Signaling theory and postmodernism

From Of Words and Weapons from The Scholar's Stage.

My readers probably suspect this essay is an attack on leftist rhetoric and identity based politics. "Post-modernism" and "critical theory" have their roots in Marxist thought, it is true. And yes, in the activist's insistence that argument be reduced to identity the parallel with Marxism's most dangerous ideas is unmistakable. However, standard leftist rhetoric is not my not target today. I bring up Marx because I am concerned with a different intellectual trend: signalling theory.

Signalling theory has been pushed by a diverse set of individuals, though the most prominent tend to be associated with the realms of economics or evolutionary psychology.[6] The central proposition of signalling theory is that the vast majority of arguments made in the public sphere are not made in good faith. An outraged tweet is not written to express genuine emotion, but to signal solidarity with the 'right' side. A verbose blog post is not written to persuade its readers of its argument, but of the cleverness of it author. A well circulated censure of some racist act is not written to convict the racist, but to display the Wokeness of the censor. The connecting string in all of these cases is that your arguments are less about your ideas than shaping other people's perceptions of you. Whether you believe you are writing primarily to shape other people's perceptions of you is immaterial. As with the Marxist theorists, signalling theorists are happy to conclude that signalling does not need to be a fully conscious process. In place of a class consciousness imposed by the material circumstances of an individual's social status, signalling theorists trace the origins of self-interested arguments to mental social-status 'modules' imposed by the material circumstances of an individual's evolutionary heritage.

The comparison with Marxism will upset those who gleefully employ the rhetoric of signalling theory in their daily dealings with the social justice left. In the modern West, Marx is most popular in the least empirical and most politically driven academic tribes. This was not always so. In the 21st century, we have forgotten that the central appeal of Marxism to socialist revolutionaries was its claim to scientific validity. Marx, like the evolutionary psychologists, was committed to a naturalistic account of human affairs. Marx, also like the evolutionary psychologists, furiously denied that ideas and impulses have their origins in a "realm of pure thought." In words that could easily be uttered by any evolutionary psychologist today, he argued that "from the start the “spirit” is afflicted with the curse of being “burdened” with matter," and that any science of human society must be built on a clear-eyed picture of the relationship between ideas, impulses, and emotions on the one hand, and their material foundations on the other.[7] Like evolutionary psychology today, part of Marx's appeal was an iconoclastic rejection of popular pieties for the sake of scientific explanation. He justified his works not in the language of justice, but of truth. Only on this foundation could a truly scientific investigation of human society proceed.

Despite all this, Marx was a rather poor scientist. The silliest psychologist of our age possesses tools of inquiry and an understanding of the scientific method far and away more sophisticated than any method Marx could dream up. The point of the comparison with the Marxists is not to equate Marx's methods with the empirical foundations of the signalling theory literature. The parallel that matters is how these theories are employed in political debate. It is one thing to analyze historical case studies of signalling behavior; it is another thing altogether to accuse your political opponents of signalling while they yet speak.

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