Concerning reasoning and political argumentation ... some ideas to consider:
As it happens, all forms of judgment are cognitive processes: when it comes to politics it often thought the dichotomy is between emotion (liberal) and cognition (conservative), however that is not the case. The decisions to be for or against anything, including political stances, including all moral judgments, are decided between two different kinds of cognition:
intuition and
reasoning. Feeling anger over someone's political position is a type of moral emotion but it is really a type of moral
intuition. But not all intuition rises to the level of emotion, most judgments are nearly instantly arrived upon - you do not need to ponder whether it better to save one person or five, the answer is instantaneous. But the intuition was not emotion-based, but rather an effortless moral judgment.
You might ask, who cares? The understanding of how we arrive at our political positions (really all our positions) explains why debating with reasoned arguments avails little to alter people’s perception of truth. Reasoning usually does not control or move the intuition to alter moral judgments. Moral judgments are based on intuition (not passion) and reasoning trails afterward to construct post hoc justifications (after the fact reasoning as to why we hold to certain positions, positions that are held automatically and instantly by intuition). It is possible to change someone's thoughts, when we are challenged by friends, that is, through social persuasion, the arguments of friends can persuade our intuitions, but not our moral reasoning.
What is he going on about? some might wonder. The intuition is like an elephant that changes its path only slowly, after consideration of a matter.
Reasoning is the rider on the elephant that has the reigns and is able to react to the logic of an argument but cannot alter the unyielding elephant (intuition). Especially in combative situations where a person's positions are under attack, where both our intuition (which holds our political belief) and our moral reasoning (which works tirelessly to defend and support those notions, not to change them). Both are working together to fend off attacks. No logic can alter the opinion of an opponent in combat mode - never ever.
To effect change in another person on moral or political matters, you must
empathize with their understanding, not vilify or condemn. The elephant is always in automatic mode, it is the intuitions that come first about any topic of concern - then reasons for that position come second, existing only to defend that intuitive position. In order to effect a change of thought in an opponent you have to talk to the elephant, not the rider. People will never believe anything that violates their intuitions, they will argue endlessly to find an escape from the logic you present.
For instance, your intuitive elephant holds its moral conceptions such that it leans or favors a particular direction, having positive intuitive reactions to certain people or words. If you say "pro-life" to a liberal, his elephant is leaning opposite to those charged words (which are pleasing to a conservative elephant). The liberal has conflict with the word, the latter is in sync. In fact, people tend to like or trust people who have elephants that lean the same direction (in agreement). Moral judgment is not thought out cerebral affairs, we do not weight out harm and benefits, rather it is a rapid, automatic process that causes people to be drawn toward things, or away. In fact, infants make moral judgments, having a preference for those who are perceived as nice to them (a six-month old baby watching a puppet show where one puppet is mean and the other nice, will pick up the nice puppet and not the mean one). The elephant starts making moral judgments during early infancy, long before language and reasoning arrive.
People do not seek evidence to disprove their stance on moral issues, we do not challenge our own beliefs. When discussions are hostile, the likelihood of change is remote. But if the elephant leans toward the other person, not as an adversary (then it would lean away and oppose any argument) but because the other person is likable, someone to be admired, or worthy for the person to want to please, then their elephant can lean
toward their opponent. Otherwise, the rider (reason) will defend the elephant's position (leanings) even to the point of nonsensical and illogical arguments. Intelligence (IQ) determines how many clever arguments one can come up with, generating more reasons, but only to buttress their own positions, not to self-analyze them.
If I said that President Bush lied and deceived in order to arrive at reasons to go to war in Iraq, a right-leaning elephant will muster its rider to oppose that argument. A left-leaning elephant will readily agree that Bush meant to deceive. Reasoning is not there to help us find truth, but to help us argue, persuade, and manipulate in the support our own views. It is very hard to have people look for evidence to disprove their favored view, in fact, it is almost never done. We easily deceive and convince ourselves, and then cover up the deception.
From a liberal point of view, liberalism is self-evidently ethical, of course. Liberals want peace, worker's rights, civil rights, and secularism. For a liberal, the Republican Party is the party of war, big business, racism, and Christianity. To a liberal, the Republican Party is the party of evil. The narrative is that liberals want to help people but conservatives only operate out of selfish self-interests (lower taxes), or veiled racism (close the borders). When one side cannot imagine the morality of the other side, then the other side is not seen as holding sincere moral beliefs. It is this blindness to the moral compass of the opponent's position that makes a person incapable of seeing more than one valid framework for judging people.
Why are people so divided on moral judgments, to include politics? All cultures hold highly certain virtues - these moral virtues vary depending on the culture (city vs. country, warrior culture vs. farming culture, etc.). Among the differences between cultures, there lies a foundational or
universal morality that various virtues are contained within. For someone on the left, spanking a child for disobedience triggers judgments of cruelty and oppression, on the right it is linked to judgments of proper enforcement of rules and respect for parents and teachers. Different foundations of morality are operating in the left and the right.
There are six universal moral foundations:
1. Care - compassion, caring, kindness such as protection of children
2. Fairness - justice and trustworthiness, such as anger at cheating or deception or the benefits of cooperation
3. Loyalty - patriotism, self-sacrifice, such as found in sports forming cohesive coalitions and group pride
4. Authority - obedience, deference, such as respect for bosses or professionals, knowing who is dominant or submissive
5. Sanctity - temperance, chastity, piety, cleanliness, such as avoiding diseased people, contaminants, or taboo ideas
6. Liberty - freedom from oppression, attempted domination, such as a bully or tyrant (authority figures must earn their trust)
Examples: hurting a child violates the rule of Care, profiting from someone's undeserved loss violates the rule of Fairness, criticizing your nation to foreigners violates the rule of Loyalty, disrespecting your father or mother violates the rule of Authority, acting in some disgusting or unclean way violates the rule of Sanctity, and accumulating wealth appears predatory on the poor (social justice is important to the Left) which violates Liberty. Abusing power (Authority) yet demanding "respect" from the abused offends Liberty (including the abuse of political power).
Where is all this leading? When these universal moral rules are applied to liberals and conservatives, something interesting appears. Certain moral rules are more relevant (important) to liberals than conservatives. It turns out that liberals value Care and Fairness most, far more than Loyalty, Authority, or Sanctity. Conservatives value all five foundations more or less equally. These moral qualities permeate the liberal thought process (their intuition) such that a liberal makes choices to maximize
Care and
Fairness. For instance, liberals prefer a dog breed that is gentle (the Care foundation value) and one that relates to their owner as an equal (Fairness as equality, an independent-minded dog that relates to its owner as a friend). Conservatives on the other hand, want dogs that are loyal (Loyalty, to home and family, but not to strangers) and obedient (Authority moral foundation, an easily trained dog), both sides equally prefer clean dogs (Sanctity).
Both sides, Left and Right, have a hatred of oppression, but is expressed differently. Liberals rely on the Care foundation heavily and see the Liberty foundation when they help the underdogs, victims, and powerless groups everywhere. Liberals seek to arrange Care and Liberty so that civil rights and human rights effect equality of rights. However, it is easy for liberals to move toward an
equality of outcome (everyone gets an "A" on the test, everyone "wins". These are concepts foreign to a capitalist system as they are impossible under capitalism, which is why Liberals lean toward socialism/communism). On the other hand, conservatives care about their "group" more than serving all of humanity. Conservatives (and libertarians) hate tyranny, which is seen as a liberal nanny state with high taxes, oppressive regulations, and sovereignty-reducing international treaties.
These six universal moral foundations of the world are what drives Liberals and Conservatives to act, think, and react the way they do. The Left tends to rest on the Care and Liberty foundations: which include social justice, care for the poor, and political equality for various subgroups in society, and to fight oppression of bullying and domineering elites. Everyone cares about Care foundation - but liberals care much, much more. Liberals are more easily upset by signs of violence and suffering compared to conservatives (or libertarians: libertarians care about liberty almost to the exclusion of all other concerns). Liberals turn to government to defend the rights of racial minorities, children, animals, etc., seeking to defend the weak against the oppression of the strong. Conservatives hold to the right to be left alone and resent liberal programs that use the government to infringe on their liberties in order to protect groups that liberals care most about.
When it comes to Fairness, conservatives care more, but they want to see proportionality. Conservatives want to see everyone "pulling their own weight", which is only fair. It is fair to a conservative that those who work the hardest get paid the most. On the other hand, liberals are at most ambivalent about Fairness. It is not rejected outright, but they focus on
Care and
Liberty the most, and are willing to trade away Fairness (cheating, lying, dishonesty) when it conflicts with compassion or their desire to fight oppression (thus, Hillary's lies and crimes are less important than her plan to fight oppression). Conservatives are tougher on punishing criminals due to their emphasis on Fairness and proportionality (do the crime and you do the time). But liberals see the conservative's retribution for crime as causing "harm", and harm activates their Care foundation.
The largest differences between conservatives and liberals are in the
Loyalty,
Authority, and
Sanctity moral foundations. Liberals are ambivalent about these, at best, while social conservatives embrace them. Because Liberals hold fast to only three of the moral foundations and don't care much for the three that conservatives hold dearest,
they don't understand the motivations of conservatives. They assume, because they don't have these moral underpinnings, that conservatives are ignorant or stupid for holding the positions they do. They must be afraid of change because, to a liberal, they can only possess the simplest of worldviews and are unable to decipher shades of grey. To the liberal mind it must be because conservatives are either evil or stupid. To the liberal mind, the arguments of conservatives based on Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity can easily be ignored. For this reason liberals do not feel the need to take conservatives seriously (which lends itself to mocking, name calling, and personal attacks by liberals). Conservatives value all six moral foundations, and can emphasize or understand the liberals defense of the poor or underclass, but the conservative's Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity moral underpinnings leads them to reject the liberal's moral defense for their arguments or policies, as in most cases the Care foundation alone will violate aspects of the other three foundations most important to conservatives.
Believe it or not, studies indicate a genetic link that disposes us toward certain moral frameworks. From the earliest age such as nursery school, our personal traits were exposed to be different - whether we grow up to be liberal vs conservative we were exhibiting these differences even in early childhood. These subtle behavioral difference was the cause for adults to treat us differently. One adult might be drawn to the creative but rebellious little girl; others punish her for being an unruly little brat. The specific environment faced caused us to adapt in response, which further defines and sharpens their personality development.
Not fitting in at a strict school, constant battles with parents or teachers causes the liberal child to seek different friends (liberals with liberals, conservatives with conservatives) and different activities than the conservative, who fits in well in a highly structured environment. The net effect, via the experiences of life and the child's reaction to them, our initial leanings grow deeper and determine what kind of person we will grow up to be. It is the difference in the genes that initiated the way the mind viewed the world as an infant, but it was the environment that helped reinforce perceptions based on those moral foundations, such as Caring for the downtrodden that led their elephant to lean left. A person's life experiences reinforces the need to defy uncaring authority, power structures, and break the "chains" that restrict the Liberty of victims. The environment that fosters the Caring foundation causes a person to fight inequality and exploitation. Ultimately the fulfillment of the initial disposition of our genes and environmental influences is to usher in the liberal welfare society with equal outcomes for all. The moral framework started with a genetic leaning as an infant. It was the interactions based on the emerging behaviors that led the blossoming liberal to join the liberal team, to join the struggle for a "good" society in which individuals are free to pursue their self-defined happiness, and eventually this becomes the dominate goal, the only worthwhile mission in life.
But for conservatives, equally genetically disposed but instead toward valuing
all six moral foundation (not just three as liberals are prone), the end goal becomes freedom from government constraint (Liberty), equality through proportionality (Fairness) where stealing wealth and redistributing it to the poor violates the rule of proportionality (you should enjoy the rewards of working hard), where Loyalty is crucial (to our military, to the country and flag that represents it), where Authority is not to be despised (subversion of the family and of traditions), and Sanctity is absolute (liberals replacing God with the celebration of promiscuity). The liberal and conservative worldviews based on the different emphasis of these six moral foundations cause the partisan opposition in politics (and life).
When liberals try to understand the conservative viewpoints, they have an impossible time. Liberals
cannot speak to the Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity with any conviction - they are rejected as moral concerns. To a liberal, Loyalty to a group means the exclusion of others and is seen as the basis of racism (thus, conservatives are always seen as racist to the liberal mindset). Person's in Authority implies dominance for the few and submission for the many, which is
oppression to liberals. Sanctity to religious values is meant only to
suppress sexual freedom and justify homophobia, to the liberal mind. When the liberal evaluates the conservative's values they shrink back in horror - only a monster would be against caring for the poor, homosexuals, minorities, etc., which it is assumed to be the default position of conservatives.
However, the conservative framework includes all six moral foundations, and while they can and do recognize certain liberal values (though applied incorrectly in their view) the conservative is quite able to show empathy for the plight of underdogs and to be moved by stories of oppression and suffering (not to the degree liberals are motivated though). But liberals possess a very poor view of conservatives based on their limited moral framework. This is because their moral matrix is built around primarily only intuitions about Care and Fairness (as equality).
Liberals tend to believe people are inherently good, and that they will do well when constraints to their freedoms are removed. Conservatives believe that people need constraints in order to behave well, cooperate, and thrive. Without them people will cheat and behave selfishly. This is why liberal programs often end in ruin, and why communist revolutions end up in despotism. The liberals' main moral foundation is Care, but it is insufficient alone to order society properly. Changing laws, traditions, and institutions to solve social problems sounds nice, but the unintended consequences of ignoring Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity eventually leads their programs to disastrous ends. The politics of kindness, looking for government to protect the public and rescue victims from the evils of capitalism, sounds enticing, but in the end causes mayhem in the capitalist system. By decreasing competition and innovation, and restricting freedom of choice, the liberal often causes harm on a vast scale, including those the liberal initially sought to show kindness and Care toward.
The conservative’s broader moral matrix allows them to detect threats that liberals cannot perceive. Conservatives do no oppose change of all kinds, but fight hard against change that will damage institutions and traditions that provide the moral framework to society (i.e., the family). Liberals think it necessary to erase the borders and boundaries that divide us, no countries, no religion - then finally we'd all be one and we'd live in peace. That is the liberal Utopian heaven. But to conservatives that would lead to hell on earth. Religion makes us better neighbors and citizens, divisions bind people together into groups and encourage trust and discourages selfishness. Diversity tends to form social isolation, people living in ethnically diverse setting tend to "hunker down", turning inward and becoming more selfish and less interested in contributing to the greater community. The liberals’ zeal to help victims of oppression and exclusion, their desire to remove arbitrary barriers (such as race) combined with the liberals lack of emphasis on Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity foundations, often lead them to push for changes that weaken groups, traditions, and institutions that hold society together. Emphasizing the difference between racial groups, eroding authority structures in homes and schools, supporting multicultural education programs and welfare programs, have had the effect of increasing out-of-wedlock births, crime, suicide, disease, weakened families, created chaos in schools, harmed the poor, and the emphasizing of differences between groups has led to more racism, not less.
So, you should see there are better ways to make your politics palatable to your opponent. If you want to argue politics, consider well the six moral foundations and try and figure out which one's carry the most weight in a particular controversy. You have to "listen" to what the other person is saying (and understand why their moral framework dictates they hold their particular positions), and try and empathize with their concerns. It is impossible to convince someone of error through angry arguments from one rider to another. It is the elephant that must be convinced to change its path, and that can only be done by prolonged influence of other
friendly elephants (social persuasion or peer pressure). Good arguments from the riders of friendly elephants will work too if the person is trusted, admired, and cared for ... but never from someone out of a position of hostility.
You must
first find points of commonality to establish some bit of trust if you care to be heard. When you bring up morality, try and start with some praise or with a sincere expression of interest in your opponent’s views. Otherwise, their rider will attack and defend itself with endless rebuttals, and you get nowhere. If you are a liberal, understand that your viewpoint is incomplete. Rather than judge and paint conservatives in broad negative terms (crazy, stupid, evil, unloving, uncaring, wanting to destroy everything) consider that they are operating on moral foundations you have rejected or don't value. Perhaps if you hold your intuitive anger (you just know you are right) and instead listen to your opponents reasoning, keeping in mind the six moral foundations, you might (and it does happen) find that their moral perspective is also a reasoned position based on moral foundations you have not considered. While your elephant may not agree initially, it is possible over time for your intuitive elephant to change its preconceived leanings and begin to open to other moral foundations not considered when "debate" was just one rider shouting at another.
john
