Can a Person Be Reasonable?
We Rely on the Abundance of Reasonable People in our Society, But Have No Means of Producing Them.
Underlying our democratic principles and institutions is an implicit assumption that all people can be made reasonable. The belief that self-preservation and the want of a comfortable life are common to all, and that once freed from erroneous beliefs and superstitions through a modern education, they will come to pursue these impulses reasonably. “If… superstitious fear of spirits were taken away, and with it, prognostics from dreams, false prophecies, and many other things depending thereon, by which crafty ambitious persons abuse the simple people, men would be much more fitted than they are for civil obedience. And this ought to be the work of schools.“1 Each individual, unshackled from superstition, will know that to prosper, they need peace, and to have peace they must not harm others etc. Of course, our democratic institutions were founded long ago, and the principles that underpin them were argued and asserted further back still. We have since come to realise that we, as humans, begin with our conclusions and reason from them, we do not use reason to arrive at conclusions. That is to say, while everyone can reason, reasonableness is the exception, not the rule.
Our way of life is based on the teaching of great men who nevertheless had an incorrect understanding of our “Natural state”. Men like Hobbes, Locke, and later Mill, understood man in his natural state to be a reasonable creature, using this talent to secure his own safety and comfort. Their animal man reasoned mostly in isolation, within himself. Beginning from the most universal antecedents (e.g., I wish to live) and proceeding by deduction. They did not know that the faculties of reason evolved in, and for, a social context. Neither was it known to them that it evolved to argue with and sway others, and that its ability to seek for the truth in all things was a miraculous coincidence. They could hardly be blamed for these misconceptions, since their works predate Darwin’s ‘The Origin of Species’ by as much as one hundred and sixty years, and the discovery of human evolution fossils by as much as two hundred years. Regardless, their understanding of human nature was incorrect and incomplete. This they shared with the religious fanatics of their time whom they riled against. If reason was not made to seek the truth, but we now rely on it for this function, then it must be retooled in each person. But can this retooling be done reliably? Can the education we provide today take in reasoners, persons who start with their conclusions, and produce reasonable people, persons who arrive at their conclusions through reason? Can any education or conditioning?
Once, as I was flying back to Melbourne from Toronto, I sat next to a slender teenage boy with pale skin and blond hair, wearing a red MAGA hat. He was perhaps fifteen or sixteen. He fiddled a little while with the entertainment system. I do not recall how our conversation started. I told him that I was on my way back to Melbourne. He was going on a holiday to Vancouver with his family. We chatted for a while, talking about his favorite video games and so on (the usual), until he mentioned to me a Jewish girl at his school who was, apparently, given free lunch every day on account of her great-grandparents being victims of the Holocaust. He did not believe that she deserved this special treatment and was somewhat indignant about this. He told me “I’m not saying [the Holocaust] didn’t happen, but what if it didn’t and [the Jewish] made it up just to get special treatment?” Indeed, if one believes that the girl does not deserve the free lunches, then it is far more convincing to deny that her great-grandparents suffered at all, rather than to try to argue the case that their suffering does not entitle their great-grandchild to any special consideration. The former argument leaves no room for rebuttal or disagreement, while the latter will at the very least be sensitive to the particular understanding of fairness among its audience. Hence why this boy was willing to ignore insurmountable evidence of events still in living memory, because it allowed him to make a far more compelling case for himself and his sense of indignation. While being most unreasonable, as a reasoner he was most successful. His education had been unsuccessful in making him into a reasonable person. He later asked me about Australian girls. He had heard that they were exceptionally attractive. He put this down to their getting a lot of sunshine.
It might be said that at this point in his life the boy’s education had been too brief. That he may still have his college years ahead of him. However, the university is only modestly more successful than the high school in producing reasonable persons. Recently I spoke with a friend of mine about the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in Australia, and his decision not to be vaccinated in the foreseeable future. This friend is a highly educated man with some strong anti-establishment leanings. He is the most outstanding reasoner. But that means, necessarily, that he is the most unreasonable. He told me that he is concerned about the vaccine’s effects on fertility, and that while there is no evidence of such a side effect, nor any biological reason to suspect it, until there have been decade long longitudinal studies “We just don’t know.” He insisted that for him to trust the vaccine, its side effects would need to be studied over at least ten years. I asked him if he would, based on this argument, advise others against taking any new drugs that are approved for sale after their phase three trials but whose effects are yet to be examined over such a period. After a brief hesitation, he said “Yes, if their condition is not life threatening.” Here he was willing to stick by his own arguments despite some ridiculous conclusions. He was willing to do this not because waiting for ten years after a drug is on the market to use it is really reasonable, but because he wished to convince me (and perhaps himself) that his anti-establishment instinct was justified, and because backtracking or compromising on his given reasons would make his case less compelling. Indeed, his instinct against the medical establishment was justified, but it had been justified long ago, when he was told that an antibiotic his mother had taken during pregnancy had affected his teeth and bone development and caused him not insignificant pain.2 This prior experience had made him justifiably prejudiced against established medical practice. This prejudice was the cause of his vaccine hesitancy.3 His unwarranted concern about infertility issues was just a symptom.
It would seem that the university also fails at molding the sort of individuals whose abundance we rely on in a liberal democracy. Many times a person might have the right opinion, but far from having good reasons for what they believe, they believe it for no reason at all. They are simply compelled to the right opinions either by the momentum of a shift in public opinion, or by a coming to terms with the status quo. According to the Pew Research Center (accessed on Aug 2nd 2021), a Washington, D.C. think tank, acceptance of homosexuality has steadily risen across the world since the 2000’s. Younger people are much likelier than their elders to be accepting of homosexuality. Yet, being one of the younger people, I have yet to hear one of my peers even attempt to give any reasons for why same sex relationships deserve society’s respect (or why heterosexual relationships do, for that matter). At best, they might say that acceptance of homosexual relationships is a matter of tolerance, and since we are a tolerant people, it follows that we must accept these relationships. But one could think of any number of consensual relationships which we do not tolerate, or we only tolerate, but do not accept. This is hardly surprising, and people do not deserve blame for seeking (and indeed needing) to defer to an authority on the many questions that they themselves cannot resolve. Even the deepest thinker can only confront a few of their own prejudices by way of their own reason. “Life is short, and Art long; the crisis fleeting; experience perilous, and judgment difficult.”4 For all other matters they must rely on their instinct, which is often informed by an outside authority. This is the limit of human reasonableness, and it has profound consequences.
For us in a democratic, radically egalitarian society, the only true authority is public opinion. If enough people support the insurrection at the Capitol, then it becomes perfectly justified to do the same. No lawyer or historian could convince the crowd that the storming of the Capitol was not upholding the principle of liberty but trampling on it. Since the layman and the expert are equal, so their claims must also always be equal. Perhaps the multitude can be wise in spite of the individual’s folly, so that the authority of public opinion is righteous. This is not a simple claim. We shall make it the topic of our next discussion.
Thomas Hobbes, “Of Imagination,” In Leviathan, ed. Michael Oakeshott (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 13.
Indeed, the antibiotic tetracycline is known to carry these side-effects. See for example Demers, P et al. “Effects of tetracyclines,” 849-854. Tetracycline is no longer prescribed for expectant mothers or young children, barring exceptional circumstances (such as anthrax).
This prejudice, once embedded, can no longer be dislodged with mere verbal discussion, but must be refuted through demonstration. In other words, positive experiences with medical practice would be needed to overcome past grievances. A discussion for another time.
Hippocrates, Charles Darwin Adams, “Aphorisms, SECTION I, Part 1,” In The Genuine Works of Hippocrates, (New York: Dover, 1868). Emphasis mine.