When fact isn't fact

I've been carrying on an altogether civil e-mail discussion with writer Nancy Jane Moore about how to engage in political debate with folks who refuse to see facts as fact. How does one compromise or come to any kind of resolution on a political issue, for example, if one side looks at the math and declares that 2 + 2 = 4, and the other side looks at 2 + 2 and declares that the answer is "blue!" (That is from a joke about a former Kansas governor, but I digress.)

Today Hunter of Justice blogged about a Yale University study that did a terrific, and somewhat frightening, job of highlighting the problem.

Among opponents of gay and lesbian adoption who base their opposition on the welfare of children, only 22% say they would change their mind if shown convincing empirical evidence that children raised by gay and lesbian couples are just as likely to be healthy and well-adjusted as children raised by heterosexual couples.

That's painful. How can we resolve political debates if facts mean nothing to a large number of participants? The good news is that the Yale Cultural Cognition Project, which conducted the study, is working on finding solutiona to that problem. I look forward to seeing what they do.

Today in Goodness

A new blog called The Wrong Stuff has appeared and begun meditating upon human frailty and how we handle our mistakes. I'm going to watch this effort by Kathryn Schulz closely. One of my hypotheses is that many of us will never reach a state of goodness because we can't face our own errors honestly. (Note that I'm including myself in that bunch of stumblers.)

E.J. Dionne, who knows Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan personally, joins the debate over Kagan with a startling report. Apparently, Kagan can engage in a political argument without getting nasty. Given the lack of civility in the public square these days, this is truly amazing. Dionne writes:

Several things about her response show why she will make an excellent justice. First, she understood we were debating in good faith. She doesn't turn disagreements into personal quarrels.

I have no idea whether Kagan will be a good justice, but this is a cheerful sign.

Finally, it's time to start the countdown for my own new effort -- The Goodness Project. My new blog, In Search of Goodness, will chronicle the quest. The new blog launches in 18 days.

What if babies aren't unrepentant sociopaths?

Yale researcher Paul Bloom writes about some surprising research.

Many parents and educators would endorse a view of infants and toddlers close to that of a recent Onion headline: “New Study Reveals Most Children Unrepentant Sociopaths.” ...

A growing body of evidence, though, suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life. With the help of well-designed experiments, you can see glimmers of moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling even in the first year of life. Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bone.

Social networks & goodness

Interesting.

Nicholas A. Christakis: "Social networks are fundamentally related to goodness, and what I think the world needs now is more connection."


HT Andrew Sullivan

Today in Goodness

Sam Harris proposed that morality is an undeveloped branch of science and set off a firestorm. Harris writes:

If nothing else, the response to my TED talk proves that many smart people believe that something in the last few centuries of intellectual progress prevents us from making cross-cultural moral judgments -- or moral judgments at all. Thousands of highly educated men and women have now written to inform me that morality is a myth, that statements about human values are without truth conditions and, therefore, nonsensical, and that concepts like "well-being" and "misery" are so poorly defined, or so susceptible to personal whim and cultural influence, that it is impossible to know anything about them.

Matt Steinglass replies:

I am a big believer in science. That’s why I think it shouldn’t attempt to generate knowledge in fields where it can’t generate knowledge.

Kathleen Parker takes on the Rev. Franklin Graham, the National Day of Prayer and the notion that some prayers are more equal than others. (Graham apparently believes that Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and those who follow any religion except his need not apply because God won't listen to them.) Money quote:

Centuries of blood have been shed for the sake of religious certitude. But transcending the notion that only some prayers are the right ones might get us closer to the enlightenment we purportedly seek.