Science loses to law – Why rhetoric is often more important than facts

by Brian Hillegas

Is Reasoning Built for Winning Arguments, Rather Than Finding Truth?
[Via The Intersection]

How is this for timing? Just as my Mother Jones piece on motivated reasoning came out, the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences devoted an entire issue to the case for an “argumentative theory” of reason, advanced by Hugo Mercier of the University of Pennsylvania and Dan Sperber of the Jean Nicod Institute in Paris. You can’t get the article over there without a subscription, but it’s also available at SSRN, and here is the abstract:

Reasoning is generally seen as a means to improve knowledge and make better decisions. However, much evidence shows that reasoning often leads to epistemic distortions and poor decisions. This suggests that the function of reasoning should be rethought. Our hypothesis is that the function of reasoning is argumentative. It is to devise and evaluate arguments intended to persuade. Reasoning so conceived is adaptive given the exceptional dependence of humans on communication and their vulnerability to misinformation. A wide range of evidence in the psychology of reasoning and decision making can be reinterpreted and better explained in the light of this hypothesis. Poor performance in standard reasoning tasks is explained by the lack of argumentative context. When the same problems are placed in a proper argumentative setting, people turn out to be skilled arguers. Skilled arguers, however, are not after the truth but after arguments supporting their views. This explains the notorious confirmation bias. This bias is apparent not only when people are actually arguing, but also when they are reasoning proactively from the perspective of having to defend their opinions. Reasoning so motivated can distort evaluations and attitudes and allow erroneous beliefs to persist. Proactively used reasoning also favors decisions that are easy to justify but not necessarily better. In all these instances traditionally described as failures or flaws, reasoning does exactly what can be expected of an argumentative device: Look for arguments that support a given conclusion, and, ceteris paribus, favor conclusions for which arguments can be found.

Behavioral and Brain Sciences contains not only the paper by Mercier and Sperber, but also a flurry of expert responses and then a response from the authors. SSRN does too, and there is a site devoted to this idea as well.

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Anyone who has seen a debate between a scientist and a creationist knows of this dynamic. Most creationist’s arguments take the form of legal rhetorical debates while scientists argue from a very different perspective. They usually present information and try to enhance the knowledge of the those around so they can make their own decision. Creationists argue to support their views using the same sorts of techniques used to validate a guilty verdict. The goal is not to impart information but to drive a decision using the best argumentative tools.

Science does not work that way. At least it tries not to. Thus is often loses in these reasoning sessions.

I would argue that the idea of reasoning used in this report is a very different one than a scientist would use when saying reasoning. Not that I disagree with its point and the idea that these sorts of reasoning arguments in a social setting could be very important for human survival.

But science – our tool for understanding the world around us – has spent the last 400 years moving away from these sorts of arguments and approach to reasoning. Science is not decided by who has the best argumentative personality or knows the best tricks of rhetoric. It is decided by facts that represent the natural world, not just our logical arguments.

Some of the most dramatic debates in science history actually rely on these sorts of reasoning arguments. The debate between Huxley and Wilberforce is one of them. Or Darrow and Bryan.

But these great debates are only remembered because the science was right, not that the argument was.

A large part of the modern scientific enterprise is to reduce this sort of reasoning to a minimum. Not that it is gone in the least. Scientists often use every single aspect of reasoning when discussing their work. But there have to be facts and a real connection to reality.

No matter how forcefully Pons and Fleischmann ‘reasoned’ about cold fusion, it did not make it real. That is why virtually every scientist will lose in a reasoned debate with a lawyer on a topic. We recognize that no matter how strong our arguments are, nor as data-filled, they will always be provisional at same level. That weakens them in a debate with someone having a hardened argument

There will always be a segment of grey, no matter how well defined the rest is. Reasoning from that viewpoint will almost always lose in a debate with someone who can argue from only a single shade.

When framed as a black and white debate, having shades of gray make you look weak along with your argument.

To win such a reasoning argument, a researcher often has to take a rhetorical position that is somewhat anathema to their viewpoint.

They have to remove the shades of grey that all researchers know exist. They must argue from a black and white view. But this often alienates other researchers while not really providing a satisfying argument.

I think this is why so many scientists are poor communicators – not when it comes to talking about the science but when it comes to arguing about decisions.

Science takes data and creates information. Transformation of information by the sorts of reasoning mentioned above results in knowledge. Knowledge allows us to make decisions. Wisdom is about making the right decision. Science can helps us with knowledge by providing information but it cannot always prevail in a purely rhetorical setting. It is good at creating information but not well prepared for the transformation of information into the knowledge needed to make a decision.

Perhaps what researchers need is not better communication skills but better training in how to present their scientific arguments in this sort of arena of reasoning – helping transfer the information they create into the knowledge needed to make the decisions in society.

I think this is where Mooney and Nisbet’s ideas of framing come from. Not to deny the science or to ignore the facts. But to find a way to permit scientific arguments to get a fair hearing in these sorts of argumentative settings that determine just what decisions get made.

We are working on getting researchers to be better presenters and speakers of their science. We need to actually be training them how to enter these reasoning arguments in a way that can benefit us all. Because their attempts at the moment are ham-handed and not helping move us forward.

They need to be given a rhetorical arsenal that allows them to enter these reasoning sessions that will be crticial for our survival.

Understanding blame in lost climate debates

by Syntopia

Climate Policy Failure, and Laying Blame
[Via The Intersection]

My latest DeSmogBlog item continues the discussion of the whole Romm-Nisbet brouhaha, which is of course mostly about how to engage in accurate finger-pointing in the wake of what all perceive as a failure of climate policy.

Romm has now given some actual rough percents for how he sees the blame-o-meter, and I comment on those–I’m guessing I’m somewhere between Romm and Nisbet, probably closer to Romm:

I would never downplay (as Nisbet did) all the attacks on science that have occurred. But I also would not exonerate environmental organizations. God knows they have their problems, and personally, I’ve felt that the inward firing squad is the biggest—and the lack of unity and common cause.

Nor would I completely exonerate scientists—and they’re not letting themselves off the hook either. They know they need to communicate better. The introspection and reflection going on in that world at the moment is a really impressive thing to see.

But Romm is right that science denial and the media (combined) have been the biggest problem. I don’t know about 90 percent, but surely in the 60-90 percent range.

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The article is one of the reasons I often agree with Mooney more than Nesbit in the area of science communication. Nisbets frames sometimes ignore large swaths of factual information. This may be more useful in changing some minds but is very repugnant to those who follow a reality-based world view.

Mooney, on the other hand, frames this debate in a way that I find much more understandable and useful – who has power  and what they did with it.

How do you calculate these percents, anyway? To me, the main factors in attributing “blame” (and I don’t think this is especially novel) are power and responsibility.

Thus, those who deny or attack climate science have a lot of power (through political influence, largesse, etc), and have done the wrong thing (responsibility) by undermining knowledge, disseminating misinformation, etc.

The media, meanwhile, also has vast power, and have done the wrong thing by not covering adequately the story of the century, and thus not living up to their societal responsibility.

Hence both deserve a lot of blame.

And of course here’s why scientists and environmentalists (and the Obama administration) are different: They didn’t misinform, and they wanted to do the right thing. Did they go about it the right way? Surely not, at least in many respects. And they do have power (especially Obama), so they are hardly blameless. But are they as blameworthy as those who have misled us, or those who ignored the problem? You see my point.

This may also explain why there was such a strong reaction to Nisbet’s report. While he might be willing to admit that much blame should  fall on the denial machine, the media, etc., his report was framed in such a way that it appeared to neglect them, while casting aspersions elsewhere. Thus, it seemed to shunt this power/responsibility dimension of laying blame.

By not showing outrage, it sparked outrage.

Nisbet put the blame for failure not only on those with the least amount of power – such as scientists –  but those who were trying to be the most responsible. Ignoring the powerful who irresponsibly misled the public is not a fair way to discuss balance.

Postulating that the researcher’s positions somehow made the powerful act irresponsibly does not help find a solution without recognizing that the powerful had in fact acted irresponsible. Blame should then fall on both parties, not mostly on the least powerful group trying to use facts to responsibly find useful public policy.

That was my main disagreement with Nisbet and something I wish had been discussed to a greater extent. It would have made his report much more important to all of us.

Reading allows us to belong to fictitious groups

How Reading Expands the Sense of Self
[Via Big Think]

New psychological research out of the University of Buffalo demonstrates how, “When we read, we psychologically become part of the community described in the narrative—be they wizards or vampires. That mechanism satisfies the deeply human, evolutionarily crucial, need for belonging.”

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This fits with my previous post – about how expanded our caring circles are compared with other mammals. We can even care about characters that do not exist. We can belong in a make believe world.

In fact, many of these works allow us to explore morality in a context that is relatively safe. It may well be that the printed word has done more to expand our sense of who belongs and who does not than any other creation of the human race.

Morality is an instinct and a learned behavior

by Mr. Kris

Where morality lives – The Boston Globe
[Via the Boston Globe]

What is morality? For millennia, the problem has bedeviled philosophers, who have debated whether it’s divinely inspired, instinctual, or an abstract set of rules that we should figure out rationally. Patricia Churchland, a philosopher at the University of California San Diego, thinks it’s time for a different kind of answer: Understanding morality, she argues, means understanding its roots in the brain.

Churchland, a former MacArthur “genius” fellow, has built a career trying to knit together neuroscience and philosophy, two fields that usually prefer competition to cooperation. In her new book, “Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality,” Churchland aims to combine the explanatory power of science with the caution and clarity of philosophy. She starts by explaining what’s most clearly known about how morality works in the brain. We know, she argues, that human moral behavior is rooted in the brain’s “circuitry for caring”—ancient biological circuitry that we share with other mammals. (When wolves care about their offspring, what happens in their brains and bodies is remarkably similar to what happens in ours.) Most mammals care only about themselves and their children. In human beings, though, the circle of caring extends widely, even to strangers.

These broad circles of caring are the foundations, Churchland says, for morality. They create the tensions that are the essence of moral life. Tension is inevitable, because caring broadly raises challenging, practical problems: All those competing moral obligations need to be balanced out. Churchland argues that we solve those problems the same way we solve other practical problems: sometimes instinctually, but also by drawing on our learning, reasoning, and culture. In the end, her picture of morality recalls Hume’s, or even Aristotle’s: Aristotle, she writes, knew that morality had its roots in human nature, but he also recognized moral problems as “difficult, practical problems emerging from living a social life.” In this conception, morality is rooted in our instincts, but it isn’t entirely instinctual.

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The ability to expand our caring – our morality – to a wide range of other people and even other forms of life strikes me as one of the strong abilities that has produced our success as a species. We can create and maintain complex social networks that are unheard of with any other  animal. This permits a relatively unspecialized animal such as humans to excel in almost any area.

Because once someone figures out how to do anything, these social networks transmit that information much more rapidly than simple Darwinian evolution could permit. In many ways human society, with its enhanced morals, evolves using Lamarkian means, not Darwinian. In many ways morality is passed down based on what was successfully learned during a lifetime.

It could be argued that most of the sweep of human society the last epoch have been an ever increasing circle of who is cared about. That the increasing circles of caring have helped enhance our natural abilities.

The problems we face today is that this success also holds the possibility of harming future success. We face some tremendous problems if we hope to be as successful the next thousand years as we have the previous.

I would expect that our increasing circles of caring, and the enhanced morality that embraces, will help us find a solution.

Great news to hear about Giffords

Giffords to attend shuttle launch
[Via BBC News | Science/Nature | World Edition]

US congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, shot in the head in January, is declared fit enough to attend her husband’s space shuttle launch on Friday.

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She gets to see her husband takeoff on one of the last Shuttle missions. I just hope she is up to all the publicity this will entail.

Her progress is remarkable but the sort of injury she has means a very long road back. I’m encouraged by her husband’s comment that her personality is 1005 there as that is one of the more likely consequences of this type of injury.