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My point is ...
  
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Hypocrisy: The homage vice pays to virtue?
« on: 2004-07-04 10:40:26 » |
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I found the quote of the title of this thread in Wikipedia's entry for Hypocrisy. The quote is not very helpful of course, because the concepts of "vice" and "virtue" are hadly more rigorous than the concept of "hypocricy", but it looked like a catchy (if a little bit hypocritical) way to start.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocrisy
<quote>
François duc de la Rochefoucauld had centuries earlier phrased a similar opinion when he stated that "hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue."
<end quote>
According to Wikipedia's definition, "hypocrisy is the act of pretending to have beliefs, virtues and feelings that one does not truly possess" and "a classic example of a hypocritical act is to denounce another for carrying out some action whilst carrying out the same action oneself."
"Beliefs, virtues and feelings" are not directly observable. An observer can only get (a) an explicit or implied statement that the agent uses them to generate behaviors and (b) the observable behaviors themselves.
Apparently, hypocrisy has to do with our interaction with others, even when it is manifested as self-deception. Not every pretense or lie qualifies as hypocrisy. I think there must be a conflict between a moral inference system and a behavior. The agent declares or implies that he is using one moral inference system to generate his behavior while he is using another one (or none, as we will see later).
There is a double deception here, because what the agent is trying to do is to make sure that the other agents stick to the first moral inference system, the one he did not use (double standards).
The Wikipedia entry for "hypocrisy" contains a reference to Keith Stanovich, a cognitive scientist who has done some work on hypocricy. I found that Stanovich is the author of a book titled "The Robot's Rebellion -- Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin"
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/News/0406stanovichprs.html
<quote>
The Robot's Rebellion is his pathbreaking explanation of how humans are cognitively and biologically "programmed" and how we can harness our abilities to reset this evolutionary programming, in the process prescribing a set of cognitive reforms that can advance human interests over the interests of the replicators.
<end quote>
Unfortunately, there is not much about "hypocricy" in this presentation of the book. However, I found some information in another article, where a journalist somehow uses Stanovich's theory of hypocricy to support a peculiar view of his own ("elect your hypocrite".) The relevant part of the article is very interesting -- although some caution with the veracity of the presentation and the journalist's conclusions wouldn't harm. I'll paste it here, skipping the political evaluations.
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040612/DOUG12/TPFocus/
<quote>
Hypocrisy now has the backing of science. Keith Stanovich, a cognitive scientist at the University of Toronto, has built a strong scientific case in defence of hypocrisy.
Mr. Stanovich, in his fascinating book The Robot's Rebellion, defines hypocrisy as the collision of first-order and second-order thought. First-order thought consists of the basic, animal desires promoted by our genes -- reproduction, self-preservation, mate-finding, nest-building, self-aggrandizement and personal defence.
People whose thoughts are mostly first-order are known as wantons: Their personal desires and aspirations are their only goals, and their principles consist of remaking the world to suit those goals. People who vote for right-wing parties entirely because they want to pay less tax are wantons. So are people who vote for left-wing parties just because they want their organizations to get more grants.
Second-order thought looks beyond personal needs into rational calculations of larger principles and goals: If I give up this desire right now, it says, we all could be better off. It is higher, more principled intelligence. It constantly battles with our first-order desires, tending to require an even higher order of thought to reconcile those collisions. In Mr. Stanovich's system, the people who engage in this kind of thinking are known as strong evaluators.
Hypocrisy is a product of strong evaluation. "You can recognize a strong evaluator as someone who seems to be constantly wrestling with the conflict between first-order and second-order thought," Mr. Stanovich told me.
To wantons, strong evaluators look not only hypocritical but irrational. This makes sense: Consistent rationality is the hallmark not of great thinkers, but of low-order thinkers: "Rats and pigeons and chimps are probably more rational," Mr. Stanovich writes, than more principled, more civilized humans, who can stand above mere rationality in defence of higher principles.
This applies not just to leaders but to voters. In my riding, where there's a close NDP-Liberal race, the wantons on the left will cast their ballot for the New Democrats: Their only goal is the personal status of party identification. The higher-order thinkers will vote Liberal to stave off a Conservative government, sacrificing immediate gratification for higher goals and long-term principles.
<end quote>
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