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I'm really confused by a lot of what you said, but I agree with some of it. When you say that these appeals to reason and logic are generally to protect the right from our left-going politics, I agree somewhat. When the right use this as an argument within political debate, IE, if someone presents a reasonable point, and they simply reject it on the basis of their emotionality or perceived lack of reason, they're no better than those that reject others' ideas out of hand because of their emotionality. I don't think the right using 'logic and reason' as a weapon is a sufficient basis to reject said logic and reason, though. You seem to take the view that we have no control over our ability to practice rhetoric and argue with logic and reason, instead of ad hominem or other pointless attacks. So what are we to do? Call it politics and move on? I don't think you properly argue against this article. You say that your point doesn't lead to this all out hobbesian war, because...Syria? We should count ourselves lucky that instead of violence, we get to use verbal personal attacks? I don't think your post is really all that at odds with this article. I think it'd be totally fine if you were to reject a point on the basis of moral repugnance, as long as that is stated in a reasonable way. If you reject a person on this basis, then there's a problem, right? If you simply reject anything Haidt has to say, then we get nowhere. If you reject one of his contentions on the basis of, well, something then great. That's how discourse is supposed to work. "come on" is a good example of rejecting an idea out of hand without reasoning. You say that "Us vs Them" doesn't matter or is invalid because...the US is more right than the rest of the world? This us vs them thing, it doesn't really matter where on this spectrum you lie. Indeed this is not relegated to politics at all. The issue crops up when "we" reject "their" idea because it's "them" -- it does not make a difference whether "us" is the American left or the rest of the world's left. Or any other group. I do agree that the US has to reject our extremely right leaning politics, but it's possible the only way that we're going to be able to do that is, well, using logic and reason. What other alternative exists? |
>We should count ourselves lucky that instead of violence, we get to use verbal personal attacks?
I'm arguing that power struggles have always been a thing and will always be. That we managed to establish a society where these mainly manifest in the form of political lobbying, social media arguments, street demonstrations, etc. instead of an all-out war is a good thing obviously, but it doesn't mean that people feeling marginalized won't do everything in their power to tip the balance of the struggle in their favor. And yes, this may degrade into personal attacks. I'm just pointing out that this has been the case forever, and banking on "my political opponents are wrong because they use ad hominems" is plain false at best, hypocritical at worst.
>If you reject a person on [a point], then there's a problem, right?
Not at all. Political views do not exist in the air. They are always associated with people, and they always carry tangible consequences for other people, who may react accordingly. If you think that my sexual orientation should be stigmatized and that I should have less rights than people with other sexual orientations, I will do everything in my power so that your views are ridiculed and shamed until I can display my sexuality and enjoy the same rights as other people's. If you think that the tech company you work at purposefully lowers the bar for women, thereby implying that women who were already hired by said company are not as skillful as men who were hired for the same job, I will take offense at that and do everything in my power so that people won't think I'm an unskilled impostor. If that leads to you being terminated, so be it. There's a difference between 'I feel you are misguided, but let's agree to disagree' and 'I feel you are threatening me and my rights'. From there, it does not matter whether you make some valid point elsewhere - I will not relent until the threat is gone. This is where argumentation stops and conflict starts.
>You say that "Us vs Them" doesn't matter or is invalid because...the US is more right than the rest of the world? This us vs them thing, it doesn't really matter where on this spectrum you lie. Indeed this is not relegated to politics at all. The issue crops up when "we" reject "their" idea because it's "them" -- it does not make a difference whether "us" is the American left or the rest of the world's left.
I simply reject the notion that people think in tribes when it comes to politics. The political spectrum in America is narrow, but many people hold diverse points of views in the fringe. The author laments the fact that she is depicted as right-wing, and then goes on to make a sort of condescending, wishy-washy-evopsychy point about people being unable to conceive of more than two ways of thinking ('ours' and 'theirs'), when the alternative I'm suggesting is simpler: she is right-wing, and I'm guided by the fact that the non-US world would agree with me.
About this 'logic and reason' thing: I believe we as humans are flawed, deeply irrational, and no amount of 'overcoming bias' is going to change that. If logic and reason came naturally to us, the entirety of mathematics would be trivial to everyone. As it turns out, many fields of advanced mathematics are utterly incomprehensible for everyone but a few dozen people in the world, and even rather elementary, engineering-oriented mathematics is still cryptic to all but a tiny minority of, well, engineers. The fact of the matter is, it is so hard to use logic and reason properly that it takes years of study backed up by millennia of research to even get acquainted with these elementary mathematics. How can we then pretend that we could reasonably put our minds in that same frame of thinking in other subjects, that are not only immensely more complex, but also much more emotionally charged? I believe we can't. To me, any appeal to 'logic and reason' is suspicious, as it is more indicative of someone unaware of their own flaws than any attempt at overcoming bias.
>What other alternative exists?
I don't have a proper answer to this question. Of course, we don't want to throw everything out of the window and become flat-earthers or something, but the question of informed decision/policy making as irrational agents will likely remain a hard problem for the centuries to come. Sometimes plain empiricism helps - just looking at historical precedents or other countries' policies may help guide one's decisions, but in many cases you only have, well, your gut feelings. And your rights to defend.