On Opinion

In Part 2 of their podcast, Turi and Bob Talisse follow on from their discussion of Equal Citizenship (and why polarization strains that ideal), to discuss Disagreement and how we build democratic ‘Civility’ to make sure disagreement is working for, not against, democracy.

Disagreement is central to the democratic aspiration. Not only does it enshrine the right of individuals to participate in the democratic process, but it is epistemically useful - it helps us discover and articulate new ideas. But how can we argue properly when all our instincts push to defeat the other side rather than build with them?

Bob Talisse explains that we're programmed to argue (a good thing) but that we must remind ourselves to do so within the bounds of 'civility'. Not 'civility' in the 19th Century sense of the term, but rather 'Civic Friendship' - anchoring our argument in the idea that we're all building the same civic project together, that our disagreement is precisely what makes our collective experience so much better.

Listen in to understand:

• Deep Disagreements: the kind of differences no reasoning or logic will ever succeed in bringing together
• How (and why) we privilege winning arguments over learning from them.
• Performance Debating: why we love to argue, and why we’re so bad at differentiating real debate with playing to the gallery.
• Why politicians play to their bases rather than try to convince the other side.
• How we've merged the notion of fact and opinion.
• Civil Discourse: what it means and how we can work to build ‘Civic Friendships’.
• And whether COVID-19 might just bring us back together as societies…

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.

"Democracy is the thesis that a decent and stable political order is possible amongst equal citizens who disagree, but only if that disagreement is made to work in the service of democracy through civility."

In this two-part podcast, Turi and Bob Talisse explain these core ideas of Equal Citizenship, Disagreement and Civility, why they're so fundamental to democracy, and why they're at threat today.

The radical idea of democracy is that a just and stable social order is possible in the absence of political hierarchies: nobody's political participation is worth more than the next person's.

It's not just that government must treat us as equals, but that we ourselves must recognise each other as political equals. If we don't, if we begin to see our political opponents as depraved, as morally or intellectually corrupt, we begin to see them as unfit for democracy. We will seek to exclude them from our common democratic project - we enter a 'Cold Civil War'.

That is the idea of Equal Citizenship, and it is massively under threat from polarization across the world.

Why are we polarized?

• Our societies have become much more diverse (through immigration) just as our local communities have become more homogenous.
• The physical landscape has changed: social and physical mobility has meant liberals and conservatives can congregate around each others geographically.
• Choice has expanded so much with technology that we can self-select for everything: liberals need only read liberal news; conservatives the same.
• Our political identities mean much more to us than they ever have - stepping into the void left by Religion.
• As we personalise our politics, so perforce we dehumanise our political opponents.

Listen to understand:

• why Polarization in democracy is a feature not a bug
• the critical difference between Political Polarization and Belief Polarization
• Lifestyle Politics: politics has suffused our consumer choices
• how to tell someone's politics from the number of maps they have at home
• why everyone is incentivised to play extreme politics today

And why Bob's father, an ardent Republican, had a Union-man as his best friend...

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.

The Mind is embodied - it is a bodily function. What causes it to function in the way that it does. What motivates it?

And here’s the rub. Because the mind has two, often contradictory, reasons for working.

1. Epistemic: we think for knowledge, truth, accuracy.
2. Emotional / Social: we think to reinforce group bonds, gain status, find safety.

This week, Turi talks to Adrian Bardon about Denialism: when the emotional reasons for thinking win out over the epistemic ones. That process is called “motivated reasoning” because our reasoning is motivated by emotional needs. It can be deeply damaging to our understanding of the world, and our capacity to engage with each other.

Together, they discuss how motivated reasoning works, what animates it, and why it has been so useful to us evolutionarily.

They also talk actual politics, and ask why Conservatives have a such a hard time with Man-Made Climate Change, and why Liberals deny the value of nuclear energy.

Listen to hear:

• why all reasoning is motivated
• how Denialism manifests itself in politics and media
• What the core emotional drivers are of our politics and values?
• why the Coronavirus caused such a challenge to Conservatives
• whether we’re happier thinking tribally than thinking rationally
• and how you can treat motivated reasoning in yourself.

Finally, listen to hear what we can do about Climate Change communication.

We don't have time to wait for the science deniers to evolve. How can we avoid an epistemic crisis unleashing an existential one?

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.

Turi talks with the philosopher Nigel Warburton about free speech and its foundational text - John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty (1859).

Today, all sides of the political spectrum decry attacks on their free expression.

Led by Donal Trump, the Right attacks the social networks for expelling them, and mainstream media for spreading lies about them. The Left attacks the systemic inequality of speech - how the white, rich and male dominate column inches. Even the Centrist signatories of the Harpers Letter feel their ability to debate has been shut down by no-platforming and cancel culture.

Nigel Warburton takes us back to the earliest defence of free speech, John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, to discuss what makes it so foundational to our polities and democracies, and why it’s such a tricky notion to define.

Listen to Nigel and Turi discuss:

• the Marketplace of Ideas (and its problems)
• ‘dead dogma’: why ideas need contesting to stay alive
• why ‘civility’ in debate is over-rated
• ‘Epistemic Injustice’ and why some people’s views aren’t taken seriously
• why Mill thought you need a diverse society to build the breeding ground for Genius.
• the Tyranny of the Majority: and why the wrong kind of free speech is so dangerous

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.

Turi talks with Professor Karen Douglas of the University of Kent, to understand where conspiracy theories come from.

Karen has surveyed all the literature on conspiracy theory. She identifies three core drivers behind the instincts of conspiracy believers, in each instance attempting to satisfy a deep psychological need.

1. Epistemic: the need to understand the world around us. Conspiracy theories appear to give us the answers we’re looking for.
2. Existential: the need to feel safe in our environments and feel a sense of control as autonomous humans. Making sense of the world around us allows us to feel we can dominate it.
3. Social: we all want to feel good about ourselves and about the groups that we belong to. If we’re in a group that’s suffering, conspiracy theories allow us to explain that away.

Listen to hear:

• why narcissists make conspiracy believers
• why people with anxious attachment styles tend to conspiracy thinking
• whether conspiracy thinking is evenly split between Left and Right
• how we’re all conspiracy theorists some of the time
• And whether conspiracy theories do, in fact, alleviate the psychological needs of those you seek to believe them

Mpre 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.

"A lot of beliefs that are fundamental to who we are and to how we think about the world are influenced by things that appear to be arbitrary and irrelevant to the truth of the matter.”

Turi talks with Professor Miriam Schoenfield, of the University of Texas at Austin, to understand whether we can have any kind of certainty about the truth of our beliefs.

The children of Jews tend to be Jews, the children of Jains tend to be Jain, those brought up in the liberal agnostic West tend to be liberal agnostics… Much as the children of Liverpool FC supporters tend to support Liverpool. The fundamental philosophical premises of our most cherished beliefs are flawed: we’re conditioned to believe them.

Are we epistemologically stranded?

Listen to hear Miriam and Turi discuss:

• Doubt: “something that simply happens to us, without explanation, fluid and wordless”
• the Gestalt Shift, and how it’s different from just ‘changing your mind’
• Whether Rationalism is itself a belief system
• Whether emotional or spiritual experiences might get us closer to the truth than ‘thought’
• Why agnostics take smaller risks in politics
• And whether we ‘learn’ our feelings, in the same way as we ‘learn’ our beliefs

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.

Turi speaks with Professor Karin Wahl-Jorgensen about how emotion drives the political agenda. What are emotional epochs? Are we all responsible for the growth of "angry populism"? Is it justified? How is social media putting emotion at the heart of the global news agenda? How is collective trauma shaping today's protest movements?

More on this episode

Learn all about the Parlia Podcast here.

Meet Turi Munthe: https://parlia.com/u/Turi

Learn more about Parlia project here: https://parlia.com/about

And visit us at: https://parlia.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"The more intelligent someone is, the more polarized their opinions on climate change become. More intelligent Republicans are actually more likely to be climate change deniers, while more intelligent Democrats are more likely to endorse the scientific consensus. So, at the extremes of intelligence, you really see a big strong divergence of opinion."

Turi talks with science writer and author of The Intelligence Trap, David Robson. What is intelligence? How does it create inequality? Do IQ tests favour the rich? Is intelligence a form of propaganda? What is the growth mindset? Where do rationality and morality intersect?

More on this episode

Learn all about the Parlia Podcast here.

Meet Turi Munthe: https://parlia.com/u/Turi

Learn more about Parlia project here: https://parlia.com/about

And visit us at: https://parlia.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“The struggle [is]...because of some of the ethics and practices of traditional journalism, there's an inclination or habit to quote both sides. Even though there really aren't both sides."

Turi talks to Spaceship Media founder Eve Pearlman about growing media polarisation, fake news and how we can combat the crisis of truth. What is polarisation? How might we overcome it? How does journalism deepen this problem? Is empathy scalable?

More on this episode

Learn all about the Parlia Podcast here.

Meet Turi Munthe: https://parlia.com/u/Turi

Learn more about Parlia project here: https://parlia.com/about

And visit us at: https://parlia.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“You may think that the feeling you're feeling is happening because of you. But in reality that's actually a performance that's being scripted by some very clever search engine in Silicone Valley."

Turi talks to futurist Shumon Basar about how technology is transforming the way we think and feel. What is the extreme present? How has the digital world rewired our experience of time? Are algorithms changing the way we perform emotions? How is that subverting the relationship between humans and our technology?

More on this episode

Learn all about the Parlia Podcast here.

Meet Turi Munthe: https://parlia.com/u/Turi

Learn more about Parlia project here: https://parlia.com/about

And visit us at: https://parlia.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.