Conviction Convicts
by rsbakker
Aphorism of the Day: Nothing is more dubious than certainty.
I find myself wondering about the people who read through Theo’s blog entries, nodding their head and thinking, “Yes–Yes!”
What, if anything distinguishes us from these guys? Are we every bit as chauvinistic as they are, only in different ways? For a long time now, this has been my impression of many you find in the humanities: self-serving dogmatism concealed behind a facade of pseudo-critical homilies. Only sophisticated where Theo is crude, adroit where Theo is clumsy.
In teaching practical reasoning I’ve always been troubled by two specific fallacies: the arguments ad hominem and ad populum. If it is the case that we cannot help but unconsciously game ambiguities to secure status and prestige (which is to say, confabulate rationalizations), and if it’s also the case that the our cognitive incapacity and the complexity of the world are such that anything may be rationalized, then the who of the argument becomes all-important, doesn’t it?
Doesn’t the question of reliability or accuracy or veracity turn more on the issue of who is arguing, more than the arguments themselves? A troubling question for the humanities in general, I think. A troubling question for philosophy most of all.
Aren’t we talking about people with the right psychologies?
Aren’t we talking about us?
Pretty hard to outrun chauvinism, isn’t it? (This is the most insidious thing about ‘seeing through’ the incapacities of others. You always end up using your insights in the same self-aggrandizing ways.)
But after this debate I can’t help but ask the question of cognitive types. Are some people ‘just born’ with overdeveloped ‘rationalization modules?’ I don’t know about you, but it seems to possess anecdotal truth to me. Everyone knows some irritating, perpetually self-satisfied ‘know-it-all.’ People who have some way of spinning every self-serving intuition their brains offer up into universal truth: ‘good for them’ automatically becomes the ‘sad fact of the matter’ for everyone else. Pursuing self-interest becomes serving the public good.
A handy social adaptation, if you think about it.
To some extent I actually think I belong to this cognitive tribe! I’m certainly an insufferable know-it-all. I find myself reflexively theorizing everything all the time, too often through the same self-congratulatory lense. My only saving grace (and this is my rationalization module speaking) is perhaps an overdeveloped self-monitoring system, one that perpetually seems to be catching hypocritical inconsistencies–well, some of them at least. For some reason, I’m continually asking myself questions, and most importantly, I think, laughing at myself. Or cringing.
Which brings me back to the debate. I don’t know about you, but there really seemed to be a dearth of humour on the other side, mocking or otherwise. One of the most striking things about Theo’s responses, I thought, was how earnest and serious they were. I had to convince myself that he really believed he was as intelligent as he claimed–that he took himself as seriously as he seemed to. These guys not only believe in the possibility of univocal interpretation, they think they have hit the cognitve jackpot. The Magical Belief Lottery in overdrive.
But how? Millions of interpretations swarming out there, and they think they have just happened upon the one, that even though everyone thinks they are the cognitive exception, these guys are convinced they are for real (and likely look at tail-chasing reflections like these as symptomatic of spiritual decadence, as opposed to confused honesty). It still makes me dizzy, the human ability to commit–unto death and murder in some cases–to claims willy nilly, so long as they are bracing or flattering in some way.
The feeling of certainty is just beginning to be researched, but I see no reason not to assume the findings will be any less unkind to human vanity as, say, the research into our feeling of willing. Robert Burton, for one, argues that certainty is something that involuntarily accompanies cognition, rather than being the engine of it. That it is, in effect, deceptive through and through.
And yet there’s no escaping the experiential sense that certainty is the fuel that comprehension burns. We always begin with the feeling, then the reasons fall into obedient line afterwards.
So, let’s just say that personality is the sum of a number of neural modules exercising varying degrees of influence over the whole, that there is a rationalization module, a certainty module, a cognitive self-censoring module, and so on, each drawing differing amounts of wattage, depending on a soup of genetic and environmental factors.
So imagine that every population of humans possesses a certain number of individuals with powerful rationalization modules, powerful certainty modules, and vestigial cognitive self-censoring modules. These are the people who get dew-eyed when the minister says ‘turn the other cheek’ and then advocate invading the homes/nations of complete strangers for their own good within the space to two heartbeats. Who want to force the State out of the public market, but invite it into our bedrooms and wombs.
This is simply the hand they were dealt. They might be incredibly intelligent otherwise, but they literally have no choice but to buy their own bullshit, to keep piling their chauvinistic rationalizations to the sky, utterly insensible to the inconsistencies. They barge through debates leaving everyone save those who share their peculiar brew of assumptions alienated and mystified, and never pause to consider the out and out preposterous presumption that underwrites so many of their claims: that the world, everywhere and every turn, is utterly captured by their flattering interpretations. That reality not only loves them, but has raised them above others.
These people, it seems to me, have to be engaged, have to be challenged, if only so that the masses don’t succumb to their own weaknesses for self-serving chauvinism. These people are appealing simply because they are so adept at generating ‘reasons’ for self-serving intuitions that we all share. That we and our ways are special, exempt, and that Others are a threat to us. That our high-school is, like, really the greatest high-school on the planet. Confirmation bias, my-side bias, the list goes on. And given that humans have evolved to be easily and almost irrevocably programmed, it seems to me that the most important place to wage this battle is in classroom. To begin teaching doubt as the highest virtue, as opposed to the madness of belief.
The prevailing madness.
Funny, huh? It’s the lapse in belief that these guys typically see as symptomatic of modern societal decline. But really what they’re talking about is a lapse in agreement. Belief is as pervasive as ever, but as a principle rather than any specific consensual canon. It stands to reason that the lack of ‘moral and cognitive solidarity’ would make us uncomfortable, considering the kinds of scarcity and competition faced by our ancestors. (This is probably what brought tears to my eyes watching Tahrir Square in recent weeks: not so much the cause as the unity.)
We wouldn’t be so keen on policing the thoughts of others otherwise.
Like I’m doing right now.
Three Pound Brain 
I think that considering all the ways in which we justify our beliefs and principles (when they can be considered as conditioned behavioral responses to sensory stimuli) then doubt would become a virtue. Except from a an evolutionary point of view, certainty is a more advantageous mental response. Doubt, self reflection, critical thinking, behaviorally speaking they are probably all linked to hesitation which would have gotten our evolutionary forebears eaten by lions. Or if religious explanations are your preferred poison (in terms of a world view) doubt gets you kicked out of the garden.
So therefore, doubt is bad. I highly doubt that any society will embrace doubt as a social virtue anytime soon. Doubt would undermine all our revered institutions. If we doubt our church we lose our afterlife insurance, if we doubt the benevolent guiding hand of the free market economy, then we have to do some serious thinking about how to regulate our greed, whoops I mean our economies. And if we start doubting ourselves, well shit…. I don’t need to tell you all the things that could go wrong there.
There is a difference between doubt and incredulity. Many belief systems, and even government entities, encourage doubt or skepticism. However, it would be very difficult to survive, let alone interact with the world if you sought to impeach everything that engaged you.
“What, if anything distinguishes us from these guys? Are we every bit as chauvinistic as they are, only in different ways? ”
Regan did a good job of saying it. It’s doubt. Certainty relaxes the vigilance of our self-awareness. I think chauvinism actually requires a great deal of certainty or at the very least a lack of self-awareness. It rests on assumptions that (ideally) the gatekeeper of doubt would recognize for the assumptions they are.
“Pretty hard to outrun chauvinism, isn’t it? (This is the most insidious thing about ‘seeing through’ the incapacities of others. You always end up using your insights in the same self-aggrandizing ways.)”
Great example of the vigilance I was talking about. In my arguing with Theo I think I made this mistake, although admittedly it was a sort of mutual mistake made by both of us. He called me stupid so many times!
Then he went on to say that:
“There is nothing self-glorifying about the observation that you aren’t very intelligent.”
Yeah, except that I was criticizing his work and disagreeing with his main point.
“What, if anything distinguishes us from these guys? Are we every bit as chauvinistic as they are, only in different ways?”
I honestly wouldn’t know how to answer this. Answering in the positive, I can’t help but wonder that one might just jump onto the chauvinism band-wagon too enthusiastically, and succumb to the *glorification* of the gaming of ambiguities that many (I have no idea if it is *most*) of the literary or po-mo establishment seem to enjoy; rather than the deep worry about the gaming of ambiguities that appears to be more appropriate. Answering in the negative, it seems, subscribes us to a descent into more mere tribalism.
Doubt, the term, seems to become its cognitive smokescreen. Merely possessing doubt can lead to any number of things, many of them leading to a kind of “certainty in doubt.” Much as a few posts ago you brought up the idea that modern fantasy wasn’t subscribing to relativism but moral realism, doubt can lead us into contrarianism or nihilism masquerading as something else. As much as everyone knows an opinionated know-it-all (by Scott’s self-definition, everyone reading this blog *must* know at least one—Scott!), I’m sure everyone knows someone who uses “realism” as a semantic mask for what ends up being cynicism or just outright contrarianism.
Doubt is great as far as it goes, but surely doubt can become as much as anything else the banner we all crowd around, jumping up and down making monkey sounds and brandishing our crude intellectual clubs.
I don’t think we need to posit any modularized brain ontologies to consider this concept. Confident people are hard to convince they’re wrong, especially when you infringe on their pride by being dismissive, hostile, or patronizing in your response to them. I myself am horribly overconfident in my ability to analyze concepts, and so it’s hard to convince me I’m wrong unless you start out by saying I would have gotten it right if I hadn’t overlooked this one little thing…
Yes–Yes!
Haha, I did the gag first! Beat ya’ll to it! Someone was going to! Unless one of you cross posts with me, darn ya!
Are we every bit as chauvinistic as they are, only in different ways?
Your refering to chauvinistic like there is some galactic standard, rather than a particular measurement method in your head that might even match up with the measure alot of other people use.
But in terms of treating personal measures as galactic standards, probably much the same.
When you do things like this I even wonder if you refer to something like chauvinistic as a galactic standard deliberately, as some sort of knife edge point your making. Maybe you don’t intend to, but it’s still very pointy.
Doesn’t the question of reliability or accuracy or veracity turn more on the issue of who is arguing, more than the arguments themselves? A troubling question for the humanities in general, I think. A troubling question for philosophy most of all.
Yes
Oh, BTW, who’s making that question/arguement? >:)
In a way I think this is possibly just a simple perceptual issue, like someone looking for their glasses while the glasses sit on their brow. I mean, you just executed the same thing your refering to – you’ve made a troubling question (read: arguement) that, by the way you put it, somehow stands by itself to challenge humanities or philosophy?
You know, in the news paper you see some pre-made chess set ups where actually the challenge does exist by itself, without an actual person asserting it. Because both parties to chess know the exact rules and use the exact same rules as each other (I’d say that’s scientifically provable, even).
I would say your coming down to who makes the arguements because there are no rules shared by both parties. It’s like VHS arguing with BETA. An arguement can’t exist between two parties without both parties using the exact same rules – otherwise it’s just apes trying to shout louder than the other and hit each others emotional hot buttons, not in co-operation, but like a certain beetle mimics ant antennae movements to trick ants into giving it food. As a preditor (or parasite). Heck, I would say I’m doing that right now, with you or any reader – and we treat it as normal *attempt to hit emotional hot button in saying so, and also in writing asterix content and also in commenting on that asterix*
It’d be cool to make up some chess-like rules together (without any double meaning, vague words in there). Prolly not gunna happen today, but all the same.
these guys are convinced they are for real
Perhaps they are? One doesn’t want to hit the magical belief lottery that you know they aren’t?
It’s a pain in the arse though, I find, to try and sustain that uncertainty – generally I think “Well, if they are right, that makes me the monster…okays, I’m forgetting about this and off to potentially be a monster now, kthnxbae”.
How I pull that off is basically innocence through ignorance – I mean, somehow in a universe where I’m ignorant, I’m evil if I don’t know who was right? Or didn’t jump, literally blindly, onto their bandwagon? One bandwagon, to me, amongst millions? To me, such a universe would be by my tastes, fucked, even if I happen to exist in it all the same.
It still makes me dizzy, the human ability to commit–unto death and murder in some cases
Well, atleast I’m turning to the universe with my judgement. I can’t murder it. ?
Like I’m doing right now.
I wave my antennae back.
Actually I should add “…okays, I’m forgetting about this, but keeping bit of an eye out for new evidence, but otherwise off to potentially be a monster now, kthnxbae”
I think I’d better clarify and say that I personally don’t hold that there is a pure dichotomy between doubt and certainty. When I think about this in the context of people debating issues I was suggesting that its more advantageous to be certain of your position, not because its necessarily correct or anything but by virtue of the human ability to rationalise and to attempt to justify their position far exceeds any critical insight that doubt or reflection might provide. Kind of like a game of prisoners dilemma, its best if everyone doubts their position, but it only takes one true believer to fuck it all up.
Now if you consider a debate or an argument or an online flamewar, notice that the mechanics of the thing quickly devolve into conflict. Doubting, especially doubting your own position reaps great reward when it comes to analysing a given situation and attempting to understand it. But the flip side of the coin is it can be nigh on impotent when addressed to whom you disagree with in that usually a significant amount of people really only seek to inflict their viewpoint on the other. I write this well aware of the bitter irony of that statement. So it is worthwhile of Scott, or anybody really to take a step back and think, am I as dogmatic and stubborn as that guy? When did I stop analysing and start making rationalisations, however well constructed and succinct.
To sum up, you can come away from things like this with the knowledge that you’ve learnt something, but give up the conceit that you’ve taught anything to other guy as they probably stopped listening to your argument and went into rationalisation over-drive a long time ago.
Shit I hope I’ve learnt something from this.
One thing I’ve found in terms of conviction are those who assert climate change is real.
Now pause for a second – is there some bit of you that is horrorfied at it being suggested that climate change isn’t true? Take a small memory recording of that emotion – indeed preferably, write down something about it. Because soon it will dissappear and act as if it never enacted itself to begin with.
Now the thing is with scientific procedure as I’ve read it, it’s that they will admit that even if they do a procedure one million times and get X result every time, on the million and first time, it may get result Y. When I read that I thought it was so ballsy to do all that work and yet still say you could be wrong – and I still think it’s ballsy to this day!
So, that’s scientific methodology. What do I see a scientist on TV saying – that climate change IS real.
What the fuck happened to the million and one possible Y result?
Maybe climate change isn’t the case. My dad thinks it isn’t – he thinks the sun is on an 11 year cyclic increased output.
Me? I BET climate change is real. It is my gamble. Not some truth I know.
You know that bit you felt that was horrofied at the suggestion climate change isn’t real? At someone acting as if climate change isn’t real? The bit that if you hadn’t memorised it, would have slipped away into the night by now? I felt that writing the first sentence of this post. Or I’m pretty sure I felt the same thing as a reader of this post did. Or if you felt nothing – please give an account because I’m facinated!
But in the end, it’s facinating, because climate change believers – are. It has become a belief. A belief that might actually correlate with how things are. But it’s still a belief, correlation or not. Climate change – a new religion. Eeek, I can feel that horrofied bit of me again…….
Hey folks. I enjoyed reading all these posts, sorry I don’t have anything to really add myself 😦
How long does it take you to write and proof these blogs?
Interesting and not uncommonly above my understanding, I think I would still rather read your novels. That said, you are a big fan of hypocrisy (or at least spotting it in one’s self) and I am sat here are work reading your blog and not doing my job. So I can hardly talk… or type as the case may be.
I am saved by the fact that I don’t like my job though, where as I bet you love writing your novel! I may as well do a bit of work whilst I’m on here. I convert currency for a living. Do you need any?
See, hard at work….
Hey Scott, Amazon US has changed the WLW release date to April 14th. Any idea what gives? Two more weeks on top of what we’ve already got left might make me crazy.
There are mathematical rules which describe which degree of certainty it would be rational to assign to a proposition given some set of information. These give birth to way to complicated calculations to be used perfectly in practice, but good approximations can sometimes be made and homing in on this theoretical optima is what a rational man would do.
If truth is sought, hitting the optima is virtuous. Doubt then becomes a virtue by proxy only when overconfidence is one’s norm and only to a certain degree. Is overconfidence the norm? Science seem to suggest that it very often is.