Some Thoughts on Political Reasoning and the Rationality and Morality of Politics

Stuff just keeps falling on the trail

Political reasoning (Germaine's definition, v. 1.0): Unconscious and conscious thinking about political issues and policies in view of cognitive and social psychological factors, including perceptions of relevant reality, truths and facts, personal ideology, personal morals, ethics or values, self-identity, social identity, and social institutions and norms the individual identifies with; it can be mostly rational by being reasonably based on significantly or mostly true objective reality, truths and facts and thinking or logic that reasonably flows from objective reality, truths and facts; it can be mostly irrational by being based on significantly or mostly false perceptions of truths and facts and/or significantly or mostly flawed thinking or logic, wherein what is reasonable or not is assessed from the point of view of service to the public interest (as I tried to 'objectively' define the concept)

In his 2018 book, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress, psychologist Steven Pinker discusses some context and suggests some tactics that might help rationalize politics to some extent relative to what it is now. This discussion is based on chapter 21, Reason.

He argues that although humans operate with cognitive and emotional biases that sometimes leads to error, that does not mean that (i) humans are completely irrational, or (ii) there is no point in trying to be more rational in our thinking and discourse. He argues that both ideas are false. Bias and error happens but not all the time because if that were the case, it would be impossible for anyone to say we are subject to bias and error. He argues: “The human brain is capable of reason, given the right circumstances; the problem is to identify those circumstances and put them more firmly in place.”

Fact checking: Pinker asserts that despite a common perception of America being in a ‘post-truth era’, that is false because societies have always been subject to lies, deceit, unsupported conspiracy theories, mass delusions and so forth. He points to the rise of fact checking in response to the rise of Trump as evidence of social progress. Poll data indicates that about 80% of the public is open to the idea of journalists questioning politicians, pundits and special interests about fact accuracy in live interviews. Fact-checking is increasingly popular with the public and complaints are increasing in cases where when fact checking is not made available.

In that regard, Dissident Politics is at or near the leading edge in advocating public refusal to listen to sources with an undeniable track record of chronic lying without real-time or near real-time fact checking. The cognitive power of unchallenged lies is too much to allow it to go unchallenged for any significant period of time. It makes sense to prefer a linguistic tactic called the truth sandwich to blunt the at least some of cognitive power of lies and deceit.

Moral irrationality: Pinker points to steady social progress citing the court case, Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), a Supreme Court civil rights decision that struck down all state laws banning interracial marriage. He asserts that “moral irrationality” can be outgrown. By casting interracial marriage in terms of being morally irrational, he incorporates conceptions of what is morality rational and what isn't in his conception of social progress. That is an important point because it correctly sees politics as a matter of not just ice-cold facts and logic, but also hot moral values.

The affective (emotional-moral?) tipping point: Pinker argues about rationality and mindset change:

Wherever we get upset about the looniness of public discourse today, we should remind ourselves that people weren't so rational in the past, either.

Persuasion by facts and logic, the m

ost direct strategy, is not always futile. . . . . Feeling their identity threatened, belief holders double down and muster more ammunition to fend off the challenge. But since another part of the human mind keeps a person in touch with reality, as the counterevidence piles up the dissonance can mount until it becomes too much to bear and the opinion topples over, a phenomenon called the affective tipping point.

Pinker goes on to point out that once something becomes ‘public knowledge’ disbelievers begin to hit their personal affective tipping point and change their minds. That is in accord with evidence that Americans who disbelieve human-caused climate change are slowly changing their minds, one at a time. But that sort of mindset change also depends on each person's subjective cost-benefit assessment of the social damage they will incur for changing their minds. As one can see, assigning rationality and irrationality to political thinking is very complicated and fraught with ambiguity. That complexity and ambiguity is the very fertile soil that tyrants, liars, kleptocrats, oligarchs, deceivers, mass murderers and other brands of bad leaders take root and grow in. Therein lies the main source of unnecessary human misery, poverty, misery, racism, bigotry, hate and bloodshed that litters human history. That is an inescapable aspect of what it is to be biologically, psychologically and sociologically human.

Debiasing thinking and fostering critical thinking: Pinker observes that the “wheels of reason turn slowly” and it makes sense to apply torque to two sources of influence, public education and the professional media. He observes that although some or many people have been arguing for better teaching of critical thinking for decades, that job is tough:

People understand concepts only when they are to think them through, to discuss them with others, and to use them to solve problems. A second impediment to effective teaching is that pupils don't spontaneously transfer from one concrete example to others in the same abstract category. . . . . With these lessons about lessons under their belts, psychologists have recently devised debiasing programs that fortify logical and critical thinking curricula. They encourage students to spot, name and correct fallacies across a broad range of contexts. . . . . Tetlock has compiled the practices of successful forecasters into a set of guidelines for good judgment . . . . These and other programs are provably effective: students newfound wisdom outlasts the training session and transfers to new subjects.

This is extremely encouraging because it says that at least some people can learn to be more rational if they want to, and mental traits that facilitate rational, critical thinking have been identified and thus directly addressed in the teaching. There is no data that says that only some people can become more politically rational. If Peter Berger in his brilliant little 1963 book, Invitation to Sociology, is right, there is nothing this observer can see that prevents the building of powerful social institutions that hold objective facts, less biased political reasoning and critical thinking as the highest moral or ethical values.

Some such institutions may exist now, probably mostly scattered, fragmented academic groups, but they are not yet powerful influences on mainstream American politics and society. That needs to change. Those institutions need to be built ASAP.

Along those lines, there is reason for encouragement. Pinker argues:

Many psychologists have called on their field to “give debiasing away” as one of its greatest potential contributions to human welfare. . . . . As one writer noted, scientists often treat the public the way Englishmen treat foreigners: they speak more slowly and more loudly. Making the world more rational, then, is not just of training people to be better reasoners and setting them loose. . . . . Experiments have shown that the right rules can avert the Tragedy of the Belief Commons [what’s rational for every individual to believe can be irrational for the society as a whole to act upon] and force people to dissociate their reasoning from their identities. . . . . Scientists themselves have hit on a new strategy called adversarial collaboration, in which mortal enemies work together to get to the bottom of an issue, setting up empirical tests that they agree beforehand will settle it (citing Psychological Science, 12, 269-275, 2001).

From this observer’s point of view, Pinker is right that if psychologists can teach debiasing, it would be one of its greatest potential contributions to human welfare. Things are not as bleak as the news would have it. Humans still have a chance to outgrow their self-destructive tendencies, even if the toll along the way is in the hundreds of millions or billions of lives.

So, is that assessment too optimistic? Or, are humans doomed to an ultimate fate of enslavement, misery and maybe even self-annihilation with complete species extinction?

B&B orig: 2/15/19