Let’s imagine that a father says to his son: “When you get from your year in Europe, I expect that you’ll go to college.” Is this just a dry prediction? No, in saying that he “expects” his son to go to college, the father is using social pressure to hopefully tip the scale in the direction that he would be happy with. It’s equally natural, though, for a person to use that same word for something that’s indeed just dry prediction: “We expect that the hurricane will show up on our shores no later than tomorrow evening.” Interestingly—and this is my point—there are countless examples in natural language of words that are ambiguous in this way. This I can personally attest to in English and Japanese, but theoretically speaking I’m convinced, at least for the time being, that this pattern is universal.

Why, though, is natural language such that there’s often this ambiguity? The answer is related to the coordination of action, to the cooperation of agents. That answer is: The more consistent a pattern of action becomes, the more that pattern of action comes to be relied upon as an assumption for other patterns of action. That increasing consistency, which increasingly justifies even the driest and most socially detached of prediction, becomes (by virtue of its increasing consistency) a stronger and stronger bedrock for other kinds of action, which in turn makes a stronger and stronger case for using social pressure to keep people from breaking that consistency. For example, consider: “Japanese people take their shoes off when they go into the house.” Is this just a dry prediction about what’s to be expected of a Japanese person? Or does this expectation also bring with it social pressure to conform to the pattern, to the consistency? Obviously it’s both prediction and social pressure. The more empirically true the proposition becomes as an observation, the more reasonable it would be for the people who build houses in Japan to not worry about making the floors able to withstand the abuse of walking on them with shoes for years and years. Eventually, anybody who’s an exception to the rule finds themselves living in a society that’s no longer made for them.

Before I go on, I should be clear about what my goal is in this essay. My goal is to explain why it is that many people, especially nowadays, reject scientific thought and communication about human action and the human mind.

What I’ve written so far suggests that at least one of the reasons is that science, although ideally a purely descriptive mode of thought and communication, makes propositions that come off to many people as no less prescriptive than descriptive. In natural language, which is a reflection of natural psychology, there’s systematic equivocation between description and prescription when talking about the human mind and human action. That is, the same linguistic “form” is used for two distinct “substances,” one logical and one social. Science, by contrast, does its best to untangle description from prescription and give a prescriptionless description. And this, being artificial (in the best of ways), is difficult for anybody without a talent for science or enough instruction in science.

This natural description-prescription ambiguity makes it so even the most prescriptionless description about, e.g., how attraction works between men and women, is likely to make many people, again especially nowadays, uncomfortable. This uncomfortable feeling is something like: “Don’t tell me who I’m supposed to be attracted to and who I’m not!”

1. Some sensory complexes bring with them positive valence, and other sensory complexes bring with them negative valence. Metaphorically speaking, we’re “pulled to move toward” the former kind and “pushed to move away from” the latter kind.
2. Some sensory complexes have more positive valence, or less negative valence, than others. (a) We prefer higher positive valence to lower and lower negative valence to higher, and (b) in making choices, we try to maximize any possible positive valence and minimize any possible negative valence—those two propositions just being tautologically true, of course. But—and here’s the important point to be made here—some sensory complexes are equal to each other in expected valence. That is: Some sensory complexes are unequal to each other in that respect, and other sensory complexes are equal to each other in that respect. We may have a preference for X over Y, but we also may instead be indifferent between X and Z. For example: Imagine that you’re at a supermarket choosing whether to buy an apple or an orange to eat as a snack. After a moment of thought, you may find yourself reaching into the tray of apples, thus revealing a preference for an apple over an orange. But which apple will you choose? In choosing, you may ignore whether the apple does, or doesn’t, have a stem; such is indifference between a “stemmed” and an “unstemmed” apple. Your hierarchy of value in the moment of choice was such that 🍎 > 🍊 but unstemmed 🍎 = stemmed 🍎.
3. Empirically speaking, we’re a mixture of preference (e.g., 🍎 > 🍊) and indifference (e.g., unstemmed 🍎 = stemmed 🍎). That proposition can be treated as a true a posteriori postulate in the science of human action and the human mind. But let’s consider the respective logical implications of the two empirically false, but nevertheless useful and interesting, contraries of that a posteriori postulate: (a) the postulate of no such mixture in the sense of all preference and no indifference and (b) the postulate of no such mixture in the reverse sense, i.e. no preference and all indifference.
4. With all preference and no indifference, what’s logically entailed is choice (i.e., action) without categorization—unless, of course, even a “category” of only one sensory complex is admitted, definitionally speaking, as a “category.”
5. With no preference and all indifference, what’s logically entailed is no choice/action because everything is put together into just one single category.
6. Logically entailed in the (empirically true) mixture of preference and indifference, then, is a system of categorization. For example: It’s in sometimes preferring apples to oranges, but sometimes being indifferent, in turn, among the different kinds of apples, that we justify the category “apple.” And it’s only because some people, at some moments, prefer to eat a Honeycrisp instead of a Fuji, or a Granny Smith instead of a Red Delicious, that we further distinguish the supercategory “apple” into the various subcategories thereof: “Honeycrisp apple,” “Fuji apple,” etc.
7. Consider next that there’s not only positive and negative valence but also neutral valence. That is, a sensory complex can be desirable, undesirable, or neither desirable nor undesirable.
8. It’s common, though, for a yet uncategorized range of sensory complexes, all of them originally neutral in valence, to all take on an equivalently positive or negative valence, and thus become categorized, because the agent comes to believe that the originally neutral range of sensory complexes X is the cause of an already positive or negative category of sensory complexes Y. That is: Something originally neither desirable nor undesirable becomes either desirable or undesirable because the agent comes to believe that it’s the cause of something else, that something else being what’s more fundamentally desirable or undesirable. The valence of the effect is imputed to the cause. For example: Let’s say that your grandfather recently passed away and you’re looking through his belongings, which he bequeathed to you. An old clock sitting in the attic of his house looks like nothing to you, just junk to get rid of. But then you find a note from your grandfather saying to be careful with the clock because it’s an antique worth $5,000. The originally neutral valence of the clock—you didn’t care about it one way or the other—suddenly takes on the already positive valence of $5,000 (assuming, of course, that you believe that your grandfather’s note is true).
9. If you desire the effect Y, and X is the cause of that effect, then Y is the end and X is the means—definitionally speaking.
10. To summarize all of the foregoing: (a) With every preference comes a distinction in category (e.g., 🍎 vs. 🍊), and with every indifference comes no distinction in category (e.g., an 🍎 is an 🍎 whether it has a stem or not). (b) Our more fundamental preferences and indifferences, which determine our more fundamental categories, bring about, in accordance with our beliefs in cause and effect, our less fundamental preferences and indifferences, which in turn determine our less fundamental categories. (c) Thus, “our” system of categorization—the micro and macro, or in other words the psychology and sociology, of “the” system of categorization, to be analyzed elsewhere—is a function of belief and value.
11. That is: Out of our beliefs in cause and effect, along with our most fundamental values, comes all of our other values, and together all of that determines how we take all of our familiar sensory complexes and put those sensory complexes into categories. The most elegant generating function possible for our system of categorization takes as its input (a) our beliefs in cause and effect—perhaps our “ultimate” beliefs of that kind, whatever that may turn out to mean—and (b) our ultimate values.

Few fads in the modern West are more disturbing than the sudden positive light shed on sexualities understood until recently as obviously unhealthy. For example, an adult male with more than just an idle fantasy of becoming a “woman” is no longer thought of in the mainstream as being confused and mentally ill. Instead, he’s given both cultural and medical support for his decision. The culture applauds him for his bravery, and a doctor injects him with estrogen. Similarly, an adult female, in her futile quest to become a “man”—for she will never truly become a man—is cheered on, by family, friends, and strangers alike, when she makes the obviously insane decision to schedule a double mastectomy.

A related pair of examples is (1) the cultural support given to adult males who, in their failure to come into their own as men, reject the traditional expectation of adult males being masculine, and (2) the converse cultural support given to adult females who, at their peril, reject womanhood and femininity.

After a century of socialist catastrophe, we find, strangely enough, that the essence of the socialist psyche—a way of thinking and feeling that I hope to give a clear explanation of in this essay—is still perfectly alive and well, though of course not as much in purely economic terms anymore. That is, the way of thinking and feeling of the kind of people who are susceptible to the socialist contagion is, despite the spectacular failure of socialism in the 20th century, unfortunately still very common. The spirit of socialism has grown weak economically (at least in comparison to how strong it was in the 20th century), but it’s still very strong elsewhere, viz. in feminism and social justice. Ultimately, the essence or spirit of the socialist, feminist, and social-justice psyches are all one and the same: All of those ideologies are built on the same foundation of sand: They’re all manifestations of the “denial of X nature,” whether the denial of human nature (i.e., what we all have in common) or the denial of male nature (i.e., what men all have in common) or the denial of female nature (i.e., what women all have in common). That is, all of those ideologies share the same fundamental article of faith: the faith in the “infinite malleability of man.” Just because you’re a man, or a woman, or white, or black, neither means that you are one way or another, nor means that you should be one way or another. Anybody can be anything. We’re all free to choose. The groups that we belong to don’t determine what we are or should be as individuals.

While traditional Western culture took into account racial, sexual, and many of the other fundamental differences between different groups of people, the modern West tries in vain to ignore or get rid of those differences.

That is: The West of generations past took seriously the differences in strengths, weaknesses, and proclivities among different groups. For example, being born male, they thought, “destined” you down a certain path in life, and being born female “destined” you down a different path. If a man acted like the stereotype of a woman, then he was told to man up. And if a woman acted like the stereotype of a man, then she would get the same kind of treatment, just in the reverse. But in the modern age, i.e. in the age of feminism and social justice, gender roles are no longer taken for granted.

Western culture has taken a degenerate turn as democracy has replaced monarchy in the wake of the catastrophes of the World Wars. Standards have fallen precipitously, with even the most justified and measured of criticism often being rejected out of hand for being “sexist,” “racist,” or otherwise socially unacceptable. For example, if a man proposes to in effect turn himself into a poor substitute for a woman, then you’re expected to at least nod along passively or if not cheer him on actively. Most importantly, you’re not allowed to ask what the underlying mental illness may be—for that, of course, would be “transphobic”—and you’re not allowed to give him the advice that, above all, he truly and desperately needs: the advice on how to bring his mental world into natural alignment with the unchangeable facts of the physical world (the relevant fact here being that he was born male). Ultimately, what he needs isn’t an injection or surgery but advice on how to live in harmony with the natural order.

In modeling the regularity in human action or the human mind: It’s possible to (1) think in terms of an individual as part of a group. For example, you can say: “Japanese people are honest, and Mr. Takahashi is Japanese. Therefore, Mr. Takahashi is honest.” It’s also possible to (2) think in terms of the individual alone. You can say, simply: “Mr. Takahashi is honest.”

Interestingly, both of those ways of modeling regularity are such that the resulting propositions can feel suffocating. To use an example from my own life: As a white American who spends a lot of time in Japan, I find it frustrating when a Japanese person assumes that I’ll think or act in a certain way just because I’m a “foreigner.” Whether what’s attributed is positive or negative, it feels like being boxed in arbitrarily; my personality isn’t just an outgrowth of my nationality or race. But it can also feel suffocating even when the purported regularity is thought of as an outgrowth of you as a unique individual. Consider: If you want to put your past behind you, move on from it, and invent yourself anew, then most radical, and thus most useful in that regard, would be to move somewhere new and cut all of your old ties to the people from your past. The people around you knowing what kind of person that you’ve been up until now can trap you into staying like that indefinitely. Moving somewhere new can get you out of that trap.

If you model a person as part of a group, then you challenge their free will to deviate from the past pattern of action of the people in that group. You bind their future to the past of others. And even if you model the person as a unique individual, then you do the same thing, just according to their own past rather than the past of others.

Thus, any attempt at scientific description of the regularity in human action or the human mind is easily taken as suffocating to free will, i.e. binding of the future of action to the past.

The scientific or rational approach is one of pure description—insofar as that ideal is even possible—with any prescriptions being included only when laid bare as the descriptions that they must ultimately be. For example, when thinking scientifically or rationally it’s perfectly reasonable to give an argument of the following logical form: “X causes Y. You want Y. Therefore, you should also want X.” Whether X actually causes Y, and whether you actually want Y, are separate questions; they’re questions that can be debated. What’s important to emphasize here is simply that science doesn’t hide value judgments but puts them out in the open for all to see. You can describe a person’s value judgments, and in some cases you may even be able to tell them something about their value judgments that they’re not already consciously aware of. But science always does its best to untangle judgments of value from beliefs in cause and effect. The ideal of science is to offer propositions only in an ultimately purely descriptive way, whether or not any prescriptions are in turn logically implied.

That is, scientific propositions are always perspective-neutral in their formulation, though it’s of course possible for each person to plug in their own value judgments and then in effect get advice on what to do.

To be clear: It’s not that the scientific approach doesn’t let you tell people what they should do. It’s just that the scientific approach lays bare the logical steps of the argument; it untangles value from belief. It doesn’t preach: “Do X, for X is right and good.” Instead, it says (much more nihilistically than any preacher would): “If you want Y, then you should do X.” Science is a tool, and like any other tool it’s itself agnostic about what people use it for. More concretely, science is analogous to a knife in that, e.g., a chef can use a knife to cut an onion, yes, but a mugger can also use that same knife for a much different purpose.