Stephen Colbert and Philosophy - Aaron Allen Schiller [58]
Some people feel that you either have absolute certainty or completely arbitrary opinion. This commits the fallacy of false dichotomy by asserting that there are only two possible options when there are more than two. We might not know with certainty that a particular political action or political ideal is true. However we can nonetheless go with our appearances, profess our ideals, and act on our commitments, all the while realizing that we could be wrong. Such political action does not rest on certainty, but it need not be entirely arbitrary either. There is a third option: we can continue our investigations and go on the best evidence we have. Such evidence usually lies somewhere between the false certainty of truthiness and the unobtainable certainty of truth. The attitude I have in mind is exemplified by scientifically minded skeptics such as Carl Sagan and the writers of Skeptical Inquirer magazine. Sagan says, “Science is far from a perfect instrument of knowledge. It’s just the best we have. In this respect, as in many others, it’s like democracy.”114 Neither science nor democracy can give us perfect, certain knowledge, but they both represent the best we can do. If science can successfully get along without certainty, why can’t politics?
Some contemporary philosophers have put this issue in terms of a challenge to “give an argument to show that Hitler was a bad man that would convince Hitler himself.”115 Just because we can’t meet this challenge, does not mean that we have to admit that Hitler could’ve been a decent person. We have good reasons to assert that Hitler was bad, even if we can’t prove it to everyone. Yes, there is dispute and controversy about political issues, and, yes, political ideals can’t be definitively proven. But none of this relegates politics to the heap of mere opinion. Politics encourages in some people the kind of reckless dogmatism known as truthiness. But we don’t need truthiness to pick up the slack when it comes to certainty in politics, because we don’t need certainty in politics at all. Reflection on the follies of truthiness can go a long way in helping us be a little more careful and bit more modest when it comes to politics, and may even counteract some of the crippling partisan bickering so effectively lampooned by The Colbert Report.
Neither should we give up on politics all together. Skeptics can still be liberals or conservatives and argue for their views. They can vote, volunteer for campaigns, or even run for office. They just do a little bit less yelling about it than their truthiness-spouting counterparts (and probably have lower blood pressure too). They also realize that at the end of the day, their political views and cherished ideals may be wrong or even incoherent. This uncertainty is unsettling for most of us, but with a big dose of skeptical therapy, even Stephen Colbert could learn to live happily skeptically after.116
8
The WØRD: Fearless Speech and the Politics of Language
MICHAEL TIBORIS and KORY SCHAFF
Does The Colbert Report promote democratic values in American political dialogue? If so, does it encourage substantive criticism of political orthodoxy? Or does it just encourage the politics of cynicism, like so many other cable news shows?
We’re going to show you that Stephen Colbert’s style of political satire actually promotes democratic values of free, open, and critical speech. Colbert’s satire reflects an ethical commitment that evokes the earlier spirit of criticism embodied by the ancient Greek philosophical tradition of parrhesia, or “speaking the truth” fearlessly in public.