Two Very Different, Unrelated Things: Phronesis and Roger Stone

Phronesis

A long time critic came across this word this morning and thought it applied to my political ideology and interest in a 3rd political party. Early on, he referred to what I wanted as the PPs, which came from a now-extinct blog I ran for years called the Pragmatic Caucus. He liked calling me a PP, short for Pragmatic Party. He still likes doing that.

If I understand the concept at least reasonably well phronesis does sound a lot like my pragmatic rationalism ideology. According to Wikipedia: “Phronesis (Ancient Greek: φρόνησῐς, romanized: phrónēsis) is an ancient Greek word for a type of wisdom or intelligence. It is more specifically a type of wisdom relevant to practical action, implying both good judgement and excellence of character and habits, sometimes referred to as "practical virtue". Phronesis was a common topic of discussion in ancient Greek philosophy.”

It seems to refer to evidence and reason based thinking and judgment, which is what pragmatic rationalism is intended to foster. People like Aristotle approved of the concept and used it in his ethics. Anyway, if phronesis and pragmatic rationalism are roughly the same thing, then I did not invent pragmatic rationalism. If so that's a good thing. In her 1951 masterpiece of human savagery, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt asserted that no thought is politics was new. Only society and technology changes and that sweeps old ideas into them.

If Aristotle or his predecessors invented pragmatic rationalism under another name, that’s a comforting thought. If pragmatic rationalism really was new, that would be unsettling. It would suggest that it contained some flaw so serious as to have never even been worth describing in writing by minds far more intelligent and insightful than mine. Validation by ancient minds is far more comforting than any assertion of novelty in modern politics.

Roger Stone

The judge handed down a 40 month sentence for Stone’s seven felony convictions. That probably would have been the case despite the corrupt William Barr’s attempt to reduce the sentence for a felon ally of the president.

The gift to Trump: That kerfuffle aside, any Stone sentencing that includes time in the slammer provides a political solid gold asset for the president. Now, the president can pardon Stone the next time info comes out that is really embarrassing to the president. The Russians did that for Trump during the 2016 election, Wikileaks dumped stolen Podesta emails within an hour or two of the release of the Hollywood Access sex predator tape. That tactic it worked quite well.

So, if Bolton publishes his book and it shows the president to be what he is ( a liar, a crook, a traitor, etc,), the same day the president can just pardon Stone and the rabid, prostituted US mainstream media will devote slathering attention to the Stone thing. In essence, that will effectively deflect significant attention from what makes Trump look like what he is to froth about what he just did for Stone.

The judge comments: The judge commented: “There was nothing unfair about the investigation and the prosecution. He was not prosecuted for standing up for the president. He was prosecuted for covering up for the president. .... [he] took it upon himself to lie, to impede, to obstruct before the investigation was complete, in an endeavor to influence the result. .... The truth still exists; the truth still matters. .... Any suggestion that the prosecution in this case did anything untoward, unethical or improper is incorrect”

The truth still matters??: Trump supporters outside the courthouse were demanding a pardon for Stone. Apparently, being a serial felon doesn't faze some or most of the president’s supporters. If nothing else, the GOP (Trump Party) isn’t concerned about the rule of law as it applies to themselves. No doubt, the Trump Party will be happy to see it applied it with a vengeance to political enemies.

As long as the Trump party exerts power, America will continue it’s slide into a corrupt, lawless dictatorship. For most of then, their truth matters, not defensible truth.

Pragmatic Rationalism: A Short, Simple Explanation

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 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


On various occasions, I've tried to explain that pragmatic rationalism operates as an anti-ideology ideology by focusing on four core moral values that are intended to help reduce partisan distortion, bias and irrationality in how people perceive facts and truths and how they think about what they think they see. It's not clear that prior explanations have been particularly successful. This is another try. Hope springs eternal.

Context

Pragmatic Rationalism[1] is an anti-bias political ideology based on four core moral values instead of core political, economic, philosophical or religious beliefs that characterize standard pro-bias ideologies, which can be overlapping to some variable extent, e.g., capitalism, socialism, fascism, nationalism, globalism or Christianity. Three of the four morals (1, 2 and 4 in the list below) are chosen because they are more objective than most concepts in politics.

Most concepts in politics are not universally definable and people bicker endlessly over what a concept means and how it applies to the real world. Undefinable concepts like that are called essentially contested concepts. They include fairness, the rule of law, sovereignty, privacy, constitutionality, etc. In modern American politics, endless disagreements over what is fair or unfair, or what is constitutional or unconstitutional are unresolvable except by compromise. Minds will not agree willingly.

Pragmatic Rationalism -- what it is 

Pragmatic rationalism is an ideology that holds that the four most important political moral values are: 

1. fidelity to trying to see facts and truths with less bias, especially inconvenient facts and truths that undermine or contradict personal beliefs;

2. fidelity to trying to apply unbiased or less biased conscious reasoning or logic to the facts and truths we think we see, especially inconvenient reasoning that undermines or contradicts personal beliefs;

3. applying 1 and 2 in service to the public interest[2]; and 

4. reasonable compromise.

That's the whole ideology.

Morals 1 and 2 are at the heart of the modern scientific mindset or ideology, but in pragmatic rationalism they are just applied to the definitely unscientific, messy endeavor called politics.

Very brief explanation

1. Each moral value serves as a bulwark against (1) authoritarianism, (2) kleptocracy, (3) dark free speech (lies, propaganda, unwarranted emotional manipulation, etc.), and (4) ideological partisan bias and politics based on false or unreasonably distorted facts, false or distorted truths and abuse of power by the majority or minority in democracy.

2. Regarding moral 4 or compromise, in authoritarian regimes the person or people in power don't have to compromise with anyone they have the power to ignore, or even abuse if they are so inclined. Compromise also fights against the kleptocracy that usually accompanies highly concentrated power.

3. Fidelity to less biased facts, truths and reason fights directly and powerfully against dark free speech or propaganda.

4. Most everyone doing politics firmly but falsely believes they do politics based on unbiased facts, truths and logic. Most also believe their beliefs best serve the public interest.

5.  If one tosses any of one of the four morals out, you have dictatorship or oligarchy, not democracy.


Footnotes:
1. Political ideology is hard or impossible to authoritatively define, just like most other politics-related concepts. I define pragmatic politics as a way of thinking within a framework of a cluster of concepts that are grounded in the real world. In essence, it is pragmatic politics, which is non-ideological. Pragmatic rationalism is anti-ideological because it is explicitly intended to try to keep perceptions of reality and reasoning strongly tethered to objective facts and truths and sound logic or reasoning. Pro-bias ideologies tend to lead to distortions of inconvenient fact and truth and flawed reasoning. The distortions and flaws include outright denying of objectively true facts and reasoning that is objectively flawed or incorrect.

2. Service to the public interest is an essentially contested concept and as I articulate it, it is larded full of additional essentially contested concepts. That is unavoidable because multiple concepts reveal the contours of politics in a democracy, but not the details. In essence service to the public interest outlines the contours of what is basically a food fight among competing interests over policy and everything else. But unlike most unresolvable partisan ideological disagreements, it is constrained by the other three core moral values, i.e., less biased facts, less biased reasoning and compromise.

For those interested, here's my current, but revisable, articulation of the food fight (service to the public interest):

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.

 

Hope springing eternal, again

Promoting the Strong in Spirit While Suppressing the Weak

A topic the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy discusses is the concept of evil. Evil is an essentially contested concept. People will not and cannot universally agree on when the term applies to specific acts. One section of the discussion of evil focuses on an attack on use of the concept in thinking and talking about it. Nietzsche’s attack on the concept of evil argues that the concept of evil is dangerous and should be abandoned. The Encyclopedia writes:

“The Dangers of ‘Evil’: An evil-skeptic might reply that we should abandon only the concept of evil, and not other normative concepts, because the concept of evil is particularly dangerous or susceptible to abuse. We can discern several reasons why ascriptions of evil might be thought to be more harmful or dangerous than ascriptions of other normative concepts such as badness or wrongdoing. First, since ascriptions of evil are the greatest form of moral condemnation, when the term ‘evil’ is misapplied we subject someone to a particularly harsh judgement undeservedly. Furthermore, it is reasonable to assume that evildoers not only deserve the greatest form of moral condemnation but also the greatest form of punishment. Thus, not only are wrongfully accused evildoers subjected to harsh judgments undeservedly, they may be subjected to harsh punishments undeservedly as well. 

Other ambiguities concerning the meaning of the term ‘evil’ may be even more harmful. For instance, on some conceptions of evil, evildoers are possessed, inhuman, incorrigible, or have fixed character traits. These metaphysical and psychological theses about evildoers are controversial. Many who use the term ‘evil’ do not mean to imply that evildoers are possessed, inhuman, incorrigible, or that they have fixed character traits. But others do. 

Nietzsche’s Attack on Evil: The most celebrated evil-skeptic, nineteenth century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, also argues that the concept of evil should be abandoned because it is dangerous. But his reasons for thinking that the concept of evil is dangerous are different from those discussed above. Nietzsche believes that the concept of evil is dangerous because it has a negative effect on human potential and vitality by promoting the weak in spirit and suppressing the strong. .... Nietzsche argues that the concept of evil arose from the negative emotions of envy, hatred, and resentment. He contends that the powerless and weak created the concept of evil to take revenge against their oppressors. Nietzsche believes that the concepts of good and evil contribute to an unhealthy view of life which judges relief from suffering as more valuable than creative self-expression and accomplishment. For this reason Nietzsche believes that we should seek to move beyond judgements of good and evil. 

Nietzsche’s skeptical attack on the concept of evil has encouraged philosophers to ignore the nature and moral significance of evil and instead focus on the motives people might have for using the term evil.”

Pragmatic rationalism and human biology

The pragmatic rationalism political ideology is built on four core morals or moral values (simplified explanation here). The morals are respect for facts, respect for true truths, service to the public interest and reasonable compromise. The morals were derived primarily from cognitive and social science insights about the how the human mind works and how humans as social creatures behave in complex modern societies that are awash in a tidal wave of information, including an endless stream of dark free speech (DFS).[1]

If one believes that DFS is fundamentally immoral as at least one moral philosopher argues, then it directly or indirectly violates all four core morals. For example, reliance on DFS to persuade people damages service to the public interest and reasonable compromise because the basis for service or compromise are corrupted in some way(s). Can that immorality ever rise to the level of evil?
If one defines evil as (i) a manifestation of profound human immorality and wickedness, especially in people's actions, or (ii) intent to harm or malevolence, it is clear that DFS can be evil if one believes in pragmatic rationalism. If one believes in an different ideology that holds it is morally acceptable to use DFS in political discourse because the ends justify the means, then DFS arguably rarely or never rises to the level of evil or even mere immorality.

So if one has a pragmatic rationalist mindset, is it wrong to call certain DFS evil if it meets the definition of evil? Does that wrongfully accuse people who rely heavily on DFS or subject them to unreasonably harsh judgments undeservedly? By definition, political DFS is legal and thus calling it immoral or evil leads to no undeserved or punishments of any kind. The only sanction is social disapproval and at present, a significant slice of American society seems to more or less accept and even defend DFS.

Is Nietzsche correct to say that evil in the context of DFS and politics arises from negative emotions of envy, hatred, and/or resentment? Or can it simply arise from the moral authority inherent in pragmatic rationalism? Is it possible for one to call malevolent DFS, e.g., public incitement to a race riot or a lynching, immoral or evil merely because that's just what it is?

What about law breakers in society or politics? Can law breaking ever rise to the level of evil? Were Hitler or Stalin evil, and if not, then what were they from the pragmatic rationalist point of view? From an authoritarian point of view, some people might believe that Hitler and/or Stalin were good and moral.

In its intent, pragmatic rationalism tries to promote the strong in spirit (rationality, tolerance, moral courage, etc.), while suppressing the weak (hate, anger, bigotry, etc.). Is use of the concept of evil so emotionally powerful that the intent is swept away in all the hate, bigotry, intolerance, distrust that DFS foments in many or most people? Does it matter if one is an atheist or otherwise non-religious and applies evil as a concept in a secular context based on a secular mindset?

Is Nietzsche right or wrong about this? Should we get rid of the concept of evil because the human mind is, e.g., biologically, morally or otherwise too weak to handle ‘evil’ in a reasonably rational or socially useful way?

Footnote:
1. Dark free speech: Constitutionally or legally protected (1) lies and deceit to distract, misinform, confuse, polarize and/or demoralize, (2) unwarranted opacity to hide inconvenient truths, facts and corruption (lies and deceit of omission), (3) unwarranted emotional manipulation (i) to obscure the truth and blind the mind to lies and deceit, and (ii) to provoke irrational, reason-killing emotions and feelings, including fear, hate, anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance, cynicism, pessimism and all kinds of bigotry including racism, and (4) ideologically-driven motivated reasoning and other ideologically-driven biases that unreasonably distort reality and reason. (my label, my definition)

Chapter Review: (Im)Morality in Political Discourse

Context

(Im)Morality in Political Discourse: The Effects of Moral Psychology in Politics is the sixth chapter in the 2017 book, Moral Psychology: A Multidisciplinary Guide, edited by Benjamin Voyer and Tor Tarantola. The book is directed to an academic and research audience in an attempt to nudge disparate streams of research into moral psychology into some form of convergence of knowledge (consilience). Researchers in neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, sociology, political science, analytic philosophy, moral philosophy, anthropology, computer science, evolutionary biology and other disciplines have developed enough knowledge in disparate areas of research that unwanted siloing and isolation of streams of research and knowledge has begun.

This book attempts to fight against that trend. The point is to fertilize disparate minds with data and logic from related areas of research, accelerate the pace of research and introduce graduate students to the depth and breadth of research as of early to mid 2017.

Chapter six was written by Nicholas Nicoletti and William Delahanty. It is the longest chapter in the book and intellectually rather complex, at least for me.

Chapter 1 (reviewed here) deals with fundamental problems in moral psychology, mostly the difficulty the human mind has in trying to understand itself. Moral psychology is not a problem the human mind evolved to solve. It is a problem the human mind may not be able to solve with a high degree of precision. Chapter 2 (reviewed here) deals with  moral psychology from an evolutionary biology point of view. Again, the human mind is a central issue, which the author makes painfully clear: “While the human mind is not usually considered an impediment to scientific progress, it may present particular barriers to accurate models of the nature of morality and moral psychology. This is not the first research question that has been hampered by the fact that science is done by humans.”

Chapter review

Nicoletti and Delahanty (N&D) conclude chapter six with these sobering comments:

“To conclude, we argue that compromise is possible under certain conditions such as those mentioned above. However, the primary obstacle to overcome is the perverse incentive that elites have to frame issues in order to mobilize maximum support. Moral framing is a very effective way to gain support and mobilize voters. Moreover, while elites moralize issues to get elected, they also have policy preferences in line with their own moral preferences. This makes political discourse exceedingly more difficult, while simultaneously increasing political participation. The juxtaposition of destructive democratic discourse with an active politically engaged public underscores the promises and pitfalls associated with moral conviction in democratic politics.”

N&D are saying that compromise has been significantly undermined by weaponizing morality in politics. Injecting morality into political discourse politically engages many people but it also tends to make them less open understanding or tolerating differences of opinion. N&D argue that political discourse infused with morality constitutes ‘destructive democratic discourse’. That is a serious allegation.

N&D discuss the moral frameworks (1) that psychologist Johnathan Haidt proposed, the Moral Foundations Theory (discussed here), and (2) that cognitive linguist George Lakoff  (discussed here) and others proposed, something that N&D call the Equal Opportunity Motivator Hypothesis. Current research indicates that, despite explicit claims to the moral high ground by conservatives, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s, both liberals and conservatives have significantly moralized their politics. N&D comment:

“both sides of the aisle show high levels of moral conviction .... This suggests that there is not a conservative advantage in the realm of moral reasoning and politics. .... We suggest that moral conviction is a double-edged blade; it has the desirable tendency to increase political action but also to limit the ability of opposing sides to deliberate, compromise and build social capital in a democratic system. .... Those respondents who felt that an issue was connected to their moral conviction preferred more social distance from someone with a dissimilar attitude. .... Ryan’s (2014) study provides more evidence that when moral conviction makes its way into political discourse, democracy may be threatened.”

N&D point out that some evidence indicates that a person’s moral foundations are partly genetic. That accords with speculation by other researchers like John Hibbing who study how biology may influence political attitudes. Hibbing estimates that our personal politics is about 35% nature (genes) and 65% nurture (family, language, identity, social norms, etc).

Making connections

Trying to connect knowledge in different disciplines is likely to be necessary if moral psychology is to progress past its current early, fragmented stage. For example, a discussion here based on a recent Scientific American article focused on how human sentience appears to include an unconscious social distancing-mapping function. Social distance between people mapped to two dimensions, relative power and affiliation, e.g., family member vs complete stranger vs your boss. It may be the case (my speculation only) that social distancing also contains a basis in morality as well as the proposed basis in power and affiliation. If so, that might make social distancing a 3-dimensional function.

Personal analysis: What’s wrong with morality & what’s right with pragmatic rationalism

N&D point to a large body of research that shows when a political issue engages people's moral values, they are (i) less inclined to compromise and trust people they disagree with, and (ii) more inclined to accept extreme means to attain a moral end, i.e., moral political ends justify draconian means. Both of those attitudes are extremely dangerous for democracy, the rule of law and civil society. From what I can tell, moral concepts[1] are both flexible and essentially contested, making disagreements unresolvable without compromise. Social context changes moral beliefs. The rise of the president led to a major moral change among Evangelical Christians. Before Trump, they were more concerned with the morals and character of a president than any other group. After Trump, they were the least concerned group.

What I glean from N&D is that the rise of morality and the rise of attitude-constraining ideology are serious threats to democracy and civil society. The four core moral values that underpin pragmatic rationalism[2] were intended to counteract the anti-democratic nature all existing sets of moral and ideological beliefs. I posited pragmatic rationalism as anti-biasing and anti-ideology. I criticized political ideology too. Morals and political ideology tend to cause, among other unwanted things, reality-distorting bias and reduced willingness to compromise.

From what I can tell, the moral and political situation that N&D describe, and worry about as rising destructive democratic discourse, is exactly what pragmatic rationalism is an attempt to counteract. As evidence continues to flow in, pragmatic rationalism makes more and more sense.


Footnote:
1. N&D define values as the basis of morals in politics like this and the implication of the rise of ideology: “Political values may be structured by values, and these values exist within greater systems and form the underlying foundation for broader ideologies. Rokeach (1973) defined a value as ‘an enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or a conversemode of conduct or end-state of existence.’ .... morality and moral conviction may be an outgrowth of individual value systems, with some of them forming along ideological lines. .... Recent research has demonstrated that attitude structure along ideological lines may be strengthening. .... Defined succinctly, a political ideology is a comprehensive political orientation that allows individuals to assess political phenomena by reference to assumptions about the proper role of government in society and the economy.”

2. The four core moral values are:
(i) fidelity to trying seeing fact and truth with less bias,
(ii) fidelity to applying less biased conscious reason to the facts and truths,
(iii) service to the public interest (defined as a transparent competition of ideas among competing interests) based on the facts, truths and reason, and
(iv) willingness to reasonably compromise according to political, economic and environmental circumstances point to.

Regarding Research on the Morality of Atheists

I do not myself believe that many people do things because they think they are the right thing to do . . . . I do not think that knowledge of what is morally right is motivational in any serious sense for anyone except a handful of saints. -- federal judge Richard Posner, referring to the power of social situations to compel behavior, moral or not, rational or not

Moral consequentialism (moral utilitarianism): morality is assessed by looking only at the consequences of an act or the state of the world that will result from what a person does; that absolutist attitude is persuasively criticized as not always the best way to do moral reasoning, but it is a reasonable way to include consideration of regarding moral dilemmas before arriving at a moral judgment

CONTEXT

An interesting research article, The amoral atheist? A cross-national examination of cultural, motivational, and cognitive antecedents of disbelief, and their implications for morality, examines the stereotype that atheists are untrustworthy and lack a moral compass. The paper looked at differences between believers and non-believers. The hypothesis was that social distrust of atheists was a major source of negative attitudes toward atheists and their perceived lack of morality. The research surveyed people in a religious country, the US, and a relatively non-believer country, Sweden. 

A 2019 survey generated data showing that 44% of Americans think that belief in God is necessary for morality. Many Americans believe that atheists are least in agreement with their vision of America compared to all other groups because they do not share their moral norms and values with 'normal' people. Some research has found that some atheists also believe that atheists are immoral, so there is solid evidence that this belief is common in most countries.

The results

The survey data indicated that compared to believers, disbelievers or atheists are less inclined to endorse moral values that serve group cohesion. By one hypothesis, those morals are socially binding moral foundations or values. Only minor differences were found in endorsement of other moral values referred to as individualizing moral foundations (care/harm and fairness/cheating morals) and epistemic rationality (something that some people do not believe is a moral value, but is the central moral value of pragmatic rationalism). The data also indicated that atheism correlated with cultural and demotivational antecedents (limited exposure to credibility-enhancing displays, low existential threat***) are associated with disbelief. Those moral beliefs correlated with weaker belief in binding moral foundations in both countries. The results also correlated disbelievers (vs. believers) with a more consequentialist source morality in both countries. Moral consequentialism was also correlated with analytic cognitive style, which is another hypothesized antecedent of disbelief.

*** Credibility enhancing displays (CREDS) were assessed by survey questions such as “Overall, to what extent did people in your community attend religious services or meetings?” (1 = to no extent at all, 7 = to an extreme extent). A low CREDS score is believed to constitute an antecedent or path to religious disbelief. Existential threat perceptions were assessed by questions such as “There are many dangerous people in our society who will attack someone out of pure meanness, for no reason at all”, and “Any day now, chaos and anarchy could erupt around us. All the signs are pointing to it” (1 = Completely disagree, 7 = Completely agree).

Commentary

As usual, the situation is complicated and data needs to be (i) considered with caution, and (ii) replicated to confirm and further explore the results. There multiple concepts discussed in this paper that I am not familiar with, e.g., measurement and interpretation of CREDS, antecedents to disbelief and analytic cognitive style. 

The authors speak of associations or correlations, not causal relationships. In addition, other research has shown that religiosity is positively related to some morally relevant behaviors, but unrelated or negatively related to others. Also, acting in a way that can be considered moral does not imply that the behavior was morally motivated. A behavior can arise from multiple motivations. For example, behavior is well-known to usually be variably, often strongly, influenced or even dominated by different social situations or contexts.

If the results hold up, they arguably point to a social and political weakness and strength in atheism and pragmatic rationalism. The weakness is the a mindset-ideology that is insufficient for good social cohesion and trust. The glue in the mindset-ideology may be too weak to sustain a liberal democracy, especially a racially diverse one. Although it's counterintuitive, that possible weakness suggests that atheism and pragmatic rationalism probably need to find some sort of spiritual component, e.g., Buddhism, that can afford some social glue. Atheists seem to be more like a herd of cats than any united kind of cohesive human group. If there are non-spiritual sources of pro-democracy social glue, they are not apparent to me. 

The strength is an analytic cognitive style that tends toward rationalism (epistemic rationality) as a moral value. Although I believe that mental trait is pro-democratic, anti-authoritarian, anti-corruption, anti-lies, etc., the paper points out that some people do not treat rationality as a moral value.**** The paper's authors comment that research on religious disbelief has also been linked to moralization of epistemic rationality. If that is true, both atheists and pragmatic rationalism may be fundamentally morally different from most significant political, religious and economic ideologies or moral frameworks that compete for influence, wealth and power today.

**** Humans did not evolve to be rational. We are intuitive, biased, social (~tribal) and arguably morally intolerant, unless one adopts tolerance as a moral value. According to psychologist Johnathan Haidt, we are designed by evolution to be “narrowly moralistic and intolerant.”[1] In other words, we evolved to be self-righteous little buggers.

Footnote:

1. The paper refers to morality in the context of Haidt's moral foundations theory. I do not know to what extent researchers have adopted this mental framework for morality research. Morality research is in its infancy. It is fraught with complexity, confounding factors, human biases, p-hacking, raging controversy and general messiness, including skepticism that morality research can ever rise to the level of a respectable scientific discipline. Despite the mess, morality research might reveal ways for humans to tame their innate tendencies to bigotry, hate and self-destructiveness enough that we avoid destroying civilization on a good day or maybe even avoid species self-annihilation on a bad day.

But isn't morality sometimes absent when spirituality is present?

Maybe morality is always necessary, unless it's bad morality

Why can't morality be a kind of spirituality?

Book review: Reasoned Politics

Context

Reasoned Politics is a 2022 book written for a general audience by a young Danish author, Magnus Vinding. Vinding has an undergraduate degree in math and some undergraduate study in areas including psychology, philosophy, and the history of science. He relies heavily on cognitive biology, social behavior and moral philosophy of politics to argue for politics that is more rational and reasoned than it is now. His main interest now is in reducing suffering and the moral reasoning behind of that goal. Vinding is not an academic. As far as I can tell, he has authored no peer-reviewed papers in the science literature. He founded and apparently works at the Center for Reducing Suffering, presumably in Denmark. His book is very easy to read. It is available online in pdf format.

If I had written a book, I would hope it would be close to Reasoned Politics. What Vinding calls reasoned politics, I call pragmatic rationalism. The two are nearly identical. In my communications with him, he and I both draw on the same sources of influence on politics, human cognitive biology, social behavior and moral philosophy. He sees the same major problem with reasoned politics (my pragmatic rationalism) that I see. Specifically, reasoned politics cannot stand alone because rationalism alone does not have the personal and social glue that most humans (~95% ?) need to be drawn in. It's impossible to build a big cohesive tribe based on rationalism alone, which is often quite uncomfortable psychologically, socially or both. 

Magnus Vinding

Book review

Broken politics: Reasoned Politics starts with a description of broken politics and a two-step protocol for doing it better: 

Politics is broken. To say that this is a cliché has itself become a cliché. But it is true nonetheless. Empty rhetoric, deceptive spin, and appeals to the lowest common denominator. These are standard premises in politics that we seem stuck with, and which many of us shake our heads at in disappointment.  

The good news is that we have compelling reasons to think that we can do better. And it is critical that we do so, as our political decisions arguably represent the most consequential decisions of all, serving like a linchpin of human decision-making that constrains and influences just about every choice we make.

The two-step protocol is actually three steps: Vinding's two-step protocol is simple:

A problem with mainstream political discourse is that there is a striking lack of distinction between normative and empirical matters. That is, we fail to distinguish ethical values on the one hand, and factual questions about how we can best realize such values on the other, which in turn causes great confusion. And predictably so. After all, the distinction between normative and empirical issues is standard within moral and political philosophy, where it is considered indispensable for clear thinking.

If that feels familiar to some regulars here, it should. My pragmatic rationalism envisions a two-step protocol, first the empirical step, second the normative step. This is the only significant difference between Vinding's brand of politics and mine. 

I put the empirical first specifically because it tends to be less emotion and bias-provoking than thinking about one's morals. I pointed this reversal of order out to Vinding and he sticks with his order of things, but he then raised the possibility of a third step, being aware of common biases, which he termed step 0. He and I both think that self-awareness of personal biases and group or tribe loyalties are a necessary predicate for doing reasoned politics. So, three steps arguably is needed, with self-awareness training part of the protocol being the first step.

The point of step three is simple. If a person denies that they are biased or influenced by group or tribe loyalty, they've already positioned themselves to likely fail at reasoned politics and unknowingly default back to broken politics. 

Moral reasoning, cognitive biases & virtue signaling to the tribe: Vinding then marches through cognitive biology, social influences on moral reasoning and the main unconscious biases that distort our perceptions of reality and facts and how we think about what we think we see. The point is to raise self-awareness of how powerful but subtle people's main biases are on both perceiving things and thinking about them. Some quotes from the book are in order.

• In their book Democracy for Realists [my book review is here], political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels review a large literature that consistently shows that voters mostly vote based on their group membership and identity rather than their economic self-interest (Achen & Bartels, 2016). This contrasts with what Achen and Bartels call the “folk theory” of democracy, a more rationalistic view according to which voters primarily vote based on their individual policy preferences — a view that turns out to be mostly false (Achen & Bartels, 2016, ch. 8-9).

• It is well-documented that the human mind is subject to confirmation bias: a tendency to seek out and recall information that confirms our pre-existing beliefs while disregarding information that challenges these beliefs (Plous, 1993, pp. 233-234). Closely related is the phenomenon of motivated reasoning, which is when we seek to justify a desired conclusion rather than following the evidence where it leads (Kunda, 1990). It hardly needs stating that confirmation bias and motivated reasoning are rampant in politics (as indeed implied by Haidt’s social intuitionist model).

• Voters tend to be ignorant about politics. In fact, this has been characterized as one of the most robust findings in political science (Bartels, 1996; Brennan, 2016, ch. 2). And voters are not just wrong in small ways on insignificant matters, but in big ways on major issues. In the words of political scientist Jeffrey Friedman, “the public is far more ignorant than academic and journalistic observers of the public realize” (Friedman, 2006b, p. v). .... A relevant phenomenon in this context is the “illusion of explanatory depth” — the widespread illusion of believing that we understand aspects of the world in much greater detail than we in fact do.

• To be clear, the point here is not that our intuitions should be wholly disregarded. After all, our intuitions often do carry a lot of wisdom, sometimes even encapsulating centuries of hard-won cultural moral progress. .... But the point is that we do not have to go with the very first intuition that eagerly announces itself and tries to dictate our judgment.

• .... political scientists have deemed group attachments [tribalism] “the most important factor” in determining people’s political judgments (Achen & Bartels, 2016, p. 232). This is at odds with the more common and more flattering view of ourselves that says that our political judgments are primarily determined by our individual reasoning — a picture that assigns little importance to our group affiliations, if any at all. .... And as is true of motivated reasoning in general, our drive to signal group loyalty is rarely fully transparent to ourselves, in that it rarely comes with any indication that it serves the purpose of loyalty signaling. Both individually and collectively, we have little clue of the extent to which group loyalty motivates our political behavior (Achen & Bartels, 2016, ch. 10; Simler & Hanson, 2018, ch. 5, ch. 16).

Reasoned politics or broken politics?

Vinding's book concludes with various thoughts about the difficulty of people doing reasoned politics and our unconscious tendency to do broken politics.   

• Lastly, a significant impediment to the two-step ideal is that the true epistemic brokenness of the human mind, especially in the realm of politics, is hardly something welcome or flattering for anyone to hear about. .... In particular, it may be difficult for us to recognize that much of our epistemic brokenness is a direct product of our social and coalitional nature itself (cf. Simler, 2016; Tooby, 2017). After all, we tend to prize our social peers and coalitions, so it might be especially inconvenient to admit that they are often the greatest source of our epistemic brokenness — e.g. due to the seductive drive to signal our loyalties to them and to use beliefs as mediators of bonding, which often comes at a high cost to our epistemic integrity (Simler, 2016).

It is clear from Vinding's, book that American society and political rhetoric is currently inimical to the rise of reasoned politics. For now, reasoned politics will remain an academic curiosity instead of the potent political force that America and the rest of the world desperately needs right now.

Debating freedom of thought

I got a criticism of my thinking regarding freedom of thought in a post yesterday. I raised the idea of society or the law somehow disapproving of DFS (dark free speech) in politics. The criticisms and my responses shed light in one reasonable mental frame about how to think about these complicated things.

Criticisms 

You said:

Is it unconstitutional for government to tax Faux News more heavily than NPR because Faux relies heavily on DFS? I don't see why.

Well, there's this:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;

Taxing a private company because of its speech - dark or otherwise - is definitely an abridgment of freedom, and unconstitutional.

Style over substance? I don't get it. Lies are lies, not truths. Logic flaws are logic flaws, not sound logic. Deceit is deceit, not honesty. Those things look clear to me, even if the lines are not always sharp...

So what "lies" are you referring to? That the moon landing was a side project by Kubrick filmed in Hollywood, or that global warming reversed when we elected Obama, or that there were no WMD in Iraq? Here you focus on the most straightforward of the criteria you listed earlier, and yet here too you'll find the utility of limiting speech marginal at best.

And whatever utility you think there is, none of these rebuttals eliminates the role of agreement in determining the "correct" standard. Ultimately your demand for limiting "dark" speech is inherently a demand for others to take your view of things. They must agree with you, do things your way, or be punished in some way.

My responses

I am unsure if taxing a private company because of its DFS (not honest speech) is definitely unconstitutional. That is a legal hypothesis I would very much like to see tested. Consider defamation law, which is constitutional:

To prove prima facie defamation, a plaintiff must show four things: 1) a false statement purporting to be fact; 2) publication or communication of that statement to a third person; 3) fault amounting to at least negligence; and 4) damages, or some harm caused to the reputation of the person or entity who is the subject of the statement.

Different states vary in their anti-defamation statutes. As such, courts in different states will interpret defamation laws differently, and defamation statutes will vary somewhat from state to state. In Davis v. Boeheim, 110 A.D.3d 1431 (N.Y. 2014), which is a New York state court case, the court held that in determining whether a defamation claim is sufficient, a court must look at whether the "contested statements are reasonably susceptible of a defamatory connotation.

Truth is widely accepted as a complete defense to all defamation claims. An absolute privilege is also a complete defense to a defamation claim. Among other examples, this includes statements made by witnesses during judicial proceedings.

In commerce, lying can amount to a criminal offense:

Businesspersons Beware: Lying is a Crime

The rules regarding lying in business in the U.S. are currently being vigorously enforced

In case after case, scandal after scandal, American federal law enforcement officials have clearly shown by their indictments and prosecutions that there is no confusion in their minds—lying is a crime. Businesspersons need to clearly understand those rules and what prosecutors define as lying.

In recent corporate scandals, some executives have learned the hard way that lying is still a crime in corporate America. Martha Stewart was accused of selling her ImClone stock allegedly after receiving insider information. However, she was not convicted of securities fraud. She was instead convicted for lying. In addition, Computer Associates executives were indicted and some have already pleaded guilty for lying to their own company’s attorney during an internal investigation when their lies were passed on by their attorney to the government.

To me the evidence is rock solid: It is sometimes or often possible to determine that a person has lied and that can trigger criminal guilt for the liar. That is a key point here.

So what "lies" are you referring to?

Excellent question. My main focus is on politics, which now clearly includes both commerce and religion. Therefore lies in politics are what I refer to, especially lies by people in government, commerce or religion who hold positions of power or public trust. Lies such as (i) the 2020 election was stolen, (ii) Joe Biden is an illegitimate president, (iii) Trump's 1/6 coup attempt was merely legitimate political discourse and/or something Trump bears no responsibility for, (iv) the over 30 thousand false or misleading statements DJT made while he was in office, (v) the lies that Faux News routinely asserts as truth in some or most of its broadcasts, and (vi) decades of corporate lies about climate change.

From what I (and some others) can tell, the entire GOP leadership now relies heavily on DFS because actual facts and truths are not on the side of kleptocratic authoritarianism.

No, fact checking is not a perfect science. Humans make mistakes, so honest mistakes will be made. But where does the greater danger lie? In my opinion, the greater danger is in letting people and interests who significantly rely on DFS to get away free and clear shifts the costs and harms from those responsible to the whole society. Screw that noise, I'm tired of people and the environment getting constantly shafted by the rich and powerful hiding behind a thick shield of constitutionally protected DFS.

Ultimately your demand for limiting "dark" speech is inherently a demand for others to take your view of things. They must agree with you, do things your way, or be punished in some way.

I vaguely recall this criticism from you before. Regardless, let's do it again.

My demand for limiting DFS is the opposite of a demand for others to take my view of things. Pragmatic rationalism is a demand for respect for facts, true truths and sound reasoning in a political context of democracy, civil liberties, the rule of law and service to the public interest. There is vast room for disagreements within those broad constraints, especially democracy, civil liberties, the rule of law and service to the public interest, all four of which I believe are essentially contested concepts. But notice, there is a lot less room for disagreements over facts and intermediate room for disagreements over true truths and sound reasoning.

So, on the one hand, my pragmatic rationalism is intended to at least partly (noticeably) purge some lies and irrationality from politics in defense of democracy and the public interest. Pragmatic rationalism frees minds, allowing freedom of thought and freedom of choice.

On the other hand, consider the mental framework and reality that purveyors of DFS use to win their arguments. They are usually corrupt authoritarians who deceive, distract, confuse, enrage, terrify, derationalize, polarize and bamboozle people to get what they want in defense of the elite's interests. DFS politics traps minds, infringing on freedom of thought and limiting choices.

What political framework do you prefer, pro-democracy pragmatic rationalism, anti-democracy DFS irrationalism, or something else? If something else, exactly what?

What DFS politics looks like

What pragmatic rationalism politics looks like

Chapter Review: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Moral Judgment and Decision-Making

The Cognitive Neuroscience of Moral Judgment and Decision-Making is chapter 88 of the 2020 book The Cognitive Neurosciences (sixth edition). This chapter was written by Joshua Greene and Liane Young. The book is academic, 1113 pages long and expensive ($233). It is not written for a general audience. It is a fairly detailed review of the state of cognitive neurosciences for academics and researchers.

Moral thinking is whole-brain thinking

Greene is the pioneer of one of the major models of the neuroscience of morality, the dual process model (mentioned in this book review):

Unconscious emotion-intuition and conscious reasoning lead to moral judgment (dual inputs): Reasoning + emotion → moral judgment

According to this hypothesis, both unconscious emotions and intuitions and conscious reason play a role in moral thinking and decision-making. The evidence to support that general thesis strikes me as overwhelming. What isn't known is the details of how the brain does what it does.

One concern about the neuroscience of morality that Greene and Young (G&Y) discuss is the possibility that morality as a separate scientific research field could be in danger of becoming meaningless. Accumulating evidence shows that morality appears to have few or no neural mechanisms that are unique to  moral thinking. In other words, moral thinking appears to rely mostly or completely on the same pathways and brain structures that mediate various kinds of non-moral thinking. G&Y comment: “It’s now clear, however, that the ‘moral brain’ is, more or less, the whole brain .... Understanding this is, itself, a kind of progress .... if this unified [whole brain] theory of morality is correct, it doesn't bode well for a unified theory for moral neuroscience.”

Apparently, there is no specific brain structure(s) that uniquely do the mental data processing involved in making moral judgments.

Morality and moral neuroscience defined; The specter of warring tribalism

If one wants to do research on something, it helps to have a definition or description of it. The description has troubling implications for long-term human survival and well-being. G&Y write:

“... we regard morality as a suite of cognitive mechanisms to enable otherwise selfish individuals to reap the benefits of cooperation. Humans have psychological features that are straightforwardly moral (such as empathy) and others that are not (such as in-group favoritism) because they enable us to achieve goals that we can’t achieve through pure selfishness. .... Morality evolved, not as a device for universal cooperation but as a competitive weapon -- as a system for turning Me into Us, which in turn enables Us to outcompete Them. It does not follow from this, however, that are are doomed to be warring tribalists. Drawing on our ingenuity and flexibility, it’s possible to put human values ahead of evolutionary imperatives, as we do when we use birth control.”

Morality and pragmatic rationalism

Based on my limited understanding of history, humans have always been warring tribalists and arguably still are today to some extent. Although it usually doesn’t seem that way, here is less warring between armies and nations going on in modern times than in past centuries.

Other than birth control, G&Y do not give evidence for their belief that ingenuity and flexibility can allow the species to put moral values ahead of evolutionary imperatives. The sentiment seems to be mostly aspirational, not empirical. In view of the major expansion of power that modern communications technologies give to demagogues, tyrants, liars and other bad people, one can argue that democratic, rule of law-driven societies are falling to evolutionary imperatives, including authoritarianism. The rapid rise of modern communications technology has blown right past slow human evolution. Societies have to evolve because biological evolution cannot keep up.

One core goal of pragmatic rationalism’s moral structure is to somehow form a gigantic Us in-group for the human species. As I learn more, e.g., by reading chapter 88 of this book, that seems increasingly unlikely. The next best thing seems to try to unite all people in a single country based on the four core moral values that pragmatic rationalism is based on. Inherent in the third moral value, service to the public interest, is an anti-war bias that is intended to reduce violence generally, including between nations.

The problem with the nation-size In group formation hypothesis is that, as we are witnessing in real time, demagogues, liars and other bad people who rely on dark free speech, can tear the people of a nation to pieces. It is odd because the conservative and GOP side is explicitly appealing to American nationalism, but it nonetheless is tearing us apart. A major reason the modern conservative appeal is tearing us apart appears to be that it is significantly grounded in irrational bigotry, racism, distrust, hate, misogyny and intolerance of Out groups. Dark free speech has created all of that poison in the minds of millions of people.

At present, circumstances and evolutionary imperatives do not bode well for the rise of pragmatic rationalism. In my opinion, that is unfortunate to say the least.

The Way A Conservative Strategist Thinks About Politics

Conservative Rick Wilson, author of the 2020 book, Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America from Trump--and Democrats from Themselves, argues that democrats don't know how to campaign. In an interview with Trevor Noah, Wilson asserts that he is strongly anti-Trump. He argues that the GOP no longer exists because it has been corrupted and lost its bearings as the party of small government, individual liberty and constitutional government.[1] Wilson is a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an effort to defeat the president in 2020. He characterizes GOP members of congress who support the president as “liars and cowards” who are afraid of the president and have “given themselves over to a cult.”

Democrat's inability to campaign 

Wilson criticizes democratic candidates as incapable of running an intelligent, effective political campaign. He says that over a period of 30 years, he and other conservatives like him built “a very smart, very sophisticated system to wreck the hell out of democratic candidates, and we did it all over the country.” He asserts that over the 20 years before the president came to power, their system took about 2,000 seats from democrats in state legislatures and congress. That success was built on being better able to do ‘root politics’ and running very tough ads in support of GOP candidates who fit their locality. Those candidates were not all hard core Evangelical conservatives.[2]

Wilson argues that democrats require ideological homogeneity[2] and try to win arguments, while republicans try to win elections by not caring how the win happens, including coming right up to the edge of what is legal. Republican campaign tactics include (i) not saying what’s on a candidate’s mind when it is inconvenient, i.e., deceiving the public, and (ii) don’t make ideological promises based on detailed plans. Democrats say things that scare a lot of people, e.g., medicare for all, so they lose elections. When there's a long policy paper, Wilson hires people to go through it and find all the things that will scare people. Then he runs attack ads based on the scary things.

Wilson says it is far better to wear a hat that says build the wall than it is to put out a white paper describing how to build it. That rings true. Obama had his Hope and Change and millions of people read their own meanings into what it meant as needed.

Exactly what is Mr. Wilson saying?

Given his history as a master of conservative republican political attack ads riddled with dark free speech,[1] what Wilson seems to be saying is something about like this: “Holy crap! We've created Trump the monster and have lost control of it. We never thought conservative politics turn in this direction and corrupt the fundamental anti-government, anti-tax and regulation utopia we were building. We didn't mean for our lies, deceit and sleazy smears and lies to lead to this mess. We wanted our own kind of mess where we had control, not where the looney-toon Trump had full loose cannon power and subverted the whole radical libertarian right ideological shebang. WTF!!! . . . . Democrats help us regain power!”

I believe that is more or less just about what Wilson is saying. Of course he cannot say it that bluntly or honestly, but he made his tactics and complaints perfectly clear: Win at all costs, the ends justify the means including lying, deceit and illegality and those liars and cowards should belong to us, not to Trump.

In adroitly side stepping his own culpability for helping to create the monster, Wilson walks a very fine line with polished expertise. He isn't the only conservative to has expressed regrets at their role in the rise of the monster. Some others on the right who for years fomented disrespect, distrust and contempt for truth and logic have come to see the soil they worked so long and hard to work turned out to be the home for Trump brand incoherence and hate instead of the home for Wilson’s own radical extremist brand of disciplined ideology and hate.

What should democrats do, if anything?

If Wilson is right, democrats should stop talking about details of policy so that Trump minions have fewer scary policy statements to misconstrue and attack them with in 2020. Instead, they should limit their policy statements to what can fit on a baseball cap, e.g., Make America Great Again or Hope and Change. There's nothing scary in any of that. Stay the hell away from details and just say positive, uplifting things like, “No New Taxes”, “America First!”, “Gimme  More!” or “Impossible Burgers for All!” that will fit on a baseball cap.

Oops, we forgot the herbicide

Of course, it’s too late for that. Democratic policy statements are already out there. Even if they are retracted, they will still be used to win hearts and minds in endless attack, smear and scare ads in 2020. The beauty (ugly?) of the monster that Wilson and other conservatives created over the decades is that attack ads can be based on absolutely nothing real at all. Attack ads can be 100% fabrication and still be legal and effective. The political soil that conservatives worked so hard to till and fertilize is the perfect place for stink-cabbage like Trump to grow. They forgot to make some herbicide in case of a political emergency. Oops!

What about pragmatic rationalism?

More importantly than concern for democratic candidates, is the questions raised by what Wilson’s obvious intelligence and professional experience reveal about the human condition and politics vis-à-vis pragmatic rationalism. At this point, a refreshing quote from two political scientists seems appropriate:

“. . . . 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.” Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels, Democracy For Realists: Why Elections Do not Produce Responsive Governments, 2016

That’s sobering, to say the least. Evolution didn’t give us enough data processing bandwidth to deal with politics rationally, especially in the stink cabbage-friendly soil that Wilson and his colleagues created. That’s not a statement of stupid. It is a statement of biological and behavioral fact. Don't forget, Wilson’s soil is heavily and constantly fertilized with copious amounts of dark free speech (win at all costs, the ends justify immoral means). It is unfair and unreasonable to accuse people of being stupid, when they have very little help in wading through a pitch black cesspool full of dark free speech and alligators.

Also sobering are the tactics and political system that Wilson helped develop in the process of blowing about 2,000 democrats out of office over 20 years. Both Wilson and Achen and Bartels suggest that pragmatic rationalism cannot work, at least under the current political circumstances that Wilson helped create. Achen and Bartels correctly say that people have much mental baggage, i.e., cherished ideas and judgments that are fact- and logic-resistant. Wilson accepts this biological-social truth and deals with it by telling candidates to shut up and just put their policies on baseball hats. 2,000 dead democratic candidates backstops Wilson’s advice.

Things look bleak for team Dissident and its vaunted pragmatic rationalism. They are up against Wilson and colleagues and the constantly fibbing, constantly golf-playing president (86 out of 365 days at a golf club in 2019 🥴)they helped bring to power. It’s time for team Dissident to put on their rally hats with a suitable positive message, e.g., “Hey! I’m not lying”.

Questions

1. Do things look bad for team Dissident with its star player pragmatic rationalism?

2. Does this OP miss the mark in describing what Wilson’s politics are like, and instead he advocates something different and much more positive?

3. Is it too late for democratic presidential candidates to back off the wonkiness and go with the baseball hat strategy?


Footnotes:
1. Concepts such as small government, individual liberty and constitutional government are all essentially contested. That means they mean what is in the minds of individuals or groups of like-minded people and disagreements cannot be resolved by facts, truths or logic. Resolution usually comes about by compromise or coercion-force, but very rarely by minds changing to come into mutual agreement.

Wikipedia: Essentially contested concepts involve widespread agreement on a concept (e.g., "fairness" [also, small government, individual liberty, constitutional, etc.]), but not on the best realization thereof. They are "concepts the proper use of which inevitably involves endless disputes about their proper uses on the part of their users", and these disputes "cannot be settled by appeal to empirical evidence, linguistic usage, or the canons of logic alone".

2. Those assertions are confusing to me. The GOP has been herded into a little tent and ideologically cleansed by years of RINO hunts, while democrats are like cats meandering in their big tent in all sorts of directions.

3. Dark free speech: Constitutionally or legally protected (1) lies and deceit to distract, misinform, confuse, polarize and/or demoralize, (2) unwarranted opacity to hide inconvenient truths, facts and corruption (lies and deceit of omission), and (3) unwarranted emotional manipulation (i) to obscure the truth and blind the mind to lies and deceit, and (ii) to provoke irrational, reason-killing emotions and feelings, including fear, hate, anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance, cynicism, pessimism and all kinds of bigotry including racism. (my label, my definition)

The Science of Morality & Human Well-Being

March 25, 2019


Nihilism: 1. the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless; 2. belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated

 In the last few months, some commentary here and elsewhere have raised the idea that many concepts related to politics, concepts relating to concepts such as good and evil, fact and non-fact, logic and illogic, and truth and lie are essentially meaningless. Meaninglessness arises from subjectivity that can be inherent in things one might think of as mostly objective. For example, some people believe it is a fact that there is a strong consensus among expert climate scientists that anthropogenic global warming is real. About 27% of Americans reject that as false and no amount of discussion and citing fact sources will change most (~ 98% ?) of those minds.

 Does that mean there is no way to discern facts or truth from lies or misinformation? When it comes to morality, is nihilism basically correct and contemplating morality from any point of view is too subjective to be meaningful in any way?

  In another example, the rule of law concept is seen by some analysts as an essentially contested concept, which is something subjective and not definable such that a large majority of people will agree on what the rule of law is and when it applies. If the rule of law cannot be defined, how can what is moral and what isn't be defined?

Pragmatic rationalism: The anti-bias ideology advocated here, “pragmatic rationalism”, is built on four core moral values, (1) respect for objective facts and truth, to the extent they can be ascertained, (2) application of less biased logic (conscious reasoning) to the facts and truths, (3) service to the public interest, which is conceived as a transparent competition of ideas constrained by facts and logic, and (4) reasonable compromise in view of political, social and other relevant factors. If nihilism is correct, the anti-bias ideology is nonsense.

Science and morality: In his 2010 book, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, neuroscientist Sam Harris argues there can be enough objectivity in matters of morals and human behavior and well-being that there is a great deal of objectivity in morality. In essence, Harris is arguing that science can find things that foster human well-being by tending to make people, e.g., happy, unhappy, and socially integrated or not. On morals, religion, secularism and the role of science in discovering morality, Harris writes:

On the first account, to speak of moral truth is, of necessity, to invoke God; on the second, it is merely to give voice to one’s apish urges, cultural biases and philosophical confusion. My purpose is to persuade you that both sides in this debate are wrong. The goal of this book is to begin a conversation about how moral truth can be understood in the context of science.

While the argument I make in this book is bound to be controversial, it rests on a very simple premise: human well-being entirely depends on events in the world and on states of the human brain. A more detailed understanding of these truths will force us to draw clear distinctions between different ways of living in society with one another, judging some to be better or worse, more or less true to the facts, and more or less ethical. I am not suggesting that we are guaranteed to resolve every moral controversy through science. Differences of opinion will remain—but opinions will be increasingly constrained by facts.

Does our inability to gather the relevant data oblige us to respect all opinions equally? Of course not. In the same way, the fact that we may not be able to resolve specific moral dilemmas does not suggest that all competing responses to them are equally valid. In my experience, mistaking no answers in practice for no answers in principle is a great source of moral confusion.

The the deeper point is that there simply must be answers to questions of this kind, whether we know them or not. And these are not areas where we can afford to respect the “traditions” of others and agree to disagree. . . . . I hope to show that when we are talking about values, we are actually talking about an interdependent world of facts.

There are facts to be understood about how thoughts and intentions arise in the human brain; there are further facts to be known about how these behaviors influence the world and the experience of other conscious beings. We will see that facts of this sort will exhaust what we can reasonably mean by terms like “good” and “evil”. They will increasingly fall within the purview of science and run far deeper than a person’s religious affiliation. Just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim algebra, we will see that there is no such thing as Christian or Muslim morality. Indeed, I will argue that morality should be considered an undeveloped branch of science. 

Having received tens of thousands of emails and letters from people at every point on the continuum between faith and doubt, I can say with some confidence that a shared belief in the limitations of reason lies at the bottom of these cultural divides. Both sides [Christian conservatives and secular liberals] believe that reason is powerless to answer the most important questions in human life.

The scientific community’s reluctance to take a stand on moral issues has come at a price. It has made science appear divorced, in principle, from the most important questions of human life.

It seems inevitable, however, that science will gradually encompass life’s deepest questions. How we respond to the resulting collision of worldviews will influence the the progress of science, of course, but may also determine whether we succeed in building global civilization based on shared values. . . . . Only a rational understanding of human well-being will allow billions of us to coexist peacefully, converging on the same social, political, economic and environmental goals. A science of human flourishing may seem a long way off, but to achieve it, we must first acknowledge that the intellectual terrain actually exists.

Harris is right, nihilism is wrong: If Harris is correct that intellectual moral terrain actually exists and is subject to scientific scrutiny, then pragmatic rationalism would seem to be a political counterpart of Harris’ vision of what can lead to human well-being for the long run. Maybe because of personal bias and/or the amazingly good fit between what Harris argues and the core moral values that pragmatic rationalism is built on, Harris is right. Science can shed light on an at least somewhat objective vision of right and wrong, good and evil. Nihilism is wrong and destructive of both self and civilization.