Yesterday we discussed the Guardian’s “long read” on the life of Steve Pinker and his new book, Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why it Matters, which came out two days ago. We can expect a passel of publicity surrounding this book, including reviews, critiques, and interviews with Steve. I’m not going to highlight them all, of course, but the piece below, published in Quillette, is of interest because it’s an actual excerpt from the book and gives you a sense of its theme as well as its style. If you’re contemplating buying the book—which at 428 pages is a mere pamphlet compared to his bigger “doorstop” books—you’ll want to read it.
I for one thought the excerpt (probably the beginning of the book) was very good, though of course I’m biased. But I think anybody with a sense of prose has to admit that the writing is clear, succinct, and engaging, larded with Steve’s usual references to popular culture. Click on the screenshot to read for free.
One of his main points, which he’s alluded to before, is that we cannot justify using reason from some kind of theory or first principle. (The same goes for the toolkit of procedures we call “the scientific method”, which of course stems from reason.) We use reason mainly because it works in helping us find the truth, and that is justification enough. Here’s his definition of reason, which he sees as closely aligned with but not identical to “logic”. There is also no alternative to reason if you want to have a productive discourse.
My own position on rationality is “I’m for it.” Though I cannot argue that reason is dope, phat, chill, fly, sick, or da bomb, and strictly speaking I cannot even justify or rationalize reason, I will defend the message on the mosaic: we ought to follow reason.
To begin at the beginning: what is rationality? As with most words in common usage, no definition can stipulate its meaning exactly, and the dictionary just leads us in a circle: most define rational as “having reason,” but reason itself comes from the Latin ration-, often defined as “reason.”
A definition that is more or less faithful to the way the word is used is “the ability to use knowledge to attain goals.” Knowledge in turn is standardly defined as “justified true belief.” We would not credit someone with being rational if they acted on beliefs that were known to be false, such as looking for their keys in a place they knew the keys could not be, or if those beliefs could not be justified—if they came, say, from a drug-induced vision or a hallucinated voice rather than observation of the world or inference from some other true belief.
. . . With this definition the case for rationality seems all too obvious: do you want things or don’t you? If you do, rationality is what allows you to get them.
Steve also makes the case that even people who are irrational, like anti-vaxers with no good reasons or conspiracy theorists, are not always irrational (see interview below). The same is true of postmodernists who deny the existence of any real “truth” that isn’t just a narrative designed to buttress power.
And ultimately even relativists who deny the possibility of objective truth and insist that all claims are merely the narratives of a culture lack the courage of their convictions. The cultural anthropologists or literary scholars who avow that the truths of science are merely the narratives of one culture will still have their child’s infection treated with antibiotics prescribed by a physician rather than a healing song performed by a shaman. And though relativism is often adorned with a moral halo, the moral convictions of relativists depend on a commitment to objective truth. Was slavery a myth? Was the Holocaust just one of many possible narratives? Is climate change a social construction? Or are the suffering and danger that define these events really real—claims that we know are true because of logic and evidence and objective scholarship? Now relativists stop being so relative.
There’s a lot more to digest in the piece, so I’ll give just one more bit, where, clearly mindful of the Zeitgeist, he relates reason to social justice and takes a lick at universities that, by trying to suppress free speech, are at the same time denigrating reason, the basis for persuasive speech. These words follow directly after the paragraph above. The bolding is mine:
For the same reason there can be no tradeoff between rationality and social justice or any other moral or political cause. The quest for social justice begins with the belief that certain groups are oppressed and others privileged. These are factual claims and may be mistaken (as advocates of social justice themselves insist in response to the claim that it’s straight white men who are oppressed). We affirm these beliefs because reason and evidence suggest they are true. And the quest in turn is guided by the belief that certain measures are necessary to rectify those injustices. Is leveling the playing field enough? Or have past injustices left some groups at a disadvantage that can only be set right by compensatory policies? Would particular measures merely be feel-good signaling that leaves the oppressed groups no better off? Would they make matters worse? Advocates of social justice need to know the answers to these questions, and reason is the only way we can know anything about anything.
Admittedly, the peculiar nature of the argument for reason always leaves open a loophole. In introducing the case for reason, I wrote, “As long as people are arguing and persuading…,” but that’s a big “as long as.” Rationality rejecters can refuse to play the game. They can say, “I don’t have to justify my beliefs to you. Your demands for arguments and evidence show that you are part of the problem.” Instead of feeling any need to persuade, people who are certain they are correct can impose their beliefs by force. In theocracies and autocracies, authorities censor, imprison, exile, or burn those with the wrong opinions. In democracies the force is less brutish, but people still find means to impose a belief rather than argue for it. Modern universities—oddly enough, given that their mission is to evaluate ideas—have been at the forefront of finding ways to suppress opinions, including disinviting and drowning out speakers, removing controversial teachers from the classroom, revoking offers of jobs and support, expunging contentious articles from archives, and classifying differences of opinion as punishable harassment and discrimination. They respond as Ring Lardner recalled his father doing when the writer was a boy: “‘Shut up,’ he explained.”
I’ll be reading it soon (I get a free copy as a sort of “books for boots” reciprocity). If the words above intrigue you, I think you’ll want to read Rationality too, even if you dislike Pinker. The prose alone is worth the price.
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Second, there’s an interview with Steve at Smashing Interviews Magazine (click on screenshot):
This deals with the topic broached in the title, and has a few provocative quotes. I’ll give just two. Here he’s talking about tribalism as an impediment to reason:
Smashing Interviews Magazine: Leaders of these “sides” are influencers as well. Doesn’t that compound the problem?
Steven Pinker: It does indeed. Whether the subject is vaccines or treatments or climate change, spokespeople should be chosen that are trusted by different political constituencies. So the best way of getting people to appreciate climate change is not to parade a bunch of leftists or Democratic Party spokespeople out there to tell people why they should act on climate change but find people who are libertarians or from the right.
Likewise, the best thing that could’ve happened for vaccines would have been if the press said, “Yeah. Donald Trump helped get vaccines developed and circulated quickly. So let’s give him credit for that, and everyone can take the Trump vaccine.” A lot of them would’ve rather died than said that, but it may have been more effective in getting the political right to be on board with the vaccines since so much is driven by tribalism.
and, related to that:
Smashing Interviews Magazine: In the book, you said, “We should care about people’s virtues when considering them as friends but not when considering the ideas they voice.” So we should try and separate the idiotic ideas from our friend who has high moral standards? I’m wondering how to do that (laughs).
Steven Pinker: (laughs) With friends, we’ve got to sometimes tell white lies and polite hypocrisies. But when it comes to evaluating public figures, what’s the best way to run a democracy, what’s scientifically true or false, then, yeah, we’ve got to forget who’s a nice guy and who’s a scoundrel and evaluate if what they’re saying is true or false, beneficial or harmful.
Here’s an obvious example. Thomas Jefferson was, in many ways, a despicable human being. On the other hand, he had some great ideas such as democracy. Conversely, an even more extreme example is that scientists who discovered smoking was harmful and could cause cancer were the Nazi scientists. For years, the tobacco companies said, “Oh, you can’t believe that smoking causes cancer. That’s Nazi science. Are you going to believe what the Nazis say?” Now, that was convenient for the tobacco companies, but it’s irrelevant to the question of whether smoking really does cause cancer. We did make a big mistake by discounting scientific facts because of where they came from. There is something called genetic fallacy that has nothing to do with genes or DNA. It’s an old term referring to the genesis or origin of an idea, how it was generated.
This reminds me of some readers who won’t read a post I write if the source is from the Right, and tend to discount everything from such a source.
At the end of this interview is a long disquisition by Pinker on what he thinks we need to do to “bring more people over to the rational side.” I’ll let you read that for yourselves. Enjoy; I’m going over to get my booster shot!
“I call him free who is led solely by reason”. (Baruch Spinoza)
“But when it comes to evaluating public figures, what’s the best way to run a democracy, what’s scientifically true or false, then, yeah, we’ve got to forget who’s a nice guy and who’s a scoundrel and evaluate if what they’re saying is true or false, beneficial or harmful.”
I feel the same can be said for music. We shouldn’t decide a musical work is bad because the composer or performer is a scoundrel or worse.
There’s also a short (and different) excerpt on the Harvard Gazette:
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/09/an-excerpt-from-steven-pinkers-latest-book-rationality/
GCM
🐾🐾
Pinker is discussing rationality and his book at the Commonwealth Club on Oct 12th. I have a very inexpensive zoom ticket and am looking forward to it.
The point about the genetic fallacy is one of the problems with quoting people and giving attribution. Sometimes if you just give a quote but not the attribution, people see point being made (or not) and evaluate it more or less rationally. But if they see that it’s a quote from someone they hate (or love) they approach the message in a very different, emotionally-dominated way. It’s frustrating.
I really like Pinker’s use of reason to defend the use of reason.
I’m well aware that Nazi scientists established a causal link between smoking and cancer (Historian Robert Procter has written on this). I also recall the hearing in Congress where the heads of the big tobacco companies famously stated that they did not believe smoking caused cancer. They just flatly dismissed the evidence. I’m old enough to remember commercials for cigarettes (even Fred Flintstone!) on television. I do not recall any tobacco company head or spokesperson dismissing the smoking-cancer connection as Nazi science, tho.
Also, NASA made use of Nazi data from human experiments where they subjected prisoners to freezing or low atmospheric pressure to see how it affected the human body. This was part of Operation Paperclip, and much was kept classified for many years. This would be considered highly unethical today. But, only after the atrocities of WWII did various science organizations begin to draft regulations about informed consent and human subjects in scientific research.
I keep a semi-humorous list of ‘things not to talk about lest I discover my conversation partner has some bananas ideas about these things’. If it is a person I like and respect, and I’d like to not lose respect for them, I’ll just avoid certain topics. These topics (which came to my list the hard way, finding out people I like and respect hold bananas ideas) include dinosaurs, 9/11 and juice cleanses.
Dinosaurs? Does one avoid this subject because it leads inevitably to other subjects like evolution,
extinction, climate change, January 6th, or smoking?
See, I thought that they would be a safe topic, too. My prior employer was a very smart lady who realized that perks during our stressful season made us more productive. So every Friday we got massages. The lady who came to do the massages seemed perfectly normal. She had a kid near the age of my kid and I mentioned enjoying the TV program Dinosaur Train (would still recommend). She gasped and said something about those, “icky, fifthly beasts”. I was flummoxed. She went on to explain to me that dinosaurs were created by ancient (giant and super intelligent) men who were breeding with animals to create these ‘amalgamations’. So, god was upset and that is why he sent the flood, to kill the evil men and dinosaurs. As a literally captive audience, I continued to receive my massage in shocked silence.
I like Dinosaur Train myself, although it doesn’t quite measure up to the most inspired episodes of Sesame Street, those involving Super-Grover, Cookie Monster, The Count, or the Swedish Chef. [Apologies for drifting away from the thread here. But don’t these programs have a little
to do with the subject of Rationality?]
Grover, Super or regular, is the best! Loved him as GW crossing the Delaware to surprise the British- with balloons😹
Steven Pinker: Likewise, the best thing that could’ve happened for vaccines would have been if the press said, “Yeah. Donald Trump helped get vaccines developed and circulated quickly. So let’s give him credit for that, and everyone can take the Trump vaccine.” A lot of them would’ve rather died than said that, but it may have been more effective in getting the political right to be on board with the vaccines since so much is driven by tribalism.
. . .
We’re so crazy that in that case the politicization around COVID would have been the exact reverse: Had Trump promoted the vaccines in earnest and imposed lockdowns and mask-wearing, the right would have played along and the left would have questioned the vaccines and decried Trump’s measures as dictatorial, an infringement of our liberties, an abuse of power bordering on outright fascism, etc., etc.
I believe I would be described as “the left.” I give credit where it is due — Trump did help get an effective COVID vaccine developed in record time. I also could not wait to get my shot. I know vaccines work. As a liberal, I would not think twice about getting the shot. The idea that many on the left would reject an effective vaccine because it was associated with Trump is laughable. When you see those who oppose the teaching of evolution, climate change, and public health, they are usually right wing. The left did not politicize vaccinations and public health. That was Fox News, OAN, and the like.
I lean left too, and like you, I have no problem crediting Trump with expediting the vaccine, and I too got my shot as soon as possible. I’m not saying that everyone on the left would have reacted as claimed; certainly not the enlightened readers of this website who happen to lean left (the majority, I suppose?). I exaggerated my point just to highlight how irrational we can be, and how a lot of what we group under right or left has no cohesive element and is often the result of arbitrary accidents of history (it’s often just the tribalism that guides us—or, if you prefer, what guides the populace). Still, I have no doubt that the narrative on the media would have been the opposite, with the consequence on attitudes and behavior that that would have entailed in either camp. Remember the fierce backlash from the left when Trump banned flights from China; then shortly thereafter most of the world restricted international travel from hot COVID spots and the criticism died down.
Pinker is so right about that, it’s genius. (Your mirror/reverse, on the other hand, is mostly imaginary.)
On the other hand, he gets a lot of postmodernists wrong, or at least lumps them into a boat to which many leading ones don’t belong. TLDR for Pinker, I guess. I prefer to give devils their due.
We have some very close friends who are pretty much anti-vax, and are still holding out on getting their Covid shots.
And yet they vaccinate their dogs. I plan on bringing this up.
My beloved cat died from FISS caused by a rabies vaccine. I wish I would have been more questioning.
So sorry for your loss. In the UK we are lucky enough to be rabies free and pets don’t need to be vaccinated unless they are travelling abroad.
When I got my own rabies shot in the ’80s before going to Pakistan, I rolled up my sleeve only for the nurse to laugh and say, “It’s not going in there!” Certainly back then the stuff was very viscous and needed a fairly wide-bore needle that had to go in the er…. gluteus maximus. Though maybe times have changed.
Thanks Jez. It was many years ago but I still regret not informing myself of the risks of that particular vaccine.
The new book sounds good and is likely to be on my list.
In terms of the genetic fallacy, the following exchange from a work of fiction is a good one:
The fact that it comes from that purveyor of woo, Richard Bach, (it’s from his 1977 book Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah) and yet I feel able to cite it reinforces the point!
Some identify rationality simply with being logical. Of course, if you start with false premises, perfectly good logic can lead you to false conclusions. I wonder how much irrationality is due to being illogical versus being logical but stubbornly on to holding false premises.
This reminds me of some readers who won’t read a post I write if the source is from the Right, and tend to discount everything from such a source.
I just finished very good book that shed new light on this phenomenon called, “Not Born Yesterday: The Science of Who We Trust and What We Believe,” by Hugo Mercier (2020. Princeton UP). It comes with Pinker’s endorsement. Highly recommend.
“such as looking for their keys in a place they knew the keys could not be”
But I look for my keys in places where I know they cannot be, and for a very good reason: I sometimes find them there!
In the fridge?
Well, if you’ve looked in all the sensible places check the fridge! (Only kidding – check the sensible places again, more carefully.) Obviously, the keys will, by definition, be found in the very last place you’d think to look…
Yeah, why are they always found in the very LAST place we look😹
Because we stop when we find them, instead of looking in the fridge – although a very helpful little light would come on if we did, so they’d be easy to spot!
Been there, done that. It helps to bear in mind that some of what you “know” is wrong. (And once you start bearing that in mind, it’s the one thing you’re guaranteed not to be wrong about!)
I once found my keys almost a year later in the bottom of the lining of a long winter coat. They had fallen through a hole in the picket…
On Amazon the book preview seems to have the entirety of chapter 1 and some of chapter 2 (including the Quillette except)
Jennifer Szalai of the NYT laid into Pinker in the 9/30/21 print edition. She crowbars Jeffrey Epstein into the review. Online comments, a lively back and forth, closed after 151 comments. Why not let it go to at least a 1000, unless the Times can’t stand the heat?