Facts v. Values, Numbers v. Ideology

Which is more important for a healthy democracy?

We could not be more excited to get back to form with another Wisdom of Crowds Debate. This week we have two very sharp minds—both familiar to Wisdom of Crowds readers.

Osita Nwanevu has written for us several times over the years and — we’re delighted to announce — is joining us as a contributing writer. In addition to his roles at The New Republic and The Guardian, he has a forthcoming book The Right of the People that makes a new case for democracy.

Oliver Traldi is a philosopher whose new book, Political Beliefs: A Philosophical Introduction, deals with the sources of political opinions. Traldi is a frequent guest on Wisdom of Crowds whose last essay was “Do You Know What You Want?”

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” So goes the famous quip by the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. But that line, while true, only tells half the story. Facts must be interpreted. How do we interpret them? According to what standards? And how should we form sound political opinions? Should we lean on ideology to do so?

In the debate below, Oliver argues that empirical facts are an essential part of all political ideas and alliances, whereas Osita prefers to see ideology as an important, if imperfect, organizing principle in a democracy.

Oliver starts us off with the first letter. Let the argument begin!

— Santiago Ramos, Executive Editor

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Dear Osita,

You and I both like democracy, and we both want to push back against the theoretical challenges it’s faced in recent years. But I think there are three places where we disagree: first, regarding the nature of politics and how we can rationally draw political conclusions; second, regarding ideological coherence and whether positions “go together”; and third, regarding political parties and how they affect political beliefs.

For you, the most central political judgments are judgments about what’s right and wrong, or at least about what’s right and wrong for us. So you aren’t quite at home in the debate between epistocrats and epistemic democrats, both of whom worry about how to produce the best empirical judgments.

But we can’t resolve most concrete ought questions without knowing how things stand when it comes to what is. We may value peace, but without understanding geopolitics we won’t know which policy is most likely to afford us peace. We may value freedom, but without understanding how one kind of freedom affects another we won’t know which policy is most likely to maximize freedom for all. Hating violence, for instance, we might be tempted to ban violent video games, but if those games act as a “safety valve” for people’s violent instincts, giving them an outlet to blow off steam, that ban could lead to more actual violence.

Next, ideology. For ideology to be a good explanation of people’s political beliefs, we don’t just need there to be some ideological story that could in theory undergird some combination of their views. We need the story to undergird plenty of their views, and we need it not to be the case that there are alternate stories that could undergird alternate configurations of views. Mere non-contradiction is not enough to avoid the charge that ideological stories are post hoc. And explaining political beliefs that don’t cohere with their bearers’ purported ideology in terms of material interests or moral values raises more questions than it answers. Why are some political beliefs determined by ideology, some by moral instinct, and some by material interest? And why does this happen in the patterns we see and not in other patterns?

Thinking about empirical judgments – not our stances on political issues, but the beliefs about the world that support those stances – really drives this point home. How are our empirical political judgments related to one another? One way is by playing on the same kinds of tropes or heuristics. Another is by being propagated by the same sources, like media outlets or political parties or figureheads. This is the sort of thing that worries epistemic democrats like me: those sources are basically doing people’s thinking for them, undermining the wisdom of the crowd.

Trusting and allying oneself with one or another kind of source is part of a larger project of political self-branding which many Americans undertake. This project goes far beyond our beliefs — it affects where we live, what coffee shops we frequent, what cars we drive, what music we listen to, what television we watch, and so on. Once we note the massive correlations between these ranges of activities, political beliefs, and partisan alignment, it is hard not to think that there must be some sociological explanation that can give us insight into all of them at once — an explanation from political parties and political identities.

Sincerely,

Oliver Traldi

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Dear Oliver,

I think there’s something to the epistemic line of thought. But many, if not most of the questions we turn to politics to resolve are not simple questions of fact. On geopolitics, for instance, the reality is that people starting from different normative premises can look at the same information on, say, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and come to different conclusions about how we ought to respond. “If we value peace,” as you write, certain facts might be particularly relevant. But whether and how much we should value peace to begin with is not a matter that facts alone can resolve, which is my point. And we can make reasoned judgments about certain policy questions without making use of factual information at all. 

I’m just not sure it’s true that, as you write, “we can’t resolve most concrete ought questions without knowing how things stand when it comes to what is.” On some of the most highly contested social issues of our time ⁠— abortion, the death penalty, gay marriage, guns, and the like ⁠— it is of course entirely possible to come to one’s stances solely on the basis of certain ideas about the meaning and value of human freedom, the intrinsic value of life and where it comes from, and so on. Data may bear upon matters of relevance to each issue, but you do not intrinsically need empirical information to come to a reasoned opinion on whether governments should be able to kill convicts or whether people of the same sex should be able to marry.  

On those and other matters, we often consult ideology instead ⁠— largely because the prevailing ideologies in the United States today, progressivism and conservatism, do offer us the resources to make sense of plenty of the issues facing us. As you suggest, I’m not especially troubled by this, even granting that much ideological reasoning may be post hoc, though I’m not prepared to say how much. The epistemic ideal seems to be a world in which we each independently make judgments about political questions on the basis of hard empirical information, without being substantially swayed by our peers, the media, or other potentially distorting influences.  I do not find this world plausible. We cannot make fully informed judgments about very many political issues on our own; even to the extent that we are “informed,” it is almost never through independent, unmediated access to information. Influences creep in from without and shape even the thinking of experts as they try to make sense of the facts; inevitably, ideologies take root.  

“Why,” you ask, “are some political beliefs determined by ideology, some by moral instinct, and some by material interest?” I don’t think it’s even possible to disentangle the three; ideologies emerge at the confluence of other forces. But they also shape those other forces in turn. This is why I think ideologies help sustain democracy on balance. They organize politics. Economic interests, social identities, the machinations of political parties, familial ties, religion, geography — it would be incredibly difficult to galvanize political action and govern absent ideology with all of these forces cacophonously at work. Ideologies are glue ⁠— they bring people from different backgrounds together and they can encourage people to think conceptually rather than fixating upon their own narrow interests.

And even when ideological beliefs are shaped by those interests, they force political actors to address themselves to principle. It will not do, in a world where ideology has weight, to say merely that this or that policy will benefit you in particular even if it’s true ⁠— you have to make a case to a wider political community and make appeals to higher ideas. And when the kind of post hoc reasoning you allude to is at work ⁠— when we furnish explanations for why disconnected beliefs are actually connected or adopt new ideological beliefs to fit in with our peers ⁠— that kind of reasoning is often critical to the success of coalitional politics. Even if I only care about x, I may come to understand that x will never happen unless I join together with people who believe in y and z and find a way to make a compelling political case for all three. I think this is fine and perhaps even democratically vital.  

Sincerely,

Osita Nwavenu

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Dear Osita,

In theory I’d agree that one can come to a political stance with no empirical information or rational inference whatsoever. David Hume wrote that reason is merely the slave of the passions, and if your passion is simply to pass a certain bill, regardless of its content or effect, then maybe that value – whether it’s moral or merely a kind of interest – is enough. But in real-world politics this is rarely the case.

For example, the number of innocent deaths is relevant to many people’s support for, or opposition to, the death penalty; few people think of “convicts” (to use your word) as a somehow essential, value-laden category. Similarly, people’s impressions of rates of gun violence and accidental shootings affect their opinions about gun rights, and people’s impressions of what fetuses in the womb can feel and perceive affect their opinions about abortion. Many debates about such topics revolve around these empirical sub-questions. 

You say that we “consult ideology” and that it helps us “make sense of plenty of the issues facing us.” However, not every ideology can help us to make sense of an issue in the absence of empirical information. It depends on the ideology. Imagine an ideology that includes this premise: “A man should be able to keep his family safe.” Surely the actual effect of gun ownership on safety is relevant to determining whether this premise militates in favor of or against gun rights. Or how about this premise: “America should tend to her own interests and not try to police foreign conflicts.” Surely one must know what America’s actual interests abroad are in order to be able to judge the application of this premise to foreign policy. 

Some aspects of your defense of ideology confuse me. For instance, you write that “we cannot make fully informed judgments about very many political issues on our own.” But I don’t know why full information is necessary or even desirable for our political judgments, and ideologies — which you allow are tied up with things like “economic interests, social identities, the machinations of political parties, familial ties, religion, geography” — don’t seem to “fully inform” us either, at least not in an objective sense of “information.” In fact, your invocation of an ideal of “full information” does seem to rely on an epistemic democratic ideal of just the sort that I think you want to disavow here. 

Of course, you’re right that organization is part of and necessary for political action. (It’s so necessary that “organizer” is the job title of many people who oversee political efforts.) However, ideological organization and party-line platforms are not the only type of political organization. I’m not an expert on how to get things done in politics, but I think many successful political efforts come from transactional, coalitional, or “big-tent” approaches. In a coalitional system, it’s much more obvious that political beliefs needn’t hang together logically, as though you could write out a logical deduction from one political stance to the next as a math class nodded along attentively. A party seeking to gain power by forming a coalition might need to decide form an alliance with the rivals who agree with them about issue A but disagree with them about issue B, rather than the ones who agree with them about issue B but disagree with them about issue A. 

The good news for people like me is that, in fact, the things that look like ideologies and doctrines are in fact often merely forgetful coalitions which will break apart before long, once different political issues are emphasized or new opportunities arise for different coalitions. What you call “cacophony” is to me the most beautiful part of politics. The alternative is the bland harmony of false conformity, the elevator music of thought. 

Oliver

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Dear Oliver,

Again, while empirical facts obviously bear upon political questions, I don’t know that it makes sense to assume that people generally need them to make political judgments ⁠— even sound ones on particular questions. I refer to the idea of being “fully informed” not because I think we can, or should, hold ourselves to that standard. Rather, I think that if we significantly reduce the influence ideology holds over our political thinking, then we will become more dependent on empirical information than seems plausible or necessary for a democracy. Without ideology, ordinary citizens would have to know not only much more about policy than they presently do, but much more than I think they realistically could.

Even I, as a leftist paid to actively follow and write about politics and policy, cannot tell you exactly how much Amazon made last quarter, or the exact number of people in my own state who lack health insurance. That information would be useful to me in certain respects; research on the efficacy of policy interventions is important to my work. But the human mind is not and cannot be a mere repository for white papers and statistics. With the limited time, attention, and agency we have as political actors, we need philosophical principles and frameworks ⁠— ideologies ⁠— to guide us through political debates and help us make sense of political outcomes. We may turn to certain facts to help us ascertain whether a particular piece of legislation will work to a particular end, yes. But facts alone cannot tell us what ends to desire in the first place or even give us evaluative standards for new policies and the status quo that are normatively neutral.

For instance, it’s been estimated — though we can’t get basic agreement on even this — that there are around 70,000 lawful defensive uses of guns in the United States every year, not counting victims of simple assault, commercial crimes, or trespassing. Even if one inflates that number a good deal to account for the missing cases, ⁠defensive uses are outweighed so massively by gun violence and crime, both numerically and ethically (to my mind), that I think the figure only justifies strict regulations on gun ownership all the more. But it is a certainty that many people politically to my right would look at the exact same number and read it as meaningful and significant enough to justify weakening regulations on guns and broadening access to them. Are they wrong? That depends substantially on one’s ideology ⁠⁠— more specifically, on how one thinks about personal autonomy. And there’s no answer key in a textbook somewhere that can tell us empirically how to define it, how to protect it, and how much to value it relative to the externalities it can incur.

People will disagree bitterly about what the facts mean and what to do about them even when they’re laid out plainly on the table. And I think democracy is fundamentally about working through or resolving those disagreements in fair and equitable ways. Coalitional politics are a critical part of that, obviously; as I wrote, I think ideologies play a significant role in building and sustaining political alliances. “In a coalitional system,” you write, “it’s much more obvious that political beliefs needn’t hang together logically.” They needn’t, but I’d argue that they often do and that the tradeoffs coalitions are willing to make will be strongly influenced by their ideological principles as a practical matter. Factions on the left and the right may have points of agreement on trade policy, but the extent to which they’re in sync on most other issues will determine how broadly and durably they can work together with each other, if at all.

There are already places in our politics where ideology is mostly an afterthought. In the deeply Democratic cities where I’ve lived, the transactions of local politics are more shaped by economic interests, demographics, social identities, political careerism, and familial ties than political philosophy. (As interesting as all that might sound to those of us who study politics closely, I’d submit to you that the politics of cities like Baltimore and Chicago are not beautiful, actually.) And while voters in municipal elections are asked to attend to the facts of given policies far more directly than they are in national politics, the fact that one might have the opportunity to cast a vote on a bond issue obscures the extent to which matters of local politics can be functionally impenetrable for the average voter, which facilitates the dominance of the wealthy and special interests ⁠— those with the time and resources not only to read white papers on specific policy matters, but to have them written on their behalf.

All told, I doubt we can actually escape ideology, and it’s not obvious to me what’s intrinsically better about a less ideological politics. Rather than wishing it away, I think we’re better off trying to understand how ideology shapes political discourse and thought, while appreciating its role in making politics accessible to more people, at varying levels of informedness ⁠— its role, in other words, in making democracy more democratic.

Osita

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