Neutrality vs Equality vs Equity

In Logic in the Wild, I present logic as the guardian of coherence and compliment it for providing a “neutral space of dialectical enquiry.” Guarding coherence requires attention to structure and reasoning rather than belief and content. Engaging in a neutral space of dialectical enquiry is to focus on coherence rather than content when contemplating various perspectives on the same issue, alone or with others. Focus on how they reason, not what they believe. Being neutral means, in particular, that no one’s opinion or belief is imposed on the space, that no one is forced to accept as true what they don’t believe in.

Engaging neutrally requires the suspension of strong opinions and beliefs for the sake of the enquiry. If, when engaging with fiction, the audience is sometimes required to suspend disbelief, which means accepting things they wouldn’t accept in real life, such as superheroes, monsters, or interstellar space travel (do you believe in it?), suspending belief in a dialectical space is not similarly being more gullible, but rather suppressing one’s beliefs unless they can be justified and shared. If you want others to adopt a belief in a neutral space, you need to motivate and argue for it. How does it benefit others in the same space? How is it better for the group? And if others have views they want to support, hear them out with a charitable ear, seeking coherence and conciliation.

That’s the positive side of neutrality, that it allows us to play on an equal field, one in which everyone is treated equally. Equality, however, doesn’t guarantee equity. That’s true in real life, that even though we pretend that everyone has equal opportunity in society, only some achieve fair outcomes, sometimes because of luck and hard work, but most often because of their situation in society, which allows them to ignore or overcome barriers that stop others not similarly situated.

I believe the same can happen in a dialectical enquiry, that imposing neutrality without concern for fairness leads to an equal but non-equitable space. Some need to give up a lot more than others to enter that space, their voices get silenced because they can’t find a neutral way to express them, and their identity gets erased and so do the richness and wisdom of what they have to contribute. This can indeed happen deep in accepted standards of reasoning, which favor orthodoxy over difference by seeking equality, thus failing to achieve equity and fairness.

Logic, the True Self, and Authenticity

Can logic help you be more authentic? That one might sound a bit weird, but I think there’s an intriguing thought to explore. Authenticity is a complex concept with multiple interpretations. While logic might help in figuring out the coherence of concepts or definitions of authenticity, as it often does, this is not what I want to think about this morning. I’m curious to ask whether logic, or logical thinking, can inspire a novel way of thinking about authenticity.

To contrast with a common notion of authenticity will help situate what I mean. You might have heard people claiming the empowerment of “being your true self,” which I take to mean liberating your core identity instead of repressing, suppressing, or hiding it. But truth is very demanding. I don’t really know what my “true self” is, and having strong philosophical inclinations towards the expression of such slogans, I find myself wondering what a self is and what it means for it to be true. Is there something essential about me that makes me who I am and that I have to respect and honour? What does it mean to be a “true” self, as opposed to what? A false self? A fake self? A constructed self?

Instead, here’s my thought with using logic. Logic and truth are two different and independent things. In Logic in the Wild, I advocate for logical thinking to liberate communication and interaction in society from being clashes of opinions and disagreements of beliefs. Instead, logic provides a “neutral space of dialectical enquiry,” where neutrality means a suspension of belief, a retraction of strong opinions, for the dialectical pursuit of shared agreement and coherence. Coherence is the key word here, and this is what logic offers to the enquiring mind: to seek and settle for coherence when truth is out of reach.

Why not adopt the same approach towards how we are in the world? Instead of thinking of authenticity as the expression of a “true self,” could we think of it as the coherent experience of our being? We change all the time, we adopt different roles in society, at work, with friends, or with family. We learn new things, we forget old ones. We are in constant flux. Finding a stable “true identity” in that constant flux can be a Sisyphean task, one that starts all over again as soon as we think we’ve got it. But coherence doesn’t require fixity. Coherence is what helps us sustain change, to respond in patterns we expect and understand, to act in ways we control, to own ourselves.

Instead of seeking to be your “true self,” then, here’s the exercise I propose towards authenticity: seek to be a “coherent self.”

The Logical Community

Why do we need logic in the community? This is a more important question to ask than why individuals need logic. I suspect many think of logic as a reasoning tool that guides in decision making, countering an emotional mind (perhaps a compassionate mind?) and that makes the “tough decision,” as the current prime minister of New Zealand keeps saying. What are tough decisions? I suppose something like cold-hearted, non-emotional, goal-oriented, and maybe also profit-maximising decisions? The kind of cold, rational, masculine strong mind that isn’t afraid of doing what’s right, where “what’s right” is assumed to be some universal goal of individuals. I hope you get the picture. I do think logic isn’t about that at all, even at the individual level, but still think that countering that kind of view isn’t the primary need for logic we have in the modern world.

No, instead, and this is why I asked my original question as being about the community, I want to ask a tougher question about why a lack of logical interaction (not just a lack of logic) is a barrier to community development. What would be better logic? In Logic in the Wild, I develop logic as the communal tool that provides a “neutral space of dialectical enquiry.” It is a bit of a mouthful, but it’s easy to break down. An enquiry is a shared intellectual goal—to reach a decision, come up with a plan, figure out the truth, or express and hear each other’s stories. A dialectical enquiry is one that seeks different perspectives. If you have a group of people, each will have their own view guiding their interest and ways of thinking about the enquiry, and a dialectic practice is to entertain each on their own terms.

Neutrality, then, is what is hardest to establish in a dialectical space of enquiry. It occurs when people do not clash on their strong opinions or their fundamental beliefs, but instead seek to appreciate the coherence in each other’s views. If we can’t appreciate that others can reason coherently, even though we don’t share fundamental beliefs, we won’t be able to reach the more important step in the enquiry, finding a common ground for resolution that accommodates everyone. Neutrality here means that no one can impose a way of thinking or believing in a disproportionate manner, even if it is the way of the majority.

What I notice a lot in recent discourse, now that oppressed minorities are finding platforms to contribute to social enquiries, is a rejection from the majority for not wanting everyone to abide by the will of the minorities, as if dropping the imposition of their beliefs in dialectical spaces amounted to disproportionately valuing those of minorities. See how I phrased it? I didn’t say that the majority had to adopt the views of the minorities, but rather that they should engage neutrally and not impose their ways of thinking and being on everyone. Everyone needs to establish neutrality, in my opinion, to achieve better dialectical results. Seeking common resolutions that are equitable in a community requires the majority to recognise and accept that their ways of thinking, their fundamental beliefs and strong opinions, can be individually preserved without being socially imposed. That is the logical way.

Today I’m working again inspired by the work of Fricker, Dotson, Mills, and Young, trying to articulate a coherent and plausible way of thinking about how logic contributes to epistemic injustice. The pattern is that epistemic structures emerge within communities, are passed down from generation to generation, mutating over time, and acquiring inertia that makes them resistant to change.

I’ve been focusing on these papers recently because these are the papers I’m reading with my stage II and III epistemology students. One student suggested understanding what I call logical monsters (which I’ve called theoretical monsters and oppressive structural monsters in previous posts; I still don’t know what to call them) in terms of Kuhn’s idea of scientific paradigms. Paradigms are also theoretical structures that emerge from the praxis of scientific paradigms (I hope Kuhn wouldn’t mind me saying that), become dominant and the standards of “normal science,” until a revolution happens (like the one generated by Einstein at the start of the Twentieth Century).

One feature of Kuhn’s paradigm is that they are mostly closed entities that incorporate both theory and practice, and a revolution from a paradigm to another is not a mere transition, but indeed a revolution, producing new theories whose concepts are incommensurable with the corresponding concepts of the previous paradigms. An example used a lot in this literature is that of mass, which Einstein re-defined in his theory in ways that are incommensurable (i.e., logically incompatible) with the concept of mass defined by Newton. Incommensurability makes communication across paradigms impossible because the clash between the concepts produces incoherence, which in this literature is measured by inconsistency.

So the story is one of successive paradigms that grow out of a revolution until they become normalized until a new revolution happens that replaces them with yet new paradigms that are logically incompatible with previous ones. Now circling back to logical monsters (or epistemic structures), an issue that arises from applying a Kuhnian analysis is that it leads to something like “cultural incommensurability,” where the resistance to change (called inertia by Dotson) is the normalization of epistemic tools that could only be changed by a revolution that would construct a new paradigm incommensurable with the previous ones.

What I find unappealing in this picture is that it invites us towards cultural relativism, which I’m trying to counter by proposing that seeking coherence in dialectical enquiry can facilitate communication across cultures. I’m not getting much of a resolution here, but it’s the point of these daily blog posts, to spend time trying to articulate new ideas, and apply logic as I suggest in Logic in the Wild, in the neutral space of dialectical enquiry…

References:

Dotson, Kristie. “Conceptualizing Epistemic Oppression.” Social Epistemology 28, no. 2 (April 3, 2014): 115–38.

Mills, Charles W. "White Ignorance." In Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, edited by Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana, Chapter 1. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007.

Young, Iris Marion. "CHAPTER 2. Five Faces of Oppression." In Justice and the Politics of Difference, 39-65. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012.

Kuhn, Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel), and Ian. Hacking. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Fourth edition. Chicago ; The University of Chicago Press, 2012.

Well-Intentioned Interruption?

Why do we do it? Is it for the sake of others, for the group, or out of selfish interest? I don’t think people are generally ill-intended when they fail to listen and keep interrupting each other. Sometimes with friends or family, we express genuine feelings about stressful situations related to health, relationships, or work. Our close ones want to help. They want to propose solutions they think will address our problems. They've understood enough about what we've said and know us closely, so they don't need the gory details of what happened or how we feel. They already empathise with us and want what’s best for us. It’s not so much that they don’t want to listen, but that they genuinely want us to feel better by seeking solutions. It's further a social role for family to offer parenting advice and friends to provide psychological support. People get used to performing their social roles and are comfortable in them. So they interrupt us before we can complete our thoughts, helping us see that our bad feelings are not necessary or justified, and offering solutions to get out of our problems. Does that help? Not in my experience. I can be my own parent, and if I need a psychologist, I’ll pay to see a professional. Unless I ask for brainstorming ideas or solutions, what I seek is to share my experiences with someone who will listen, understand, and take some of the stress away by simply being present and listening.

But why do we do it when it’s not about problems? Why do we interrupt each other and offer our opinions or beliefs without listening to what others think? Are we similarly trying to help? Instead of correcting their feelings, are we attempting to correct their beliefs? I don’t think people are ill-intended when they fail to listen to a thought being expressed, interrupt the speaker, and say what they think on the subject. I don’t think we realise when we keep stopping someone from sharing their thoughts. Or perhaps it’s some kind of learned behaviour to express something good and be rewarded for it. That would be more out of selfish interest, to present ourselves as good or smart people. Or perhaps it’s even a defensive reflex, out of fear of not showing that we understand the topic or have something interesting to contribute. It’s not always comfortable to be in a discussion when the rules of engagement are not clear. When do we transgress at a dinner party? At a family dinner? At the pub? When do we go too far? Some people will turn everything into a joke, either finding a funny angle on what is said or by expressing something relevant to the topic but in full irony. Is that a defensive measure? Because if we’re wrong, it doesn’t matter since we weren’t trying to be right, but to be funny.

A simple trick I’ve learned from working with my colleague Maree Davis in education is to teach students the use of uptake questions. Instead of saying, “I don’t agree with this,” or interrupting a speaker with what we think is a better opinion, ask a question that invites others to develop their ideas: “Why do you say that?” “Why do you believe that?” Leave it open; don’t ask a rhetorical question that tells them they’re wrong, such as, “Don’t you think it’s more like [express your opinion]?” I wonder what your experience will be. One thing I’ve noticed is that when people are given time to develop their ideas, they feel more comfortable expressing themselves in more nuanced, constructive ways that everyone benefits from listening to. That is one way to enforce neutrality in a dialectical space of enquiry.