
Moral Pollution in Place of Reasoned Critique - hkai
https://quillette.com/2018/10/14/moral-pollution-in-place-of-reasoned-critique/
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aluren
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
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?

~~~
aluren
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.

