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Republican Response: Call for Unity with the Haters

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After Trump supporters attacked the capitol, the Democrats moved quickly to impeach the President for inciting this insurrection. Trump is probably safe from being convicted for a crime, but impeachment is a political matter.  As noted in the previous essay, some Republicans initially tried to claim that Antifa was behind the attack—but this lie was quickly refuted by the FBI. While this lie is still popular on social media, Trump’s defenders have employed two other tactics: accusing the Democrats of being haters and calling for unity.

Claiming Democrats are the party of haters has been a standard tactic for some time and is often used to defend Trump. The simplest version is the mere accusation of hate, such as saying “I’ve never seen such hate” in response to a criticism of Trump. Variations also include such things as accusing Democrats who point out racism of being “the real racists” or accusing them of “Trump derangement syndrome.”

While sometimes used as a mere insult, the accusation of hate is commonly used to “refute” claims. For example, Nancy might argue that Trump fomented an insurrection, and the “refutation” might be to say that Nancy hates Trump. This is fallacious reasoning. Even if Nancy did hate Trump, it would not follow that her claim is false. This fallacious reasoning is a version of the accusation of hate fallacy (it can also be considered a form of ad hominin attack):

 

Premise 1: Person A makes claim C about person B.

Premise 2: Person A is accused of hating person B.

Conclusion: Claim C is false.

 

As my usual silly math example shows, this is bad logic:

 

Premise 1: Dave says that Adolph is wrong when Adolph says that 2+2=7.

Premise 2: Dave hates Adolph.

Conclusion: So, 2+2=7.

 

While hating someone would be a biasing factor, this does not disprove the alleged hater’s claim. If it could be shown that a person’s hate biases them, then this would impact their credibility—but this would never suffice to disprove a person’s claim. Like many fallacies, the accusation of hate can have great psychological force—people tend to reject claims made by those they think hates someone they like. As such even if the Democrats do hate Trump (and others), this has no bearing on the truth of the claims they make about Trump.

The Republicans could make a moral criticism of the Democrats by accusing them of hating Trump (and others). This would require not only proving that a Democrat hates Trump (which might be easy) but showing that the hatred is not warranted by Trump’s actions. Even if this succeeded, it would not refute a claim made by the alleged hater.  I do think that a case could me made that Trump merits hate, although I have a moral preference against hating people. Thus, the Republican accusations of hate have no merit as attempts to refute claims.

One variation of the claim that Democrats are haters is the claim that they are dividers (this is a similar ad hominem attack). As would be expected, the Democrats have been accused of being dividers for impeaching Trump and wanting to hold him accountable for his actions. Saying that the Democrats are dividers would not, obviously, refute their claims—such as the claim that Trump’s action warrants impeachment.

The Republicans also seem to be advancing a utilitarian moral argument: impeaching Trump (or otherwise holding him accountable) would divide the nation and thus create harm. As such, the Democrats should not impeach Trump (or otherwise hold him accountable). The Republicans are probably right that impeaching Trump again would anger his supporters and thus expand the already vast political divide. It could be rationally debated whether holding Trump accountable would create more harm than letting him, once again, escape without consequences; but letting people escape consequences because some people would be upset would seem to be a problematic moral position.

In response to the Republican call for unity (in the form of not holding them or Trump accountable) critics have pointed out that Trump and his enablers have spent months lying about the election, trying to undermine democracy, and inspiring a violent insurrection against the United States. There are also credible claims that some Republicans assisted the insurrectionists by giving them the opportunity to conduct reconnaissance before their attack.

While it might be tempting to reject the Republican claim that Democrats should be uniters by declining to hold Trump (and others) accountable because of their hypocrisy, this would be an ad hominem tu quoque.   This fallacy is committed when it is concluded that a person’s claim is false because it is inconsistent with something else a person has said or what a person says is inconsistent with her actions. As such, the fact that Republicans call for unity after months of dividing does not disprove their claim: they could be right despite their hypocrisy. But their behavior is, of course, relevant to the ethics of the situation.

If the Republicans claim that the Democrats are wrong for dividing the country by holding Trump accountable, then consistency requires that their actions that divide the country would also be wrong. As such, they would need to accept that they have been acting wrongly. This could require that they accept the consequences of their actions and, at the very least, they would need to act in accord with their professed principle and renounce their lies about the election and cease instigating insurrection.

There is also the obvious moral argument that these actions by some Republicans warrant a response even if it would enhance disunity. To use an analogy, imagine that Dawn and Sam are a married couple. Sam learns that Dawn has had multiple affairs, has stolen from his family, has spread vicious lies about him, and killed the family dog. Sam files for divorce and his family files charges against Dawn. In response, Dawn and her relatives accuse Sam and his family of being haters and dividers to refute the charges against Dawn. They also say that Sam should not go through with the divorce and file charges because this would divide the family. But Dawn’s misdeeds would merit the divorce and charges—Sam would be a fool to not go through with them. The same holds true for Trump and his fellows: their actions merit consequences and their calls for unity are absurd.

 

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Epistemic Epidemiology: Election Fraud

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While this is being written Trump and his fellows have lost 59 court cases relating to the election. It is, as always, worth noting that Trump’s kraken legal team generally have not alleged widespread fraud in their court cases—for the obvious reason that there are consequences for lying to a judge. After Fox News and other right-wing media outlets started attacking voting technology company Smartmatic, the company responded with legal notices. This resulted in a surreal event on Fox, with a news segment being aired that debunked the election fraud lies made by its own hosts. One infers that Fox lawyers know it would be a disaster if they had to go to court—again, a place where lies about election fraud can have real consequences.

Forbes has a clear summary of the failed claims Trump and his fellows attempted to use to overturn the election for those who want a recap of the particular untruths. Even Trump’s own Attorney General has disagreed with him, stating that there is no widespread election fraud. The electoral college has met and what remains is Biden’s inauguration. Despite all this, Trump and his supporters still claim that there was widespread voter fraud, and that Trump won the election. Anyone who disagrees with them is dismissed as deceived or a traitor and there seems to be no evidence that will convince them that their claims are not true. This suggests the possibility of an epistemic epidemic. That is, there could be millions of people with extremely defective or even diseased belief forming systems. As with any disease, this is not a condemnation of these people—but a recognition of a serious condition that needs treatment.

It is also worth considering that there is also an ethical epidemic. That is, there is a widespread moral disease or condition affecting many people. Those who are lying about the election would be suffering from an ethical rather than epistemic defect—they do not believe what they are saying but are lying to achieve some gain for themselves or their group. For example, someone might make claims about widespread election fraud or even bring a lawsuit to fish for a pardon from Trump. While it can be difficult to sort out ethical defects from epistemic defects in such situations, it does seem reasonable to hold that those in the leadership of the Republican party know that there is no widespread voter fraud. Hence, their claims to the contrary will tend to be the result of ethical defects. But as one moves out into the general population, it seems possible and even likely that many Trump supporters believe the lies about widespread voter fraud. I know people who seem sincere in these beliefs—they are certain that widespread fraud occurred and relentlessly post on social media in support of Trump and his lies. While I do not know what is in their hearts and minds, the evidence is very strong that they believe what they are saying. Given the overwhelming evidence against their beliefs, they must have an issue with their belief forming mechanisms (which is obviously true of all of us sometimes).

Since they lack true evidence for their beliefs about election fraud, their beliefs must be founded on psychological factors and bad logic. The likely logical errors include many classic fallacies. One is clearly wishful thinking (the fallacy of believing that something is true because one wants it to be true). Much of the “reasoning” consists of various fallacious appeals to authority (accepting a claim based on what an inadequate authority claims). These involve accepting the claims of Trump, his allies, and the right-wing “news” outlets that are making these claims when they are clearly defective as experts in this matter. There is also likely to be the use of the fallacy argument from authoritarian (believing a claim because an authoritarian makes the claim)—this would occur when people believe there was fraud because the authoritarian Trump says so. These fallacies are obviously not unique to Trump supporters, but such a widespread infection that presents a danger to American democracy demands additional investigation into the causes of this outbreak and the development of an effective treatment of this epistemic epidemic. Fortunately, the errors seem to be common fallacies—there seems to be no new strain of bad logic loose in the population.

 

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Arguing: Good and Bad Faith

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Philosophical argumentation aims at establishing the truth of a claim.  The goal of persuasion is to get the audience to believe a claim whether it is true or false. Philosophical argumentation requires that one argue in good faith; persuasion does not. This is not to say that persuasive techniques are forbidden when arguing philosophically. You can and should use persuasive techniques to make your arguments more interesting, but you should not use them as substitutes for arguments.

Arguing in good faith is not the same thing as making a good argument: a person could make a terrible argument or use false premises in good faith. This is because arguing in good or bad faith is primarily a matter of intention. That said, arguments made in bad faith will tend to be bad arguments. To use an analogy, a person can prepare a turkey in good faith with the intention of making it safe and delicious. But the turkey could turn out badly or could even give the guests food poisoning. Preparing food in bad faith, to continue the analogy, would aim at deceiving guests about what they are really eating or even aim at intentionally poisoning them. As the analogy suggests, just as you would want to avoid bad faith cooks you would want to avoid those who argue in bad faith. They will not be serving up anything you should consume.

When a person argues in good faith, they intend to argue that a claim is true by using good logic and true (or at least plausible) evidence and reasons. Arguing in good faith does not require that a person believe the claim they are arguing for, but they do need to be honest about this. A person can advance an argument they disagree with as part of a good faith discussion. For example, philosophical argumentation often includes considering objections against one’s position and these objections can (and should) be made in good faith. As another example, when a philosophy presents the views of a philosopher they disagree with, they should present the arguments in good faith.

When considering arguments against your view (be they objections you raise yourself or not), arguing in good faith means using the principle of charity. Following this principle requires interpreting claims in the best possible light and reconstructing (or constructing) arguments to make them as strong as possible. There are three reasons to follow the principle. The first is that the use of this principle is the right thing to do. The second is that doing so helps avoid committing the straw person fallacy.  In this context, this a fallacy in which one presents a distorted or exaggerated version of an argument and then take criticism of that version to refute the real argument.  The third is practical: criticism of the best and strongest version of an argument also addresses the lesser versions.

The principle of charity should be tempered by the principle of plausibility. If you are considering another person’s argument, then the claims must be interpreted, and the argument reconstructed in a way that matches what is known about the source and the context. For example, reconstructing an argument by Descartes and including premises from quantum physics would violate the principle of plausibility. Now, on to arguing in bad faith.

Arguing in bad faith is not the same thing as arguing badly, but it usually involves making bad arguments with dubious premises. As with good faith, bad faith is a matter of intention.  When a person argues in bad faith, they intend to deceive and mislead when engaged in argument.  A person can engage in bad faith arguing in many ways.

One way to argue in bad faith is to knowingly use fallacies (errors in logic) to try to get the audience to accept a claim as true (or reject one as false). To illustrate, a person arguing in bad faith might make a straw person out of their opponents view or launch an ad Hominen attack against them to “refute” them.

Another way to argue in bad faith is to knowingly use persuasive devices (rhetoric) in place of evidence and reasons to get the audience to believe a claim. As noted above, you can use persuasive devices in good faith when making an argument. For example, a person skilled at both argumentation and comedy might make a hilarious but still good argument.

A third way to argue in bad faith is to use lies as premises or the conclusion of an argument. This is different from unintentionally using claims that are not true—a person can make a false claim and not be lying, since lying is a matter not just of truth but also intention.  A person can also make a true claim and still be lying; this could occur because the person incorrectly believes the claim is false and is trying to deceive the audience into accepting the claim as true.

Like sorting out when someone is lying, determining when someone is arguing in bad faith can be challenging. A person who is arguing in good faith might seem to be arguing in bad faith if they unintentionally use bad logic or make false claims. Someone who is skilled at arguing in bad faith might be utterly convincing and seem to be advancing incredible arguments. Fortunately, when assessing arguments and claims you can cut through bad faith by focusing on using the methods of logic and critical thinking to sort things out.

 

 

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Trump Supporters: Accomplices or Victims?

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Trump is infamous for spewing lies and his supporters are known for believing his claims. As noted in previous essays, one of the many things that is striking about supporters professing belief in Trump’s claims is that they accept claims that are logically inconsistent (even contradictory in some cases). Two claims are inconsistent when they both cannot be true but they both could be false. This is different from two claims being contradictory: if one claims contradicts another, one must be true and the other false.

The pandemic provides a horrific example of the ability of Trump supporters to profess belief in inconsistent claims.  Many Trump supporters claim to believe that the virus is a hoax, that it is no worse than the flu, that it is a Chinese bioweapon, that Trump has been doing a great job with the pandemic and that Trump should get credit for the vaccine.   When Bob Woodward released tapes proving that Trump acknowledged the danger of the virus in February, many Trump supporters accepted Trump’s claim that he wanted to play down the virus to avoid a panic. His supporters defended him, claiming that great leaders have and should lie to prevent panic in the face of terrible danger. If Trump was right to lie to play down the deadly danger of the virus, then this is inconsistent with the claim that it is like the flu and also inconsistent with the claim that it is a hoax. If he was right to lie because of the danger, then it is not like the flu nor is it a hoax. But if it is like the flu or a hoax, then he would not need to lie about the danger. One way to explain Trump supporters professing inconsistent beliefs is that some of them are accomplices. Another is that they are victims. I will begin with the accomplice explanation.

It is possible, even likely, that some of Trump’s supporters are aware when he is lying and perhaps even recognize when they make inconsistent claims. In this case, the inconsistency can easily be explained: they are accomplices to his lies and are simply repeating them. There is no inconsistency here in their beliefs because they do not believe what they are claiming. There are various reasons for people to serve as his accomplices in this matter. They might want to express their allegiance to him, they might find his lies advantageous in their own grifting, they might be trolls, or they might gain some other advantage by professing belief in his lies. Not believing the inconsistent claims does not make the claims consistent; it is just that the accomplices do not have inconsistent beliefs in this context.

As would be suspected, it can be rather difficult to prove that a supporter is an accomplice of Trump rather than a victim. While Trump sometimes pulls the curtain back and reveals things (like how Republicans want to make it harder to vote), it is unlikely that one of his accomplices would end a social media post professing belief in Trump’s claims by revealing that they do not believe the lies they just professed to believe. Sorting out the accomplices would require access to such things as private emails and recordings—things that would be difficult and often illegal to acquire. We can, of course, also wait for the inevitable flood of tell all books after Trump leaves the White House. In general, the accomplices are not very interesting from an epistemic standpoint: they are simply lying. About the only thing interesting is the epistemic problem of discerning the accomplices from the victims. Now, on to the victims.

In this context, the victims of Trump are supporters who believe his lies. These victims can be further divided into those who would change their view of Trump if they realized he was lying and those who would still support him (that is, would become accomplices). Given that Trump lies so badly and so blatantly even when his lies are easily exposed, my main explanation as to why these victims believe him is that they are often basing their beliefs on an appeal to authoritarian. This fallacious reasoning has the following form:

 

Premise 1: Authoritarian leader L makes claim c.

Conclusion: Claim C is true.

 

The fact that an authoritarian leader makes a claim does not provide evidence or a logical reason that supports the claim. It also does not disprove the claim—accepting or rejecting a claim because it comes from an authoritarian would both be errors. The authoritarian could be right about the claim but, as with any fallacy, the error lies in the reasoning.

A silly math example illustrates why this is bad logic:

 

Premise 1: The dear leader claims that 2+2 =7.

Conclusion: The dear leader is right.

 

Since this is bad logic, it gets its power from psychological rather than logical factors. In this case, these factors are the psychological features of authoritarian personalities. An authoritarian leader is characterized by the belief that they have a special status as a leader. At the greatest extreme, the authoritarian leader believes that they are the voice of their followers and that they alone can lead. Or, as Trump put it, “I alone can fix it.” Underlying this is the (false) belief that they possess exceptional skills, knowledge and ability. This causes them to make false claims and mistakes.

Since the authoritarian leader is reluctant to admit errors and limits, they must be dishonest to the degree they are not delusional and delusional to the degree they are not dishonest. Trump exemplifies this with his constant barrage of untruths and incessant bragging. These claims are embraced as true by his supporters who are victims.

An authoritarian leader like Trump desires followers and fortunately for him, there are those of the authoritarian follower type. While Trump’s accomplices make use of him and assist him, they know he is lying. The authoritarian follower believes that their leader is special, that the leader alone can fix things. Thus, the followers must buy into the leaders’ delusions and lies, convincing themselves despite the evidence to the contrary. Trump’s most devoted supporters incorrectly believe him to be honest and competent.

Since Trump has failed often and catastrophically, his victims must accept the deceitful explanations put forth to account for them. This requires rejecting facts and logic.  These victims embrace lies and conspiracy theories—whatever supports the narrative of Trump’s greatness and success Those who do not agree with Trump are not merely wrong but are enemies.  The claims of those who disagree are rejected out of hand, and often with hostility and insults. Thus, the followers tend to isolate themselves epistemically—which is a fancy way of saying that nothing that goes against their view of the leader ever gets in. While this explains, in part, their belief in Trump’s lies it also helps explain how they can believe inconsistent (even contradictory) claims.

Someone who forms certain beliefs based on the appeal to authoritarian will accept that what the authoritarian tells them is true. What justifies these beliefs in the minds of the victims is that the authoritarian made them. As such, they have no reason to consider any other evidence and are effectively immune to arguments against these beliefs. After all, if the justification of a belief is a matter of it being a claim made by the authoritarian, then any evidence or argument against that claim cannot impact its justification. The only things that could undermine the belief would be if the authoritarian told their followers to accept a new belief in place of the old (for example, the authoritarian saying that a once trusted ally is now an enemy) or if the victim stopped accepting the authoritarian for some reason.  So how does this enable inconsistent beliefs?

The answer is that it does so quite easily. If the victim believes a claim because the authoritarian makes the claim and other factors are irrelevant, then consistency will not matter to that victim. These beliefs are not accepted because they are backed by evidence and they are not subject to critical assessment. As such, it would not even occur to the victim to check the claims made by the authoritarian against each other to see if they are consistent or not: these claims are simply believed and they are believed because the authoritarian makes them. In the case of Trump supporters who are victims, this seems to be what they are doing: they believe what Trump says because Trump says it—and that is good enough. It has to be; if they engaged in a honest assessment and search for the truth, they would not believe Trump’s lies. While they might bring up “evidence” and “argue” when responding to critics of Trump, these are not good faith efforts—they do not believe based on evidence (because there is none) and they will refuse all evidence and arguments that go against these beliefs. Trump’s victims believing his lies about the election and insisting there is evidence of widespread fraud is an excellent example of this. The utter lack of evidence has no impact on their beliefs nor does the inconsistency of some of their Trump originated beliefs—all that matters is what Trump says. This, of course, is a terrible epistemic system—although it is the foundation of authoritarianism (which is what Trumpism is, at least in part).

 

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The Transference Problem & Inconsistent Beliefs

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On the face of it, the notion of skill transference in education sounds reasonable: if a student learns one skill, such a Latin or geometry, that requires logical thinking, then this skill should transfer to other areas that involve logical thinking—such as categorical logic. But it turns out that these skills do not transfer. There have also been ill-fated attempts to find skills that would boost general intelligence—a good example being the view that learning to play an instrument or chess would have this effect. So far, this has not worked out as desired. While learning to play chess makes a person better at chess, it does not seem to boost general intelligence.

Because of its perceived value, there has been a concerted effort to teach students critical thinking. At my university this is one of the competencies we assess as part of our assessment of the General Education curriculum. These is, as would be imagined, an assumption that various and diverse general education classes can teach the general skill of critical thinking. My Philosophy and Religion program also has critical thinking as a competency we assess as part of our assessment and there is, once again, an assumption that there is a general skill being taught. Interestingly, the national data and the data from my university shows that students generally do not transfer critical thinking skills. What is extremely interesting is that these skills do not seem to transfer well even within a specific discipline. For example, one might think that taking Critical Inquiry (a critical thinking class) or Logic would confer general critical thinking skills that would be retained an applied in other philosophy classes. But this is generally not the case.

While it is not surprising that very specific skills would not transfer well (for example, learning about metaphysics might not help a student much in ethics) it does seem odd that the supposedly general critical skills do not transfer very well. Daniel Willingham provides an excellent analysis of this problem.

Willingham presents two excellent examples. One involves the difficultly people have with transferring an understanding of the law of large numbers in the context of randomness (such as dice) to cases such as judging academic performance. That is, a person who gets that rolling a set of dice twice will not tell you whether they are loaded or not might uncritically accept that a person who gets two bad math exam grades must be bad at math. These involve the same sort of reasoning: inductive generalizations; but the skill does not seem to transfer between the different applications. If it did, a person who understood the dice situation would also get that a sample of two math tests is too small to be an adequate sample.

His second example, a classic experiment, involved analogical reasoning. In this example, subjects were asked how a tumor could be treated with a ray that would cause a lot of collateral damage. Before being given this problem, the subjects read a story about rebels attacking a fortress that offered a strong analogy to the tumor situation. Despite having the solution right in front of them, the subjects could not solve the medical problem. The researchers found that telling the subjects that the story might help solve the problem resulted in almost all the subjects being able to apply the analogy. The researchers concluded that the problem was getting the subjects to use the analogy—the analogy itself was easy to use.

Willingham draws the conclusion that, “The problem is that previous critical thinking successes seem encapsulated in memory. We know that a student has understood an idea like the law of large numbers. But understanding it offers no guarantee that the student will recognize new situations in which that idea will be useful.” So how could this connect to the ability of people to hold to inconsistent beliefs?

As noted in my previous essays on inconsistent beliefs, people are good at believing claims that are inconsistent with each other. Two claims are inconsistent when they both cannot be true but they both could be false. This is different from two claims being contradictory: if one claims contradicts another, one must be true and the other false. As also noted in previous essays, my inspiration for this series of essays was seeing social media posts by Trump supporters presenting and professing belief in inconsistent (and sometimes contradictory claims). To illustrate, Trump supporters tended to profess belief in Trump’s claims that the virus was no worse than the flu (and that it was a hoax). When Bob Woodward released tapes proving that Trump acknowledged the danger of the virus in February, many Trump supporters accepted Trump’s claim that he wanted to play down the virus to avoid a panic. His supporters begin posting in his defense, asserting that great leaders lie in this way to keep morale up in the face of terrible danger (something Plato might accept, given his noble lie). They also claimed he was right to do this—to prevent panic in the face of a deadly virus. Laying aside all the moral issues here, there is an obvious logical problem: if Trump was right to lie to play down the virus because it is a terrible danger, then this is inconsistent with the claim that it is like the flu (or a hoax). So, if he had to lie because of the danger, then it is not like the flu (or a hoax). But if it is like the flu (or a hoax) then he did not need to lie about the danger. There is a certain unpleasant fun to be had in getting a Trump supporter to profess belief in these inconsistent claims in the space of a short Facebook interaction; but almost anyone can easily be caught in holding inconsistent beliefs. The transference problem can help explain some of this.

As Willingham has shown, people are generally bad at transferring their critical thinking skills between different situations. Differences in content, as he noted, can prevent people from seeing what can be made obvious with the right context. Because of this, a person might be very good at discerning inconsistency in specific cases but fail completely in other cases. As an example, consider a Trump supporter who is very good at finding inconsistencies in claims made by liberals they disagree with. They are motivated to find such problems and continued practice can make them quite good at finding inconsistencies in very specific contexts. But if the context is switched to their own beliefs, the change can suffice to prevent the transference of this skill. That is, they can readily see the inconsistencies of a liberal in a specific context but are literally unable to see their own inconsistencies. This is analogous to the subjects in the analogy experiment: they had the answer right in front of them but were blind to it until it was pointed out to them.

Put in general terms, people with strong political views can get considerable practice attacking and criticizing views they disagree with—so they can develop critical thinking skills they can apply in very specific contexts. But people rarely subject their own beliefs to intense logical scrutiny. People almost never carefully compare their core beliefs to check for logical inconsistencies—so they have little practice or experience doing so. Hence, they will tend to be very bad at noticing what should be blindingly obvious inconsistencies. This, of course, assumes that people are being honest—they hold to the beliefs they are professing and are not lying as a strategy. It is to this that I will turn in my next essay.

 

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Choice Blindness and Inconsistent Beliefs

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Unlike the thinking machines of science fiction, human beings can easily believe inconsistent (even contradictory) claims. I am confident I have many inconsistent beliefs and know that I have many false beliefs. This is because I have turned up such beliefs over the years—one of the benefits (or occupational hazards) of being a professional philosopher. I thus infer I have many left in my mind. I do not know which ones are false—if I knew, I would (I hope) stop believing them. Writing out my ideas, like this, is a help—other people can see my claims and subject them to critical assessment. If someone can honestly show that two of my beliefs are inconsistent (or contradictory) I consider that a gift—they are helping me weed the garden of my mind. But not everyone is grateful for this sort of help—although, to be fair, this can often be done from cruelty rather than honest concern.

While most people do not write extensively about their beliefs, many people present their professed beliefs on social media, such as Facebook. Being a philosopher, I have the annoying trait of noting these claims and then assessing whether they can all be true. That is, I automatically check for logical inconsistency and contradictions. Two claims are inconsistent if they both cannot be true at the same time; but they could both be false. If two claims are contradictory, one must be false and the other true.

As would be suspected, the political beliefs people profess are often inconsistent or even contradictory. I have, and perhaps so have you, seen relatively short Facebook posts putting forth sets of political claims that are inconsistent. As noted in my previous essay, the professed beliefs of Trump supporters about the pandemic often form such sets. It is a bit jarring to see a single post mock people who take the pandemic “hoax” seriously, assert that the “China Virus” is a dangerous bioweapon, and then finish things off with praise for Trump’s great handling of the pandemic and how the Democrats are trying to steal credit for the great vaccine that should be credited to Trump. It gets even stranger when 5G and QAnon gets thrown into the post. Efforts to point out the inconsistencies tend to only lead people to respond by angrily doubling down or making threats. I, of course, invite readers to provide their favorite examples of how “the libs” also hold inconsistent sets of beliefs. But keep in mind that inconsistency is a matter of logic—a set of false claims can be consistent with each other. So how do people profess such sets of clearly inconsistent beliefs?  Perhaps the concept of choice blindness can shed some light on the matter.

Back in 2005 Swedish researchers developed the concept of choice blindness after conducting an experiment involving choosing between two photos of faces. Each participant was asked which photo they found most attractive and then the researcher used sleight of hand to make the participant think they had been handed back the photo they picked. But the researcher handed them the photo they had not picked. While one would expect the subject to notice the switch, they generally did not—they accepted the switched photo as the one they had picked and even offered reasons as to why they had picked that photo in the first place (though they had rejected it in the first place). Follow up experiments yielded the same results for the taste of jam, financial choices, and eyewitness reports.

These results could, perhaps, be explained away in terms of weak preferences and other factors. For example, if a person is asked to pick between two photos and at that moment, they slightly prefer one, then it would not be surprising that they would be amendable to easily changing their mind. But one might think that political beliefs would be different—especially in these highly polarized times.  But people seem to suffer from choice blindness here as well.

In 2018 an experiment was conducted in which participants were given a survey about political questions. The researchers gave the subjects false feedback and found that their beliefs tended to shift accordingly. This effect lasted up to a week and, interestingly, lasted even longer when the researchers asked the participants to defend “their choices.” For example, a person who originally favored raising taxes would be asked by the researchers about “their” view that taxes should not be raised. This person would then tend to believe that taxes should not be raised. The researchers’ explanation is a reasonable one: if a person thinks a belief is their belief, they will be free of many of the factors that would have caused them to defend their original belief. This certainly makes sense: if someone believes they believe something, then they will tend to believe and defend it. Roughly put, people believe what they believe they believe—even when they previously did not believe it. So how can this help explain the ability to believe inconsistent or even contradictory claims?

Based on the above, a person can initially believe one claim and then be easily switched to believing (and defending) a claim inconsistent with their original professed belief.  For example, a person who initially believes that a carbon tax would reduce emissions could have their belief switched by this method to believing (and defending) that carbon taxes would not do that.  These two claims are inconsistent, but a person can easily be switched from one to the other without apparently even noticing.

Now consider a person who professes to believe claims that are inconsistent. When they profess one claim, this would be analogous to their professing their original belief in the choice blindness experiment. When they profess an inconsistent claim, this would be analogous to them professing belief in the claim they were switched to believing by the researchers. In the case of holding inconsistent beliefs, a person would be switching themselves when they switched from professing one belief to professing belief in a claim inconsistent with the first belief. As such, a person would believe the first belief and then seamlessly switch to the inconsistent belief without noticing the inconsistency. Given that the experiment shows that people can be switched to opposite beliefs without noticing, it would be even easier for people to hold to inconsistent beliefs without noticing any inconsistency. They believe one belief because they believe it; they believe an inconsistent belief because they believe that as well. That is, people believe what they think they believe and simply ignore or forget any inconsistencies.  While this is certainly not the whole story, choice blindness does shed some light on the ability people have to profess inconsistent beliefs.

 

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