Inferential projects.

The observation I'm about to make isn't groundbreaking in any way, but I'm going to try to put it in terms that are sort of new to me.

Reihan writes about a function of political parties:

“To recognize that our two parties represent two broad worldviews isn’t to suggest that one of both have always been faithful to them. Rather, it is a way that we negotiate a landscape that in fact includes as many worldviews as there are individuals. Andrew and I both have highly idiosyncratic takes on the world, and so we both bristle at the excesses of partisanship. But in my case, I tend to think that being part of an extended conversation among like-minded people has some value. At the same time, I think it’s very valuable to also have conversations with people who don’t share the same premises, which is why I strive to be careful and fair-minded and empathetic. Having known Yuval for a while, I think he operates in much the same way, though perhaps he has a little more faith than I do in the Republican leadership.

“There is also, I stress, a place for clear-eyed loners. We’d all be far worse off with Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan and other writers and thinkers who adhere closely to Orwell’s vision of the public intellectual. But there is also a place for movements, and those who seek to repair them and guide them.”

What is the value in conversations with those who think like we do and in conversations with those who don't?

So let's say we're all usually engaged in making inferences from positions to which we're already committed. Sometimes we will have to examine some of those basic positions, but, short of a complete epistemological crisis, we'll have to do it on the basis of inferences from other basic positions.

People who reject your basic premises will help you by questioning your inferences at or near the root level. They don't usually have an interest in following your project to its outer bounds. On the other hand, people who share your commitment to some basic principle will be interested in those limits, though they will be much less likely to challenge you on a basic level. Engaging with both groups leaves you most likely to emerge from the process with only the strongest inferences left standing. If you stick with only one group, you'll end up with shoddy commitments.

That's how I would initially translate Reihan's paragraph. But then I have to move a little bit further, since I don't think all of our inferential projects should be individual endeavors (and Reihan isn't saying this either). A group with a common project—a tradition of enquiry, let's call it—should expect to see some returns from a division of labor. Furthermore, a tradition doesn't have to die like people do.

What am I talking about, anyway? This, like so much of what I write, is so abstract as to be nearly meaningless. I've wandered far from what Reihan was talking about. And I've slipped into MacIntyre-speak again. Alas, my fallen nature.

Anyhow, I guess I like the idea of “inferential projects” because they don't require anything but “secular reason,” whatever that is. You don't have to buy the premises to criticize or investigate someone else's arguments, though you might have to invest a good deal of time figuring out how those argument really work, particularly if the premises to which that person is committed are complex.

We'll see how all of this looks in the morning. If you know of a thinker who's been over all of this long before I have—and I'm sure there's tens of thousands—let me know in the comments.

And now, off to see Jandek.