by Zack Beauchamp
Julian Sanchez wrote a neat post on the relationship between political philosophy and one’s political views. You should read the whole thing, but here’s his takeaway:
The point is just that the policy view doesn’t fall straightforwardly out of a set of premises established by rights theory or moral philosophy. Empirical beliefs are doing a lot of work, both for those who accept a libertarian position and those who reject it. Sometimes the philosophical differences would lead people to different policy views even if we agreed on all the facts. But there are many fact patterns where the plausible moral views all (or mostly) converge on a common normative result, even if for different reasons.
This is a good point, but, as Sanchez hints at in the above clip, there’s more to it than that. To properly understand the relationship between political philosophy and people’s political views, we should talk about motivated reasoning.
To bloggily reduce a complicated idea to a sentence, motivated reasoning theory claims that, instead of using reason to get to the truth of the matter, we use it to get to the conclusion we want to reach. For example, if I really want sour cream on my Chipotle burrito, I won’t reason towards the truth on the health impact of sour cream, because that would move me away from my desire to get tasty sour cream. Rather, I’ll convince myself it’s not so bad for me (I exercised today! It has protein!) so I can get what I want.
Our political philosophies define what we want in politics. If we believe in an enforceable right to health care as an extension of our antecedent moral beliefs (be they consequentialist, Rawlsian, or what have you), we want the government to be able to ensure greater access to better health care. If we think people have a right to keep fairly earned money on libertarian grounds, we want the government to respect that person’s right to their money.
But, if motivated reasoning theorists are right, this means that we’ll shape our policy views to match our philosophical commitments. People who believe in a moral right to health care want to accept the claim that the government can effectively provide people with health care, as that would allow the government to be able to bring about the state of affairs they want. People who oppose taxation on moral grounds are more likely to accept supply side arguments that taxation will raise government income so as to eliminate arguments against the outcome their political philosophy inclines them to prefer.
The point, then, is that a person’s philosophical commitments make them more likely to accept empirical conclusions that push them towards the ideal outcome as imagined by their moral views and reject ones they don’t. This suggests that arguments about political philosophy can do more than previously thought to change policy beliefs, especially if Sanchez is right that most people are doing political philosophy “badly.” If that’s the case, exposing contradictions and other logic fails in people’s moral/philosophical beliefs might push them towards revising such views, which in turn could trigger a reevaluation of their policy positions.
Unless, of course, people come to philosophical views based on another, more basic desire (rich people are opposed to taxation because they want their money). Then you’ve just got to hope motivated reasoning can be overcome by plain old truth-seeking reasoning…
The Dish 