If you enjoy PEI mussels, here is one place they are grown: in Orwell Bay, right out in front of our cottage. Those small white floats are mussel bags in which they are grown.

A couple of jottings

The Breathing

In the stillness between waves

Ending their journeys

Across leagues of sea

With a single polishing

Of black beach pebbles,

Themselves offspring of

The elegant cliff rising high above,

Itself sculpted by ancient glaciers.

In that in-between

The Universe breathes.

Vowels evaporate, no longer

Linking consonants together,

An unboundaried softness

Cradling the assurance later chanted:

“As it was in the beginning, is now,

and shall be evermore.”

Welcome the Night

When your words become sharpened with

Fear spearing this way and that, the

World becomes mean, alarming.

When hope unravels,

No longer tethering you to

Confidence, you begin to

Stumble, the path gives away.

It is time to let the evening

Shadows wash you from toe to

Forehead, sponging away

The harsh details sculpting your profile.

Enter into the night, leaving

Hesitancy at the border.

Stop the urge to

Switch on a light;

It only prolongs the glare of

Exhausted assurances, depleted

By the day’s constant obligations.

Permit the deep darkness of the

Universe to hold you with its

Pledge that you are not

A statistical coincidence.

Invite your dreamer to step into your

Imagination, there to gather the

Ingredients of the day and begin

Concocting healing dramas foretelling

Your well-being.

Welcome the night enfolding you into

Its womb, there to be prepared for

Birth once again.

The virtue of argument

In our local PEI  paper, the Guardian (actually the main Provincial paper), world news is generally relegated to one page. It’s therefore interesting to see what world events are chosen for this limited space. Recently, one of the three articles on the page highlighted the IMF’s “reprimand” of the US government’s incapacity – so far – to resolve the US debt ceiling crisis, broadly hinting about the global repercussions should Congress fail to raise the debt limit.

For a few weeks now I have been away from the daily reporting of what the federal government is doing or not doing, so decided to listen in for a few evenings via NPR. I wasn’t surprised however to hear how the debate about the debt ceiling, taxes, budget cuts sounded like what I had heard weeks ago.

As I listened to the repeated rhetoric, charges and counter charges, I begin pondering on the value of arguments. Normally, I consider arguments as non-productive and a source for generating hostility. But the pondering is a result of a report I read recently written by 2 respected cognitive-scientists about the value of arguments.

A recent paper "Why Do Humans Reason? Arguments for an Argumentative Theory," published  in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, has stirred much conversation about the positive evolutionary value of argument. (for a fuller exploration, see: http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge342.html ) The paper’s authors are Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber. Hugo Mercier is a cognitive scientist and a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He did his doctoral work under Sperber's supervision on reasoning and argumentation and he has published many articles on the argumentative theory, several of them in collaboration with Sperber. Dan Sperber, an influential French social and cognitive scientist, is widely recognized as being among the most brilliant cognitive scientists writing about reason, language, culture, and human evolution.

They state, "Reasoning was not designed to pursue the truth. Reasoning was designed by evolution to help us win arguments.” So, as they put it, "The evidence reviewed here shows not only that reasoning falls quite short of reliably delivering rational beliefs and rational decisions. It may even be, in a variety of cases, detrimental to rationality. “Reasoning can lead to poor outcomes, not because humans are bad at it, but because they systematically strive for arguments that justify their beliefs or their actions. This explains the confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and reason-based choice, among other things."

To summarize the article: If you take the point of view of the argumentative theory, having a confirmation bias makes complete sense. When you're trying to convince someone, you don't want to find arguments for the other side, you want to find arguments for your side. And that's what the confirmation bias helps you do.
                                 
The idea here is that the confirmation bias is not a flaw of reasoning, it's actually a feature. It is something that is built into reasoning; not because reasoning is flawed or because people are stupid, but because actually people are very good at reasoning — but they're very good at reasoning for arguing. “Not only does the argumentative theory explain the bias, it can also give us ideas about how to escape the bad consequences of the confirmation bias.”

People want to make decisions that confirm their bias, their predilection, their preference. I will argue for my point of view, my perceptions, my take on reality, my options, my decisions. “What has been observed is that often times, when people reason on their own, they're unable to arrive at a good solution, at a good belief, or to make a good decision because they will only confirm their initial intuition.”
                                 
On the other hand, when people are able to discuss their ideas with other people who disagree with them, then the confirmation biases of the different participants will balance each other out, and the group will be able to focus on the best solution. Thus, reasoning works much better in groups. “When people reason on their own, it's very likely that they are going to go down a wrong path. But when they're actually able to reason together, they are much more likely to reach a correct solution.”

And here is where I was forced to ponder: the theory fits in very well with the idea of deliberative democracy. “In deliberative democracy, the idea is that people should argue with one another more often, and that instead of simply using voting as a way of aggregating opinion, people should instead be deliberating with one another, they should be discussing their ideas, they should be sharing their points of views and criticizing each other's point of view….. And our theory can both provide an explanation for why deliberative democracy can be helpful and effective. It can also help us perfect the way deliberative democracy can work by making us better understand how it works, and in what circumstances it can really help.”

Mercier goes on to suggest, “.. even in our personal lives it's quite important to keep in mind that when we're reasoning on our own, it's quite possible that we're going to arrive at false conclusions and misleading decisions. If you take a very intuitive example, let's say you have a quarrel with your partner and you go to brood over what happened in your room. And you keep thinking about why it was all his or her fault, and why you did everything that was possible to make things right, and you know it really has nothing to do with you. You find many, many reasons why you didn't do anything wrong, and it's all the other person's fault.”

A final caution from the authors: “ In our theory, what's important to keep in mind is that reasoning is used in a very technical sense. And sometimes not only laymen, but philosophers, and sometimes psychologists tend to use "reasoning" in an overly broad way, in which basically reasoning can mean anything you do with your mind.

By contrast, the way we use the term "reasoning" is very specific. And we're only referring to what reasoning is supposed to mean in the first place, when you're actually processing reasons.” (Emphasis mine).

O while considering the value of reasoning, I was reminded of a recent TE D lecture I listened to. I don’t recall the lecturer’s name, but he was suggesting that there are three levels of responses when parties disagree. First, “you must be ignorant of the facts or you wouldn’t disagree with me. Or, you must be stupid, because you know the facts but can’t put them together in the right order. Or, you must be evil since you know the facts are deliberately disagreeing with me.”

These three responses are a good example of what happens when a disagreement crosses over from arguing about observable facts, ideas or strategies to evaluating who the other person is. Attacking instead of reasoning can only escalate the intensity of feelings, usually negative anger or other expression of hostility.

                      
It also prevents the argument from going forward in a way that may reveal new understandings. But to do so, we first have to affirm the value of disagreements and arguments, and not consider them as irrational and harmful. Conflict of ideas, when not couched in evaluation of the other party, can be a positive contribution to an emerging truth or strategy.

But can one disagree while still being compassionate, still being empathetic, bringing those feelings and motivations into the process? I want to explore that one a bit more, soon.