Kindly Inquisitors, a Gentle Interrogation
Q: Jonathan Rauch’s Kindly Inquisitors is against cancel culture, and against punishing hate speech—sounds interesting. Tell me about it.
A: It’s more broadly a defense of what Rauch calls “liberal science.” Liberal science “uses intellectual resources efficiently, it settles differences of opinion peacefully, and it inherently blocks the political manipulation of knowledge.” The alternatives don’t, or don’t do those things as well. Liberal science therefore is the way to go. But freedom of expression is part of liberal science, so hate speech (etc) must be permitted.
listed it as “required reading” for free speech 101.Q: You’ve told me what liberal science “does” but not how it does it, or what it is.
A: One foundational principle of liberal science, Rauch says, is “the skeptical rule”:
No one gets the final say: you may claim that a statement is established as knowledge only if it can be debunked, in principle, and only insofar as it withstands attempts to debunk it.
Q: Okay, so if knowledge requires “attempted debunkings,” and (Rauch says this elsewhere) if knowledge requires criticism, and encounters with opposing ideas, then, since speech restrictions work against such encounters, they, what, make it harder to know stuff? And since knowledge is good, we shouldn’t restrict speech?
A: I think that’s it.
Q: So I see a path from the skeptical rule, to freedom of expression. But is the skeptical rule true? What arguments or evidence does Rauch offer for it?
A: He’s not really trying to argue for it. In fact he says that it is “impossible to show that ... the skeptical rule ... is ‘true’ in any grand or final sense.”
Q: I’d be happy if he showed it to be true-without-quotes, in a non-final sense. What do those qualifications mean?
A: I’m not sure. But surely the principle is plausible on its face. Untested hypotheses aren’t knowledge! How much defense does it really need?
Q: I think it’s false.
A: Wait, what?
Q: So, ancients who believed the sun went round the earth didn’t know the sun went around the earth, because falsehoods can’t be known: truth is a condition on knowledge. But it’s not the only one. If I believe you have one hundred twenty-five books in your house, and my belief is true, but I was just guessing, I still lack knowledge. So what are the other conditions on knowledge? Rauch’s skeptical rule proposes one, but it is too strong. Knowledge is possible, without meeting his condition.
A: Actually, the rule is a condition on when “you may claim that a statement is established as knowledge.”
Q: I don’t know what all those extra words are for. Suppose someone believes, say, that price caps cause shortages; but they keep quiet about it. They never claim they know it, much less that it is “established as knowledge.” Surely the interesting question is whether they know, not whether they are permitted to “claim” they know. If they do know, aren’t they automatically permitted to claim as much?
A: Why do you think the skeptical rule is false?
Q: Back up for a sec. Take this idea: if you have enough good evidence for something, so that it outweighs any evidence against it, then you know it. Right? Meeting this condition is enough for knowledge. For example, we know the earth is round because our evidence for it (ships disappear below the horizon before their sails etc), outweighs the evidence to the contrary (it “looks flat” to the naked eye).
A: Yeah, that sounds plausible.
Q: But then the skeptical rule is false. Surely I could have enough good evidence for something, even if no attempts have been made to debunk it, it has not prevailed in a debate with opposing ideas, etc?
A: How’s that? The earth is round has survived plenty of debunking attempts.
Q: Use a simpler example. Look, there’s an apple on the table between us. You and I both believe, and know, that there’s an apple there. It’s not some random guess. Our eyes provide us all the evidence we need. But this belief has not survived any debunking attempts. It hasn’t survived any criticism. We haven’t argued with anyone who believed otherwise.
A: ...
Q: Rauch says that “knowledge comes from a social process. Knowledge comes from people checking with each other.” Elsewhere: “Liberalism holds that knowledge comes only from a public process of critical exchange.” These are his central claims, but they are false. There’s no checking and no “social/public process” happening in here, when we look and come to know there’s an apple. (Don’t say that your presence makes it “public”; I could know it if you weren’t here.) Sometimes, a fact can be known without any of that. And it’s not good, if your defense of free speech rests on a false principle.
A: Maybe all he means is that many important things cannot be known without the criticism and the checking.
Q: There’s no such hedging in the statements we quoted.
A: [Flips through the book.] Wait, what about this?:
liberal science...limits its domain to public knowledge: a body of propositions which are argued about and developed as a group effort, and which are collectively given special social...respectability and accorded unique standing in making public decisions.
There’s your restriction.
Q: The proposition that we’re not all brains in vats is given “unique standing in making public decisions”: we’d make very different public decisions if we didn’t accept it. But it’s not, thank goodness, “argued about and developed as a group effort.”
Q: Does Rauch think it is even possible to know anything?
A: Sure he does, if the right “social process” of criticism and checking is in place. What makes you ask?
Q: Well at one point he writes,
This, finally, is why the [US] Constitution protects the speech of Nazis, Communists, racists, sexists, homophobes, and Andy Rooney: they may be right.
They may be right? Really? I deny that the Nazis may be right—I know their views are false—and I’m shocked to see Rauch unable to say the same. I, like Rauch, believe in free speech for Nazis etc; defending this view better not require admitting that the Nazis may be right!
Not least because it makes free speech an even harder sell than it already is. Imagine! Someone wants to restrict Nazi speech, and you say to them, “well you know you have to let them speak, after all, they may be right”? Not a way to win friends or influence people.
Rauch is not extreme enough in his defense of free speech. I think that the freedom to speak must be extended, not just to those who “might be right,” but also to those who are wrong, and are known to be so.
A: When Rauch says the Nazis might be right, he doesn’t mean to say that he doesn’t know they’re wrong. He thinks both could be true—they might be right, and he knows they’re wrong.
Here: he says that his view
does not require you to renounce knowledge. It requires you only to renounce certainty....we must all take seriously the idea that any and all of us might, at any time, be wrong.
Q: Once I say “they might be right,” I can’t go on to add “...but I know they’re not,” without contradicting myself.
A: Rauch argues elsewhere in the book that allowing Nazis—or homophobes or racists etc—to speak, and then speaking against them, is a better way to combat their views, then censorship. That argument doesn’t depend on “the Nazis might be right.”
Q: I’m glad to hear that he has other arguments, that don’t depend on the skeptical rule.
A: Rauch thinks that without the skeptical rule, we’ll descend into authoritarianism. Maybe we should at least tell it as a noble lie?
Q: Why does he think that?
A: Without it, people who think they know what’s right won’t need to listen to criticism and dissent, and so can use state power to suppress that criticism. We’ll be back to the Inquisition and so on.
Q: I don’t get it. Epistemology is not political theory. Just because knowledge is possible without criticism, doesn’t mean that those in the know may exercise government power without the consent of the governed. Nor does it mean that government punishment of beliefs or expressions of belief is ever legitimate.
And sticking just to epistemology, while knowledge is possible without criticism, those with knowledge should still listen to criticism, engage with critics, each side trying to persuade the other.
A: But if you know the earth is round, and your knowledge doesn’t depend on engaging with critics, shouldn’t you regard such engagement as a waste of your time? What do you have to gain from it?
Q: You can make your knowledge even stronger and more secure, you can convince uncertain third parties, and you might relieve your critics of their ignorance. Those are good things!
A: You’re so negative! Steelman Rauch’s position.
Q: Rauch is against thinking one is infallible, and against being too-quick to think one knows. He’s against thinking everyone who disagrees with you is wrong and stupid. I’m against those too. But the solution isn't to go to the opposite extreme, and hold that, regarding each and every thing one believes, "I might be wrong."
And the book does contain a defense of free expression that doesn’t rest on the “skeptical rule”: freedom of speech, including the freedom to criticize, and the freedom to entertain and pursue ideas that others deem harmful or dangerous: while these aren’t requirements on knowledge, they do create a social environment in which more knowledge will be discovered and retained, and more false beliefs will be rejected, than a social environment that restricts speech.
Rauch sometimes talks as if the “skeptical rule” is not meant as a statement that can be true or false, but as a policy recommendation. That seems a good framing: the toleration, even encouragement, of criticism, while not necessary for knowledge, is good epistemic and social policy.
See also: Holmes Changes His Mind; On Defending My Enemy.
In practice, couldn't this get exhausting and delay many advances in knowledge? If we make progress or establish anything, then we have to go back and debate it simply because some people want to?
Think of the time this takes.
It seems it would also become very arbitrary--some people want to debate. Others do not. They are confident enough that they've arrived at some decent ideas. They offer some evidence against the would-be debaters but why is the burden on them to open up the floor? The ones that want to debate are always expected to carry the day?
I have my doubts that 'they could be right' is why the constitution protects the free speech of Nazis. Seems more likely that they decided to allow public expression of things known to be wrong because it maximizes the neutrality of the state. And that you want that because you know there *will be some things* that are right, and want to limit the temptation by the state to lump those things in with the Nazis. You are merely letting Nazis be a placeholder for that neutrality, in the full awareness that they are wrong.
This was thought reasonable at the time because it was assumed the Nazis would never be taken to be reasonable. If the danger loomed that the Nazis were going to become a thing, other considerations might have come to the fore.
> Look, there’s an apple on the table between us. You and I both believe, and know, that there’s an apple there. It’s not some random guess. Our eyes provide us all the evidence we need.
The interlocutor could have pressed his point. Even with something so obvious or trivial we have some difficulties. Perhaps one or both of them were under the influence of hallucinogens. Perhaps it is a perfect imitation of a fruit. The stakes are low, and we have seen fruit thousands of times. But if your life depended on establishing with very very high probability that it was indeed an apple in front of you, would you not subject it to rigorous falsification tests?
More generally aren't we checking the fidelity of our mind's representation of reality?