Fundamentalism, Pragmatism and Public Deliberation

SEVERAL posts in this blog have explored the argument that growing fundamentalism is the inevitable byproduct of an increasingly interconnected plural society that still lashes on to the classic liberal idea that our individual worldviews should be held and justified privately. As I have insisted in multiple occasions, the world in which we live in today has interwoven together everyone’s formerly private personas in an irreversible manner and tensions among contradicting beliefs are boiling. Faced with this dilemma, I have argued purely on pragmatic grounds that we need to rethink our personal relationship towards our own private beliefs and we need to expose them to public scrutiny and social accountability. Just as the fathers of liberalism successfully relied on toleration to safeguard our freedom against mounting fundamentalism, we now face conditions that require a new strategy in a world where toleration is becoming unviable.

There is, however, a very important distinction that needs to be made before one can start a serious philosophical campaign against fundamentalism. This distinction stems from the fact that there are two very distinct types of fundamental beliefs: fundamental beliefs about matters of fact (or descriptive fundamentalism) and fundamental beliefs about matters of value (or prescriptive fundamentalism). It can also be described as the difference between fundamental beliefs about what is and fundamental beliefs about what ought to be. Distinguishing between these two types of fundamental beliefs is crucial as it allows us to confront each one in its own terms. For instance, the fundamental belief that the aryan race is superior relates to matters of fact and as such should be dealt with by science, while the fundamental belief that jews ought to be exterminated relates to matters of value and should be the topic of morality. Let me focus first on fundamental beliefs about matters of fact.

As I pointed out in the previous post, when it comes to matters of fact, pragmatism is not an adequate philosophical approach. Trying to be pragmatic about how things actually are has proven to be pragmatism’s costliest mistake and has, unsurprisingly, alienated most scientific-minded individuals. As such, my suggested approach to matters of fact is simple, conventional and in accordance to common sense: there is a reality out there to be understood by the human mind and our best method available for doing so is the method of science (and not the pragmatic method).So when it comes to fighting fundamental beliefs about matters of fact my proposal is again predictable and adds nothing new: observation, experimentation and ongoing scientific discussion are the best antidotes we posses against unsupported fundamental beliefs about reality. When it comes to explaining matters of fact, the ongoing victories of science against superstition and unsubstantiated beliefs since the rise of modernity speak for themselves.

Arguing against someone that holds a fundamental belief that contradicts observable evidence can be a very frustrating experience, but at least one has observable evidence on one’s side. When things get really frustrating is when one needs to deal with fundamental beliefs about matters of value. Once we move away from matters of fact and venture into value judgments’ territory, the power of scientific considerations starts to weaken.

Nonetheless, it is important to recognize that science does have some power against fundamental beliefs about matters of value. This is simply because our beliefs about how the world is can (although not necessarily do) influence our beliefs about how the world ought to be. In other words, our perception of reality and of matters of fact can heavily influence our values or be used as justification for them. That said, as David Hume famously highlighted, there is no necessary logical connection between how the world is and how we judge it ought to be and in many instances our values remain unaffected and independent of the ways of the world. Fundamentalism about matters of value tends to exhibit this “impermeability” to factual evidence and not because the evidence against them is weak or insufficient, but because the basis for justification of these values is beyond the realm of facts — they are “metaphysical” to use the common philosophical term. If for instance, one fundamentally believes that homosexuality is morally wrong, there is no piece of factual evidence that can be used to necessarily undermine this belief. If factual evidence alone is not enough, what is then the right approach against fundamental values?

The first thing one should remember is that our current political organization into liberal, plural and tolerant societies was developed precisely as an attempt to deal with value fundamentalism. Political liberalism successfully contained the harmful side effects of fundamental values not by confronting them but by carving out a private sphere in which everyone is free to embrace any values as long as these do not interfere with political stability. The unshakeable conviction that fundamental values are irreconcilable is at the heart of our political, social and institutional organization. A combination of heightened toleration and strict border control between the private and the public was thought to be enough to minimize the threat of fundamental values. Now that the Internet is rendering this border control ineffective and the clash between antagonistic fundamental values intensifies, it is clear that we need a different strategy.

Here is where I believe the pragmatic method proves its worth as it offers a unique opportunity to truly tackle the roots of fundamental values. The strategy I am about to outline is philosophically simple but carries several political consequences. First, a quick reminder on what the pragmatic method is: The pragmatic method is a method for settling metaphysical disputes — which is fitting for our purposes as fundamental values are metaphysical as pointed out earlier. What the pragmatic method brilliantly highlights is that although fundamental values might be justified on metaphysical grounds, the practical consequences in our behavior of holding such beliefs are observable and factual. As such, when dealing with fundamental values we should redirect the discussion away from the sources of justification (which are metaphysical) and focus instead on the practical consequences of such values (which manifest in our behavior). So coming back to my earlier example, the fundamental belief that homosexuality is morally wrong might be shielded against factual argumentation, but holding such a belief has real practical and observable consequences (i.e., discriminatory behavior) that can be factually evaluated.

Since the behavior that springs from fundamental values is observable, all we need to do is to focus the discussion at this level. By doing so we avoid getting trapped in muddy metaphysical arguments and focus instead on factual and objective debates. Political liberalism was then only partially right to assume that disputes regarding fundamental values are insurmountable. Such disputes are indeed intractable if kept at the level of metaphysical arguments looking to ground one or another set of fundamental values. Where political liberalism is mistaken is in believing that such is the only way in which we can settle disputes regarding fundamental values. As I have argued here, these disputes are amenable to factual and objective discussion if we focus the debate at the level of the discernible practical consequences that such beliefs have in our behavior. As I will argue in what follows, for this debate to be successful in the type of interlinked world that we live in today, it needs to be the subject of public — instead of private — deliberation. Let me now turn to this topic.

Since up to now we have been thought that fundamental values are irreconcilable, we are indeed badly equipped to suddenly drag our personal values out of the private closet where they have been hiding and into the light of public scrutiny and public deliberation. Before we can do so, we need an institutional environment that permits and encourages debate on matters of value instead of denying it and sweeping it under the rug of the private. A good first step in that direction is to promote a new idea of public reason that embraces ongoing dialogue among conflicting values and encourages public deliberation on fundamental differences. This new idea of public reason is of course diametrically opposite to the prevailing liberal idea of public reason as an overlapping consensus of the reasonable features of our private values. In the liberal version there are no mechanisms for dialogue and compromise among fundamentally different and irreconcilable values, only the hope for an opportunistic non-aggression pact in the name of political stability.

Additionally, it is fairly obvious that in order to keep a debate on fundamental values within the realm of facts, we need a set of clear criteria and rules of the game around which the practical consequences of different fundamental beliefs can be evaluated objectively. In other words, we need to setup proper political mechanisms for introducing disputes about fundamental values into a framework of reasonable public deliberation and we need clear criteria to be able to judge among those disputes. This criteria itself should result from open and ongoing public deliberation on basic guiding principles whose purpose is to provide a basis for what is acceptable morally. These should never be closed principles but interpreted by citizens as the contour that delineates the basic goals we share as a society. In an upcoming post I will further develop these later topics, that is: a new idea of public reason consistent with public deliberation of fundamental values, the institutional framework required to implement such a deliberation and the criteria around which pragmatic debates should be held. I will just close this post emphasizing that ending fundamentalism is the single most important and difficult challenge of our generation yet I have no doubt that it is within our grasp.