How the fallacy of motivism tricks us into demagoguery

[Image from here]

Russell Brand once said: “When I was poor and complained about inequality they said I was bitter; now that I’m rich and I complain about inequality they say I’m a hypocrite. I’m beginning to think they just don’t want to talk about inequality.”

In other words, people dismissed his arguments on the grounds that his arguments were coming from bad motives, simply because they didn’t want to think carefully about his argument.

It isn’t just about people who don’t want to talk about inequality. Just in the last month, I’ve seen people dismiss Pelosi’s reluctance to impeach Trump as motivated by nothing other than her ambition, Pence’s support of Trump as motivated by nothing other than his ambition, skepticism about anti-vax claims attributed to people being in the thrall of Big Pharma, my city’s bike plan for bike lanes as being in the thrall of Big Bikes (not really—I still can’t figure that one out), the scientific consensus about global warming as motivated by sheer greed, people putting plastic bags with dog poop in them into a trash can as being motivated by sheer selfishness. These are all ways of refusing to engage with people who disagree with you by believing, just on the basis that they disagree, that they must be bad people for disagreeing. It’s motivism.

Demagoguery is

a discourse that promises stability, certainty, and escape from the responsibilities of rhetoric through framing public policy in terms of the degree to which and means by which (not whether) the outgroup should be punished for the current problems of the ingroup. Public debate largely concerns three stases: group identity (who is in the ingroup, what signifies outgroup membership, and how loyal rhetors are to the ingroup); need (usually framed in terms of how evil the outgroup is); what level of punishment to enact against the outgroup (restriction of rights to extermination). (Demagoguery and Democracy)

Here’s another way to put that: democracy presumes (and requires) that citizens work to develop informed opinions about our shared policy options. Democracy requires imaginative and reasonable argumentation about policy. Democracy presumes that people really disagree, that no solution is perfect, and that we have to consider policy issues from various perspectives. Demagoguery says we don’t need all that work. It says that we should instead think about politics as a zero-sum battle between us and them. And it’s zero-sum in the sense that, any benefit is a loss for the other side, and any loss is a benefit for the other side. So, we can win just by making them lose.

Demagoguery relies on the belief that there is one right answer to every political issue, and it is obvious to every right-thinking person (sometimes it’s only obvious to the leader in whom we should put all our faith—that’s when it’s cult demagoguery). Demagoguery undermines democracy because it means that the appropriate response to disagreement in a culture is to silence the people who aren’t saying what every right-minded person believes. And they can and should be silenced because their argument has no merit—they aren’t engaged in “good faith argumentation” (explained below). They’re only disagreeing because they’re bad people with bad motives.

“Good faith argumentation” is the term that a lot of scholars use for when people are disagreeing with one another honestly, trying hard to make reasonable (and internally consistent) arguments, listening to one another and representing the others’ views fairly, and are genuinely open to having their minds changed on the issue.

This is a useful concept because it helps you make decisions about whether to argue with a family member over Thanksgiving dinner (is Uncle Fubar willing to engage in good faith argumentation? if not, just change the subject), some rando on the internet (who might be a bot, a hatebot, or a paid troll), your boss (who has weird ideas and might punish you for disagreeing), someone concern-trolling you, or various other people with whom it isn’t worth your time to argue.

So, there’s a difference between deciding that someone is not engaged in good faith argumentation and therefore not worth arguing with because you have clear evidence that they aren’t, and dismissing all significant opposition arguments on the grounds anyone who disagrees with you must have bad motives. That second move is motivism.

And motivism reinforces the way that people there is only one right and simple answer to every complicated issue, and it’s obvious to everyone, explain disagreement. If you believe that, then how do you explain disagreement?

There are two ways: one requires metacognition, and the other doesn’t.

One requires that you think to yourself that you might be wrong, that your position might be right from your perspective, but wrong from other perspectives (and, no, that isn’t relativism[1]), that what is best for you is not best for others—that requires that you think about whether how you’re thinking about this issue is a good way (metacognition). And so you would try to find ways of making and assessing argument to which you will hold all groups, and which you would think a good way of making and assessing argument if an opposition used it (so, if your way of assessing is, “Do I think it’s true,” then you’d have to say that’s a good way for your opposition to assess arguments, and now you’re the relativist).

This way involves perspective-shifting, and listening. It requires that you really try to understand the oppositions’ arguments and why they would seem to make sense to them. Sometimes you discover that their arguments don’t make sense, that you’d reject them if they were in-group arguments, or that they aren’t engaged in good faith argumentation, but you do that on the basis of engaging with the way they’re arguing and imagining them arguing that way for your position.

The other says that anyone who doesn’t see that you’re right (since you can keep looking at the situation and see that you are) must be rejecting the obvious good course of action because of bad motives.

That’s motivism. Motivism is when you refuse to treat opposition arguments as you want your arguments treated on the grounds that their disagreeing means they must have bad motives, and could not possibly be engaged in good faith argumentation.

It’s fine to decide you won’t argue reasonably with someone because you have determined they aren’t engaged in good faith argumentation. But you determine that by how they respond to disagreement. It’s pretty unusual that on the basis of their simply having made a claim you can decide they aren’t engaged in good faith argumentation. [2]

There is, of course, a really simple way to decide if they are: ask if they’re willing to change their mind. At that point, you can decide they aren’t able to engage in good faith argumentation, but they might still have good reasons for their position. You might be the one who is being unreasonable. You can only know if people who disagree with you have good reasons by paying attention to their reasons.

You can only know if a policy argument is terrible by trying to find the smartest arguments for it and seeing if they’re terrible.

But, assuming that simply because someone disagrees with you their position is the consequence of their bad motives means that we can’t argue together. Demagoguery says that the world really is us v. them and anyone who disagrees with you should be silenced, expelled, or exterminated.

And democracy requires that we argue together.

[1] Despite what common media say, there are many kinds of relativism, and the one attributed to “liberals”—that all views are equally valid—is not held by anyone over 14 who is not smoking very bad weed. I only know of two major philosophers who advocated that position (Barbara Herrnstein Smith and Paul Feyerabend), but, since they both argued that people are wrong not to be relativist, that would be the pragmatic fallacy. (That’s the same problem with people who say, “You should never judge anyone,” which is a pretty judgmental thing to say.) Saying that people have genuinely different understandings is not saying that positions are equally valid—it’s saying that many positions other than the one I have are worth being treated just as I want my opinion treated. It isn’t that all positions are equally valid, but that all positions should have the same validity tests applied.

The notion that there is no single position from which the absolute truth is obvious is not an endorsement of any of the kinds of relativism. It’s actually a kind of realism. It is really true that, if you’re a sheep rancher, then you have certain interests, and those interests aren’t the same as someone who wants to redirect your water supply for their cornfield. People really disagree.
[2] But it happens. It happens when you’ve looked at the best sources making that claim, tried to find the best arguments for it, and determined that this claim has never been defended through good faith argumentation.