Are There Secular Reasons? (II)
Eve has a follow-up to the post I linked yesterday. This is the part that gets closest to the sort of argument I had in mind:
Basically many of [my interlocutors] say, "You can use sectarian arguments, but only when there could maybe be secular reasons in there somewhere." But who decides which reasons are sufficiently secular–and why?
If I can dredge up one atheist who thinks we need to keep "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance because it reminds us to be humble, even though (let’s say; I’m making this up) 99% of the people who want the phrase in the Pledge are God-fearin’ believers… is this an acceptable public-square sectarian argument? How many atheists do I have to convince of any particular position (from "gay marriage is an oxymoron" to–what should be far more controversial–"human nature has no history") before it’s sufficiently secular? How many atheists before it’s Febreezed?
And which sects and anti-sects are sufficiently far apart? If a Cat’lick and a Prot agree on something, is that no longer sectarian? What about a Catholic, a Jew, and a Muslim? How close to "…walk into a bar" territory do we have to get before an argument is considered broadly-enough-accepted?
(Does it matter if the Catholic is Camille Paglia, the Jew is Naomi Wolf, and the Muslim is Irshad Manji? Because I bet I could get that lot to agree to some whacked-out things.)
If it’s, "I know it when I see it," well that’s fair enough, but it’s hard for me when I see something different. If you think "nature" or whatever is a Jesus word that contaminates your pristine politics, I really need you to argue for that (and try to convince me on my ground from your premises, the same way I’m doing from my side) and not just assert that I’m out of bounds for saying the taboo word.
I need you to tell me what makes your abstractions boringly obvious and mine scarily sectarian, and so far, no argument I’ve seen has convinced me that this can be settled a) without reference to metaphysical beliefs or b) faster than we’d settle things if you just let me argue politics in whatever way comes naturally.
This is an especially knotty problem for my opponents because my whole claim is that our culture conditions us to find some claims obvious and other claims risible, and those divisions don’t match up well with the truth.
To come at it from a slightly different angle, suppose you could, as Eve and I both think you can’t, give a non-arbitrary specification of which notions are and aren’t sufficiently detached from a “comprehensive” picture of the world to count as secular in the relevant sense. Any argument, then, that passes muster in the public square must be one that employs notions taken only from this class. But you still have to say more than this: for example, is it required for an argument to pass muster that it be a logically valid argument? (Probably.) A sound one? (No, because soundness requires the truth of the premise and it’s exactly our incapacity to agree on this latter thing that’s gotten us into this predicament.) Must it appear to be sound? This seems reasonable enough – but appear that way to whom? And under what circumstances? If I and my co-religionists get together in private and use our shared comprehensive doctrines to hammer out a political position that we all agree on, and then we emerge into the public square and offer a “secularized” argument for that position that’s only convincing to us, have we done enough? If we make up a majority of the population, we can then vote our position into law; does the mere attempt at appealing to “public” reason in support of our view entitle us to do this? Why not?
Note that my claim is emphatically not that politics should be unmoored from the art of persuasion: and in any society as ideologically diverse as our own, any argument that borrows on a lot of narrowly sectarian vocabulary (or on bald appeals to “special revelation”, as a commenter put it yesterday) isn’t likely to do a good job of creating a democratic consensus and will therefore need to be supplemented by other sorts of arguments for that reason. But then Eve’s point (and mine) is just that in such a society the goodness of a public argument is best measured by its persuasiveness, and that the kind of sterilization that the secularist demands is very often not the best way to achieve this: to return to a point that Eve makes earlier in that follow-up post and that I alluded to yesterday, our moral concepts, and so also our standards for determining whether moral arguments are convincing or not, are far too bound up with our dread comprehensive views of the world to make such an idealized picture a workable one.
Elsewhere: James on a similar dilemma for Damon Linker.
Filed under: morality, philosophy, politics, religion
The central problem with the Rawlsian position (and Linker’s as well, to the extent that he’s merely relying on Rawls) is in its attempt to pin down what sort of consensus is morally necessary for a pluralist democratic order. It can’t be that *everyone* must agree (since there will always be people who disagree with the most basic of democratic premises) and yet it must be something more than just a commitment not to shoot one another – otherwise, Rawls suggests, we won’t feel morally obligated and the whole shebang (to use a technical term) rests on “happenstance and a balance of forces” (or somesuch). But it’s never particularly well defined exactly, then, what sorts of things we’re supposed to agree upon. Instead, he relies on a kind of exploded original position that says something to the effect that what counts as a good reason is whatever the people who are concerned to exercise their political authority in consonance with democratic commitments (i.e. those who are “politically reasonable”) would themselves accept. But when we’re asking about what *should* count as politically reasonable reasons – and by extension what counts as a politically reasonable conception of democratic political life – then the category of reasonableness itself can’t do the work its partisans want it to do. In short, Rawls recognized that consensus wouldn’t fly in our wildly pluralist society and tried to figure out a way to narrow the circle so that consensus could work. The real culprit here is the idea that a democratic polity must be or aspire to be consensual as a matter of its political legitimacy. If you buy consensus, I think the “public reason” argument necessarily comes along with it.
My fear is that you’re whistling past a graveyard here; while I’m convinced religion is here to stay, I’m equally convinced religious devotion that inspires morality is a vanishing quantity, and someday even those who don’t want to think that you can be good without god will be desperate to find arguments that prove just that.
Bryan: I certainly think you’re on to something, but I think the problem can arise even if the demand for consensus is left aside. For we could grant that outright consensus is a pipe dream, but still insist that even a viable majority (or plurality, or whatever) position must be one that’s undergirded by a sufficiently Febreezed form of argument, no?
Freddie: Obviously I see your point, but it’s not just about religious devotion – it’s also the way that near-religious or in any case “comprehensive” worldviews underwrite our conceptions of e.g. human nature and the human good in ways that make their “secular” cores difficult if not impossible to disentangle.
The real culprit here is the idea that a democratic polity must be or aspire to be consensual as a matter of its political legitimacy
This.
In science, legitimacy of the hypothesis is derived from the reliablity of empirical evidence to support it. A consensus on a hypothesis is irreleveant. Only the experiment can justify this legitimacy.
In fact, some of the most ground-breaking theories in science began as revolutions against consensus. Why can’t this hold for politics? (I don’t know, thats why I’m asking!)
In science, legitimacy of the hypothesis is derived from the reliablity of empirical evidence to support it. A consensus on a hypothesis is irreleveant. Only the experiment can justify this legitimacy.
That’s the discipline. Is that how it actually works? Not on your life. When do people know they’ve reached scientific truth? When enough people in the appropriate field agree that they have. That might not fit the dogma, but that’s how it actually works. Plenty of people claim to have evidentiary proof of their hypothesis, but it doesn’t matter until their peers agree, until they reach social consensus. That’s why there’s a peer review system, that’s how Nobel prizes are given out, that’s how New York Times science articles get written, that’s how textbooks are changed– through the agreement of a scientific community. That’s how practical science actually works.
It would seem to me that precisely the call of this argument (any most like it) rejects religious believers unfairly. Under Rawls the only “totalizing theory” that is unacceptable seems (in practice) to be religious ones. Now feminism is a “totalizing theory”, Libertarianism is a “totalizing theory”, Socialism is a “totalizing theory” & Indeed, Rawlianism is itself a “totalizing theory.”
The fact of the matter is that from the very beginning of this Republic and indeed the enlightenment itself, religious believers have been framing their arguments in secular terms. Rarely does one find the religious proffering scriptural arguments outside their own enclaves. Rather – it is the persistent tactic of the amoral secularist to label any argument that disagrees with their proffered policy position as (somehow) “religious”.
Empirical arguments and social policy ranging from the beginning of human life, to the dangers of early sexual activity, to the primacy of the two parent natural married family all have strongly secular arguments vastly in their favor. The list of coarse goes on and on.
One should read the Regensburg lectures by Pope Benedict and understand that it is our Academic class that has abandon reason in favor of post – modern emotivism & relativism. It is the strident secularist who base their arguments with presuppositions of metaphysical weight, like “liberty interests”, “radical autonomy” “gender equality” and the like. All backed up not by empirical claims based around solid public policy, but rather utopian fabrications of a better tomorrow.
Plenty of people claim to have evidentiary proof of their hypothesis, but it doesn’t matter until their peers agree, until they reach social consensus.
This is a good point, though the peer-review process can be hit-or-miss on the consesus issue.
Shouldn’t it follow that a political position requiring persuasion for social consensus have a wealth of empirical evidence behind it? How does any religion fit that description? Additionally, a lack of religious devotion and pursuant amoralization seems to bankrupt religion in the context of secular political discourse.
Shouldn’t it follow that a political position requiring persuasion for social consensus have a wealth of empirical evidence behind it?
True. And that, I think, is where people who have more faith in our ability to understand an objective reality than I do have a window of opportunity, so to speak. The fact that we decide what is truth, most of the time, based on social consensus still means that enough people have to see things the same way, and that gives us hope. It’s just never going to be perfectly dispositive; we could all be under the same delusion, the old Matrix though experiment, etc. But if people are willing to live with “close enoughs” rather than “we know it’s trues”, then I think you’ve made an important point.
Sorry to get so tangential.
As someone pointed out somewhere, the left lost the notion of truth as an absolute, and so all they have left to rely on is power. I think that this exclusion of “religious speech” is, at bottom, a power play: “People should listen to us, but not to you.”
Now, for us, there is still an element of truth. If I’m talking to an atheist, “God said” is not likely to be persuasive. But what it comes down to, in my opinion, is that we should know who we’re talking to, and talk to them in the manner that will most communicate to them.
And to those who say that we can’t talk that way, we should say something along the lines of, “Why not? Who gave you authority to decide how we should talk?” We should not cede one inch to those who would limit the scope of our public discourse to only non-religious matters, because if we do, we will find that the rest of what we have to say will be classified as “religious in nature”.
Really? Obviously the social epistemology of science is a tricky business, but there are bound to be tons of cases of scientists who were convinced – rightly or wrongly – that they’d found the truth long before a significant number of their peers came around to recognizing it. It’s true, of course, that science reporting and textbook changes and the bestowals of awards require certain levels of consensus, but such things are merely symptoms of scientific progress; they’re not criterial for it.
I just wrote a multi-paragraph response that was eaten by not writing the spam word and I don’t have it in me right now to write it again.
You can’t retrieve it via the “Back” button, Freddie?
“Under Rawls the only “totalizing theory” that is unacceptable seems (in practice) to be religious ones.”
This is simply, plainly false. So is this:
“the left lost the notion of truth as an absolute, and so all they have left to rely on is power.” (I dare you to read through, e.g.,a random sample of Freddie’s blog posts and tell me that this has even a vague semblance of truth there.)
Comments like those are symptomatic of what happens when you don’t actually read what the other side has to say, but only read your side’s propaganda about what the other side has to say.
Yes, that is true. Then again this is also a near-universal human affliction, and one that is sadly endemic to all sides in most of our debates
I tried. Here we go:
there are bound to be tons of cases of scientists who were convinced – rightly or wrongly – that they’d found the truth long before a significant number of their peers came around to recognizing it
OK, so a scientist is convinced he’s found the truth. Does anyone care, until his peers agree with him? Usually not. How would we know he actually had the truth when he had it? Well, we know when enough people agree with him. There’s plenty of people who are cranks who believe they’ve found scientific truth, and plenty of people who turn out to be geniuses who believe they’ve found truth. The only way we separate one from the other is when enough scientists decide one way or another.
Now, the wrong way to think about this is to think that the social consensus “makes” it true. The right way to think about it is that the social consensus is the best we have. I have conversations with people who are more inclined to believe in objective truth than I am who assert a kind of constantly-removed truth, where we can’t ever know what’s truth aside from what everybody agrees on, but the truth is nonetheless out there somewhere. If you can’t access it, and you can’t know that it’s even “really there” outside of the social construction of the thing, does it really exist?
It depends who the “we” is referring to, Freddie. If you’re talking about the scientifically inexpert layman, then sure: it’s scientific consensus more than anything else that drives the view of what is and isn’t so. But for experts that needn’t be the case: for one thing, expert opinion can be equally divided between people who are convinced that each of their mutually exclusive positions are the correct ones (this happens quite a lot in philosophy, but also in the “real” sciences); for another, a discovery might be shared with only a few people and might still convince them even though the rest of the field hasn’t yet had the chance to respond; and so on. (Indeed, if you believe Kuhn then the history of science just is the history of people working out views that violate the consensus, convinced all along that they’re right even though the rest of the field doesn’t recognize it.) Broader opinion is surely relevant to evaluating whether a claim is true or false, but for someone appropriately attuned to the intricacies of the discipline it’s by no means necessary.
Does this relate to the original question? Is it that we have different groups that would like to converse in mutually exclusive ideas of truth? How do we get beyond this without allowing for difference? Why shouldn’t we let religion into public debate in Iowa and expect it’s absence on the coasts? There’s a limit to how much can be efficiently communicated to fundamentally different communities. How are Freudians going to argue with neural psych folk? Do they have to? What would be the point?
So if the right people think something is true, then, it’s true?
Pretty much. Music critics may find a particular piece unanimously great, while those that haven’t the experience may find it rubbish. There are truths that are not subject to objectivity. This, of course, is not going to work with two plus two equals five but life involves more than math and observable phenomena.
“Yes, that is true. Then again this is also a near-universal human affliction, and one that is sadly endemic to all sides in most of our debates.” I agree, sadly. That’s why there’s such value in the handful of outlets, like C11 or the Atlantic blogs, where it’s possible at least sometimes to get past that.
The quality of a public argument is BEST measured by persuasiveness, but certainly not ONLY measured that way. Otherwise disestablishmentarianism only lasts until 51% decide they want their religion to be the state’s. There’s a blurry line between rational, secular arguments and conflict over the “black box” of religious or other subjective starting points, but in practice it’s not often difficult and almost never unworkable. It has, after all, lasted a couple centuries.
On another forum I’m arguing against a guy with a similar position. He, too, rejects boundaries between the public sphere and private belief. He does it from a position that – for better or worse – is becoming more common in the US: that all belief should be subject to “rational” investigation and Occam’s razor, and that this ultimately leads to religion being inferior to nonbelief. He also thinks that religion is responsible for millions of deaths and falsification of research results(?!), which I suspect will ultimately lead him to some drastic conclusions about how the state should look. The American Revolution managed to avoid the insane anti-clericalism of the French Revolution but without eternal vigilance it could yet happen.
That’s certainly not what I was saying; indeed, my point above was very much the opposite: namely that neither consensus nor near-consensus is a genuine requirement for someone sufficiently schooled in the relevant issues to accept something as true. As for what makes something true, well, the most natural candidate for that is simply its being true. But I agree that we’ve rather lost sight of things at this point. Pan Cascadian asks a bunch of crucial questions:
I once wrote a very long and rambling post on this question, and concluded that something like subsidiarity/federalism/decentralism/regionalism was the only appropriate response. Like I said, long and rambling … be warned.
Thanks for the link. I don’t think I disagree with anything in that post. I sure would like to see more Republicans take these kinds of thoughts seriously. It seems to me a path out of the wilderness.
As for what makes something true, well, the most natural candidate for that is simply its being true.
It’s turtles all the way down….
So I went ahead and read John Schwenkler “very long and rambling post on this question” were he “concluded that something like subsidiarity/federalism/decentralism/regionalism was the only appropriate response.”
Low and behold this was the Founding Fathers answer to these perplexing and vexing problems also!!!
There has turned out to be one very ingrained and persistent problem with such an approach.
Our adversaries don’t subscribe to notions of subsidiarity/ federalism/ decentralism/regionalism.
On the contrary the Left is centralist/authoritative/ hierarchical/totalitarian.
So there’s one little bump.
And the Right, by contrast, is … ?
Fitz: You’re of course correct. However, recall that the Dems started out with Jefferson and anti-federalism, what is often referred to as “federalism” these days. Political beliefs between the parties has been fluid for all of our history, look at “compassionate (big spending) conservatism”.
I think if Republicans want to form new alliances and free themselves from what seems to be a Southern theocratic spiral, appealing to a return to regional State’s Rights, might just be the trick. There’s no problem with convincing many Californians that they should be able to have their own emission standards, we can develop this and perhaps even come up with a fifty state strategy of our own.
John & Pan
I get the point that the Right are not always perfect Federalists either. (The medical marijuana case for instance)
My only real point is that both parties and most people need a consensus on the rules of the game before it’s played. I am a member of the federalist Society and I often call them the “Marcus of Queensbury Fools”
This is because when one side plays by the rules and the other doesn’t, that other side keeps its honor but gets mauled in the process. Originalism, textualism, federalism, has been like bringing a knife to a gun fight.
This can be demonstrated most aptly in the “same-sex marriage” debate. National candidates have avoided the real substantive debate by talking about each State deciding on its own. (even McCain)
Right now it looks like a State to State fight. Well just a soon as they get a little democratic legitimacy and the right SCOTUS make-up, all this will be swept aside and the Supremes will foist it on the entire country with Congress & the President running interference so as to lessen political fallout.
[here is a recent article on point]
http://www.moralaccountability.com/obama-on-same-sex-marriage/cloaking-extremism-obama-and-same-sex-marriage/#more-214
So discussions about which system is theoretically best seem moot. Our adversaries (the culture left in particular) have shown the willingness in both theory & practice (Roe, Lawrence, Romer) to use whatever rhetorical tactic is politically useful until they finally rile by judicial dictate.
Now- I’m not just beating the drum of my favorite cause here (marriage) – This is building up to be the final arbiter of who really rules in this country. The elites or the people. Should we lose, it will be clear that all our theorizing is simply empty and futile.
Fitz’s comment is another great example of what happens when you only read your own side’s propaganda, and don’t seriously engage the other side.
“There’s no problem with convincing many Californians that they should be able to have their own emission standards…” I suspect lots of states would love greater freedom to experiment with different sorts of drug decriminalization schemes as well.
Is it really not the case that we don’t already have a lot of federalism already? So many of our laws, affecting many very basic aspects of our lives, vary significantly from state to state and even municipality to municipality. We have high-tax, high-service localities, and low-tax, low-service localities; we have variation in minimum wages, in labor laws, in laws concerning smoking, gambling, and prostitution; in the amount and sort of restrictions that can be placed on what your neighbors can do with their properties; and of course, even after NCLB, tremendous variation as to the funding and curriculum of our schools.
Other than the incredibly thorny issues of gay rights and abortion, what other points of serious political conflict are there that a greater degree of subsidiarity would offer any sort of help with?
Medical marijuana is a good example. Scalia sided with the majority. The greatest expansion of the commerce clause to date. There are many scum suckers on both sides that hold to their arguments as long as it provides their desired outcomes. If we can’t find politicians that will actually tow the line regardless of the outcome, we will have to fall back on the people and a state by state referendum. I think ultimately this is what will have to happen.
“Other than the incredibly thorny issues of gay rights and abortion, what other points of serious political conflict are there that a greater degree of subsidiarity would offer any sort of help with?”
Speed limits, environmental regulation, drinking age, control over medical procedures, immigration, constitutional legitimacy and annulment, just to name a few. Anything that the Feds do now that transgresses the tenth amendment, books and books of regulations.
But, Pan, some of those things are just _terrible_ candidates for subsidiarity. Immigration is the most obvious one: unless we want to have border guards and customs officials at state (or even locality?) boundaries, immigration is just something that pretty much _has_ to addressed at a national, not local, level.
Some of the others, including a lot of environmental regulation, medical policy, and speed limits, already do have significant state (and even some local) variation, so I’m not sure why they are on your list.
I must confess to not knowing quite what you have in mind in terms of “constitutional legitimacy and annulment” — are you talking about the right of secession here? If so… really??
Anyhow, the question wasn’t, “What are the things that we would throw open to more local control in a subsidiarist’s dream world?” The question, rather, was “What currently-intractable political disputes could be usefully dissolved by going subsidiarist on them?”
So I’m going to try to stay out of the particularities of this discussion, but in case you’re interested, here’s my column on the case for federalism. Oh, and I’ve written about secession, too, but in a somewhat different context.
Damn, lost a post.
“But, Pan, some of those things are just _terrible_ candidates for subsidiarity. Immigration is the most obvious one: unless we want to have border guards and customs officials at state (or even locality?) boundaries, immigration is just something that pretty much _has_ to addressed at a national, not local, level. ”
I’d love to have state walls. Tom McCall once joked that he wanted to build a ply-wood curtain around the State of Oregon but was afraid it would become a tourist attraction. The NW has been isolationist since it’s inception. Our earliest history was as Oregon Country, a separate institution envisioned by Jefferson as a balance to East Coast power. Of course, before the 14th citizenship was a State right as well as a National right.
I put speed limits in there because I’m still pissed at Reagan for forcing 55 on everyone or else lose Federal highway funding. Where does that come from? The speed limits of course have changed but the precedent remains.
Of course, I think that secession should be a right, though more important is the division of powers so that the State can block overstep from the Supremes. Look at the Alien and Sedition act, the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions and the similarity to the patriot act. The country was founded on checks and balances that included separation of powers as well as division of powers. Today we barely maintain the separation of powers and the Feds have become unchecked.
James Williams (writes)
“Fitz’s comment is another great example of what happens when you only read your own side’s propaganda, and don’t seriously engage the other side.”
I resent that. I read extensively on the other side. So extensively in fact that I know what most readily concede. The cultural left has no propensity for subsidiary. They are simply waiting for the right moment to bring the right case for same-sex “marriage’.
Even when California votes twice in favor of marriage the attorney general takes the unprecedented step of filing a brief against the clearly expressed will of the people.
The point is a simple one. Regardless of what level of federalism now exists- it exists solely because the Left doesn’t mind it. When the time comes that prostitution, or assisted suicide, or same-sex marriage is desired by the left on a national level…they will show zero compunction in imposing it through the courts.
Simple & irrefutable.
Fitz: just a heads up. On immigration, constitutionality, even economics I’m pretty much a paleocon. On cultural matters, I’m about as left as you’ll find. I have absolutely no interest in telling Kansas or anywhere else what to do. Alabama could elect Bob Jones for all I care.
“So extensively in fact that I know what most readily concede. The cultural left has no propensity for subsidiary.”
What a stupid claim, and based on next to no real evidence. Look, there are a great many issues that folks on the left are by and large in favor of allowing states and localities to go their own ways on. I just mentioned drug laws, to take a very obvious example, and I am certain that assisted suicide and prostitution would be in the same category. Only the daft and propaganda-addled would take it that our generally not wanting gay rights — which we think of as a basic civil rights issue — to be among the issues that we’re looking to live and let live on, is somehow evidence that we are _generally_ opposed to federalism. The whole idea of the “laboratory of the states” is one that finds a very wide appreciation and endorsement on the left.
Really, Fitz, you just have _no_ idea what you’re talking about here. Roll on back to RedState already, ok?