Category Archives: Objectivity training

Finding balance in the Brexit storm

Middle Way Philosophy, Objectivity training, Politics, Uncategorized

To say that the last couple of days have been eventful in British political life would be an understatement. A narrow vote to leave the EU in the referendum on 23rd June confounded widespread assumptions of the permanence of the status quo. As had been widely predicted, an economic storm blew up immediately. But what is even more notable is what has happened since: not only Cameron’s resignation, but widespread reports of ‘Bregret’ – those who voted leave saying they would change their minds next time, because they hadn’t realised it would actually make a difference. At the time of writing, a petition on the government petition site has gathered over 2 million signatures calling for a second referendum.Ship in strait

What does all this have to do with the Middle Way? Pretty much everything. Remember, the practice of the Middle Way starts right now in whatever situation we are in, finding a point of balance and avoiding either sort of absolutisation, positive or negative. I suspect that most readers of this blog will greatly regret the current situation, and may feel that it’s really unjust, or perhaps a few will feel that it is just: but either of these responses are idealisations of a complex situation. The degree of justice or injustice lies in people, not in the whole situation, so probably the first move in finding a point of balance is to recognise and avoid implicit cosmic justice assumptions or their denial. Related to these may be other absolutisations: absolute blame heaped on one person or group or another, or absolute value applied to the consequence of either leaving or remaining in the EU. Such abolutisations obscure our understanding of the conditions involved.

It is avoiding these absolutisations that can enable us to judge the situation in a more balanced way, but it does not free us from political concerns. Nor does it release us from recognising the degree of justice and injustice, appropriate praise and blame, or right and wrong that need to be applied in understanding the situation. Examination of the process of events can reveal a whole set of biases and fallacies that have both created receptivity for the misleading narrative for ‘Leave’ and also made the ‘Remain’ campaign ineffective.

Personally I think fairly strong moral conclusions can still be reasonably drawn whilst avoiding absolutisation. I think that the leaders of the ‘Leave’ campaign have behaved in a disgracefully dishonest fashion, and that the English and Welsh working classes have been duped. These are generalisations, which will of course have exceptions, and we can also recognise an interdependency between the naivete of the voters and the lack of integrity of the politicians and of the tabloid media. Neither is wholly to blame, but at the same time considerable blame can be fairly apportioned. The evidence is clear if, for example, we look at the simplistic figure of £350 million pounds a week allegedly given to the EU, the treatment of the issue of possible Turkish accession to the EU, or the treatment of the issue of the economic and social impact of EU migrants in the UK. On the whole, the politicians offered simplistic slogans that obscured the issues, these slogans were passed on without any critical context by the tabloids, and when questioned about them the politicians concerned resorted to diversionary tactics such as ad hominem attacks. The falsely neutral BBC rarely got any further than ‘balancing’ one ad hominem attack against another, letting through unscrutinised no end of misleading mono-causal explanations for complex phenomena or statistics taken out of context.  Only a few more specialised and less popular programmes examined the issues more deeply.

Conclusions like these can be drawn, but we also need to start by coming to terms with the new conditions. Yes, it seems that we have a bitterly divided UK with an alienated, ignorant and even blindly furious working class largely at the mercy of whatever media and political interests are best able to manipulate them. Failing to understand the conditions, this group have collectively engaged in a massively self-destructive act. But we won’t be able to address these conditions if we think that somehow God has made a mistake and it really shouldn’t have been allowed, or that some other intrinsic justice has been betrayed. Nothing finally ‘wrong’ has happened: rather people have made mistakes, and these can be improved upon.

Trying to reach that position of balanced judgement, I still think we can find ways forward and find grounds for optimism. The underlying problem is that people have absolutised in their judgements, because they have not had the training in critical thinking to be aware when they were being fed a narrow account of conditions, nor the training in other integrative practices to move beyond one particular dominant idea (say that of ‘getting our country back’) that has dominated their judgement. This can be changed, but only in the long term. People can be trained in integrative practice and in critical thinking by more effective education, not just at school but throughout life. People can also be greatly encouraged to think more critically about political claims by a more effective and genuinely critical media. As individuals, we can also contribute to them spreading one-to-one even if we do not work in either education or the media.

I would like to contribute to campaigning in both those crucial areas – education and the media – but if forced to choose between them, I am most struck by the responsibility of the media for the situation. That responsibility emerges from a complex web of conditions: the operation of market forces on media organisations, the constant interplay between journalistic creativity and audience expectations, and so on. Yet my impression is that most journalists, even those working for the most reputable newspapers or broadcast organisations, do not see critical thinking as part of their brief, and are simply not trained in it. If journalists really want to give the public the tools to draw their own conclusions in an informed way, they need to become much more aware of the terminology and techniques of critical thinking and of practically applied cognitive psychology. At the moment, for the most part, they are simply not holding politicians to account, because the politicians remain effectively unchallenged in the ways that matter most. Being rude, interrupting the politician and telling them they have not answered the question are simply not enough if endless ad hominems, straw men, false dilemmas, simplistic mono-causal explanations, raw statistical figures without contextual proportions, or dismissals without a practical alternative go straight past them. If the public are not interested enough or aware enough of these things, it is both the job and the talent of journalists to make them interesting, and in the process start to contribute to a more objective and more adequate politics in the future.

Critical Thinking 18: Ad Hoc Argument

Critical Thinking, Objectivity training

An ad hoc argument is one in which a person shifts their goals or ‘moves the goalposts’ in mid-argument in order to avoid having to admit that they’re wrong. It tends to accompany defensiveness and a dogmatic attachment to a position that can’t possibly be accepted as wrong without losing face.

It’s also sometimes known as the ‘No True Scotsman’, from an example in which a Scotsman who claims that no Scotsman eats his porridge with sugar, when challenged with a counter-example of one who does, rejoins that no true Scotsman eats his porridge with sugar. The claim about the Scotsman in this example has thus shifted to a claim about a much more flexible and manipulable ‘true’ Scotsman. The ‘truth’ of the Scotsman seems to amount to nothing more than the favour of being defined as such by the ad hoc arguer, but of course ‘true’ sounds terribly grand and may deceive the unwary, even though it turns out to be empty bluster when examined more closely.

More controversial contemporary versions of the ‘true Scotsman’, may include the ‘true Muslim’, the ‘true scientist’ or the ‘true Socialist’: the true Muslim may always be peaceful, the true scientist always provisional, and the true Socialist always committed to equality, thus allowing us to hang on to idealisations of these positions when challenged with counter-examples that show them to be rough labels for diverse traditions. It may still be the case that the overwhelming majority of Scots refuse to eat their porridge with sugar, and the overwhelming majority of Muslims are peaceful, but if we absolutely essentialise those categories it may be a way of repressing recognition of the minority who are not.

Another example of ad hoc argument is illustrated by the following cartoon, which is a version of a historical example from the life of Galileo. Here it is not the category of ‘Scotsman’ that is being defended, but an Aristotelian scientific theory that all celestial bodies from the moon upwards must be perfect spheres. In order to avoid questioning this theory, one of Galileo’s opponents came up with this highly implausible explanation of what he observed. Of course, it’s just possible that he might be right, but the defensive intention is pretty transparent (if you’ll forgive the pun).

Ad_hoc

Ad hoc argument departs from the Middle Way because it involves an absolutisation of the belief that is being defended. It is so absolutised that the alternatives being offered are just not seriously considered, and instead the person using the ad hoc argument just wants an excuse to dismiss the alternative. As with any absolutisation, it also has an opposite that is just as unhelpful, which in this case is the assumption that the theory being defended is unquestionably wrong. The problem with the transparent substance is not that we know it to be wrong, but that it is necessarily assumed to be right for defensive reasons, just as the problem with assuming all ‘true’ Muslims to be necessarily peaceful is not that there may not be a justifiable interpretation of Islam that would require peaceful behaviour, but that the assertion about ‘true’ Muslims is made to avoid acknowledgement of the violent ones who at least use the label ‘Muslim’.

Ad hoc argument is closely related to confirmation bias, the tendency to select from our experience and interpret it in terms of our existing beliefs. It can also be seen as a form of circular argument or ‘begging the question’. For example, in the Galileo example, Aristotle’s theory is supported by the belief that the moon is perfectly spherical despite appearances to the contrary, which in turn justifies the belief in Aristotle’s theory.

Ad hoc argument needs to be distinguished from some other reasons people may have for changing their position in the course of an argument. For example, it may be necessary to redefine one’s terms in the course of an argument in a way that is not defensive, but rather has the goal of reaching a helpful conclusion. For example, if you were having an argument about Christianity and started off with a very narrow definition of it (e.g. belief that Jesus is the son of God, meaning a supernatural entity), but then recognised that you could reach a more helpful agreement with another person by recognising that Christianity could be defined in different ways (e.g. as a symbolic or archetypal relationship with a Christ-figure within our experience), shifting your definition would not be ad hoc argument. In the end, it’s the unhelpful disruption to engagement and mutual understanding involved in a particular shift in position that makes it ad hoc, not the mere fact of shifting one’s position.

Exercise

Are these examples of ad hoc argument?

  1. The ‘Leave’ Campaign in the UK EU referendum pointed out that there have been 72 occasions (since the 1990’s) when the UK disagreed with new EU laws but was overruled. They argued that this involved unacceptable infringement of UK sovereignty.  However, the ‘Remain’ campaign responded that these 72 occasions should be seen in the context of over 2000 occasions when the UK has agreed with new EU laws, so that seen as a proportion rather than as a raw number it was not very high.
  2. In a debate before a football game between England and Germany, an England fan predicted that England would win the game. In the event, England scored one undisputed goal, but Germany scored two goals, both from penalties awarded in controversial refereeing decisions. After the game, the fan argued that he had been correct, because England should have won the game if the referee had been fair.
  3. Two Christians are discussing the interpretation of the Bible in relation to the ordination of women, which one supports but the other opposes. In 1 Corinthians 14:33-35 it says: “As in all congregations of God’s people, women should keep silent at the meeting. They have no permission to talk, but should keep their place as the law directs. If there is something they want to know, they can ask their husbands at home. It is a shocking thing for a woman to talk at the meeting.” The first Christian argues that this passage clearly implies that women should not be ordained, as one could hardly be an ordained priest or minister and not speak at a church service. The second argues that Paul’s motive when he wrote this passage was to prevent conflict between early Christians and the surrounding Roman culture, and that there is no reason why it should be interpreted as a commandment for Christians today.

Link to index of other Critical Thinking blogs in this series

Provisionality markers: keeping the lines of discussion open

Critical Thinking, Linguistics, Objectivity training, Practice

Provisionality markers are the words we use when communicating that signal we are being provisional rather than absolute. Using them well is a crucial part of the practice of provisionality. On the recent Objectivity Training course, I was planning to include some discussion of provisionality markers in one session, and then failed to do so in much detail because I ran out of time. One of the participants remarked that it would have been useful to give it higher priority, given the great practical importance of provisionality markers. Reflecting further, I agree, so I’ve decided to write a blog about it to help make up for my omission.

You will probably need to know a bit about provisionality, and how it differs from absolutisation, to follow this. If you haven’t come across the term before, I’d suggest watching this video.

Provisionality markers consist in words or phrases that try to directly communicate that a statement being made is provisional, usually by linking it to appearance rather than reality, opinion rather than claimed fact, or probability rather than certainty. Here are some examples:

Appearance rather than reality

It appears…Provisionality markers

It seems…

Apparently

Evidently

Opinion rather than claimed fact

In my opinion…

I’d suggest…

On the whole I think…

In my view…

I think…

One might conclude that…

I believe…

Arguably…

Probability rather than certainty

…may…

…might…

Probably

It’s likely that…

The use of these terms is, of course, no guarantee that a person is being provisional. What make them provisional is their state of mind when they are making a judgement, and whether they are able to consider alternatives, not just whether they use these words. You’ll always need to judge provisionality from the context, rather than just from the use of these words, and they may be used formalistically, merely to try to avoid the possibility of offence, or because they are believed to be expected in the group. That judgement is obviously trickier on the internet, where the words are separated from information about tone and context.

In some cases the use of these terms may also indicate hesitancy or indecisiveness rather than provisionality. Indecisiveness should not be confused with provisionality, the difference being that provisionality involves taking as much into account as the conditions allow and then making a balanced judgement, whilst indecisiveness means failing to make a judgement when one is required. Indecisiveness may even often be accompanied by a negative absolute belief, such as that I can’t be justified in making a decision, or that decisions can’t ever be justified.

Nevertheless, I think the use of these terms (and others like them) can be very helpful. There are two aspects to the practice of using provisionality markers, obviously: using them ourselves and noting when others use them.

Using provisionality markers

Using them ourselves adds to the probability that others will recognise that we are trying to be provisional rather than absolute. That makes it more likely that a helpful discussion will ensue, because, if we disagree with each other, that makes it much more likely that we will consider and try to understand and assess each other’s positions rather than being defensive and ending up in conflict. Provisionality markers should set up whatever I am claiming for a discussion where we are both concerned with finding the most helpful outcome, rather than for an adversarial argument in which ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ is our main concern.

However, for provisionality markers to potentially have this effect, other people have to notice that we are using them. Thus it may help to give them extra emphasis in one way or another, particularly when communicating with someone whom you think might not notice or might not have noticed the markers. We can do this through tone of voice, or in text by using asterisks or other emphasising features.

Which markers we choose to use may also have an effect on whether they are noticed. Longer phrases like “One might conclude that…” may seem clumsy and over-formal, but have the advantage of going to great lengths to draw attention to provisionality. “I believe…”, on the other hand, may sometimes be intended as provisional, but (particularly in a religious context) is easily interpreted as dogmatic nevertheless.

The provisionality of the marker also needs to be consistent with the rest of what you are saying, and if the rest of your statement is absolute in form, no quantity of provisionality markers will rescue it. For example, it’s contradictory to say “It may be inevitable that you’ll find the right partner”: if it may be the case (rather than being a certainty), it can’t be inevitable. If you say “In my view conservatives are always greedy”, the over-certainty of your sweeping generalisation about conservatives is undermining the apparent provisionality of “in my view” to such an extent that your provisionality marker is likely to be deservedly ignored. It’s thus impossible to separate the use of provisionality markers from the wider issue of avoiding absolutes, which in turn requires some understanding of the wide variety of forms that absolutes can take so that you can avoid them.

Noting others’ use of provisionality markers

Just as important, however, as using provisionality markers oneself, is noticing when other people use them, and giving due weight to their intention to be provisional. This is related to the problem of people taking offence – something that they are responsible for as well as you. Even if you’re not inclined to enter into discussion of a claim that someone has made, if you recognise that they’re trying to do so provisionally, you can at least pass on without taking offence, recognising that a statement you disagreed with was probably part of someone else’s progression from a relatively ignorant position to a wiser one.

The crucial part of noting others’ provisionality markers is  usually interpretation. Was the provisionality marker intended? Was the whole statement intended as provisional even despite the lack of provisionality markers? This is where I think the principle of charity is really helpful: this is the presumption, when in doubt, that a person had a more helpful rather than a less helpful intention. If you presume wrongly, after all, the outcome is much more likely to be helpful if you do so in a positive direction, and it’s likely to be become clearer in subsequent discussion whether or not the person was being genuinely provisional. The video below shows a variety of ambiguous situations where the principle of charity needs to be exercised!

One of my own bugbears online is having provisionality markers ignored, often by people who feel strongly about a particular view, and are eager to pigeonhole me either in the ‘for’ or ‘against’ camp in relation to that view, even when I want to suggest a third alternative. It’s easy to walk away from such heated debates (for example, about the EU in the current UK political climate) on the grounds that joining in may just lead to people taking offence and to unfruitful polarised discussion. At the same time, though, it is exactly such debates where provisionality and a critical perspective on over-simplifications are most needed. Making strong use of provisionality markers, recognising those of others, and also pointing them out robustly when others ignore them, may be important steps in making such discussions more productive.

Overall, then, the importance of provisionality markers, and of using them carefully, cannot be underestimated. In the end, however, their use cannot be separated from other Middle Way practices: provisionality, agnosticism, incrementality and integration.

Objectivity Training Course

Critical Thinking, Middle Way Society, Objectivity training, Psychology,

I’ve produced this new video to help publicise the Objectivity Training Course which I’m running May 31st-Jun 3rd in Malvern, UK. That’s only 6 weeks away at the time of posting this, so if you’re planning to come, please book without delay! This 4 day intensive course should allow you to understand the inter-relationship between a range of different kinds of assumptions that interfere with our judgement, and develop some practical strategies for avoiding them. The web address given at the end of the video, for more information about the course, is also linked here.

Objectivity Training: An update

Objectivity training, Psychology

It was in a previous blog post at the end of August that I first coined the term ‘Objectivity Training’. The reason I felt we needed a new term was because existing terms like ‘Critical Thinking’ didn’t really convey the breadth and the psychological depth of the kind of work we need to do to challenge all our biases and delusions. It’s not just a question of ‘thinking’ or reasoning, though that obviously comes into it.

Objectivity training is the name for an area of practice that needs to connect with our bodies and wider awareness of the conditions in which our beliefs arise, in addition to critical thinking. It is focused much more on our assumptions than on whether we are reasoning logically, because it is our assumptions that make much more of a difference in practice.

Since I wrote that first blog I have made a start on a new book called Objectivity Training, which will try to bracket out the philosophical arguments and just focus on this practical process. This book is undoubtedly going to take some time.  I have also made some progress with the ‘Mistakes we make in thinking’ video series, and produced five of them so far. However, probably the most important development is a decision to develop training courses.

There is plenty of training on meditation available in many places these days, but very little working practically with the integration of belief and elimination of biases, so there is obviously a widespread need for objectivity training courses. These courses could help a very wide range of people in a variety of ways, such as the following:

    • personal and spiritual development
    • moral and political judgement
    • study and research skills
    • effective decision-making in businesses and organisations

I’ve arranged the first Objectivity Training course to take place in Malvern UK, near where I live, for an intensive 4 day block from 31st May-3rd June. Please see this page for more details and to book. But there is plenty of scope for developing and delivering courses of different kinds elsewhere. To be able to give this the time it deserves I’ve decided to try to make it part of my livelihood, hopefully in time taking over from some of the online tutoring I currently do. That’s why I’ve decided to offer this training independently rather than making it a society event, but the society committee has agreed that it can be advertised through the society.

In thinking further about how to present objectivity training I’ve recognised one new key distinction. That’s between the aspects of cognitive error (biases and fallacies) that apply to all judgements, and the specific biases and fallacies that apply to some judgements but not others. I have identified 15 dimensions of judgement that will always be present to some extent in every judgement, and will play a part in determining how far that judgement is either limited and deluded on the one hand or objective and adequate on the other. As these dimensions of all judgement are so widely important I have decided to focus all my initial work on them, and the book (or at least its first volume) and the Malvern training course will be focused on them.

To get some idea of how these different dimensions interact, let’s take an example judgement. Let’s say you get into a road rage scenario when driving a car. Let’s say another driver pulls out of a side street unexpectedly in front of you, you brake sharply and swerve to avoid him, and a car on the other side of the road is then forced to swerve to avoid you. You are enraged by this. Doesn’t this person know the Highway Code? He could have caused a serious accident etc. University Street Liege Jeanhousen CCSA3-0

Let’s pause the situation there. It could develop in all sorts of ways: with everyone just driving off, with a reproving blast of the horn, with both drivers getting out and shouting at each other or even coming to blows. But your key judgement at that point is that the dangerous manoeuvre, with its dangerous consequences, was the fault of the other driver. It’s from that judgement that your anger flows. However, unknown to you, the other driver has just heard that his wife has been taken to hospital in a critically ill state. He’s in a distracted state and is desperately trying to get to the hospital as quickly as possible.

Your tendency to assume that the other driver is responsible can be related to the actor-observer bias in cognitive psychology, whereby we tend to assume that another person is responsible for an action with a bad outcome, whilst exculpating ourselves. The most obviously relevant dimension of the judgement here is thus that of responsibility. There is a lot of interesting psychological research on responsibility biases that can be applied here. It’s also worth noting, though, that every other judgement has this dimension even if it doesn’t at first appear to be particularly about responsibility. If we assume that we are powerless in making any judgement, for example, we fail to take responsibility for it and thus cannot work to improve it, even if it is a judgement about a ‘factual’ matter like a measurement of a length of guttering or the shortest route to a particular destination.

But this judgement about responsibility also involves many other dimensions. For example, it involves confirmation bias (which is the tendency only to look for evidence which reinforces our prior beliefs), because all your observations of the other driver are likely to be interpreted in terms of the irresponsibility you seek to place on him. For example, if you see a little ‘B’ on the car registration you might exclaim ‘Ah, should have known, the Belgians have the worst accident statistics in the EU!’, although it would never have occurred to you to consider the Belgian-ness of the car in that light otherwise. You will also be constructing a ‘reality’ about this driver, this irresponsible Belgian, which has little to do with the complexity of the actual person concerned: our tendency to construct a reality that is affirmed or denied is another feature of errors of judgement. In this case it is a ‘reality’ that includes stereotyping and hasty generalisation.

The judgement also has conditions ‘further back’ on which it relies – for example, it relies on availability – the limitation of ideas that will actually occur to us. It doesn’t occur to you that the hapless Belgian might be rushing to hospital in a distracted state – and there’s probably no way you were likely to guess this unless he stopped and told you (and you also listened). It doesn’t occur to you as a possibility because it’s not salient for you: it’s not part of the goals and representations you’re intent on at this moment. But if we were to slightly broaden our awareness there might be some chance in this situation that the possibility of an alternative perspective might occur to us. That might just take the form of a general thought that there was probably a reason why the driver of the Belgian car pulled out like that. Once that general thought occurs to you, perhaps because of mindfulness training as well as some awareness of your likely biases, the edge of your anger might be blunted and you might at least avoid fisticuffs on the pavement. That general thought need not undermine your awareness of the importance of care on the roads and following the Highway Code – but dwelling on a near-miss that was due to someone else’s actions is hardly likely to make much difference in practice at that point. It’s probably best to let go of the incident as quickly as you can, and a wider awareness of your biases can help you do that.

So, I’ve mentioned at least four dimensions of judgement there: responsibility, confirmation bias, constructions of reality, and availability. There’s a lot more I could say even about these, and there are 11 more dimensions in my analysis of each and every judgement. But I don’t want to prolong this blog unduly. That should be enough to give a taste of how objectivity training might work by making us more aware of the different dimensions of our judgements. The training itself would obviously involve more time devoted to each dimension (as well as the relationship between the dimensions), with a more thorough explanation of how each works, further examples, exercises applying the dimensions and discussion of how we can make balanced judgements about them. It’s a big job, but a very worthwhile job central to all of our lives.