From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Mon May 26 2003 - 17:44:21 MDT
Dan (Technotranscendence) wrote
> Abstract: [Michael Huemer] look for explanations for the phenomenon of
> widespread, strong, and persistent disagreements about political issues.
> The best explanation is provided by the hypothesis that most people are
> irrational about politics and not, for example, that political issues
> are particularly difficult or that we lack sufficient evidence for
> resolving them. I discuss how this irrationality works and why people
> are especially irrational about politics.
>
> For the full essay, see http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/irrationality.htm
>
> Any thoughts?
Yes, indeedy. I will agree that it is quite a good essay, well-written
and easy to read, and well-informed on most points. However, the author
in my opinion makes several errors. One is that he fails to appreciate
how Pan Critical Rationalism explains learning and the retention of
hypothesis (which is to say, he fails to acknowledge how conjectures
really die). Two, he doesn't address some cases where it seems to me
obvious that values determine some political stances, and doesn't
find the simplest explanation for some of his examples, like, duh, look
to the ambiguity of certain words. Three, as Harvey hinted at, he has
a pretty expansive definition of "irrational"---but then, perhaps so
does Robin Hanson and others (I haven't finished with their papers).
Finally, he doesn't seem to deal too well with those interesting cases
where it's "rational to be irrational".
Firstly, he writes
On the Divergent Fundamental Values theory [which I, Lee, embrace]
we should expect prevalent political belief clusters to
correspond to different basic moral theories. Thus there
should be some core moral claim that unites all or most
'liberal' political beliefs, and a different moral claim
that unites all or most 'conservative' political beliefs.
What underlying thesis supports the views that (a) capitalism
is unjust, (b) abortion is permissible, (c) capital punishment
is bad, and (d) affirmative action is just? Here I need only
claim that these beliefs are *correlated*...
Well, I can think of two (2) value differences that explain these
political differences! One is that liberals rate inequality as
much more damaging and unfair than do conservatives, and secondly
many libertarians and conservatives (though not I, incidentally)
consider it morally *unjust* for rich people's money or hard-
working people's money to be taken from them by force for the sake
of the poor. (I myself happen merely to think that it doesn't work
out at all well to do so, even though I am a libertarian-conservative.)
Therefore, the author has not refuted the conjecture that differing
values are quite important in determining some political differences.
Now consider his flawed treatment of the capital punishment question.
He thinks that it comes down to a factual dispute, and that the
various partisan proponents disagree over the facts about capital
punishment:
Those who support capital punishment are much more
likely to believe that it has a deterrent effect,
and that few innocent people have been executed.
Those who oppose capital punishment tend to believe
that it does not have a deterrent effect, and that
many innocent people have been executed. Those are
factual [sic] questions, and my moral values should
not have any effect on what I think about those
factual questions.
But those are not EASILY RESOLVED factual questions! Even more
importantly, consider the term "many innocent people". IMO it
is very likely that proponents of CP and opponents of CP might
agree on the numbers, yet still consider it to be, respectively
"not too many" and "too many"! Duh. Why, they'll even disagree
about whether the particular adage, "better that a thousand guilty
men go free than one innocent man executed" is wise or not, despite
it employing a very concrete number!
I think I'll discuss his idea of "non-epistemic belief preferences",
his overly small (IMO) idea of "rationality", and his failure to
appreciate PCR in another post.
Lee
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon May 26 2003 - 17:55:18 MDT