Contested Ideas & Concepts

The value of viewpoint diversity with complex questions

A few years ago a podcast series was produced out of the UK called Talking Politics: History of Ideas. I spent many an evening cooking up a meal kit and having a listen to this excellent series. The episode Weber on Leadership | The Profession and Vocation of Politics, 1919 from the first series was fascinating as it spoke to Weber’s ideas around politics and leadership. As I recall, deliberation and a sort of Kahneman-like ‘slow thinking’ comes into tension with the necessity of decision-making within a climate of uncertainty (not all the way analogous to ‘fast thinking’).

Dialectic and Dialogue

With the ever-contentious (and seemingly worsening) state of dialogue and discourse in the US and globally, I’ve been thinking a lot about “contested” ideas, or almost divergent and convergent questions. Kahneman is an excellent source to draw from here, and his book Thinking, Fast and Slow reveals the very human tendency to continue coherent narratives and draw speedy conclusions when we encounter questions, puzzles or dilemmas. What’s especially fascinating about the research Kahneman outlines is that not only do laypeople fail to think slowly in puzzling dilemmas, the psychologists who conduct these studies and ought to know better are also prone to fast-think.

Photo by Sushil Nash on Unsplash

To bring these thoughts on Kahneman and Weber together, let’s use an example from everyday school administration. Schooling institutions do their due diligence to pull together policies and procedures that address much of the day-to-day and year-to-year operation of a school for faulty, staff and students. However—and anyone who’s worked in a school knows this—these stepwise policies and procedures only take you so far. Much of the job of site level leadership is kind of like Sancho Panza’s governorship in (my absolutely favorite book) Don Quixote. The administrator is called in to deal with a situation and set of facts or realities that does not clearly fit the outlined policy and/or procedure. Many times these cases offer multiple justified responses, and oftentimes these cases demand timely decision making.

The Weber listen makes a distinction between the deliberate, slow thinking we aspire to, and the actual work of leadership. Oftentimes leaders must make decisions amidst deep uncertainty, with incomplete facts and information, in order to best serve their followers. We’ve lived, now, through a couple years of this very reality. To judge a leader on their lack of deliberation ignores the nuance of complex questions and the necessity of timely decision-making.

Lots of our online dialogue—both on edutwitter and the web more broadly—exemplifies an almost monologic fast-thinking. It may be helpful to consider ideas or positions on a sort of spectrum of “contest.” Clearly, scientific history demonstrates that ideas encounter differing measures of “contest”—Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions does much to illuminates this. I’d like to offer a framework of approach for ideas, or a few things to think about when you’re presented with the invitation to remark upon an idea out there in the Interwebs.

1. How contested is the idea? Is it accepted fact?

2. What does the preponderance of evidence suggest? Is there evidence supporting multiple points of view?

3. Am I so committed to and idea (through my beliefs or values) that I may be viewing an idea as uncontested when it very well may be contested?

I’m personally struggling a bit with ideas of equivocation, living by my personal values, and advocating for what I believe to be right or justified. This is in tension with the humility of Proverbs 3:5:

Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

How do you decide if an idea is contested or uncontested? What preponderance of evidence or replication of investigation suggests a movement to “uncontested”? What examples in our intellectual and political history can you think of that illustrate this? Do some ideas remain “uncontested” for all time? Like faith’s lack of use for proof? I’m interested to hear your thoughts in the comments.