Political Concepts: Fact, Truth, Logic

Some poll data indicates that most Americans, about 78%, believe that the two sides cannot agree on basic facts related to various political issues. At one time the idea that people were entitled to their opinions but not their facts no longer applies. Each side sees the other as significantly or mostly untethered from facts. Partisan differences in what people accept as facts, truths and sound reasoning or logic seem to constitute most of the basis for partisan disagreements.

The following descriptions of concepts such as facts and truths are intended to apply either (1) in the context of politics in ways that most people would understand and agree with, and/or (2) in accord with modern cognitive and social science. Despite their common use, the concepts are complex and hard to describe. Even the concept of what a fact is is disputed, with some arguing that facts do not exist but only reflect our flawed perception of objective reality. Some technical discussion about these concepts are complex enough to border on incomprehensible.

Fact

A fact is a thing that is known to be consistent with or representative of objective reality. Facts can be proven to be true with evidence and should thus be verifiable by anyone. For example, reliable fact checkers assert that the president has made many false statements to the public, because there is objective evidence to show those statements are false. Fact checkers also assert that he makes many misleading statements, but what is misleading to one person may be not misleading to another. Thus, that assertion cannot be fact, but instead this can be classified as truth, which may be justified or true, or not.

Truth

Opinions will vary, but fact and truth are not the same. Truth is something that is believed by most people to be in accord with fact or reality. Truth is something that can be grounded in facts or reality and/or in personal factors such as biases, beliefs, morals, ideology, identity and/or life experiences. Truth can be mostly or completely objectively true, false or unknowable. Truth is usually sufficiently linked to fact to lead most people to believe it reasonably reflects fact or reality.

Disputes arise when personal factors influences or completely determines what constitutes truth. For example, reliable fact checkers assert that the president makes many misleading statements to the public. Most people would probably consider that to be true. Nonetheless, most supporters of the president would probably reject that as false or a lie. From the foregoing, it is clear that what is truth to most people can be false to many others.

Logic

“. . . . the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. . . . cherished ideas and judgments we bring to politics are stereotypes and simplifications with little room for adjustment as the facts change. . . . . the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. Although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage it.”   Democracy For Realists: Why Elections Do not Produce Responsive Governments, Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels, 2016

Logic for people doing politics is unlike logic in philosophy, which is reasoning conducted or assessed according to principles of validity. In politics, people reason mostly in accord with personal factors (see the list above) and to a lesser extent with principles of validity. This view of logic in politics or ‘political logic’ is based on my understanding from cognitive and social science of how the human mind processes or thinks about input information such as a political speech. Because personal factors, e.g., motivated reasoning, dominate over principles of validity, political logic can easily lead different people to opposite conclusions, even if they agree on facts and truths.

When facts and justified truth (~ ‘real truth’) conflict with political logic, they are usually rejected as false or distorted to be less threatening. This reject or distort mental response to inconvenient facts and truths is a mostly unconscious process. We are usually or always unaware of what our unconscious minds have done to inconvenient facts and real truths, unless we stop and consciously, critically self-question. Most people do not do that most of the time because that is not how the human mind evolved to work. This is how the mind works:

“Morality binds and blinds. The true believers produce pious fantasies that don’t match reality, and at some point somebody comes along to knock the idol off its pedestal. . . . . We do moral reasoning not to reconstruct why we ourselves came to a judgment; we reason to find the best possible reasons why somebody else ought to join us in our judgment. . . . . The rider [the conscious mind] is skilled at fabricating post hoc explanations for whatever the elephant [the unconscious mind] has just done, and it is good at finding reasons to justify whatever the elephant wants to do next. . . . . We make our first judgments rapidly, and we are dreadful at seeking out evidence that might disconfirm those initial judgments.” Johnathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, 2012

What about pragmatic rationalism?

In view of the foregoing, it is obvious that politics is not an inherently rational endeavor. That arises from the nature and functioning of the human mind as we it got from evolution. Pragmatic rationalism relies on moral values that include fidelity to facts, truths and sound conscious logic or reasoning. The point is to try to nudge politics toward rationality to some small, but hopefully meaningful extent. Whether people can adopt such a more rational mindset is an open question. Personal experience and human history suggest the answer is no for the time being, and maybe forever. Human biology just is not aligned with political rationalism.