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How to Understand “Reasonable Disagreement”

Ever have a political discussion with a friend and have it degenerate into incompatible positions that cause tension, anger, and exasperation? You have to learn how to appreciate “reasonable disagreement.” This is not a contradiction in terms; you can disagree and be both reasonable about it.

In the culture-laden and pragmatic world of communication disagreement is the norm, so we have to deal with it. Some people are taught that specific sources of information are the true guides to knowledge. Scripture and religious communities which include all sorts of information about the earth and animal species can be cited as a supreme source of knowledge. If people take no critical stance toward these issues and accept them thoroughly then they are justified in their beliefs. There can be a debate about what is true and what is not but this does not change the normative system. The beliefs of the religious person are justified; they are part of a system of relationships their empirical content notwithstanding. A “creationist” and “evolutionist” produce disagreement because they live in different knowledge worlds. They may be polarized and the position of the other may be unimaginable but this is the “stuff” of disagreement and must be managed.

Relationships that are “fiercely entangled”, such as between ethnopolitical groups in conflict, are characterized by the incommensurability that accompanies situations where the parties in conflict are divergent. Conflicting groups must be able to experience disagreement; they must, as Benhabib describes, treat the other as an “adversary” and not an “enemy.” The ability to tolerate disagreement as well as work with it is central to the communicative and resolution process.

There is more to reasonable disagreement than a gentleman’s agreement to respect differences. Clearly, communities, cultures, social networks, and groups establish different sets of standards and principles regarding beliefs and drawing conclusions. And while there are overlaps between groups in terms of standards of knowing (e.g. science) there are also sharp differences between them. For this reason, reasonable disagreement is a defensible philosophical position and a communicative state that usually cannot be avoided.

Some theorists are relativists in that they do not believe there is any overarching cultural norm of rationality. Others want to argue for more objective standards. One problem is that for one side of a cultural disagreement to be “correct” there must be a standard that determines such correctness. Such standards are difficult to establish. Still, rampant relativism is equally as indefensible and it is possible for certain positions to be more justified than others. The central question is posed as the following: is it possible for two cultures or conflicting groups, both of which have epistemic standards, to both share evidence and have reasonable disagreement. In other words, one group believes a proposition and the other group does not. An explication of the clash of narratives between Israelis and Palestinians present a good example. Zionism, for example, as stated in historical documents and instances can be interpreted as a noble effort to return a historically oppressed people to their homeland, or as a European colonialist enterprise with an expansionist ideology. The two groups (Israelis and Palestinians) are in disagreement such that one believes a proposition to be true and the other disbelieves it.

The disagreement is “reasonable” to the extent that each side is justified in holding the belief or disbelief. Ideally anyway, members of both groups should have equal access to evidence and documentation including the benefit of full discussion. In many cases this condition is not met. Differences in education and availability of information will also account for disagreements. To make matters even more complex, we must include the fact that people have graded beliefs based on subjective probabilities.

Participants in groups who disagree are working on the basis of a proposition that states that their own system of information justifies their beliefs. The simple act of observing Jews migrate to Israel justifies both the belief in “noble return” as well as “colonialism.” And from a communicative and discursive standpoint there is nothing malevolent about these differences. Both beliefs are justified and linked to some system of information. One side of the argument is not more correct than the other.

One solution to the condition of reasonable disagreement is for the two parties to converge on what counts as evidence. Some progress here is possible but slow and difficult. Then again, we always note that the process of communication and decision-making is slow and difficult.

Posted on November 11, 2013 | Image

Learning How to Talk to People

Oct 7

Posted by Donald Ellis

The polarization that currently characterizes the American political environment, and is graphically depicted above, is a consequence of the degeneration of political relationships. Political friendships treat opponents as respectful adversaries, not enemies, that have common interests in problem resolution as much as anything else. The issue sophistication that comes with political relationships is quite compatible with the ability to sustain “reasonable disagreement.” Solving political and ethnopolitical conflicts involves initiating the two conflicting groups into the larger cultural conversation, where the understanding is that the conversation is about the relationship between the two groups. This involves creating a relationship where members of each group understand that they must engage in reasonable discourse, accept the burdens of justification, and reject illiberal attitudes and behaviors. Another way to think about it is as a network of weak ties. Weak ties are important forms of relationships that are more casual friendships or work relationships (e.g., acquaintance or coworkers) and engage in less intimate exchanges and share fewer types of information and support than those who report stronger relationships. Strong ties include in their exchanges a higher level of intimacy, more self disclosure, emotional as well as instrumental exchanges, reciprocity in exchanges, and more frequent interaction. We have fewer strong ties and they are more important to our personal lives. Facebook and electronic contacts create numerous weak ties that serve important functions.

What Danielle Allen (2004), in her book “Talking to Strangers”, describes as “political friendship” is a sort of important weak tie. This is the sort of friendship that goes beyond the close relationships we have with family members and intimates. Political friendship is a set of practices and habits used to solve problems and bridge difficult differences. Emotional attachment to the other is less important than the realization of interdependence and the need for practical problem resolution. This form of a communicative relationship serves as a useful outlet for conflict resolution, and allows minority groups in multicultural societies to establish mature relationships with the dominant group.

The concept of political friendship is important and deserving of some elaboration. It is necessary to develop a healthy path to the resolution and reconciliation of group conflicts in order to provide either citizens or members of competing groups with political and interpersonal agency. The idea of political friendship is particularly associated with citizenship which is not necessarily a matter of civic duties but a communicative role that values negotiation and reciprocity. It is an excellent relationship to cultivate between members of different cultural and political groups because it is based more on trust than self-interest. Political friendship recognizes self-interest but develops a relationship that rests on equitable self-interest; that is, a relationship where each attends to the utilitarian needs of the other. As Allen (2004) writes, “Equity entails, above all else and as in friendship a habit of attention by which citizens are attuned to the balances and imbalances in what citizens are giving up for each other.” (p. 134). Political friendship is less concerned with intimacy because intimacy is reserved for relatively few relationships that are more absorbing and based on sacrifice and strong identity with the other. But utilitarian political relationships can apply to large numbers of people and is focused on the pragmatics of problem solving or resource gratification. Parent-child, ruler and ruled, or superior- subordinate relationships are not political relationships because they limit the autonomy and agency of one person (the child, ruled, or subordinate) and are based on maximization of differences. In short, the political friendship relationship is central to the problems associated with multicultural contact and the ability of groups to develop their capacities for trust and communication. As Allen (2004) points out, we have to teach people how to “talk to strangers.”

It is necessary to identify some conditions of political friendship. These are habits of communication that facilitate the relationship. They include recognizing and publicly acknowledging groups and their differences as well as promoting deliberative environments and intelligent judgment. Many of these communication behaviors require exceptional sensitivity and tolerance. Recognizing a group, for example, that is less talkative or more remote from Western habits of thinking and either accepting the differences or trying to meld cultural norms is difficult. So minority groups simply need to learn communication skills most associated with success depending on the nature of the dominant culture. Diverse groups must understand their problems as “public” problems. Under the best conditions different groups will have secure knowledge of each other and a similar level of understanding about what is occurring between them.

Posted in Political Conflict

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Tags: Communication strategy, Conflict Resolution, political argument

Dangerously Rigid Political Opinions Can be Changed: Here is One Approach

Jul 8

Posted by Donald Ellis

Extreme opinions are one of the thorniest issues when it comes to trying to solve problems and the necessary “difficult conversations” required. But related to extreme opinions are rigid opinions; that is, those people who hold firm opinions from which they will not waiver. They are convinced that they are correct and will not listen or engage in communication designed to solve problems or result in integrative solutions to.

A recent study in the journal Psychological Science (2013) found that those who hold extremely rigid opinions often support those opinions by the illusion of understanding. These people believe that they understand things better than they actually do. The study examined how much people really understood a particular policy or issue, and the extent to which the rigidity of their opinions contributed to polarization. The authors then predicted that asking subjects in the experiment to explain political issues would make them aware of how poorly they actually understood issues and hence they would subsequently moderate their opinions. We will get to the results of the study in a moment. But first it’s important to say something about extreme opinions and their deleterious effects on the political process. Polarization, or the increased perceived distances between people’s political opinions and the resulting paralysis with respect to problem-solving, is a serious problem.

After Obama was elected president Mitch McConnell in the United States Senate declared that the only agenda for him was to make sure the president did not succeed. If we take this statement seriously it means that this elected official will subject himself to no communication that upsets his belief system. He has made decisions about where he stands and will not subject them to any decision-making processes to the contrary. This is not much different than the religious Muslim or Orthodox Jew who has a comprehensive worldview and will not depart from it.

Rigid opinions are capable of inciting violence. Such opinions are usually accompanied by intense belief that includes emotions and justifies strong reactions. We can see this operating when politicians or religious people use the “politics as a war” metaphor. It codes into the discourse all of the language of war including the fact that your adversary is your “enemy” and he or she must be “vanquished”. So political leaders have enemies lists and incorporate all of the aggressive and clandestine language associated with such lists. Our culture is filled with individuals, journalists, and talk show hosts characterized by combative personalities who are more rigid than extreme.

Throughout the 1980s conservatives made considerable progress by maligning liberals and turning the word “liberal” into a shibboleth used to attack democrats. Again, I’m less concerned about the content of a political opinion that I am its fixed nature. An opinion becomes extreme and dangerous when it cannot be moderated or there is no sense of perspective and proportion. Politics is not warfare; in fact, it is the antidote to warfare. Politics and communication with those who are unlike you is the alternative to warfare. It is the only consequential and morally legitimate means of solving problems and avoiding violence.

So what did the authors of the study referred to above discover? Interestingly, they found that those people with particularly strong opinions were unjustified in their confidence with respect to how thoroughly they actually understood policies. Very simply, they understood policies and political positions considerably less than they thought. When subjects in the experiment were asked to produce what are termed “mechanistic explanations” they were exposed to their ignorance and thereby moderated their opinions. Mechanistic explanations are explanations about how things actually work such as legal positions and social policies. When subjects in the study were simply asked to list the reasons that they supported something they were less likely to be influenced by their own lack of knowledge and did not moderate their positions. The assumption is that asking someone to list the reasons for supporting or not supporting a political position allows them to tap into values and general principles that do not require much knowledge and are more fundamental emotional attachments.

It turns out that educating people about how policies and positions actually work tends to increase their exposure to other perspectives and improves the quality of debate. This is one more weapon in the “difficult conversation” arsenal (to continue the war metaphor) that can serve as a corrective and ameliorate the polarization process. Rigid opinions will not disappear but improving knowledge promises to be an effective unfreezing of attitudes procedure.