Who cares?
A week or two ago I was reading another book about emotions and thinking, The Political Brain by Drew Westen (I read it after reading this article in the NY Review of Books). I was struck by this observation on page 15:
Republicans understand what…David Hume recognized three centuries ago: that reason is a slave to emotion, not the other way around…Democratic strategists for the last three decades have instead clung tenaciously to the dispassionate view of the mind…They do so, I believe, because of an irrational emotional commitment to rationality – one that renders them, ironically, impervious to…scientific evidence on how the political mind and brain work. [italics his]
Hmmmm, I thought – do I have that? So I thought about it (rationally, I hope, despite the wild sobbing and tearing of hair). Well, I at least have an emotional commitment to rationality, I agreed. I don’t think it’s irrational, because I think rationality is better, for reasons I could enumerate – but it could be the case that that commitment causes me to overlook or forget the importance of emotion. I decided to try to do a better job of keeping it in mind.
But anyway, I have no trouble agreeing that it is an emotional commitment. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t care – everyone could be irrational and coercive up one side and down the other, and I wouldn’t care, because I wouldn’t care. The caring comes first – I get that.
The rational care for the cares of the irrational.
(It’s a Zen koan.)
Re: ‘The Political Brain’ by Drew Westen. Did you know that he is currently a guest blogger on the Huffington Post, and a commentator on NPR’s “All Things Considered”.
Since the opposite of this alleged affliction is to have a rational preference for the irrational – presumably licensing you, as with the current crop of US Republicans, to say or do anything you feel like in pursuit of arbitrarily chosen goals – I think I’ll stick with my emotional attachment to reason…
Me too – especially since, as I boldy claimed in the comment, the attachment can be emotional without being irrational. We can have the emotional attachment and then second guess it in a rational manner, and conclude that it is better for the sorts of reasons you indicate. So ha.
I don’t think Westen’s point is wrong, just poorly phrased. It’s not exactly the irrational emotional commitment to rationality that causes the Democratic party’s sometimes spectacular political idiocy so much as an irrational emotional commitment to a view of human nature as being fundamentally rational. Such optimism leads one to such ridiculous notions the belief that explaining why a policy will have horrible consequences will persuade the public to oppose it. If only! Preying upon the public’s fears and prejudices is the most effective way to seize and wield political power – sadly.
No, I don’t think it’s wrong either, I think it’s right – and actually the passage in its entirety (without the ellipses) makes the point the way G did. It’s my fault if Westen seems to have left out a step; in the book the step is there. It’s an interesting book.
No, GT, if you follow the steps as G has laid out, it is not dribble, it is tragically accurate. The only point is that one would not want to erect it into a principle, lest one find oneself advocating ‘education’ as the socially-useful inculcation of irrational prejudices.
Or ‘faith’, as they call it.
[BTW, of course, it should be noted that all the most conservative economists have an absolute attachment to the notion of human nature as fundamentally rational, in a self-interested sense. But that is hooey too.]
The attachment to scientific method is at least a-rational, because of the problem of induction, n-est-ce pas? I pointed this out once on a particularly irritating thread on Pharyngula, and I was glad to see that PZ at least listened, because he mentioned the problem in a post shortly afterwards.
Good guy, Hume. On Saturday, I walked by where he used to live in Edinburgh, but if there was a plaque of the wall I didn’t find it.
But what if you love the darling scientific method?
giggle
No plaque?! That’s an outrage!
Julian belongs to a Fans of Hume group on Facebook.
Potentilla –
hey, you were in Edinburgh on Saturday? So was I! (lived there for 30 years, now over the Forth in Dunfermline).
You probably know the whole “St. David’s Street” story, then…or did you mean when he lived up in James Court in the Old Town?
Sometimes I like to wonder what Hume could have done if he’d had even the science of the 100 years after his death to build his ideas on…?
Potentilla – but there is a nice big statue of the man in one of the most walked on streets in Europe. A very recent statue too (1995), which is great.
“Instinct leads, intelligence does but follow,”
William James
I read that a few days ago and thought that was exactly true. Because when you read something idiotic or wrong you react as an instinct before “giving reasons for your answer”. Though training intelligence means it reacts like instinct just like practising at a sport or a musical instrument turns learned movements into reflexes.
And intelligence needs to judge as well as follow – because sometimes instinct gets it wrong. Cf. ‘disgust’ etc.
Andy – yes, we live up near Kyle, we were doing an exciting trip to the big city. I meant James Court, in fact. I walked Far Too Far and tired myself out (am in the middle of chemo). The Royal Museum was the best bit.
KBP – I forgot about the Royal Mile statue when I posted last night. I don’t completely understand why it depicts him in his bath-towel, though.
potentilla –
good luck with the chemo.
The museum is indeed great, but the new bit is abominably poorly laid-out – clustering the artifacts by quite fuzzily-defined “themes” rather than chronological – or even geographical criteria…blechh! :-)
Well, Hume does say that he ‘likes his soup’, so maybe he’d spilled some on his good shirt and had to wash it off…
It says in today’s Irish Independent
“Though, they mightn’t even realise it, for the most part Bertie Ahern’s legion of fans probably vote for him first and foremost simply because they like him, which breaks down as voters seeing him as someone they can relate to. …[S]o while he may be currently be resenting, or embarrassed by, the relevations that he was sleeping on a camp bed at his constitutency office in Drumcondra following his marriage break-up, those images and the sympathetic reactions they may illicit in voters may in the long term do him no harm at all. In fact it might do Hillary Clinton some good to bring out the hankies and start wailing about her upset at Bill’s cheating ways in order to tap into voter’s emotions. But somehow we think its highly likely she will.”
Emotional brain rules ok! C’mon everybody, take out those snot-rags and show us what your’e made of be’god. Bertie Ahern cried on the telly and look what it did for him. It boosted his election chances, so much so that he eventually won the election. Clue into your emotions, I say, they will definitely get you places.