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On Opinion
On Opinion episodes
- Collective Consciousness with Sarah Rose Cavanagh“We synchronise together through processes of emotional contagion and social conformity… This helps produce a shared experience of the world.”
Human beings are social creatures. But is this social nature more than just a desire to be connected? Do we actually form one collective consciousness? Are humans more a ‘We’ than an ‘I’?
In her book Hivemind: the New Science of Tribalism in our Divided World, Sarah Rose Cavanagh speaks to biologists, historians and psychologists to explore these questions and better understand our “collective self.”
But what can we learn from the Hivemind? How has it polarised us? How does it impact our sense of ‘Us’ and what does it do to our feelings about ‘Them’? And what has social media done to our social consciousness?
“I think taking our ultra sociality online has led to some group polarisation and this tendency for people with different viewpoints to polarise on opposite ends of the spectrum.”Listen to Sarah Rose and Turi discuss how our sense of self is derived collectively.
- How we experience the world as a collective
- The science that proves Emotional Contagion
- The threat of conspiracy theories to our consensus reality
- The role stories play in our making sense of the world
- Synchrony, and the warm buzz of ‘sharing’
- How stories improve our theory of mind
- Whether our relationships shape our likes and dislikes
- The danger of dehumanisation of our out-groups
- How loneliness affects health
- And what we humans can learn from bees…
Sarah Rose Cavanagh
Sarah Rose Cavanagh is a psychologist, professor, and Associate Director of the D’Amour Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption College. Her research considers the contribution of emotions and emotion regulation to quality of life. She is the author of Hivemind: the New Science of Tribalism in our Divided World.
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Learn all about the Parlia Podcast here.
Meet Turi Munthe: https://www.parlia.com/u/Turi
Learn more about the Parlia project here: https://www.parlia.com/about
And visit us at: https://www.parlia.com
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49 min - Polarisation around the World, with Thomas Carothers“You really do have to do bridge building at the community level. People have to learn to talk to each other across sides”
The Left and the Right today are miles apart. In the past few years, polarisation has become an integral part of our societies. But has it always been this way - is polarisation a natural part of democracy?
Covering the politics of polarisation from Chile through India to Vietnam, via long-standing democracies such as the US and Germany, this week’s guest Thomas Carothers suggests that there are three roots present in every polarised society - religion, race and ideological clashes. But what about societies with no polarisation? According to Thomas, they’re at risk too.
“Too much consensus can lead to a dangerous pressure for alternatives that usually tend to be anti systemic, extreme and dangerous…”Listen to Turi and Thomas discuss:
- Polarisation as a fixture of democracy
- How consensus leads to polarised societies
- Whether there are problems with a lack of polarisation
- The creation of grievance politics
- How Brexit created a different identity polarisation
- Whether polarisation can be a good thing
- How grievance politics differ from Right to Left
- Whether we can manage polarisation
- If the pandemic has made us less polarised
Thomas Carothers
Thomas Carothers is senior vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a leading authority on international support for democracy, human rights, governance, the rule of law, and civil society. He is also the author of Democracies Divided: the global challenges of political polarisation
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Learn all about the Parlia Podcast here.
Meet Turi Munthe: https://www.parlia.com/u/Turi
Learn more about the Parlia project here: https://www.parlia.com/about
And visit us at: https://www.parlia.com
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55 min - Dyadic Morality with Kurt Gray“Dyadic morality is ultimately about the link between perceived harm and immorality…”
Why do we believe murder is “wrong”? Why can’t we compare the effects of a hurricane with the acts of a paedophile? Kurt Gray argues that human morality stems from “harm” - that moral acts have an intentional agent and a victim, and it is this perception of harm caused by one person to another that allows us to define moral evils.
So could this explain political differences? Do we just all have different definitions of harm? In which case, is there a way of reconciling polarised groups by re-examining our own perception of harm and suffering?
“I think one way forward is acknowledging that the other side’s perceptions of harm are legitimate…”Listen to Kurt and Turi discuss how harm is the basis of human morality.
- How intuitionism is actually about harm
- Whether morality requires a perpetrator and a victim
- How dyadic moral theory deals with self-harm
- Why people moralise homosexuality
- The importance of theory of mind in dyadic morality
- God versus Environment
- The moral differences between Liberals and Conservatives
- How people remove moral harm
- Why perceptions of harm creates political polarisation
- Whether recognition of perceptions of harm can bridge the political divide
Works cited include:
- Lawrence Kohlberg and his work on Moral Development
- Jonathan Haidt and his work on Intuition and Pluralism.
Kurt Gray
Dr. Gray is an Associate Professor in Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he directs the Deepest Beliefs Lab and the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor in Organizational Behavior at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC, where he teaches about organizational ethics and team processes.
More on this episode
Learn all about the Parlia Podcast here.
Meet Turi Munthe: https://www.parlia.com/u/Turi
Learn more about the Parlia project here: https://www.parlia.com/about
And visit us at: https://www.parlia.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
44 min - Evolutionary Psychology and Politics with Hector Garcia“A lot of the human behaviour that seems perplexing, irrational (like politics or religion) is often most effectively explained by Evolutionary Psychology”
We evolved to live in hunter-gatherer communities clustered in small units spread sparsely across the landscape. Existentially threatened by outsiders - who brought war as well as germs - humans evolved adaptive psychological behaviours to help negotiate our ancestral environment.
Evolutionary Psychology seeks to understand human psychological behaviour from that adaptive perspective. If we protect our children, fall in love, create social hierarchies - what were the evolutionary reasons to do so?
“Evolutionary psychology allows us to get sighted to our instincts”Listen to Hector and Turi discuss what evolutionary psychology can teach us about our Politics.
- Evolutionary Basis for Conservatism and Liberalism
- The Politics of Sex: why men and women have different political tendencies
- Why there’s a correlation between conservatism and upper-body strength in men
- Why there’s a correlation between liberalism and greater facial expressiveness across both genders
- Simon Baron Cohen’s work on autism and the “essential male brain”
- Why Conservatives are from Mars and Liberals are from Venus
- How we can map our politics across the Big 5 Personality Test
- Why high-testosterone men tend to share less
- The evolutionary basis for Xenophobia and Xenophilia
- Why Conservatives love dominance hierarchies and Liberals spend all their effort trying to pull them down.
- Why Fear is such a big driver for conservatives (who tend to have a larger amygdala than liberals)
- What the difference between Chimps and Bonobos can teach us about the evolution of our politics
- How to explain the manifestation of strong man politicians, like Donald Trump, in evolutionary terms
- The idea of “Evolutionary Mismatch”: that certain types of behaviour today are a useless hold over from our hunter-gatherer ancestry (like a psychological version of the appendix)
- And why the Iroquois had a split leadership system: one for war (led by young men) and one for peace (led by the old and the women).
Works cited include:
- John Hibbing, Kevin B. Smith and John R. Alford and their work on the Biology of Political Differences.
- Sir Simon Baron Cohen and his work on autism.
Hector Garcia
Hector Garcia is Professor in the department of Psychiatry at the University of Texas and a Clinical Psychologist working with veterans. He’s the author of Sex, Power and Partisanship and hosts a YouTube channel discussing those issues.
More on this episode
Learn all about the Parlia Podcast here.
Meet Turi Munthe: https://www.parlia.com/u/Turi
Learn more about the Parlia project here: https://www.parlia.com/about
And visit us at: https://www.parlia.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
47 min - The Problem with MicroAggression, with Regina Rini“Microaggressions are so hard because they typically don’t meet traditional philosophical conceptions of blameworthiness…”
Microaggressions are the latest front in the culture wars - seemingly harmless comments such as “yes, but where are you really from…” or misused pronouns, over time, can cause profound damage to the receiver. But the idea of cautioning an act so seemingly harmless feels like thought-policing.
In her book The Ethics of Microaggression, Regina Rini defines a MicroAggression as “an act or event that is perceived by a member of an oppressed group as possibly but not certainly instantiating oppression.”
There’s a lot to unpack here, and a lot to trigger both Right and Centre, since it tells us the aggression is in the eye of the beholder. Microaggressions can’t be ‘judged’ from the outside, they can only be heard.
To many, that feels intuitively dangerous: old school totalitarianism could see you hauled off for ideas other might suspect you of having; with MicroAggressions, one might be hauled off for ideas someone else could have based on your suspected intent.
Rini explains the philosophical misunderstanding at the heart of the war around microaggression: the huge mismatch between the Harm Felt and the Blame Attributable.
Minute acts of indignity can add up to systemic violence and have profound real-world consequences for their victims, but how do you blame the often unconscious perpetrator for an act so ‘micro’?
Listen to Regina and Turi discuss:
- Why MicroAggressions have become such a cause celebre in the Culture Wars
- MicroAggression and the threat to freedom of speech
- The history of the idea to Chester Pierce in the 1970s.
- The problem of Collective Harm vs Individual Blame
- How the idea of MicroAggression is woven into thinking about systemic inequality.
Works Cited include:
- Derald Wing Sue: Race Talk
- Chester Pierce, who coined the term.
- Jon Haidt and Greg Lukianoff’s The Coddling of the American Mind
Regina Rini
Regina Rini holds the Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Moral and Social Cognition at York University in Toronto. Prior to that, she taught at NYU’s centre of bioethics. She writes a regular philosophy column for the TLS.
More on this episode
Learn all about the Parlia Podcast here.
Meet Turi Munthe: https://www.parlia.com/u/Turi
Learn more about the Parlia project here: https://www.parlia.com/about
And visit us at: https://www.parlia.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
46 min - Saving Liberalism, with Timothy Garton Ash“We need to borrow from both the Left and the Right to achieve a renewal of liberalism…”
As a journalist and political commentator, Timothy Garton Ash took a front row seat watching Eastern Europe open up in the 1990s - the heyday of Liberal expansionism around the world.
Today, faced with populist authoritarians and illiberal democrats at home, and the rise of China's new model of modernity abroad, Liberalism is on the back foot - we're experiencing an "anti-Liberal counter-revolution".
Timothy argues liberalism is to blame for its troubles - over-exporting free-market ideas, under-investing in culture, community and politics in a world of massive, destabilising change. He argues for a "conservative-socialist-Liberalism" - a civic patriotism focused on the common good deeply embedded in national communities.
On the back of his recent manifesto for Liberalism's renewal in Prospect Magazine, listen to Timothy and Turi discuss:
- Whether Liberalism can survive in the 21st Century
- Whether Joe Biden's America can still hope to lead the "free world"
- The demise of liberal ideas in the student body
- Equality of Esteem alongside economic security
- Levelling up vs Levelling down
- Civic Virtue
- Patriotism vs Nationalism
“The nation is just too important, and too strong in its emotional appeal, to be left to the nationalists”
Timothy Garton Ash
Timothy Garton Ash is the author of ten books of political writing or ‘history of the present’ which have charted the transformation of Europe over the last half century. He is Professor of European Studies in the University of Oxford, Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
More on this episode
Learn all about the Parlia Podcast here.
Meet Turi Munthe: https://www.parlia.com/u/Turi
Learn more about the Parlia project here: https://www.parlia.com/about
And visit us at: https://www.parlia.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
43 min - Negotiating with Warlords, with Hichem Khadhraoui
“We have to come to the table, even if it’s just to say we disagree… then you have a chance to move forward”
The number of armed groups created in the last 6 years surpasses the number created since WW2. States themselves have been creating them, globalisation has linked them up, and the population displacement driven by climate change has only exacerbated the problem.
Through his work with Geneva Call, Hichem has worked all over the world - successfully convincing militias in Northern Syrian to not recruit child soldiers, and securing the release of hostages in the DR Congo.
His work is centred around Dialogue - engaging, listening and negotiating. How do you ask a militia leader to commit not to use human shields? How do you ask an armed group to divert some of its resources towards protecting civilians?
The guiding principles used by Geneva Call offer a way to approach dialogue in a polarised world.
Listen to Turi and Hichem discuss the three pillars of constructive dialogue
- Ownership: granting the other side autonomy, and shared ownership of the dialogue.
- Localisation: working with the physical reality of your interlocutor, understanding their community.
- Contextualisation: every community is individual and different - we tend to apply the same rules everywhere irrespective of what is happening on the ground.
Hichem Khadhraoui
Hichem Khadhraoui is Director of Operations at Geneva Call, where he has travelled across the world negotiating with armed groups who violate human rights. Geneva Call works in situations of conflict or violence where armed groups are at risk of violating human rights law and endangering civilians. They have worked everywhere from Colombia (FARC) to the Philippines (with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front).
More on this episode
Learn all about the Parlia Podcast here.
Meet Turi Munthe: https://www.parlia.com/u/Turi
Learn more about the Parlia project here: https://www.parlia.com/about
And visit us at: https://www.parlia.com
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38 min - How Cultures Think, with Julian Baggini
"By gaining greater knowledge of how others think, we can become less certain of the knowledge we think we have, which is always the first step to greater understanding"
It goes without saying that the way we think is embedded in our own time and culture. The same is true even of Philosophers: our 'professional' thinkers.
Julian Baggini's How the World Thinks is an exploration of the world's non-Western philosophical traditions (China, Japan, India, Islam and the oral traditions of Africa and elsewhere) - how they differ, what they can teach us.
Nothing deflates western philosophy's claims to universalism so much as seeing how deeply embedded they are in time and place.
Baggini looks at four epistemological areas across each philosophical tradition:
- How we think we know
- How we understand the workings of the world
- How we understand ourselves in the world
- What we see as the 'Good Life'
From the Confucian ideal of Harmony, the interplay of Falsafa and Kalam in the Islamic world, the Indian principle of Pratyaksa and ideas around Karma in numerous cosmologies, listen to Julian and Turi discuss how very differently we all see the world:
- Truth-seeking vs Way Seeking
- Progress vs Tradition
- Freedom vs Harmony
- Intimacy vs Integrity
And how the way we see the world impacts what we do to it - from the development of empirical science to the rise of capitalism, populism and today's atomised society.
"An insider is like a fish in a fishbowl," said Xu Zhiyuan, "unable to see the exact shape of its surroundings even though those surroundings are perfectly clear to everyone else." Come take a step outside.
Works Cited:
- Derek Parfit, Reason and Persons
- Thomas Kasulis, Intimacy or Integrity
Julian Baggini
Dr. Julian Baggini is a philosopher, journalist and the author of over 20 books about philosophy written for a general audience. He is co-founder of The Philosopher's Magazine and a patron of Humanists UK.
More on this episode
Learn all about the Parlia Podcast here.
Meet Turi Munthe: https://www.parlia.com/u/Turi
Learn more about the Parlia project here: https://www.parlia.com/about
And visit us at: https://www.parlia.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
49 min - Equalitarianism - the fundamental Liberal Bias, with Cory Clark
“In their desire for groups to BE equal, Liberals have a bias towards PERCEIVING groups to be equal… Inequality must therefore always be explained through discrimination and prejudice, rather than evolved or genetic differences”
Turi talks with Dr. Cory Clark about the origins of bias - why it is so ingrained in our thinking, its evolutionary uses, and whether bias (or ‘motivated reasoning’) is equally shared by people on all sides of the political spectrum.
Conservatives have historically got a terrible rap for being anti-science, creationists, climate change deniers… able to ignore objective facts that attack their world views.
Liberals, on the other hand, are the party of empiricism - they are more educated, are more likely to trust experts, and make up the massive majority of scientists and academics themselves…
And there’s the rub. Because at the heart of the Liberal view is a fundamental structuring bias around equality. Liberals so desire to see equality in the world that they are blind to instances of true genetic or evolved differences. This is what Cory Clark calls the ‘Equalitarianism’
Listen to hear Cory and Turi discuss:
- ‘Equalitarianism’, the liberal bias that underpins all others
- Tribalism and its evolutionary advantages
- ‘Ideological Epistemology’ - how we frame our ideas politically
- Liberal Bias in academia
- Whether, despite warping research, Liberal Bias might be a good thing for the world
- Whether there is an evolutionary purpose to our political differences
Works cited include:
- Bo Winegard and his work on Equalitarianism
- Roy Baumeister and his work on wealth creators vs wealth distributors.
Cory Clark
Cory Clark is a Social Psychologist and a Visiting Scholar in Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her primary research interests social cognition, politics, morality and metascience.
More on this episode
Learn all about the Parlia Podcast here.
Meet Turi Munthe: https://www.parlia.com/u/Turi
Learn more about the Parlia project here: https://www.parlia.com/about
And visit us at: https://www.parlia.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
48 min - Why Bias is Rational, with Kevin Dorst“When evidence is ambiguous––when it is hard to know how to interpret it—it can lead rational people to predictably polarize.”
Turi talks with philosopher Kevin Dorst to understand why all our cognitive ‘flaws’ - from confirmation bias and motivated reasoning, through our selective exposure to media, even the prejudice we apply to our analysis of evidence that contradicts our beliefs - should actually be thought of rational behaviour.
Ever since the 1970s, when Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky began working on the cognitive / psychological bases of our logical errors, the idea that humans are profoundly irrational has grown in popularity.
We think to satisfy emotional needs (the need to feel safe, to belong, to feel better than others) as much as epistemic ones (finding out the truth).
So much is certainly true, but - as Kevin explains - it has profound political implications.
When we come to believe that humans are irrational, it is only and always those on the other side whom we accuse of the flaw; never ourselves. And accusing our political opponents of irrationality - accusing them of intellectual corruption and cognitive breakdown - is a step towards demonising them, and a massive accelerant of the polarisation we see across our political landscapes.
Kevin Dorst tells us that story is wrong. Politics and Culture are not maths. The evidence we have for thinking one way or another is always ambiguous. The ways we think about politics and culture are, Kevin tells us, fundamentally rational approaches to Ambiguous Evidence.
Join us to hear how, and why, and what that should mean for the way we engage with those on the other side of the political spectrum.
Listen to Kevin and Turi discuss:
- Ideological Sorting
- Attitude Polarization
- Affective Polarization
- Ambiguous Evidence
- And the pernicious effects of de-rationalising humans
More on this episode
Learn all about the Parlia Podcast here.
Meet Turi Munthe: https://www.parlia.com/u/Turi
Learn more about the Parlia project here: https://www.parlia.com/about
And visit us at: https://www.parlia.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
40 min
About On Opinion
From the publisher's feed
Where do your opinions come from?
Do we ‘think’ our world views, or ‘feel’ them? And what do our beliefs mean for politics and society?
In each episode of On Opinion, Turi Munthe asks…
thought leaders to share their perspectives on why we think what we think and what it means for the world today, discussing everything from the war on truth to how to argue with people you hate.
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