The effectiveness of the international strategy in the analysis of the political language: Berlusconi´s speech at the chamber of deputies on the 13TH May 2008

CAPÍTULO V THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE INTENTIONAL STRATEGY IN THE ANALYSIS OF THE POLITICAL LANGUAGE: BERLUSCONI´S SPEECH AT THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES ON THE 13TH MAY 2008. Dario Intorre Universidad de Córdoba Abstract In this context we will oversee to understand if and in which measure, the intentional attitude delineated today by the school of Anglo-Saxon thought and, in particular, by Dennett’s philosophy, can constitute an opportune and effective instrument for the analysis of the public language. With the expression “intentional system” we refer to the addressee of the communicative enterprise: a collectivity of people joined by the sharing a physical space and a temporal time; such a system can be explained, rationalized and, possibly, anticipated (as for its actions and to its behaviors) through the attribution to it of shared convictions and desires, which constitute the common sense of that organism. The so delineated philosophy of intentionality becomes, in this within, hermeneutics of the speech held by the then Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to the Chamber of Deputies on May, 13 2008, that is in occasion of the beginning of its IV legislature. The exposure of the former prime Minister insisted, in order to guarantee to his own government the necessary consent, on the baggage of convictions and desires shared by the Italians, in an historical moment of confusion and political-institutional instability. That speech evidenced proper values of the cultural and ideological matrix of Italy: the house, the family, the entrepreneurial increase of North, the elimination of the organized crime in the South, the tax reduction on the job of the entrepreneurs, individual safety, the removal of the material causes of the abortion. Such concepts were introduced in order to attract the interest of a conservative public opinion and to diverge the attention from the substance of that government’s action, that realized itself in a plan of drastic reduction of the job in Public Administration and of increase of the tax charge, in the picture of a progressive and general economic recess. - 76 - The effectiveness of the intentional strategy in the analysis of the political language: Berlusconi's speech at the Chamber of Deputies on the 13th May 2008. Comprehensive relation This paper intends to analyze if and to what extent the intentional stance as described in the Anglo-Saxon school of thought and, in particular, in the philosophy of Dennett83, can constitute an appropriate and efficient instrument in the analysis of political language. This research concerns the motives, development dynamics and the objectives themselves of the oratory universe of politicians, whose discourse techniques have as their objective, public persuasion. With the expression "intentional system"84 (here used in an exclusively socio-political sense). We are referring to the addressee of any communicative intent: a group of people sharing a physical space and temporal time, which become the aggregating elements of a social organism; such a system can be explained, rationalized and, consequently, anticipated (as far as its actions and behavior are concerned) through the attribution of shared beliefs and desires, that for such an organism constitute a form of orientation criteria. The intentional stance pertains to a heuristic methodology which enables man/hermeneut to analyze a cluster of happenings, so as to reduce them to an action/reaction dynamics realized by systems that, having a language and rationality, will act in a conscious way. The scope of such a hermeneutic strategy85 is to identify the reasons behind the actions and thoughts of a society, in such a way that we are able to predict its effects in the social, political and economic fields. This prediction, closely approximated to the reality of shared behavior, will be possible only if a careful and detailed recognition is carried out (this constitutes the essence of intentionality) of the quantity of pre-comprehensions86 that, in terms of beliefs and desires, constitute the socio-cultural humus which permeates society. What we have to do is to identify, on the basis of the thought of a given historical community, what direction will constitute the most rational and efficient actions for the members/agents of that specific social structure. 83 Dennett D., Contenuto e coscienza, tr. it. di G. Pacini Mugnai, Il Mulino, Bologna 1992, p. 39. 84 ID., Brainstorms. Saggi filosofici sulla mente e la psicologia, tr. it. di L. Colasanti, Adelphi, Milano 1991, p. 37. ID., Dove nascono le idee, tr. it. di F. Garofoli, Di Renzo, Roma 2006, p. 28. 85 Cfr. Gadamer H. G., Verità e metodo, tr. it. di G. Vattimo, Bompiani, Milano 1983, pp. 349-57. 86 Ivi, pp. 552-57. - 77 - The first aspect to look into concerning intentional systems as understood in this way, is that if we are to speak about any intentional system, on the one hand, we must begin a discussion, on the other, we must analyze with one or more of the intentional actors, what constitutes their interpretative strategies, what can be considered a rational prediction of the behavior of the others87. From a political point of view (regarding the efficacy that a good communicative technique by the orator can have on the acquisition of public consent) the right attitude to have regarding any potential electoral system/corpus, is to ask oneself which is the most rational move to make88, once you have gathered all the starting information, concerning precisely the objectives to reach for the people, the socioeconomic conditions in which it has lived up to that precise moment, its expectations regarding any new political direction; in other words, the data that photograph the present day status quaestionis. The adoption of an investigative attitude is particularly significant in the elaboration of the prediction of the behavior of other people, that is, the adoption of an investigative attitude which is teleologically orientated with the purpose of identifying and understanding the objectives of an intentional system. It is not possible to elaborate a reliable prediction, without being able to establish, with a good level of precision, the nature of the information which the public opinion possesses in a given historical moment together with the objectives that the actors of a community want to reach, projected towards the future in social, political and economic terms. It should be clear, at this point, what we mean with the concepts of intentional system and intentional stance. The inclination of our mind to admit presuppositions of rationality in the system it wants to analyze, is what we call intentional stance and the social organism that is interpreted according to this prospective, is what constitutes the intentional system89. The interpretation of future behavior of a society is realized on the basis of the information and scopes that we ourselves attribute to it. Consequently, in relation to a historically determined social corpus, we can define the following in this manner: 87 Dennett D., Brainstorms …, op. cit., p. 42. 88 Ivi, p. 43. 89 Ivi, p. 47. - 78 - 1) beliefs90, a mix of its traditions, uses and customs which have in time been interiorized, as well as the influence that these habits have in structuring shared thoughts; 2) desires, desired objectives of each member of a community considering him/her as a part of the whole. When one tries to explain the working of a system on the basis of a universe of beliefs and desires which are attributed to it, one arrives at what can be effectively considered a theory of behavior. In the light of this consideration it is important to establish the relationship between intentional models and other explicative criteria of behavior itself. Rationality certainly constitutes an extremely important pillar of our intentional system regarding our interpretation of the world, in fact man is not usually ready for an irrational reaction in facing specific events. The person protagonist of any intention, is so used to considering the existence of a strong rational basis to the intentional system, that he is not often ready to accept failure in his own system of predictions91. When our predictions of a system are revealed as false by factual proof, rather than doubting the effective rationality of an intentional system, we tend to correct, re-analyze and update the conditions through which the information was communicated and the real scopes of that system. This can reveal itself to be misleading, because as the history of thought has taught us, man is composed of both a rational and an irrational part, which is strongly linked to impulses and desires. It can happen that the latter can sometimes dominate on the former in the elaboration of collective thought92. It is not always true, in realizing any strategy of behavior, that a system follows a regular pattern, in some cases, it can assume unpredictable decisions that go far beyond any predicable framework. What had been elaborated above, poses another stronger objection, creating many problems to our discussion so far: the inferential rules of an intentional system are not necessarily valid, because some of them may not be the verifying criteria of logic; in this sense our attempts to give a sense 90 ID., Rompere l’incantesimo. La religione come fenomeno naturale, tr. it. di S. Levi, Raffaello Cortina, Milano 2007, p. 215, ID., Brainstorms …, op. cit., pp. 57- 60, Peirce C.S., Caso, amore e logica, Introduzione di M.R. Cohen, tr. it. di N. e M. Abbagnano, Taylor, Torino 1956, pp. 28-30. 91 Dennett D., Brainstorms …, op. cit., p. 47. 92 Ibidem. - 79 - to the actions of an intentional system can become sterile and unsuccessful93. This is when common sense assumes a particularly important role94, becoming a lifeline in the difficult task of the intentional subject who has to rely on a rational structure (even only partially) implicit in any intentional system. What becomes particularly important, is to understand if, and in what terms, common sense can constitute a valid theoretical presumption for the construction of a system of beliefs about natural reality that may have an epistemological basis. Dennett has had the cultural merit, starting from the Anglo-Saxon lesson, of trying to found a psychological theory of common sense, analyzing an example and asking questions on the characteristics of magnets and on the plausible answers given to these questions by people from different sociocultural levels95. The reply given at a first glance is that certainly magnets attract iron. The second reply would try to supply a description in technical-scientific terms of the material, explaining all its chemical characteristics and the effects these qualities produce in the natural world96. The conclusion is that man establishes his first cognitive approach to surrounding reality, not on the basis of an abstract technicalscientific exposition, the result of a longer or less longer learning process, but through the existence of a common set of thoughts, shared by that society, which are substantiated in auctoritas temporis. From the moment that terms like belief or desire are an integral part of our daily language, as are magnets, our scope is to specify which elements or aspects of reality can be explained intentionally, basing our work, on the analysis of a specific event, on a shared interpretation, founded on common sense and, thus on collective beliefs. The role of natural beliefs understood as the founding principles of knowledge has been asserted by the tradition of Scottish Enlightenment and, in particular, by Thomas Reid, who underlined the function of common sense as a parameter of rational reference for all human communities97. 93 Ivi, p. 49. 94 Reid T., Ricerca sulla mente umana e altri scritti, a cura di A. Santucci, UTET, Torino 1975, infra. 95 Dennett D., L’atteggiamento intenzionale, tr. it. di E. Bassato, Il Mulino, Bologna 1993, p. 67. 96 Ibidem. 97 Reid T., Ricerca …, op. cit., infra. - 80 - Dennett seems here to be recalling the inductivist position of Reid, when he asserts that we conceive the psychology of common sense as a sort of vernacular technique which has been shared and consolidated within a social community98; it can be considered the result of a process of observation on specific aspects of natural reality, through which we arrive at the identification of the general rules99. Something like the characteristics of magnets. We observe how they attract iron and from that, we elaborate a systematic theory of their chemical-physical characteristics. What meaning should we attribute to the term belief in relationship to the psychology of common sense and to its predictive and explicative role within a specific context? The psychology of common sense maintains that beliefs are psychic states of individuals, founded on the transmission of information that lead, together with the formation of desires appropriately correlated to the beliefs themselves, to undertake guided actions by the intellect100. Moore has analyzed very effectively, from the hedonistic point of view, the concept of desire considered as a propulsive stimulus to an intelligent action101, in particular, he affirms that such a concept is generally referred to an interior state characterized by the effective non existence of an object or event, but which is ideally present in our mind and functions as a motivating factor towards its realization102. The non-realized idea of an object determines in us a feeling of pleasure which, in its turn, produces desire. This causes a proairetic attitude towards the resolution of the action, whose ultimate goal is the obtaining of the object of pleasure103. Only when in our mind we have the presence of the non realized thought of a pleasure, can we admit the existence of the pleasure itself that becomes the reason behind the realization of an action orientated towards that objective. The stimulus to act must, however, be guided 98 Dennett D., L’atteggiamento intenzionale, op cit., p. 71. 99 Bacone F., Novum Organum, libro II, in Scritti filosofici, a cura di P. Rossi, UTET, Torino 1975, pp. 389-91. 100 Epicuro, Lettera a Meneceo, in Opere, a cura di M. Isnardi Parente, UTET, Torino 1974, pp. 201-03. Nussbaum M.C., Terapia del desiderio. Teoria e pratica nell’etica ellenistica, pref. di G. Reale, tr. it. di N.S. Muth, Vita e Pensiero, Milano 2007, cap. IV, pp. 113-114. 101 Moore G.E., Principia ethica, tr. it. di G. Vattimo, Bompiani, Milano 1964, p.135. 102 Ibidem. 103 Ivi, p. 136. - 81 - by the idea of the object considered as the source of pleasure, and not by that of the simple desire itself104. The English philosopher has even spoken of two forms of thought contextual to desire: first a general one, connected to the idea of pleasure, the other, connected to the idea of the object as a source of pleasure. However only the latter can constitute the cause of behavior. The extent of the importance that reason assumes, in the deliberative process of the desiring subject, is very difficult to establish, because this an aspect closely linked to historical, social and individual contingency. The moral of common sense can be easily applied to very different sectors of reality and, after all, this is also the case with the intentional technique to it related; it exists in the same way as a phenomenon, or a religion or a language, thus it can be studied and analyzed in depth with an investigative approach of the anthropological type105. Anthropological analysis, in particular, should comprehend, in its vision of the psychology of common sense, what each individual, considered singularly and as part of the whole, would include in his own system of beliefs, desires, predictions about the others, however misleading, wrong or banal they may seem. When an anthropological analysis, stimulated by an exclusively hermeneutic intent, deconstructs a universe of theories formulated by the members of a given community towards a specific phenomenon and decrees that they are not true, it is referring to a false ideology or to a false conscience. The role of an ideology, however false it may be, should not be scorned, on the contrary, it represents a starting point for planning new projects in the sense that it may open new horizons concerning reflection on questions of cultural and social interest. A false ideology and a set of wrong beliefs represent an intentional system founded on a basis which is not true. Geertz, in his analysis on the formation and the role of ideology in social contexts, has clearly demonstrated what risks an anthropologist has to face, when he has to interpret the complexity of theories present in a community which are considered representative of its own identity. In particular, he considers, that we use two constructs to study the elements that define an ideology: the theory of interest and the theory of tension106. In the first case, which is the most relevant for us, ideology is considered similar to a weapon, in the second case, it is considered a corrective instrument. In the theory of interest, ideological declarations are referred to the general 104 Ibidem. 105 Dennett D., L’atteggiamento intenzionale, op. cit., p. 72. 106 Geertz C., Interpretazione di culture, tr. it. di E. Bona, Il Mulino, Bologna 1987, pp. 256-58. - 82 - context of a race for power seen from the sort of utilitarian point of view. It is because of this, that such a construct presupposes an extremely low level of psychological complexity107. The existence of social systems that direct their choices on the basis of interest, implies the possibility of manipulating consensus by the dominating elites, exploiting the natural tendency of human beings in their desire to satisfy their own needs. Such satisfaction can often have a purely transitory or illusory nature, not based on any solid and rational motivation and can be considered the symptom of a general absence of any critical conscience. From this point of view an efficient intentional strategy should insert itself in this vacuum of opinion, building up the basis for the conquest of a hegemony. The human being who thinks and acts on the basis of an intentional stance, continually resorts to the psychology of common sense to try and predict his and other people's behavior, attributing beliefs and desires and, thus, describing the world in intentional terms. The intentional strategy based on the development of common sense can present obviously some weak points, such as for example, the inability to explain, even retrospectively, certain types of behavior, especially if they are exceptional or abnormal compared to ordinary mental frames of mind belonging to their own social context. However some strong points can be traced, consistent with what has been said above, in that the psychology of common sense, in tracing back the actions and behavior of a system to a series of elements of pre-comprehen- sion (beliefs and desires) that belong to it, succeeds in describing the origins of actions themselves, conferring to them a meaning in a specific historical context108. The attribution of meaning does not imply, however, in itself, the moral correctness of a shared decision, it only means that a choice that has been made by a social community is seen in a neutral motivational context where that choice constitutes a theoretical framework of reference. In other words, we consider each other reciprocally as if we were everlasting rational agents and the capacity of using intellect to acquire a critical awareness of the natural need inherent to our species, allows us to possess a reliable previsional system on the behavior of other people. In this sense (always considering the psychology of common sense as a hermeneutics of behavior) we could trace back the totality of the actions of a community to a form of logical behavior which can be formulated in terms 107 Ibidem. 108 Dennett D., L’atteggiamento intenzionale, op. cit., pp. 74-75. - 83 - of the inclination to act in a certain way, only when certain events have occurred. What sort of events are we talking about? Actual circumstances that are free of all historicalsocial conditioning. This would lead us to admit, within the relationship between the intentional subject and the intentional system, the existence of a reductionist logic109, based on a communicative dynamics regulated by the stimulusresponse binomial, in which habit plays a fundamental role. In referring to his criticism of Cartesian body-mind dualism, Ryle maintains that mental acts are not different to body acts and the reasons why a person acts in a certain way, are determined by real dispositions that an individual possesses to act in such a way in specific situations110. The example of the clown111 is particularly significant, whose ability is shown in the acrobatics he performs. He succeeds in his programmed clumsiness in evoking laughter and cheerfulness in the people looking at him; but the enjoyment of the spectators in the hic et nunc of the performance is not determined by a rational reflection on the anthropological conditions that, in the course of decades, have made clowns become a sort of cathartic figures in the eyes of society. Fun and evasion are simply guaranteed, according to Ryle, by the simple observation of the efficient performance by the artist. The latter, in his turn, in stimulating collective entertainment, does not carry out any form of reason or meta-cognition on the sense of his execution. His acts are simply the effect of consolidated dispositions that in time, have produced a specific result on the basis of an exclusively sensorial communication between the intentional/public system and the intentional/clown subject. Can an approach of this sort really contribute to presenting the mind as a scientific concept? If we really believed this, we would remove from the intentional stance and system, that historical-anthropological and hermeneutic rationality in which they are on the contrary impregnated. Geertz on the case of the clown described by Ryle, maintains that only physical gestures can be reduced to the stimulus-response binomial as in the behaviorist prospective, not the ability112. The latter is a concept that contains a multiplicity of meanings and interior references (concerning the mind of the clown) and exterior references (historical-social). In the con- 109 Ivi, p. 77, but also Wittgenstein L., Ricerche filosofiche, tr. it. di R. Piovesan, Einaudi, Torino 1999, p. 108. 110 Ryle G., Il concetto di mente, tr. it. di G. Pellegrino, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2007, p. 33. 111 Geertz C., Interpretazione …, op. cit., p. 107. 112 Ibidem. - 84 - ID., Contenuto e coscienza, tr. it. di G. Pacini Mugnai, Il Mulino, Bologna 1992. ID., Dove nascono le idee, tr. it. di F. 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Lorenzo Milani, Tommaso Fiore e le esperienze pastorali, Il pozzo di Giacobbe, Trapani 2007. Wittgenstein L., Ricerche filosofiche, tr. it. di R. Piovesan, Einaudi, Torino 1999. Sitography Berlusconi S., Discorso alla Camera dei Deputati del 13 Maggio 2008, versione digitale scaricata http://www.affaritaliani.it/politica/discorsointegraleberlusconica mera130508_pg_2.html - 92 -