Just Act (Like It's) Normal

Willard Van Orman Quine, the 20th Century philosopher of language, provides us with an idea that helps to explain one of the strategies by which people allow themselves to believe extremely unlikely, even utterly ridiculous things.  It is possible, Quine tells us, to believe or, at least, to vigorously insist on the truth of, anything, with complete logical consistency.  All that is required is that you structure the whole of your beliefs and claims about reality so as to avoid  contradicting this privileged claim.  That is, you can insist on the truth of any proposition as long as you embrace the other propositions that it logically entails and reject any that contradict it .

     So, for (a very simple) example, one can logically maintain that the Earth is at the center of the solar system, and that all the other heavenly bodies revolve around it in orbits that form concentric spheres.  What about all the observational (scientific) evidence to the contrary?  There are a couple of strategies for dealing with this.

     One strategy is to construct a world view within which these seemingly troublesome observations are actually not incompatible with geocentrism.  The weakness in this approach is that it can require one to embrace some quite unlikely claims.  The defenders of the Ptolemaic system against the Copernican system developed a panoply of epicycles and retrograde motion and other devices to accommodate the increasingly detailed observations that were available to astronomers.  But the solar system began to look less and less like the perfect creation of a perfect god, and more and more like some Rube Goldberg device that was trying to shake itself apart as it went through its regular motions.

     Early Copernican astronomy needed some of these devices, too.  But they gradually disappeared as the theory was adjusted to fit the observations, rather than such odd notions as the perfection of circles and spheres.  Thus, because it does take the evidence seriously, this strategy has a tendency (by no means always effective) towards self-correction.

     A second strategy, one that has no such tendency to self-correction, is to find some way of discounting contrary evidence.  In its most transparent form, this strategy amounts simply to ignoring evidence that conflicts with one’s views, and perhaps treating that which supports one’s views as beyond criticism.  This is often called cherry picking the evidence, and is a favorite strategy of undergraduates.  They will cite as the very gospel the one scholarly article or scientific study that supports their thesis and ignore the dozens which undermine it.  

     A more sophisticated version of this strategy is to attempt to invalidate contrary evidence by some sort of rhetorical move.  Conspiracy theories often turn on this—evidence contrary to the conspiracy is discounted as simply part of the conspiracy.  Anyone who questions some element of the theory has simply fallen for the plot.  For example, no amount of evidence was going to shake the convictions of those who believed that Obama was born in Kenya, because the evidence was just part of the cover-up.  And anyone who didn’t see this was a fool, or a tool.

     Why does this matter?  It certainly isn’t news that human beings aren’t very good at thinking.  But that is why the conservative press is able to employ more sophisticated versions of this strategy in their efforts to defend the Trump presidency, to portray the Trump administration as somehow the normal working of our political system.  There’s misdirection:  whenever Trump does something particularly illegal or corrupt or disgusting, we are inundated with reminders that Clinton is guilty of all things.  There’s framing:  as the evidence of collusion with the Russians accumulates, conservative pundits bend their rhetorical skills to showing that Trump hasn’t done anything illegal, however corrupt and contrary to the country’s interests his actions may be.  And there is the crap artistry one would expect from an administration headed by a professional crap artist:  as Trump blunders through the G-20 and subsequent meetings in Europe, squandering the good will of our allies and giving our enemies much to laugh about, we are treated to surreal accounts of his foreign policy vision.  And so on.  

     There is nothing normal about any of this.  Or maybe it is perfectly normal.  I guess it depends on context.

Composition and Division

A recent discussion drew my attention to a rhetorical turn that is becoming common in our political discourse.  It is worth a bit of reflection because it has the consequence of allowing us to talk past each other about a great many conflicted issues.  A few examples will make it easier to characterize this rhetorical turn.

     Women who attempt to explain the concept of rape culture to men are often met with the response that not all men commit rape.  This is true, of course, but it misses the point.  The point of the claim that there is a rape culture in the US is, as I understand it, that there are cultural institutions and practices in place that facilitate and encourage rape, and that many (most/all) men implicitly support these institutions and practices.  The fact that many (most) men do not commit rape doesn’t speak to this claim very constructively.

     Anyone who suggests that the way we train and equip police leads to a lot of unnecessary violence and death is likely to be met with outraged protestations about the integrity and courage and sacrifice of police officers.  But the fact that many (most) police officers are people of integrity does not speak very constructively to the claim that we are training and equipping them for the wrong job.

     People who criticize religion—either a specific one or just in general—for the violence and mistreatment and misery it perpetrates meet the same kind of response.  They are admonished that most Christians/Muslims/Jews/whatever are “not like that.”  Again, true or false, this is not a very constructive response to criticism of a body of doctrine or a set of institutions and practices.  To say that a body of doctrine encourages people to behave badly is not the same as to say that all (or even most) who subscribe to the doctrine behave badly.

     The response in all three of these examples is a version of what logicians would call the fallacy of composition.  A fallacy is an inference that may be convincing but is not sound.  The fallacy of composition consists in arguing that because the parts of some whole have or lack some characteristic, the whole itself must have or lack this characteristic.  Two very simple examples:  since neither oxygen nor hydrogen has the property of being wet, neither can water; since each of us wants to pay lower taxes, society as a whole wants everyone to pay lower taxes.  

     These simple examples help to clarify the more complex examples above.  Men who reject claims about rape culture by pointing out that many (most) men do not commit rape are making an inference that looks very much like the fallacy of composition.  The implicit inference is that because most men lack a certain characteristic—the inclination to commit rape—society could not be encouraging rape.  The same can be said of those who answer criticisms of the police with protestations of the integrity of officers.  The implicit inference is that the system cannot be violent or corrupt if the people in it are not inclined to violence and corruption.  And of those who answer criticisms of religion with protestations of the goodness of believers.  The implicit inference is that if most of the people who subscribe to a doctrine are good people, the doctrine could not be the cause of evil.

     The corollary of the fallacy of composition is the fallacy of division, which consists in arguing that because some whole has or lacks a certain characteristic, each of the parts must have or lack this characteristic.  It is certainly possible to find people who argue that because there is a rape culture, all men are rapists; or that because policing involves much violence, all police officers are violent thugs; or that because religious doctrines are vile, so are all religious folk.  The fallacy of division is rather less common in our political discourse, in part, I think, because it does not cohere as well with individualism as the fallacy of composition.  But it is no less problematic for all that.

     Notice that both composition and division are what logicians would call “informal” fallacies.     Unlike inferences that are unacceptable because of their logical structure, inferences that embody informal fallacies are sometimes cogent.  There is no logically necessary connection between rape culture and the inclinations of individual men, but there may be a causal connection.  And this causal connection may run in either direction:  rape culture may influence the inclinations of men, or the inclinations of men may undermine rape culture.  And the same sort of thing can be said about the other examples above.

     The point is that whether or not an informal fallacy is actually fallacious will depend in part on the factual context in which the inference is made.  Sometimes there is factual support for the claim of a connection, or a disconnect, between part and whole; sometimes there is not.  It is the facts, and not logical structure that determines the cogency of the inference.

     Of course, facts, or their absence, don’t count for much in our political culture these days; if someone puts forward facts that undermine your reasoning, you can always cobble together some alternative facts.  And then we can continue to talk past each other, at the top of our lungs, in high dudgeon.  It’s so satisfying.

Nobody Knows....

The chattering classes (which I have recently joined with this blog) are in a frenzy of speculation about what Trump is going to do when he takes office.  And there is a great lament about the terrible uncertainty, because nobody knows….

     There is certainly a kernel of truth to this lament.  It seems that Trump himself does not know what he is going to do, from moment to moment or in the long term.  There is always a high level of uncertainty when one is dealing with someone as mentally disordered as Trump.  

     On the other hand.  We make countless decisions everyday that depend largely on projections about the future behavior of other people.  These range from interactions with strangers, like driving or purchasing things in stores, to interactions with people of whom we have more particular knowledge, like students or friends.  A functional society will have norms in place to regulate impersonal interactions; and most of us learn a bit about human psychology and more about the motivations of specific others simply by paying a bit of attention to what goes on around us.  

     The decisions we make on the basis of these projections often are of life-altering consequence.  And we often make mistakes.  So often, in fact, that Schopenhauer says we might well “look upon life as an unprofitable episode, disturbing the blessed calm of non-existence.”  But what choice do we have?  Only acidheads and monks can live entirely in the moment.  And escaping into some fantasy fueled by religious ecstasy or political conviction doesn’t seem such a good idea.  A careful deployment of our powers of thought and observation, limited though they are, seems about the best we can do.

     This is not easy.  Just getting a handle on the facts about anything the least bit complicated takes a good bit of time and attention to a variety of sources of information.  Making sense of the facts requires some skill in logic and practical reasoning.  And the outcome of any decisions we make about what to do (including the decision to do nothing) will depend largely on how good a job we do of getting the facts and making sense of them.

     There is a moral imperative at stake here.  It is not simply a matter of prudence, of individual self-interest, whether we get the facts right and think carefully before we act.  We are social creatures, and the decisions we make affect those around us in significant ways.  We make economic decisions, political decisions, personal decisions that are often of life-altering consequence to our fellows.

     This essay by William Clifford gives a compelling account of our duty to inquire and think carefully.  (He also addresses the question of how to treat the views of experts, a rather pressing matter for modern society.)  And the web is full of resources to help you sharpen your own critical thinking skills.  Here and here are good places to start.  

     So…can we know what Trump is going to do?  We can certainly know what he has been doing.  Not just since the election.  Not just since the beginning of his campaign.  He has been a publicity hound for at least 50 years, and he has carefully cultivated a reputation as a misogynist and a con artist.  What possible reason is there to suppose he has changed, especially when all the evidence is to the contrary?

     We know how he campaigns.  He uses the rhetoric of violent racism and the most vulgar sexism to incite fear and hatred.  He promises retribution for the elitist devils who have hijacked this great country and denied real (white) Americans their due.  This is the style of a demagogue who will govern by setting the citizenry against itself.

     We know who he has appointed to implement whatever it is he plans.  You couldn’t pick a better team for further militarizing the country, both at home and abroad, and for further strengthening the plutocrats.  Government under the Trump administration will look less like a tool of the corporate sector, and more like simply an extension of it.  And, of course, there are just enough racists and homohysterics to keep the base inflamed.

     And, perhaps most important, we know Trump’s thoughts, as they are emitted nocturnally in his tweets.  I fear that interpreting the tweets of the Great Leader (for what other sort of leader could Trump be) will become a matter of some importance.  Perhaps someone will collect them and publish them in a little red book.

     We may not know the details of how Trump will proceed.  But the general outlines of his plan seem pretty evident.  If nobody knows, it is because nobody wants to know.