Using Street Epistemology on Social and Political Topics

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Introduction

Street Epistemology is most commonly practiced on supernatural beliefs, yet such beliefs rarely appear in everyday discussions. There is much more room for practicing Street Epistemology on politics, health and lifestyle topics. In this post I've provided ideas to help you apply SE to secular topics and achieve more progress in conversations, in particular how to make ambiguous claims testable and also how to apply SE-style questioning to ethical claims.

Start At The End

Everyone wants to achieve their goals. On the one hand, your success is affected by having an accurate map of reality, and there your epistemology plays a key role. On the other hand, your goals follow from the values you hold dear, and there your ethical system plays a key role. And so we come to two tracks at the very beginning of the dialogue:

Scientific track: The interlocutor (IL) says something clearly contrary to modern scientific understanding, examining IL’s epistemology the classic SE way seems to be a good option. Questions of type “What is really out there?” fall into this category.

The interlocutor (IL) says something clearly contrary to modern scientific understanding, examining IL’s epistemology the classic SE way seems to be a good option. Questions of type “What is really out there?” fall into this category. Ethical track: The IL talks about values, and so you look closer into the value system. Much like a belief, there might be contradictions, fallacies and delusions here worth exploring. Here the questions like “How should it be?” are the most pertinent.

Let’s take LGBTQ+ topic to illustrate. Consider the following statements that might be made by someone opposed to rights for gay families and how you might challenge them:

"Children from gay families suffer from psychological disorders"

"Gay couples are sinful/disgusting, therefore gay marriage should be banned"

In response to the first statement you might take the scientific track, and in response to the second you might take the ethical track. Let's now look more closely at the two tracks.

Scientific Track

We call this the scientific track because it's about testing ideas about the world or what causes something. Although scientists perform rigorous tests and take steps to counteract confirmation bias and other pitfalls, non-scientists also test their ideas about the world all the time. To be clear, we're usually making sloppy tests with sample size 1 and rarely shout "my hypothesis has been falsified!" when it starts raining after having decided not to bring an umbrella, but testing our ideas remains an everyday activity. For this reason, you can take the scientific track with an interlocutor without framing it in scientific jargon like the null hypothesis or falsification, but with appropriate everyday questions.

Techniques you can use in order to tie meaningless claims to reality:

“Does the truth of the claim affect the experiences you do and do not anticipate?”. If a claim does not affect expectations in any way, or the observations are not demonstrable, you might consider reformulating the claim or suggesting your IL to think about utility of such claims;

“How could we distinguish the world where the statement is true from the one where it is false?” is a variation of the question above.

Mind projection fallacy check. People tend to assume others value and perceive the world the same way they do. Such words as success, intelligence, influence, erudition, difficulty, respect, taste etc. are prone to misunderstanding.“What do you mean by that?” question should clarify the subtleties of the terms, and the question: “Can others perceive or value the same thing differently?” invites IL to seek alternative explanations. Also, sometimes the claim is actually not about the outer world, but about inner properties of the brain. “If there is a process in a brain that makes you feel that it is true, would you want to know?” is a question I asked a free will proponent. Giving an example helps, too: “Is there a chance that there is some mind trick behind this, like with white-and-gold or black-and-blue dress?”

Comparison. In science, null hypothesis usually is that there is no difference between two alternatives. Without alternatives stating a null hypotheses might be a trouble. Concerning the LGBTQ+ example, children from gay families should be compared to children from heterosexual families, and the underlying null hypothesis is “Sexual orientation of parents does not predict psychological disorders of children better than chance”.

Reduction. The point of reduction is to substitute the initial question with one or more factual questions accounting for the initial one. Raising contradictions in factual questions may lead to a shift on the confidence scale concerning the initial, regardless of it being objective or subjective. To find out who was a better president, you can ask your IL which means he uses to justify his belief, and maybe suggest to select the most significant from the list of possible factors, such as scientific progress, economic achievements or improvement in other aspects like social welfare or culture. This might be a sequel of the “expected observable consequences” question. I should note that in case IL decides who was better mainly on the basis of liking or disliking, the ethical track is preferable.

Metric. Introducing a measure teleports the discussion to just one step away from resolving the initial question. Continuing with LGBTQ+ example, the appropriate metrics might be frequency, duration or severity of pre-agreed list of disorders.

After you've put the claim into a testable form, you can explore IL’s epistemology the classic SE way. Or you can compile all the work into one final question:

“If you find out that, all else being equal, children have about the same frequency of disorders irrespectively of the sexual orientation of their parents, how would that information affect your confidence?”

Ethical Track

SE primarily focuses on epistemology of claims about what is real or not, but you can take a related approach to addressing claims about what is right or wrong. There are a lot of harmful beliefs in morality worth inducing doubt on, where knowledge of reliabilism is just not enough.

And there consequentialism comes to the rescue. Simply put, consequentialism states that the better the state of the world the action leads to, the better the action is. Comprehensively explained here, I would like to introduce a few ideas from the article and how they can be incorporated in SE dialogue. Note that the text below is a system of intuitions of the author, not an expert judgement.

Strategy

Most common problem I faced is that ILs gave only arguments which supported their own position, for example, death penalty advocates never payed attention to negative consequences. And the question “Do you see any cons in death penalty?” draws IL’s attention to the other side of the problem, which often results in openness and shift on the confidence scale. There are more sophisticated cases where negative consequences have no effect on IL’s confidence, though, so let’s proceed.

How do you know that it’s good?

Some people tend to use ways of justifying a moral belief in contexts where they may be unreliable, or where the quality of decision is crucial and speed is not. Like ways of knowing, e.g. personal experience or testimony in classic SE, these ways of evaluating actions should be questioned:

Affect heuristic. “Gay couples are disgusting, therefore gay marriage should be banned” is the example of how this mental shortcut is used to justify a claim. If one did something on the basis of liking or disliking, does it mean he committed a good thing? Can one use disgust as a way to determine what to do and commit a bad thing? Shame or guilt. If one feels bad after doing something, does it mean he did a bad thing? Warm fuzzies. If one feels good after doing something, does it mean he did a good thing?

Social signaling. Observing a person doing something affects our expectation of him belonging to certain social groups. Some actions affect our confidence stronger than others. In particular, the more improbable the action is, given that the person does not belong to the social group, the bigger the effect is. Buying a diamond is a signal of wealth, because this purchase is not likely otherwise, as diamonds are made a little use of in households. If one did something to prove others he belongs to the social group, does it mean he committed a good thing?

Deontology. “Homosexual behavior breaks divine laws, and is therefore wrong” falls into this category. If an action according to the rule leads to worse consequences than another action, why would you want to follow it? More information on this in the section below.

As you can see, traditional techniques like Outsider Test and Socratic Method can be applied to ways of determining what is good, too.

Deontology

Deontology is often set against consequentialism, as instead of judging an action on the basis of consequences the action leads to, deontology states that the better an action corresponds to a set of rules, the better the action is. The rules may be called “commandments”, “principles”, “rights”, “laws”, “norms”, “standards” etc.

The central problem of deontology is the origin of rules, so don't confuse it with two-level consequentialism, where rules are based on consequences and result from the tradeoff between flexibility and reliability. For example, “Stealing is bad unless one has a good reason for it” will likely lead to a worse state of the world than “Stealing is bad” would. Furthermore, these rules may be overridden, if the proper examination of consequences produces better results.

However, not all rules are consequences-based. Some claim divine origin or an underlying universal metaphysical “Law”, and some are just floating without any non-arbitrary justification. Adherents of pure deontology, free of assessment of any real-world consequences, should be given a chance to perform that assessment themselves and become more aware of the disadvantages of their ethical system.

Noncentral Fallacy

Popular incarnation of deontology is noncentral fallacy, for example, “abortion is murder”. Supposedly, a person saying this keeps in mind the rule “murder is bad”. Abortion might have similarities with murder, and on the basis of these abortion is pronounced bad. The fallacy occurs mainly because of the assumption that all the murders are equally bad. Abortion is not a typical murder, so it might be good to ask: “Is it a typical murder, like a mugger with a gun or maniac with an axe type of murder?”

Also, you might challenge rule with consequences. “Do you think that a woman who had abortion should spend, all else being equal, the same number of years in prison as a murderer?” “Does it mean you expect there would be more positive and less negative consequences, if state passed the law equating abortion and murder?”

Another way to deal with this kind of statement is to ask your IL to reformulate it without using certain words. “These words seem to bear a lot of luggage. Could you please tell me what you mean by that without using words “abortion” and “murder”, so I can better understand what exactly you consider bad?”

Conclusion

Casual conversations provide an excellent opportunity to gain SE experience and to help people revise their beliefs and get closer to the truth. I have shared a few insights on how to approach the discussion of “what there is” and “how it should be”, calling them scientific and ethical tracks respectively. I hope this information will help you enhance your mastery of SE, yielding more meaningful dialogues every day.