Is Reason
More a Weapon Than a Path to Truth?
W.J. Holly, Ph.D.
On
6/14/2011, in the New York Times,
Patricia Cohen published a piece entitled, “Reason Seen More as Weapon Than
Path to Truth.” Her piece was occasioned
by a collection of related articles in the April Issue of The Journal of Behavioral and
Brain Sciences. A central idea,
called the argumentative theory of reasoning (ATR), is that (contrary to
what thinkers have assumed for centuries) reason does not exist to lead
us to philosophical, moral, and scientific enlightenment. Put differently, reason “doesn’t have this
function of helping us to get better beliefs and make better decisions,” nor is
its purpose to help us arrive at the truth.
To the contrary, reason evolved for an entirely different purpose,
namely, to help us to win arguments, to help us persuade and defeat other
groups in the debating arena. To this
end, bias, irrationality, confirmation bias, flawed (fallacious) reasoning, and
stubborn certitude, all work just as well as rationality does to help us win
arguments. Reading between the lines, it seems that Mr.
Mercier (one of the ATR crowd) is proposing a pragmatic or utilitarian defense
of pig-headed bias and fallacious reasoning, since they do exactly what they
and reasoning are supposed to do: help
us win the argument. Our rants in
philosophy class against fallacious reasoning are misplaced according to
Mercier: “People have been trying to
reform something that works perfectly well.”
Part of
this idea is not new. In the time of
Socrates, a man’s fortune, even his life, could depend upon his being
persuasive in court – winning the argument.
Some have even claimed that this was the original impetus for the study
of argument and rhetoric. Sophists could
charge impressive fees for teaching people to make the true appear false and
the false appear true, or the just appear unjust and wrong appear right. Socrates wanted to distance himself from these
Sophists as being one who received no financial gain from his quest for wisdom,
and he had undisguised contempt for fancy speech, for fallacious reasoning, and
for those who were willing to say the thing that is not true. So, what are we to say to Mr. Mercier and these
defenders of the “argumentative theory of reasoning” (hereafter referred to as
the ATR)?
The
first thing that should strike us as being odd is that ATR seems to be a
teleological theory. It tells us that
rationality or the ability to reason exists for the purpose to help us win arguments.
When they tell us that our rationality exists for the purpose of helping
us win arguments, presumably they are not speaking as theologians: They are not telling us that God gave us rationality for the purpose
of helping us to win arguments. Instead,
they seem to be attempting to divine some purpose from the evolutionary origins of rationality. But, this is a murky claim at best, since one
of the main beauties of evolutionary theory is that it is entirely
non-teleological. Evolution explains the
complexity of organisms without any reference to intelligent design or purpose
at all.
We can
of course speak of the function of the heart as being to pump blood. We might even say that the purpose of the
heart is to help blood to circulate.
But, of course this does not mean that the heart was designed with this
purpose in mind, nor is it to say that the heart has any thought, desire, or
moral duty to help the blood circulate.
To say the heart has this purpose is only to say that if it did not help
blood to circulate, then the heart would not have evolved. When the heart pumps blood, it is not
engaging in any goal-directed activity of its own or of its owner, and the
evolutionary processes which led to the development of the heart were entirely
non-conscious.
To use another example, we might
say that the purpose of the parachute on the dandelion seed is to help
propagate dandelions to distant places.
But, again, this does not mean that the dandelion (or nature) has any
goal of propagating dandelions or of forming parachutes so that its seed can
inherit the earth. Dandelions and their
seeds have no more conscious or unconscious purposes or goals than do the ice
crystals that make patterns on your windows in the winter. Another example: We might say that the purpose of sexual
intercourse is to help propagate the species.
But, when people engage in sexual intercourse, they do it for sexual
gratification, to get favors or money, or sometimes because they want a child
to love, but they do it to propagate the species only in end-of-the-world
science fiction stories. Abraham is the
only historical person I can recall who had intercourse so that his seed could
inherit the world. So, again, speaking
of the purposes of organic structures or activities is simply an incurably
misleading and derivative sense of “purpose” or “function.” The conclusion is that it is a species of nonsense to say that the evolutionary
purpose of reasoning is to win arguments.
Evolution confers no purposes on
anything. And, even if a person, Fred,
were to say that the purpose of his having been born with genitals were so that
he could help reproduce his species, it does not follow in the least that one
of his purposes is to reproduce or that he has any moral duty to
reproduce. So, even if the champions of
ATR could prove that the purpose of reasoning is to help us win arguments (purpose
in the sense that we would not have evolved the ability to reason if it had not
helped us to win arguments), it does not in the least follow that we would have
any moral duty to win arguments, or to care about winning more than we care
about truth. Besides, even if reasoning
did give us some survival advantage in helping us to win arguments, it is
fantasy to think we could quantify this advantage conferred by reasoning in
comparison to other possible advantages reasoning might confer, such as the ability
to discern the truth about who is an enemy and who is not, truth about the most
effective way to marshal forces in battle, and to cement social relations with
love poems, political tracts, and so on and on.
Reason is what Descartes called a universal tool, one which offers an
unlimited repertoire of possible advantages in the competition for survival of
one’s gene pool, as well as an unlimited repertoire of advantages in the
pursuit of things that people personally desire or decide to pursue.
We are told in P. Cohen’s piece
that Mr. Sperber tried to explain why evolution did not eliminate flaws in our
reasoning just as it eliminated our prehensile tail, and presumably his answer
is that there must be some evolutionary advantage to flawed reasoning, confirmation
bias, and other varieties of illogic:
Flawed reasoning is evolutionarily favored because it is an adaptation
useful for bolstering our debating skills and winning arguments. Perhaps the original articles (which appear
to be available online, some at $45 a pop) flesh out these “theories” to give
them at least marginal plausibility, but I doubt it. There are many plausible explanations, say,
why baboons lack perfect rationality without our needing to suppose that
relative stupidity must give them a competitive advantage. And, even if we could prove that relative
stupidity gave one’s genes or gene pool a greater probability of propagation,
it would not follow that being stupid would be one of our duties or
purposes.
Kant treats us to a similarly silly
kind of speculation in the second page of SECTION I of the Groundwork of the
Metaphysics of Morals. Here he tells us that perhaps we have
misunderstood the purpose of nature in assigning reason to be the governor of
our will. He tells us that in the
natural constitution of any being constituted purposely for life, any
instrument intended for some end will be the most appropriate and best adapted
to that end! How propitious! He goes on to remark that if the proper end
of a person were his own preservation, welfare, and happiness, then nature
would have hit upon a very bad arrangement in selecting reason to carry out
this purpose, since instinct would attain that purpose far more certainly and
accurately than reason can do. Kant
concludes that, since nature did not assign reason to us for our happiness, it
must have assigned us reason for a different and greater purpose, perhaps to
produce a will that is good, not as a means to other purposes, but as a good in
itself, for which reason is absolutely necessary.
At the risk of being tiresome, the
response to Kant here is that nature has no mind, no purposes, and no plan. Nature is not a person, so she does not
endow us with instruments (organs and abilities) for any purpose she has, and
adaptations that might be advantageous in one environment might suddenly mark a
species for extinction when environment suddenly changes, as has happened
continuously over geological periods of time.
Nor is it convincing that instinct would serve human survival better
than reason. Despite the less than
perfect tool that reason is, it has led to advances in weaponry, medicine,
agriculture, shelter, etc. that have greatly enhanced human competition with
other humans and with other organisms. Of course all of these adaptations are
imperfect and temporary, as eventual extinction awaits all species. But, to
return to topic, whatever evolutionary forces might have given rise to powers
of reasoning in people, neither Kant nor the champions of ATR have given even minimally
plausible accounts of how nature could confer “purpose” on reason.
Of course this is a sword that cuts
both ways. If neither nature nor
evolution can make the winning of arguments the purpose of our rationality,
neither can they make the pursuit of truth the purpose of our rationality. For, nature and evolution are purpose-neutral
and non-teleological. Neither God nor
nature has given us the faculty of reason for any purpose at all, be it to help
us attain scientific and moral enlightenment or to help us win arguments. The good news is that, even so, we are free
to use our powers of rationality to pursue truth and moral goodness if we so choose, even if rationality or
reason was not given to us for that or for any other purpose. (Indeed, the Existentialist claims that not
only are we free to choose our purposes, but we are condemned to be free. We
cannot blame human nature for what we are or have become. The entire responsibility for our lives rests
with us alone, since our choices help to determine what human nature and human
purposes shall be.)
Years ago, I read in the Scientific American a theory that monkey
intelligence developed not because it gave monkeys an advantage in weaponry,
but because it made them more sexually attractive to the females, since the
courtship displays of the smarter monkeys attracted more female attention. Even if this theory happens to be the proper
explanation for the initial development of advanced primate intelligence, there
is no reason why this intelligence could not be used for other primate
purposes, like improving hunting practices or developing music and
philosophy. Muscles developed for
swinging from tree to tree also can be used for swinging clubs or for swinging
incense burners.
One of the contributors, Darcia
Narvaez, objects to ATR and to current mainstream evolutionary theory that holds
that everything we do is motivated by selfishness and the manipulation of
others; she says this is crazy in her view.
I would use a different word. ATR
is not simply crazy – it is morally offensive to claim that the purpose of
reason is to help us win arguments and to manipulate people, and that
unsupported conviction and the use of fallacies, lies, and distortion are
equally permissible because the name of the game is simply winning the argument. In fact, this tenet of ATR is nothing short
of evil. Those who would willingly use
and advocate the use of fallacious
reasoning and lies are self-declared enemies of science, morality, and their
fellow human beings -- enemies of everything that we hold dear. A person who can lie to you can lie to
himself. And, if a person can lie to
himself, there is nothing (no matter how evil) that he cannot bring himself to
do. His lies and flawed reasoning will
justify any evil on which he sets his sights.
What shall we say of a person, an
advocate of ATR, who not only feels comfortable in telling lies and using
fallacies to win his way, but who openly preaches that this is perfectly fine
as a strategy – because (as Mercier puts it) it “works perfectly fine”? Sometimes men become corrupt; sometimes
they do rotten things perhaps from temptation, from addiction or bad habits or
lack of discipline, from inattention, from insufficient reflection on their
actions, or from self-serving rationalizations, and we say these men have
become bad men. Even bad men, however,
when forced to reflect on their crimes, sometimes can feel pangs of guilt,
remorse, and shame. But, what are we to
say of the person who has become so utterly shameless that he claims that there
is nothing wrong with what he has done, who actually goes so far as to champion and advocate lying and cheating because they “work perfectly fine”? At that point, he has gone over to the dark
side – he has gone over the line from just being bad to being evil. Those who are careless with the truth end by becoming
careless of human beings and their lives.
ATR looks like a variation on the
Machiavellian or Bolshevik line that the end justifies the means. For, ATR claims that the use of fallacies and
falsehoods is justified because it helps us achieve our ends of winning
arguments and manipulating people. That the end justifies the means is the credo
of the unscrupulous. History is replete
with the examples of self-righteous people (like V.I. Lenin) and groups who have
become dangerous, murderous, and despotic because they feel entirely justified in
using any means whatsoever that can help them attain their supposedly “noble” ends.
Perhaps even more chilling than
ATR’s thesis that the end justifies the means is the end that it proposes: Winning arguments and manipulating
people. This is amazing. ATR’s thesis is the rule of the psychopath: Lie,
cheat, use any means whatsoever to the end of manipulating and using other
human beings. Treat others as means to
your ends. There is no need to feel any guilt or shame for any of this, so long
as it “works perfectly fine” for you.
Indeed, these ATR folk seem part
of the same crowd that recently has suggested that being a psychopath might
sometimes be a good thing, since
psychopaths could be more efficient, effective, and more successful as CEO’s,
politicians, police, and soldiers, not being bound by morality or by feelings
for other people. When playing with
ideas leads academics down such mindless and morally desolate paths as these,
one can only wonder whether simple lack of seriousness can explain such a
complete loss of contact with decency and common sense, or whether the poisoned
“ivory-tower” halls of ivy have been invaded by certifiable psychopaths, as
described in Robert Hare’s classic work, Without Conscience.
When ATR advocates the use of
fallacies because of their utility in winning arguments, it gains no support
from the utilitarian, John Stuart Mill.
On page 30 of On Liberty (Oxford U. edition), Mill says, “In the
opinion … of the best men, no belief
which is contrary to truth can be really useful.” (So, lies are not useful even when they help
us to manipulate people and win arguments.)
On page 45, discussing true opinions not properly grounded, Mill says, “this is not the way truth ought to be held
by a rational being. This is not
knowing the truth. Truth, thus held, is
but one superstition the more.” Moreover,
Mill does not think that the utility of truth is just that it might help us better
to achieve such goals as making a better weapon, making better toothpaste, or
winning an argument.
For Mill, the utility of the
pursuit and acquisition of truth derives from what he considers to be man’s
ultimate purpose – to develop as a progressive being. On page 71, he approvingly quotes Wilhelm von
Humboldt as saying, “the end of man … is the highest and most harmonious
development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole.” The powers he mentions here are moral and
intellectual powers. On page 73, Mill
tells us that “Human nature is not a machine … set to do exactly the work
prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and to develop itself on
all sides.” Reflecting on what
constitutes a person’s comparative worth as a human being, Mill states, “It really is of importance, not only what
men do, but also what manner of men they are that do it. Among the works of man, which human life is
rightly employed in perfecting and beautifying, the first in importance surely
is man himself.” What a refreshing
contrast to ATR’s celebration of psychopathy!
Mills’ moral philosophy is
elaborated in his treatise on Utilitarianism. We know that this is not a selfish creed,
since he tells us that its foundation is acceptance of the greatest happiness
principle – that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote the
greatest happiness (most pleasure and least pain) for the greatest number. But, when Mill tells us that the aim of
morality is to maximize human happiness, he is no more an ordinary pleasure
seeker than was Socrates. At core, Mill
is a Socratic elitist. He begins Utilitarianism
with the suggestion that Socrates
defended utilitarianism against the popular morality of the sophist. Indeed, Mill believed that there are qualitatively
superior and distinctively human pleasures that are necessary for true human
happiness: “Human beings have faculties
more elevated than the animal appetites and, when once made conscious of them,
do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their
gratification.” Thus he asserts that “It
is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be
Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”
The qualitatively superior pleasures necessary for human happiness are
made clear when he says that the two chief sources of unhappiness are selfishness
and want of mental cultivation. No creed
could be further from the selfish, lying, manipulating creed of the ATR
psychopath. If any doubt remains where
Mill would stand on the ATR thesis, see what he says in Chapter II of
Utilitarianism:
“Few human creatures would consent
to be changed into any of the lower animals for a promise of the fullest
allowance of a beast’s pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to
be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and
conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that
the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they
are with theirs.”
I would like to end this discussion
by citing a few passages from W.K. Clifford’s The Ethics of Belief,
where he argues that “it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to
believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” If Clifford is correct in this, then the
followers of ATR who use lies or fallacies to win arguments are doing wrong
because they are causing others to do wrong, and because they are undermining
society’s ability to know what is true and what is not. So, listen to his song, his ode to Truth and
Reason, penned over a century ago:
“It is not possible so to sever the
belief from the action it suggests as to condemn the one without condemning the
other … Nor is that truly a belief at all which has not some influence upon the
actions of him who holds it. He who
truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action
to lust after it, he has committed it already in his heart. … No real belief,
however trifling and fragmentary it may seem, is ever truly insignificant; it
prepares us to receive more of its like, confirms those which resembled it
before, and weakens others; and so gradually it lays a stealthy train in our
inmost thoughts, which may someday explode into overt action, and leave its
stamp on our character forever.”
“No one man’s belief is in any case
a private matter which concerns himself alone.
… Our words, our phrases, our forms and processes and modes of thought,
are common property … an heirloom which every succeeding generation inherits as
a precious deposit and sacred trust to be handed on to the next one, not
unchanged, but enlarged and purified. … An awful privilege and an awful
responsibility, that we should help to
create the world in which we live.”
“Belief, that sacred faculty which
prompts the decisions of our will, and knits into harmonious working all the
compacted energies of our being, is ours not for ourselves, but for
humanity. It is rightly used on truths
which have been established by long experience and waiting toil, and which have
stood in the fierce light of free and fearless questioning. Then it helps to bind men together, and to
strengthen and direct their common action.
It is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements, for
the solace and private pleasure of the believer; to add a tinsel splendor to
the plain straight road of our life and display a bright mirage beyond it; or
even to drown the common sorrows of our kind by a self deception which allows
them not only to cast down, but also to degrade us. Whoso would deserve well of his fellows in
this matter will guard the purity of his belief with a very fanaticism of jealous
care, lest at any time it should rest on an unworthy object, and catch a stain
which can never be wiped away.”
“Every time we let ourselves
believe for unworthy reasons, we weaken out powers of self-control, of
doubting, of judicially and fairly weighing evidence. We all suffer severely enough from the
maintenance and support of false beliefs and the fatally wrong actions which
they lead to, and the evil born when one such belief is entertained is great
and wide. But a greater and wider evil
arises when the credulous character is maintained and supported, when a habit
of believing for unworthy reasons is fostered and made permanent. If I steal money from any person, there may
be no harm done by the mere transfer of possession; he may not feel the loss,
or it may prevent him from using the money badly. But, I cannot help doing this great wrong
towards Man, that I make myself dishonest.
What hurts society is not that it should lose its property, but that it
should become a den of thieves, for then it must cease to be society. This is why we ought not to do evil, that
good may come; for at any rate this great evil has come, that we have done evil
and are made wicked thereby. In like
manner if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence … I cannot
help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it
should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should
become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them;
for then it must sink back into savagery.”
“Habitual want of care about what I
believe leads to habitual want of care in others about the truth of what is
told to me. Men speak the truth to one
another when each reveres the truth in his own mind and in the other’s mind;
but how shall my friend revere the truth in my mind when I myself am careless
about it, when I believe things because I want to believe them, and because
they are comforting and pleasant? Will
he not learn to cry “Peace” to me, when there is no peace? By such a course I shall surround myself with
a thick atmosphere of falsehood and fraud, and in that I must live. It may matter little to me in my cloudcastle
of sweet illusions and darling lies; but it matters much to Man that I have
made my neighbors ready to deceive. The
credulous man is father to the liar and the cheat; he lives in the bosom of
this his family, and it is no marvel that he should become even as they are.”
In conclusion, I do not believe
that God or Nature has given us or our Reason for any purpose whatsoever. At the risk of sounding like an
Existentialist, I believe that it is entirely up to us to decide what sort of
persons we shall be. I ended this essay
(or rant, if you will) with extensive quotation from Mill and Clifford because
I believe that their vision of human excellence is one that offers true
happiness and genuine meaning for our lives, and it seems to be a vision that
some of these Post Modernists have never felt or known. When I am asked to choose between ATR and
classic humanists like Mill and Clifford, I break into a Woody Allen sweat,
asking, “Is this a trick question?”
Would I rather be good, true, and
noble … or would I rather be a user without conscience or morals, a psychopath? What kind of a choice is this? What have things come to that this is posed
as a serious question?
No comments:
Post a Comment