Hello everyone and welcome to improve your thinking. I’m your host Kevin Browne and today I want to talk about differences. I want to make two points that may seem to conflict with each other but I think are actually complementary points. First, we are not as different as we think we are from one another. Second, the differences that do exist between us are beneficial, even necessary.
When I teach ethics one of the questions we discuss is: Does everyone have different morals? Nearly every student answers yes. I find this an odd and inaccurate answer. But, even when presented with evidence for the sameness of our moral principles they remain unconvinced and continue to focus on the differences to the exclusion of any focus on our common moral foundation. Inasmuch as this has some pretty important implications for our moral discourse I’d like to consider some possible explanations for this focus on differences. 1. We confuse surface disagreements for deeper disagreements. It’s easy to see disagreements when we discuss such issues as gun control, abortion, euthanasia, and drug legalization. Could those who disagree about these issues really share common moral principles? I think to have the conversation at all, they have to. Take the abortion debate. Both sides care deeply about the issue but are not as clear in their common moral agreement. But, it is there. Both pro-life and pro-choice advocates believe in the moral principle: babies should not be killed for no good reason. I would go so far as to say that everyone agrees with this moral principle. The debate over abortion is not over a fundamental moral principle but rather some important factual questions such as whether the fetus should be classified as a baby. While this may be an oversimplification of the issue I think it remains the case that both sides share much in common when it comes to their fundamental moral principles. 2. We assume that having common moral principles would eliminate all debate. The claim is often made that if we all had the same morals, there would be no debate about such issues as abortion, euthanasia, etc. But, is this true? It is put forward as if it were true but rarely is any evidence provided for this claim. I think it turns out to be false. To illustrate consider an analogy to a simpler example; food. It is a universal human requirement that we need food to survive. But, even though this is a universal agreement, there is a huge variance in what counts as food from one culture to the next. There are even debates about what should and should not be eaten. What explains these differences? The environment is an important factor as well as cultural traditions. But, the point remains that even with a fundamental agreement there are still debates. The same holds true when it comes to morality. As the philosopher James Rachels pointed out, there are several important fundamental moral principles we all share concerning the care of the young, indiscriminate killing, and truth-telling. But, while we all share these fundamental principles we still debate over such things as what counts as proper care for the young, who can and who cannot be killed, and when it is permissible to lie. 3. We don’t want to dig deeper to see common underlying moral principles. It takes work and deep thinking to see the common moral principles that lie beneath the surface disagreements. It also takes a willingness to enter into a thoughtful dialogue. The only way we can really discover the common values we share is to slow down, ask questions, and listen to the answers we get. Ultimately this is a more valuable activity than trading insults and slogans. One activity I encourage my students to engage in comes from a TED talk given by Elizabeth Lesser titled Take the Other to Lunch. In this activity, you sit down with someone who shares a different view regarding some important issue and have a thoughtful conversation. As part of this conversation you ask them to share some of their life experiences and ask them the following questions: What issues deeply concern you? What have you always wanted to ask someone from the “other side?” The idea is not to persuade but to understand. Perhaps if more people tried this they would see the common morality hidden underneath the surface arguments. Another interesting perspective on the question of differences is offered by the research of social psychologist Shalom Schwartz who has concluded that there are not an infinite number of values. In fact, there are only ten: stimulation, hedonism, achievement, power, benevolence, universalism, security, conformity, and self-direction. You can take the Human Values Test and see how you rank these values. Visit IDRlabs.com to see. But, how could there only be ten fundamental values? Aren’t there too many variations to believe that the number of fundamental values is so low? Not really. Of course, there are variations in how researchers have identified and counted values. But, the point is that there is a finite and fairly small number. What accounts for the variation then is how different people prioritize those values. One person might see security and conformity as their highest values whereas someone else might rate achievement and self-direction as their highest values. It’s not that they reject the other values entirely, but that they rate their importance as lower. So, when you are disagreeing with someone on some controversial issue remember that you both probably share many values in common but your disagreement is the result of the differences in how you rank those values. Of course, this won’t completely resolve the disagreement but it does allow for the possibility of communicating and finding common ground. It’s a small step but an important step in the right direction. It’s better than thinking the people who disagree with you have no values at all and are evil. When you adopt this mindset, there is little hope for communicating and coming together. When we see that the differences in our values are differences in degree and not differences of kind, we can also recognize the value in those differences. Without these differences, we succumb to what Matthew Syed calls “collective blindness.?” In his book Rebel Ideas: The Power of Thinking Differently, he offers one of the most compelling arguments for the importance of diversity I have come across. He argues for cognitive diversity by showing that “most of the challenging work today is undertaken in groups for a simple reason: problems are too complex for any one person to tackle alone.” We need the diversity of perspective and thinking that groups offer. But, not just any group will do. If you have a group comprised of people with similar backgrounds, education, and experiences your group is not going to be cognitively diverse enough to really generate the kinds of ideas and solutions needed. In practical terms, think about the groups we often see trying to address social problems. Groups comprised mainly of politicians. But, not politicians from a wide range of backgrounds. Politicians grouped according to allegiance to specific ideas. And, what’s worse, these groups purposely exclude people who value different ideas. These groups sort themselves according to how similar they are in how they rank order values and that virtually ensures that those groups will lack the cognitive diversity required to handle any of the complex problems we face. Recognizing this means recognizing that the idea of working together is not just a nice ideal to aspire to. It is an essential requirement for any hope of success. Of course, there's much more to say on this topic so stay tuned for next week’s episode where I discuss a very insightful new book by Mónica Guzmán that offers some practical tips for bringing people together. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast and visit me online at kevinjbrowne.com. Thank you for listening and I’ll see you on the next episode.
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kevin j. brownePhilosopher | Educator Archives
July 2022
improve your thinking: The course |