Moral Pollution in Place of Reasoned Critique

https://quillette.com/2018/10/14/moral-pollution-in-place-of-reasoned-critique/

by hkai • 8 years ago

16 4 8 years ago

aluren2• 8 years ago

That's a very long-winded way of rehashing the same old tropes of the 'reasonable centrist' using logic and reason to establish arguments as opposed to silly liberals who only rely on their feelings. It's almost cited verbatim in the article ('the Untruth of Emotional Reasoning'). But then, it should be expected of a platform whose pitch is "academia is too left-wing for our tastes". A few specific things that struck me:

-The so-called Us vs. Them divide, where 'Us' is supposedly the Left and 'Them' is the Right. It should be reminded - not for the first time, and certainly not for the last time - that there's more to the American political spectrum than the overwhelmingly American Quillette audience may think. For the rest of the Western world and many non-Western democracies, Democrats are in fact right-wing; and the views of Republicans on many social issues would pass as either far-right or so outlandish as to be hard to make sense of. From there, it makes sense that if you are left-wing (in the 'rest of the world' sense, not the Quillette one), you are going to perceive much of the American 'left' as part of the right. It's not that there are 'tribes' - it's the fact that actual left-wing beliefs are fringe in America. I find it ludicrous when huge tech corporations that operate in at-will employment states, dodge taxes and labor regulations are routinely accused of being 'too leftist'.

-'Our brains evolved for tribal warfare'. I know this is Quillette, but come on.

-The whole article permeates with a rhetoric whereby one's point of view is placed above the fray and draws facile analogies with history (people refusing to associate with right-wingers in college campus vs. e.g. people refusing to eat unclean animals for religious reasons). It follows that line of reasoning where the speaker is unbiased, logically-minded and in full possession of the facts whereas the opponent is emotionally driven, cannot comprehend any argument and lashes out like an animal. I don't believe this tactic is so far removed from the so called 'ad hominem' attacks the author mentions in the article.

Lastly, and this is more a general point on 'discriminating the writer': people attack each other for their opinions all the time, and have been doing it for millennia. Pretty much all philosophers, scientists and other such people that we typically hold to be great thinkers were not above attempts to discredit, debase or otherwise humiliate their intellectual opponents or rivals. Voltaire wrote a poem to specifically insult his rival Fréron. In fact, the whole process is called politics, and I'm afraid it will last as long as mankind does.

Does that mean we should give up any pretense of civility and take it out on an all-out Hobbesian war for our personal interests? Of course not. Many of us are lucky enough to live in countries where most attacks on political grounds are verbal only, and limited to abrasive posts on blogs or social media. (This cannot be said about less fortunate countries like Syria, for instance.) But to make 'civility' a talking point of your political standing, and using it as an argument in a political debate is just disingenuous. If you say something that I find morally repellent, I will be repelled, and state as much. If you hold opinions that I perceive to be putting my safety or individual rights into jeopardy, I will lash out in response. If we have a disagreement that revolves around my identity and can only be resolved with its erasure, there can be no debate, only conflict, until I win.

You may argue that this is all subjective, and that conservative voters may feel the exact same way regarding their own identity, etc. And you would be right. And here lies the crux of what I believe is the hidden sentiment behind all these appeals to logic, reason and civil arguments: it's not that they're deploring personal attacks and shaming per se, it's the fact that shaming someone for being right-wing works in 2018, whereas the same cannot be said for being on the left. It's not a case of 'I wish both left and right would all get along in the marketplace of ideas', it's a case of 'I wish the cultural leftward shift stopped happening so my not-so-left views were socially acceptable again'. A whole class of people is noticing their opinions are being relegated to the fringe, and they just want it to stop. This process is also part of politics, and time will tell who wins the power struggle.

Finch2192• 8 years ago

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?

aluren2• 8 years ago

Apologies - the points are supposed to address specific takes in the article and as such they may not appear very connected. To clarify:

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.

Scaevolus• 8 years ago

They don't claim that "us vs them" is left vs right.

What social environment do you think humans and our primate ancestors evolved in? Even if you believe in Blank Slates and attribute it to culture, would you disagree that most people operate in group/tribe-oriented thinking?

It's not ad hominem to point out that your opponent is not actually arguing against your points. It's pointing out specific, salient parts of the current conversation. Proper rhetoric should be able to stand alone.

You're... arguing against being able to respond to criticism? Or saying that all forms of criticism are equally valid? Surely an argument against facts or logic is more persuasive than one that only engages emotionally.

It's nice that you're happy that the loss of reasoned debate and rationality is bending the public dialog in your direction, or the parts of the public conversation your curated bubble is exposed to, but that's not a good thing.

People don't have time to spend on reasoning, but emotions can be effortlessly broadcast and repeated with the press of a button. This is a bad thing for humanity's future, if science and reason are needed to guide us.

Moral Pollution in Place of Reasoned Critique

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