Via Andrew Sullivan, I found Ramesh Ponnuru's remarks on The Corner to be important:
I find the reaction to [Romney's] remarks last night a little dismaying. Do conservatives really want to tie themselves to the position that the surge is not only working, but that there can be no doubt on the score and that anyone who acknowledges the existence of doubt is a heretic?
I remember the moment in the GOP debate when Romney first spoke of the surge as if its success wasn't certain. McCain interrupted him and assured him that it had worked. It was not a moment of strength, but of weakness.
One of the things that shook me out of my liberalism as a college student in the 1980s was how political correctness kept the left from seeing how reality contradicted some of their dogmatic beliefs. For me, a key moment was showing up to work at the Progressive Student Network literature table on the morning Palestinian terrorists murdered the hostage Leon Klinghoffer. I was scandalized by their savagery, and said so to my student PSN colleagues. One of them shot back, "You always hear about Palestinian terrorism, but never about Israeli terrorism." And that, to him, was a sufficient response. Another, a short man from Puerto Rico with thick eyeglasses, said coolly, "Well, if Klinghoffer was rich enough to take the cruise, maybe he deserved what he got."
That was the end of me and the PSN. It would be a much longer time before I wearied of the left. I came to see that so much of what they (we) believed -- especially on economics and social policy -- was disproved by reality. Conservatism had a better explanation, and at least dealt with reality.
Ideological thinking is not a temptation only for liberals, though, and I've written in several places how I'd fallen into intellectual complacency as a conservative, and had come to be an unconscious ideologue when I thought I was just being true to principles. The GOP debate the other night, though, made me wonder what college students today who might have come to school as conservatives might be thinking when they hear leading Republicans refusing to admit even the possibility that the surge has failed. Do they hear in that strength of conviction -- or denial of reality?
And when they hear Gov. Huckabee respond to Ron Paul's assertion that we've lost Iraq and the GOP is shipwrecking itself because of its inability to deal with this reality -- when they hear Huckabee respond by invoking "honor" -- well, what do they hear? I tell you what I hear: I hear the same kind of evasion that the left back in my college years indulged in on, for example, welfare policy: that the only thing wrong with it was that we didn't spend enough, and anybody who questioned that dogma was obviously a closet racist.
Sentiments, however noble or sincerely held, don't refute facts. Clinging steadfastly to beliefs that contradict facts and experience is fine in the field of theology, but stupid and dangerous in politics, and almost any other human endeavor you can think of.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
Scurvy,
I appreciate your comments. What you have called "narrative" can also be referred to as worldview or as Wilhelm Dilthey called it in German, Weltanschauung. He thought there were three basic types; materialism, pantheistic vitalism, and idealism. Stephen J Pepper, noted American philosopher thought there were five "root metaphors" in human belief (pretty complicated and lengthy.) Karl Jaspers thought the study of worldviews was a worthy pursuit for philosophy. Following are some redactions of his thought on worldviews.
Contained within the worldview is the way the person evaluates things. From it the determination of what matters absolutely and what matters only relatively flow. Within the worldview lies the inner attitude toward what is not of this world. Jaspers thought that a stable and sincere person could not switch worldviews rapidly, and should only hold one world view. The worldview never seems to be complete, and people feel the tension and restlessness of its incompleteness. A worldview is a contemplative state that contains a variety of cognitions. The person is aware of the possibility that their worldview isn't true: It is a precious possibilty to them. If a person expresses their worldview verbally to others, they will find it only partially received by some and crassly reduced by others. Others might say the person is a "knee-jerk liberal" or a "right-wing reactionary," while the person holding the viewpoint sees their outlook as more complex than that. For Jaspers, the analysis of the worldview was the core of his existential philosophy, and the core of the worldview was the persons response to faith.
You seem to be saying that the scientific method is best: that scientifically tested data is better than anecdotes. That's laudable, but to quote another researcher on worldviews, "Now matter how important the facts may be, we are not satisfied merely knowing them." To add meaning to the facts means resorting to metaphysics, where our worldviews hold sway.
Rod, Thanks for the explanation @ 2:29. I understand better where you're coming from although I'm not necessarily convinced there is a distinction. I would argue that empiricism is appropriate but that it is certainly not the only criteria to ground one's faith.
What I'm trying to say is that someone who uses their knowledge and experience, and has thought about the reasons they believe what they do deserves respect in my book. Believing something simply because that is what one is told to believe: not so much.
"Let me try again: in these comboxes, debates over first principles are a waste of time. Nobody's mind is changed. Rarely does anybody say anything new. Reading and joining in that sort of argument was entertaining when I was new to the blogosphere. But now, it's just horribly boring.
...
Sorry, I'm not done yet. On these arguments from first principles, any veteran reader of this blog can anticipate pretty well the next 5 things that are going to be said in a given argument and even who's likely to say them.
It's good to learn stuff. When people bring information to the party, everybody learns stuff. When people just vent their oft-recited first principles, nobody learns anything."
Scurvy, I agree with you entirely, and, sadly or smartly, I've learned this lesson here in just a few weeks. This is not so much a market place for ideas as it is a marinade; fortunately from time to time a bug seems to splash in and paddle about to add crunchy zest and tang, and maybe that will do.
ScurvyOaks, I'm trying to understand what you're saying here; please excuse any errors I make as I'm definitely the verbal type.
However, looking at your post from 4:38 p.m., several things come to mind.
For instance, in point number one you discuss the value of data vs. underlying principles and say, "I certainly agree that quantitative analysis tells us nothing about, for example, when life begins, which is the lynchpin to the abortion issue." But quantitative analysis is sometimes extremely important to the abortion issue, and from a purely scientific perspective it's possible to say, for instance, that the zygote is a unique human individual (from a DNA perspective) from the moment of conception, and that it is alive as opposed to dead. I agree that quantitative analysis can't then answer the question of whether or not that life has any intrinsic value, a position that will be formed by principle; but even then quantitative analysis can't be entirely left out of the debate. For example, abortion in this country is legal through all of pregnancy (Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton); yet even Peter Singer agrees that a fetus born at 26 weeks has an extremely good chance of survival with low risks of long-term disability, which in effect means that our abortion policy permits us to kill the fetus during those fourteen weeks of viability. It is in these areas, informed by quantitative analysis, that it is possible to blur the lines of principle: someone as entirely pro-life as I am can, and does, find people whose principles are pro-choice yet who dislike our current policy's legalization of abortion through the viability period and would be willing to cooperate on legislation that would restrict abortion from week 26 of gestation. This might seem like a small thing to work toward, but finding this sort of common ground does seem valuable to me.
Your second point, that arguments about abstract principles almost never change anyone's mind, seems to be a statement of opinion and not fact; moreover, it is opinion based on your experience, which may very well differ from that of others. I can only say that I have known people to change their minds about abstract principles through argument and discussion, which doesn't, of course, invalidate your experience.
I agree on your third point, with the caveat that the data is only as good as its sources and its qualified interpreters. I could read raw data all night long on whether or not we're in trouble regarding the national debt and it wouldn't do me any good; and most people are like me in that they're not trained in statistical analysis and therefore need trustworthy interpreters when it comes to data presented as sets of numbers.
For instance, you said that whether the surge is a success or failure is a qualitative issue. The problem is, like so many Americans, I have no idea what numbers should be "plugged in" to determine this. Number of U.S. casualties? Number of Iraqi casualties? Percent of decline of either post surge? Percent of increase or decrease in levels of sectarian violence? Success rate of various military objectives, with accurate definitions of and descriptions of same? Rise or fall of Iraq's economic stability as measured by specific markers? Seriously, I'd love to know what factors to look at and who would be a reliable source for that data and analysis.
So in that sense, I'd agree with you that on issues like these the qualitative data needs to be a part of the discussion, even when abstract principles cause people to argue about what types of data are valuable and which should be excluded right off the bat. So I'd be less likely to dismiss an "abstract principle" argument as a dead-end; they can sometimes provide an opportunity for discussion along the lines you've outlined.
If I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to say, again, I do apologize.
Posted by: Loudon is a Fool
On another topic below gun control is argued. For the most part, the gun control debate is not about what makes us safer (which relies on statistical analysis). The gun control debate is really about who properly bears the responsibility of protecting one's self and one's family. Statistical analysis masks that debate. If it could be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt with statistical analysis that a country with conceal and carry laws has less violent crime than a country that criminalizes guns (or vice versa) it would not resolve the gun control debate. Because the gun control debate is really a debate about the proper role of government, differing perceptions of individual responsibility, and the general lack of manliness among hippies, sensitive men, and their fellow travelers.
Heh, I always use gun control as an example of something where Progressives are just flat out wrong. At some point in the past, gun control seemed reasonable, and as it became increasingly obviously it doesn't work, the left just dug in and kept fighting for it.
Posted by: ScurvyOaks
Yet because they are powerful, narratives can also powerfully deceive. The common complaint that it is possible to lie with statistics overlooks that it is far easier to lie with anecdote. I mistrust anecdote in news reporting because of its unnoticed power – which is why I dislike NPR so much. Even Marketplace, which uses statistics with reasonable honesty, relies on anecdotes to get its point across.
Everyone's arguing their own little reality. The Republicans are the masters of it, redefining Democrats to the point where a large section of the population has no idea what the Evil Liberals actually believe.
And they've redefined the universe they live in so much that they are, at this point, teetering on the edge of lunacy and running out of sane people to defend them.
That sounded a little nastier than I intended, but, really, it's true. The GOP invents messages, little memes that get inside people's heads like 'Democrats are fiscally irresponsible', despite the fact that, by any objective measure of spending, the Republicans spend more, and run higher deficits, for as long as anyone here remembers. Even the sane people here tend to fall for it, because they've heard it so much. (And it's not just limited to Democrats. Would you vote for McCain if you learned he'd fathered a child out of wedlock with an African-American?)
But while redefining the Democrats was a clever idea, they couldn't actually redefine the universe, it exists the same regardless of what anyone thinks. It doesn't matter how much they want attacking Iran to be the next glorious step to Democratizing the Middle East(TM), it will not change the fact it would be perhaps the stupidest idea on the planet, and would fail horrible, and anyone with even moderate intelligence can figure that out.
That's not to say the left doesn't do this to some extent, they do. In fact, I suspect they started it.
But at least some of the reframing of the left was a good thing, especially in the civil rights area. I'm sure half the people here have been slipped memes about how evil that was, but honestly I think it's a good thing that it's no longer acceptable to, for example, belittle and demean women in society by calling them pet names and grabbing their ass. (And, way back when, 'liberals' set up the reframing of politics with 'inalienable rights' and 'governments exist by the consent of the governed', although obviously that's not directly related to the modern left.)
But since the 80s or so, even the left frame their message in Republican terms. It's very annoying.
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.