Michael Lackey teaches courses in twentieth-century American and African American literature at the University of Minnesota, Morris. A recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship, he has published articles in many journals, including Philosophy and Literature, Journal of the History of Ideas, and the Journal of Colonialism & Colonial History. University Press of Florida has recently published his book, African American Atheists and Political Liberation: A Study of the Socio-Cultural Dynamics of Faith, which was named a “Choice Outstanding Academic Title” for 2007. He is currently working on his second book, which is tentatively titled: Modernist God States: A Literary Study of the Theological Origins of Totalitarianism.
In this discussion with D.J. Grothe, Michael Lackey talks about black liberation atheism, and the view among certain black intellectuals that belief in God results in racial inequality. He explores the black intellectual critique of the Enlightenment and of humanism, and how this has played out in post-modernist skepticism of humanism, science and reason in the academy. Focusing on Richard Wright, he explains the view that the real value of science is how it is democratic, not necessarily that it leads to “the truth”. And he talks about the correspondence theory of truth and why he rejects it.
If only I had even heard of such a thing 2 or 3 decades ago. The only choices were semi-wacked out christians or completely wacked out muslims (not the real muslims, the american heretical sects).
There were black atheists in the late 19th century?
I always found the embracing of the church by black people during and after the time if slavery bizarre. They were embracing the church which facilitated their enslavement and oppression. This was mentioned but not really addressed.
So far as the enlightenment & science go, I never was taught or believed that science is the channel to Truth with a capital T. My science education taught me Truth is close to not existing, close enough we assume it doesn’t as a matter of course. IE, all knowledge is provisional in time even if we sometimes must assume things to be true to progress.
Prof Lackey refers to white humanists who used humanism to justify oppression and indignity of blacks- I would like to know more about this. Who were these people?
I’d don’t accept post-modernism on the grounds it is an arbitrary construction, a manufactured idea with no grounding in reality.
Prof. Lackey- a merely editorial observation. The phrase ‘the way I would phrase it is this’ most oft is needless. However you phrase is the way you would phrase it.
In the discussion around post-modernism, it appeared that DJ and Dr. Lackey were bantering about “truth” without defining it or recognizing that they may meant different things when they refer to “truth.” However, I fault Dr. Lackey for switching definitions midstream. He admitted that he would go to a medical doctor (scientist) for health reasons that are associated with his own body. How does he then allow science to be a “fiction” when he’s undergoing a medical procedure? Is it a fiction when he’s having a bone set, a skin cancer removed, or a heart transplant? Does the fact that they can do these things with increasing success and rigor make the knowledge true, or is it still fiction? I think that Dr. Lackey needs to examine what he means and either use different words or define his terms before starting such discussions.
DJ’s conduct and sharpness in this interview, however, make it one of his best ever. He was courteous and calm, and consistently articulate in not letting Michael get away with his own form of “intellectual masturbation” (a quote from the show). In particular, DJ was most profound when he commented that Michael’s statement lacked profundity. I don’t often listen to the podcasts a second time, but I plan to do so with this one.
In my younger, less informed (and still Christian) days, I read Richard Wright’s books with awe at his perspective. However, I was on my own and had no context in which to place them. I appreciated this podcast to help me place Wright’s writing within the world of atheistic humanism ... sort of.
I really enjoyed this discussion, and wished it could continue.
Michael Lackey manages to get his points across (particularly de-bunking the cartoon caricature of ‘post-modernism’ so popular among secularists and skeptics) without inspiring Mr. Grothe to get his back up, as happened during the infamous Chris Hedges interview.
The point is that colonialism and imperialism have always found ‘humanist’ ideological handmaidens alongside missionary christianity and continue to do so. Lackey’s argument about the contribution of Black American atheism to the critique of both religion and Enlightenmnent humanism (without lumping the two together) which then furnished tools for a critique of so many other forms of human oppression (eg., the woman question) illuminated a vast region of which I am ignorant but would certainly like to learn more about. During the interview, Lackey doesn’t mention the influence of the Communist International on Wright (or of Marxism in general), which might have pulled some of the philosophical and political threads together…
Another thing glaringly missing was any reference to the role of ‘humanist’ apologists for the so-called ‘War on Terror’ and the racist ‘clash of civilizations’ ideology more broadly (thought Edward Said was mentioned in passing). Recall CFI’s recurring problems with this - eg. its inability to take a position even on such obvious crimes as the U.S. assaults/occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, as leading ‘new atheists’ cheerlead for ‘humanist’ cluster bombing in Iraq and toy with the prospect of nuking Iran (Harris) ‘because of the way they think’.
One wonders whether the obvious topics of Marxism and the Middle-East in Dr. Lackey’s discussion might be casualties of the creeping ‘homeland security’ mentality and its deadly effect on academic freedom.
I have struggled with the concept of postmodernism, which seems to mean a lot of different things to different people. I have yet to understand the full gravity of this term and would appreciate further explanation into why postmodernism does or does not conflict with the humanist perspective. Personally I feel no conflict between the two and feel this could be resolved with a concise definition of the term.
In the interview Michael & DJ agreed on the short definition that postmodern thought was (correct my paraphrasing) “skepticism to the extreme”. Even to the point that our concept of “truth” is really just a collection of pragmatic connections. I think identifying aspects of a philosophy (humanism isn’t off limits to critical analysis) that are not satisfactory to everyone is admirable, and by cross referencing all of those unsatisfactory aspects we can better hone in on a more unified position.
Edit: Furthermore, I suspect the main reason postmodernism is commonly susceptible to the criticism of being exclusive in their own language, is that not enough has been done to break the concept up into easy to digest concepts. I would say that the concept of natural selection was somewhat unfairly characterized as “survival of the fittest”, but even that shortcut concept got everyone closer to the main idea (atleast collectively).
I find the claim “if there were no human being, there will be no concept of gravity” a non sense or a empty claim, depending on the meaning of the words.
If you acknowledge that even without any human being (or any alien advanced enough to observe the gravity fact) there be sill gravity, well, the above claim is meaningless and empty.
If you believe that without any being advanced enough to observe gravity there will be no gravity, well, it is nonsense.
Right, Barto. I haven’t listened to the podcast, and so I don’t know how that issue came up, but the general knock on postmodernism is its tendency to go in for a species of vulgar relativism, whereby ‘truth’, ‘evidence’, ‘reason’ are just various sorts of social construct, without any particular merit. That sort of philosophy is a direct rejection of the entire Enlightenment project.
There may be other, less extreme forms of postmodernism that aren’t quite as problematic; however all the sorts I am familiar with at the very least involve an overgrown verbiage that makes them very difficult to read and understand. And the complexity of the verbiage is in no apparent relation to the complexity or depth of the thinking. Of course, I am speaking in generalizations and there may be exceptions.
Sate, There have been some very useful books discussing the critique of humanism, and in my estimation, Martin Halliwell’s and Andy Mousley’s book (Critical Humanisms: Humanist/Anti-Humanist Dialogues) is the best. But let me briefly explain why I believe it is the best. Mousley and Halliwell examine a variety of humanisms, and they specifically explain why each form of humanism has had its own distinctive problems. However, like myself, they have ultimately tried to defend humanism. But you ask specifically for a name. In my book, I spend a lot of time discussing Aime Cesaire, who claims in Discourse on Colonialism: “it would be worthwhile to study clinically, in detail, the steps taken by Hitler and Hitlerism and to reveal to the very distinguished, very humanistic, very Christian bourgeois of the twentieth century that without his being aware of it, he has a Hitler inside him, that Hitler inhabits him.” Cesaire, therefore, concludes: “At the end of formal humanism and philosophic renunciation, there is Hitler.” Cesaire quotes and discusses the work of many humanists in this book. In my book, I try to explain why Cesaire offers such a nasty view of humanism. But here’s the strange thing: Cesaire calls himself a humanist. So while Cesaire critiques humanism, he ultimately believes in humanism.
As for your comment about postmodernism, there is something very fascinating going on here. You say that you were never taught to believe in Truth with a capital T, and that your training in enlightenment, science, and IE have taught you that truth is provisional. According to many postmodernists, your definition of truth would qualify you as a postmodernist—in the Postmodern Condition, Jean-Francois defines postmodernism simply as “incredulity toward metanarratives.” Postmodernists claim that no metaphysical or absolute Truth exists. What we have of “truth” is a provisional construct that shifts and evolves in relation to the community of language users. Granted, there are some extreme postmodernists, who hold that all truth is equally non-truth, but most postmodernists I know and study hold that some truths can be extremely valuable constructs, while others truths are extremely destructive. Where I think you would probably differ from postmodernists is in your claim about an arbitrary construction. Yes, postmodernism is anti-foundational (in the sense that Rorty defines). But postmodernists would claim that all systems of knowledge are arbitrary constructions, whether people believe it or not, whether they think so or not. Most postmodernists would say that they unabashedly acknowledge that their systems of knowledge are arbitrarily constructed.
I have so much more that I want to say, but I am really in a rush at the moment. Talk to you later, michael
Right, Barto. I haven’t listened to the podcast, and so I don’t know how that issue came up, but the general knock on postmodernism is its tendency to go in for a species of vulgar relativism, whereby ‘truth’, ‘evidence’, ‘reason’ are just various sorts of social construct, without any particular merit.
A really really great podcast. I think it deserved a couple of minutes more or a second part. Lackey and DJ exposed their POV and entered a very well reasoned discusion really worth listening. There was when prof. Lackey came with the phrase about gravity.
The kind of posmodernism I know was born in order to justify (or defend) psychoanalysis. I tend to believe that here (one of the two remaining psichoanalytics countries in the world) the humanist academia (humanist used as an oposition to natural science and mathematic) embraces posmodernism as a way to protect psychoanalysis from the inquiry of scientific psychology: after a weird turn, is not science what challenges psychoanalysis, is psychoanalysis what challenges science because it exposes that science is a narrative.
So maybe I am being unfair with the real posmodernist (I swear I was about to write real scotmen ), but the ones I met support the ridiculous claim that there are no laws whatsoever in the universe or that our science is not even a good approach to those laws. Of course, they write it in a computer builded upon the solid state physic theory.
I don’t have any trouble admitin that our science didn’t reach the ultimate ‘Truth’, but I don’t see how it is posible to claim that there are no laws in the universe or that our science is no better aproximation to these laws than, for instance, chamanism.
I find the claim “if there were no human being, there will be no concept of gravity” a non sense or a empty claim, depending on the meaning of the words.
If you acknowledge that even without any human being (or any alien advanced enough to observe the gravity fact) there be sill gravity, well, the above claim is meaningless and empty.
If you believe that without any being advanced enough to observe gravity there will be no gravity, well, it is nonsense.
Not only do I agree with Barto, I also think that by making this kind of statement Prof Lackey commits post modernism’s usual sin - playing with words. As a professor of English I would expect that he would understand that unless we have agreed meanings for words, language is meaningless. What does the word ‘concept’ mean? As highlighted by Barto, it can mean either the item (e.g. gravity) itself or it’s linguistic description. Only the latter is a human construct, but to say that it’s fiction is silly because it has no independent life; it’s simply a way of conveying a truth, not a truth in its own right.
He also confuses the scientific endeavour, which is a human construct, and scientific knowledge, which most certainly is not.
I wouldn’t say this kind of silliness is mental masturbation, because it’s not even fun…
NH Baritone, I want to briefly respond to the following: “I fault Dr. Lackey for switching definitions midstream. He admitted that he would go to a medical doctor (scientist) for health reasons that are associated with his own body. How does he then allow science to be a “fiction” when he’s undergoing a medical procedure? Is it a fiction when he’s having a bone set, a skin cancer removed, or a heart transplant? Does the fact that they can do these things with increasing success and rigor make the knowledge true, or is it still fiction?” PZ Myers and I have been hashing this idea out for the last year, and we finally figured out what divides us. PZ invited me to give a lecture on the different types of atheism, and I claimed that, according to postmodern atheists, science is a fiction. PZ said that scientists would neither accept nor appreciate this claim. But I retorted: fiction is a positive phrase for us in the humanities. It doesn’t mean that something is not “true.” From a postmodern perspective, all concepts are fictions. Why? They start with the claim that, because there is no God, there can be no pre-existent concepts waiting to be discovered. What we have of concepts are human constructions. Freud’s theory of the unconscious, Nietzsche’s will to power, and gravity are all concepts about the world. In the Gay Science, Nietzsche clarifies this point nicely: “We have arranged for ourselves a world in which we can live—by positing bodies, lines, planes, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content; without these articles of faith nobody now could endure life. But that does not prove them. Life is no argument.” The word table is not the same thing as the referent table, and for Nietzsche (and most postmodernists), the moment we enter the world of language, we have entered the world of fiction. Given this view of language, does it follow that language is useless or meaningless? While Nietzsche and many postmodernists insist that there is no metaphysical Truth, they do insist that truth, as a constructed fiction, is crucial for human living. When I say that science is a fiction, I mean this in a positive sense—I consider scientists artists. Indeed, I consider them some of the most important artists alive. Now here’s the key point that I, as a postmodern humanist, would make. The fiction of Enlightenment reason marks a decisive advance in human history, because scientists have created (not discovered) a rigorous method for systematizing our experiences in the world. If traditional humanists favored science over religion because science gave them epistemological access to Truth, postmodern humanists favor science over religion because science has created a system and method of knowledge that is democratically accessible to all people. Religion, in my view, is a closed system of knowledge—when somebody claims that they have knowledge of a moral Truth because God disclosed it to them, I am absolutely lost, because I have no idea what the word God means. But science has created a method that allows us to test and verify its propositions. My motivation, therefore, for favoring science is not that it gives me Truth, but that it is an empirically verifiable system of constructed knowledge.
For postmodern humanists, it is possible to call science a fiction, but also to consider the truths of science both valuable and useful. I feel the same way about Freud’s theory of the unconscious. In race theory, we make a distinction between conscious and unconscious forms of racism. Is there really a thing called the unconscious inside of humans? To my mind, that is an incoherent question. What I would say is this: Freud created a fiction about the human that enables us to talk intelligently about our experiences in the world. But, following Nietzsche, just because it is useful, it doesn’t follow that it is True.
I hope this clarifies what I was trying to say. By the way, this was my first radio interview, and I think the nerves got the better of me at times—I just listened to the podcast, and I certainly was not as clear as I could have been.
Balak, Thank you so much for your kind remarks. I want briefly to address your claim about “the cartoon caricature of ‘post-modernism’ so popular among secularists and skeptics.” To my mind, your claim could be applied to postmodernists as well as humanists. At many universities today, most professors in the humanities are postmodernists. Unfortunately, many of them have uncritically accepted some of the postmodern critiques of humanism, and since I am a staunch defender of humanism, the fundamentalist postmodernists attack me quite viciously for my endorsement of humanism. But I always try to point out that the picture they have of humanism is nothing more than a cartoon caricature. I find that the same thing happens with fundamentalist humanists. Instead of laboring over the thirty most important books by postmodernists, they dismiss postmodernism without really knowing much about the movement.
But change is coming. PZ Myers and I have been considering doing a conference that would bring together humanists and postmodernists in order to clarify our differences and underscore our similarities. We will not be inviting fundamentalist postmodernists or fundamentalist humanists, because, instead of actually listening to other people, instead of trying to understand what other people are saying, they merely go on the attack—like fundamentalist Christians. PZ and I have spent the last year patiently listening to each other and clarifying our positions to each other, and what we have discovered is that very little separates us. Yes, I call science a fiction, and while this bothered PZ last year, he now knows that this has an extremely positive meaning for postmodernists. Moreover, we now realize that we just have different reasons for claiming that Enlightenment rationalism marks a decisive advance for culture—he sees it in terms of advancing scientific knowledge, while I see it in terms of radical democracy.
My motivation, therefore, for favoring science is not that it gives me Truth, but that it is an empirically verifiable system of constructed knowledge.
But why do you ultimately favour a verifiable knowledge system over non-verifiable ones?.
I do and I have an explanation why I do favour those: because they are much better at predicting the outcomes of reality. I would say that the predictive capacity is the ultimate reason that leads us to prefer a MD over a chaman.
This predictive capacity leads me to think that there is something like reality and we tend to be closer to it with verifiable knowledge than with non-verificable knowledge.
Moreover, the word verifiable means, as I see, a kind of realism: you verify the knowledge against something, against some system of reference. I’d say that that system of reference is reality, or, at least, a good aproximation. This is the ultimate reason of why the scientific knowledge is so good at predicting the outcomes of reality.
(Entering a discussion about phylosophy with a humanities teacher using my second language… maybe I am running toward a public humiliation on this thread )
Entering a discussion about phylosophy with a humanities teacher using my second language… maybe I am running toward a public humiliation on this thread
Don’t worry, you won’t be the first! (I’ve been there a few times myself)—-anyway, publicly humiliating participants is not the purpose of these forums!
science is a fiction. PZ said that scientists would neither accept nor appreciate this claim. But I retorted: fiction is a positive phrase for us in the humanities.
There are so many things to disagree with Lackey about in this podcast, but (for the sake of time right now) I’ll simply disagree with one thing: this desire to use the word “fiction” in a way that is completely disconnected from the way the majority of English speakers use it. You simply can’t use this word to describe what postmodernists think of science unless you mean “untruth”. First of all, it’s horrendously misleading (if not flat-out deceptive). If I said “Lackey is a liar*” and then attached a little footnote (*and by liar, I mean interesting guy), you wouldn’t accept that because words have meanings. Postmodernists are messing with the accepted definitions of words. Second, what if we accept the phrase that “science is a fiction” and “Lackey is a liar”? Now, we have a problem because everyone reads those sentences with the old definition of “fiction” and “liar”. Now, everyone in the world thinks that scientists believe that “science is a fiction” and Lackey admits that “he is a liar” - but they understand those phrases using the old (aka established, accepted) definitions. Oh, but don’t get offended if everyone in the world refers to you as a “liar”. Postmodernists REALLY need to use other words, not use alternative, opaque, personalized definitions of existing words that mean something entirely different than their real meanings. You’d almost think that postmodernists are going out of their way to confuse their listeners (and maybe they think the whole “accepted definitions of words” is “so last century”).
), but the ones I met support the ridiculous claim that there are no laws whatsoever in the universe or that our science is not even a good approach to those laws. Of course, they write it in a computer builded upon the solid state physic theory. 
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