Intolerance is almost inevitably accompanied by a natural and true inability to comprehend or make allowance for opposite points of view. . . . We find here with significant uniformity what one psychologist has called ‘logic-proof compartments.’ The logic-proof compartment has always been with us. Master propagandist Edward Bernays,
Crystallizing Public Opinion, 1923
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. Psychologist Johnathan Haidt,
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, 2012
We found ourselves at the end of chapter 3 with a dystopian assessment of democracy, an apparent ill-suited match between the mental apparatus of the public and the high-minded requirements of democracy: People should be well informed about politically important matters, but they are not. People should think rationally, but they most often do not. Political psychologist George Marcus,
Political Psychology: Neuroscience, Genetics, and Politics, 2013
Instrumental or practical rationality or reasoning: a belief about human reasoning where decisions, beliefs and behaviors are not influenced by psychological factors such as morals, values, ethics, ideology or identity; the only concern instrumental reasoning focuses on is what actions are needed to best reach the end an individual wants to achieve, regardless of good, bad or ambiguous impacts of the end on other people, groups of people and/or the entire society; desires and goals are not questioned as moral, immoral, rational or irrational,
they just exist as givens
Values or ethical rationality or reasoning: a belief about human reasoning where decisions, beliefs and behaviors are influenced by psychological factors such as morals, values, ethics, ideology or identity, with the main concern of values reasoning being what ethics or values the end or goal represents to the individual for her-himself, other people, groups of people and/or the entire society;
Hybrid rationality or reasoning: a belief that political reasoning is influenced by an unknowable but variable combination of instrumental and values reasoning in arriving at decisions, beliefs and behaviors; for decisions, beliefs and behaviors that are relatively ethical- or values-neutral for the individual, instrumental reasoning is the only or dominant form of reasoning employed; for decisions, beliefs and behaviors that are non-trivially infused with ethical or value concerns for the individual, values reasoning is the only or dominant form of reasoning employed; most political decisions, beliefs and behaviors probably mostly arise from significantly mixed instrumental and values reasoning, but with values reasoning usually dominant and usually influenced by psychological, cognitive and social forces including biases and social institutions
How moral can politics be?: That mostly depends on what factors such as ideologies, beliefs, morals and tribes or groups a person believes in or identifies with. Many American conservatives and populists see liberals and socialists as being significantly immoral. The converse seems to be also true. Talking about what ideology is the most moral or ethical in the endless left vs right dispute is unresolvable. From an objective, neutral point of view, the debate is poisoned to the point of unresolvability by unwarranted disconnects from (a) reality, facts and truths, and (b) sound logic. Does that constitute a basis to argue that existing ideologies are significantly or mostly immoral because, e.g., they get in the way of compromise, thereby making civilization less efficient and less civil?
This discussion argues that the anti-bias ideology advocated here is more objective than existing ideologies and that makes it as moral as a political ideology can be without being just toothless or meaningless theory. A premise is that due to the nature of human reasoning, sentience and cognition, disputes in liberal democratic politics, but not authoritarian politics, can never be resolved with purely subjective or objective perfection. That also applies to anti-bias, which is not posited as perfect, but just better.
Another premise is that hybrid reasoning is valid based on modern neuroscience, and cognitive and social science research. Modern science strongly supports a conception of reasoning that most people mostly apply to most political issues as being heavily influenced by psychological factors including personal morals (or ethics or values), personal ideologies, group and tribal identities, personal identity, tolerance for dissonance or difference of opinions, and so forth. Most political reasoning arises from uncontrollable, unconscious perceptions of reality, facts and truths, true, false or otherwise, and uncontrollable, unconscious reasoning and decision-making. Those factors can lead to decisions, beliefs and behaviors that are objectively good, bad or ambiguous for the individual, while independently being bad, ambiguous or good for society.
The anti-bias ideology comprises four highest political morals, fidelity to seeing less biased reality, facts and truths, commitment to applying less biased logic to the reality, facts and truths, applying those in service to the public interest and reasonable compromise in view of relevant political, social and economic-environmental concerns. How objective those morals are look like this:
Most objective → less biased reality, facts and truths > reasonable compromise ≥ less biased logic > service to the public interest
← Least objective
Near-universal moral beliefs: At this point, the following objective facts about most people’s beliefs about politics need to be kept in mind. Most people claim that in addition to their ideology, morals, beliefs and tribe identities, their brand of politics and policy choices:
(1) mostly or completely based on unbiased reality, facts and truths;
(2) mostly or completely based on irrefutable or sound logic or reasoning;
(3) best serve the public interest;
(4) are open to reasonable compromise (this moral is in decline, which is an indicator of the rise of American anti-democratic authoritarian politics); and when asked
(5) are merits-based by claiming their morals, ideologies and beliefs win any contest in an honest competition of ideas.
All five of those are things that most people believe in. That therefore strongly implies (1) those five traits constitute some sort of nearly universal values or morals, and (2) those values or morals are independent of underlying personal ideology, other morals, beliefs, tribe identities, etc. In essence, those five beliefs, except for compromise, are the
only things in politics that unite most deeply divided Americans (about 95% of adults?) probably about 95% of the time.
Service to the public interest: This moral concept is mostly subjective. Other than some kind of compromise, disputes about it are not solvable short of coercion or overt violence. Evidence and pure logic alone cannot resolve disagreements. People almost always define the public interest as (i) in accord with their own ideology, morals, beliefs, group and tribe identities, (ii) based on unbiased reality, facts and truths, (iii) based on irrefutable or sound logic or reasoning, and (iv) sometimes reasonable compromise.
That is generally the public interest concept for most adults and nearly all ideologues. In over 10 years of online dialog and exposure to over 40 years of print and broadcast media content, this observer cannot recall anyone who engages in political debate and claims (1) they rely on distorted reality, lies, false facts, false truths, or ignorance, (2) that their reasoning is flawed or partisan nonsense, (3) that what they want isn’t good for America and by implication the public interest, or assuming the question is asked, (4) that their beliefs and policy choices would lose in an honest competition of ideas.
Almost no one claims any of those things about their political beliefs and policy preferences. Many routinely allege one or more of those things against the political opposition, but none of it ever applies to themselves.
In addition to those intractable problems, the concept of service to the public interest is necessarily heavily infused with essentially contested concepts. An
essentially contested concept is one where there is widespread general agreement about the concept, e.g., fairness or constitutional, but not on the best definition or realization of it, e.g., by political policy. The practical use of these concepts involves endless, unresolvable disputes about their proper definitions or uses. These disputes cannot be settled by citing empirical evidence or applying sound logic. Only compromise, coercion or physical force can resolve them. Concepts such as the public interest, fairness, equality, legal, state of emergency, constitutional, patriotic, corrupt, honest, incompetent, democratic, and authoritarian are all unresolvable.
If one accepts all of the foregoing assertions of facts, reasoning and political reality as more true than false, then is it true that there is no possible way to even partially rationalize and moralize politics compared to what it is today?
How partially rationalize and moralize the public interest concept: There is a way to partially rationalize and maximally moralize the public interest concept. That way is to ask people to adopt the anti-bias ideology and its morals. That does not demand that people abandon their existing ideologies, morals and beliefs. For most people, existing ideologies and morals include the five factors stated above, facts, logic, public interest, compromise and merit-based competition of ideas. In essence, anti-bias simply asks people to have the moral courage to try to live up to what most claim they already believe in. Put another way, it asks for people to take their own professed universal moral political values seriously, instead of simply accepting it when own side employs lies, unwarranted emotional manipulation and other dark free speech tactics to convince them of their correctness.
In theory, this is simple, just be less biased and less partisan, while being more objective and open-minded about unbiased facts, sound reason, the public interest and compromise. That is the moral, more rational way to do politics. In practice, it may be impossible to move very far in that moral direction in view of existing laws, social norms and tribalism that protect lies and other forms of dark free speech. From the anti-bias point of view, the current, irrational way of doing politics is the immoral way.
The service to the public interest concept can be articulated many ways. But what is the best way to articulate it if the moral goal is to maximize rationality, efficiency, personal freedom, sustainability, liberal democracy, a vibrant economy and society, reliance on less biased facts and logic, and other major moral concerns despite all the unresolvable moral conflicts inherent in all of that? The best answer is this: Make ideas compete in a transparent, merit- and evidence-based competition, where the rules require the debate to adhere to what people already claim they believe in, namely unbiased facts, unbiased logic, what is best for the public interest, and reasonable compromise.
What would such an articulation look like? It would explicitly invoke the main concepts that most people believe are in the public interest, despite unresolvable differences about what those concepts look like. One articulation is this:
The conduct of politics and governance based on identifying a rational, optimum balance between serving public, individual and commercial interests based on a transparent fact- and logic-based analysis of competing policy choices (evidence- and reason-based politics), while
(1) being reasonably responsive to public opinion,
(2) protecting and growing the American economy,
(3) fostering individual economic and personal growth opportunity,
(4) defending constitutional personal freedoms,
(5) fostering improvement in the American standard of living,
(6) protecting national security,
(7) protecting the environment,
(8) increasing transparency, competition and efficiency in government and commerce when possible,
(9) fostering global peace, stability and prosperity whenever reasonably possible, including maintaining and growing alliances with non-authoritarian democratic nations, and
(10) defending American liberal democracy and democratic norms, by replacing federal norms with laws, and (a) requiring states to maximize voter participation, making voting as easy as reasonably possible, (b) elevating opinions of ethics officials in the federal government to the status of laws or requirements that bind all members of all branches of the federal government, particularly including the President and all Executive Branch employees, (c) incentivizing voter participation by conferring a tax break on voters and a reasonable tax penalty on qualified citizens who do not vote, (d) prevent or limit corruption, unwarranted opacity, and anti-democratic actions such as gerrymandering voting districts to minimize competition or limiting voter participation, and (e) requiring allowing high level federal politicians and bureaucrats, federal judges and members of congress to show their tax returns for at least the six tax years before they take office or starting federal employment or service, all of which is constrained by (i) honest, reality-based fiscal sustainability that limits the scope and size of government and regulation to no more or no less than what is deemed needed and (ii) genuine respect for the U.S. constitution and the rule of law with a particular concern for limiting unwarranted legal complexity and ambiguity to limit opportunities to subvert the constitution and the law.
Some important concerns are not explicit, but instead they are inherent. For example, defending equal protection, freedom of religion and gun ownership is inherent in defending constitutional personal freedoms. This conception is an attempt to shift the balance of power from wealthy individuals, special interests and the two main political parties, where it is unreasonably concentrated now, to be more favorable to the public interest and public opinion.
This conception of service to the public interest better accounts for social change by making public opinion an explicit factor in policy debates, unlike the current situation where
public opinion is usually irrelevant. Most anti-government conservatives and populists will not like public opinion as a factor in governance. If so, anti-bias dictates that they must be transparent and honest about it and publicly state that they reject public opinion as a relevant guide to policy debates. Given the significant authoritarian, anti-democratic leaning of most conservatives and populists, it is very unlikely that the anti-authoritarian, pro-democratic anti-bias ideology would be acceptable to most of those people.
Obviously, that articulation will be criticized for various reasons. It is shot through with essentially contested concepts. One can argue that concerns such as protecting and growing the American economy are unsustainable and can be at odds with others such as protecting the environment. In response, it is clear that such conflicts are unavoidable. There are unavoidable internal conflicts and the way that conception of service to the public interest deals with conflicting goals is to focus on “identifying a rational, optimum balance” among competing interests. There is no other means available to resolve unresolvable disagreements short of authoritarian coercion.
The point of the ideology is to make it harder to do politics based on opacity, lies and partisan or fake logic. Those things are invariably used by powerful special interests, bad leaders, e.g., Donald Trump, and ideologues to win arguments. The point is to make politics perform the best it can within the limits of what humans can be expected to tolerate. In essence, anti-bias is a morals-, merit-, evidence- and reason-based ideology instead of an ideology that imposes visions of what the world and people should look like and believe rather than what they are.
What about bad morals and behaviors?: Some Americans hold what others would describe as bad morals, e.g., bigotry, racism support for abortion, or tolerance for conflicts of interest in politicians. Nothing can be done under anti-bias to physically coerce people into having only good or neutral morals, which is a contested concept. Some of this reflects conflicting social norms with their acceptable or unacceptable behaviors. At present, morals or beliefs such as acceptance of racism, dark free speech (lies, deceit, etc.), corruption, or anti-democratic authoritarianism, lead to intractable disagreements and there is no way to change that.
Could the anti-bias ideology and the public interest concept as articulated here be made more moral, e.g., by explicitly fostering values reasoning? Maybe. But how one might do that is not clear to this observer. The hybrid reasoning described above is a postulated mode of rationality that may not actually exist. It is proposed here based only on this observer’s (i) experiences and assessment of how people think about politics, and (ii) understanding of the neuroscience, cognitive science and social science of human reasoning and behavior. Political reasoning seems to be an intractable entanglement of emotion, morals, ideology, reason (roughly logic), self-identity, etc., all of which is constantly reacting in real time to sensory inputs that are usually complex. On top of that complexity, the influence of nature (genes) and nurture (family, society, ideology, life experience, morals, etc.) probably varies significantly from person to person. One expert, John Hibbing, author of
Predisposed: Liberals, Conservatives, and the Biology of Political Differences, recently tentatively estimated that we are about 30-35% nature and 65-70% nurture.
How humans think about morals and politics is simply not yet understood. Thus, it is hard or impossible to know how to make the ideology both more rational and more moral. The anti-bias mindset envisions that being rational, whatever that means, is in itself a high moral value. More of it should be better, but that needs to be tested and demonstrated on a mass scale. The limited laboratory testing this observer is aware of suggests more rationality is better, at least for predicting future events, the apparent acid test for the rationality of any political ideology.
B&B orig: 2/18/19
