In a recent IM conversation with my friend Ali we got into a debate about whether more and better reasoning would make society better. Of course if the right people (elected officials) improved their reasoning skills and used them more frequently things would be much improved. However, it is not so clear to me that we would benefit from more reasoning by the common man.

Of course if we magically gave everyone perfect deductive power and the right characters to make use of it society would be perfect. However, I suspect a more modest change, say a grade school program which universally successfully improved reasoning ability and encouraged its use, might actually be harmful. In practice I support such programs as for most people they only improve their after the fact justifications. Suppose though they actually encouraged most people to make their decisions about politics and policy using reason instead of gut reaction. I don’t think the results would be necessarily good. Most people make decisions by first consulting their feelings and prejudices and then justifying that instinct. This tendency can readily be confirmed by asking someone about matters of political concern. Most people are obviously more attached to their position on the issue than any particular justification, often switching form one justification to another when you demolish one but maintaining their ultimate position. It is even sometimes baldly revealed when you ask someone about a position they don’t expect to be challenged, like why are drugs illegal, and they will retreat to an explicit statement of emotional commitment.

If people are to make more use of reason they must learn to suppress such reactions with their intellect. While I would welcome this reaction in some areas (drug laws) it also considerably raises the risk of stupendously bad choices. A small mistake in reasoning can lead to truly awful results if followed through. For instance forgetting to take into account the effects of fear and emotional reaction to disrespect for life might justify ‘putting to sleep’ homeless people. It is quite likely that the life of someone who is mentally disturbed and living outside is on the whole unpleasant making a sudden death into a blessing. However, while a small mistake in reasoning might justify this solution our emotional reaction screams out against it.

Or to put the worry another way our society has developed a long host of prejudices over the years against things like killing people for their own good. However, teaching people to put reason over emotion implicitly encourages skepticism about these prejudices. So while I think more skepticism about our prejudices than we have now is for the better they type of extreme skepticism a society which really made its decisions by way of reason would exhibit might be too much.

We have not yet even touched on the problem of core values. No amount of reasoning ability is going to guarantee people pursue good ends. As it is now most people have wildly inconsistent sets of beliefs. They may both believe the Catholic Church has a special claim to true preaching but also think abortion is a woman’s right. Increased reasoning ability would make people more aware and bothered by these inconsistencies. I fear that much of the current tolerant atmosphere which exists despite religious beliefs to the contrary would be replaced by a large percentage of absolutist religious beliefs.

Of course there would also be an increase in the number of atheists but they are not immune to this danger either. The Objectivists are a perfect example of a group where more devotion to reason has lead them into less reasonable views. Ayn Rand rightly, and very deviously, pointed out the absolutist ends which were consequences of most publicly visible moral theories and used this to lure people into her extreme response. Certainly sufficiently reasoning power would expose her own system as inconsistent but it is unlikely that most of the populace could be elevated beyond this point.

I don’t want to give the impression that I am totally cynical about the common person. I do think they have the ability to reason and think but choose not to use it for very good reasons. Having a little bit of reasoning ability can be a very dangerous thing. I also don’t think the situation is totally hopeless. With certain societal changes, like a replacement of our societal myths and values with something more logical, we could reduce the danger of a bit of reasoning ability. However, as it stands now their are so many important societal elements whose supposed justifications are totally incoherent that people with a small amount of reasoning ability are likely to be radically mislead.