The demon is not just lying at random—the demon is lying with the purpose of getting a certain reaction (in this case, getting the human to subscribe to the philosophy of materialism). The original quote is advice on how to use the human’s cognitive biases against him, in order to better achieve that goal.
The point of the quote isn’t materialism. That could be replaced with any other philosophy, quite easily. The point of the quote is that, for many people, subscribing to a philosophy isn’t about whether that philosophy is true at all; it’s more about whether that philosophy is popular, or cool, or daring.
The point isn’t to mock the demon, or the materialist. The point is to highlight a common human cognitive mistake.
You correctly describe what the quote literally says, but there’s a fine line between “I’m just writing a story which requires that these particular materialists be biased” and “I’m accusing materialists in general of being biased like this”. The former is often a way for authors to hint at the latter without saying it.
I could easily write a story where the Devil tempts Jews into baking matzohs using the blood of Christian babies. I could then argue that I’m not really accusing any Jews except my fictional characters of anything, and that this is simply a story about how people can do bad things for bad reasons. But you would be completely justified in not believing me when I say that.
You correctly describe what the quote literally says, but there’s a fine line between “I’m just writing a story which requires that these particular materialists be biased” and “I’m accusing materialists in general of being biased like this”.
Lewis is not accusing materialists in general of having that bias—Lewis is accusing humans in general of having that bias. The idea that humans have that bias, and that that bias can be exploited to convince a human to subscribe to a given philosophy independantly of whether that philosophy is true is rather the point of the quote.
Lewis described how humans can subscribe to a given philosophy independently of its correctness. That part is completely rational.
But he didn’t use a random example to describe this bias. -- Just look at all other books he wrote, they all deal with the same topic. His choice of Devil is not the same as e.g. Tolkien’s choice of elves. Tolkien wrote fiction, but Lewis wrote fiction as a propaganda tool. Tolkien didn’t believe in elves, but Lewis did believe in Devil. -- Therefore it seems to me very likely that he wanted his readers to think about this specific example instead of using this kind of reasoning generally.
In other words, his work is an equivalent of a hypothetical LW article: “Top 10 cognitive biases that Republicans have, and how it influences their voting”. (Assume that the author wrote dozen articles on Republicans, and none about anything else.) Cognitive biases: okay. Selective attention to one specific group: not okay.
Since the author thought materialism was thoroughly false, this constitutes one of the mildest attacks on the character of materialists he could have written, short of just omitting the topic altogether. Thinking your opponents are wrong because they were misled by epistemic sleight of hand (from malevolent ageless invisible all-seeing schemers, no less) is nicer than thinking they’re wrong due to stupidity or sheer contrarian defiance.
The Screwtape Letters is a hundred-page collection of mistakes to be avoided. It seems silly to assume hostile intent behind this particular passage, rather than reading it in the same “don’t be misled in this particular way” spirit as the rest of the text.
Since the author thought materialism was thoroughly false
That’s actually one of the reasons I’m more inclined to interpret it that way. If Lewis thought there were also materialists with superb reasoning abilities who believed in materialism by correctly exercising those reasoning abilities, I wouldn’t think a passage about poorly reasoned materialists was meant to be a generalization.
this constitutes one of the mildest attacks on the character of materialists he could have written
Hypothesis: Lewis was well aware that there are materialists who are good people. Yet his religion forced him to think bad of materialists. He handled this cognitive dissonance by thinking bad of materialists in one of the weakest ways possible. In other words, he knew too much to be able to believe that all materialists are power-hungry maniacs, but he couldn’t avoid at least politely thinking they were all materialists because of everyday human foibles.
It’s like Lewis’s beliefs about homosexuality. He was forced by his religion to believe that homosexuality is a sin and that all gay people should abstain from sex, but he tried to be as polite to them as he could within the confines of these beliefs and did not write about how gays are a menace to our children.
If Lewis thought there were also materialists with superb reasoning abilities who believed in materialism by correctly exercising those reasoning abilities, I wouldn’t think a passage about poorly reasoned materialists was meant to be a generalization.
Why do you think he didn’t think this? I’m having a hard time not seeing this exchange as you projecting negativity onto Lewis, when he was writing about fully general cognitive biases and weaknesses with compassion towards all humans who share those biases.
If he thought that materialists became materialists by reasoning correctly, he would either have been a materialist, or would have taken one of a particularly narrow set of positions (such as “materialism is based on correct reasoning, and how something can be false and correctly reasoned at the same time is one of God’s mysteries” or “materialists are only materialists because they start with different premises from me, but correctly reason from those premises”) which as far as I know he didn’t. (Or else taken no opinion on materialism, which he wasn’t going to do.)
The demon is not just lying at random—the demon is lying with the purpose of getting a certain reaction (in this case, getting the human to subscribe to the philosophy of materialism). The original quote is advice on how to use the human’s cognitive biases against him, in order to better achieve that goal.
The point of the quote isn’t materialism. That could be replaced with any other philosophy, quite easily. The point of the quote is that, for many people, subscribing to a philosophy isn’t about whether that philosophy is true at all; it’s more about whether that philosophy is popular, or cool, or daring.
The point isn’t to mock the demon, or the materialist. The point is to highlight a common human cognitive mistake.
You correctly describe what the quote literally says, but there’s a fine line between “I’m just writing a story which requires that these particular materialists be biased” and “I’m accusing materialists in general of being biased like this”. The former is often a way for authors to hint at the latter without saying it.
I could easily write a story where the Devil tempts Jews into baking matzohs using the blood of Christian babies. I could then argue that I’m not really accusing any Jews except my fictional characters of anything, and that this is simply a story about how people can do bad things for bad reasons. But you would be completely justified in not believing me when I say that.
Lewis is not accusing materialists in general of having that bias—Lewis is accusing humans in general of having that bias. The idea that humans have that bias, and that that bias can be exploited to convince a human to subscribe to a given philosophy independantly of whether that philosophy is true is rather the point of the quote.
Well, I think it is both.
Lewis described how humans can subscribe to a given philosophy independently of its correctness. That part is completely rational.
But he didn’t use a random example to describe this bias. -- Just look at all other books he wrote, they all deal with the same topic. His choice of Devil is not the same as e.g. Tolkien’s choice of elves. Tolkien wrote fiction, but Lewis wrote fiction as a propaganda tool. Tolkien didn’t believe in elves, but Lewis did believe in Devil. -- Therefore it seems to me very likely that he wanted his readers to think about this specific example instead of using this kind of reasoning generally.
In other words, his work is an equivalent of a hypothetical LW article: “Top 10 cognitive biases that Republicans have, and how it influences their voting”. (Assume that the author wrote dozen articles on Republicans, and none about anything else.) Cognitive biases: okay. Selective attention to one specific group: not okay.
Since the author thought materialism was thoroughly false, this constitutes one of the mildest attacks on the character of materialists he could have written, short of just omitting the topic altogether. Thinking your opponents are wrong because they were misled by epistemic sleight of hand (from malevolent ageless invisible all-seeing schemers, no less) is nicer than thinking they’re wrong due to stupidity or sheer contrarian defiance.
The Screwtape Letters is a hundred-page collection of mistakes to be avoided. It seems silly to assume hostile intent behind this particular passage, rather than reading it in the same “don’t be misled in this particular way” spirit as the rest of the text.
That’s actually one of the reasons I’m more inclined to interpret it that way. If Lewis thought there were also materialists with superb reasoning abilities who believed in materialism by correctly exercising those reasoning abilities, I wouldn’t think a passage about poorly reasoned materialists was meant to be a generalization.
Hypothesis: Lewis was well aware that there are materialists who are good people. Yet his religion forced him to think bad of materialists. He handled this cognitive dissonance by thinking bad of materialists in one of the weakest ways possible. In other words, he knew too much to be able to believe that all materialists are power-hungry maniacs, but he couldn’t avoid at least politely thinking they were all materialists because of everyday human foibles.
It’s like Lewis’s beliefs about homosexuality. He was forced by his religion to believe that homosexuality is a sin and that all gay people should abstain from sex, but he tried to be as polite to them as he could within the confines of these beliefs and did not write about how gays are a menace to our children.
Why do you think he didn’t think this? I’m having a hard time not seeing this exchange as you projecting negativity onto Lewis, when he was writing about fully general cognitive biases and weaknesses with compassion towards all humans who share those biases.
If he thought that materialists became materialists by reasoning correctly, he would either have been a materialist, or would have taken one of a particularly narrow set of positions (such as “materialism is based on correct reasoning, and how something can be false and correctly reasoned at the same time is one of God’s mysteries” or “materialists are only materialists because they start with different premises from me, but correctly reason from those premises”) which as far as I know he didn’t. (Or else taken no opinion on materialism, which he wasn’t going to do.)