If Popper is right about science then his is also the only genuinely scientific political philosophy; and also, most importantly, the hostility to science and the revolt against reason, both of which are so prominently expressed in today’s world, are directed at false conceptions of science and reason. [101]
Tag: politics
Explanation as the antidote to extremism
The challenge in an election season that largely takes place in the form of 30-second advertisements and fire-up-the-base rallies is that rarely is anybody — candidate or voter — asked to explain his or her positions. American political discourse, in short, is not discourse at all.
So what can be done to turn it into one? The answer implied by our research is not that we should all become policy wonks. Instead, we voters need to be more mindful that issues are complicated and challenge ourselves to break down the policy proposals on both sides into their component parts. We have to then imagine how these ideas would work in the real world — and then make a choice: to either moderate our positions on policies we don’t really understand, as research suggests we will, or try to improve our understanding. Either way, discourse would then be based on information, not illusion. […]
Strong opinion and vigorous debate are key parts of democracy and the foundation to American culture. Yet most people would agree that it is not productive to have a strong opinion about an issue that one doesn’t really understand. We have a problem in American politics: an illusion of knowledge that leads to extremism. We can start to fix it by acknowledging that we know a lot less than we think.
A dangerous precedent
An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
Let the party think for you
In Wirklichkeit aber nimmt mit sehr wenigen Ausnahmen jemand, der in eine Partei eintritt, gehorsam jene Geisteshaltung an, die er später folgendermaßen ausdrücken wird: „Als Monarchist, als Sozialist meine ich, dass …“ Das ist so bequem! Denn es heißt, nicht zu denken. Es gibt nichts Bequemeres als nicht zu denken.
Das dritte Merkmal der Parteien – nämlich dass sie Maschinen zur Fabrikation kollektiver Leidenschaft sind – ist so augenscheinlich, dass es keiner Erläuterung bedarf. Die kollektive Leidenschaft ist die einzige Energie, die den Parteien für die Propaganda nach außen hin und für den Druck, den sie auf die Seele jedes Mitglieds ausüben, zur Verfügung steht.
Man gibt zu, dass der Parteiengeist blind macht, dass er taub macht für die Gerechtigkeit und dass er selbst rechtschaffene Leute zum grausamsten Wüten gegen Unschuldige hinreißt. Man gibt es zu, doch man denkt nicht daran, die Organismen abzuschaffen, die einen solchen Geist fabrizieren. [28-9]
The inner light of truth
Wenn es keine Wahrheit gibt, dann ist es legitim, auf diese oder jene Weise zu denken, als jemand, der zufälligerweise dieses oder jenes ist. So wie man schwarze, braune, rote oder blonde Haare hat, weil man eben so ist, sondert man auch diese oder jene Gedanken ab. Das Denken ist damit wie die Haare Produkt eines körperlichen Ausscheidungsprozesses.
Erkennt man an, dass es eine Wahrheit gibt, darf man nur denken, was wahr ist. Dann denkt man etwas nicht, weil man zufälligerwise Franzose ist oder Katholik oder Sozialist, sondern weil das unwiderstehliche Licht der Evidenz so und nicht anders zu denken verpflichtet.
… In jedem Fall gewährt das innere Licht jedem, der es befragt, immer eine offenkundige Antwort. Der Inhalt der Antwort ist mehr oder weniger affirmativ; das ist nicht wichtig. Er kann stets revidiert werden: korrigiert werden jedoch kann er nur aus einem Mehr an innerem Licht heraus. [20-1]
Totalitarianism and truth
Jede Wirklichkeit impliziert von selbst eine Grenze. Was gar nicht existiert, lässt sich niemals begenzen.
Deshalb besteht eine Affinität, ein Bündnis zwischen dem Totalitarismus und der Lüge.
Vielen Leuten kommt allerdings der Gedanke an eine totale Macht gar nicht nicht in den Sinn; diese Vorstellung würde sie ängstigen. Sie ist schwindelerregend, und es braucht eine Art von Größe, um sie auszuhalten. Wenn solche Leute sich für eine Partei interessieren, begnügen sie sich mit dem Wunsch, sie möge wachsen – doch so, wie etwas wächst, das keine Grenze in sich trägt. Wenn es in diesem Jahr drei Mitgleider mehr gibt als im letzen oder die Spendensammlung hundert Francs mehr eingebracht hat, sind sie zufrieden. Aber sie wünschen, dass dies unbegrenzt immer so weitergeht. Nie würde ihnen einfallen, dass ihre Partei irgendwann zu viele Mitglieder, zu viele Wähler, zu viel Geld haben könnte. [17-8]
What it means to be a liberal
To avoid misunderstandings I wish to make it quite clear that I use the terms ‘liberal’, ‘liberalism’, etc., always in a sense in which they are still generally used in England (though perhaps not in America): by a liberal I do not mean a sympathizer with any one political party but simply a man who values individual freedom and who is alive to the dangers inherent in all forms of power and authority. [xiii]
Truth is oppressive
But the “centrists” who weigh in on policy debates are playing a different game. Their self-image, and to a large extent their professional selling point, depends on posing as high-minded types standing between the partisan extremes, bringing together reasonable people from both parties—even if these reasonable people don’t actually exist. …
So you can see the problem these commentators face. To admit that the president’s critique is right would be to admit that they were snookered by Mr. Ryan, who is the same as he ever was. More than that, it would call into question their whole centrist shtick—for the moral of my story is that Mr. Ryan isn’t the only emperor who turns out, on closer examination, to be naked.
Hence the howls of outrage, and the attacks on the president for being “partisan.” For that is what people in Washington say when they want to shout down someone who is telling the truth.
What participation means
The conditions of ‘fairness’ as conceived in the various social-choice problems are misconceptions analogous to empiricism: they are all about the input to the decision-making process – who participates, and how their opinions are integrated to form the ‘preference of the group’. A rational analysis must concentrate instead on how the rules and institutions contribute to the removal of bad policies and rulers, and to the creation of new options.
Sometimes such an analysis does endorse one of the traditional requirements, at least in part. For instance, it is indeed important that no member of the group be privileged or deprived of representation. But this is not so that all members can contribute to the answer. It is because such discrimination entrenches in the system a preference among their potential criticisms. It does not make sense to include everyone’s favoured policies, or parts of them, in the new decision; what is necessary for progress is to exclude ideas that fail to survive criticism, and to prevent their entrenchment, and to promote the creation of new ideas. [345-6]
Creating wealth and wisdom ex nihilo
The essence of democratic decision-making is not the choice made by the system at elections, but the ideas created between elections. And elections are merely one of the many institutions whose function is to allow such ideas to be created, tested, modified and rejected. The voters are not a fount of wisdom from which the right policies can be empirically ‘derived’. They are attempting, fallibly, to explain the world and thereby to improve it. They are, both individually and collectively, seeking the truth – or should be, if they are rational. And there is an objective truth of the matter. Problems are soluble. Society is not a zero-sum game: the civilization of the Enlightenment did not get where it is today by cleverly sharing out the wealth, votes or anything else that was in dispute when it began. It got here by creating ex nihilo. In particular, what voters are doing in elections is not synthesizing a decision of a superhuman being, ‘Society’. They are choosing which experiments are to be attempted next, and (principally) which are to be abandoned because there is no longer a good explanation for why they are best. The politicians, and their policies, are those experiments. [345]
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