Thursday, July 28, 2011

Church and state

Gary Gutting writes in The Stone that:
There is no honest line of argument from what the Bible says to substantive conclusions about the size of the United States government, the need for a free enterprise system, the right to bear arms or the proper interpretation of the Constitution.  Family Leader (and many other religious groups with a conservative political agenda) are disguising partisan political positions as religious convictions. This cripples efforts to have meaningful discussions about their political views.
Proponents of conservative views that require sober argument from empirical facts and generally accepted principles, instead merely assert them with religious fervor.
This sounds very much like what I had in mind when I referred to "the kind of right-of-center political ideology and movement that goes by" the name of Christianity.  It raises the question: what is politics and what is religion?

Are political positions being disguised as religious convictions? If so, how consciously and how cynically? Is a view asserted with religious fervor thereby a religious view? And if political views "require sober argument from empirical facts and generally accepted principles" do religious convictions too? Let me try to answer these questions in turn.

I think it is probably fair to say that some people do quite cynically and consciously disguise political opinions as religious beliefs. But the mixing of the two is so widespread that I find it hard to believe that every religious political conservative who mixes them up is just lying. Indeed, why would anyone bother with the disguise if they didn't expect some people, at least, to be taken in by it? So I think that it might be better, in some cases at least, to talk about a confusion than a disguising. And if we are going to be neutral then we should probably talk of mixing or combining rather than confusing. If there is confusion, then that remains to be shown, it seems to me.

Is a view asserted with religious fervor thereby religious? I suppose this amounts to: is religion a kind of fervor? And although the answer to this is surely No, there is something to it. Assuming that even religions we do not believe still count as religions, so that 'religion' does not mean 'true religion', what is a religion? It seems to be a family resemblance concept with no obvious defining essence, but a connection with fervor is surely an important characteristic. Other common features might be things like moral principles or ideals, rituals, tradition, authority, what Huston Smith (whose account of religion is influencing this list) calls speculation, and so on. Religious political conservatism has most, if not all, of these features. So why not call it a religion, or recognize it as, say, a branch of this or that religion (Christianity in the case Gutting has in mind)? I'll come back to this question in a minute.

Gutting's complaint about sober argument from empirical facts and generally accepted principles is appealing, but what religious belief is based on such argument? Pretty much none, I would think, even if rational argument and empirical facts support faith (I'm not saying that they do, just leaving open that possibility). You don't become God-intoxicated through sober argument.

Gutting says that "there is no objection in principle to religious arguments in political debates" because in such debates the "goal is to reach consensus about conclusions, but not necessarily consensus about the reasons for the conclusions." So why shouldn't rich people who want low taxes for selfish reasons and poorer people who want low taxes because that is what their religion preaches reach a consensus? Others (such as me) might be contemptuous of this consensus, not because they like high taxes but because they consider the reasons for it (i.e., the hypothetical consensus that taxes should be low) to be unethical, stupid, or shallow. But then it would be our part in the political debate to make the case for some other conclusion about taxes.

It's hard to see how there could be much of a debate if neither side engages with its opponents' reasons. This will mean, in the imaginary case at hand, considering whether the Bible really does have the implications for tax policy that some say it does. And this might well involve questioning the honesty of the reasoning given in support of such views. But it isn't debate if we just shout "You lie!" at each other. We would have to engage with the Bible itself. Which further suggests that this is a genuinely religious issue. And at the end of the day at least some people on the obviously wrong side will remain unmoved. This does not prove that they are religious, but it makes it hard to claim to be neutral if one insists that their beliefs are actually merely political.

In short, I think Gutting's position is untenable. Either we exclude religion from political debate (which would surely be hard to do, even if there is nothing else wrong with the idea), or else we accept that this debate must engage with (or simply give up on and ignore) various people who are irrational. I agree with him that "Eschewing this sort of appeal to religious considerations would be a good start toward reducing the acrimony and frustration of our political debates," but I don't see that it amounts to anything more than asking certain people to shut up. And I don't think they will do so any time soon.

4 comments:

  1. And if political views "require sober argument from empirical facts and generally accepted principles" do religious convictions too?

    Curiously, Gutting would seem to exclude from the sphere of the political all value judgements per se, and not just ones formed on religious grounds. He seems to think both that some Vienna Circle-style noncognitivism about ethics is obviously or demonstrably true, and that the "empirical facts" nevertheless give significantly more support to some concrete political demands than other, competing ones. The thoroughly confused combination, indeed a kind of running together, of these two mutually contradictory beliefs is one of the true hallmarks of contemporary liberalism. (And a key part of what makes it so endlessly depressing.)

    So why shouldn't rich people who want low taxes for selfish reasons and poorer people who want low taxes because that is what their religion preaches reach a consensus?

    Phenomenologically, or so to say, there aren't any "rich people who want low taxes for selfish reasons" around in public political debates such as those Gutting refers to. Not only the conclusions must be acceptable, but the premises from which the conclusions follow, and selfish premises are generally not socially acceptable to give publicly as the grounds for one's political demands. Of course there may be some Ayn Rand types who just ignore this (counterproductively for their own cause), but generally speaking, even the most selfish of preferences are self-censored into the form of something unselfish before they are ready to be put into collective choice processes. In the case of demands for both higher and lower taxation, these typically take the form of purportedly technical arguments from economics.

    (In political theory there is the notion of "laundering preferences", which comes from a paper by Robert Goodin that is widely considered a minor classic. Goodin doesn't disapprove of the laundering, but suggests instead that it is an excellent way of narrowing down the range of unsavoury preferences we are asked to give weight to; only some preferences can be laundered.)

    Either we exclude religion from political debate (which would surely be hard to do, even if there is nothing else wrong with the idea), or else we accept that this debate must engage with (or simply give up on and ignore) various people who are irrational.

    Actually religion doesn't even have to enter into it. The empirical stuff my second book builds on shows that people are irrational even when we use a definition of irrationality that is politically more or less uncontroversial. For instance, slight changes in the wording of opinion poll questions, or even changes in the order in which a series of poll questions is asked, can easily cause fluctuations of tens of percentage points in the answers. People answer in accordance with the association chains triggered in their mind by the form of words - in accordance with what the words connote, not what they denote.

    Political scientists have also documented a statistically significant influence on voting behaviour - in many cases big enough to tip the election - by phenomena such as football scores, the local weather, and even shark attacks (in New Jersey in the 1916 presidential election), as if it had been in the incumbent politicians' power to affect these. People don't think so consciously, but it's enough that they do so subconsciously.

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  2. Thanks, Tommi.

    You say "there aren't any "rich people who want low taxes for selfish reasons" around in public political debates." This is true, but there are plenty of people who want to "ease the tax burden on our nation's entrepreneurs and middle class" and who decry any other policy as "class war." They don't even bother to claim that this will have a trickle down effect that benefits others, although they sometimes throw that idea in too. The people identified as "small business owners," of course, are then identified not by whether they own small businesses but by their income, which is always much higher than that of any ordinary small business owner.

    Then "people are irrational even when we use a definition of irrationality that is politically more or less uncontroversial." This is a very good point. I focus on religion here because that's what Gutting talks about, but this point is both true and important. We aren't going to get a public political debate based on empirical facts, sober reasoning, and generally accepted principles. It would be nice if those who deliberately avoid such things were ashamed of themselves, but they don't seem to be. And their supporters don't appear to care.

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  3. This is true, but there are plenty of people who want to "ease the tax burden on our nation's entrepreneurs and middle class" and who decry any other policy as "class war."

    Yes, this is an interesting case. Often it is something like the tone of voice that gives away the selfishness of the demands, even when they are presented in the name of the common good - after all, the politicians making the demands are not entrepreneurs but politicians, so it's still formally an unselfish demand. The "ease the tax burden on our nation's entrepreneurs and middle class" demands usually sound quite shrill and strident. (As in religion and the "fervour" you associated with it. When Wittgenstein and Drury passed a ranting and raving street preacher, Wittgenstein said that if he really believed in what he said, he wouldn't say it that way.)

    The people identified as "small business owners," of course, are then identified not by whether they own small businesses but by their income, which is always much higher than that of any ordinary small business owner.

    There is a kind of silver lining to this. I've found one of the benefits of actually being a small business owner to be that I can identify myself as such in political debates, and then go on to be the unreconstructed lefty I am, with relative moral impunity. A bit like the man Stalin's secret police were psychologically unable to shoot because he had tattooed the word "Stalin" on his chest.

    We aren't going to get a public political debate based on empirical facts, sober reasoning, and generally accepted principles.

    Bizarrely, those who would like to get it appear as a kind of subculture within politics - as those who have simply checked the optional box "sober debate" instead of some other boxes others have. In Finland we have Osmo Soininvaara, former leader of the Green party and former cabinet minister (and now once again a backbencher after a sabbatical from politics). His blog, where I am a regular commenter, is a verdant oasis of reasoned and fact-based political debate in an endless desert of irrational shrillness; but both he and the blog have a kind of unspoken reputation as simply the choice of the minority who prefer that sort of stuff. The minority is a large one - he got more than 8,000 votes in the recent election even while his party was routed comprehensively - but its smallness can be invoked to stifle demands for more rationality in politics, even while its existence is simultaneously invoked to argue for the health of our democracy! Heads I win, tails you lose.

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  4. Often it is something like the tone of voice that gives away the selfishness of the demands, even when they are presented in the name of the common good - after all, the politicians making the demands are not entrepreneurs but politicians, so it's still formally an unselfish demand.

    Formally, yes, although the politicians in question are typically either rich themselves (and words like 'entrepreneurs' are just euphemisms, often, for 'rich people') or else working on behalf of the rich. And although you're right that there is a tone associated with such people, there are also so many of them now (and they have their own news channel) that they can talk among themselves without sounding very shrill.

    (As in religion and the "fervour" you associated with it. When Wittgenstein and Drury passed a ranting and raving street preacher, Wittgenstein said that if he really believed in what he said, he wouldn't say it that way.)

    Good point. Maybe 'fervor' isn't the right word. If it suggests ranting and raving, and if Wittgenstein was right, then there might be no such thing as the "religious fervor" that Gutting mentions. There would only be pseudo-religious fervor. But religion is associated with something like passion, as in "a passionate commitment to a frame of reference." There need be no ranting or raving in this kind of passion.

    Sober debate exists in the UK and the US as a minority interest, too. I think there used to be a time when a lot of people in the UK recognized the Liberal Party or the Social Democratic party or the Lib-Dems as they became as clearly the best party in terms of policies, intelligence, good intentions, etc., but voted instead for the Labour Party because only they had a realistic chance of beating the Conservatives. Similarly, within the Democratic Party in the US the defeats of Kerry and Gore have led some people to think that a candidate who is perceived as too sensible has no chance of beating a Republican candidate. Republicans also see that sober candidates are unpopular. People vote for someone they (think they) would like to have a beer with. The rejection of sobriety is almost literal. Reality is not popular.

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