Cognitive and social science research shows that political and other ideologies often foster distortion of perceptions of reality and truths and conscious reasoning about what is perceived, true, false or ambiguous. That can and often does generate irrational politics and policy. The problem is generally more pronounced for hard core ideologues and authoritarians, neither of which can tolerate the cognitive dissonance between what unbiased reality, truth and reason lead to compared to what the ideology or authoritarian mind needs these things to be. For most of those people, fact, truth and reason fall to ideological beliefs and authoritarian goals when they are at odds.
Living in a society that is awash in lies, deceit and irrational emotional manipulation makes matters worse, but that cannot be avoided in a liberal democracy. That often makes what is false and irrational seem real and acceptable. That reflects the mental workings that evolution conferred on the human species. We can't help being what we are. The best that can be done is to acknowledge our 'flawed' biological traits and try to deal with them as rationally as our minds allow.
The other pragmatic rationalisms: At least two pragmatic rationalism (PR) ideologies appear to exist. One is posited as a general theory of the human world that is grounded in (i) physics; (ii) mathematics; (iii) philosophy; and (iv) the algorithmic part of human knowledge, which could be computerised, whatever that means. The author describes his all-encompassing theory of everything in abstract terms. It doesn't seem to have much to do with mass politics.
The other PR looks to be much more relevant to mass politics. That one is posited as an inquiry into understanding how scientific knowledge variably influences formulating and implementing political policies depending on the policy at issue. That PR is getting close to the PR this discussion is focused on.
This pragmatic rationalism: The PR political ideology posited here is intended to work as an anti-bias, anti-ideology ideology. It is built on is built on four, easy to understand, core or highest moral political values. The moral values are (1) fidelity to try to see relevant objective facts and truths, to the extent they can be ascertained (they are often not fully ascertainable) with less bias, (2) application of less biased conscious reasoning (roughly, logic) to the facts and truths, (3) applying the facts and reasoning in service to the public interest, and (4) willingness to engage in reasonable compromises in view of political, social and other relevant factors. Service to the public interest is envisioned to constitute a transparent competition of fact- and reason-based ideas.
This PR attempts to account for sources of bias and irrationality in politics by (i) forcing a larger role for more objective, less biased, less distorted fact, truth and logic in politics, (ii) ignoring standard ideologies, making them of secondary importance, (iii) induce some power and influence to flow from powerful special interests to the public interest, and (iv) forcing compromise onto the process as a bulwark against the rise of both single party rule and authoritarianism.
This variant of PR is thus an ideology that is more constrained by facts, truths and logic than all other ideologies, which tend to promote distortion of facts, truths and logic to fit the needs of the ideology. This amounts to an effort to build a mindset open to politics based more on objectivity, to the extent it can be ascertained, and less on subjective factors such as personal morals and identification with irrational tribalism.
Whether nations or whole societies can accept and/or adopt such a PR mindset is an open question. It asks a lot of people to set aside their prejudices and sacred beliefs when they are at odds with objective reality and reason. Maybe the human species cannot rise to a higher level of mental performance because the cognitive load is just too high. It is an experiment that needs to be tried to know if it would lead to more rational and efficient, but less conflict-prone politics and outcomes.
B&B orig: 5/20/19
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