Scientific Digital Dualism: A Conversation with Michael Sacasas

In response to my latest post for Cyborgology, Michael Sacasas raises a number of good pointed questions about my proposal. I’ve pulled some of our discussion from the comments section and am posting it here in the form of a dialogue. Though some of what follows will be understandable to those who haven’t read the original piece, much of the discussion will likely be comprehensible only to those who have read the essay that prompted it.

Michael: It does not seem to me that a digital dualist is required, by logical necessity, to conclude that a preference for the online implies a person is somehow damaged or lacking. Unless, of course, by “lacking” you include a lack of information. I may, for instance, have an unhealthy diet because I have never been instructed about the basics of nutrition. This lack of information does not imply any sort of moral inferiority on my part and it is a “lack” that I would hope someone would rectify.

Jesse: This is a good point. I don’t think I disagree, but… I just want to point out that I think you are also beginning to confuse standard conservative digital dualism with conservative scientific digital dualism. The example you use of eating unhealthy food would be analogous to scientific digital dualism, as it has normatively-charged consequences. However, you then attempt to apply this analogy to the matter of preferences to show that there lack of information rather than inherent deficiencies might explain such preferences. But note that preference is the internal link between *standard* digital dualism and conservatism vs. scientific digital dualism. The analogous case regarding preferences would be something more like matters of taste than those of health. And in such cases, it is harder to see how a lack of information could explain away a taste for “unrefined” food. If I derive more enjoyment from buttered noodles than fine French cooking, is there really some piece of information that I am lacking that explains this “gauche” preference? This isn’t meant to detract from/derail your argument. I am just trying to keep things clear.

As an aside, note that there are at least some cases where a lack of information is interpreted as a sign of social inferiority. Consider the person with poor table manners. Such a trait does not represent an inherent deficiency, but, rather, is clearly a lack of information (perhaps the person was “raised by wolves.”) Yet, in such a case, this lack is widely taken as a sign of social inferiority.

You say that the difference between good-faith efforts and conservative digital dualism lies in the realm of motive and ideology. But, you admit, it is difficult to prove intent and the conservative (read: “bad”) digital dualists can always fall back on the defense that they are concerned with health and safety, but somehow you know that this is not “really” the case. In truth, you seem quite certain that this is dissimulation on their part. This strikes me as a form of critical-theoretical McCarthyism. If you decide they are “conservative digital dualist” there is no way for them to prove they are not because any effort to do so will be dismissed as a concealment of their “real” motives which you know (even as you say that you can’t … really, you do).

[T]his seems to be the heart of our disagreement: abstraction aside, how do you judge a particular writer or thinker to be a conservative scientific digital dualist? Unfortunately, I think there is a bit of a dilemma here. On the one hand, you don’t want to malign anyone with non-falsifiable charges. And I would hate to see the concepts I am working to develop used as a cudgel against the well-intentioned. Yet, on the other hand, to avoid the non-falsifiable is to willfully blind oneself to political reality. Consider, for example, scientific racists (e.g., people who continually seek to prove that certain races have lower IQs or other shortcomings). Can such people be charged with racism? That seems like it would be “theoretical McCarthyism” according to you. Of course such individuals will never reveal their true motives, and there is no way to falsify charges of racism. Does that really mean we must refrain from such judgments? Even white supremacists will shy from charges of hierarchy, going to great lengths to emphasize that, no , the are white *nationalists*, not supremacists. Must we take them at their word?

Whether you read Machiavelli or Strauss, Sidgwick or Habermas, the inescapable conclusion is that there is a significant esoteric dimension to politics where underlying beliefs are not explicitly stated and tacitly-held ends are pursued concomitantly with public condemnation of those ends. To truly understand politics, you have to sometimes develop theoretical accounts that aren’t necessarily empirically falsifiable but seem to have enough explanatory power to make the persuasive. More needs to be said on what makes for a good theory, but it seems there is at least an intuitive “I know it when I see it” line that might be further formalized. In the post, I attempt to provide some standards that seem to me to be suggestive of underlying conservatism. I will need to further think through why exactly these standards seem like good ones.

In addition, I would like to suggest that fears of a witch hunt are largely unfounded. I don’t think that there is any reason for thinking that the concept will be abused or misused beyond its intended purposes. I think it unlikely that anyone with good motives will be accused (at least by anyone of standing), though I will certainly revise this position if presented with contradictory evidence. Finally, to be quite frank, if I found myself worried that I might be accused of propping up social hierarchy, I would take that as a sign that I perhaps ought to take a second look at those positions of mine that might create an appearance of such conservatism.

That is a tremendously serious charge, and I, personally, would be remarkably cautious about making it. The McCarthyism that I find implicit in your post is the sense I take that, while you’ve allowed yourself an out, the drift of your post suggests that most scientific digital dualist critics are closet bigots. You have no proof, indeed, you admit that such proof would be difficult to ascertain, but yet you suggest that the link is strong and the tendency is strong enough to suggest, if not establish, guilt.

I would emphasize that there is no proof in the same sense that you could never *prove* any political affiliation, assuming that the person in question refuses to cooperate with an investigation. Recall the white supremacist (“nationalist!) argument from my previous response. If your standard is conclusive proof, then you will be unable to meaningfully discuss a huge portion of political activity. Given this, I contend that, even if embracing non-falsifiable, non-provable charges are the only alternative, this is still preferable to willfully blinding ourselves when it comes to doing meaningful political analysis. I understand why you are harping on this one horn of the dilemma, but I think that if you want to continue to object on these grounds, you need to, at the very least, address the other horn.

Perhaps the relevant analogy here is whether it is better to let 100 guilty people go free than have one innocent one be imprisoned. I take you to be making the theoretical version of this claim. To [be] frank, I think it would be better to be able to contest the forces of the right (apologies if that’s your affiliation) than to stand behind dialectical/discursive standards designed to ensure that no theorist who writes things about technology online has their feelings hurt or is unfairly maligned.

Further, I would note that lack of proof does not make such charges baseless. One must still have reasons for thinking that a person is conservative in her dualism and those reasons are still subject to criticism and refutation. Indeed, I have attempted to present a few criteria that one might hold to be necessary for a charge of conservatism to be plausible. One might argue that these conditions are not sufficiently developed, but this is a problem that is easily correctable. Given this, I think your fear of baseless witchhunts is unfounded.

You also seem to be under the assumption that only “conservative” critics of technology suffer from confirmation-bias or exhibit a lack of scientific rigor.

I think people of all ideological stripes jump on empirical findings that seem to confirm their theoretical views. Being too quick to accept a conclusion is a sign that it is favorable to you and, thus, reflects some underlying ideology. This is why I posit that the embrace of bad science is a marker of conservatism. However, the same could be said of any ideology that has a stake in empirical matters.

Do you include yourself in this description, or less pointedly, are there any critics that are not subject to confirmation bias?

I do include myself and I think that there are very few. I do try to use neutral evaluative criteria for assessing empirical studies, but, at the end of the day, I think that it is extremely difficult to debunk favorable conclusions, not only because you aren’t motivated to search for problems, but also because they simply don’t present themselves as readily to you. Like, when I hear about the latest bit of scientific digital dualism, it often just seems fishy to me and I can often hone in on a particular source of that discomfort and identify potential problems. I think that if I was, say, more conservative in my orientation, I would not be able to do that (though would be able to when it came to anti-dualist studies). Thus, I think there is a mixture of conscious and unconscious bias on all sides that distorts empirical debate. I would suggest that this dialectical arrangement is, in many cases, actually conducive to making intellectual progress. However, it also allows for you to treat empirical beliefs as political/ideological Rorschach tests.

I think Robert Nozick has put this point well, in the context of philosophical investigation:

I do not stop the philosophical reasoning until it leads me where I want to go; then I stop.

This description oversimplifies. In the course of the philosophical quest, the destination gets modified somewhat. Nevertheless, a value criterion is at work. The goal is getting to a place worth being, even though the investigation may change and deepen the idea of worth.

Are other philosophers more dispassionate about the important question? A philosopher’s concerns are exhibited within his work on a topic as well as in selecting that topic. When a philosopher sees that premises he accepts logically imply a conclusion he has rejected until now, he faces a choice: he may accept this conclusion, or reject one of the previously accepted premises, or even postpone the decision about which to do. His choice will depend upon which is greater, the degree of his commitment to the various premises or the degree of his commitment to denying the conclusion. It is implausible that these are independent of how strongly he wants certain things to be true. The various means of control over conclusions explain why so few philosophers publish ones that (continue to) upset them. I do not recall any philosopher reporting in distress that on some fundamental question he is forced to conclude that the truth is awful, worse even than the third best way he would want it. (Did not even Schopenhauer come to relish his conclusions?)

[I]f people of all ideological stripes are prone to confirmation bias, how then can confirmation bias serve as an indicator of conservative scientific digital dualism?

It is not just confirmation bias that acts as an indicator, but, rather, the content of what is being endorsed. As discussed above, the existence of confirmation bias is a necessary condition that must obtain if empirical beliefs to act as Rorschach tests that reveal underlying ideology. If everyone were totally neutral scientists, then a given empirical belief would not provide any insight into their political and normative beliefs. However, given my claim that this is not the case, you can then look at the *content* of what a person believes and make inferences regarding her ideology. For example, if I am a vocally endorse the empirical claim that people of other races have lower IQs on average, that would suggest that I am might be a white supremacist. It is not the confirmation bias, here, that is telling, but rather, the particularities of the empirical claims. I should have made this more clear in the piece.