Philosophy is for Thinkers; Ideology is for Stinkers

This article is adapted from an earlier posting on Al Fin, the Next Level

Philosophy encourages participation in discussions in order to strengthen their theories and explanations. On the other hand, ideology does not encourage discussions of any sort that do not agree with their beliefs. _Difference Between Philosophy and Ideology

Young children come into the world needing to learn to think for themselves, in the face of a nearly incomprehensible flood of stimuli, ideas, and information. Instead, they are typically taught:

1. what to think
2. what not to think
3. and how to "think" like authority figures tell them they should think.

There are very fundamental differences between philosophy and ideology. Ideology refers to a set of beliefs, doctrines that back a certain social institution or a particular organization. Philosophy refers to looking at life in a pragmatic manner and attempting to understand why life is as it is and the principles governing behind it.

...philosophy and ideology, if measured on a scale, would occupy two extreme ends of the scale. The purpose of any philosopher is to seek knowledge for the sake of wisdom and truth whereas an ideologue’s sole aim is to advocate and enforce his or her ideology wherever he can. _Differences Between.net

It was once the purpose of universities to teach students how to reason, by teaching the great thinkers and great ideas in all their variations -- from the earliest to more recent.

These days, universities are more the province of ideologues, whose purpose is to indoctrinate young minds into "proper" and "politically correct" modes of thought and action.

Popper’s famous distinction between science and pseudo-science (or ideology) depends on his equally famous principle of falsification. Quite simply, he argues that if a theory is in principle open to being disproved or ‘falsified’ by the facts of the world, then it is scientific. If it is not open to being falsified by the facts of the world, then it is pseudo-science, ideology. For example, the claim “Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light”, on which the Special Theory of Relativity crucially depends, can in principle be falsified by observing something in the actual world that does travel faster than the speed of light. But the statement “God’s in His Heaven” cannot be scientific, because it’s unclear what sort of evidence in the world would count as falsifying it. Therefore it must be pseudo-science or ideology. _Philosophy Now

Similarly, theories of anthropogenic climate catastrophe are being put to the test by real world data which show a divergence between steadily rising atmospheric CO2 levels, and global temperatures which have plateaued. The alarmist branch of climate science is flirting dangerously close to pseudo-science in its over-dependence on computer modeling and its willingness to avoid possible falsification of its hypotheses.

Very few people today have learned to think on the basis of first principles, which is why classical philosophy is not a very popular subject, at least not as popular as it was during the 40s, the 50s, and the 60s. Ideological thinking has more appeal to some because it involves less work. One does not have to spend years reading the great works of the great thinkers. All one has to do is buy the ideological package and one has something by which to make sense out of the world. It is quick and easy, like instant Oatmeal or a McDonald's Drive Thru....

...An ideological construct comes as a package that contains all sorts of things, such as starting points, assumptions, premises, conclusions, prejudices, etc., and it is through this package that the world can be interpreted. The problem, however, is that if one does not know how to think on the basis of primary principles (principled thinking), one will be unable to critically evaluate the ideological superstructure through which one interprets data. Rather, one will be critical of things on the basis of the ideological package, and thus feel as if one is a free and critical thinker, but one isn't quite sure whether the ideological package contains some rotten items that should be discarded. _Ideology vs Philosophy

The willingness of modern universities to discard classical philosophy and classical reasoning in favour of politically correct ideological indoctrination, constitutes a dark omen for the future. When even the educated elite can no longer interpret data from the real world in a valid manner, society will be drifting more rudderless and out of control than it is at present -- which is more than bad enough as it is.

In conclusion, here is a summary of differences between philosophy and ideology.
1.Philosophy refers to a pragmatic approach of looking and analyzing life. Ideology refers to a set of beliefs and rules belonging to a particular group or set of people
2.Philosophy aims at understand the world as it exists whereas ideology is born out of a vision for the future and aims at changing the current state to that particular vision
3.Philosophy is objective whereas ideology is dogmatic and refuses to participate in any discussion that does not agree with that ideology
4.Philosophy does not have as much impact as an ideology would have on the world ‘“ for ideology aims at spreading the beliefs and imposing them on the rest of the society irrespective of its relevance
5.All ideologies have some underlying philosophy but it is not vice versa. _Philosophy vs Ideology

Religions are ideologies, as are political "isms," most mass movements, and almost all "advocacy" groups and movements. Almost all "non-profit" organisations are actually ideologically driven, as are most tax-exempt foundations.

Ideologies may sometimes have a "good" impact -- as in immediate post-disaster relief, for example. But any ideology that aims to institute forced redistribution, is no better than a criminal organisation. If you see such an ideologue on the road, kill him. [Apologies to the zen koan: "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him."] It is clear that a world that is driven by ideology is an impoverished world in terms of innovation, exploration, and discovery.

Which points out the growing importance of training children -- and yourselves -- to be truly dangerous. Dangerous children are slaves to no one and to no idea.

Ideology's Greatest Threat: Former Believers In Search of Wisdom

We were never designed to listen to reason. When you ask people moral questions, time their responses and scan their brains, their answers and brain activation patterns indicate that they reach conclusions quickly and produce reasons later only to justify what they’ve decided.

...The problem isn’t that people don’t reason. They do reason. But their arguments aim to support their conclusions, not yours. Reason doesn’t work like a judge or teacher, impartially weighing evidence or guiding us to wisdom. _NYT_Saletan

The excerpts are taken from a William Saletan review of Jonathan Haidt's book, "The Righteous Mind." Just a few years ago, Jonathan Haidt was a partisan American leftist, before he embarked upon an intellectual journey in search of a larger wisdom. His writings and video presentations are causing quite a stir within a number of hidebound ideological communities. Haidt is stirring things up, because he is telling members of his former ideological congregation that they are only human -- much of what they think they know, just ain't so.

Humans typically arrive at a conclusion rapidly in an instinctive, intuitive, massively parallel manner. It is only in retrospect that they construct a logical argument to support their conclusion. The argument, more often than not, serves as armour shielding, to protect against contrary opinions and arguments. When systems of conclusions interact in a mutually reinforcing manner, they can grow over time, becoming ideologies. Ideologies tend to accumulate large conglomerations of defensive rhetorical shielding, which can open to accept those of like mind, and instantly close to exclude outside attacks.

... moral systems aren’t ignorant or backward. [Jonathan] Haidt argues that they’re common in history and across the globe because they fit human nature. He compares them to cuisines. We acquire morality the same way we acquire food preferences: we start with what we’re given. If it tastes good, we stick with it. If it doesn’t, we reject it. People accept God, authority and karma because these ideas suit their moral taste buds. Haidt points to research showing that people punish cheaters, accept many hierarchies and don’t support equal distribution of benefits when contributions are unequal.

...The hardest part, Haidt finds, is getting liberals to open their minds. Anecdotally, he reports that when he talks about authority, loyalty and sanctity, many people in the audience spurn these ideas as the seeds of racism, sexism and homophobia. And in a survey of 2,000 Americans, Haidt found that self-described liberals, especially those who called themselves “very liberal,” were worse at predicting the moral judgments of moderates and conservatives than moderates and conservatives were at predicting the moral judgments of liberals. Liberals don’t understand conservative values. And they can’t recognize this failing, because they’re so convinced of their rationality, open-mindedness and enlightenment. _NYT Review of Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind"_ by William Saletan

The problem is shared by humans of all ideologies, of course, not just leftists. What makes the intellectual blindness of the left such a problem today, is the almost total control by the left of academia, main-skankstream journalism, popular media, and governmental regulatory bureaucracies. The resultant veering of public policy and top-down social values out-of-control -- without apparent checks and balances or any sign of deeper wisdom -- threatens to drown most western nations in a quagmire of debt, demographic decline, and mental/moral atrophy.

Being Human: Mental + Representations & Decision-Making from Being Human on FORA.tv
This FORA.TV panel discussion looks at how humans represent reality and make decisions.

The human mind has come to be a remarkable organic machine. It is a shame when so much of the mind's potential is squandered in service of ideology.

Cost of Consensus: Overconfidence in Group Decisions

When decisions and policies are made in collaborative groups, an overconfidence in group accuracy develops. Groups are less willing to accept external input, and tend to make mistakes in judgment which individuals would be less likely to make -- due to most individuals' greater willingness to consider alternative viewpoints. (Minson and Mueller APS 2012 PDF)

There is a curious confidence in the power of consensus in bureaucracies and institutions -- including institutions of government and inter-government which increasingly set limits on the future of humans. And yet consensual decision-making is rarely put to the test, to assess its weaknesses and how it might be radically improved.

We demonstrate that the very process of making a judgment collaboratively rather than individually also contributes to such myopic underweighting of external viewpoints. Dyad members exposed to numerical judgments made by peers gave significantly less weight to those judgments than did individuals working alone. This difference in willingness to use peer input was mediated by the greater confidence that the dyad members reported in the accuracy of their own estimates. Furthermore, dyads were no better at judging the relative accuracy of their own estimates and the advisor’s estimates than individuals were. Our analyses demonstrate that, relative to individuals, dyads suffered an accuracy cost. Specifically, if dyad members had given as much weight to peer input as individuals working alone did, then their revised estimates would have been significantly more accurate. _Minson and Mueller 2012 Abstract

The researchers discovered that the larger the number of the collaborative consensus group, the greater the danger of this overconfident refusal to entertain outside input.

The unwillingness of collaborative "insider" groups to entertain outside input is particularly dangerous when the results of the decisions made by such groups could lead to poverty and oppression for large numbers of people. One ready example of such a dangerous consensus is the IPCC collaborative of "ClimateGate" fame. An honest and thorough assessment of insider emails between IPCC insiders reveals an internal climate of hubris, overconfidence, and a willingness to suppress contradictory evidence and to ruin the careers of anyone willing to espouse other points of view.

This willingness of group members to subsume themselves within the identity and purpose of the group -- this decadent conformity of consensus with its concomitant blockheaded overconfidence -- becomes a more serious problem as more and more important decisions are being made by bureaucratic committees and collaboratives.

Individuals are not, of course, immune from this group consensus fallibility. In fact, within a single brain, decisions are made by competition between different brain-wide neuronal assemblies, which battle it out until a winner emerges. That type of decision making is a consensus of sorts, a trial by combat that takes place on a subconscious level constantly, as choices and decisions are made on a moment by moment basis.

Over time, overconfidence is possible on an individual basis, if enough subconscious decisions and choices result in success. Daniel Kahneman has studied this phenomenon of intuitive overconfidence:

"What you find is a great deal of confidence in the presence of very poor accuracy," Kahneman explained. "So the confidence people have is not a good indication of how accurate they are."

Overconfidence is accentuated by the failure of people to, in general, learn from their mistakes. "When something happens that a person has not anticipated, ... they remain convinced that what they had predicted, although it didn't happen, almost happened," he said. The overconfidence is then propagated while the accuracy remains the same, and the cycle begins again. _APS

It is not necessarily a question of whether individuals or groups are better at problem solving or decision making, although false confidence tends to grow exponentially as the numbers in the group grow. The important thing is for both individuals and groups -- no matter what the purported level of expertise -- to be relatively open to looking at alternative approaches and theories.

The modern curse of conformity in general, is a much tougher nut to crack. We will be dealing with that question both here and at Al Fin the Next Level.

A Contemptible Conformity: Humans as Hardwired Herd Beasts

Some people conform more than others. Across different contexts, this tendency is a fairly stable trait [1]. This stability suggests that the tendency to conform might have an anatomical correlate [2]. Values that one associates with available options, from foods to political candidates, help to guide choices and behaviour. These values can often be updated by the expressed preferences of other people as much as by independent experience. In this correspondence, we report a linear relationship between grey matter volume (GM) in a region of lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFCGM) and the tendency to shift reported desire for objects toward values expressed by other people. This effect was found in precisely the same region in each brain hemisphere. lOFCGM also predicted the functional hemodynamic response in the middle frontal gyrus to discovering that someone else's values contrast with one's own. These findings indicate that the tendency to conform one's values to those expressed by other people has an anatomical correlate in the human brain. _Current Biology Campbell-Meikeljohn et al

Current Biology Campbell-Meikeljohn et al
We have known for many decades that humans can be moved to behave in irrational and fanatical ways, by perceived popular or group opinions and attitudes. Following the disturbing Nazi Germany experience of WWII, psychologists attempted to determine how decent people could be led to conform to indecent behaviours. From the Asch experiments to the Milgram experiments and more, psychologists unfolded an image of human conformity to crowd pressure which is most uncomplimentary to the species.

The research cited above looked at how easily a person's opinion of a piece of music could be swayed by the opinions of "reviewers." Those subjects with larger volumes in the orbitofrontal cortex were more easily swayed by "expert opinion." Popular media article describing the research

One example of the dangers of conformity to the herd is climate activist Peter Gleick: His fraud and deception is but the latest in a series of contretemps for the "climate consensus orthodoxy." Such acts of consensus-inspired insanity force thinking persons to scratch their heads in wonder. What is it that compels nominally intelligent persons to blissfully surrender themselves into a sea of fanatical conformity, convinced that the "safety in numbers" will protect them no matter how deeply they descend into a consensual mindlessness?

But if there is something hardwired into the brains of conformists so that they truly cannot help themselves, should we deal with their contemptible behaviour differently?

Difficult to say. Although consensual herd conformists tend to behave abysmally en masse, we are required to deal with them individually, on a case by case basis. We must also admit to ourselves that the rehabilitation from herd conformity to rational, independent thinking, is not likely to be successful for most affected persons.

We would like to think that the group hysteria which brought Adolf Hitler to power in Germany, will not be repeated in more modern times. But we would probably be deluding ourselves by believing that, particularly in light of a declining demographic, the coming Idiocracy, and the clique-like nature of academia, media, popular culture, and politics. In light of all that, a "Lord of the Flies" future may be the best we can expect.

Here is a sad addendum, and a hint of future uses of advanced technologies which should have been used to improve the human condition.