Understanding of the norm of political discourse

Abstract

It is argued that understanding is the norm of political discourse, and it is shown why political assertions can be epistemically problematic within a liberal democracy even when asserted knowledgeably.

1 §1

Liberal democracies are increasingly threatened by the rise of fake news and political misinformation, which poses a challenge to political philosophers and social epistemologists who aim to characterise appropriate epistemic standards of political discourse. This article aims to make new headway on this front. First, it is shown that—at least within a framework of political liberalism—political belief based on mere deference is defective in an important sense: it cannot support politically legitimate action, and this is so even when these purely deferential political beliefs are knowledgeable. From this starting point, it is argued that, on the assumption that assertion has the function to generate good belief, political assertion within such democracies plausibly has the function to generate understanding, not mere knowledge. Moreover, the most reliable way to achieve function fulfilment, in normal conditions, in the case of political assertion, is by its being sourced in understanding on the part of the speaker. From here there is a very short step—one linking functions and norms—to the overarching conclusion of the paper: that understanding is the norm of political discourse. An attractive payoff of this view is that it helps us to make sense of various ways in which certain political speech is defective when it is, and defective in a way that is both epistemically as well as politically significant.

Here is the plan for what follows. §2 suggests how political legitimacy, within the framework of political liberalism, depends in important ways on understanding and not merely knowledge; §3 shows how the key idea in §2 bears on norms governing political belief. §4 briefly reviews some current thinking about assertion generally and its functions; §5 combines these general ideas about assertion with conclusions from §4 to get the result that political assertion—at least within a political liberalist framework—has the function to generate understanding, not mere knowledge. §§6–9 connect functions with norms in order to establish the thesis that understanding is the norm of political assertion. A pleasing consequence of the position argued for here is that it will allow us to make sense of (among other things) why political assertions can be epistemically problematic within a liberal democracy, even when knowledgably delivered.

2 §2

One of the central tenets of liberal political philosophy is the endorsement constraint (e.g., Dworkin, 2002; Kymlicka, 1989) according which, put roughly, the political legitimacy of institutions depends on their being able to be endorsed by those subject to them, including those with differing value frameworks. It is contentious exactly what kind or quality of endorsement suffices here, however a familiar idea among political liberals is that such endorsement is legitimate only if suitably autonomous—viz., “only if the citizens see themselves as fully able to reflectively endorse or reject such shared principles, and to do so competently and with adequate information … and according to reasons and motives that are taken as one’s own” (Christman, 2020, my italics).¹

This core insight of political liberalism is suggestive of an easily overlooked epistemological constraint that plausibly falls out of the above endorsement constraint. The epistemological constraint, to a first approximation, is that autonomous endorsement asymmetrically entails knowledgeable endorsement. Presumably one at least needs to know adequate information if she is to competently and autonomously endorse political principles in the way that matters for satisfying the political liberal’s endorsement constraint. But—and here is what is easily overlooked—mere knowledge is plausibly not enough. The reason is that, as contemporary work in social epistemology demonstrates, knowledge (e.g., including about political principles and institutions) can be achieved via simply trusting testimony without one’s ever reflecting on or possessing any further background information, including—importantly for the political liberal—even reasons that one takes as one’s own.

For example, according to the standard (and widely-endorsed) anti-reductionist position in the epistemology of testimony, one can gain knowledge from a reliable speaker simply by trusting their testimony, provided that one lacks any positive reason to doubt their competence or sincerity. It follows from anti-reductionism, then, that an unreflective, uncritical, and barely informed thinker would be nonetheless positioned to knowledgeably endorse some particular political principle or institution, and indeed might do exactly this by voting on a reliable testifier’s sheer say-so about what candidate or policy is best. Such knowledgeable endorsement, however, falls short of grounding political legitimacy as political liberals understand it.

What all this suggests, then, is a stronger epistemic constraint than mere knowledge on the kind of endorsement that matters for political legitimacy on political liberalism.

The most natural candidate here is understanding, where understanding is often taken to require more than mere propositional knowledge of the sort one could gain unreflectively via testimony. For example, according to Alison Hills (2009) understanding requires (in addition to knowledge) abilities that allow one to employ the relevant piece of information beyond the issue at hand. As Hills puts it: “To understand why p you must have an ability to draw conclusions about similar cases, and to work out when a different conclusion would hold if the reasons why p were no longer the case.” These are all things that mere propositional knowledge doesn’t ensure that one is able to do. Likewise, according to Elgin (2017) and Gordon (e.g. 2016), understanding requires a ‘grasping component’ the satisfaction of which itself plausibly requires a certain type of know-how (e.g., to manipulate the relevant information one has and use it for one’s relevant purposes) which is not reducible to know-that. Notice that the above views of what understanding demands line up snugly with—and much more so than knowledge does—what it is that the political liberal says must be involved in the legitimate, autonomous endorsement of political principles and institutions. Both understanding and such autonomous endorsement plausibly require a reflective appreciation of the reasons one has, and an ability to see how those reasons support what it is that one is endorsing. Knowledge ensures none of these things, but understanding does.

What the foregoing suggests, then, is a very general idea about the relationship between political legitimacy within the framework of political liberalism and understanding, which is that the former requires the latter. This general idea is suggestive of related theses about political action. For if political legitimacy requires the possibility of endorsement based on one’s understanding (and not merely on one’s knowledge), then plausibly we should also expect that political action within a liberal framework should be similarly constrained—e.g., autonomous voting of the sort that aspires to lend legitimacy to political policies and principles should, for the liberal, likewise be based on understanding and not merely on trusting someone’s say-so, with no appreciation of one’s own reasons and how they support what one is through one’s vote endorsing.

3 §3

The idea that politically legitimate action—viz., action sourced in belief(s) that meet the epistemic component of the endorsement condition on political legitimacy—requires political understanding and not mere political knowledge offers us a useful starting point to address some vexed questions about political communication. As Quassim Cassam (2018) notes, a particularly troubling feature of recent political discourse is an apparent rise a kind of epistemic indifference in political speech—viz., a casual lack of concern for the basis of one’s political assertions and beliefs. Cassam notes many examples here, though one he takes as a focal point is UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s frequent claims prior to the UK Brexit vote that leaving the EU will bring with it an array of economic benefits. It is unclear whether this is a lie, given that lying plausibly requires believing that what one says is false and so intending to deceive (see, e.g., Lackey, 2013), and we can’t be sure what Johnson actually believed. Nonetheless, Johnson’s demonstrable casual lack of concern—during the lead up to the Brexit vote—for the basis of his bold economic assertions (e.g., including his assertion about saving money from the NHS) and how they could serve to cogently support his position demonstrated indifference that, if not issuing in outright lies, issued in the kind of speech act Harry Frankfurt (2009) terms ‘bullshit’: speech without concern (positive or negative) for the truth.

Crucially for our present purpose, epistemic indifference to one’s political speech manifests not only in lies and bullshit, but also in political speech that is not misinformed, but nonetheless lacks concern for the capacity to discursively justify one’s assertions, and, correspondingly, for whether the hearer understands the issues in question or would be in a position to do so.

Consider here, for example, the press communications conveyed by former US President Donald Trump’s former press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Setting aside the information from Sanders that was inaccurate, Sanders was often challenged by the White House press corps for disregarding follow-ups from the media inviting her to explain and contextualise critical policy information she was instructed to relay, even when this policy information was accurate. Some of this accurate information conveyed in the White House briefing room, we may presume, Sanders knew to be true—and indeed presented perfectly accurately to the press in a way that manifested that knowledge—and yet her political communication here was often nonetheless taken to fall short, and for reasons that (at least on political liberalism) would seem to be politically relevant.

Drawing from the idea in §1 that politically legitimate action requires political understanding and not mere political knowledge, this paper will attempt to make headway in addressing exactly why it is that even knowledgeable political assertions –i.e., knowledgeable assertions of claims with political content (e.g., which political principles are correct, which policies should be prohibited/permitted by the principles we accept, etc.)² can be epistemically defective, and in doing so, I’ll connect the ideas we began with—about understanding as an epistemic constraint on political action—with the closely related idea that understanding is a plausible epistemic constraint on political assertion.

4 §3

If politically legitimate action requires political understanding and not mere political knowledge, does this tell us anything about political beliefs? It surely does. Here it will be helpful to briefly consider an analogy to the literature on moral deference. On a view that has gained traction over the past decade, morally worthy action must be guided not by mere moral knowledge, but by moral understanding. As Hills (2010: p. 188) puts it, “doing the right thing on the basis of moral knowledge (even on the basis of knowledge why an action is right) is not sufficient for the action to have moral worth.” However, notice that if this is right, then if we form our moral beliefs on sheer deference (even if to a reliable authority), these beliefs will be importantly disconnected from the kinds of actions we would presumably hope to be guided by those very beliefs. That is, such beliefs would be capable of grounding, at most, actions that lack moral worth. This point—as critics of moral deference maintain—should lead us to aspire to ‘upgrade’ the quality of our epistemic standing with regard to moral matters to the level that would be needed to support morally worthy action—viz., to understanding. We should not, then, form moral beliefs based on mere deference.

By parity of reasoning, we can see a very similar line of argument unfolding in the political case of interest to us presently: if we form our political beliefs on sheer deference (even if to a reliable political authority), these beliefs will be importantly disconnected from legitimate political actions, which we would want to be guided by those very beliefs. That is—and continuing our analogy—such beliefs would be capable of generating, at most, actions (e.g., including endorsement of political principles, including endorsement via voting) that lack political worth, in the sense that they will, on the political liberal’s wider rationale, lack political legitimacy. This point, as the thought goes, should lead us to aspire to ‘upgrade’ the quality of our epistemic standing towards political matters to the level that would be needed to support politically legitimate action—viz., to political understanding. Political beliefs formed simply on mere testimonial say-so are in this respect defective.

5 §4

Let’s bracket for the moment the above point—that political beliefs are defective (in the epistemic sense relevant to the political liberal conception of legitimacy) if held on sheer deference—and consider the propriety of political assertions. The relevant question here is: if we suppose that political beliefs are defective if the topic is merely known but not understood, does anything follow from this about the epistemic constraints we should expect to be in place on one who asserts politically relevant information to a would-be believer?

Here it will be helpful to begin with a simple and broadly Gricean (1989) idea about assertion, which is that it is a speech act that has a function in communication, relative to which we can make sense of when an assertion is defective or not—viz., whether it fulfils its communicative function.

So what is the function of assertion within the social practice of communication?

Here is a plausible idea: The function of assertion is plausibly, at the very least, to generate not mere belief but good³belief in the hearer. When assertion generates good beliefs in the hearer, it would seem that communication is working as it should. A familiar idea, associated with knowledge-first epistemology, identifies beliefs that are good as beliefs with knowledge (Williamson, 2002, 2016, 2017).⁴ Unsurprisingly, then, a number of researchers have endorsed the idea that the function of assertion is to generate good beliefs and therefore to generate knowledge in the hearer (Goldberg 2015, Kelp, 2018; Simion, 2019; Kelp and Simion 2021).

At this stage, the reader might already sense a tension between this kind of position and the very specific case of political beliefs we’ve been discussing so far. After all, regardless of what we say about beliefs more generally, we already have reason to think that political beliefs are defective in the epistemic sense relevant to the political liberal conception of legitimacy when known, but held on mere deference. We have seen that a popular explanation of this intuition is that political matters require a stronger epistemic standing, i.e. understanding. If that is right, it would seem as though we have a tension between the idea that the function of assertion is to generate knowledge, and the particular case of beliefs about political matters. More precisely, the following claims that we have found plausible seem to generate a puzzle for political deference: (1) the function of assertion is to generate good beliefs in hearers, (2) good beliefs are knowledgeable beliefs (3) political assertion has the disposition to generate knowledge in the hearer,⁵ (4) political beliefs held on mere deference are epistemically defective, even when knowledgeable. One of these claims has to go.

6 §5

In what follows, I argue that the culprit is a biconditional reading of (2): once we abandon the sufficiency direction, I claim, the puzzle disappears.

To see this, note that political belief is a species of belief. In turn, species inherit the normativity of the type: if a norm N governs the type, it governs each of its species S too, on pain of S not being a species of the type to begin with (Simion, 2019). If so, and if knowledge-firsters are right about good belief being knowledgeable belief, it will follow that all species thereof will inherit this knowledge evaluative norm: beliefs ought to be knowledgeable.⁶ That being, said, though, note that species only inherit the necessity direction of type norms: indeed, in virtue of being particular species of the type in question, species are governed by particular norms that they do not inherit from the type. One way this can happen is by being governed by extra norms, on top of the ones governing the type. Alternatively, species can be governed by stronger versions of the norms governing the type. If so, what we are left with is a minimal threshold for good belief when it comes to particular species thereof: beliefs are good beliefs qua beliefs only if knowledgeable. Compatibly, particular species of belief may be governed by stronger norms, and/or further norms, on top of the knowledge norm. (2) is only correct when read as a necessity claim. If so, the puzzle disappears: some varieties of belief may require more than knowledge in order to be well held. This, I claim, is the case of political beliefs.

If so, the claim that the function of assertion is to generate knowledge in the hearer is only correct when read as a minimal claim as well: the function of assertion is, minimally, to generate knowledgeable beliefs. Compatibly, some varieties of assertion may serve a more sophisticated epistemic function, corresponding to the normativity governing the variety of beliefs they aim to generate. Because politically legitimate action must be based on political understanding and not merely on political knowledge, beliefs about political facts based on mere deference are defective, even if knowledgeable. Understanding implies a grasp of how one’s reasons support the positions one sets out to autonomously endorse. Only such understanding (and not knowledge alone) equips one to act with political legitimacy. Accordingly, then, political assertion has the function to generate understanding, not mere knowledge. In this respect, political assertion is plausibly more akin to moral assertion than it is to other more standard kinds of assertion which generate good beliefs in hearers whenever the hearer gains knowledge.

7 §6

Consider the following case:

MNEMONIC SAM: Sam, the President’s press secretary, is about to give an important press briefing on a live threat of a very specific kind of cyberattack, which if not contained soon by ongoing efforts could compromise the electrical grid on the entire eastern seaboard. The media have heard rumours, and await anxiously for the press briefing to better gauge the nature of the threat. Sam’s intellectual weak spot, unfortunately, is cybersecurity. In fact, this is such a weak spot that Sam barely understands any of the information he has been given from the President’s communications director, passed on from intelligence briefings. In a panic, Sam uses a very elaborate mnemonic device to memorize the three-page briefing to the press corps on cybersecurity. Equipped with no understanding whatsoever about cybersecurity but a wealth of memorised documents, Sam briefs the press on the ongoing threat. The press are impressed and gain on the basis of the briefing a clear appreciation of how the cyberthreat has the capacity to compromise the electrical grid. Exhausted and prepared to move on to other topics, they (rather unusually) ask no follow-up questions on the cyberattack.

Here are two observations: Sam does not understand the cybersecurity threat; he doesn’t understand it any more than an actor reading from a card. Secondly, the press corps now do understand this threat, and they do so on the basis of his assertions in the briefing and follow-ups to their questions.

But when we put these two observations together, doesn’t the view developed so far face a tension? Let me spell out the tension. The I have argued for is that political assertion has the function to generate understanding. The political assertions Sam makes in the above press briefing do exactly that. And yet—and here’s the tension—it seems as though Sam’s assertions to the media are still in some way defective, despite fulfilling their function. But how can this be?

8 §7

The answer here comes from putting together a further observation about MNEMONIC SAM, with some ideas developed in the philosophy of functions, more specifically, in the literature on etiological theories of function (e.g., Millikan, 1984). The observation is that although reading from a card (or memorising information one doesn’t understand at all) is a possible way to generate understanding in a hearer, it is not at all the normal way to do so. After all, it is just down to dumb luck that the press corps didn’t grill Sam with difficult questions, his answers to which (or lack thereof) would have then contributed to confusion.

The normal way to fulfil the function of generating political understanding in the hearer is by one’s assertions being sourced in political understanding. Normally, asserters understand what they’re talking about, which leads them to explain things well enough to generate understanding in their hearers.⁷ If Sam actually understood the cyberattack threat, he would then be in a position to not only convey accurate information (and in a coherent narrative, memorised or not), but also, importantly, to engage in discussion to the extent that the hearers required clarifications and further explanations. And he would be reliably able to do this, equipped with the kinds of intellectual sophistication that understanding (rather than mere disconnected knowledge) demands.

The fact that the normal way to achieve function of generating understanding in the hearer is by being sourced in understanding on the part of the speaker is a consideration with an important theoretical ramification in the theory of etiological functions. In short, this because central to the etiological theory of functions is that functions generate norms. For example, if the function of some trait or practice A is X, then A is properly functioning—i.e., functioning as it should—when it is normally functioning. In turn, normal functioning is unpacked as the way in which A worked back at the point of function acquisition since, in normal conditions—i.e. the conditions of function acquisition—that is a reliable way towards function fulfilment. Take the function of the heart, which is to pump blood. The heart could fulfil its function by luck—say, by moving randomly in a way that just so happens to pump blood. While it is doing this, it is fulfilling its function, but it violates a norm that is generated by its function—viz., the norm that it proceed in the way in which it did back when it acquired its function of pumping blood. The heart is malfunctioning: in normal conditions—conditions of function acquisition—it will not reliably fulfil its function by moving randomly into the chest.

What goes for the heart goes for Sam. Sam’s assertion fulfils its function by luck, since Sam himself has no understanding of the subject matter. In normal conditions, this is not a reliable way of function fulfilment. What is plausible is that the practice of political assertion generated understanding at the moment of function acquisition via being sourced in understanding rather than luck. In normal conditions, assertions based on understanding will continue do so reliably.

The norm for political assertion, then, sourced in its etiological function of generating political understanding, is that it be sourced in understanding on the speaker’s side. We now have an explanation for why Sam’s briefing in MNEMONIC SAM is defective despite generating understanding in the hearer. It is because Sam lacked political understanding, and thus was in breach of the norm of political assertion.

9 §8

With the central argument now in view, it will be useful to consider and respond to a potential objection about the proposal’s wider implications. More specifically, it might seem, initially, as though an inevitable implication is one of widespread norm violation. The worry is as follows: the sheer volume of political misinformation and distrust of expertise is suggestive of a lack of political understanding behind a significant subset of all political assertions. The idea that understanding (a broadly factive phenomenon⁸) is the norm of political assertion, accordingly, would then seem to predict that large portion of political assertions actually made are defective, given that we can anticipate many such assertions will be grounded in (various kinds of) political misinformation and epistemically unreasonable distrust.

This kind of objection, however, invites two different kinds of responses. Firstly, and importantly, it should be emphasised that nearly all researchers in the epistemology of understanding take understanding to come in degrees.⁹ With this in mind, the relevant question becomes: is the level of understanding required for outright understanding set so high that a result would be that political understanding is exceedingly rare, in light of data we have about the prevalence of misinformation, etc.? It’s not clear that it would be. To give just one example, consider a simple case where a political candidate asserts that a certain tax aimed to support an environmental policy will help the environment. Even if we grant that there is misinformation floating around in the wider ecosystem (e.g., conspiracy theory websites that hold that all taxation dollars are pocketed by a secret oligarchy), it is nonetheless plausible to suppose that both a speaker and hearer can grasp (in a way required for outright understanding) that such a policy will help the environment, so long as they’re not actually taken in by the conspiracy theories, and even if both speaker and hearer lack a sophisticated grasp on taxation policy and economics such that they could account for how all tax funds would be spent precisely, and how (e.g., in terms of biological processes) trees planted and funded by the tax funds would release oxygen into the atmosphere in such a way as to help the environment. The above response to the anticipated objection, accordingly, calls into doubt whether we should expect norm violations (predicated on an understanding norm on political assertion) to be more widespread than we should expect them to be.¹⁰

However, there is perhaps a more forceful line of response to the above worry, which allows us to simply grant to the critic that if understanding is a norm on political assertion, then norm violations would be widespread. This second reply is metatheoretical: the fact that a theory of X (de facto) implicates widespread X-norm violations isn’t in itself a decisive—or even good—reason to think the theory is mistaken. To use just one example: many of our most successful theories of rational belief revision make use of norms governing ideal rational updating moves that are rarely met in practice. The fact that we often make rational mistakes isn’t a good indication that, e.g., Bayesian updating rules don’t correctly model ideally rational ways to update in light of new evidence. But—and this is a related metatheoretical point—the fact that a given theory of the norm governing X predicts widespread norm violations implicates the theory should be rejected if we have independent grounds to think that individuals are following correct norms when participating in the kind of activity that norm X purports to govern. However, in the case of political assertion, though, we already have ample evidence that in fact norm violations are reasonably common, even if not the norm. (This point, in fact, gained international attention following Trump spokesperson Kellyanne Conway’s baffling assertions about crowd size following the inauguration of Donald Trump) (see, e.g., Barrera et al., 2020).

Thus, and in sum, the worry that an understanding norm on political assertion is going to generate implausibly strong implications, when it comes to norm violations, is not one that ultimately poses any kind of intractable problem for the view. This is because (i) with a suitable appreciation of the gradability of understanding, it’s plausible that understanding-backed assertion will be commonplace even granting assumptions about the prevalence of misinformation in the infosphere; and because (ii) even if the view generated the result that there is widespread norm violations within the activity type of political assertion, this in itself needn’t be a problem for the theory.

10 §9

In summary, here is where we’ve got: (a) Politically legitimate action—at least, within a framework of political liberalism—requires autonomy, and thus political understanding and not mere political knowledge; (b) as such, political belief based on mere deference is defective in an important sense: it cannot generate politically legitimate action; (c) assertion has the function to generate good belief; (d) political assertion has the function to generate understanding, not mere knowledge; (e) The most reliable way to achieve function fulfilment, in normal conditions, in the case of political assertion, is by is by it being sourced in understanding; (f) functions generate norms: proceed in the way that's most reliable towards function fulfilment in normal conditions; (g) therefore, understanding is the norm of political assertion.

The above line of argument offers us a helpful vantage point to revisit cases of political apathy, even when it issues in accurate, and even knowledgeable, information communicated to a voting public. On the presumption that what we need for politically legitimate and worthy action is not mere political beliefs and knowledge but political understanding, the norm to which we should hold purveyors of political discourse—particularly those in a position of political responsibility—is the norm of political understanding. When political speech is inaccurate—as we find in the epidemic of fake news—it violates this norm. But importantly for what I hope to have established here, even when accurate and sourced in knowledge, political discourse can still be normatively defective, even when the hearer happens to gain political understanding on its basis. Whenever political speech is based on less than political understanding, such speech should be held—at least in liberal democracies—to a higher standard.