Why you were rational in choosing your party

Two preliminary points to keep in mind:

1. Rational belief and true belief can come apart. In fact, sometimes it is irrational to believe what is true. For example, if ten people lie to you and say that they saw Peter at a party on Saturday night and you have no other evidence, then it is rational for you to have the false belief that Peter was at the party and it is irrational for you to have the true belief that he was not at the party. This isn’t controversial, but it’s worth keeping it in mind explicitly.

2. One doesn’t need to survey all the relevant evidence about something in order to form a rational belief. For example, if I’ve seen a hundred crows and they’ve all been black, then it is perfectly rational for me to come to believe that crows are usually black even though there are millions of other crows that I could have examined.

Okay, so here is why you were rational in choosing the political party that you endorse/plan to vote for. Suppose you have two choices: A and B. You’re trying to figure out which choice is the better one. You might learn about some benefits that A would provide. Those benefits would be reasons to choose A. Perhaps not conclusive reasons, but reasons nonetheless. You might also learn about some terrible features of B. Those would also be reasons to choose A. In short, reasons not to choose one thing are reasons to choose another.

So suppose our two choices are the Democrats and the Republicans. You might think this is simplistic, but I think it fairly represents American politics and, besides, I’m sure you’re clever enough to extend the story to a more complicated case. Nothing important in the case above hinged on there being only two choices.

So here are some good reasons to go for your favoured party:

1. Some of their policies are pretty sensible.

2. The other party has some really horrid policies. In fact, some of them seem not just ill-advised but downright morally dubious. That’s at best. So that’s really good reason not to vote for them. This, of course, is good reason to vote for your party.

3. It gets even worse. Members of the other party routinely say extraordinarily stupid things. Also, a lot of really nasty, vicious things. In fact, it’s become quite clear to you that at least some members of the other party are simply wicked, depraved individuals. You suspect that even some of the more innocent-appearing members must be guilty at least of failing to adequately disassociate themselves from the really depraved members. In all of this you are right. In other words, more good reason to stick with your party.

4. There is one sort of thing the other party says that particularly gets under your skin. They frequently say things that imply that anyone who believes the sort of thing you believe is stupid, immoral, or worse. Sometimes they don’t bother just implying it but say it quite explicitly. But you know that you’re neither stupid nor immoral. At least not unusually so. Clearly, the other party isn’t very good at getting things right, given that they’ve gotten you and those like you so completely wrong. So more great reason to reject them and stick with your party.

So there you have it: four excellent reasons to vote for your favoured party rather than for the other one. Actually, the case is remarkably strong, since note that these were actually categories of reasons. For example, cataloguing all the instances of stupid and nasty behaviour exemplified by the other side would be a practically endless task. Even the internet might not be up to the task of holding such a catalogue. (Actually, come to think of it, maybe the internet already is largely such a catalogue, albeit still incomplete …) So, really, these aren’t just three reasons. You have here practically innumerable reasons to choose the party you chose. What could possibly be more rational than choosing on the basis of such an impressive catalogue of reasons?

Sydney