By positing fidelity to less distorted truth or facts and fidelity to less biased common sense as two of three key morals in pragmatic politics, reason or conscious thought explicitly becomes a moral issue.
One criticism of the three morals anti-bias ideology is that there’s not sufficient proof that it can actually make any difference in real world politics at the level of whole societies or nations. That’s mostly true. However, circumstantial evidence suggests otherwise. Nonetheless, as cognitive and social science continues to accumulate information about how the human mind deals with politics, evidence is pointing to a solid biological rationale for considering less biased reason to be a universal human moral.
Evidence of reason as a moral issue: A recently published peer-reviewed paper by Tomas Ståhl and colleagues at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Exeter suggests that some people see reason and evidence as a secular moral issue. Those people tend to consider the rationality of another's beliefs as evidence of their morality or lack thereof.
According to the paper’s summary, “In the present article we demonstrate stable individual differences in the extent to which a reliance on logic and evidence in the formation and evaluation of beliefs is perceived as a moral virtue, and a reliance on less rational processes is perceived as a vice. We refer to this individual difference variable as moralized rationality. . . . Results show that the Moralized Rationality Scale (MRS) is internally consistent, and captures something distinct from the personal importance people attach to being rational (Studies 1–3). Furthermore, the MRS has high test-retest reliability (Study 4), is conceptually distinct from frequently used measures of individual differences in moral values, and it is negatively related to common beliefs that are not supported by scientific evidence (Study 5).” Ståhl T, Zaal MP, Skitka LJ (2016) Moralized Rationality: Relying on Logic and Evidence in the Formation and Evaluation of Belief Can Be Seen as a Moral Issue. PLoS ONE 11(11): e0166332.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0166332
Given the intolerant, moral nature of politics (described here before), it’s perhaps not surprising that people who moralize rationality tend to harshly judge others they see as less rational because less rational is perceived to be less moral. Like believers in standard political ideological frameworks, e.g.,liberalism or conservatism, that has consequences for “moral rationalist” behavior.
According to Ståhl’s paper, “People who moralize rationality should not only respond more strongly to irrational (vs. rational) acts, but also towards the actors themselves. . . . . a central finding in the moral psychology literature is that differences in moral values and attitudes lead to intolerance. For example, the more morally convicted people are on a particular issue (i.e., the more their stance is grounded in their fundamental beliefs about what is right or wrong), the more they prefer to distance themselves socially from those who are attitudinally dissimilar.”
ScienceDaily commented on the paper: moral rationalists see less rational individuals as “less moral; prefer to distance themselves from them; and under some circumstances, even prefer them to be punished for their irrational behavior . . . . By contrast, individuals who moralized rationality judged others who were perceived as rational as more moral and worthy of praise. . . . While morality is commonly linked to religiosity and a belief in God, the current research identifies a secular moral value and how it may affect individuals' interpersonal relations and societal engagement.”
ScienceDaily also noted that “in the wake of a presidential election that often kept fact-checkers busy, Ståhl (the paper’s lead researcher) says the findings would suggest a possible avenue to more productive political discourse that would encourage a culture in which it is viewed as a virtue to evaluate beliefs based on logical reasoning and the available evidence. . . . . ‘In such a climate, politicians would get credit for engaging in a rational intellectually honest argument . . . . They would also think twice before making unfounded claims, because it would be perceived as immoral.’”
Obviously, that won't happen as long as most people retain their beliefs in less rational, pro-bias ideological frameworks such as liberalism or conservatism.
The cognitive and social science-based, anti-bias morals: The pragmatic, science-based ideology advocated here at B&B clearly is a form of a moral rationalist ideology. Ståhl’s data makes it plain that respect for rationality, i.e., less biased common sense or conscious thinking, is elevated to the level of a core political principle or moral belief as the anti-bias ideology advocated here explicitly does. What is new is that this research provides direct evidence that some people do in fact treat being rational as an core personal moral. Ståhl’s paper provides evidence that a pragmatic, anti-bias ideological framework with it’s three core morals* (i) could in fact define people’s mind set toward politics, and (ii) affect their beliefs and political behavior.
* The three core anti-bias morals are (1) fidelity to less biased or distorted reality and facts, (2) fidelity to less biased or distorted common sense, both of which are focused on (3) fidelity to service to the public interest, defined for example as described here before.
Questions: Is the finding of respect for rational thinking about political issues a credible basis for a secular political principle or moral? If not, why? Is there no such thing as a “secular moral” because morals can only come from religious belief or a supernatural source? If there’s no such thing as a secular moral, then what explains the data that Ståhl and his colleagues generated?
B&B orig: 11/23/16
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