Editor’s note: This commentary is by Wavell Cowan, of Montpelier, a retired pulp and paper research scientist still active as a consultant. He also has been an inventor, entrepreneur and businessman, having founded and operated a number of small businesses to develop and market research ideas.
[O]pinions are of social significance in a democracy. They determine how people vote and are responsible for the issues that attract the attention of political leadership. We all have a wide array of personal opinions. Further we live in a country that encourages the free expression of these opinions as a constitutionally protected right. One gets the sense, however, that many people interpret this constitutional right as meaning that all opinions are equally valid. The greatly increased accessibility to opinions provided by the internet seems to reinforce this perception.
The 20th century philosopher Mortimer Adler suggests that all opinions fall into one or other of only two categories. One concerns matters of taste, the other, matters of truth.
Adler considers matters emanating from the experimental sciences and from mathematics as being unequivocally matters of truth, while such things as preferences in cuisine, dress, artistic and literary works, etc., are unequivocally matters of taste. His expectation is that in the above distinction between matters of truth and matters of taste there would be broad agreement.
However, when it comes to religion, philosophy and politics, he suggests that no such broad agreement would be found. That is, there would be considerable disagreement in these areas of human experience as to what were matters of taste and what were matters of truth. According to Adler, therein lies the source of much of the conflicts and disruptions that have and continue to plague humanity.
For Adler holds that in matters of taste, cultural diversity and cultural tolerance are fundamentally desirable. Here he agrees with the perception that all such opinions are equally valid. However, in matters of truth he suggests there is need for constant dispute, coordinated and cooperative, designed to seek the actual truth from the disputed truth, for in such matters only one of differing opinions can possibly represent the actual truth. That is, all may be wrong, but only one can possibly be right. Thus in matters of truth all opinions cannot be equally valid.
The “truth” of any policy proposal – whether or not it can achieve the outcomes that are assumed – can only be determined after the fact.
Again, according to Adler, it is cultural intolerance in matters of taste, failures to properly distinguish matters of truth from matters of taste, and non-cooperative and uncoordinated dispute in respect to matters of truth, that account for the conflicts and disruptions referred to above.
In general and particularly in the recent presidential campaign, it seems the political opinions of both candidates are expressed as matters of taste, not matters of truth. While this might well apply to disparaging opinions seeking to foster dislike and mistrust, they should presumably not apply to policy ideas.
The “truth” of any policy proposal – whether or not it can achieve the outcomes that are assumed – can only be determined after the fact. As a proposal, its apparent validity can only be assessed relative to competing policy proposals, and then only in respect to probabilities. That is, the weight of perceived evidence is advanced in favor of one over another, but cannot guarantee the success of any particular policy. In effect all proposals are offered as “experiments” with (ideally) the final vote being the majority opinion favoring the one particular experiment perceived to have the best chance (highest probability) of achieving its assumed outcome.
According to Adler, the process through which a decision is to be made – which experiment to run – should be based on constant dispute, “coordinated and cooperative,” designed to seek the actual truth from the disputed truth.
I would suggest that examined from these perspectives, the evidence is pretty conclusive that political debate in general and particularly these days contains little that would suggest a “cooperative and coordinated dispute designed to seek the actual truth from the disputed truth.” Rather it seems clear, judging by the importance to political debate of ideological convictions, that an inability to distinguish matters of truth from matters of taste and act accordingly is pervasive and, as implied by Adler, would seem to be at the very heart of the political conflicts that account for congressional gridlock and the ascendancy of Donald Trump.
