The Merit Mythology: Merit as ‘Natural Selection’

This chapter explores how the practices of “acceptability” assign merit to arguments based upon the strength of an idea and/or its expression comparatively and competitively. To clarify this point, we argue that the legitimation of the practices is ideally believed to yield good or better ideas or expressions of them. We ultimately contend that this phenomenon is procedurally Darwinistic. That is, our ideas and academic knowledge we produce for others appear to enter practices that cause thought and ideas to evolve by subjecting them to the forces of evolving critique in a similar way to Darwin’s exposition on the continuing development of the natural world: survival of the fittest and adaptation in light of conflict and competition. We argue that the metaphors of a Darwinistic nature are particularly problematic for ideas, as they are a synthetic human pursuit and not akin to groves of trees or schools of fish whose adaptation to dominate forces is seen as desirable or whose failure and extinction is the morally neutral consequence of “nature.” Instead we show that the extinguishing of ideas is harmful as dominant ideas no longer must serve to defend themselves from the challenges of that which has been extinguished. The conclusion we draw, echoing Mill and Aristotle in spirit, is that error is valuable. In order for error to be present, ideas must exist and be produced to counteract existing concepts or to present entirely new conceptual frameworks to assess a shared problem or quandary. Procedures which deny catharsis with a thought, harm everyone. No procedure that operates on these grounds can ever yield a just outcome, only one efficient to its own flawed ideal.