I was talking with someone today, and realized that there was a fundamental difference between us in the way we thought. An example shows this best. I said that one of three things must be true: 1. Pastors should be ordained by bishops; 2. Pastors should not be ordained by bishops; 3. It does not matter whether pastors are ordained by bishops. I think she didn't want to make a choice, and thought that all three could be true simultaneously. Or, rather, I focussed on whether statements were true or false, but she did not think that was important, or perhaps even meaningful. To her, what was important was whether a statement hurt somebody's feelings or not, and whether it was true or false was irrelevant. This meant we were talking at cross-purposes, since she furthermore seemed to think that if a statement hurt somebody's feelings it was therefore bad, whereas I thought that such an outcome might be very good, if it meant that the person had learned something new though painful.
I'm not sure how to talk to such a person, and I think there are many of them. Persuasion cannot use reason, because the other person's approach rules out logic. I can't even argue that logic is useful, because that argument uses logic. Instead, persuasion must rely on rhetorical devices that manipulate the other person's feelings. But someone with my worldview finds such tricks (as we call them) distasteful.
I am reminded of the conversation between the White Queen and Alice in Alice Through the Looking
Glass:
`You needn't say "exactually,"' the Queen remarked: `I can believe it without that.
Now I'll give YOU something to believe. I'm just one hundred and one, five months and a
day.'
`I can't believe THAT!' said Alice.
`Can't you?' the Queen said in a pitying tone. `Try again: draw a long breath, and
shut your eyes.'
Alice laughed. `There's not use trying,' she said: `one CAN'T believe impossible
things.'
`I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. `When I was your age, I
always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six
impossible things before breakfast.
`I`m seven and a half exactly.'
It's not really hard to believe impossible things. It is not even hard to believe
contradictory things, an odder situation, so long as there is not a "forced decision" of
the kind that William James discusses in The Will to Believe (which I've discussed before here). I
can believe that Canada is the biggest country in the world and that Russia is the
biggest country in the world simultaneously, so long as I don't think very hard about
the impossibility that both things are true. And, more in the modern style, I could say
that even though I believe Canada is the biggest and you believe that Russia is the
biggest, we are both right. Indeed, if the most important thing is for us not to offend
each other, we might both be happy with that compromise, even though it surely is false.
Conrad is perceptive about the unreason of some people in The Secret Agent. In one chapter he talks about the gentle anarchist
Michaelis and his old lady patron. Of Michaelis, he says,
His ideas were not in the nature of convictions. They were inaccessible to reasoning.
They formed in all their contradictions and obscurities an invincible and humanitarian
creed, which he confessed rather than preached, with an obstinate gentleness, a smile of
pacific assurance on his lips, and his candid blue eyes cast down because the sight of
faces troubled his inspiration developed in solitude.
The old lady finds Michaelis charming. She pays him a pension and wants to protect him
from the police.
Her arbitrary kindness would not brook patiently any interference with Michaelis's
freedom. It was a deep, calm, convinced infatuation. She had not only felt him to be
inoffensive, but she had said so, which last by a confusion of her absolutist mind
became a sort of incontrovertible demonstration.
It is an interesting question as to whether the rational person should try to engage
unreasoning people in discussion, or whether that is a waste of time. I suppose it is a
waste of time--- Michaelis and the old lady might well say they like open discussion
of ideas, but they value it as an opportunity to proclaim their beliefs, not to convince
someone else or be convinced. They might or might not value freedom of speech (though
they would certainly say they valued it), but if they value it that is because they
think everybody should have the pleasure of expressing their opinions, not because they
think that the best ideas will win out in open discussion.
Actually, this might explain current American jurisprudence on the subject. Commercial speech would get no protection, because it is clearly not for the pleasure of the speaker. Pornography *would* get protection, because it clearly *is* for the pleasure of the speaker or the listener, even if it contains no ideas and clearly does not advance knowledge. Going a bit beyond current jurisprudence, offensive speech would *not* be protected, even if true and important to a discussion of public policy, because although it might give pleasure to the speaker, it would distress the listener.
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