The problem

IMAGINE that you and I are standing next to each other looking out a window onto a square. I say, ‘look, there’s someone standing there.’ You say, ‘what are you talking about? I don’t see anyone.’ We both have normal organs of perception and suffer from no physical or mental impairments. It is important for this thought experiment to exert its full logical force, that we recognize each other as equally trustworthy. In the language of philosophers we are epistemic peers – we recognize the same evidence, we’re equally smart and have the same ability to reason, the same background assumptions – neither of us believes in astrology or ghosts or black magic.

I say, ‘that person, the one right there in front of us.’ You say, ‘but the square is absolutely empty. No one’s there.’ If you and I are both sure this is not some elaborate joke one is playing on the other, then our response may be a moment of unease. You blink and look again, still seeing no one, while I stare at the figure standing in front of me, unsure of something about which I had no doubts a moment ago. What should our proper response be in this situation? Is either of us in a position to assert our rightness? Because in this disagreement there is one fact we can’t get away from: one of us is right and one of us is wrong.

There are other kinds of disagreement without such obvious binaries. You say Balasaraswati gave her first performance when she was seven; I say she gave her first performance when she was fifteen. But it turns out that our disagreement is not really about dates and age, but about what we mean by ‘performance’ – we are using the same term to refer to quite radically different events: dancing in a small temple in a secret ceremony and dancing on a stage in front of an audience.

Or you may say Balasaraswati was a great dancer, and I may say, ‘I don’t think so, Madhuri Dixit is much better.’ This seems to be a matter of taste and the world accepts that in matters of taste, we don’t have to reach agreement – ‘one man’s meat’ and so forth. In mathematics we expect consensus, but not in fashion.

Disagreements can arise for all manner of reasons: one side may not be as smart as the other, and not know as much about the facts of the matter on which they disagree. Or two people may think they have a disagreement, but it may actually be that they have a confusion over concepts and categories and once those are cleared up there is no longer any disagreement. Or self-interest blurs one side’s perceptions on some issue. Or one side suffers from a lack of imagination or a lack of empathy. Or we are arguing over values for which there are no rational basis to decide one way or the other.

The tolerance of disagreement, agreeing to disagree, can be valuable when both sides have the expertise within an area of knowledge to sustain evidence-based disagreement. If one study shows the efficacy of an experimental drug, and the next study doesn’t, it makes sense to suspend judgment and wait to discover further evidence.

The problem is that all evidence, by its very nature, is selective, and therefore assumptions and bias lie at the very root of what we think we know. Even statistics, the sacred cow of evidence, are prone to being misinterpreted, misused or misunderstood.

According to the Jain philosophers, we have seven possible responses to evidence:

yād-asti – in some ways, it is,

syād-nāsti – in some ways, it is not,

syād-asti-nāsti – in some ways, it is, and it is not,

syād-asti-avaktavyah – in some ways, it is, and it is indescribable,

syād-nāsti-avaktavyah – in some ways, it is not, and it is indescribable,

syād-asti-nāsti-avaktavyah – in some ways, it is, it is not, and it is indescribable,

syād-avaktavyah – in some ways, it is indescribable.

To ignore the complexity of reality is to commit the fallacy of dogmatism.

The Jain philosophers used these methods of assessing and arguing to find a way to act in the world. But our moral and ethical beliefs seem to be based on a ‘feeling of rightness’ that arises before the evidence or the rational argument. These pre-theoretical ethical intuitions seem to be built-in, a part of who we are, arising out of the unique circumstances of the society and culture in which we grew up, our particular family situation, our education, our life experience and our human biology. All these factors are not necessarily consistent – the values of the family and the culture could be in conflict with education and life experience for example. Since the position comes first and the rationalization comes later, evidence rarely changes minds. Given this reality, is there any way to decide which of our pre-theoretical ethical intuitions are the right ones?

Disagreements grow into controversies when they rile up a lot of people over some period of time, in accordance with Benford’s law of controversy, which states, ‘Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.’ Once opposing sides are pushed into polarized positions, all nuances are lost and evidence is ignored, distorted, exaggerated or twisted to fit whichever argument one is making. Celebrities and authority figures weigh in with their own motives and less than transparent agendas; then, belonging to the right ‘tribe’ becomes more important than the rationality of the argument. The cognitive dissonance caused by evidence that doesn’t align with ones position can easily be overcome by swatting away those troubling facts, like flies.

To return to the original thought experiment: Richard Feldman, who suggested it, thinks that without further evidence, we should suspend judgment: ‘we each know that something weird is going on, but we have no idea which of us has the problem. Either I am "seeing things" or you are missing something. I would not be reasonable in thinking that the problem is in your head, nor would you be reasonable in thinking that the problem is in mine.’

But this presupposes that we can suspend judgment. The truth of the matter is that if I see someone, I don’t have the choice to unsee the person. My pre-theoretical intuitions are as much a part of me as my eyes, and when I look out at the world I perceive it by their light. I think this thought experiment of looking out on the square and seeing or not seeing someone there best expresses the situation I often find myself in these days in relation to my epistemic peers. I see a man or a woman, and they see no gender; I see a woman succumbing to a misogynistic practice, and they see a woman expressing her freedom to choose; I see a woman expressing consent to sex and they see a woman being raped; I see a beautiful outfit, they see cultural appropriation; I see the abuse of young girls, they see a valuable cultural practice. This creates that queasy feeling, the sense that one of us is right and one of us is wrong, without having the means to decide the argument.

The uncertainty is unsettling, but it also opens up a space for real engagement. If we agree that it is not a sign of irrationality to assess the evidence differently – this is what juries do, after all – expressing disagreement can drive the group towards consensus. What this issue of Seminar attempts to do is to look at some recent controversies, teasing apart issues and evidence without retreating into the comfort of tribe-think. The situations are complex, so it makes sense that there are no simple, wholly coherent answers. We’ve tried, in the words of a friend, ‘to have the courage of our contradictions.’

GITANJALI KOLANAD