How can we know if we are being witty? I suppose we could observe our interlocutors. Are they smiling? Some people have grown very rich by speaking in a witty manner. We might say they have grasped something about what it means for one's speech or discourse to be guided by a norm- that which regulates wit or comedy. However even very witty people can violate this norm much to the delight of humorless bastards like myself. Sadly, the truly witty have the nous to turn the tables on us by shrugging their shoulders and saying- 'What? Too soon?'. The notion here is that norms about what is funny and what is in bad taste can be undermined by a meta-norm which insists that everything is funny. Kairos- what is 'timely' or 'untimely' is merely an appearance not an essence.
This suggests that norms regulating speech have an 'intensional' content, they have a complex internal mathematical structure (which may only be known after the 'end of time')- they are not 'extensional' merely- i.e they can't be fully specified with reference to the state of the world. In other words, there is some internal way to assess if the norm holds which external observation can't always confirm. The question is whether this 'intensional' aspect is itself something that can be expressed in a clear and straightforward manner. There is a good reason to doubt this. It is often impossible to say why x is funny but y is in poor taste. There does not seem to be an algorithmic way of ensuring one is always being funny and never being in bad taste. However, from a pragmatic, or common sense, point of view no great scandal is involved in admitting this. We merely say we have a 'mode of experience' such that somethings strike as funny at certain times. There can be considerable overlap with regards to this mode of experience. Thus we can quietly insist- x is funny. It is indeed 'too soon' for it to be in good taste to be funny about y. Witty people may accept such norms if they value providing a particular 'mode of experience' to us or if they profit by doing so.
Jason Stanley takes a different view- at least when it comes to being 'reasonable' rather than being funny-
we must have a better grasp of what is it for a discourse to be guided by a norm. We can think of reasonableness, or theoretical rationality, as ideal deliberative norms guiding discussion. The question at issue is whether the complexity of actual human communication makes such deliberative ideals hopeless or useless.
It may do for some people- just as it would be impossible for me to learn to be witty by reading books on the subject. But others might simply have a knack for it. We often find that one politician is able to present his views in a manner which seems very reasonable, whereas another politician struggles to appear coherent. But this is not the only criteria by which we judge politicians. We may prefer an incoherent communicator whose 'heart is in the right place' to a well-spoken politicians whose intentions or fundamental values we distrust.
What role do norms of public reason have when communication is so often indirect and complex?
This is a strange question. It is like asking- what role does the actor playing Hamlet play in Shakespeare's very complex play of that name?
The most salient examples of shared norms guiding communicative acts are the norms governing speech acts, such as assertion and promising.
But reasonableness may have nothing to do with either.
It is widely agreed that in order for there to be a practice of assertion or promising in a community, there must be a regularity within certain ordinary contexts of speakers taking what Habermas calls an “interpersonal binding and bonding relationship” with their audience.
Again this seems a strange thing to say. It is widely agreed that in order for there to be a practice there must be a practice.
What is Jason asserting? Nothing at all. Why is he doing so? I suppose he thinks we think he has promised to tell us something interesting. But he can't. We feel his motivation is to convince us that an unreasonable view does not violate shared norms of reasonableness.
Different speech acts determine different such relations, which are the norms guiding the relevant speech acts: The binding and bonding relationship into which the speaker is willing to enter with the performance of an illocutionary act signifies a guarantee that, in consequence of her utterance, she will fulfill certain conditions—for example, regard a question as settled when a satisfactory answer is given; drop an assertion when it proves to be false; follow her own advice when finds herself in the same situation as the hearer. . . . Thus, the illocutionary force of an acceptable speech act consists in the fact that it can move a hearer to rely on the speech-act-typical obligations of the speaker.
This is not true. A speech act is perfectly acceptable if it friendly, polite and in good taste. It need have no binding or bonding force. Something more is needed for 'illocution' to obtain. This may be a justiciable matter. But then again it may not. If the other guy tries to hold you to something you said just to be polite you say- 'Sue me!'- meaning 'don't sue me. This is not a justiciable matter. You are a fool for taking a casual remark as some sort of binding promise.'
As Habermas here makes clear, the existence of a speech act in a community depends upon the existence of a regularity in the community, perhaps constrained to a range of regularly encountered and identifiable contexts, in which speakers fulfill the obligations of that speech act. Timothy Williamson makes a similar point when he notes that the speech act of assertion can only exist if there is “at least general sensitivity” to the violation of its governing norm.
But, in that case, there is nothing special about speech acts. There is expected behavior and there is a sensitivity to violations of expectations based on relevant norms. But assertion is irrelevant.
If it is rare for people in a community to be sanctioned for the act of uttering false sentences in utterances of declarative sentences, or (perhaps equivalently) if it is rare for people to live up to the commitment of uttering truths (or known propositions) when using declarative sentences, then we may conclude that there is no speech act of assertion in that community.
No. Rarity does not entail non-existence.
The complexities of communication we have surveyed do not undermine, for example, standard suggestions for norms for assertion.
Yet, where there is great complexity, there may be no unambiguous assertion. Lawyers and administrators are well aware of the special care that is needed in draftsmanship to avoid ambiguity. This often requires complex utterances to be broken down into simpler propositions.
What is asserted is the at-issue content of an utterance. I have argued that propaganda typically affects the not-at-issue content of an utterance.
But that is precisely what a propagandists would argue! When this sort of thing happens we feel a card is being forced upon us. We become wary of our interlocutor.
It enters into the common ground by routes other than assertion.
But does it actually become common ground? If so, perhaps this wasn't propaganda but a case of preaching to the choir.
In fact, this is key to the kinds of demagoguery I have in this chapter discussed; the assertion must express a reasonable at-issue content in order for the act to be effective qua propaganda; propagandists seek to retain reasonableness (or any other deliberative ideal) at the level of assertion, but violate reasonableness at another level.
This is what Jason has done. He tried to persuade us that Newt Gingrich was indulging in Racist propaganda and was called on it by a guy who got in trouble for saying Muslims made him nervous. Tens of millions of Americans watched that interview. Few would have agreed with Jason's dogmatic view in this regard.
... the degree to which a society satisfies a democratic ideal of rationality or reasonableness can be measured by the degree to which those who enter public political discourse commit themselves to following these ideals, and the degree to which those who deviate from it are sanctioned.
This is an unreasonable restriction on entry into public political discourse. One may say 'some people- generally those with an elite education- think a democratic ideal of rationality is satisfied when such and such is the case.' However, no theory of rationality which upholds democracy as an ideal can be committed to this view unless it asserts that 'ideals' can be followed in some sense other than that by which a rule is followed. But if a rule is followed then there is some algorithm which gets us to the preordained result more quickly and cheaply. In other words, rationality militates against indulging in political discourse just to keep up appearances. In a legislature, this may take the form of 'cloture'. In other contexts, a Statistical Bureau may replace deliberative discussion.
Of course, one could argue that 'following an ideal' isn't a matter of following a rule. But if it isn't, what sort of rationality does it represent? Is it something intuitive or non-deterministic? If so and so has really been led to a superior solution, should this fact not be empirically established and made known? This is a person who should be treated as an Oracle! Why submit him to the rough and tumble of public discourse? It is enough to say 'listen to this man! He has some uncanny skill which we lack.'
One might, however, worry, given just the complexity about communication surveyed in this chapter and the pervasiveness of propaganda, that no actual state would count as democratic to any reasonable degree, if norm guidance was like what is at issue in the norms governing speech acts like assertion.
And yet such is the case. There are some statements made to a legislative body which attract heavy sanctions. What matters if there was an intention to materially mislead.
Given the complexity we have discussed, perhaps no deliberative ideal of public reason has ever been strictly adhered to in the passing of any policy in the United States; certainly for the vast majority of policies it has not.
That is generally a mere matter of opinion. But it may be justiciable.
As we have seen from Anderson and Pildes, discussion in the Supreme Court regularly involves the communication of unreasonable social meanings. In contrast, if most utterances of declarative sentences were known to be false by the speaker and never sanctioned, there would be no speech act of assertion. Is there a less demanding model of norm governance available for the task?
The concept of 'expressive harm' could be said to cover lese majeste and other such offenses against the powerful. Why should they not be adapted to cover those in humbler circumstances? I suppose, one answer is the law is a double edged sword. Hard cases make bad laws.
In his book The Public and Its Problems, published in 1927, John Dewey confronts one of the main problems for democracy posed in Walter Lippmann’s book The Phantom Public, published in 1925. Lippmann there argues that there is no public, or at best there is a phantom one. The facts of the division of labor, of geographical location, and so on threaten the idea of an intersection of interests in a large, geographically diverse population. Anything that holds 51 percent of the people together is not a common good, a set of important and valuable common interests, but rather an appeal to emotion, a “call to arms.”
So what? Who are we to say that other people are wrong about what they think is the 'common good'? It may be that even if they are wrong, it is good for the commonweal if people make mistakes in this regard and thus, learning by experience, come to have a better conception of the 'common good'.
There is no interesting notion like that of a public, a democratic community, or a democratic society. Arguing for the common good is arguing for nothing at all.
But that is merely one view of the matter.
The problem Lippmann raises is that if there is no set of interests to be taken as the public’s interests, one cannot choose to be bound by the result of a public deliberative procedure aimed at furthering the common good, that is, the good of the public.
One can choose to be bound by anything one can freely choose. That is the meaning of choice.
But something like this is Dewey’s deliberative ideal. In the face of arguments Dewey admits are cogent in support of the view that there is no public or public interests, Dewey suggests considering the characteristic elements of democracy to be ideals that ought to guide our behavior if we want our society to become more democratic: [Democracy] is an ideal in the only intelligible sense of an ideal: namely, the tendency and movement of some thing which exists carried to its final limit, viewed as completed, perfected.'
The same thing can be said of being witty. Wit is an ideal which may have an 'intensional' or 'intuitive' aspect which can't be fully expressed or defined in language- except perhaps 'at the end of time' when mathematics has surrendered all its secrets. The same may be true of Democratic discourse considered as an ideal. A pragmatic conception of such ideals does not commit us to any particular philosophy of language nor does it suggest that matters could be improved by having any such thing.
Since things do not attain such fulfillment, but are in actuality distracted and interfered with, democracy in this sense is not a fact and never will be. But neither in this sense is there or has there ever been anything which is a community in its full measure, a community unalloyed by alien elements. The idea or ideal of a community presents, however, actual phases of associated life as they are freed from restrictive and disturbing elements, and are contemplated as having attained their limit of development.54 Thus, Dewey suggests that democracy functions as an ideal. Dewey even has a particular suggestion about how these ideals ought to regulate the behavior of an actual society struggling with “the ills of democracy.” When confronted with the daily reminders of the nonrealistic features inherent in the ideals of democracy, we should nevertheless adhere to the ideals, which means trusting our fellow deliberators and abiding by the outcome of the deliberative process. If this is what it is to follow a deliberative ideal, it is possible to follow it despite its persistent failure to match reality. This attitude is aptly described as having faith in the democratic process. That it is so natural to appeal to such language is evocative of John Dewey’s contention “that the cure for the ailments of democracy is more democracy.”
Dewey was quoting Nobel Laureate Jane Addams, generally considered America's first female 'public philosopher'. Her pragmatism called for something more than 'faith' in deliberative processes. Her 'settlement houses' brought people of different classes together. She considered democracy to be inextricably intertwined with the struggle for social justice and international peace. It can't be said that faith in this trinity is 'natural'. US participation in the Second World war is generally considered to have been a democratically arrived at decision.
As we have seen, what Dewey means is that in the face of the fact that “democracy [in the ideal sense] is not a fact and never will be,” we must nevertheless have faith in democratic ideals in our political deliberations. By this, Dewey meant that the ideals should in some sense guide our actions. But in which sense?
I think Dewey's own life- or that of Jane Addams- supplies a useful enough answer. But then pragmatics is concerned with usefulness.
It should be stressed that at one time it seemed natural that Democracies would exclude minorities (perhaps repatriating them or resettling them so they could develop separately) and prevent immigration save from traditional sources. Pragmatism, as a philosophy, had a special value because it could point to evidence of different types of people getting on well and achieving high productivity. Clearly the thing worked even if it didn't correspond to any current 'ideal'.
What Jason is doing is the reverse of 'pragmatic'. He points to situations where people get on perfectly well and says that they ought not to get on well at all. They should be constantly complaining about each other's 'bad ideology' and 'propagandistic' use of words like 'we' and the terrible insults and injury they suffer as a result.
Lara Buchak has usefully provided a characterization of faith,
Really? Will reading her make one stronger in one's Religious faith? If not how is her characterization useful?
which can help us understand more precisely the notion at issue. Her characterization is meant to be perfectly general, by which I mean that it is intended to apply to all the different relations that count as faith: faith between people, faith that a proposition is true, and so on.
What about Faith in God?
A person has faith that X, expressed by A, if and only if that person performs act A when there is some alternative act B such that he strictly prefers A&X to B&X and he strictly prefers B&~X to A&~X, and the person prefers {to commit to A before he examines additional evidence} rather than {to postpone his decision about A until he examines additional evidence}.
This appears to be a characterization of credence or confidence of a decision theoretic type. It has nothing to do with faith- though not doubt an academic writing in a particular sub-discipline may use the term to express some distinction germane to that particular branch of thought.
The fact is one may have Faith even if one considers one's beliefs to be false and one's choice options to be delusive or mischievous.
Let us provisionally say that a process is democratically legitimate if it exemplifies reasonableness or rationality, or comes close enough (this is here irrelevant).
Why bother to do so? Either democracy has itself provided a protocol bound, buck-stopped, juristic procedure to determine such legitimacy or it would be undemocratic to suppose that it is illegitimate by reason of having failed to do so.
To exhibit faith that a process is democratically legitimate, or, in this case, that a process is sufficiently close to the ideal deliberative procedure, is to endorse an action over an alternative action that one would prefer if the process were not democratically legitimate.
This is not the case. One may have faith that democratically legitimate decisions will always correspond to those of God or the Geist or whatever other entity one has faith in. We may say, 'A test of faith in democracy is endorsing an decision one does not like'. However, Democracy may permit you to exit the jurisdiction if you don't like its decision or it may provide you an immunity from that particular action- e.g. an exemption for conscientious objectors from conscription into the Army.
The idea that participation in democratic deliberation requires faith that the process was governed by an ideal of public reason is much weaker than the norms governing speech acts.
Presumably, because ideas are 'weaker' than norms more especially if those ideas take norms as their starting point.
Even if no procedures by which policies are passed in fact exemplify, or come close to exemplifying, the norms of public reason, the measure of a democracy can be taken by the proportion of participants in its deliberations who have faith that the procedures exemplify those ideals (and hence act on that supposition).
Jason's reasoning has led him to a very strange place. Compare what happens when we go to a Town Hall meeting with our experience of attending collective worship. In the former case, everybody may express great skepticism regarding the quality of the deliberations and though a vote is taken and a decision is made nobody seems particularly happy with the outcome. Yet this is a legitimate democratic process. By contrast, deliberations which occur in Church such that all present affirm the same faith and some come forth to testify to the manner in which that faith has transformed their lives, would not be called 'democratic' or secular or political in any sense. Rather it is theological, sacred or wholly religious.
Did Dewey- a man very sensitive to the pragmatic implications of the separation of Church and State- really subscribe to the view Stanley seems to attribute to him? No. Don't be silly. Jason no more understands Dewey than he understands Gingrich. Dewey thought the 'mode of experience' of a faith was something different from faith itself. There could be a common 'mode of experience' without a common faith.
However, the Deweyian conception of norm guidance as faith is too problematic to be adopted.
It does not exist. We may have a mode of experience such that we feel norm guidance is occurring without any further dogmatic or doxastic commitments. Indeed, our beliefs in other respects may be greatly at variance with this 'mode of experience'. But this is enough for a pragmatist to be getting on with.
The problem is that faith in democratic ideals leads us to blindness about their violations.
The reverse may be true. We may have faith in an entity whose evils are invisible to us. However, if we have faith in an ideal then we experience cognitive dissonance when violations occur. I suppose 'hysterical blindness' may be one outcome of this dissonance. But, surely, it is not the most natural, or the most frequent, 'first response'?
To simply assume that policies based on appeal to bias and special interest were democratically legitimate risks overlooking too many concrete instances of injustice.
The opposite is the case. We must assume that 'democratic legitimacy' is no warrant of freedom from bias or the occult workings of vested interests. Indeed, there could be no doctrine of 'separation of powers' save under this stipulation.
This is simply too large a risk to take.
We are speaking of stupidity here- not risk.
One might also reject the demand for ideals to be practically possible in order to be useful. Even practically impossible scientific ideals are nevertheless useful in science. However, this defense of political ideals is tendentious. Scientific ideals, as Kwame Anthony Appiah has argued in unpublished work, are useful because the details from which they abstract are unimportant to our overall picture of the physical world. However, political ideals are not at all like this. The details from which they abstract are concrete instances of social injustice. Scientific ideals abstract from friction; political ideals abstract from the existence of oppressed minorities.
Political ideals may militate for the killing, rather than oppressing, of such minorities. Science does not speak of 'ideals'. Neither does Economics. Talk of ideals, in politics, may prevent the emergence of minorities. It may replace oppression or second class status with deportation. Having a stick to beat majorities with is all very well. But in Democracies, that same stick could be used by the majority to get rid of the minority. This is a dangerous road to go down. A type of propaganda which is meant to undermine the majority may be seized on by that very majority as evidence of radical hostility or a mischievous intent. Democracies have ways of dealing severely with seditious activity. It is foolish to think they can't aggressively eliminate perceived threats.
Still, there are many possible models of norm guidance that are left open. In the face of the complexities we have discussed, perhaps a reasonable way to adhere to ideal deliberative norms, for example, the norm of objectivity, may be to adopt systematic openness to the possibility that one has been unknowingly swayed by bias.
Is Jason willing to really do so? After all, his profession entails exposure to silly people with jejune political views. He may have become biased by reason of having to read worthless dreck produced by woke or virtue signaling cretins as stupid as himself.
If so, the mark of a democratic culture is one in which participants in debates regularly check themselves for bias, and subject their own beliefs and unthinking use of language to the same critical scrutiny as they do the beliefs and utterances of others.
It appears that the Ivy League culture of 'wokeness' fails this test. It is not democratic. It may view itself as 'elitist' or 'progressive'. But its effects have been mischievous. Rather than expanding the scope of Liberty, it invokes the specter of 'Thought Police'.
The question of the practical possibility of deliberative ideals then becomes the question of the practical possibility of such policing.
Authoritarian regimes do have to increasingly concern themselves with the practical possibility of policing what people think or, unthinkingly, say.
Is Jason suggesting that everybody should be constantly monitored by a police-man? No. It is enough if we are constantly reporting each other to some imaginary police-man for various sorts of thought-crimes or brain-farts or other such evil consequences of bad ideology.
It is not just a matter of attending to our own discourse.
Perhaps it should be. If Jason read over what he wrote and anticipated natural objections to his lunacy, perhaps he might one day write something useful.
Since whether or not discourse is propagandistic depends upon flawed ideological belief,
Jason's flawed ideology has led him to see propaganda where there was no propaganda. Yet what he has himself written is propaganda of a self-defeating sort.
the practical possibility of deliberative ideals ultimately rests upon our capacity to be sensitive to the effects of flawed ideologies on our own belief system.
In other words shouting 'mental rape!' any time any guy with a flawed ideology bumps into you and says 'Sorry Ma'am.'
To be clear, I may have 'man-boobs' but I am not a woman. On the other hand, senior South Indian scientists have established that, because of my obesity, I now have my own gravitational field. Thus people who bump into me should condemn Jewish Science- like that of Einstein- or WASP Science- like that of Newton- for an inconvenience to which I am increasingly subject.
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