For at least four U.S. presidential cycles, those involved and concerned with the American political landscape have lamented the threats to, as well as the loss of, the deliberative democratic spirit. And this is happening at the same time that, as Scott Aiken and Robert Talisse pointed out in The Critique in 2017, “contemporary democracy is deliberative democracy [my emphasis].” So much of what we consume today as news or as political commentary is prefaced upon debate and argumentation among competing sides. Yet those with whom citizens tend to engage in political discussions today are so often only ever the like-minded.
This results in what we term “group polarization,” where people’s positions tend to get more extreme the more ideas are exchanged within groups of like-minded individuals. These exchanges are echo chambers bolstered by social media, where one can tailor her news feeds and engage in discussions with only those for whom she agrees. And what this creates is the phenomenon (in politics) referred to as “epistemic closure.”
Julian Sanchez first used this term in April of 2010 to explain the ideological close-mindedness of the contemporary conservative movement. He described it as a way of seeing the world, as well as a way of seeing the views of those with whom one disagrees:
“Reality is defined by a multimedia array of interconnected and cross-promoting conservative blogs, radio programs, magazines, and of course, Fox News. Whatever conflicts with that reality can be dismissed out of hand because it comes from the liberal media, and is therefore ipso facto not to be trusted. (How do you know they’re liberal? Well, they disagree with the conservative media!).”
So, it is a form of group polarization. Aiken and Talisse, furthermore, see group polarization as deliberation resulting in extremism. But the problem is that these exchanges are not really deliberative in any way.
Instead, the phenomenon of epistemic closure that results from group polarization is a consequence of confirmation bias operating in non-deliberative situations, bolstered by the technological mediation of our communication. This can be understood through Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber’s new evolutionary theory of human reasoning, the Argumentative Theory of Reason (ATR), yet it is not a psychological theory upon which deliberative democratic theorists could place much hope. While Hélène Landemore has argued that the argumentative theory of reasoning provides support for the “discursive, dialogical ideal of democratic deliberation,” the theory still suffers from an impoverished understanding of reasoning in general.
Mercier and Sperber argue that the main function of reason is not to improve individual cognition, but “to devise and evaluate arguments intended to persuade.” According to the ATR, reason has two functions in argumentation. The first function is to find reasons that justify claims to an interlocutor. The second function is to evaluate arguments presented to one by an interlocutor. The purpose of the first function is to convince or persuade the listener, while the purpose of the second function is to analyze the arguments of the interlocutor in order to assess whether it is information that would beneficial for the listener to adopt. So, actual deliberation must be occurring for reasoning to occur in the way that it has evolved to function. In a given argumentative situation, there must be at least two conflicting or inconsistent opinions being argued.
Deliberation, a necessary component of the argumentative context for which reasoning has evolved, will only occur if Person A puts forth opinion a and argues for it while Person B evaluates opinion a, and Person B puts forth conflicting opinion b and argues for it, while Person A evaluates opinion b. This theory, then, takes one of the most notorious ‘flaws’ in human reasoning to be an efficient and effective feature of human cognition. Confirmation bias becomes the key mechanism through which arguments are produced; the intention of such argument production is to persuade an interlocutor. But reasoning also has the function of evaluating reasons for a given claim. When one is tasked with evaluating the argument of another, the function of reason is to decide if an argument is good enough to warrant accepting the claim being argued (or to change one’s mind about something).
So, if the participants are mostly like-minded or hold the same beliefs prior to the public exchange of ideas, then deliberation does not occur. What occurs in this situation is a conversation, or perhaps a discussion. It is not surprising, then, that the group members would strengthen their support of a common opinion or belief. The other phenomenon that develops in this situation is that of overconfidence. While individuals in the discussion continue to discuss the topic, converging in opinion, bolstering the position, confidence in the position will only strengthen. The feeling will be that the ‘debate’ has helped to produce an incontrovertible argument in favor of an almost obvious truth. Epistemic closure, then, is a feature of a group who has so insulated itself from outside or conflicting views that they have created an abnormal condition for reasoning, causing confirmation bias at the group level to create a myside bias and groupthink ideology.
So, the ATR rightly identifies the problem of group polarization as the consequence of confirmation bias functioning in non-deliberative situations. Yet the ATR is not without its problems as an evolutionary theory of reasoning when thinking through contemporary political theories. Specifically, the ATR fails as a theory compatible with the tenets of deliberative democracy, even as proponents of the theory argue for its compatibility with deliberative democracy.
The problem arises when thinking through how interlocutors are “truth-oriented” (or justice-oriented) in a given deliberation. For the ATR, individuals are skilled arguers—skilled arguers not after the truth, however, but after arguments meant to persuade. From the standpoint of evolution, the aim of an arguer according to the ATR is to maintain a positive image within the group.
The production of arguments in moral or political discussions, then, is guided by the intent to persuade rather than by what one considers to be just. Producing arguments has as its goal the persuading and convincing of an audience, not the goal of stating what is actually epistemically valuable. Instead, the goal appears to be primarily one of reputation-building. Nothing precludes good arguers (that is, good persuaders) from arguing strategically rather than veridically.
According to the principles of the theory, the arguer is really only after the truth when evaluating a received argument. One is strategically motivated to improve one’s position within the group when engaged in giving arguments. This is the most problematic aspect of the theory.
Consequently, the ATR advances the notion that strategic rationality motivates the production of arguments in deliberation. Yet Habermas, for example, convincingly argues that strategic action is, in fact, parasitic upon communicative action. The ‘original’ mode of language was oriented towards understanding. Analyzing the linguistic foundations of “reasoning” provides support for the claim that communicative reasoning is the primary mode of language. The argumentative theory of reasoning takes a parasitic mode of reasoning as the sole mode of reasoning, reducing what reason is so much that its complexity is missed, thereby sacrificing any hope of offering a psychological theory capable of providing support for theories of deliberative democracy.
Murray Skees
Murray Skees is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina Beaufort. He specializes in Critical Social Theory as well as the Philosophy of Culture. His most recent publication on data-driven social science can be found here.
