Identity, Truth, and Stoicism in the Face of Crumbling Norms of Civil Discourse

Introduction

Yo. Check it. You can't have a functioning democracy without at least two things: a concern for truth and civil discourse. Although perhaps too obvious to state, democracy requires citizens have a concern for truth. Without it, policy will be ineffective at best. Y'see, in (many conceptions) of democracy, policy represents, to some degree, the will of the people. If "the people" are more concerned with short-term political one-up-manship rather than quality of evidence and argument, a country will be governed by policy disconnected from the best evidence and arguments.

A political community often contains an assortment of views on the same issues. While some differing views might each partake in some aspect of the truth, there's no reason to suppose all will. I know this will come as a shock to some of you, but some beliefs just are false. 

Let's assume it's better to get everyone to buy into a policy or view than it is to force it onto a segment of the population. If each is equally convinced of their own 'rightness', how do we not only reach agreement but also lead those holding objectively false views into the light of reason--without outright coercion? That is, how do we get people with false beliefs to change their minds and endorse the policy based on the best evidence?

Think about how it is you discarded previously held views that turned out to be false. Did your change of mind occur by someone shouting at you and calling you an idiot? Did it arise after being ignored? After being mocked? My guess is probably not. 

While not the only means of effecting doxastic change, engaging in respectful discourse probably increases the odds. It also helps when people present compelling arguments, counter-arguments, and evidence. In other words, tone, attitude, and content all matter for changing people's minds. I'll call this loose cluster of methods and attitudes, the norms of civil discourse. [Note: There's a fair amount of philosophical literature on the exact content of the norms of civil discourse. For my purposes, a broad intuitive account is sufficient].

In this post, I want to explore the ethical dimensions of belief, and how the various things we cling to sabotage our path to truth and civil discourse. By drawing on Stoic ideas, I’m going to suggest we all have within us the resources to reconcile the competing passions that have lead to the current breakdown in civil discourse and its corrosive effects on good policy-making. 

Setting the Stage

In perhaps one of the best known psychological studies of the 20th century, subjects are asked to distinguish between real and fake suicide notes. As they do so, they receive feedback on how well they are able to make the distinction. He's the twist (one of them, anyway): The feedback they receive has nothing to do with their performance. It's all a sham. Before they even began the task, experimenters had randomly pre-sorted the subjects into three groups: Those that will be told they are excellent, average, or below average. To summarize, experimenter feedback is predetermined regardless of how subjects perform and has no relation to subject performance. 

In the next phase of experiment, the fact of the predetermined feedback is revealed to the subjects. That is, the subject are told that the feedback was totally unrelated to their task performance. Subjects are then asked to self-assess their ability to distinguish between real and fake suicide notes. 

Of the 20 assigned to the ‘good-guesser’ group, how many do you think changed their self-assessment after the predetermined nature of the experiment was revealed to them? E.g., how many people who were told they were good-guessers evaluated themselves as average or below average? Keep that number in your head. Now, of the 20 who were told they were bad guessers, how many do you think changed their self-assessment after the reveal?

Now that you have those two numbers in your head, I’m going to give you a choice. I can tell you the real numbers from the study, or I can invent some fake numbers to tell you.

Which do you prefer that I do?

I’ll reveal the real numbers in a moment but I want to make my first claim which is central to Stoic philosophy (it actually comes from Plato but the Stoics adopted it...): Every soul is deprived of the truth against its will. By this, the Stoics mean that it is human nature to want truth and knowledge. We have an intrinsic affinity for truth and knowledge. If we have false beliefs, it is only because we have been mislead or we have not yet been taught.

When I asked you whether you wanted me to tell you the true numbers or fake numbers for the study, you very likely wanted the true ones. I’m even willing to go so far as to say that you felt pulled to know the truth. And if I’d given you the fake ones, you’d have probably been upset with me. Human beings have an intrinsic affinity for truth and knowledge. You just experienced it yourself.

Not so fast though. What is the content of the study that you want to know the truth about? After debriefing, only three of the 20 subjects who had been told they were good guessers didn’t continue to believe that they were above average! Of the 20 who had been told they were below average, only three of them revised their beliefs about their abilities too! (For anyone familiar with all the p-hacking issues in psychology, this effect size isn’t one that can be waived away.)

I just finished telling you that a drive for truth and knowledge is intrinsic to human nature. But here we have a well-designed and multiply replicated study in which subjects were given the truth yet refused to take it into account in revising their self-conception. Their self-assessments were completely impervious to countervailing evidence. Only 15% of subjects in each group responded to evidence that undermined a prior belief.

What gives? Well, an affinity for truth isn’t the only component of human nature. As Aristotle observed, we are by nature social and political animals. In other words, we have an intrinsic affinity for being part of a group. Being part of a group requires two things: First, that we share the cluster of beliefs, behaviors, and values particular to the group of which we are a member. Second, that others see us as sharing those beliefs, behaviors, and values.

Let’s return to the study. Why didn’t the subjects merely accept the truth of what the experimenters were telling them and revise their self-assessments accordingly? To quote the study:

It is proposed that personal impressions and social perceptions become relatively autonomous from the evidence that created them. As a result, subsequent challenges to that evidence, and hence to the impression it fostered, will have surprisingly little impact— far less impact than would be demanded by any logical or rational impression-formation model. (Ross, Lepper, and Hubbard, 1975)

In other words, subjects began to self-identify and see others as identifying them as members of particular groups—‘good guessers’ or ‘bad guessers’. To generalize, when you challenge someone’s beliefs, you are not only challenging beliefs but their identity. In order for people to relinquish beliefs tied to their identity they must also change their identity. 

But that’s not even the most difficult part: They have to surrender their membership in a group. Groups are defined, in part, by their beliefs. If you no longer share the same core beliefs as that group, not only can you not self-identify as a member but the other members can no longer identify you as a member. When a group identity is central to someone’s life—like a political or religious group—you best believe they’re going to reject evidence before they compromise the relationships that imbue their lives with meaning.

Stoicism, Truth, and Civil Discourse

I began by telling you that we have an intrinsic affinity for truth and knowledge but even if you hadn’t read about the above study, that claim is on the face of it worthy of ridicule. Everything we’ve witnessed in the the current political climate undermines it. Now we have an explanation: Another intrinsic human drive—belonging to and preserving identity and group membership—completely sabotages our natural affinity for truth.

I’m going to argue for two solutions that come out of ancient Stoic thought. Stoic thought can be boiled down to two practices: 

1. Discover what is necessarily true of the world and 
2. Determine what is and is not in your power to do about it. 

Below I'll suggest what I take to be three facts about the world and then I’ll  suggest what you can do about them. The first applies to how we self-identify and the second applies to how we conceive of others. The third, to how we handle our political environment.

Fact 1 About the World: If you self-identify primarily in terms of a group that is defined by particular beliefs you will sabotage your path to truth.

On it’s own, merely being a social animal doesn’t undermine our affinity for truth. It’s the nature of the particular groups with which we identify that do. People ARE interested in truth but only so long as personal identity and group membership aren't threatened. From the individual point of view, this means that individually we can be part of the solution to civil discord if we reconceptualize or, at least, re-order our identity. Instead of primarily self-conceiving as a member of a particular political group, I can self-identify as a member of the group "rational animal." 

What are the values and behaviors of members of the group "rational animal"? Good reasoning and a concern for truth. In other words, self-conceiving in this way pulls us away from a conclusion-based identity and towards a process-based identity. A reasoner examines the strength of reasons (evidence and claims) and the logical relationships between reasons and conclusions. 'Rational animals' are primarily concerned with quality and method of justification for beliefs rather than dogmatically clinging to and defending particular beliefs.

Importantly, when we identify primarily as rational animals, it shifts our disposition towards others: First, we more likely come to view those with whom we disagree as partners rather than adversaries in the shared enterprise of pursuing truth. We become more calm and charitable because we want to learn rather than impose or defend a view. 

Our concern for the process of justification--i.e., why someone believes something--helps us become better listeners since we can only evaluate justifications if we listen carefully. Not only are we better off for being better listeners, but we likely diffuse much of our interlocutors' animosity when we present ourselves as genuinely interested in why they hold certain beliefs. In short, we begin to turn down the dial on the reactive emotions and attitudes that have rendered political discourse so intractable. 

Epistemic Humility: We ought to always take seriously the possibility that our current view is mistaken. Self-conceiving primarily as a rational animal makes it easier to change our views in the face of new or better evidence and arguments.  Consider for a moment how many beliefs about the world you hold. There are probably an almost infinite number. Now consider all the other people in your country. How likely is it that there are more than a handful that share each one of your millions of beliefs? The odds are staggeringly small. Now consider the millions of people with whom you don't overlap on at least some beliefs. What are the odds that YOU, in the face of widespread disagreement, are the only one in the country that holds all the true beliefs about the world? 

As someone who primarily identifies as a reasoning being, you are not wedded to any particular conclusion but to standards of evidence and a process. So, your views can more easy be responsive to new or better evidence and arguments.

Fact 2 About the World: Conceiving of our Political Others as Evil or Idiots or Both is a Poor Strategy for Changing Minds
Stoic thought offers us insight in how we ought to conceive of others if we hope to mitigate the culture war and our own emotional outbursts that obstruct the pathway to truth. I argue we ought to adopt the Stoic teaching to act as though "every soul is deprived of the truth against its will." 

There are two ideas contained here. First, humans have an affinity for truth (despite the fact that other variables interfere with its attainment); and second, as members of the human species, we are 'rational animals'--which implies we are all sensitive to reasons and arguments (although, perhaps to varying degrees).

Here is Epictetus counseling his student on how to handle someone with an obviously false and harmful view:

Student: Yes, but she is in error.
Epictetus: Well, act on her idea. As long as you don't lay it out for her, though, she has nothing besides her own idea of right and wrong to guide her. So don't get angry at [her] for being confused about what's most important, and accordingly mutating from human to snake. (Discourse I. 26)

Marcus Aurelius had similar thoughts in this somewhat amusing example:

Are you angry with him whose armpits stink? Are you angry with him whose mouth smells foul? What good will this anger do you? He has such a mouth. He has such armpits: It is necessary that such an emanation come from such things--but the man has reason, it will be said, and he is able if he takes pains, to discover wherein he offends. Well then, and you, too, have reason: by your rational faculty stir him up his rational faculty; show him his error [...]. (Meditations Bk V. 28)

And here is more of the same from Epictetus again:

Well, when a guide meets up with someone who is lost, ordinarily his reaction is to direct him on the right path, not mock or malign him, then turn on heel and walk away. As for you, lead someone to the truth and you will find that he can follow. But as long as you don't point it out to him, don't make fun of him; be aware of what you need to work on instead. (Discourse II. 11. 3-4)

Think of it this way. When a student reasons incorrectly on a math problem, we don't get angry with them. We assume they genuinely wanted to get the question right: They aimed for truth not falsity. No one would think it reasonable to yell and get emotionally upset because of the student's error.  

Instead, as a teacher or peer, we adopt a compassionate disposition and work through that student's reasoning process to help discover where they erred. I submit that reconceiving of our cultural and political *others* as truth-seekers--inadvertently making errors in judgment in good faith--will dispose us to be more kind and dial down our own animus both of which opens the door for civil discourse. [All the while we should adopt a stance of epistemic humility; i.e., we should continue to take seriously the possibility that our own view is mistaken unless it aligns with a consensus of relevant experts. Then more confidence is warranted.]

I can hear some of you, including my past-self, mocking this idea:

"This is lunacy. Have you ever read the comments section of an article on vaccines, climate science, GMOs, Trump, Obama, etc...? There is no way these people are even remotely deprived of the truth against their will. Their ignorance is entirely willful."

This may be true for what I call the 'true believers' but I don't think it's true of the vast majority of people.  There's selection bias in the comments sections of the internet. Those with the most extreme views and loudest voices are going to be disproportionately represented. Let's not make the mistake in believing those holding extreme views and attitudes are representative of all with whom we disagree. 

I think the vast majority of people are responsive to argument and evidence when its presented in a way that doesn't immediately threaten their identity or make them out to insufferable morons. Treating people as though they are genuinely concerned with truth raises the odds that they will be open to evidence and argument. And even if agreement isn't reached, we can all count as a win the gain in civility.

Final Fact: You Can't Outrun Disagreement
In closing, I want to dispense (draw on?) some wisdom from an American philosopher. In Fed #10, James Madison is trying to solve what is called The Republican Dilemma: How do we give power to the people but at the same time avoid the tyranny of the majority; i.e., avoid a large faction from ganging up and trampling the rights of a minority group. Part of his answer involves arguing against Rousseau. Rousseau's solution revolves around ensuring that political communities have relatively homogenous values, interests, levels of wealth, and ways of living. If everyone is in the same 'faction', the worry of some factions suppressing others is mitigated. Madison rejects Rousseau's view on the grounds that it is human nature for factions to form. He says

The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. (My italics for emphasis)

Here is the insight: We can’t outrun disagreement. So long as people have different talents, values, and interests as well as the liberty to pursue them, we will disagree with each other. Even in our own families we must live with and get along with people with whom we deeply disagree. 

Again, we can appeal to the Stoics' useful advice: Figure out what is necessarily true of the world then determine what is and is not in your power to do about it. Knowing that you will never outrun disagreement with people with whom you must live, you must determine how to respond to it. They ain't going nowherez and neither are you. 

Are you going to demand that everyone believe what you believe? Are you going to get whipped up into an emotional frenzy with every dissenting view? Are you going to treat each person with whom you disagree as though they are idiots? This path is exhausting and yields no fruit. Trust me. I've tried it. I've tried it a lot.

To summarize, I instead suggest the following: (a) avoid identifying primarily as a member of a group defined by particular beliefs; (b) Identify primarily as a member of the group of people concerned with the process and standards of justification for beliefs rather than with conclusions; (c) take seriously the possibility that you could be wrong, particularly if you aren't an expert and your view conflicts with a consensus of experts; (d) engage with others as though they are deprived of the truth against their will; (d) avoid the temptation of identifying the loudest and most obnoxious as representative of a group (availability bias, sampling bias--for those keeping track!).

Drawing on Kant and Rawls and every major wisdom tradition, there's perhaps an even simpler way to think about the problem of disagreement and the norms of civil discourse: Employ the principle of reciprocity. How would I like to be treated by those with whom I disagree? You may be tempted to reply, "Ya, but...they aren't very nice to me!"  Ok. But barring some special cases, do you increase or decrease the likelihood of persuading them to your view when you adopt acerbic strategies? I mean, what are you even trying to achieve in engaging? 

And what about the state of civil discourse? We are all all responsible for the tone of discourse within our purview--regardless of what others do. That is in our respective control. Nothing I can do will guarantee someone's civility towards me, but this doesn't mean I can't affect the probabilities one way or the other.

Jefferson and Adams: A Beautiful Bromance 
A Case Study In Civil Disagreement
If there ever was a model for the kind of civil dialogue I'm talking about, it can be found in the friendship and correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. These two life-time friends and political adversaries wrote letters almost daily to each other despite fundamental political disagreement. They weren't perfect though: After Jefferson won the presidency (against Adams, the incumbent!) they didn't write to each other for 13 years. However, once the ice thawed, they resumed their regular correspondence in which they regularly disagreed, until both their deaths in 1826. (Crazy history note that boggles my mind: The two friends died only 5 hours apart. Adams' last words were 'Jefferson still lives'. But that's not all. They died on July 4th) 

There is lengthy exchange of letters between the two in 1813--the year they had renewed their friendship. The topic concerned equality and how to ensure that the 'pseudo-aristocracy' (i.e., those whose status and power are a consequence of wealth and birth--not virtue, talent, and wisdom) don't hijack government to their ends. Before addressing Adams' view, Jefferson writes:

On the question of which is the best provision, you and I differ, but we differ as rational friends, using the free exercise of our own reason, and mutually indulging in its errors. [my italics]

Notice a few things: The appeal to the values of friendship; that is, they can disagree on fundamental matters while maintaining mutual respect and while avoiding animosity. The value of the relationship and civility supersede any outcome. Also important is the acknowledgment and mutual conception of both as appealing to reason while also admitting their mutual fallibility--even under optimal conditions. 

Later, after presenting his arguments against Adams' view, Jefferson writes,

It is probable that our disagreement of opinion may, in some measure, be produced by a difference in character in those among whom we live.

Here, Jefferson importantly acknowledges the more general point that different life experiences shape our respective assumptions about the world. We cannot expect those who haven't lived our lives, met the people we've met, or shared the various circumstances that we have to hold the same views as us. Each of us experiences only a very minute subset of the human experience. And if our experiences shape our beliefs about the world, of course we will have different beliefs about the world, human nature, institutions, and so on... (Caveat: Relativism and infallibility don't follow--people can still be wrong).

Disagreement produced by differing life experiences has implications for our basic assumptions about the world. From the point of view of the norms of civil discourse, Jefferson's comments underscore the importance of mutually recognizing and acknowledging in one another the possible effects of our different experiences. I would venture that it is the failure of acknowledgement and consideration of differing experiences which draws out the reactive emotions.

Finally, in closing the letter Jefferson writes:

I have thus stated my opinion on a point on which we differ, not with a view to controversy, for we are both too old to change opinions which are the result of a long life of inquiry and reflection: but on the suggestions of a former letter of yours, that we ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other.

The take-away here is that we needn't always agree. Sometimes agreement isn't forthcoming. However, given that we cannot outrun disagreement, what matters at least as much as reaching resolutions is how we engage with each other. Also, on matters where we do disagree deeply, there is an obligation to explain to others our reasons for the views we hold. That is, we must be willing to submit our own justificatory reasons to rational scrutiny. We can't simply demand that others agree with us.

Closing Thoughts
I study ethics and political philosophy. I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in my research over the last couple of years. Every time I come up with what I think is a good idea, a voice in my head goes, “Hey, wait a minute. Didn’t my parents tell me this when I was, like, five?”  And I don’t think much of what I’ve said here is any different. Nevertheless, that fact that so many, including myself, forget to employ these common sense ideas testifies to the value of their reminder. 

Additional note regarding self and group identity in terms of beliefs: I think there's an important distinction to be made between how we treat identity made up of empirical beliefs (observable facts about the world) vs identity made up of normative (i.e., value) beliefs. Without going into a lot of detail, I think there are good reasons for people to hold on more tightly to the value-based beliefs that form their identity. But I think we ought not hold on so tightly to an identity constituted by empirical beliefs. Doing so forces us into a position where we might have to deny a scientific consensus (think vaccine-safety denier, flat-earther, creationist, global warming deniers, etc...). This not only forces us to adopt dishonest strategies to maintain our beliefs and to dismiss legitimate argument and evidence but it undermines the important political role of empirical experts in forming policy. In clinging to empirical beliefs, as non-experts we apportion an inappropriate amount of credence to our own beliefs relative to those of a consensus of experts.

What I have said applies to the vast majority of disagreement. However, there are special cases where I'm not convinced such a conciliatory attitude is appropriate. Most obviously, this applies to how we deal with overt neo-Nazis deliberately intimidating the well-being of others. 

Whataboutyou?
Finally, before I'm inundated with tu quoques, let me make the following brief comment. We can acknowledge all I have said above and also agree that there is a time and place in discourse for humor, rhetoric, satire, and sarcasm. In fact, they are what can make political discourse fun--especially when done tastefully and between friends. Furthermore, in some contexts, humor and satire have shown to be effective means of persuasion (google it yourself--there's a lot of literature!). 

Finally, with respect to my failings, the Stoics present their virtues as aspirational; i.e., they recognize the human propensity to screw up sometimes despite knowing better. Nevertheless, they give us a target at which to aim as we bumble through life. I have screwed up and continue to screw up a lot in terms of acting on these norms of civil discourse but I'm working daily on hitting the target more than missing it.

Freedum Vs Freedom: What's the Difference and Why Should We Care? USA! USA! Edition

Introduction
Freedom. No single word is found more often on the lips of the American politician. It is 'Murika's rallying cry. But what does it mean? And, once we've settled on a meaning, what sorts of actions does that value commit us to? 

As everyone knows, 99% of philosophy consists in asking, "Ah, ha! But what do you mean by X?" That's pretty much all philosophers do. All day. We argue about what words mean. 

Of course, I'm being facetious. Nevertheless, at least part of philosophy is getting clear on the meanings of terms. Meanings do matter, after all--for both practical and theoretical concerns. Suppose you're debating with someone over whether happiness is the meaning of life. If you think happiness is a psychologically pleasant state then you'll formulate your argument one way. On the other hand, if you think, as Aristotle did, that happiness is a way of living--i.e.., living virtuously--then you will formulate different arguments. 

It's also possible for two people to agree that happiness is the meaning of life but disagree about what 'happiness' means. Unless they first clarify their terms, they'll end of talking past each other without any advance in the dialectic. In a political context, they'll likely advocate different policies and fail to understand why they disagree. 

A: "This policy will promote the general happiness (meaning pleasure)"
B: "No, it won't because it undermines virtue!
A: "Huh? What has virtue got to do with happiness?

In a way, I think this is what's going in with respect to 'freedom'.  In America there are two meanings to the term. I'll call the first 'freedum' and the second 'freedom'. People agree that freedom is important but are talking past each other. [Note: There are actually more meanings for freedom, but I'm going to focus on only two of them].

Freedum
Very simply, freedum is the combination of the absence of coercion combined with capacity to act according to your immediate desires. This is 'Murika's definition of freedom. In my more cynical moods, I call it the freedum to be an idiot. 

Ain't no gubmint gonna tell me what to do. If I want to walk around nekit in my front yard and shit on my lawn--it's my property and I'll do what I want. If I want to drive a diesel monster truck to and from work, despite the fact that I'm unnecessarily polluting the air, ain't no gubmint gonna tell me not to. I gots freedum. 

Freedum is the type of freedom an animal in the wild has. A desire pops up and no one is there to tell that animal that it can't act on that desire if it so chooses--no matter the content of the desire. 

Before dismissing freedum as somehow beneath a thinking creature, freedum does have value. Very few of us would want to live in a world where we were restricted from acting according to our desires. There are many important political freedoms that fit with what I've called freedum: Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to marry whomever you please, etc...

The main point, (to be expanded in the next section) is that at the level of the individual merely acting on whatever fancy enters one's pointy head is an impoverished view of freedom.

I've been overly disparaging of freedum to make a point. It isn't the only kind of freedom worth having, and, I will suggest, there is a more valuable kind of freedom which should sometimes eclipse freedum. 

Freedom
The absence of coercion is one thing but is doin' whatever the f*ck I want all there is to freedom? Perhaps, if you're a 13 year-old. 

Kant
Kant and subsequent philosophers noted that merely acting according to our desires isn't genuine freedom (to be fair, the idea starts with Socrates and Plato). In broad terms, freedom is acting according to reason. Let me explain:

You don't choose to have the particular desires and preferences that you have. For example, when you get a craving for ice cream, you didn't choose to have that desire. You just have the craving. Acting on your various occurrent desires requires no deliberation. You just act on whichever is strongest. On the other hand, freedom is rationally deliberating on your current set of desires (for current and future ends) and figuring out what the rational/best thing to do/pursue would be, then acting in accordance with what reason tells you to do. 

Similarly, we don't choose our preferences. You don't choose to like the foods, activities, people, books, etc.. that you do. For example, no one says "I think today I'm going to like studying philosophy" or "I'm going to like carpentry". You just do. 

Freedum would be simply taking these preferences and desires at face value. So long as no external force prevented you from pursuing and fulfilling them, you have freedum. But Kant's point is that genuine freedom takes more than this. As rational creatures we can take our sets of desires and preferences and submit them to rational scrutiny. We can rationally deliberate over whether they are good desires and preferences to have and whether it would be good to act on those desires and preferences. Freedom is freeing ourselves from our unreflective brute inclinations and instead carefully considering what we ought to do.

Freedom is not simply accepting my brute desire to eat a whole pizza to myself--cuz ain't nobody gonna tell me what to do. Freedom is rationally deliberating about whether it would be good for me to eat that whole pizza, concluding that it isn't, then acting in accordance with this conclusion. 

To drive the point home, if freedom were merely a matter of acting on our desires in the absence of coercion, we'd have to say the heroine addict is just as free as the person who carefully plans out and lives a successful and purposeful life.  Thinking this way confuses freedum for freedom and it turns freedom into a mockery of a travesty of a sham. 

Another way of thinking of freedom is self-legislation. I rationally deliberate upon a set of principles and values according to which I live my life. When a desire arises that clashes with my rationally arrived at principles and values (as will happen frequently), I accord my action with my principles and values--not the haphazard desire. 

For example, perhaps one of my values is to become a great philosophy teacher. To do this I know that in the evenings I have to spend time planning my lectures. However, sometimes in the evening I instead have an overwhelming desire to watch a movie. I am free when I live in accordance with my rationally conceived values and principles. And so, if I refuse to indulge the desire I am free. 

Conversely, I might think, "YOLO!!!". If I acquiesce to my occurrent desire, I give up on my own rules and values. I'm not in control of my life anymore--there are no principles guiding my actions. Like Otis, I just act on whatever fancy happens to enter my head in that moment. But I'm not free when I do whatever the f*ck I want. In such a case I only possess freedum. 

We can think of this notion of freedom not only at the individual but also at the political level. Political freedom can also be understood as self-legislation. We govern ourselves as a society according to the rules, principles, and values that we collectively rationally agree to. Of course, there will be disagreement within a society over exactly what those rules will be. Figuring out what to do in cases of disagreement is the heart and soul of contemporary political philosophy. I won't go into it in this post--I only want to suggest how Kant's idea of freedom extends to the political realm. (For an overview of how political philosophers approach the problem of political freedom, self-legislation, and disagreement see this post.)

Hegel and Marx
Hegel and Marx build on Kant but kick it up a notch in terms of explaining why you aren't free when you merely act on your desires. The best way to understand is by way of my version of an analogy which I loosely borrow from Peter Singer (Singer's original analogy concerns deodorant products).

Economist think an economy is good to the degree that people's actual preferences are satisfied. But the philosopher asks two further question: (a) why do people in that economy have the particular preferences that they do? and (b) are these good preferences to have? 

Take for example the massive popularity of fast food in the US of A. An economist will say that an economy is good in so far as people's preferences for fast food are being met.  The philosopher asks: (a) why do people in the US of A desire fast food so much? and (b) are these preferences for fast food good? Let's examine each in turn.

A little reflection provides several answers to (a) at various levels of analysis. The first point to consider is that the desire for fast food didn't arise spontaneously. It is the result of carefully crafted marketing campaigns to generate the desires. This insight counts as a strike against the idea that someone is free when they act according to their desire for fast food.  The desire came from without, not from within and an action is free only in so far it is the product of conscious deliberation. There's a lot more to the story which I discuss below.

The short version of the story is that our desires and preferences are the product of complex environmental factors external to us. Since their origin is external, accepting and acting upon them isn't commensurate with authentic freedom. Freedom, as should be clear by now, is acting on desires and preferences generated and reflected upon internally.  

Hegel's point (more fully developed in Marx) is that our political preferences--our values and principles that we think ought to order our society--are just like our preferences for fast food. They are the product of our particular place in history and its institutions, attitudes, and practices.

Marx emphasized that our values and preferences don't just shape our institutions and practices (namely capitalism) but our institutions and practices also serve to reinforce the prevailing values and preferences. To understand, we can return to the fast food analogy. 

People have the preference and desire for fast food because not just because of clever marketing but because of our existing practices and the very structure of our institutions. The practice of eating fast food reenforces the preference and serves to generate the desire. The structure of our cities, neighborhoods, and food production systems also serve to generate and reinforce our desire for fast food. 

When you're hungry and out of the house, what's the quickest easiest meal? Fast food restaurants are on every corner. It's much easier to find and pull into a drive thru than to find a quick affordable healthy option. And so, the very structure of our world (in some neighborhoods more than others) pushes us toward fast food. When it's all around us, the desire seems endogenous when in fact it isn't.

We can take further steps back in our analysis and ask why it is that we don't have time for sit down meals. This is also a contingent fact about how are world is currently structured. But it also pushes us toward the practice of eating fast food, desiring fast food, and further creates demand for fast food restaurants which in turn reinforces those material structures in our world. 

We can play this game all day but the point remains the same. Many values, desires, and preferences that we might think come from within, in fact don't. The structure of our world, our institutions, and our practices all serve to generate and reinforce values which fold back on themselves to reinforce the existing structures and practices that were their genesis. Freedom is about acting on internally generated (and deliberated upon) preferences, values, and desires. We are frequently mistaken about the origins of many of our desires; thus, we are also mistaken about the nature of our choices and actions with respect to freedom.

Once we've applied our critique of our values, practices, desires, etc... we must do the real philosophical work. We need to figure out what values and desires we would rationally will that are independent of being externally generated. Returning to the analogy, What would I rationally want to eat--devoid of external forces generating my various gustatory desires? 

More generally, what are the authentic unpolluted rational desires for human beings? For Kant there are universal rational answers to this question since reason is universal and we all (to varying degrees) possess rationality. If we all go to the same well, we all drink the same water. There are universal right answers for what humans should desire. (It's not clear in Kant's philosophy how specific those desires would be). 

Hegel's insight is that we never make choices completely divorced from an implicit value system. Just as we can never perfectly escape our own subjective point of view, we can't escape our point in history and all its implicit accompanying beliefs, values, practices, and attitudes. Nevertheless, through critical analysis we can come to understand the source and origins of our existing institutions, practices, and values and apply rational deliberation to them and the desires they generate.

To continue with the analogy, Kant might have us ban all the fast food restaurants along all the forces that created them. We couldn't rationally want to eat fast food, and so away with it! Hegel would tell us that since we can never exist apart from a value-laden environment we should do the best with the one we currently inhabit:  take the existing fast food restaurants and improve through application of rational deliberation. Fast food restaurants are both good and bad: They offer food that is quick, affordable, and convenient. Unfortunately, the food itself isn't good for us. So, let's tinker with the menu but preserve what's good. Marx might agree with Hegel regarding the menu change, but you best believe he'd also insist labor practices be changed too! 

Let's now apply this framework to life choices. Consider the fact that many students want to be business majors. Why? At the level of freedum, they may just have the brute desire. But a Hegalian analysis gives us much more to consider. We ask, why do they have that brute desire in the first place? If we look around at the structure of our society (capitalism) and the values it inculcates (money, power), the answer is apparent. In a capitalist society, status, power, and success are all tightly bound to how much money one has. Without money, you're in for a rough life.

In one sense, we can say these students are rationally choosing and are thus making choices consistent with freedom. They recognize that in order to be successful in the US of A you need money. Thus, if they had competing desires to go into social work or fine arts, we might say they are rational in choosing to study bidniz. 

But the Hegelian point cuts deeper. It asks how we came to value money so highly in the first place which in turn leads students to have the desire to pursue business degrees. What are the structures, institutions, practices, and attitudes that shape and maintain our value systems which in turn shape our desires? Since we didn't choose the conditions out of which our values arose, there is a sense in which we are not free when we accept them uncritically and the desires they generate--even when they are rational to pursue within a particular historical context.

It can be rational to desire money in a capitalist system and so in a sense you're free when you order your life in pursuit of it. On the other hand, in so far as you don't reflect on the social and historical origins of your deeply held desires and values you are not free. You mistakenly assume that values in your world are eternal and objective. They are the right ones. You fail to see that they are a contingency of your location in history. In so far as you don't see the contingency of your core values and desires, and don't subject them to critical analysis and rational scrutiny, your choices are not consistent with freedom. Otherwise stated, for your choices to be truly free in the Hegelian sense, you have to recognize that your values and desires are the product of your society, your location in history, and a function of various institutions, structures, practices, and attitudes. Only after you've done this intellectual work can a choice be considered to be free.

Conclusion
The next time someone rants about Freedom!!!1!1!!!! USA #1!!!!1!1!! or a politician makes proclamations about freedom, take a moment to reflect on whether they're primarily concerned with freedum or freedom. It's true that the gubbamint can constrain your freedum and that's something we should avoid. But if you reflect a little you might find that restricting your own freedum is sometimes consistent with freedom. And freedom, it seems to me, is frequently to be preferred to freedum. Especially when it comes to living in large groups...

Understanding Philosophy in the Real World: Brexit

Introduction
My second semester of teaching philosophy 101 I had that student; the one that every teacher dreads. You know, the one that sits there all class with a scowl on her face and only opens her mouth to say "What's the point? Why are we even doing this?".  Next to math teachers, philosophy teachers probably have to deal with this the most. When handled incorrectly, this type of student can pollute the whole atmosphere of the class making the entire semester difficult. There are a variety of ways to handle such students. 

My response was to take her concerns seriously. If she couldn't see the value and importance of what I was teaching, at least a quarter of the students were probably thinking the same thing. [That figure comes from extensively polling my intuitions]. From that point forward I promised myself that I'd begin each lesson with a real world issue where the philosophical concept of the day played a pivotal role. If I couldn't show that the concept has real-world applicability and importance, I'd take it out of the syllabus. And that's what I've done ever since. (Bye-bye Gettier epicycles...)

From teaching this way I've learned that philosophy is all around us in every aspect of our lives--even more than even I had imagined. You can't see what you aren't looking for. But if you grow accustomed to looking, you'll be astounded with how embedded in philosophy our lives are.

With all that in mind I want to take the whole Brexit debacle as an opportunity to explore three closely related topics in political philosophy: (a) representative vs direct democracy, (b) idealization, and (c) voting rules. My aim is to show how philosophical decisions shape political events. 

(Here's an excellent companion article by political philosophers).

Representative vs Direct Democracy
Background
Pre-theoretically, most of us think of democracy as meaning something akin to self-rule. We, the people, are sovereign and so the rules that govern society (us) come from us, not from some external power. We (the governed) vote on the nature and content of the rules, policies, and institutions that we want to be governed by. In short, we self-legislate. 

Ok, so we self-legislate. How do we do that? Does each citizen need to vote every time a new law or policy is proposed?  Direct democracy is the idea that citizens vote directly on policy.  This may, at first blush, seem like a good idea. If I'm going to be governed by a law or bear the consequences of a policy, I want to have a say in it. In small organizations this kind of process makes sense. However, as an organization's size grows from team or village-size to that of a modern nation-state, direct democracy will be hugely impractical for a variety of reasons. 

First, in a large political community the amount of time each citizen would have to spend voting on a daily basis would significantly undermine their ability to go about their work day. And it's not just time spent voting. We might hope that citizens spend time familiarizing themselves with the relevant arguments and data associated with each issue. This again in hugely impractical given the breadth and depth of knowledge required to know everything about everything. If we want voters to be informed voters, not only would citizens need to set aside time each day to vote but they also have to set time aside to DO THEY'RE REESURCH!!!!11!!!. 

Besides, anyone who has spent more that 5 seconds in the comments section of the internet can tell you that what many people think is doing research is in fact a massive exercise in motivated reasoning. I find reading the comments section of most online articles to be the best possible argument against direct democracy. 

This leads us to the idea of representative gubbamint. Instead of each citizen giving up most of their day voting and doing research, they can pick someone who knows their interests and can represent them in gubbamint. This is what's meant by representative government: citizens select representatives from their respective communities that are familiar with their interests.  Enter the politician. 

Brexit and Representative Democracy
Here's the dealy-yo. It's very doubtful that any political arrangement will be perfect (excluding putting philosophers in charge of everything). There will always be trade-offs. With representative democracy we overcome many of the shortcomings of direct democracy (I'll discuss more of them in the next section). But we create new problems. 

First, since each citizen doesn't actually vote on policy, the representative has to interpret what his constituency would have voted for. There are many ways interpretation can go wrong. And this doesn't even include some subgroups' disproportionate influence or that the representative can be constrained by party politics (which of course, they always are to various degrees). 

Another major problem with interpretation is that people can be mistaken about what's in their own best interest. As a representative, do you vote according to what they actually say they want (even though it ultimately undermines their interests) or do you vote according to what a reasonable expert thinks would best advance their interests? I'll deal with this problem in detail in the idealization section below.

The next major problem takes a bit of background explanation. The whole point of democracy is self-rule. Ideally, the rules that govern us are represent our own will. Otherwise, to various degrees we are being coerced by what feels like (or is) an alien power. And nobody likes being told to follow rules they don't agree with.  

As a political community grows in size and complexity each sub-community has proportionately less influence over the rules by which they will be governed. This is just a fact about numbers. If your community represents only 3% of the population then your political weight in terms of shaping policy is quite small. 

Add to the numbers phenomena the fact that the diversity of values also increases as political communities expand. In a small political community there are more personal interactions and shared ways of living. It follows that fundamental values will tend to be relatively homogenous and so political disagreement over fundamental values is less likely. As political communities expand however, the likelihood of disagreement over fundamental values increases. Pair this fact with a sub-community's diminished political power to shape the laws and policies by which it is governed and you have a great recipe for political alienation. 

These concepts give us a helpful lens through which to understand the "take our country back" sentiment in Brexit (and "Make America Great Again" in US of A). The people who voted for Bexit don't feel as though they have any say in the laws and policies that govern them and that those laws are (perceived to be) inconsistent with their own values and beliefs. And, they are right. If democracy is conceived of as self-rule, their communities have very little influence over the policy according to which they are governed. Second, they don't recognize as their own the perceived values according to which they are governed (set by EU policy). 

This is not meant as a defense of Brexit supporters, only an explanation. That said, let me point out that the above reasons for resisting yet another level of gubbamint and for favoring local levels are probabilistic. There's no logical contradiction between a local government, tyranny, and despotism. 

Furthermore, there are reasons to think that the same people who voted for Brexit voted against their own interests. (Aside from the philosophical ones discussed below, here are some empirical ones from a libertarian blog which one would expect to be against centralization).

Let me explain:

Idealization
A naive view of people and politics suggests that people always know what's best for them. But this is obviously false. Such a view assumes perfect information and perfect reasoning. A mere moments reflection on one's own past or a perusal of the comments section of a vaccine article reveals that we can very often be mistaken about our own good. Thus, it looks like we have the makings of a dilemma: People make mistakes about their own good which implies that if we want to avoid bad policy experts ought to decide policy but at the same time democracy requires that citizens have a role in forming policy. We want to avoid coercing people--even if it's for their own good. 

Deriving solutions to this dilemma is the meat and potatoes of political philosophy. One of the more popular methods is to suggest some degree of cognitive idealization. Let me explain: we know that real people have false beliefs and make bad inferences. That's how they end up having false beliefs about what policy would actually best advance their interests. Proponents of idealization suggest that policy reflect what people would want if we (to varying degrees) idealized away their false beliefs and bad inferences. In other words, policy should be what people would want if they were rational and didn't have false beliefs. 

Let me illustrate. I've decided that you are in charge of me but you can only apply rules to me that I consent to. I walk into a donut shop and I see all the delicious donuts. I want to order 3 donuts. I believe that I want to order and eat 3 donuts. It turns out that eating 3 donuts would actually be inconsistent with what I truly value: the maintenance of my health and washboard abs. 

You know this but the overwhelming olfactory and visual stimulation has overwhelmed by brain. I have false beliefs about what's good for me. On a view of democracy where policy is set by people's actual desires and beliefs, you must buy me the donuts. It's what I actually want despite the fact that eating 3 donuts would be contrary to my core values (get it?) and interests. 

An idealization view, on the other hand, wouldn't give me the donuts. The idealization view idealizes away my false beliefs and bad inferences ("I'm going to feel so good if I eat those 3 donuts", "I'd be really happy if I ate all these donuts"). My belief that I want to eat 3 donuts is actually inconsistent with my more fundamental values (health and abs). Thus, if you prevented me from eating all three, it would not be contrary to democratic values. You wouldn't be coercing me because the policy you are imposing on me is actually consistent with my own values if I just thought about it a bit more. I am still self-legislating. You're just correcting for the vicissitudes of my passions. 

Within the literature there is dispute over just how much idealization we should do. If we idealize too much then the resulting policies won't be recognizable to the imperfect people they end up governing. Thus, although consistent with their interests, they will be perceived as coercion by an alien power. 

Others advocate some version of moderate idealization. Kevin Vallier suggests we idealize only in so far as actual people can recognize their own core values and beliefs in the resulting policy. The criticism of this view is that we still sometimes get people voting for bad policy if they have bad/false core beliefs or racist/zenophobic/homophobic values. 

Idealization and Brexit
Idealization gives us another lens through which to understand the Brexit vote. The vote was a referendum; i.e., direct democracy. In other words, there was no opportunity to correct (if need be) people's votes with idealization. If it turns out that it would actually be in most Brits' actual interest to stay in the EU, too bad. There's no way for a representative to correct for the error. 

The fact of the matter is that even most (all?) experts aren't clear on what the consequences of Brexit will be and so it's hardly likely that people in the general public made this judgment in an informed way.  Really, the vote was a "feel-off". Votes were more likely the result of raw emotion than any kind of informed deliberation over trade offs between values and likely consequences. 

If we take the reports in the media seriously,  there now seems to be growing buyers remorse among some of the no-vote contingent. The immediate adverse effect on the British economy (and people's pension funds) is making people seriously reconsider whether they voted on good information and whether their "no" vote was actually consistent with their core values, desires, and interests. 

Voting Rules
The quick about-face points to another issue in political philosophy: Voting rules. For many political issues, timing is everything. Poll people at two different points in time--even days apart--and you can get very different results. For example, if you'd polled Americans pre-9-11 about extending executive powers, the overwhelming majority would have said no. Just a few days after 9-11, many saw no problem with it. Now, it's being called into question again. 

This points to the idea that for major national-level decisions, you want some kind of voting rule in place that ensures the will of the people is stable and not the product of short-term current events. The Brexit referendum used a one-time majority rule vote. That doesn't do much to hedge against the vicissitudes of the unwashed masses. 

Consider also, about 70% of the country turned out to vote, just over half of which voted "no". That means about 35% of the population determined the fate of the remaining 65%. In the US constitutional reforms require 2/3 majority in both legislative houses (read: representative democracy/idealization). The higher bar ensures the changes reflect the publics' stable attitudes. The one-time majoritarian referendum does not. 

Conclusion
There are legitimate concerns with representative democracy in diverse large political communities. One's proportionate influence over policy diminishes and one must coexist within a greater diversity of values. When people lose the ability to shape the policy and institutions by which they are governed--even if it's in their own long-term interest--they push back. No one likes to be told how to live by a perceived-to-be alien power. It's not unreasonable to believe that as we add layers of government, institutions become less representative of local interests and values. Autonomy is undermined. Of course, these are probabilistic assumptions and the ultimate truth will vary across actual cases.

It's logically possible to believe both that all of the reasons for voting for Brexit are valid and still maintain that it is in the British public's own interest to stay (on balance). In fact, at least some observers suggest that there will be less rather than more overall autonomy with Brexit. At the end of the day, we'll have to see how it plays out. 

My own tentative view is that the world of nationalist isolated nation-states has had its chance. A casual look back at history tells us that what Europeans gain with the EU is so much greater than what they lose. I submit that Brexiters are confusing relative costs for absolute costs. They see the costs of the current state of affairs on their self-determination. And they are without a doubt right. But these cost are being considered as absolute costs. In fact, the costs must be weighted relative to the alternatives. And as I've already mentioned, we needn't look too far into history to see the costs of a nationalist Europe. 

Finally, we should ask what Brexiters are trying to achieve. What is their metric of success? How will they know if it was a good decision? None of this is really clear beyond a greater sense of self-determination even if on the whole they end up worse off. If so, we can make sense of the Brexit vote through the eyes of Dostoevsky's Underground Man:

I would not be at all surprised, for instance, if suddenly and without the slightest possible reason a gentleman of an ignoble or rather reactionary and sardonic countenance were to arise amid all that future reign of universal common sense and, gripping his sides firmly with his hands, were to say to us all, "Well, gentlemen, what about giving this common sense a mighty kick and letting it scatter in the dust before our feet simply to send all those logarithms to the devil so that we can again live according to our foolish will?"  

...Man has always and everywhere--whoever he may be--preferred to do as he chose, and not in the least as his reason or advantage dictated; and one may choose to do something even if it is against on's own advantage, and sometimes one positively should. One's own free and unfettered choice, one's own whims, however wild, one's own fancy, overwrought thou it sometimes may be to the point of madness [. . .]

All man wants is an absolutely free choice, however dear that freedom may cost him and wherever it may lead him to...