Polylogism and War

by Steven Yates

Just recently I lectured a group of students at the Mises University on polylogism and its problems, and it dawned on me that the prevalence of polylogism in the modern world may be one of the reasons the world is threatening to explode in any number of places. Since polylogism is not exactly a household word, I probably ought to explain it a little before applying it to my main topic.

The great economist Ludwig von Mises held that the human mind has a single logical structure. This structure is the same for everyone, rich or poor, male or female, gay or straight, Christian, Jew, Moslem or atheist, black or white or red or yellow or polka-dotted. Mises did not say everyone has an equal ability to make use of the logical structure of their minds. No doubt there are people who never so much as heard of logical relations. But when they see fire, they infer that if they put their hand in it they will get burned, same as we do. When they add two and two they still get four. Correct reasoning is the same for the most primitive tribesman as it is for one of us. None of us can think out-and-out contradictions (statements akin to, "It both is and isn’t raining at the same time, place, and respect").

In the end, all successful human communication depends on this kind of uniformity. As Mises explained,

Polylogism denies this. As close inspection of the term suggests, it means: many logics. One logic for the rich and one for the poor (this was how Mises characterized the "bourgeois class consciousness" / "proletariat class consciousness" dichotomy in classical Marxism), one kind of logic for men and another for women, one for blacks, one for whites, one for Asians, one for Moslems, a different logic for every identifiable group. Of course, it will follow that no one’s statements are objectively true, following the path of a single correct logic. The most anyone can produce is ideological rationalizations for his own group using its provincial logic.

The role of polylogism in multiculturalism should be clear if we think about it. While I am not sure any multiculturalists even know the term polylogism, they assert that because of their different origins and cultural collective experiences, different ethnic groups live in different cultural universes. Blacks’ having had ancestors who were slaves, for example, gives them a different collective experience than whites. What is true according to one culture isn’t necessarily true for another. And the way you think is culturally determined. Hence the shirt: "It’s a black thing; you wouldn’t understand."

I’m not saying this makes sense. The similarities to the more familiar relativism are obvious. Some form of what Mises called polylogism doubtless hides inside those forms of relativism that say something like, "Well, this may be true for you but it’s not true for me" and are the reason you want to reply, "You don’t know what the word true means." But there’s a deeper objection. On what basis does the polylogist claim that polylogism is true? If all truth is a cultural construction of some sort, then this would apply to the truth of polylogism, which means that if it is true, it is only true for the culture of polylogists (whatever that is). To say that polylogism is true for everyone would make it a universal truth. This won’t work because polylogism says there are no universal truths or logical norms. In other words, to a logical mind, polylogism is self-refuting.

Unfortunately, the "culture of polylogists" is no longer limited to the cultural Marxists in law schools and humanities departments on the campuses of America’s dominant universities. It suffuses a great deal of public thought, often masquerading behind calls for "tolerance." Most of its advocates do not even understand, much less have an answer to, the self-refutation charge. They couldn’t care less about such technicalities. On this larger scale, polylogism is dangerous. To take it seriously is to accept that there are globally incommensurable rifts between the mindsets of different peoples the world over as well as different groups here at home. No one really understands another culture or another group’s mindset; one can observe, but the only way to understand a culture or group is to be on its inside, living it. Communication between members of different cultures, given these assumptions, is extremely difficult at best and, at worst, simply impossible. Polylogism doesn’t mean simply that peoples have different beliefs – that’s obvious. Taken seriously, it means that different peoples literally do not think the same way. Their minds do not operate according to the same logical rules. Whatever the cash value of this really is, the peoples live in different cognitive and moral universes.

If, say, Americans moving into the 21^st century really do live in a different cognitive and moral universe from, say, peoples in the Islamic world – then how do we communicate with them, whatever our purpose? We can’t. Not really. They will talk right past us and we will talk right past them. According to the polylogist, this is inevitable. Neither one of us can cross that incommensurable divide. So what happens? The American Empire practically invades their countries because – whatever the rationalizations – America wants their oil and will do what it takes to obtain it. America’s rulers will not ask what Arab rulers want, or worry overly about what is motivating them. They will act astonished when 19 Arabs fly planes into buildings on US soil. America’s rulers will be outraged, call it an "act of war." They will scheme to strike back, and strike back hard. Their schemes won’t make much sense (unless one remembers the oil). As of this writing, America’s rulers have only attacked Afghanistan, although according to the official accounts the hijackers were Saudis. They haven’t yet attacked Iraq. The attack on Iraq could come at any time, though. This will further inflame Arab populations against America. They might well plan new attacks here. Our agencies might thwart the first three efforts, and the fourth will take out the Golden Gate Bridge or some other treasured landmark. On and on it will go. Back and forth. Bush the Younger’s "war on terrorism" threatens to be like that, even as it destroys liberties here at home and helps the global centralizers consolidate power.

Polylogism in theory may be silly – its fundamental incoherence is easily exposed. But in practice it is deadly. If we begin with the assumption that peoples cannot communicate, no one will ever have any reason to try. Disputes will be resolved not by any form of reason but by fighting it out. One cannot help but think of the nasty fight building over reparations for slavery here at home – aided and abetted by the polylogists in Ivy League law schools. It isn’t even clear that there will be a clear victor and a clear vanquished. War is inherently destructive. Even those victorious can be devastated through loss of population, destruction of property and the long-term effects on an economy diverted from its natural course into the production of weapons and other accouterments of war.

Someday we will want a global free market system that actually works. Technology alone – the technology of the Internet and other forms of global communications – will ensure that different cultures come into contact at a rate likely to accelerate (barring, of course, a massively destructive all-out war). By global free market system I mean the real thing, not the sham-markets of the World Trade Organization and other outfits run by and for superelites. There can be no doubt that unbridled immigration is creating massive problems here and in Europe. Immigration by nature brings cultures together. Combine it with polylogism, and you have trouble.

Immigrants will see no need to assimilate; they will not learn to speak the language and adopt the dominant culture as their own (except, perhaps, for its welfarist social philosophy). They won’t even see the need to obey its laws. Instead they will resent the dominant culture and eventually try to destroy it. Is this not what is happening all over the West? Mises believed that Marx and his cohorts had developed polylogism out of pure resentment against the potential markets were showing, and against the economic science that was explaining that potential. Not that much has changed. Polylogism among intellectuals today masks deep resentment and hostility against the most successful civilization in history and against the people who can claim the lion’s share of the credit for building it. Sadly, polylogism suggests that real multicultural education – education about the beliefs, practices and desires of those in other cultures without the egalitarian implications of multiculturalism – is pointless.

So what’s the solution? There isn’t a single, easy or quick solution. We didn’t get into our present morass overnight, and we won’t get out of it overnight. I stated at the outset that polylogism is not a household word. I am all for making it more of a household word. It may be unfamiliar, but it can be made clear, as the doctrine that different groups think according to fundamentally different logical principles and so live in fundamentally different worlds. The answer is that this doesn’t make sense – but nothing short of a potentially demanding excursion into the laws of logic will explain this. I am consequently all for more logical instruction. We need to understand the foundations of correct human thought. This is as important as any form of moral instruction.

I am aware that some readers will be uncomfortable with my comments above on immigration, simply because I did not repudiate the whole thing and recommend that the US close its borders. Of course, if we had a system based exclusively on private property rights, then if immigrants entered this country illegally they would be little more than trespassers and could be prosecuted as such before being sent home (a point Hans-Hermann Hoppe has made). This is the solution to the problem of unbridled immigration. If Western Europeans have a worse problem with immigration than we do it is because their ruling elites and intellectual classes are even more addicted to socialism, polylogism, and political correctness than we are. But even were there no immigration at all, technology would still bring different cultures into contact. The World Wide Web is, well, world wide. Left to themselves, moreover, peoples will try to act in ways they believe will improve their lives – or, at least, the lives of their children. It is not a given that different peoples will fight when they can trade. Once the costs of war become clear, why on earth would they fight?

All of this cries out for bringing basic logical instruction into the center of how we educate the next generation (I hope home schoolers are paying attention). I’m not advocating some "national education policy" here. I’m pleading for reason. At present, basic logical instruction barely exists. We see the consequences: citizens who have not thought through the consequences of the idea that our rulers can keep us safe if only we give them more power, college professors who will support anything so long as it is trendy and politically correct, university students who often don’t know what to believe (and sometimes couldn’t care less) because they have given up trying to sort through the barrage of sometimes contradictory information hitting them everyday, peoples ready to do battle whether in the courtrooms or in the streets.

Bringing back logical instruction is not the entire solution, but it is part of the solution. The politically correct will say that "white, Western male logic" is just more cultural imperialism. They haven’t understood the subject. While white Western males may have taken more successful actions in history from having understood implicitly how causality – a fundamentally logical notion – works in the world, logical principles are no more inherently "white, Western and male" than they are anything else. Being able to reason and use logic in effective actions, whether in commerce, diplomacy or science and technology, is part of what makes us human. No other form of life on the planet possesses this ability. But all human beings possess it.

Americans should be learning this themselves, and then be preparing to teach the rest of the world by example. This calls for going down a different road, one that won’t lead to our making war on an entire culture (and inviting further attacks on our own). I would think this new road would be a whole lot more interesting and challenging than the one our rulers are taking us down now.

August 17, 2002

Steven Yates [send him mail] has a PhD in philosophy and is a Margaret "Peg" Rowley Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He is the author of Civil Wrongs: What Went Wrong With Affirmative Action (ICS Press, 1994), and numerous articles and reviews. At any given time he is at work on any number of articles and book projects, including a science fiction novel.

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