Good Faith and Bad Logic
In a struggle to decide how to plough into Monday's lesson on confronting intellectual difference to my English classes, I followed a string of YouTube videos explaining Sartre's mauvais fois, "bona fides," and other angles into bad faith and bad faith argumentation (which are clearly related, but not necessarily the same thing). I also came across this blog article on bad faith reasoning and masculinity.
A long time ago, I wrote a series of difficult articles talking through the Young Women Values (part of the youth education program in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when I was a teenager). In that series I described Integrity as more than simple fiscal honesty, as presenting ourselves in realistic ways and unifying our internal identity and our external presentation of ourselves. If you forget that I'm talking about character virtues, it starts to sound a lot like trying to act in Good Faith.
It also sounds a lot like this article by Michael Austin. But Dr. Austin has a clear motive: to convince people to be better humans. Rebecca suggested that my post might also be for similar reasons: namely, to convince people who argue in bad faith to abandon their evil ways. But I can't do that. Frankly, it's a consequence of their "unassailable" stance that no one can. We're taught by scripture to want that perfect faith, that "knowing" of things. In 3 Nephi 7, for instance, we hear one of the prophets Nephi described.
15 And it came to pass that Nephi—having been visited by angels and also the voice of the Lord, therefore having seen angels, and being eye-witness, and having had power given unto him that he might know concerning the ministry of Christ,[. . .]began to testify, boldly, repentance and remission of sins through faith on the Lord Jesus Christ.
17 [. . .] And Nephi did minister with power and with great authority.
We want that kind of power and authority, don't we? We want that unshakable faith? And sometimes, aren't we even capable of feeling like if our faith isn't that unshakable, that we're unworthy or not truly one of Jesus's disciples? We're Israelites in the wilderness, building golden idols everywhere. Don't the scriptures say (specifically, Revelation 3:16)"16 So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." And doesn't that mean that we are either in or out? And somehow we think that we can bluff our way into heaven: if we testify boldly enough, if we propound dogmatically, then we'll convince ourselves, after we've convinced everyone else and seen the truth in the admiration of their eyes.
This is bad faith. And my aversion to dogmatism is also why I, very controversially, sometimes insist that it might be better for some people to let their faith journey take them away from the gospel. Because that is sometimes how we manifest good faith. If you use the church's Articles of Faith, then give Article 11 a reread. It emphasizes the dictates of conscience, and I don't think that's just a turn of phrase. I think that the unity of the self is a faintly echoing valence of Jesus's admonition that "if ye are not one, ye are not mine."
Is it possible to bluff our way into righteousness? Frankly, yes. I think that there are many possible paths to the Tree which is the Love of God. But mendacity or bad faith (the former is conscious, the latter is a lie to ourselves, too) must be overcome first. Remember that relationship triangle, where as long as any two people move toward God, they also come closer to each-other? I think that can work with parts of ourselves, too. (This is a complicated conceit that could be unpacked into an entirely new post, so I'll leave it as a loose end for now.) But like any path back, it isn't for everyone. I personally don't recommend it for anyone, because I think that acting in good faith is a much surer way, and a much more promising start.
So far, I've mainly addressed mauvais foi a la Sartre. He proponed good faith for the sake of real freedom: to acknowledge our choices and to be self-aware enough to understand why we make them. Freedom comes from that kind of integrity. But what about bad faith arguments? That brings us back to the idea of dogma.
Many people, possibly motivated by a sincere desire to do the right thing, think that that necessarily means being right in how they think and converse, and so they strive always for a position so correct that it is unassailable: for a constitution so perfect, like a purse that's always full, that it continues to guide perfectly regardless of any changing circumstances. It's objectivism pushed to such an extreme that it becomes relativistic. In this life, any unassailable position is ultimately not a matter of building a foundation on perfect facts, but on understanding that whatever reality framework you build your hopes and actions on is ultimately subject to archaeological excavation. This ideological house you live in? It was built on a graveyard. They moved the headstones, but not the bodies.
Being ready to move when the creepy clown doll attacks, being adaptable, is not the same as being "children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive" as described in Ephesians 4:14. How easy would it be to accuse progressive thinkers in this way - convinced by every new "fact" to come out of science - and to defend conservative thinkers for holding fast to what they "know" is true, even after it has been proven wrong? Terry Pratchett (probably paraphrasing somebody else) once said, “The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it" (Diggers).
How to we decide if we're being teachable, or just too easily moved? I don't know, and I don't think you do, either, but I'm willing to talk about it and listen to your ideas. I feel like this topic is important and I want to have conversations with people about it, to maybe get some new insights into how to do this better myself, but this is the internet and the ratio of good-faith to bad-faith rhetors is devastating. So many people act like abused spouses when you bring up difficult topics, and maybe that's not far from their experience. Trolls are different than bad-faith rhetors (if we're going with Sartre's definition), so even people who have themselves completely fooled might be flinching back from truly toxic interactions.
Right now, we just make the best decisions we can with the information we have and believe in. There's no point perfectly bisecting the line between two opinions where truth is stashed either. There's no algorithm for this. It's a damned mess, and the things you believe that are true and the things you believe that are false are so intertwined that they have three generations of children by now, so don't be too sure of the truth of something you believe simply because you believe it, no matter how strong your belief is or how well convinced you are of your own rationality. The only way to argue in good faith is to believe in and openly acknowledge your own fallibility. Until we can all do that, conversations are going to be the worst, especially if you understand that if a conversation has a loser, it's definitely the person jumping around with his boxing gloves in the air.
A long time ago, I wrote a series of difficult articles talking through the Young Women Values (part of the youth education program in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when I was a teenager). In that series I described Integrity as more than simple fiscal honesty, as presenting ourselves in realistic ways and unifying our internal identity and our external presentation of ourselves. If you forget that I'm talking about character virtues, it starts to sound a lot like trying to act in Good Faith.
It also sounds a lot like this article by Michael Austin. But Dr. Austin has a clear motive: to convince people to be better humans. Rebecca suggested that my post might also be for similar reasons: namely, to convince people who argue in bad faith to abandon their evil ways. But I can't do that. Frankly, it's a consequence of their "unassailable" stance that no one can. We're taught by scripture to want that perfect faith, that "knowing" of things. In 3 Nephi 7, for instance, we hear one of the prophets Nephi described.
15 And it came to pass that Nephi—having been visited by angels and also the voice of the Lord, therefore having seen angels, and being eye-witness, and having had power given unto him that he might know concerning the ministry of Christ,[. . .]began to testify, boldly, repentance and remission of sins through faith on the Lord Jesus Christ.
17 [. . .] And Nephi did minister with power and with great authority.
We want that kind of power and authority, don't we? We want that unshakable faith? And sometimes, aren't we even capable of feeling like if our faith isn't that unshakable, that we're unworthy or not truly one of Jesus's disciples? We're Israelites in the wilderness, building golden idols everywhere. Don't the scriptures say (specifically, Revelation 3:16)"16 So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." And doesn't that mean that we are either in or out? And somehow we think that we can bluff our way into heaven: if we testify boldly enough, if we propound dogmatically, then we'll convince ourselves, after we've convinced everyone else and seen the truth in the admiration of their eyes.
This is bad faith. And my aversion to dogmatism is also why I, very controversially, sometimes insist that it might be better for some people to let their faith journey take them away from the gospel. Because that is sometimes how we manifest good faith. If you use the church's Articles of Faith, then give Article 11 a reread. It emphasizes the dictates of conscience, and I don't think that's just a turn of phrase. I think that the unity of the self is a faintly echoing valence of Jesus's admonition that "if ye are not one, ye are not mine."
Is it possible to bluff our way into righteousness? Frankly, yes. I think that there are many possible paths to the Tree which is the Love of God. But mendacity or bad faith (the former is conscious, the latter is a lie to ourselves, too) must be overcome first. Remember that relationship triangle, where as long as any two people move toward God, they also come closer to each-other? I think that can work with parts of ourselves, too. (This is a complicated conceit that could be unpacked into an entirely new post, so I'll leave it as a loose end for now.) But like any path back, it isn't for everyone. I personally don't recommend it for anyone, because I think that acting in good faith is a much surer way, and a much more promising start.
So far, I've mainly addressed mauvais foi a la Sartre. He proponed good faith for the sake of real freedom: to acknowledge our choices and to be self-aware enough to understand why we make them. Freedom comes from that kind of integrity. But what about bad faith arguments? That brings us back to the idea of dogma.
Many people, possibly motivated by a sincere desire to do the right thing, think that that necessarily means being right in how they think and converse, and so they strive always for a position so correct that it is unassailable: for a constitution so perfect, like a purse that's always full, that it continues to guide perfectly regardless of any changing circumstances. It's objectivism pushed to such an extreme that it becomes relativistic. In this life, any unassailable position is ultimately not a matter of building a foundation on perfect facts, but on understanding that whatever reality framework you build your hopes and actions on is ultimately subject to archaeological excavation. This ideological house you live in? It was built on a graveyard. They moved the headstones, but not the bodies.
Being ready to move when the creepy clown doll attacks, being adaptable, is not the same as being "children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive" as described in Ephesians 4:14. How easy would it be to accuse progressive thinkers in this way - convinced by every new "fact" to come out of science - and to defend conservative thinkers for holding fast to what they "know" is true, even after it has been proven wrong? Terry Pratchett (probably paraphrasing somebody else) once said, “The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it" (Diggers).
How to we decide if we're being teachable, or just too easily moved? I don't know, and I don't think you do, either, but I'm willing to talk about it and listen to your ideas. I feel like this topic is important and I want to have conversations with people about it, to maybe get some new insights into how to do this better myself, but this is the internet and the ratio of good-faith to bad-faith rhetors is devastating. So many people act like abused spouses when you bring up difficult topics, and maybe that's not far from their experience. Trolls are different than bad-faith rhetors (if we're going with Sartre's definition), so even people who have themselves completely fooled might be flinching back from truly toxic interactions.
Right now, we just make the best decisions we can with the information we have and believe in. There's no point perfectly bisecting the line between two opinions where truth is stashed either. There's no algorithm for this. It's a damned mess, and the things you believe that are true and the things you believe that are false are so intertwined that they have three generations of children by now, so don't be too sure of the truth of something you believe simply because you believe it, no matter how strong your belief is or how well convinced you are of your own rationality. The only way to argue in good faith is to believe in and openly acknowledge your own fallibility. Until we can all do that, conversations are going to be the worst, especially if you understand that if a conversation has a loser, it's definitely the person jumping around with his boxing gloves in the air.
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