Binary Questions: How Dualism Still Rules the Modern World

A "loaded question" is a question that is asked, not in order to gain any actual information, but to lead the person being question to a certain conclusion. It's a form of propaganda or persuasion.

A loaded question is a question with a false or questionable presupposition, and it is "loaded" with that presumption. The question "Have you stopped beating your wife?" is a loaded question that presupposes that you have beaten your wife prior to its asking, as well as that you have a wife. If you are unmarried, or have never beaten your wife, then the question is loaded. www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=loaded+question

Another version of the loaded question is the logical fallacy known as the Complex Question:

Complex Question: the fallacy of phrasing a question that, by the way it is worded, assumes something not contextually granted, assumes something not true, or assumes a false dichotomy. To be a fallacy, and not just a rhetorical technique, the conclusion (usually the answer to the question) must be present either implicitly or explicitly. http://philosophy.lander.edu/logic/complex.html

Both loaded and complex questions are fairly obvious ways to manipulate. A more subtle and even more common type of propaganda is what I'm going to call the Binary Question. When it comes to issues of politics, religion or philosophy, people are generally led by authorities, intellectuals and the media to take one of two positions. For example:

"Are you a liberal or conservative?" (or "Are you a Democrat or Republican?")

"Are you for or against abortion?" (or the death penalty, gun control, etc.)

"Do you believe in Creationism or Evolution?"

The way these kind of questions, common in opinion polls, are phrased assumes that you believe that the answer can be definitively answered either A or B. If you haven't thought very much about the issue (or even if you have), the result is that you are almost coerced into answering in one of these ways.

The simplest and most straightforward type of binary question is the true and false type of question, common on tests. Presumably, on true and false questions, there is a correct or incorrect answer. However, when it comes to issues that have many possible points of view, and they are presented in binary terms, the reader, listener or viewer is being manipulated into seeing the issue in a simple, binary manner.

This leads us to another philosophical issue - dualism. Dualism often refers to a belief in absolutes like good vs. evil or the split between mind and body. However, it can also take the form of believing in a neat split between two opposing sides. Social discourse almost invariably tends to push people into taking one side or the other.

For the purposes of this discussion, we are concerned not so much with the metaphysical implications of dualism, but with the more commonplace ways that dualism appears in everyday discourse.

Dualism and Binary Questions Historically

This analysis is necessarily going to be oversimplified, but in general we can divide societies into three historic periods -pre-modern, modern and post-modern. These are not neat divisions; for example, there are still societies today that are mostly living in pre-modern cultural frameworks.

In pre-modern societies, the issue of dualism is almost absent in everyday life. This is because people are not raised to believe that they have any choices when it comes to what they believe about important issues. For example, in medieval Europe or in a fundamentalist Islamic state, no one is/was permitted to question the basic belief systems. They may do so privately, or in small groups, but there is no public discourse about such things. So the issue of binary questions is not really relevant as, essentially, you aren't supposed to ask questions at all. To some extent, this mentality persists in certain subcultures even in modern Western societies. In America, this started to break down roughly in the 1960s.

In modern democratic societies, dualism is pervasive. Debate is considered the hallmark of free expression. This can, of course be quite deceptive. A good example would be ancient Greece, usually labeled the first democracy, but where slavery was unapologetically practiced.

A more subtle deception than ownership of human beings within a supposedly free society is the very topic of this essay -binary questions. There is arguably a strong element of propaganda or intellectual manipulation going on whenever something is presented in an "either this or that" framework. You can, of course, answer that you are somewhere in the middle, but this makes one feel indecisive or wishy-washy.

Dialectic

This brings up yet another philosophical term - dialectic. The first kind of dialectic that Western philosophers usually recognize is the Socratic dialogues of Plato. If you read these, you will notice that the entire dialogues are long, complicated games of wordplay (or semantics), in which Socrates leads, confuses and intellectually coerces his hapless opponents into ultimately conceding some point. Of course, since Plato created the entire argument, Socrates always wins.

A more modern, and far more difficult to understand version of dialectic was created by Hegel.

Hegelian dialectic, usually presented in a three-fold manner, was stated by Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus as comprising three dialectical stages of development: a thesis, giving rise to its reaction, an antithesis, which contradicts or negates the thesis, and the tension between the two being resolved by means of a synthesis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic

Even without delving too deeply the extremely abstract metaphysics of Hegel, we can recognize that synthesis is an extremely important concept, and one that is seldom acknowledged in most discussions. For the very notion of a third principle that mediates between two opposing ones instantly creates a far more complex, and arguably more sophisticated intellectual atmosphere.

Of course, thesis, antithesis and synthesis remain abstractions, and when you attempt to plug them into actual arguments, they do not magically resolve things. Some questions, after all, do not lend themselves to this format. Consider, for example, the question, "Did Smith or Jones commit the crime?" This, or any question of fact, cannot be resolved by a simple formula. It may be that Smith or Jones is guilty, or that neither are. But when it comes to issues like politics and philosophy, there is often more room for such a device.

One relatively recent example of how a dialectical method can help to chart the course to a more sophisticated view of things is Benjamin Barber's essay (which later become a book), Jihad Vs. McWorld, first published in the Atlantic. Says Barber in the introduction to the essay:

The two axial principles of our age-tribalism and globalism-clash at every point except one: they may both be threatening to democracy

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199203/barber

This is a complex subject, but the key here is that Barber is presenting a persuasive argument that the two primary opposing forces of the modern world both pose a serious threat to a free and democratic world. This, written in the pre-9-11 world of hyper-vigiligance regarding terrorism, suggests that to create a better world we have to move beyond the dualism or binary of tribalism vs. globalism.

Postmodernism, Quantum Theory and Dualism

While there are pre-modern and modern societies, postmodernism is still a movement that exists within modern societies. There are no pure postmodern societies (some might argue that the concept itself is an oxymoron, believing that the postmodernism is antithetical to any organized society).

We can identify movements that are part of, or at least compatible with postmodernism. The aforementioned Hegelian dialectic is a postmodern idea. So are existentialism and many of the implications of quantum physics, such as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

Again, when dealing with such vast topics, it's necessary to simplify. In general, however, we can observe that postmodernism is a way of looking at the world that defies both the homogeneity of pre-modernism (there is only one answer, don't question authority), and the dualism of modern society (take sides, choose a candidate or party).

While there are many arguments that can be made for or against postmodernism in the abstract, there is a fairly straightforward bias that the majority of people have against postmodernism. That is, that it breeds uncertainty, undercuts values and promotes anarchy.

While the most vocal critics of postmodernism are cultural conservatives, when it comes down to it, secular humanists and liberals are not very fond of it either (even though conservatives assume, with some justification, that liberal intellectuals are to blame for it all). After all, liberals are at least as contentious and dualistic as conservatives; atheists at least as convinced of their correctness as monotheists. In most cases, the most postmodern professor of literature, art history or cultural theory rejoins the everyday world of dualism when he or she leaves the classroom and turns on the television or talks about politics.

The real fear regarding postmodernism is that it will lead to a kind of Alice In Wonderland chaos, where nothing makes sense and all possibilities are equally valid (or absurd or meaningless). In other words, nihilism.

I will not attempt to argue here that the critics of postmodernism have misunderstood or misrepresented postmodernism. The truth be told, it would be almost impossible to come up with a coherent social order of any kind based on the musings of a Derrida or Focault. Instead, I will claim that the basic premises of postmodernism, along with existentialism, can be -I would go as far as to say must be- woven into the fabric of everyday discourse in much the same way that the recent findings of quantum physics can be integrated into modern science without rendering our everyday, "Newtonian" physical reality chaotic.

Denying Post-modernism -or Trying to Put Schrodinger's Cat Back in the Bag

It's interesting to note that none of the movements that can be associated with postmodernism are very recent. They can be traced at least to the 19th to mid-20th Centuries (e.g. existentialism, Hegel, Nietzsche, and physicists such as Schrodinger, Heisenberg and Bohm).

Schrodinger's Cat, a fairly simple thought experiment, is a good example of a way of looking at things that shatters the binary dualism of most modern discourse. In this experiment, rather than A or B being true, both are true in some way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_cat

Contemporary culture mostly goes right on behaving as though we were still living under the modernistic rubric of Descartes and Newton (no doubt, it's another oversimplification to personify these two as the poster boys for modernism -Newton, for example, had a fervent interest in the occult--, but as far as they are popularly understood, it will do for now to use them as examples).

The Creationism vs. Evolution Debate

We could pick many examples, but I can't think of a more pure or enduring example of the modernistic, dualistic paradigm in action than the evolution vs. creationism debate. Let us consider one aspect of this debate, in order to limit the discussion and keep it manageable --the debate over what should be taught in public schools.

Creationists, of course, want to teach the Biblical story of creation. One question that is seldom addressed is this -why should only one creation story be told when there are at least hundreds? Creationists, of course, do not adhere to either the multicultural tenets of postmodernism or even the intellectualism of modernism. They are mostly residing in the pre-modern certainty of faith.

Evolutionists, in turn, see it as a simple matter of scientific fact versus primitive superstition; reason versus irrationality. To their way of thinking, invoking the principles of science and reason should be sufficient to win the battle. However, even assuming the scientific validity of their case (a great deal to assume indeed, but let's do so for the sake of argument), they are missing a significant piece of the picture.

Evolution may not be compatible with a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible, but it can be reconciled with many other spiritual beliefs, such as the mystical or pantheistic belief that God or a universal consciousness pervades all of nature. While they may argue that children are free to believe this while learning about evolution, the fact remains that a strictly scientific approach to knowledge seems designed to foster a materialistic view of life.

"Crackpot" Theories of Evolution

While it is not even close to respectable to mention this in academic circles, there are intelligent people who believe in alternative views of human evolution. Is there, for example, anything intrinsically unscientific about believing that aliens from other planets were responsible for creating the human species? Zacharia Sitchin, for example, has spent many years deciphering Sumerian documents in his efforts to uncover evidence supporting the "alien" theory of evolution

http://www.sitchin.com/

Terrance McKenna, meanwhile, argued for what has been called the "Stoned Ape" theory of evolution, the premise being that psychedelic mushrooms were the catalyst behind the development of the human brain.

http://users.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/McKenna/Evolution/

Interestingly enough, neither of these "crackpot" theories is fundamentally inconsistent with either evolution or creationism -- when these terms are understood in broad terms. Alien intervention, for example, does not invalidate the possibility of evolution or of a Creator (who could have created the aliens and humans alike). Only a dogmatic approach renders these theories mutually exclusive. Yet traditional creationists and evolutionists would be equally horrified at the mere mention of teaching such theories in public schools.

The point here is simply that the dualistic reductionism of most creationism vs. evolution debates attempt to coerce people into choosing between scientific materialism or orthodox monotheism, without having the freedom to even ponder other possibilities. And this is only one example.

Possible Worlds Theory

One school of philosophy that attempts to reconcile all conceivable possibilities is possible worlds theory. This is the idea that any notion that can be coherently thought is representative of a real world. What this actually means is open to many interpretations., but the essential point is that all possible worlds are actual worlds, somewhere, in some sense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possible_world

The possible worlds theory of philosophers is somewhat analogous to the multi or many worlds theories of some physicists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation

In both cases, the essential belief is that everything that can be imagined is real. This is not something many people are ready to consider, but it represents a possible way out of the dualistic dilemma.

Back to Duality and Complex Questions

I will now attempt to reign in this rather broad essay, returning to the original questions of duality and binary questions. My purpose is not to "prove" that possible worlds theory is correct, rendering all dualistic arguments obsolete. My purpose, rather, is the more modest one of simply calling attention to the fact that the modern (as opposed to post-modern) dualistic paradigm is what still rules when it comes to mainstream politics, science, journalism and education (at least at the pre-college levels).

The world that is presented to you is almost always presented through the lens of dualism. Our very freedom is often equated with our ability to "choose" --but the choice is almost invariably limited to two possibilities. The questions we are asked are usually loaded, complex, and/or binary. Coke or Pepsi, Republican or Democrat, Team A or Team B, God or No God, Pro Choice or Pro Life, Capitalism or Socialism, etc.

If you need proof of this, consider that in the United States today, it's still all but impossible for a third party candidate to be taken seriously (whether the whole binary question scourge is mainly an American phenomenon is an interesting question in itself; I suspect it's pervasive throughout the Western world, but more so in the U.S.).

I introduced possible worlds theory because it's a possible model of including an almost infinite number of possibilities at every turn. Postmodern phobics will no doubt see this as an invitation to intellectual decline, if not chaos, but this needn't be the case. Remember, possible worlds theory states that anything that you can imagine is real. This means that we have infinite choices. It does not mean we have to choose, or even seriously consider all of them. But in most cases, we would do well to consider more than two.