Why do people believe the election was rigged, refuse to wear face masks, suspect vaccines are a government plot, or vote for politicians who will cut social services they rely on?
Here is one popular answer. Because they are “dumb hicks”: “childish, stupid people” who “hate facts” or “can’t tell fact from fiction.”
This view has become extremely popular (and controversial in philosophy). Mainstream discussions of psychology and behavioral economics emphasize our irrationality. Google Ngram (which graphs the frequency of words in print over time) confirms that, regardless of whether we live in the age of stupidity, we certainly live in the age of calling people stupid:
And we usually think that it is people who disagree with us who have these cognitive shotcomings. A 2019 PEW Research Center report found that 38% of Democrats think that Republicans are less intelligent than other Americans, and 36% of Republicans think the same of Democrats:
I understand why this way of viewing others is popular. It is a satisfying view to take when feeling frustrated by failures to persuade others or hurt by their offensive views. If you just spent a family Zoom call arguing with your uncle that the election was not rigged, and getting nowhere, it might be easier to decide he is beyond the reach of reason. This protects you from thinking that the problem is that you are bad at persuasion. Similarly, if you’re an immigrant faced with an angry xenophobic tirade, trying to engage in reasoned debate about immigration policy is probably not the first thing on your mind.
Though it is appealing to take others to be stupid and irrational, I am convinced we should resist this impulse. As a woman, it has not been an unusual experience for others to assume this of me, leading to dispiriting, alienating, and deeply demoralizing effects. More generally, sexist and other prejudicial stereotypes often play a role in viewing others in these ways, suggesting that we ought to be suspicious of this stance.
This suspicion is bolstered by recent work in social epistemology, feminist philosophy, and political philosophy. With the help of such work, we can see why thinking that others are stupid and irrational should be a last resort, not a get-out-of-jail card for difficult conversations with those who disagree with us.
Conversations matter
As the philosophical tradition of deliberative democracy emphasizes, we should not always want to get out of such difficult conversations.
First, we won’t change others’ minds without talking to them. And, though people will rarely admit to being wrong while you are talking with them, being exposed to other views tends to have some effect. For example, a 2020 large-scale study of political advertising found that such ads reliably lead to (small) changes in opinion.
And arguments are much better than short ads. Reading a single op-ed has noticeable, and durable, effects on the views of readers. And when people change their minds through arguments, those changes of mind usually stick.
Arguments can work even on extremist beliefs. Megan Phelps-Roper left the Westboro Baptist Church (a cult famous for picketing funerals with signs with kindly messages like “God Hates Fags”) as the result of civil conversations on Twitter—of all places! In her TED Talk on leaving the church, she emphasized the importance of arguments: “As kind as my friends on Twitter were, if they hadn’t actually made their arguments, it would’ve been so much harder for me to see the world in a different way.”
Of course, she didn’t change her mind as the result of a single good argument made by a stranger. That took years of forming trusting relationships and having difficult conversations. Still, arguments and reasons played a crucial role.
Even if we don’t change minds, talking with people we disagree with is important. Conversations across political divides have been shown to lead to a better understanding of different points of view and of the reasons for them and to increase tolerance and empathy—which, as philosopher Michael Hannon has argued, are crucial in a well-functioning democracy.
Thinking that the person you’re talking with is stupid and irrational is a pretty big barrier to productive dialogue. Think back to the last time someone talked down to you. Did you find them persuasive? Did you feel inclined to agree with them? Or did you, instead, decide you didn’t want to talk with them and feel an urge to prove them wrong?
I expect you were in the latter camp. If you can tell that someone thinks poorly of you, you are likely to dislike and mistrust them. Once trust has been replaced with suspicion, it will be hard to have productive conversations going forward. At the extreme, we get what philosopher Thi Nguyen calls “echo chambers,” where people come to distrust all who disagree with them and, as a consequence, dismiss their claims.
We see this dynamic play out in communication about vaccines (among other controversies). There are understandable reasons to be suspicious of the medical establishment: for example, it has medicalized conditions that are not diseases (like homosexuality), used Black people as experimental guinea pigs, and prescribed harmful treatments. As philosopher Maya Goldenberg has recently argued, such suspicion—not stupidity and irrationality—often lies behind vaccine hesitancy.
Treating people who have doubts about vaccines as stupid and irrational does not repair their trust. It further alienates them. And, without trust, communication will fail. We don’t believe those we don’t trust, and we don’t trust those who treat us like idiots.
How we think of others matters
Taking others to be stupid and irrational is not only a problem because it keeps us from having valuable conversations. It is morally and politically hazardous on its own.
How would you feel if you were to find out that your friends, mentors, and family all think that you are stupid and irrational? I expect you would feel deeply hurt and expect an apology or explanation.
And you would be right to feel this way. As philosopher Rima Basu has argued, we wrong others in having disrespectful beliefs about them, at least in the absence of a lot of strong evidence for those disrespectful beliefs. Thinking that others are stupid and irrational based on disagreement is a case in point: it is a disrespectful belief formed on the basis of scant evidence.
Further, we often hold this view of others on a prejudicial basis. Common stereotypes about women, Black people, the working class, and people with mental illness (among other groups) encourage us to think of members of these groups as stupid or irrational. In turn, thinking of them in these ways contributes to their oppression. Such cases constitute what philosophers call “epistemic injustice,” injustice we do to others in their capacity as knowers.
For example, the suffragettes were often depicted as hysterical. They were taken to be profoundly irrational, whiny cry-babies not to reason with, but to literally force-feed into compliance. This was undoubtedly the result of sexist stereotypes. And it served to discredit their claims without the need for argument.
Holding that others are stupid and irrational has been a tool of the elite to keep their place at the top of the social pyramid. In other words, it is a part of what Sally Haslanger and other critical theorists call “ideology”: sets of meanings, beliefs, and practices that help perpetuate unjust social structures. This view of others justifies a status quo in which certain groups (such as women) are powerless. If those groups are stupid and irrational, political decision-making—and academic research and cultural production—is best left to the powerful.
Is thinking of our political opponents as stupid and irrational the result of prejudice? And does it entrench unjust social hierarchies? I think there is a serious risk of both.
We are much more likely to end up thinking of our opponents in these ways when encouraged by existing stereotypes. For example, classist images are part of the reason why it is so easy to think of working-class white Republicans as “dumb hicks.” Similarly, sexist stereotypes are undoubtedly behind how we think of anti-vaxxers as hysterical. And, in thinking in these ways, we are entrenching classist and sexist social hierarchies.
What’s the alternative?
At the other extreme from assuming that others are stupid and irrational are people like Daryl Davis, a Black musician who has made it his life’s work to persuade KKK members to become less racist. Davis sought to understand the sources of their views, enmeshing himself in their community and engaging in conversation with an attitude of curiosity and the belief that the evidence he brought could lead them to abandon their extreme racist beliefs. And he often succeeded.
We do not all need to be Daryl Davis. His actions demand a level of generosity that it would be unreasonable to expect of the average person—much less of members of marginalized groups, who are in the line of fire for disrespect, aggression, and hate speech.
What we ought to do is replace the reflex of taking those who disagree with us to be stupid and irrational, with the assumption that they are responsive to reasons, much like we think we are.
This is compatible with recognizing, as psychology shows, that people’s thinking is—in our case as in theirs—shaped by social position, identity, values, and affiliations. The fact that these factors play a role does not mean that we are unable to change our minds in response to evidence. As the example of Megan Phelps-Roper illustrates, though it is hard to change people’s minds on topics that are central to their identity and way of life, it is not impossible.
A first step is engaging deeply with others’ values and perspectives—which involves thinking there is more behind their views than stupidity and irrationality. In the face of a lifetime of experiencing and witnessing virulent racism, Daryl Davis could have concluded that “there’s some people who are just like that.” Instead, he sought to understand “What does ‘just like that’ mean? Where does that come from?” He listened to KKK members, asked questions, took notes, and came to understand where their views came from—using that knowledge to then dispel their views.
Of course, there is no guarantee that we will succeed. Talking with others might show that our values radically differ or that they have a vicious moral character. Frustrating and upsetting as that may be, at least we come to a better understanding of why others think the way they do. In contrast, if you just take others to be stupid and irrational, you have no chance to discover what really lies behind the disagreement.
Recent work in social epistemology, feminist philosophy, and political philosophy illuminates what is wrong with the reflex of assuming others’ stupidity and irrationality. To be successful interlocutors (especially in the context of discussions of social and political topics), we should approach others under the assumption that they have understandable (though perhaps not good) reasons for their views. We should also presume that, with enough effort and sensitivity on our part, others can adjust their views in the light of new reasons. And we should only shift to the view that our disagreement is due to their stupidity and irrationality when, after putting in real effort, we can’t find another explanation for their views.
This stance has special resonance in the light of feminist concerns. It is important if we want to avoid looking at others in prejudicial ways or committing epistemic injustices. Adopting it is a way of taking up a stance against ideological tools that have historically, and are to this day, used to put women and other marginalized groups “in their place.”
If we don’t take up this kind of charitable stance, we risk ending up smugly condescending and isolated, unable to see beyond our own perspectives.
Acknowledgments: Thanks to Ian Olasov, Julinna Oxley, Elise Woodard for helpful comments. Thanks to the Social Epistemology Network for literature recommendations. Thanks to Teresa Marques for bringing the case of Daryl Davis to my attention.
The Women in Philosophy series publishes posts on women in the history of philosophy, posts on issues of concern to women in the field of philosophy, and posts that put philosophy to work to address issues of concern to women in the wider world. If you are interested in writing for the series, please contact the Series Editor Adriel M. Trott or Associate Editor Julinna Oxley.
Carolina Flores
Carolina is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at UC Santa Cruz. She works at the intersection of philosophy of mind, epistemology, and social philosophy.
I’m surprised that I still do not see any comments on this piece. APA philosophers have nothing to say about it? So I will offer one:
A friend sent me a video that might be worth examining in light of these remarks:
(Tucker Carlson: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) – YouTube). And while I long considered myself a “progressive” (it seemed to mean something a little different back then, however), I cringe at some of the ways John Oliver presents his own “argument” against Tucker, even as I share some of his concerns about some of the positions Tucker takes (and regard his 25-year-old public appearances as eye-opening, to say the least).
Oliver unabashedly “puts words in his mouth,” apparently thinking it’s OK to do that because Tucker is so good at not-quite-saying but IMPLYING what he actually means, getting across his racist, white-supremacist viewpoint without having to put it in so many words. To be fair, there are many points at which Tucker does the same sort of thing, misreading or over-interpreting what his “leftist” opponents are saying. But is this the level of discussion we should be having, in our fast-fraying democracy? Oliver criticizes Tucker for “just asking questions,” insisting on being given the definitions of some of the terms that get bandied about, and “trying to get his viewers to understand where the demonstrators [on Jan 6] were coming from.” These are apparently just seemingly Tucker’s tactics for getting across his white supremacist message, covertly. But if we can no longer “ask questions,” request clear definitions, or make an attempt to “understand” where our ideological opponents are coming from (as the author of this post, diverging from Oliver’s view, seems to be urging us to do), then hoping to find “common ground” that will bring these two rapidly diverging “realities” back together again would seem a vain hope indeed.
To give an example somewhat closer to my heart as an environmental philosopher, I would like to quote several long passages from one of my favorite fiction writers, one I would put right up there with Michael Connelly and Lee Child in the genre of “suspense, thriller or mystery,” C J Box. This is from Savage Run (2002), his second Joe Pickett novel, Joe Pickett being a Wyoming game warden. John Coble, an old-timer who had been involved with a group trying to kill people they viewed as radical environmentalists, says to Stewie Woods, one of his targets, whom he had just decided not to kill:
“Our job seemed right at first. It seemed like the only way left to strike back. You people threatened our way of thinking and our way of life. All you environmentalists just showed up one day and told us that everything we’ve done for years was now wrong, and that everyone living in the West was a stupid ignorant criminal.
“You people expect everyone out here to suddenly give up the only jobs they’ve ever known in mines and the fields . . . and the forests. Somehow, all of us are expected to get jobs working out of our homes with computers . . . That’s all you’ve offered up as an alternative, you know. Like lumberjacks and cowboys can just change over to being software programmers.
“. . . None of you know or appreciate how tough and raggedly-assed it used to be in this country. Hell, a hundred and forty years ago this was still a wilderness out here . . . The last thing anybody ever thought of was that they were ruining the earth. Hell, we all thought the earth was ruining us.”
“. . . You people want to stop us from doing everything we know. You do it just so that if you ever want to travel out here from the East in your new car, you might be able to see a wolf out of the window. You’re trying to make our home a real-life theme park for environmental whackos. . . .”
Now, Joe Pickett might seem a strange hero for someone like me to have, seeing as how he’s up to his elbows in animal blood every day of hunting season. But Joe’s a strongly, if strugglingly, moral man, enforcing the game laws while caring about what happens to species and to experiencing individuals, human and nonhuman alike; he struggles with anthropocentrism, as Box obviously does, and I recommend the series (his latest is Dark Sky) as a way toward a better understanding of what BOTH people who have known only the down-to-earth “reality” described by John Coble, and what people with serious environmental and animal-protectionist goals (people who do NOT do what they do just so they can post “seeing a wolf out the car window” one day), are up against. Unfortunately, there ARE real changes taking place in our “environment” that are going to challenge the beliefs that all of us grew up taking for granted. We need to get our separate “realities” to converge again, and one way to do it might be, instead of whipping up group emotions by hurling charges of “racism” (and other sorts of group-isms) back and forth, by spending some time attending to what by far the majority of us have been assuming, wrongly–that we are entitled to continue our takeover of the Earth indefinitely, simply by virtue of our HUMAN supremacy.
The author writes….
“What we ought to do is replace the reflex of taking those who disagree with us to be stupid and irrational, with the assumption that they are responsive to reasons, much like we think we are.”
While this is a noble and constructive suggestion which can be applauded for it’s positive tone, there is regrettably ample evidence that the human race is not really all that responsive to reason. We learn more from pain it seems.
The next time you’re in traffic observe how many people are tailgating. That is, risking everything for nothing. And that’s not a particular group of folks, but almost everybody.
For a more important example, we might recall how in the recent presidential election neither candidates nor journalists gave more than the very briefest mention to nuclear weapons, the single biggest threat to our national survival. And this lack of interest took place in a process where we selected a single human being to have sole authority over use of the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
Sorry to say this, but philosophers are no different. Don’t take my word for it. Search this blog, any philosophy blog, for yourself. How many articles on nuclear weapons do you find?
In my view, philosophers are very intelligent, well educated, and articulate. But like the rest of humanity, not fundamentally rational. I would include myself in this claim, given that I’ve already made these points many times, to no effect. And yet I keep doing it. Very human, but not very rational.
Hi Phil–I’m glad you’re willing to take part in this conversation. My response is this:
You say ” . . . there is regrettably ample evidence that the human race is not really all that responsive to reason.” Yes, there seems to be lots of evidence to that effect–but maybe part of the problem (especially for philosophers to consider) is the meaning of “being responsive to reason”—how is “reason” understood within our culture? Unfortunately, the Western mindset (reinforced by the underlying philosophy) generally understands “reason” to mean taking a reductionistic approach to most everything it considers (examples here: not only your view that “nuclear weapons [are] the single biggest threat to our national survival”–in this dawning Anthropocene epoch, there are many, many threats to our species’ survival, of which nuclear weapons are one—but also, and even more narrowly abstracted from the “big picture,” that which you are criticizing, the “lack of interest” on the part of both journalists and candidates regarding the threat from nuclear weapons, as well as the threats from climate change, destabilization of terrestrial and marine food webs, our hugely growing and unsustainably over-consuming global population, etc). There is no holistic grasp of the “precarity” of our lives today, rather a very narrow focus on the topic-of-the-day driven by social media (and yes, by our largely irrational social psychology) as well as—continuously—on the money game that effectively draws our collective attention away from seeing the myriad actual, not-simply-socially-constructed threats that we face. Will philosophers ever attempt to remedy this situation by getting through to the rest of humanity how much we would be empowered should we come to fully recognize the constructedness of “economics,” thereby realizing our ability to change the game, to “see through” it and understand how it differs from the planetary reality its directives are leading us to do such great harm to? And while we’re at it, of course, we could also point out the constructedness of our ideas about “race” and all our other ways of subgrouping ourselves, in order to “see through” these labels that so divide us to the fact that we humans are all members of one biological species—and one that badly needs to come to grips with its proper place within the Biosphere.
Repose to Women In Philosophy – “Are They All Stupid and Irrational” by Carolina Flores 3/24/21
Thank you Carolina. Important stuff – especially as our democracy teeters. I would like to add that, in my opinion there are also some fundamental truths that support your view.
While this view may be philosophically debatable, I take it as fundamental that no sentient being accurately and completely apprehends what is commonly referred to as “reality”, or, what I refer to as “what’s-out-there”. What all sentient beings act on is not what’s-out-there, but rather their own idiosyncratic neuronic patterns of what’s-out-there. But actions are constructive only to the extent that they are compatible with what’s-out-there.
In our human view, even on the basic physical level, what’s-out-there is not fully understood. Even move so on the societal level. So to ensure that social actions are in fact compatible with what’s out-there, it is imperative that we consider disparate “truths”, and attempt to base our actions on a composite, and thus less idiosyncratic, understanding. So viewing opposing views as crazy or stupid so they can be ignored, is irrational.
Unfortunately, being intellectually open to opposing views is only a necessary condition for constructive discourse. Most human communication has an emotional as well as an intellectual impact on a receiver’s neurotic system. So before even a semblance of intellectual discourse can take place, some level of empathy and trust must be established. Even then, communicators need to take care that the rational content of their messages is not short circuited by emotional triggers.