Rationalization

On NPR just now there's a novelist discussing his new novel. The main character is a reporter, reporting on "sex tours", who intends to remain detached, but ends up participating in the tours himself.

Terry Gross reads several excerpts from the novel of the different justifications that the men on the tour give for their participation. One considers how many different services are considered legitimate: we pay people to carry our things, clean our houses, massage our bodies; so why the special standard for sex? (presumably the gentleman in question thinks there isn't an important difference). Another considers the argument that it's dangerous for women and reasons that there are lots of risky jobs in society: is being a sex worker riskier than being a police officer or fireman?

At this point the novelist said something that set me off; he said that this illustrates the problem with "words". He claimed that your moral sense has to be deeper than, beyond "words", because words can lead you astray (as they did his main character).

Let's re-phrase what he really seems to be saying: Often our reasons (those "words") are really rationalizations, and we can too-easily convince ourselves with spurious arguments. If your "moral compass" is immune to such reasoning, you can escape the danger of rationalizing.

This is perfectly true, but neglects the equally compelling danger of the alternative: having a moral sense that isn't sensitive to reason means you can never check whether your moral compass makes any sense. If rationalizing is pretending you don't see, dogmatism is never looking in the first place.

I don't want to overstate people's (myself included) ability to correctly reason--I think all evidence is that it's pretty poor. But I think it's the only weapon we've got. The danger of rationalizing isn't that we've done too much reasoning; the problem is that we haven't done enough. Rationalizations, if such they are, shouldn't be able to withstand closer scrutiny. The problem is that we stop as soon as we get to an answer we like and don't look at them as closely as we really should.

I don't see many good practical prospects for improving our situation. How do you compel people to consider more deeply? The problem is even worse than it may seem, since there are a lot of people who admittedly continue to do things they've judged that they shouldn't. These, perhaps, are the more honest among us who recognize they won't change, but at least don't try to rationalize their choices. What's to be done?

I have no idea, but I do know that a promising way to deal with individual weakness is through the social bonds formed in groups; there are plenty of "keep-each-other-strong" organizations in other areas; so why not these? Religious groups are particularly well-positioned to do this since they already have the infrastructure in place, so to speak.

The foundation of such a group would be a collective recognition that no one probably knows the truth about things, and our best shot at figuring anything out is through challenging, though respectful, dialogue and that everyone needs help to become who they wish they were.