Does Anyone Still Care About Objective Truth?

In today’s world it seems like the driving force in any conversation, discussion, not to mention argument is to WIN, not to search for and perhaps even find the TRUTH. 

Facts are out the window.  It is all about NARRATIVE.  That is, what is the story one wants to tell that will serve the teller’s purposes – that purpose most often being to win.  The end seems to always justify the means.  Lies are not prohibited; challenging lies is an impermissible attack. The teller’s story must be believed so the teller can win; questions are not for discussion but rather seen as attacks.

Mature discussions used to also include some element of humility which resulted in actually listening to the assertions of the other side and accepting questions about one’s own beliefs and assertions with a humble dignity and acknowledgement that they might be wrong or open to revision.  Both sides were not only willing to listen to verified facts but were also unwilling to assert as true or factual opinions or allegations that were not verified or that came only from “unidentified sources.”

Not so today.  Humility gets in the way of winning.  It is inconsistent with the assertion that one is absolutely right, no matter what.  No matter what the facts might be or what a full evidentiary examination might prove.  Egos seem unable to take any sort of challenge.  It is all about winning and in order to “win” too many people think that they must be right no matter what and any contrary fact or point of logic must be repelled and denied.

This is at least in part why people believe that they are justified in denying the First Amendment rights of others.  This is at least in part why people assert that information published by news outlets that do not concur with their Left or Right leanings are simply not worth reading, even if they provide verifiable facts on a topic.  This is why when one narrative is repeated by other outlets that have the same leanings that those who accept that narrative believe that it has been verified and not just repeated. 

This is how false allegations take wing.  Opinions become fact.  An unverified statement by an unidentified source becomes truth.  In reality, neither is so, and yet we let such narratives ruin the lives of so many people:  think about the Kavanaugh hearings for example; think about a justified – and there are some – police shooting where the officer is crucified rather than appreciated for doing his or her job; think about FISA warrants to spy on American citizens and on a Presidential candidate that were granted on what have now been proven to be false statements.  These are just a few of the more egregious false narratives that far too many are willing to accept simply because they support the triumph of their own narrative. 

It is all about winning.  But once upon a time it was more about finding an objective truth.

There was an interesting commentary in the Wall Street Journal on Aug. 30 by Tony Woodlief titled “Free Speech Absolutism Killed Free Speech.”  In it he argues that too much free speech has led to the cancel culture.  Essentially his position is that when we have open speech and the full exchange of ideas (which were originally believed by Mill and others to be the way to ferret out the objective TRUTH), that no idea is refutable, and ultimately leads to the belief that no truth exists. 

“When no dogma can finally be put to rest, it becomes easier—almost obligatory—to do whatever we like. Ideas are evaluated, not based on their reasonableness or coherence, but by how much they tickle the ears of the in-crowd. Harder truths become offensive. The only intolerable citizen, in such a regime, is the one whose belief in truth compels him to attack beliefs he believes to be false even if his attacks disturb the equanimity of the establishment. His criticism becomes too hurtful—even a form of “violence.” For the safety of the community, he must be cast out.”

This well describes a reason for such things as free speech being driven from campuses, threats and attacks directed towards those who do not support the favored position, acceptance of unverified facts or opinions and “news,” etc. 

But this reasoning is flawed.  It is not free speech itself that leads to this place of dogma over truth.  Rather it is the current inability or unwillingness of people to use their critical thinking skills – to use reason as well as emotion in assessing the speech that they hear.  As Mr. Woodlief writes, “Mill believed heretics should be heard, not put in charge of classrooms and permitted to create despotic speech codes. Everybody should be allowed to express his views, but that doesn’t require us to empower and elevate people who would afford themselves the right to speak and take it from everybody else.”

When did we decide that we are no longer allowed to question speech put forth if it might be in the least bit upsetting to the mob of public opinion?  I think there are two areas that are in large part responsible for this:  A loss of shared values and a loss of an educational system that teaches us to think.

Both require not just listening, but listening and then holding the ideas and ideologies presented accountable.

As Mr. Woodlief states, “the classroom is not a fiefdom and students are not a teacher’s ideological playthings.”  It is the responsibility of educators to not present one viewpoint alone, but to present several and then help the students to conduct their own inquiry and evaluation into those viewpoints – questioning the adequacy of sources, the completeness and objectivity with which facts are presented, etc.  It is the job of educators to teach students how to assess a variety of informations and then make up their own minds.

Yet too often educators try to instill their beliefs into their students by presenting only their ideology.  Academics and those who hold themselves out to be scholars have an ethical responsibility to promote free and open inquiry as well as practice intellectual honesty themselves.

Combined with the loss of critical thinking in the classroom has come a change in what Americans value.  We have become a “feel good” society.  Everyone must get a trophy; no one should be made to feel uncomfortable -ever; if it makes you feel good, do it; etc.  Questioning someone’s point is seen as an attack, not on the point being argued, but on the person.  We have lost the ability to distinguish that.  We have silenced our reason for our emotions. 

When everyone is right, when everyone expects the trophy, we essentially silence both our humility and our critical thinking ability.  It is not free speech that is the problem, but our inability to listen to that free speech without feeling threatened and without the ability to assess the many ideas we find in the marketplace and hold them accountable.

We have lost the belief in an objective truth; it has been replaced with a belief in individual narrative truth.  When that is the prevailing belief, there will be no assessments of ideologies as part of the search for that objective truth.  Instead, truth will become the fickle assertion of the mob majority and opposing ideas will be silenced, not because the ideas in vogue are not refutable, but because we are afraid to refute them.

Only when, and not until, we relearn the humility of putting a shared search for objective truth above a personal desire to win, only then will we find the civility and tolerance that once existed in this country and be able to use it to overcome the hate and blindness to reason that is destroying us.

Critical Thinking - A Lost Art

There are plenty of topics for a blog in today’s news:  the bias of the top people in Mueller’s investigation; their special treatment of Hillary and their being instrumental in the initial allegations of Trump’s collusion with Russia; the use of the FBI by a sitting administration to conduct opposition research against political opponents;  whether the Mueller investigation has overreached; whether it has any legitimacy at all given the revelations of the past few days; Time’s choice of the hysteria-driven and victim-creating #MeToo as its person of the year;  recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel; the hypocrisy of the Democrats outcry against Trump moving the embassy to Jerusalem when they supported it in the past; Conyer’s retirement and who will take his place; what SCOTUS will decide about whether a cake artist can be compelled to create a cake that violates his religious beliefs and whether his refusal to do so is unlawful discrimination against members of the LGBT community; the Tax bill; immigration; the actions of the deep state; and on and on and on.

But, today, this being my 100^th blog posting, I will talk about something else.  Something more important than even the most hysterical hysteria of the day.  Something the lack of which underlies much of the hysteria and news-as-entertainment we see today.   Today I will talk about thinking:   deep thinking, CRITICAL THINKING.  This is something that seems to have been lost in our country, and without it I don’t see how we can ever stop the daily hysteria and the havoc it causes to our country and our lives.

Critical thinking is simply the ability to objectively analyze facts or evidence in order to reach a conclusion or form a judgment.  The key here is the word “objective” meaning unbiased, unprejudiced, impartial, detached, dispassionate, and fair.  Critical thinking is performed by the one reaching the judgment or conclusion.  It requires clear and rational thinking.  And, it is sadly lacking today.

Critical thinking means that one questions everything, even their own beliefs.  One does not accept something just because someone else said it was true, even if that is a someone whom one respects or with whom one always agrees.   And, it means that one is able to distinguish between people themselves and the positions that they hold.   (That is, one may find an individual repulsive, but that does not mean that the individual’s agenda is also repulsive). 

In the last few days I have heard from individuals who support Democrat policies that anyone who does not support those polices is not only wrong, but an idiot as well.  I have heard parents ask how to tell their children that their teacher is “wrong” when the teacher has expressed or explained a viewpoint that runs counter to the viewpoint of the parents.  I have heard people say they will not even consider reading new or opinion pieces from sources labeled as holding political views to the right or left of their own.  I have heard people explain that it is too time consuming to read even a full synopsis of an issue or controversy, so they simply read the highlights as selected by their favorite news source, even if things such as quotes are distorted or otherwise misleading and taken out of context.  And, I regularly hear people adopt the conclusions and judgments presented to them by their favored source without any further inquiry or research.

These are all examples of the pervasive lack of critical thinking in our society.  Let’s look at these in more detail, beginning with the parent who thinks that he must tell his child that he is right and the teacher is wrong.  Not only is the parent not exercising critical thinking (not asking for details and context of what the teacher said), but the parent is not teaching or allowing his child to become a critical thinker.  Placing a child in an environment where one authority figure is always right does not teach a child to exercise her own mind and reach her own judgments.  A parent who expects a child to adopt all the parent’s beliefs unquestioned does not teach the child how to make her own judgments and decisions once the parent is no longer there.  In the instance where a parent finds a teacher or other pushing a viewpoint contrary to that of the parent, the better approach is to discuss, at an appropriate level for the child, the different ways of looking at the question. explain why the parents hold the belief they do, while accepting that others may hold other beliefs.  That allows the child to understand that there is more than one way of looking at something, that there may be a need to understand context or find further facts or evidence.  Even if the child is expected to accept and follow the parent’s view at that point in her life, it teaches the child about thinking, about the possibility of other views, and about tolerance of other views. 

Those are some notes for the parent, but I also have notes about the teachers and our education system.  From what I see, very little time is spent on teaching critical thinking skills.  Teachers seem to have no problem presenting their views and judgments as fact that the student either must accept, or will accept in order to please the teacher.   Emotional arguments and conclusions are accepted by teachers with no demand for logic or rational support.  Students are encouraged to express their feelings with little demand that their articulation be clear, organized, or well thought out.  Of course, logic, developing support, indeed, learning and thinking itself, are hard work.  There seems to be an aversion to the idea of work in school these days.  Rather, teachers want kids to have fun; they seem to seek friendship rather than respect from their students. And, we have placed upon teachers the burdens of parenting, social work, and other requirements that are not part of a teacher’s traditional duties or trained skills.

If we do not teach our children how to be critical thinkers, then we cannot expect to see critical thinking in our adult population.  If we train our children to simply accept the judgment of one or another authority figure then we cannot expect them to do otherwise as adults.  Thus, we have people who simply accept whatever superficial judgment sounds good to them without even seeing a need to do their own inquiry into the rationality and legitimacy of that position.   Looking more specifically at politics, we have people who support each and every position of their preferred party, without any thought or investigation.  We have people who support or oppose views simply because they like or do not like the individual who professes those views.  This is especially senseless in that it confuses an individual with an institution of which that individual is a part.   Every leader as an individual will have a variety of qualities that will generally be liked or disliked, but that individual’s administration and its policies should and will eventually be judged by different standards in the context of history (this assumes of course that those whose goal it is to erase history will not in the end succeed). 

Of course, the problem with all this is that we end up with two warring camps:  those who blindly accept the view of one side on an issue and those who blindly accept the opposing view.  Arguments about the issue devolve into calling the other side stupid, idiotic, or similar names because without critical thinking and its use to arrive at and thus understand the views one has adopted, one cannot really debate the issues themselves.  So, it becomes simply cults of personality and ad hominem attacks on those holding opposing views.

Sure, it would be easier to have clear cut right and wrong answers to every one of life’s issues.  But, life is far more complex.  And, in order to make sound judgments about the issues that face us as individuals and as society as a whole, we must be able to critically think about them.  We must take the time to fully learn the relevant facts and to fully educate ourselves about various and competing viewpoints.  We must each of us examine this body of evidence that relates to each issue upon with we have or would like to take a stand.  We must each arrive at our own understanding and our own conclusions, based on our own examination; we must not be content to simply accept that which we are told. 

When it comes to politics, our education must begin with a clear and objective understanding of the history and core principles of this country.  We must read and understand our Constitution as well as how it has been interpreted and applied throughout our history.  Before taking a position on a law or regulation we must fully understand if not entirely read the operative provisions of the rule and must understand the basis of differing views about the rule.  We must consider not simply the immediate effect or gratification but also the long-term consequences of what is done or not done.  And we must listen to full words and context when a politician speaks, not be content to have only the particular sound bite chosen by the nightly news or our preferred Twitter feed. 

Yes, this all asks a lot.  Making informed decisions takes time and effort.  But no one said that being a responsible citizen and a responsible adult is an easy task.  It is, however, a serious and a critical task.  Without critical thinking we are governed by emotion alone and our world becomes less rational and more angry.  Teachers and parents together must insure that children learn the skill and the joy of deep and critical thinking, and then as adults we must demand of ourselves and of others that we use those skills in making the important decisions and judgments that affect all of our lives.