The Righteous Mind: The Rationalist Delusion
Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2012 8:42 am
Haidt's section on the rationalist delusion (p. 88) finishes up the first part of the book. I think there may be a few people who have just got the book and are trying to catch up, so I might not make any new threads for a few days to let them do that.
The term 'rationalist delusion' is not one with a previous history, as far as I can tell. Hume would seem to claim that rationalism is delusory, but he doesn't put it that way. Anyway, Haidt claims that he originates the term, and he probably does so to be able to counter Richard Dawkins, who of course wrote The God Delusion and whom Haidt considers the dean of the New Atheists. The New Atheists, according to JH, are rationalists to the core. Rationalists believe that "reasoning is our most noble attribute, one that makes us like the gods (for Plato) or that brings us beyond the 'delusion' of believing in gods (for the New Atheists). The rationalist delusion is not just a claim about human nature. It's also a claim that the rational caste (philosophers or scientists) should have more power, and it usually comes along with a utopian program for raising more rational children."
This is the kind of attack that can get our elephant swaying, as Haidt himself would say, or maybe even rampaging through the jungle, as our rider tries desperately to provide reasoning in defense of rationalism. It's a good idea to remain calm and note that JH isn't attacking rational thought or advocating that we make a habit of going with our gut feelings. "Gut feelings are sometimes better guides than reasoning when it comes to making consumer choices and interpersonal judgments, but they are often disastrous as a basis for public policy, science, and law." He is suggesting that rationalism, like any -ism we can think of, is going to fall far short as a comprehensive ideology by which we lead our lives. In this section, he broadens his attack on rationalism, though, calling for support from all the voluminous literature on the pitfalls of reasoning. In other words, it's not just about moral reasoning anymore. Reasoning itself is something we should be wary of as we use it. Here again, I'd suggest that 'reason' and 'reasoning' aren't equivalent. We should always have respect for reason, the "power of the mind to think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic" (dictionary). But reasoning, as a largely social activity, is subject to many pitfalls. In the moral realm, the pitfall is that it usually is a post-hoc rationalization of our gut feelings or intuitions.
So what does JH suggest as a way of using our reason as the essential tool that it is, while avoiding the abuses we put it to?
"What I'm saying is that we must be wary of any individual's ability to reason. We should see each individual as being limited, like a neuron. A neuron is really good at one thing: summing up the stimulation coming into its dendrites to 'decide' whether to fire a pulse along its axon. A neuron by itself isn't very smart. But if you put neurons together in the right way you get a brain; you get an emergent system that is much smarter and more flexible than a single neuron. In the same way, each individual reasoner is really good at one thing: finding evidence to support the position he or she already holds, usually for intuitive reasons. We should not expect individuals to produce good, open-minded, truth-seeking reasoning, particularly when self-interest or reputational concerns are in play. But if you put individuals together in the right way, such that some individuals can use their reasoning powers to disconfirm the claims of others, and all individuals feel some common bond or shared fate that allows them to interact civilly, you can create a group that ends up producing good reasoning as an emergent property of the social system. This is why it's so important to have intellectual and ideological diversity within any group or institution whose goal is to find truth."
The term 'rationalist delusion' is not one with a previous history, as far as I can tell. Hume would seem to claim that rationalism is delusory, but he doesn't put it that way. Anyway, Haidt claims that he originates the term, and he probably does so to be able to counter Richard Dawkins, who of course wrote The God Delusion and whom Haidt considers the dean of the New Atheists. The New Atheists, according to JH, are rationalists to the core. Rationalists believe that "reasoning is our most noble attribute, one that makes us like the gods (for Plato) or that brings us beyond the 'delusion' of believing in gods (for the New Atheists). The rationalist delusion is not just a claim about human nature. It's also a claim that the rational caste (philosophers or scientists) should have more power, and it usually comes along with a utopian program for raising more rational children."
This is the kind of attack that can get our elephant swaying, as Haidt himself would say, or maybe even rampaging through the jungle, as our rider tries desperately to provide reasoning in defense of rationalism. It's a good idea to remain calm and note that JH isn't attacking rational thought or advocating that we make a habit of going with our gut feelings. "Gut feelings are sometimes better guides than reasoning when it comes to making consumer choices and interpersonal judgments, but they are often disastrous as a basis for public policy, science, and law." He is suggesting that rationalism, like any -ism we can think of, is going to fall far short as a comprehensive ideology by which we lead our lives. In this section, he broadens his attack on rationalism, though, calling for support from all the voluminous literature on the pitfalls of reasoning. In other words, it's not just about moral reasoning anymore. Reasoning itself is something we should be wary of as we use it. Here again, I'd suggest that 'reason' and 'reasoning' aren't equivalent. We should always have respect for reason, the "power of the mind to think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic" (dictionary). But reasoning, as a largely social activity, is subject to many pitfalls. In the moral realm, the pitfall is that it usually is a post-hoc rationalization of our gut feelings or intuitions.
So what does JH suggest as a way of using our reason as the essential tool that it is, while avoiding the abuses we put it to?
"What I'm saying is that we must be wary of any individual's ability to reason. We should see each individual as being limited, like a neuron. A neuron is really good at one thing: summing up the stimulation coming into its dendrites to 'decide' whether to fire a pulse along its axon. A neuron by itself isn't very smart. But if you put neurons together in the right way you get a brain; you get an emergent system that is much smarter and more flexible than a single neuron. In the same way, each individual reasoner is really good at one thing: finding evidence to support the position he or she already holds, usually for intuitive reasons. We should not expect individuals to produce good, open-minded, truth-seeking reasoning, particularly when self-interest or reputational concerns are in play. But if you put individuals together in the right way, such that some individuals can use their reasoning powers to disconfirm the claims of others, and all individuals feel some common bond or shared fate that allows them to interact civilly, you can create a group that ends up producing good reasoning as an emergent property of the social system. This is why it's so important to have intellectual and ideological diversity within any group or institution whose goal is to find truth."