The featured image of this post is a photograph I took two weeks ago less than a mile from my home in Maine. It is only illustrative but, I think, powerfully illustrative.
In evaluating the truth, objectivity requires one to check one’s own biases. It is not absolutely impossible that in an advanced society with multiple independent officials and checks against election fraud (as opposed to a banana republic), the government’s party steals an election. It is not absolutely impossible either that the opposition steals the election, as some claim happened in the 2020 federal elections. It is however very unlikely. This remains true if one—like your humble blogger—does not like the party that actually won.
In his recent introduction to philosophy for college students, Knowledge, Reality, and Value: A Mostly Common Sense Guide to Philosophy (self-published, 2021), University of Colorado’s Michael Huemer offers interesting thoughts on rationality and the difficulty but necessity of avoiding biases. A few quotes from chapter 3 on Critical Thinking:
Rationality is the master intellectual virtue, the one that subsumes all the others. (p. 32)
Objectivity, like all other intellectual virtues, is part of rationality. The character trait of objectivity is a disposition to resist bias, and hence to base one’s beliefs on the objective facts. The main failures of objectivity are cases where your beliefs are overly influenced by your personal interests, emotions, or desires, or by how the phenomenon in the world is related to you, as opposed to how the external world is independent of you. (p. 32)
The purpose of intellectual discussion is promoting truth (for yourself and others). If your view can’t survive when you treat the opposing views fairly, then that pretty much means your view is wrong. As a rational thinker, you want your beliefs to be true, so you should welcome the opportunity to discover if your own current view is wrong; then you can eliminate a mistaken belief and move closer to the truth. If you are afraid to confront the strongest opposing views, represented in the fairest way possible, that means that you suspect that your own beliefs are not up to the challenge, which means you already suspect that your beliefs are false. (p. 34)
The human mind is not really designed for discovering abstract, philosophical truths. Our natural tendency is to try to advance our own interests or the interests of the group we identify with, and we tend to treat intellectual issues as a proxy battleground for that endeavor. Again, we don’t expressly decide to do this; we do it automatically unless we are making a concerted, conscious effort not to. And naturally, when we do this, we form all sorts of false beliefs, because reality does not adjust itself to whatever is convenient for our particular social faction. (p. 35)
If you can only maintain your beliefs by being biased or irrational, then your beliefs are almost certainly wrong. (p. 38)
Irrationality and bias can support any ideology, including your opponents’. Nazis, Marxists, flat-Earthers, and partisans of any other crazy or evil view can base their beliefs on irrational biases, and there is no way to reason them out of it if you’ve rejected rationality and objectivity. So don’t attack objectivity and rationality. Unless you’re an asshole and you just want intellectual chaos. (p. 39)
Also, by the way, collect information from the most sophisticated sources, not (as most people do) the most entertaining sources. (p. 39)
Dogmatism is probably the most common kind of failure of objectivity. (p. 40)
A related quote from Huemer’s book (p. 303), which co-blogger Bryan Caplan reproduced in his recent Econlog series on Knowledge, Reality, and Value:
If you have a philosophical view (or any view really), and you know that a lot of smart people disagree with it, you really need to think about why they disagree. And I don’t mean “Because they’re jerks” or “Because they’re evil.” What you need to think about are the best reasons someone could have for disagreeing. If you can’t think of any, then you probably haven’t thought or read enough about the issue; you should then go look up some intelligent opponents and see what they say. And I don’t mean television pundits or celebrities on Twitter. The best defenders of a view are usually academics who have written books about it. You should then think seriously about those objections and whether they might be correct. If you don’t find them persuasive, try to figure out why. This is the part of rational thought that most human beings tend to skip.
I confess I have sinned before, but I think I am better at controlling my own biases than when I was younger. It remains a work in progress.
READER COMMENTS
David Seltzer
Sep 23 2021 at 5:48pm
Pierre: I just read, for the third time in the past fifty years, Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom.
In the Preface, he says, “I am not a slave to the prejudices and superstitions of general opinions.” He dedicated the book “To the Socialists of All parties.” He did so not in the spirit of mockery…his words…but in the interest of robust civil debate that might yield truth. As an aside, it was the wonderful statistician, Harry Roberts, who suggested I read Hayek’s masterpiece. Harry said the true intellectual is both curious and skeptical in the pursuit of object truth.
David Henderson
Sep 23 2021 at 9:50pm
Great to hear a story about Harry Roberts. In the list of academics that I could have met but didn’t, he’s in the top 10.
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 23 2021 at 10:14pm
David (Seltzer) and David (Henderson): First time I hear of Harry Roberts. Wikipedia presents an endearing picture of him. This is why I like to have knowledgeable friends like you!
Craig
Sep 24 2021 at 9:30am
Way I see it the divisiveness has risen to the level where the ‘rules of the game’ as they were are themselves being attacked. In essence the left is the majority and the right is the minority. The left doesn’t respect the countermajoritarian institutions and this can easily be seen in wanting to get rid of the Electoral College, calls for court packing, I have even heard grumblings about the Senate. Naturally more than a few on the right are now not necessarily respecting the majoritarian elements of the system.
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 24 2021 at 10:50am
Craig: There is a difference between what you are talking about on the one hand and, on the other hand, disparaging the truth, bringing naive (but often well-intentioned people) people to believe falsehoods, and mounting a banana-republic-style attempt to election results.
You may be interested in my recent Independent Review article “The Impossibility of Populism”, which contains related discussions.
Craig
Sep 24 2021 at 12:11pm
A government that is illegitimate in purpose cannot achieve legitimacy through procedure.
“disparaging the truth”
This is a proportionate and quite peaceful mode of ‘revolution’ a revolution which must be done peacefully. The democratic socialists seek legitimacy in the election and that legitimacy should be undermined if at all practicable.
“mounting a banana-republic-style attempt to [alter/change] election results.”
At this point this is water under the bridge, but changing the election results wouldn’t have resulted in Trump remaining President of the US. It would’ve meant the end of the republic. The leftists wouldn’t have respected it (and I’m not really suggesting they should have). Frankly I would’ve demanded an Amendment banning court packing as a precondition to hand the government over and barring that I would’ve declared the election void.
Now, ultimately, I am sure this is the unpopular opinion of the day for many, right? Indeed, that’s why I can’t use my last name in any way where it might be googled out of fear of economic ostracization. Ultimately I left NJ primarily because of taxes. My life happened in NJ, I lived there, I raised a family there, had a manufacturing/ecommerce business there. But the taxes wound up amounting to 56% of every dollar I earned. And so I moved over 1000 miles away to FL and frankly if you told me today that the taxes I was paying 2019 are going to be the taxes I will have to pay moving forward, ie a guarantee, frankly I wouldn’t care, I’d be ok with that. But that’s not what is going to happen because the left doesn’t respect limits. They want court packing and to make a moral claim to more than half my income and there’s consequences to that.
I do enjoy the quoted section of course:
” So don’t attack objectivity and rationality. Unless you’re an a—– and you just want intellectual chaos.”
Well to be fair, I was born in NYC and right on the birth certificate it says, “City of New York, A—— Number 18,407,657”
Sorry, but there’s a lot of money on the line here. Right now I’m 49 and I’m looking ahead and there are things I would love to do before going for a dirt nap. Where paying 56% of every dollar I earn will limit me materially and that’s a helluva lot more important to me than the truth about who won the election. I have a mission and I want to execute it and the proposed confiscatory taxation, taxes I have already fled NJ for, is in the way.
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 24 2021 at 2:33pm
Craig: You write:
What tells us that what you say in your comment is true or even that you believe it is true?
By the way, French Communists had an expression, “mentir vrai,” meaning “lying to defend a valid or true cause.”
Craig
Sep 24 2021 at 3:38pm
“What tells us that what you say in your comment is true or even that you believe it is true?”
Precisely, or not, as the case may be. Indeed, a conversation has to be had on the presumption of truth, right? And your quote has: “you just want intellectual chaos.”
But the political debate isn’t occurring in good faith. Its unraveled causing, in my view, a mental secession particularly to the extent that the debate touches on things that I’m just not even willing to debate.
“By the way, French Communists had an expression, “mentir vrai,” meaning “lying to defend a valid or true cause.””
The left employs the tactic. Fortunately the next Civil War will be a mostly peaceful tussle in the ‘marketplace of propaganda’ — and yes, the left is almost assuredly going to win it.
Phil H
Sep 25 2021 at 5:19am
I very much agree with all of this. But I think it does create a difficult intellectual problem, which is the problem of doublethink. Doublethink is much-derided in 1984 and by those who like to cite George Orwell. But it’s pretty much a necessary consquence of intellectual humility.
What I mean is that I hold a number of views; while at the same time accepting that the majority (or some well-informed elite) does not hold those views; and therefore that my views are probably wrong. I think it’s necessary to do all of those things. If I just give up my views in favour of some majority position (or elite positions), then I’m not going to be thinking any more. Plus, of course, majority positions are inconsistent, and often wrong. So it’s important to retain my own views; but also important to maintain humility and to be aware that I’m probably wrong. Doublethink!
A quick illustration of how it plays out: I’m fairly convinced that the younger generation are pretty useless. My boys won’t climb trees! And it’s not like they’re great with technology, like kids are supposed to be, either. But at the same time, I’m aware that every generation seems to think this about the younger generation. So I heavily discount my own views on this subject. That doesn’t mean I ignore what I think entirely, but I don’t allow it to guide what I do and say.
Rationality, and intellectual humility, demand a facility with holding multiple views at the same time.
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 25 2021 at 12:30pm
Phil H: I would reformulate your last sentence as something like “rationality and intellectual humility demand the capacity of understanding different views.” Holding A and non-A is a contradiction, not a paragon of rationality and epistemic humility. Holding A while admitting there is some probability that non-A is the truth (because you know the arguments of the believers in non-A) is, I think, what Huemer is after.
One can also be unsure of whether A or non-A or some other position B is true.
Phil H
Sep 26 2021 at 5:42am
I’m not nearly as optimistic as you that one can arrive at a set of consistent views while doing all the very complex things that human life requires. And if a person did manage to obtain a set of self-consistent views about everything, I find it very hard to believe that that person would remain intellectually humble. (That sounds to me like what religion is like.) So I’m going to have to stick with that Fitzgerald quote: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
robc
Sep 27 2021 at 9:38am
I think Goedel handled this just fine and that Fitzgerald is wrong.
Logical systems can be complete or consistent.
Believing both A and not-A is really wrong, so better to be incomplete, in that case.
On the other hand, I have argued in the past for a complete philosophical/political system of libertarianism and just accepted that it will have contradictions. But that isn’t taking the Fitzgerald POV, it is just me picking and choosing which half of the contradictions I will hold as valid (but acknowledging the contradictory choice is just as logically valid).
Phil H
Sep 27 2021 at 10:28am
Yeah… I think we’re just dancing around the same facts here, putting a slightly different spin on the same thing.
I can’t distinguish between the two states you name as “hold as valid” and “acknowledge…as logically valid” – I literally can’t see any difference between those two things.
Either way, we’re still left with the problem that sometimes we have to make decisions while knowing perfectly well that the other choice has equally good arguments. It’s a problem.
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 30 2021 at 10:27am
Good point, robc. However, I don’t think your last sentence follows. It is one thing to believe that there exist truths we will never be able to prove (Godel) and another thing to believe that both A and not-A is true. The first belief still allows us to search for any truth that can be found. The second belief implies that any truth is false as well and that any implication is both true and false.
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 30 2021 at 10:41am
Phil H: Perhaps poetry and art in general can straddle the divide between incompleteness and incoherence (as Fitzgerald suggests), but there is no test of whose poetry is better or more useful in understanding the world.
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