Guest Post by Pamela Lindsay.
Way, way back in the day — a couple millennia ago — students receiving a classical education would have learned the necessity of Dissoi Logoi to constructing their arguments. That is, they’d throw themselves full throttle into an opposing or contradictory position to their own. And while Aristotle invented neither the method nor the term, I’ll let him explain the necessity of the practice. What’s it all for, Ari?
Aristotle
[We] must be able to employ persuasion, just as strict reasoning can be employed, on opposite sides of a question, not in order that we may in practice employ it in both ways (for we must not make people believe what is wrong), but in order that we may see clearly what the facts are, and that, if another man argues unfairly, we on our part may be able to confute him. No other of the arts draws opposite conclusions: dialectic and rhetoric alone do this. Both these arts draw opposite conclusions impartially. Nevertheless, the underlying facts do not lend themselves equally well to the contrary views.
Aristotle. Translated by W. Rhys Roberts. Rhetoric, Dover Publications, Inc.: New York. 2004.Book I, Chapter I, pp 5-6 , 1355a 30, 35
Fast forward to the not-so-distant past, John Stuart Mill expounds the method of Dissoi Logoi (by concept, not name) and stresses its necessity to argumentation and justification for one’s beliefs. My comments follow.
John Stuart Mill
“[Cf Cicero] He who knows only his own side knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may be able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side: if he does not so much know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment, and unless he contents himself with that, he is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side which he feels most inclination. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. That is not the way to do justice to arguments, or bring them into real contact with his own mind. He must be able to hear them from people who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he will never really possess himself of the portion of the truth which meets and removes that difficulty. Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are called educated men are in this condition; even of those who can argue fluently for their opinions. Their conclusion may be true, but it might be false for anything they know; they have never thrown themselves in the mental position of those who think differently from them, and considered what such persons have to say; and consequently they do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the doctrine which they themselves profess. They do not know the parts of it which explain and justify the remainder; the considerations which show that a fact which seemingly conflicts with another is reconcilable with it, or that, of two apparently strong reasons, one and not the other ought to be preferred. All that part of the truth that turns the scale, and decides the judgment of a completely informed mind; they are strangers to; nor is it ever really known, but to those who have attended equally and impartially to both sides, and endeavoured to see the reasons of both in the strongest light. So essential is this discipline to a real understanding of moral and human subjects, that if opponents of all important truths do not do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them, and supply them with the strongest arguments which the most skilful devil’s advocate can conjure up [bolding mine].”
John Stuart Mill. On Liberty. New York and Melbourne: The Walter Scott Publishing Company, Ltd. Chapter 2. pp 68-69
As much as I’m a proponent of the practice Mill (and Aristotle) advocates, it’s not without its difficulties. I won’t here worry the so-called cancel culture’s effects on hearing or, rather, not-hearing what people have to say. I’m interested in the idea of a hypothetical devil’s advocate, or of a person designated to that role.
A philosopher writes an argument with an opponent on her shoulder, much the way a parrot perches on a pirate’s and shrieks in his ear. The philosopher’s hypothetical objectors manifest the moment others set their eyes on her work. That’s philosophy.
But, notwithstanding the variety of arguments and objections, philosophers are playing the same game by the same rules within a circumscribed domain of discourse. Out thar in the Real WorldTM, not so much.
To some extent, each of us can, and do, play our own devil’s advocate. One might do so to weigh the pros and cons of an immanent decision. Another might do her utmost, in a show of solidarity, to make sense of a friend’s baffling predicament. These practices are reliable enough to get most humans around in the world most of the time, else Darwin’s dandelion fork would have taken us out by the roots long ago. Like dandelions, humans are a persistent species.
There are times, though, that near-enough-good-enough won’t cut it. Such as to avoid civil unrest or to develop a safe and efficacious vaccination. As Covid-19 demonstrated, these aims are sometimes not mutually exclusive. In an intense situation such as the pandemic, or plan-demic depending on your position, the simultaneous proliferation and suppression of devil’s advocates brings Mill to the forefront,
So essential is this discipline to a real understanding of moral and human subjects, that if opponents of all important truths do not do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them, and supply them with the strongest arguments which the most skilful devil’s advocate can conjure up.
In the midst of controversies, especially acute controversies (e.g. Covid-19) but also chronic (e.g. anything ending in -denier; political polarisation), many find Mill’s exhortation unconscionable. The metaphorical devil’s advocate is the devil himself. And the villagers look for his mark not only on strangers but also on friends and loved-ones.
This strain on friendships has some serious repercussions for people’s doxastic (belief forming) practices. Friends are often devil’s advocates in the provision of the sober second thought. In the thick of controversy, this provision might be sequestered perhaps to avoid social disapprobation and the negative consequences of loss of reputation.
A group of friends might even form a coalition to repel offending opinions, some by huddling under a force field and others by wielding torches and pitchforks a la social media. Another analogy might be bug dope versus the fly swatter versus calling Pest ControlTM, We don’t want your pesky opinions here! It takes a lot of guts for a mud wasp to don a gas mask and face down a can of Raid. Let alone convince the fearful picnickers that he’s needed. (And mostly harmless.)
The social problems — of narrow (friendship) and broader (community; political) scope — arising from controversies are sticky. So one might put some stock in those entrusted with public leadership and problem solving to mitigate these problems by examining them and their solutions from all angles — which includes inviting devil’s advocates to the table. And then not, as in spy movies, triggering a trap door to drop these vital guests down a chute and into a tank full of piranhas.
Perhaps emergency planning should incorporate the pre-installation of devil’s advocates, kept at the ready as in In Case of Emergency, Break Glass. If you walk down a hallway and see those boxes empty, you should worry.
One way to keep devil’s advocates at the ready is to not put them in boxes, but to instil the habit of putting them to good use. In my research travels, I’d noted one Canadian paediatric association (for which I’ve lost the reference) that elects a devil’s advocate to their governing committee. Just as one member keep minutes, another plays devil’s advocate. Commendable though this practice might be, another worry arises here. One raised by Mill,
He must be able to hear them from people who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he will never really possess himself of the portion of the truth which meets and removes that difficulty.
The problem with designated devil’s advocates is that they’re still drawing on imaginary arguments. And that imagination tends to some pretty naive characterisations of the views of their opponents, often deriving from corresponding caricatures of the same. What’s more, some designates aren’t going to be able to play the role without virtue signals prefacing their arguments — even, and maybe especially, very compelling arguments — such as reminders that they’re only acting here. Hence the arguments that these designates put forward might thus be modified so as not to be whole-hearted, and may even be fully wrong. Of course some designate might play a wonderful devil’s advocate, but probably not — especially because the designate belongs to one specially educated occupational group yet is attempting to represent the views of another group that most members, herself included, don’t come into contact with on a regular peer to peer basis.
Here’s an example.
Some atheists characterise Christians as backwards bible-thumping Satanic realists. Some Christians characterise atheists as cold and amoral, even immoral. Each of these characterisations, sometimes true of some people to some extent, are what might be construed as kindergarten views of each other. But the arguments of sophisticated theologians and philosophers, like Alvin Plantiga, and humanitarian atheists, like Bertrand Russell , aren’t liable to land on a board room table.
Leaving off that Russell is dead, Plantinga is unlikely to sit at a board meeting for some Canadian paediatric association. But then, maybe he’s never been asked. Surely though, the fire and brimstone pastor of a local church would be happy to avail himself as their devil’s advocate. All the better if he doesn’t like kids.
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