21.1. Status inflation and deflation: Prestige, the essence of status, permits broad alliances

Is status a positional good?

As the concept of social status itself attains higher status (through employment in evolutionary psychology), class struggles over the material conditions of life are recognized as impregnated with status aspirations. The conclusion may be drawn or implied that these conflicts are inherently wasteful: we’d be better off if people accepted their lot, because status is a positional good—a zero-sum game—what is won by some is lost by others. (See, for example, Robin Hanson’s Inequality talk is about grabbing.) But it also seems that a society beset with severe status inequality will suffer status deflation.

One approach to the question of whether status is a positional good is whether status is (implicitly) measured using an ordinal scale of measurement or a higher scale, interval or ratio, where ordinal scales express only rank, whereas interval and ratio scales express degrees of difference. An example of an ordinal scale expressing social status is military rank. The status of the rank of major depends on the mass of soldiers a major outranks and the number who outrank the major, so, if half of the captains are promoted to major, the major’s status declines.

Social status can seem similar to military rank, but (I contend) this is a confusion: the social status of an entire population can rise or fall (inflate or deflate), because the main component of social status is prestige, which has ratio properties. The confusion results from conflating prestige with dominance, more primitive and prototypical, but prestige is a ratio scale, not an ordinal scale like dominance, because it results from summing over weighted dominance relations. Consider our major in contrast to a lieutenant under his command. The lieutenant may have received higher grades in the military academy, he may come from a wealthier family, and he may be the president of a nonmilitary club in which the major participates as an ordinary member. Which has more prestige? The point is that the question makes sense; we combine information about position in various separate dominance hierarchies with other information about their potential power to determine their prestige, the information’s additivity implying that prestige is at least an interval scale (probably a ratio scale), not a mere ordinal scale like dominance. Concern with prestige (as distinct from dominance) is a human-specific trait, with few roots other than dominance in our primate psychology.

Why prestige?

Evolutionary psychologists propose that prestige (usually referred to simply as status, a convention I will abide) reflects a person’s value as an ally: a high-status person is a powerful ally. (The person with the highest prestige is God, the most powerful ally.) Other primates appear to have only dominance, which suffices for simian calculations because apes, living in a single hierarchy, don’t need to sum over different hierarchies. Humans live embedded in multiple social hierarchies—at root, dominance relations—which must be weighted and added to appraise an individual’s value in alliances.

If primordial alliances were exclusively alliances pitted against other allied humans, prestige could still be a zero-sum game despite its ratio scaling. But the alliances formed primordially weren’t exclusively competitive alliances: alliances were presumably formed for foraging and child care. Ratio-scaled prestige, a currency spanning dominance hierarchies, allows more and broader alliances.

Two distinct explanatory tasks regarding prestige concern its evolutionary function and its individual motivation. Evolutionary psychologists hypothesize that status derives from the differential value of persons as allies. The quest for prestige aligns the individual’s efforts with adaptation: by pursuing prestige, one becomes a more powerful ally, deriving the corresponding social (and reproductive) advantages. But the mechanism is more complex and itself provides additional clues about function. Prestige is a reaction formation against envy. This agrees with the observation that we accord prestige to those we would otherwise envy. (See Theodor Reik, Love and Lust: On the Psychoanalysis of Romantic and Sexual Emotion regarding the idealization process—rooted in unconscious envy—in romantic love. “Reaction formation” is a psychodynamic mechanism involving experiencing the opposite of certain thoughts, to deny them conscious access.)

Since status is commonly perceived value as ally, status deflation means decreased willingness to rely on—to ally with—others. In 11.3, I discussed opinionation as a pathology of belief-opinion confusion: we are opinionated when we fail to rely sufficiently on the opinions of experts. Status deflation causes irrational opinionation (as well as other adverse societal effects, including some relating to macroeconomics). The modern expression of the tendency toward excessively narrow alliances is lack of regard for the opinions of most others, including experts. At the same time, (one's own) status deflation increases the experienced envy. In societies where status is most deflated (typically, traditional agrarian societies), this two-pronged attack on the sublimation of envy results in the bullheadedness of the peasant.

Countering status deflation and generating inflation.

Economic inequality is a manifestation of status deflation as well as one of its causes (as I maintained in 21.0.) In modern capitalist societies, the main ways of reducing inequality have been restricted immigration (to reduce the supply of labor and increase its price) and progressive taxation. But these policies have been applied sporadically and are only practiced weakly in most advanced countries. Within Europe, the Common Market has opened borders, and in the United States, wealth inequality is so high it rivals some third-world countries. The reason stringent immigration control and progressive taxation are only sporadically applied is that these methods don’t correspond to any humanly valued relational model—which as Alan P. Fiske (Structures of Social Life (1991)) shows, enable the moralization of social practices and, as John Bolender elaborates (The Self-Organizing Social Mind (2010)), correspond to the four scales of measurement. (Communal/Sharing is nominal, Authority/Ranking is ordinal, Equality/Matching is interval, and Market/Pricing is ratio.) A flat tax employs a ratio scale, a fact that helps account for its ideological popularity despite its practical infirmity. To human intuition, progressive tax rates are arbitrary. As to immigration control, absolute restriction would correspond to Communal/Sharing, but like the flat tax rate, mere reduction of immigration rates doesn’t form an intuitively compelling public policy. (This is not to disparage the instrumental use of either immigration control or progressive taxation.)

State socialism, on the other hand, can be grounded in intuitive metrics: equality matching (interval scale) embedded in communal sharing (nominal scale). It has proven not only to provide a greater degree of status equality (thus status inflation) but also to be more durable.

11.6. Belief–opinion confusion and the contradictions of capitalist investment markets: Fictional-market socialism

(Part 7 of Belief-versus-opinion series.)

Economic recessions, like the one we hope we’re recovering from, have varied causes, but any causes inhering in capitalist markets are fundamental in that they won’t be eliminated without basic systemic change. My theory of belief-opinion confusion explains a fundamental cause of business cycles: investment markets necessarily rely on beliefs at places in social-decision processes where opinions are appropriate.

Belief and opinion: Two kinds of judgments

With mild regimentation of ordinary language, belief and opinion name two distinct entity types—dispositions versus occurrent mentation—derived from two perspectives on reality: abstract construal and concrete construal. This chart summarizes the differences between belief and opinion:

Belief and opinion ideally correspond to ways of participating in decisions in groups, including entire societies: action and deliberation; deliberation concerns figuring out what ought to be done, and action concerns doing it. Confusion is rife in electoral democracies with deeply opposed interests, since one forum serves both purposes.

“Deliberation” by capitalist markets defectively supplants opinion with belief

But if the political arena is the scene for opinion-belief confusion, the investment markets are where belief completely supplants opinion. Markets are mechanisms for societal decision-making: in a democracy of the dollar, your purchases figure into the determination of what is produced. In markets for use, the buying decisions follow from the buyer’s opinion, which—being personal—translates smoothly into belief, without deliberation. Whose opinion but your own should you consult? Markets for commodities and other easily comparable items effectively combine the opinions of buyers, since they can decide independently.

Investment markets are fundamentally different because investors must rely on the past financial performance of an enterprise; usually that’s the most important information available, so they must mainly extrapolate from an investment's past market results. In the societal deliberative process, investors express their beliefs rather than opinions, and these beliefs are heavily laden with others’ judgments (although from a personal standpoint, they express their opinions, since they value most what is original in the judgment).

The investment process can be viewed as forgoing opinion formation prior to deliberation, where the decision to invest should be based on independent opinion if the “deliberative process”—consisting of the “decisions” issued by the market—is to function properly.

The cost of this type of dysfunctional substitution of belief for opinion in deliberation is conformism, and when decisions are made sequentially, a consequence is information cascades, where random variations are amplified into large swings. This results from extrapolation, the result of investors using the previous judgments of other investors—expressed as stock or bond prices—as guide. Judgments by investors are essentially expressions of investors’ beliefs, primarily based on others’ judgments previously given. Obscuring the role of extrapolation is the apparent paradox that profits are made on the market by betting against the consensus, but extrapolating from investment-market gains is to extrapolate based on outperforming the crowd.

Purified fictional markets under socialism

Conceptualization of belief-opinion confusion suggests that the solution is to obtain independent opinions, which investments don’t reflect because investors know their beliefs are more veridical than their opinions, which are based on very limited data. Opinions can be obtained only if personal gain is divorced from investment decisions. Not only can’t capitalist investors be expected to invest according to opinion; they won’t even disclose their true opinions because they benefit from the ignorance of other investors.

Opinions could be obtained in an economy where capital is state owned—probably in such an economy exclusively. The model suggested is a fictional market where numerous government functionaries make investment decisions based on their opinions but don’t lose or profit because of their decisions: those incentives would cause them to “invest” based on beliefs. The fictional investments regulate the economy, which is state owned despite being controlled by a market purified of cascades and the other distortions due to correlated judgments.

Such a society requires a high level of material well-being and a high level of social consciousness, so the functionaries will afford concern with following instructions for which they won’t be rewarded or punished. These requirements may illuminate the ultimate failure of the socialistic experiment that was the Soviet Union, where slow growth set the stage for a pro-capitalist coup. In a society still materially poor, fictional use of the market would degenerate into a real capitalist market.

11.5. Why do we confuse belief and opinion?: A construal-level-theory analysis. THE CONFUSION BETWEEN BELIEF AND OPINION AND THE NATURES OF FANATICISM AND PHILISTINISM. PART 6.

Why do we confuse the epistemic attitudes opinion and belief, which—to serve the distinct functions of deliberation and action—should be based, respectively, on our own thinking or on that of our epistemic superiors and peers? We confuse them because we’re prone to see our own beliefs as being more like original opinions than they are, so we forgo the distinction, treating these epistemic attitudes identically whether as opinion or belief. Construal-level theory provides the explanatory concepts. We use a distinctively global way of thinking—abstract construal or far-mode—when we contemplate the future and the psychologically distant; and we use a distinctively narrow way of thinking—concrete construal or near-mode—when we act for the present and on the psychologically near. Appraisals of belief, unlike opinion, result from abstract construal, but when we think of our own (hence psychologically near) beliefs, we construe concretely, eliminating construal level as a cue to distinguish belief and opinion to assess each on its proper grounds.

Belief is more psychologically distant than opinion because one’s own person is near, others’ distant, and belief incorporates (averages) others’ opinions, which are disregarded in rational opinion formation. Construal-level theory would indicate that we perceive others as acting for their beliefs and ourselves as acting for our opinions, that is, we see ourselves as engaged in deliberation when we see our counterparts engaged in action. The spiral ensues in which parties to deliberation misperceive the other as advancing an agenda rather than engaging in good-faith deliberation, forcing each to reciprocate because the party engaging in action controls through benefiting from the distraction.

Beliefs and opinions are different entities, not just different functions that entities serve. We typically ascribe beliefs to others to describe and predict their conduct. Beliefs are far-mode constructions that must be grounded in an inbuilt template—since belief ascription is humanly universal—an idealization, which reality only approximates. If you believe that “She’s telling the truth,” your actions will comport with the absence of suspected untruthfulness but only to a point. Belief is a matter of degree, based on how close the template and reality match.

Belief is a primitive intuition regarding others, but applying the concept of belief to oneself doesn’t come naturally. Ferreting out the contours of unarticulated belief is what gives insight-based psychotherapy its power. Although the thinking comes easily that another agent is deceiving himself about what he really believes—others’ beliefs proven by behavior more than words—the agent himself often rejects belief ascriptions contradicting the words he tells himself. Those words are usually his opinions: our ordinary unwillingness to attribute an opinion to someone who can’t express it shows that opinions are closely tied to particular words. Opinion is the construct more suitable for possible neurobiological reduction, whereas belief is a family-relations concept, not a sharply delineated entity.

11.4 Explaining deliberation. THE CONFUSION BETWEEN BELIEF AND OPINION AND THE NATURES OF FANATICISM AND PHILISTINISM. Part 5.

I. The one-factor belief theorist's predicament

The key to understanding this account of epistemic attitude is what it denies: that the same attitude — belief — governs deliberation as well as action. The film Twelve Angry Men will illustrate the distinctions between the standard one-factor belief theory and my two-factor belief/opinion theory. The theories account differently for what transpired in Twelve Angry Men and what rationally justifies the dissenter's contradicting his ostensible epistemic equals. I assume that the dissenter was acting rationally. His conduct obviously compares favorably with the conformist jurors; yet, according to the belief theory, preferring his initial beliefs, after being informed that all of his epistemic equals disagreed, isn't rational. The belief/opinion theory resolves the anomalous conclusion implied by the belief theory.

Recall that the belief/opinion theory accounts for the anomaly by denying that the same epistemic attitude ordinarily governs outcome-determining action and guides deliberation. Common-denominator beliefs (the only epistemic attitude available to the belief theorist) leave little if any room for deliberation: deliberators would immediately agree. Since an average opinion constitutes a belief, the belief theorist tries to resolve the anomaly by resisting the averaging effects constitutive of belief to argue that the dissenter could credential himself as epistemically superior.

II. Justification for claims to epistemic superiority

A. Circular argument

Although justifications for the dissenter's epistemic certification are imaginable, those feasible apply under limited circumstances that don't do justice to our intuitions about the general role of dissenter. The dissenter's conduct is surprisingly hard to justify; when certifying epistemic superiority seems easy, the illusion comes from tacitly accepting a certain circular argument.

The dissenter's justification would be circular had the dissenter said, "Since the other jurors irrationally believe the prosecutor proved guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, my beliefs are credentiable, as proven when the other jurors refused to accept the inconclusiveness of the evidence." This "proof" is equivalent to "I am justified in believing defendant's guilt is unproven because of my epistemic superiority. I am justified in asserting my epistemic superiority because I believe the defendant's guilt is unproven." Certification of epistemic superiority must be based on independent evidence, meaning evidence different from that supporting the belief in dispute. The circular argument assumes the epistemic superiority it pretends to prove.

B. General traits

(1) Intelligence

To certify his epistemic superiority, the dissenter needs evidence — independent of the publicly displayed substance of their thinking — of the jurors' grades of thinking: he can't substantively assess the jurors' arguments and conclusions, because that's what's at stake: that argument is circular.

Without endorsing it, I'll construct a dissenter's argument based on independent evidence. Its major premise is that "general intelligence" predicts general rationality. The dissenter is barred from basing his self-certifying argument on beliefs about the matter at hand, but if the estimate is based on independent data, relative-intelligence estimates could serve as an independent criterion for epistemic superiority.

The dissenter might avoid circularity in his self-certifying argument by estimating jurors' relative intelligence based on independent evidence, such as complexity of speech, extensiveness of vocabulary, and coherence of organization. If the argument's assumptions are satisfied, the dissenter then could justify credentialing his own opinions. (Note that credentialing an opinion doesn't necessarily warrant privileging it enough to outweigh eleven other jurors.)

The argument based on intelligence works only if the other jurors don't have the opposite belief. If they think they're the smart ones, the dissenter hasn't justified his epistemic superiority, as the other jurors' claims would then have an equally strong epistemic position. (In reality, people who are wrong who think they're right don't always think they're smart, but they often do.)

(2) Conscientiousness

Some evidence for certification manifests an intermediate degree of independence. Rather than base his opinion on the very substance of the dispute (circular argument) or, on the other hand, on evidence independent from that substance (e.g., intelligence), the dissenter certifies his epistemic claims by comparing approaches to deliberation: the dissenter notes his own rational exercise of care, which he contrasts with other jurors' conclusion jumping. Whether the judgment of superior deliberative carefulness establishes epistemic superiority depends on the specifics of the dissenter's inference, but he might successfully justify his epistemic superiority by attributing habitual carelessness to the other jurors.

But justifiably characterizing the other deliberators as careless more often fails to establish epistemic superiority because deliberators' carelessness can't usually be divorced from their substantive conclusions. The jurors' dismissive attitude could be appropriate for an outcome as obvious as they believed this one was. An analysis — is the carelessness a general trait or part of the very opinion in question? — must support epistemic credentialing based on conscientiousness.

(3) General principle

The dissenter might reach for a general principle: nothing could be that simple. Allowing for its vagueness, the platitude holds true, but its truth is inadmissible in an endeavor seeking the same truth. Again, different solutions might obtain depending on specifics. If the other jurors agreed with the general proposition that nothing could be so simple, then demonstrating their inconsistency is part of the deliberation, but before the matter is deliberated, the jurors' self-contradiction doesn't credential the dissenter. After all, worse contradictions may lurk in the dissenter's beliefs.

(4) Inadequacy of arguments based on general traits.

The bite of Aumann's agreement theorem is hard to evade: often little room is available for certification. Even after finding a loophole, we are still without an account of the dissenter's rationality, inasmuch as the dissenter represents a type; if the dissenter has no justifiable claim to epistemic superiority, we wouldn't want a similarly situated juror to collapse his opinion into a group-based belief. In complete and acknowledged epistemic non-superiority — even epistemic inferiority — deliberation depends on the dissenter's expressing his opinion, notwithstanding that his rational belief should conform to an overwhelming majority.

III. Lowering the disagreement threshold for rational deliberation.

If epistemic superiority doesn't justify the dissenter's non-conformity, the one-factor belief theorist might try to argue that ordinary belief is sufficiently spacious to contain deliberation. If epistemic superiority doesn't justify the dissenter's non-conformity, belief theorists must justify his dissension employing belief alone, contending that the deliberative process requires less justification than the belief/opinion theorist demands. The belief theorist would argue that deliberation isn't foreclosed because, in general, rational jurors deliberate.

A. Reasonable doubt.

The belief theorist who takes this tack must account for deliberation's rationality by claiming that the dissenter's position — when included in an averaging process congealing one belief from many — moves the average of the consensual belief beyond the reasonable-doubt threshold. The jury majority might temper its certainty enough to move the group average to within the reasonable-doubt range. Belief theorists might argue that this scintilla of doubt justifies the dissenter's advocacy. Without positing opinions, belief theorists maintain that a belief's slight dubiety justifies a jury's deliberation.

But consider another possibility: the dissenter himself believed there was only a scintilla of exonerating evidence, while other jurors believed there was none. Then, the average of the initial beliefs would congeal in a belief remaining beyond reasonable doubt. In this state, there would be no deliberation. Moreover, if the group belief were within the reasonable doubt range, the debate over a slight difference in estimated probability of guilt would be feeble.

B. Devil's advocacy.

The remaining argument available to belief theorists is that rational jurors would recognize the desirability of full debate, despite the convergence of opinions, and they would appoint the dissenter as devil's advocate. This twist, would argue belief theorists, allows them to account for productive debate based on its rational necessity. Occurring regularly, the practice would blur the distinction between the belief and the belief/opinion theories, only a single but important difference remaining: under the belief theory, the advocate's identity is irrelevant. Consensual belief, unsupplemented by opinion, leaves no residue distinguishing the deliberators to account for the specific selection of the dissenter. Jurors may discover that dissenters make the best devil's advocates, but why they are better remains unexplained. The belief/opinion theory accounts for selection of the dissenter: in deliberation, he defends his opinion, distinct from his belief. 

Next in series: Why do we confuse belief and opinion?: A construal level theory analysis.

11.3. Pathologies of belief-opinion confusion. THE CONFUSION BETWEEN BELIEF AND OPINION AND THE NATURES OF FANATICISM AND PHILISTINISM. Part 4

Belief-opinion confusion results in common political pathologies. Since beliefs are averaged opinions, the latter are less stable, uniform, and moderate than beliefs. Opinion formation, when properly detached from outcome determination, is a kind of intellectual game, albeit one having a vital societal function. Opinions merit argumentative intensity without practical enthusiasm; but in politics most adherents can’t distinguish belief from opinion and promote their opinions with belief-appropriate confidence. Fervent promotion of opinion is termed fanaticism; when less fervent, opinionation.

Another attitudinal pathology resulting from treating opinion as belief is hasty closure. Beliefs, formed by consensus, are more robust and stable than opinions, since averages change more gradually than individuals do. But when they confuse belief and opinion, adherents think their opinions ought to be as robust and sure as their beliefs. If interested in and well informed about a topic, they’re embarrassed by any inability to form a stable and confident opinion, and they’re denounced for any political fickleness, although variability is the nature of rational opinions, which, as deliberative tools, shouldn’t be held tightly.

Other pathologies result from the reverse confusion, illustrated by Solomon Asch’s influential conformity experiment: mistaking belief for opinion. Asch asked subjects to choose the longer of two lines, but unknown to the real subjects, the other ones were Asch’s confederates (“stooges”), who followed a script to report that the obviously shorter line was longer. Many subjects conformed their judgments to the stooges.'

The experiment’s standard interpretation holds that subjects were psychologically driven to conform. We're indeed sheep if scared to dissent about a line’s length because we fear a group of strangers will ostracize us! The conventional interpretation is contested by a few social psychologists: in my terms, subjects suffered from belief-opinion confusion. Asch’s ambiguous instructions confused his subjects, who misunderstood the length-estimation task as requesting they form a belief about relative length. Subjects weren't irrational when they discounted their own perceptions (read opinions), contradicted by epistemically equal stooges. The hypothesis is testable: tell subjects to report their perceptions of relative length, rather than eliciting their all-considered beliefs.

Subjects who nevertheless continue to report their beliefs, not opinions, would, then, be social conformists, forming their opinions as if beliefs, the reverse of fanatics, who form beliefs as if opinions. Conformists don’t necessarily go far wrong in their beliefs (fanatics do), but they’re useless deliberators, compulsively moderate equivocators, whose fear of error, suitable for outcome-determining beliefs, governs how they form deliberation-enhancing opinions, which are functionally eliminated when adherents apply unsuited belief-forming methods.

Confusion between belief and opinion is also what makes Aumann’s agreement theorem counter-intuitive. The theorem concerns beliefs, but students tacitly apply it, instead, to opinion.

Next Essay: Explaining deliberation

11.2 The distinct functions of belief and opinion THE CONFUSION BETWEEN BELIEF AND OPINION AND THE NATURES OF FANATICISM AND PHILISTINISM. PART 3.

Belief, relying on the opinions of epistemic superiors and equals, is the rational basis for controlling outcome, but effective deliberators must express their opinions, as in the 1957 movie "Twelve Angry Men." A single holdout—without claim to epistemic superiority—stood firm and averted an innocent defendant's conviction. In rational-belief formation, agents discount their own opinions following their overwhelming rejection by epistemic equals. For rational belief, the dissenter should assign no greater weight to his own opinion than to other jurors'; but had he based his position on rational belief, the jury would have convicted wrongly. Under the (false) assumption that deliberation is based on belief, the independent juror would have been irrational in his stubborn defense of personal opinion. That's wrong: jurors are supposed to be independent. Jury instructions, though not philosophically explicit, imply that jurors should form independent opinions, influenced only by other jurors' arguments, not the belief-constituting average opinion of epistemic equals. The other eleven jurors, who decidedly were not paragons of rationality, adopted group-average opinion to form, irrationally, a bloc against the dissenter.

Opinions and beliefs serve separate valid roles. Whereas belief is the rational basis for outcome control, opinion is the substantial basis for deliberation, which contests opinions to adjust belief. Deliberation flourishes when independent contributions foster the debate driving it.

Scientific and philosophical debates resemble jury deliberations. Although rational belief is a weighted average of all the experts' beliefs, to reach beliefs least prone to error each scientist involved must first serve as an independent "measuring instrument," only later submitting to an ultimate computation of a group average. Philosophers' attitudes are typified by Hume's when he skeptically rejected causality, opining that no future expectancies are justified, and causality is mere habitual association. Yet, he admittedly disregarded his philosophical conclusions in practical matters. Hypocrisy? No, Hume was properly distinguishing his belief that causality is objective from his opinion that it's illusion. Hume advanced philosophy by cultivating his independent opinion, which, like all good philosophers, he tried to conform to his reasoning, but he disbelieved his skepticism.

Philosophers and scientists distinguish the research program they pursue from the tenets they believe, but political disagreement is different. In an election-based system expressing deeply opposed interests, political advocacy simultaneously serves deliberative and outcome-controlling functions, because democratic debate serves to both answer and decide political questions. Democratic debate is premised on deliberation, while democratic process is premised on outcome control, and when a single venue simultaneously serves both functions, the deliberative function suffers. If the other jurors continued stating beliefs rather than forming opinions, the dissenting juror's deliberative efforts would have been futile, but outcome control is more robust. Whereas deliberation is stymied when some jurors substitute the drive to control the outcome for the desire to find the truth, outcome control is facilitated when others distractedly pursue other goals.

While beliefs rather than opinions guide political debate, when their deliberation is obstructed the intended beliefs never progress beyond opinion. The pathologies of belief and opinion, the subject of the next essay, derive from this political concoction and its thorough confusion of belief and opinion.

Next posting: Pathologies of belief-opinion confusion.

11.1 Is epistemic equality a fiction? THE CONFUSION BETWEEN BELIEF AND OPINION AND THE NATURES OF FANATICISM AND PHILISTINISM. PART 2.

Concepts

The leading concept, epistemic superiority (discussed in 11.0), refers to relatively greater capacity to distinguish relevant truth from falsity, as demonstrated by objective evidence. Epistemic justification refers to evidence proving an adherent's epistemic superiority. Credentialing means according epistemic superiority. The agreement theorem (according to my parsing) requires epistemic justification to claim epistemic superiority rationally. Rational adherents modify their beliefs upon learning that an epistemic equal disagrees.

Superior expertise

Proving the agreement theorem is mathematically trivial, and the previous post was supposed to demonstrate, almost intuitive. Yet, because the theorem conflicts with prevailing norms, which reinforce adherents' untoward opinionation, mathematically sophisticated students commonly reject the proof initially. Contentious beliefs—their adherents regarding themselves epistemically superior—indeed complicate matters, but self-description isn't epistemic justification: a claim to epistemic superiority is just another justification-requiring belief. Self-credentialing is rational only if adherents first prove their epistemic superiority with respect to their claim to epistemic superiority!

Circular reasoning is obvious when adherents contend adherence to the belief itself proves their epistemic qualifications, but some dodges are subtler. As an example of the evasions, consider "birthers" (Americans who believe Obama's "real" birthplace is presidentially disqualifying), called upon to justify their ideological self-confidence enough to survive their beliefs' overwhelming rejection. Birthers may believe that, as such, antibirther beliefs epistemically discredit their adherents, but this argument is circular because the same ideological isolation discredits both belief and credential. Sophisticated birthers might invoke a subtler form of question begging, claiming vindication by other equally contentious positions—perhaps, adherents' "discernment" that Obama is Muslim—but these adherents' struggles against the stigma of intellectual isolation unwittingly prove their epistemic inferiority, despite the lesser absurdity of Muslim baiting compared to citizenship paranoia.

Leveraging credible beliefs to demonstrate adherents' expertise occasionally succeeds, but credentialing is more commonly based on direct grounds, as when experts' training vouchsafes their expertise against masses of disagreeing nonprofessionals. Also, experts reasonably disregard lesser experts, as Albert Einstein did Niels Bohr, who insisted Einstein was mistaken to reject quantum mechanics. Einstein replied he had earned the right to be mistaken. His demonstrated powers of physical intuition justified self-credentialing his opinion. Analogizing the credentialing process to averaging measurements of duration—with equally accurate clocks, the readings should be averaged, but a reading from an ancient 0-jewel wind-up clock should be overridden by one from an atomic clock.

Superior methods

Claiming superiority in method—in the manner of the Catholic Church—is a systematic way to bolster epistemic credentials and save an opinion from its fate as one of many. If the Church's claim that the Pope speaks for God were demonstrable, then taking your cue from priests would be more rational than relying on your cogitations.

Another bootstrapping method is Marxist sociological justification, which can be treated as an answer to demands for epistemic justification: under the agreement theorem, what justifies accepting Marxism when most intellectuals disagree? The Marxist answers that these opponents, however erudite, belong to (or identify with) an exploitative social class, blinding them to subversive truths. If the workers accept Marxist socialism, while the bourgeoisie espouses liberalism, conservatism, or reaction, the line-up reveals politics' class dependence, and the argument avoids circularity if independent historical evidence supports the bourgeoisie's epistemic inferiority. Thus, Marxism contains theoretical machinery adequate, in principle, to justify Marxists' intellectually isolated iconoclasm. No doubt this contributes to its endurance.

Equal credentials

Granting the Marxist claim that the main political divisions represent social classes differing in epistemic endowment, most political and religious disputes still would be between approximate epistemic equals. Republicans and Democrats vituperate with language proven lethal, without there being a rational basis justifying either's epistemic superiority. Marxist ideologues, too, disagree vehemently, although none occupy superior epistemic positions. The disputants' epistemic equality doesn't temper these disagreements, whereas it should among rational adherents.

Under-weighting others' beliefs in effect equates belief (all-things-considered position) with individual opinion (others' beliefs factored out) despite the rationality of differentiating them. Confusion about the distinct societal roles of belief and opinion explains this irrationality.

Next essay: The distinct societal functions of belief and opinion.

11.0. Two kinds of belief. THE CONFUSION BETWEEN BELIEF AND OPINION AND THE NATURES OF FANATICISM AND PHILISTINISM. PART1.

Two distinct attitudes—which I'll call belief and opinion—go by the name “belief,” and distinct pathologies—fanaticism, opinionation, conformism, and equivocation— result from confusing them. The difference between belief and opinion is manner of formation. Beliefs are what you hold true, all things considered; opinions are what’s left after you factor out reliance on other people's beliefs. The way belief and opinion are confused differentiates the pathologies.

The distinction’s formal description might seem trivial, but its implications are counter-intuitive. A theorem that won economist Robert Aumann a Nobel Prize expresses the paradox. Aumann proved that if two agents in the same epistemic position have different beliefs, they should, rationally, split the difference.

To get the idea and see the point, start with simple factual beliefs. You and nine others estimate the number of marbles in a fish bowl. You observers are indistinguishable by your relevant abilities and experiences, but you guess higher than most others do. Then, Aumann's theorem (the "agreement theorem") says you should lower your estimate by adopting the average of all ten as your own belief. One way to explain the reason is each observer functions as a measuring instrument. If you have ten rulers with equal credentials for measuring length, you obtain the most reliable estimate by averaging the ten. You should treat each observer as a measuring instrument, and as you should average ten separate, epistemically indistinguishable rulers, you should adopt the average result of the human “instruments.” You have no rational basis to give more weight to your own opinion than to that of the other observers, even in forming your own belief.

This might be fine and well when applied to estimating marbles in a fish bowl, but think of applying the principle to important beliefs.

Next part: Is “epistemic equality” a fiction?

Correction (February 23, 2011): Aumann is best known for his agreement theorem (and for reactionary politics), but he won the Nobel Prize on other bases.