About Rationally Speaking


Rationally Speaking is a blog maintained by Prof. Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher at the City University of New York. The blog reflects the Enlightenment figure Marquis de Condorcet's idea of what a public intellectual (yes, we know, that's such a bad word) ought to be: someone who devotes himself to "the tracking down of prejudices in the hiding places where priests, the schools, the government, and all long-established institutions had gathered and protected them." You're welcome. Please notice that the contents of this blog can be reprinted under the standard Creative Commons license.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

To Fling Poo or Not to Fling Poo...


by Steve Neumann

Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

In the metaphorical agora of ideas, and especially in the clashes that take place in political and religious discourse, passionate emotions often rival, if not completely override, rational dialogue. This is not surprising, given the fact that we humans are primates. In the 2005 animated movie Madagascar, there are two minor characters, Mason and Phil, who are chimpanzees. Mason, who has a charming British accent, is Phil’s urbane interpreter; Phil is both mute and very temperamental:

Mason: I heard Tom Wolfe is speaking at Lincoln Center.

Phil: (Signs something vigorously at Mason)

Mason: Well of course we're going to throw poo at him!

So we humans come by it honestly. But, research indicating that poop-throwing by chimps may be a sign of intelligence aside, must civility be a casualty of the Culture Wars?

Not so, says my friend and fellow Nietzschephile (is that a word?) Dan Fincke of Camels with Hammers over at Patheos. Dan has published the Civility Pledge, and he is encouraging his fellow bloggers and other writers to sign it. So far the responses have been mixed: see here and here, for instance. I like the idea of a Civility Pledge not only because I think it has the potential to enable true progress in our discourse, but because it’s a piece of self-overcoming, at least for me. I am a very sarcastic person with my close friends and my two siblings. As the Facebook profile cliché has it: I’m fluent in sarcasm. It comes quite naturally to me, and it’s a self-conscious act on my part to modulate my delivery, whether written or verbal. To be honest, I’m not always successful. 

I’m not sure yet if I’m going to sign the Pledge; and unlike the two bloggers I linked to above, I’d rather focus on the nature of intellectual discourse in general in this post, instead of the merits or demerits of the Pledge itself. But if you’re a blogger or other writer, I encourage you to at least go check it out. 

No matter what the topic — sports, music, food, or politics — each of us expresses his valuations usually with the motive of convincing his interlocutor of our correctness. This tendency is so automatic as to be instinctual. But like an undersea artifact obscured by a couple millennia of aquatic accretions, it seems that the two notions of dialectic and rhetoric have been similarly disfigured. An Aristotelian understanding of discourse considered rhetoric to be a counterpart to dialectic. Rhetoric didn’t have the pejorative connotation it has today: e.g., “All I hear on TV anymore is the same old political rhetoric.”

Furthermore, rhetoric today, especially in the blogosphere and social media, seems to be rife with more or less ad hominem epithets. Just to be clear (and Dan Fincke is equally clear in his Civility Pledge), attacking an intellectual opponent’s positions with passion doesn’t necessarily mean one is engaging in ad hominem attacks. I do believe that impassioned dialogue tends to activate one’s psychological defenses more so than an equable discussion does, but I don’t see anything wrong with arguing with zeal per se

How often do we argue with the aim of getting at the truth of a matter (dialectics)? How often do we argue with the aim of persuading someone (rhetoric)? I’d be willing to guess that we tend to want to convince more often than we want to discover. Can we have it both ways? Presumably, most of us are arguing in support of our valuations because we believe they are true, and therefore others ought to value them as we do.

The Point

To get one’s point across —
across what, you might ask?
A vast, unbridgeable gap?
But what if you tried too hard and
overshot, as if hurling a hefty spear
or slender arrow, not aiming to maim 
or kill, just convince the other fellow?
The point in getting one’s point across 
still remains, ostensibly, for two to reach 
consensus, even détente, rather than 
an altogether senseless folie à deux.

We humans are constantly trying to change each other: we want our spouse to be tidier, our boss to be more respectful, our friend to be nicer. I’ve talked about the four quadrants of operant conditioning in a previous post. Operant conditioning describes how animals’ behavior changes in response to environmental stimuli. And we all employ tactics from these quadrants, whether we realize it or not, in varying degrees to change the behavior of others. We continually nag our spouse to put away his dirty clothes until he finally gets tired of hearing it (negative reinforcement) and puts them in the hamper; we take away our teenager’s gaming privileges if he comes home with a bad report card (negative punishment), hoping this will somehow motivate him to do better next time; we make our daughter do the dishes if she keeps picking on her little sister (positive punishment); and all too infrequently we buy our friend a nice bottle of wine for showing us some kindness (positive reinforcement).

Experience shows that all four methods of operant conditioning are effective in changing behavior, but to varying degrees. Punishment is by far humanity’s preferred method, though it is unreliable in most cases; and it tends to engender other undesirable fallout: evasion, secrecy, fear, mistrust, etc. The subject who is punished usually doesn’t learn anything from the punishment, other than how to avoid punishment in the future! And the punisher himself gets reinforced every time his punishment seems to work. It can be a vicious cycle. 

Karen Pryor, author of Don’t Shoot the Dog and one of the co-founders of clicker training for animals (especially dogs), espouses a philosophy of positive reinforcement for behavior change. She offers some steps for being a “changemaker”:

1. When they ignore you, find allies and persist.

2. Don’t be misled by lip service. Find allies and persist.

3. Meet resistance with persistence. Move around the resistance; try other avenues.

4. The stage of open attack is a touchy time. People can get fired, for example. Keep your head down, but persist. Don’t take the attack personally, even if it is a personal attack. Attack is information; it tells you:

a) You're getting somewhere: change is happening, causing extinction-induced aggression.
b) Your attacker is frightened. Empathize.
c) Your attacker still believes in the efficacy of aversives.

5. Absorbing and utilizing: this stage can last a year or more. Maintain generous schedules of reinforcement.

6. They're taking credit for your idea? By all means let them; your goal is the change. Credit is a low-cost reinforcer and people who want it don’t satiate. Give it away in buckets.

7. Are they pitching the change? Good. If you want to change something else, you now have new allies.

Her outline here is meant primarily for effecting change in a work environment; but with a few adjustments one could apply these principles to any kind of change, really. And nowhere does she suggest or encourage bullying, berating or intimidating. 

In my job as a guide dog mobility instructor I not only train dogs, I teach visually-impaired human students. Whether I’m teaching a new student or one who has had a guide dog before, there is often much behavior that needs to be either taught or changed. There are essentially two options open to me: I can either constantly tell them what they’re doing wrong, or I can positively reinforce what I want them to do right. I can nag and berate them; or I can identify an objective, highlight it, and then reinforce it — Yes! Good! There is an organization, a movement, really, called TAGteach International whose aim is to educate teachers in all disciplines in the use of concise, effective positive reinforcement. Essentially, its paradigm is one of applying clicker training principles for animals to humans. And it works.

But what about the relation between belief and behavior? We all try to change behaviors, but in the Culture Wars we also try to change beliefs. How are they related? Does behavior simply flow from belief, or is it more complex than that? Do we need to change beliefs first, and then assume that behavior will change? Or is our only recourse to try to change behavior and not worry about changing beliefs?

Let’s take marriage equality as an example. Generally speaking, those who are religious tend to oppose it, while those who aren’t religious, or lack a strong religious belief, tend to either support it or remain neutral about it (i.e., live and let live). Personally, I support marriage equality: I see no good reason why two people of the same sex shouldn’t be allowed to get married. Further, I think that religious objections to marriage equality don’t hold water. And, I find it unfair that opponents of marriage equality attempt to legislate their religious morality and try to use the force of the State to prevent same sex couples from getting married. 

Assuming change is what I’m after, and not simply winning an argument, should I try to alter the belief of my opponents? Or should I merely try to convince them not to lobby and vote against marriage equality, and leave their belief untouched? Or should I try to lobby to prevent them from legislating their belief? No matter which tack I choose, it doesn’t behoove me to engage in ridicule and condescension. If my opponent cites the Bible in defense of his position, I confess that my first impulse is to ridicule. But this happens, in my case, because his citation activates in me a constellation of judgments on propositions and assertions related to all things biblical. And my reaction is immediate because I know I’ve already rejected them, finding them to be unsupported, generally refuted, or facile. 

Ultimately, if change is possible at all, I think it’s easier to change behavior rather than belief. Beliefs are so essential to who we are, or at least who we feel ourselves to be. And as social creatures, we humans are literally awash in configurations of reinforcement and punishment as we navigate that social environment. Also, our behavior can be so protean as to be undetectable; or at least the reasons for changes in our behavior are often occluded from our reflective Eye of Sauron

When we consciously intend to change the behavior of others, we don’t really need to resort to name-calling, caustic sarcasm, or condescension, even though it seems to exude from us as naturally and surely as salty effluvium on a hot summer’s day.

20 comments:

  1. Your comment is entiteled, superficial, nonsensical, and it demonstrates your position of privilege as well as an exclusive perspective.

    Basically, all you do is defending the "tone argument" which is not only a fallacy but - more importantly - an instrument of oppression in many discourses about value judgements, civil rights, and social policy issues regarding minority interests.

    Educate yourself.

    http://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/07/24/the-tone-argument/

    http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/resources/mirror-derailing-for-dummies/

    http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/02/14/the-desert-tortoises-with-boltcutters-civility-pledge/

    http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Tone_argument

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. St. David -

      If you could offer up some of your own arguments in your own words, then I'd be more than happy to engage in a discussion with you.

      Delete
    2. St. David, while I have concerns with Steve's post, I don't see how tone concerns can be dismissed with Full Generality as "privileged." Tone is a meta-issue, having to do with how a conversation is carried out, rather than the conversation itself. As such, it can serve to derail, but it can also be quite relevant. We have to judge on a case by case basis.

      I'm guessing feminists encounter "tone" conversations as a derailing tactic often, and so have a reflex dislike for them. But calling tone concerns a "fallacy" across the board is just nuts.

      And ultimately, it sounds an awful lot like a plea to completely excuse the author from *any* constraints of conversational ethics.

      Meta-conversations can be abused to derail conversations, but sometimes they actually do need to happen.

      Delete
    3. ... and in this conversation, the "meta-conversation" is the topic, so it's entirely appropriate.

      Delete
  2. Please stop jumping up and claiming a fallacy once something follows a pattern. And I'm about to do the same thing here: you're committing the fallacy fallacy. Just because something is an informal fallacy doesn't mean it's false or that the argument isn't correct. In this case, he's not committing to saying that saying things nicely makes them true...no truth claim about civility making things more true makes the informal fallacy here a bit moot.

    The point here is a *rhetorical* or a *pedagogical* one. Often, emphasizing shared values will increase the *efficacy* of your argument in its purpose to achieve some ends: namely change belief or behavior. That doesn't make it not true. Is it true that those who police the forum use civility to silence outsiders? Sure. It's also true that within civil zones people are much safer and it's easier to get them to at least consider new ideas without believing them...which is the first step to critical thinking. This is also an empirical claim about the kinds of arguments that work to change belief or behavior (rather than to express or demonstrate truth), which has some evidence that backs it up, namely from folks like Dan Kahan, etc. If you have evidence that refutes their evidence, I'd like to hear it.

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    Replies
    1. Firstly, the "tone argument" is, in fact, a fallacy (ie a logically fallacious argument) and it is called a fallacy in the respective discussions. This is justified because it is usually employed as if it were a sound argument ("Your perception/opinion/complaint is not to be taken seriously because you employ sarcastic/insulting/inflammatory language"). Deply entrenched social norms as well as the psychological persistence of prejudice keep many people from questioning the argument's 'logic'. Consequently, the argument enables discrimination and exclusion of minority viewpoints and complaints while doing nothing (or, at least, not much) to improve other discussions. Obviously, the "tone argument" is seldomly employed in discussions devoid of fundamental value judgements, minority interests, social policy or similar issues.
      The fact that you seem to be unaware of this demonstrates your unfamiliarity with discussions about the "tone argument's" role in discourse.

      Secondly, it is philosophically naive to belief that any discussion about fundamental values or value judgements has to track truth, since values are nothing to be discovered (either rationally or empirically) and value judgements are not truth-apt. It is impossible to change someone's fundamental value judgements by the "unforced force” of rational argument alone. Therefore, a discussion about fundamental values or value judgements (and especially disagreement about them) is not supposed to track truth or be truth-conducive. Those who presuppose an intellectual method of settling fundamental value disputes curtail the very discourse they seek to enhance.

      Delete
    2. St. David,

      > the "tone argument" is, in fact, a fallacy (ie a logically fallacious argument) <

      No, it isn't. I teach a course on logical fallacies, and I can assure you that I never heard of this one.

      > "Your perception/opinion/complaint is not to be taken seriously because you employ sarcastic/insulting/inflammatory language" <

      As you should be able to see, this has nothing whatsoever to do with logic. It is a statement about human psychology. And it is often (though not always) true.

      > it is philosophically naive to belief that any discussion about fundamental values or value judgements has to track truth <

      It may not track truth, but it better track logical coherence, yes?

      > Those who presuppose an intellectual method of settling fundamental value disputes curtail the very discourse they seek to enhance. <

      How *else* are you going to settle disputes? By yelling people out of court? Shooting at them? Or what?

      Delete
    3. >I teach a course on logical fallacies, and I can assure you that I never heard of this one.

      I suspect that's because it was invented by bloggers as a generalized excuse for crappy behaviour.

      Delete
  3. I am wondering Steven if you are familiar with the paper by Mercier and Sperber, 'Why do humans reason? Arguments
    for an argumentative theory'.

    As the title suggests the authors make a case that the function of reasoning is argumentative. They argue that being persuasive in human communication super-cedes fact or truth finding in evolutionary importance.

    This theory does seem to correspond with our robust tendency towards the confirmation bias.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I haven't read the paper, but on the face of it I would say it seems reasonable to me. And I'm aware of some studies, which I can't recall off the top of my head, that argue for an evolutionary advantage of some sort being conferred on those humans who communicate well, creatively, and persuasively - or a combo of all three.

      Delete
    2. Hi Steve,

      I think you would find this PDF very interesting:
      http://www.sjsu.edu/people/anand.vaidya/courses/c5/s2/Why%20Do%20Humans%20Reason%20Sperber.pdf

      The paper I mention is presented, followed by a critique from quite a few researches in the field, and then Mercier and Sperber respond.

      Delete
    3. I just noticed that Massimo has previously posted in a critical fashion on the paper I linked to above. I have read Massimo's post and a number of the other critiques along with the answer from Mercier and Sperber.

      I can see Massimo's point that this looks like a 'just so' Evo Psch story without a proper means to test the hypothesis. I was drawn to the story as it resonated strongly with my intuitions concerning the pervasiveness of confirmation bias in personal arguments and the potential for more accurate evaluation in group contexts.

      Even on this site where the motto is 'truth springs from argument amongst friends' it often seems that the personal desire to win arguments predominates over a collective desire to move towards truth. So I think the topic is an important one. What is the best way to make use of our argumentative tendencies while also being receptive to evaluate the arguments of the collective. Perhaps trying to make evolutionary case is not helpful.

      Delete
  4. There is also Chris Mooney's "The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science--and Reality". The thesis here is that "liberal" vs. "conservative" personality types will shape how data is filtered and conclusions are reached, so arguments have a limited effect. Knowing about the science behind this, he claims, is at least a step in the direction of understanding differences.

    www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/brain-difference-democrats-republicans

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. See also the Rationally Speaking podcast with Mooney:

      http://www.rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/show/rs79-chris-mooney-on-the-republican-war-on-science.html

      Delete
  5. >How often do we argue with the aim of getting at the truth of a matter (dialectics)? How often do we argue with the aim of persuading someone (rhetoric)? I’d be willing to guess that we tend to want to convince more often than we want to discover.

    Probably, although note that rhetorical effectiveness with an *audience* may show a tradeoff against rhetorical effectiveness with one's *interlocutor.* (Obama wasn't hoping to convince Romney in those Town Hall debates.) Demonizing your interlocutors views may close your interlocutor's mind, but be a very powerful technique with the watching, passive audience.

    My biggest issue with your post is here:

    >Ultimately, if change is possible at all, I think it’s easier to change behavior rather than belief.

    Absolutely. But then you say,

    >When we consciously intend to change the behavior of others, we don’t really need to resort to name-calling, caustic sarcasm, or condescension...

    I think the empirical claim you seem to be making here is most likely false. Moral change (whether progress or regress) is very much driven by what people think they can get away with socially. So making a pariah of your opponent may be quite rhetorically effective (whether it's ethical is another question).

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    Replies
    1. Hi Ian -

      "Probably, although note that rhetorical effectiveness with an *audience* may show a tradeoff against rhetorical effectiveness with one's *interlocutor.*"

      Good point. Agreed. I didn't have an audience in mind when talking about discourse in this post, though. I was more thinking about the one-on-one conversations we have with people on a day to day basis.

      "I think the empirical claim you seem to be making here is most likely false."

      In my last paragraph/sentence, I was more summing up behavior change in general. I don't think spouses' actions are driven by what they can get away with with each other -or am I just naive?!

      But I guess I'm not completely naive - your point is well-taken with regard to workplace behavior, for instance. And I agree that, from a politics-perspective, making a pariah of one's opponent would have some efficacy. Though I remember reading somewhere that the televised debates don't really sway voters. Can't remember where I saw that...

      Delete
  6. Ian

    "I think the empirical claim you seem to be making here is most likely false. Moral change (whether progress or regress) is very much driven by what people think they can get away with socially. So making a pariah of your opponent may be quite rhetorically effective (whether it's ethical is another question)"

    This depends I think on how popular a given view is across society. If believing in god for example is a popular view then mocking a believing 'opponent' will not cause that person to feel like a pariah. I suppose even unpopular views will only be hardened in the holder of the view so long as they belong to a sub-culture that confirms their views.

    The effectiveness of mocking probably most often relates to your Obama/Romney example whereby the effect occurs on an audience other than the person being mocked.

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  7. If you've ever have had to clean out a horse barn you've found yourself knee deep in, you'll know the only Way to do it is to grab a shovel and start throwin.

    =

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  8. Many good takeaways from this, the best (imho) being: "if change is possible at all, ... it’s easier to change behavior rather than belief. Beliefs are so essential to who we are, or at least who we feel ourselves to be. And as social creatures, we humans are literally awash in configurations of reinforcement and punishment as we navigate that social environment."

    Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Do apes fling poo to annoy others? dispose of excess waste? or a combination of the two?

    ReplyDelete

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