis, we accept information that confirms our identity and values and reject information that conflicts with them. We mold our thinking around our social identity, protecting it from serious challenge. Confronting people with inconvenient facts is likely only to harden their resistance to change. Our social identity is shaped by values that psychologists classify as extrinsic or intrinsic. Extrinsic values concern status and self-advancement. People with a strong set of extrinsic values fixate on how others see them, and cherish financial success, image and fame. Intrinsic values concern relationships with friends, family and community, and self-acceptance. Those who have a strong set of intrinsic values are not dependent on praise or rewards from other people. They have beliefs that transcend their self-interest. Few people are all-extrinsic or all-intrinsic.
An analysis of extrinsic values and intrinsic values in people’s mind sets shows us how a screwed up attention to extrinsic values interacts with the media’s obsessive focus on celebrities, ranking lists of all sorts, linking of social status and material fortune. This interaction produces societies where the political processes become more and more irrational, with people actively fighting for issues that are strongly against their own interests. The media become smoke screens which hide people’s real interests from them – while at the same time making them believe that their interests are the same as those of the extremely wealthy. The media are also increasingly being owned by rich people who have a strong political agenda aimed at furthering their personal interests. These media create stories and ideas in conformity with the messages they wish to send, without regard to factual corrections that others wish to contribute in order to produce a different version of truth. Only the truth that they regard as relevant for their interests is given space in their media. And in this endeavor they are helped by politicians who use the same techniques. Neither the media nor the politicians in question make any attempt to seek truth in its own right.
People end up fighting for the interests of those who don’t need public services of any kind, but wish to have as little government as possible – combined with as little taxes as possible. The extremely rich have the resources to pay for private education, health, and all other sorts of public services which the lower middle class cannot afford. An example is The Tea Party movement in the USA which, although in large part funded by some very rich people, has succeeded in getting the support from lower middle class in their fight against public services and for lower taxes. The image being used is the total freedom and non-interference of government that was found in the “original” wild west. What the people supporting the movement do not seem to understand, is that there were no public services of any kind in the wild west – while they may take for granted that all the things a modern society offers them today will stay unchanged even if they eliminate government.
As regards the expectation of “more order in natural phenomena than is actually to be found”, the fundamental expression of this is found in different forms of ancient mythology – with greek mythology being a good example. One important function of that mythology was to introduce explanations of natural phenomena as the consequence of rational actions performed by gods in their pursuit of their own aims. Without such explanations, people would not be able to understand what was happening in nature – and they needed to understand and rationalize. Chaos or lack of control in general is difficult to accept.
Idols of the cave
Personal prejudices, characteristics of the particular investigator.
This notion of cave immediately brings to mind Plato’s allegory of the cave. Our personal ideas of objects and notions do not represent “truth”. We see the world with our eyes, and other people see it with their eyes – with everybody having a different perception. Truth – in some form – exists as something outside the perceptions of each individual. Descartes takes this thinking further, by stating that nothing exists outside of our own perception. His “cogito, ergo sum” says that through the act of thinking he accepts the idea that he exists – but outside of his own thoughts he cannot say what actually exists.
These two points of departure have the common ground that what we perceive is dependent of the nature of our own senses, and of our personal state of mind. We cannot say what is “the truth”. In practical life, we base our decisions on what we consider to be facts. The relative importance of a given factual information increases with the number of people who are willing to accept the idea that that fact is indeed a fact. Awareness of this separation between perception and truth is a fundamental point of departure for all dialogue and action.
In your own cave, you develop ideas and opinions about people and phenomena that may be partly or totally separated from factual information about these. If you have any sources of information outside of yourself, these may even be based on inventions or lies produced by others who have as little information as you have (for instance tabloid media). These ideas and opinions may live on and develop unchecked if you do not seek corrective information along the way. As your ideas become entrenched, they become increasingly difficult to uproot, and develop impermeability to facts. Your own attitude to, and capacity to deconstruct, the “facts” you rely on, will determine the extent of your personal prejudices. In addition, your social network will be crucial in this context. If your social network is extensive, and consists of open-minded people, your ideas and opinions will be in a state of constant flux – whereas they will be entrenched and self-reinforced by paranoia if you are an isolated person.
Idols of the market place
Those that have to do with the tyranny of words.
The notion of “market place” is in this context the public space where people meet physically or virtually (media, internet). This is where fashions are formed, be it in clothes, objects, thoughts or ideas. Some people have more influence than others in the forming of fashion. There are often very few people involved when a fashion is formed. Once a fashion is formed, it may become a forceful mass movement – until it is replaced by a new fashion (operated either by the same people, or by a new group of people who have in turn become market leaders). A fashion in behavior or thought is not legitimate in any objective sense. It is there only because it is given legitimacy by those who adhere to it. The larger the number of adherents, the greater its degree of legitimacy in the public space. To go against the ruling fashion may be costly, because those who follow the fashion - especially the weaker individuals – feel attacked in their dignity and may retaliate (sometimes even by physical violence) against those who deviate.
Idols of the market place may be likened to “common understanding”. This may refer to common understanding of ideas, words, behavioral rules (dos and dont's), and fashionable things to do and to think. How these common understandings come about is an interesting question in its own right, and this is why – as the role of media has expanded – communication experts of all sorts have popped up.
The need for effective communication has become widespread, and it has produced a large profession of communication experts which is consulted high and wide. These experts increasingly dominate the public dialogue between interest groups, politicians, and other opinion makers. They use the same techniques as they teach their customers to use, which mainly implies that they send their own messages over and over again – without answering the questions they are being asked. The dialogue gets poorer and poorer, at the expense of the increasing role of public propaganda (propagation of messages, without attempts to engage in dialogue).
In the light of this development, the “common understanding” is the one produced by the most powerful media conglomerates, i.e. the understanding the owners of these conglomerates wish to convey. This is something else than George Orwell’s 1984, because it is not governed by a totalitarian state. It is governed by oligopolistic forces, and it acts in indirect ways. It does not enter people’s private spaces, but it governs through brainwashing.
Idols of the theatre
Those that have to do with received systems of thought.
In a deeper and stronger way than the idols of the market place, the idols of the theatre represent received systems of thought. They are more deep rooted than day to day fashions, because they have taken long time to develop and are generally passed on from generation to generation. There are competing systems of thought, and their respective proponents leave little room for doubt about their own system’s superiority over the others – precisely because there is a competition to make one’s own system of thought prevail. This creates a good climate for dogmatic thinking, where people who do not adhere to one’s own system of thought easily get stigmatized. Dogmatic thinking leads to errors in judgment and errors in action. Societies where dogmatic thinking dominate people’s daily lives are either repressive or conflict-ridden.
Idols of the tribe
The habit of expecting more order in natural phenomena than is actually to be found.
The need to create an impression of order in chaos is at the root of all mythologies. Human nature is transposed into natural phenomena in such a way that nature seems to be governed by human rationale. The forces of nature are personified as we see in Greek and Roman mythology, as opposed to a scientific approach where other kinds of logic, causality and interdependence enter into consideration. Scholastic efforts, such as those by Thomas Aquinas, have been made over time to attempt forms of synthesis between mythological and scientific understandings of nature’s workings – without much success. The two approaches to understanding are of different types and operate in different spheres of human perception.
The Guardian Weekly’s article (“Rationality can’t win emotional arguments” 22.10.10) comments on the blight that now afflicts every good cause from welfare to climate change. Progressives have been suckers for a myth of human cognition labelled “the enlightenment model”. This holds that people make rational decisions by assessing facts, and that all that has to be done is to lay out the data. A host of psychological experiments demonstrate that it doesn’t work like this. Instead of performing a rational cost-benefit analysis, we accept information that confirms our identity and values and reject information that conflicts with them. We mold our thinking around our social identity, protecting it from serious challenge. Confronting people with inconvenient facts is likely only to harden their resistance to change. Our social identity is shaped by values that psychologists classify as extrinsic or intrinsic. Extrinsic values concern status and self-advancement. People with a strong set of extrinsic values fixate on how others see them, and cherish financial success, image and fame. Intrinsic values concern relationships with friends, family and community, and self-acceptance. Those who have a strong set of intrinsic values are not dependent on praise or rewards from other people. They have beliefs that transcend their self-interest. Few people are all-extrinsic or all-intrinsic.
An analysis of extrinsic values and intrinsic values in people’s mind sets shows us how a screwed up attention to extrinsic values interacts with the media’s obsessive focus on celebrities, ranking lists of all sorts, linking of social status and material fortune. This interaction produces societies where the political processes become more and more irrational, with people actively fighting for issues that are strongly against their own interests. The media become smoke screens which hide people’s real interests from them – while at the same time making them believe that their interests are the same as those of the extremely wealthy. The media are also increasingly being owned by rich people who have a strong political agenda aimed at furthering their personal interests. These media create stories and ideas in conformity with the messages they wish to send, without regard to factual corrections that others wish to contribute in order to produce a different version of truth. Only the truth that they regard as relevant for their interests is given space in their media. And in this endeavor they are helped by politicians who use the same techniques. Neither the media nor the politicians in question make any attempt to seek truth in its own right.
People end up fighting for the interests of those who don’t need public services of any kind, but wish to have as little government as possible – combined with as little taxes as possible. The extremely rich have the resources to pay for private education, health, and all other sorts of public services which the lower middle class cannot afford. An example is The Tea Party movement in the USA which, although in large part funded by some very rich people, has succeeded in getting the support from lower middle class in their fight against public services and for lower taxes. The image being used is the total freedom and non-interference of government that was found in the “original” wild west. What the people supporting the movement do not seem to understand, is that there were no public services of any kind in the wild west – while they may take for granted that all the things a modern society offers them today will stay unchanged even if they eliminate government.
As regards the expectation of “more order in natural phenomena than is actually to be found”, the fundamental expression of this is found in different forms of ancient mythology – with greek mythology being a good example. One important function of that mythology was to introduce explanations of natural phenomena as the consequence of rational actions performed by gods in their pursuit of their own aims. Without such explanations, people would not be able to understand what was happening in nature – and they needed to understand and rationalize. Chaos or lack of control in general is difficult to accept.
Idols of the cave
Personal prejudices, characteristics of the particular investigator.
This notion of cave immediately brings to mind Plato’s allegory of the cave. Our personal ideas of objects and notions do not represent “truth”. We see the world with our eyes, and other people see it with their eyes – with everybody having a different perception. Truth – in some form – exists as something outside the perceptions of each individual. Descartes takes this thinking further, by stating that nothing exists outside of our own perception. His “cogito, ergo sum” says that through the act of thinking he accepts the idea that he exists – but outside of his own thoughts he cannot say what actually exists.
These two points of departure have the common ground that what we perceive is dependent of the nature of our own senses, and of our personal state of mind. We cannot say what is “the truth”. In practical life, we base our decisions on what we consider to be facts. The relative importance of a given factual information increases with the number of people who are willing to accept the idea that that fact is indeed a fact. Awareness of this separation between perception and truth is a fundamental point of departure for all dialogue and action.
In your own cave, you develop ideas and opinions about people and phenomena that may be partly or totally separated from factual information about these. If you have any sources of information outside of yourself, these may even be based on inventions or lies produced by others who have as little information as you have (for instance tabloid media). These ideas and opinions may live on and develop unchecked if you do not seek corrective information along the way. As your ideas become entrenched, they become increasingly difficult to uproot, and develop impermeability to facts. Your own attitude to, and capacity to deconstruct, the “facts” you rely on, will determine the extent of your personal prejudices. In addition, your social network will be crucial in this context. If your social network is extensive, and consists of open-minded people, your ideas and opinions will be in a state of constant flux – whereas they will be entrenched and self-reinforced by paranoia if you are an isolated person.
Idols of the market place
Those that have to do with the tyranny of words.
The notion of “market place” is in this context the public space where people meet physically or virtually (media, internet). This is where fashions are formed, be it in clothes, objects, thoughts or ideas. Some people have more influence than others in the forming of fashion. There are often very few people involved when a fashion is formed. Once a fashion is formed, it may become a forceful mass movement – until it is replaced by a new fashion (operated either by the same people, or by a new group of people who have in turn become market leaders). A fashion in behavior or thought is not legitimate in any objective sense. It is there only because it is given legitimacy by those who adhere to it. The larger the number of adherents, the greater its degree of legitimacy in the public space. To go against the ruling fashion may be costly, because those who follow the fashion - especially the weaker individuals – feel attacked in their dignity and may retaliate (sometimes even by physical violence) against those who deviate.
Idols of the market place may be likened to “common understanding”. This may refer to common understanding of ideas, words, behavioral rules (dos and dont's), and fashionable things to do and to think. How these common understandings come about is an interesting question in its own right, and this is why – as the role of media has expanded – communication experts of all sorts have popped up.
The need for effective communication has become widespread, and it has produced a large profession of communication experts which is consulted high and wide. These experts increasingly dominate the public dialogue between interest groups, politicians, and other opinion makers. They use the same techniques as they teach their customers to use, which mainly implies that they send their own messages over and over again – without answering the questions they are being asked. The dialogue gets poorer and poorer, at the expense of the increasing role of public propaganda (propagation of messages, without attempts to engage in dialogue).
In the light of this development, the “common understanding” is the one produced by the most powerful media conglomerates, i.e. the understanding the owners of these conglomerates wish to convey. This is something else than George Orwell’s 1984, because it is not governed by a totalitarian state. It is governed by oligopolistic forces, and it acts in indirect ways. It does not enter people’s private spaces, but it governs through brainwashing.
Idols of the theatre
Those that have to do with received systems of thought.
In a deeper and stronger way than the idols of the market place, the idols of the theatre represent received systems of thought. They are more deep rooted than day to day fashions, because they have taken long time to develop and are generally passed on from generation to generation. There are competing systems of thought, and their respective proponents leave little room for doubt about their own system’s superiority over the others – precisely because there is a competition to make one’s own system of thought prevail. This creates a good climate for dogmatic thinking, where people who do not adhere to one’s own system of thought easily get stigmatized. Dogmatic thinking leads to errors in judgment and errors in action. Societies where dogmatic thinking dominate people’s daily lives are either repressive or conflict-ridden.