作者： chenchen

Rousseau postulated that man is naturally good, with the ability to co-exist in a prelapsarian Eden-like state had it not been for the corruptions of civilisation[1]. This sentiment is aptly embodied by Thondup in his assertion that life has “no need for temples [or] complicated philosophies” if “[one’s] brain and heart are temples; [one’s] philosophy is kindness.”[2] Yet, to the secular observer, there exists a tinge of irony in his statement. Thondup, the 14th Dalai Lama, is widely revered as the spiritual voice of Tibet. His unceasing advocacy for a compassionate, non-violent human race are rooted in Tibetan Buddhism, thus incorporating many tenets of the four noble truths and five precepts in his universal teachings. To scores of Tibetan Buddhists who submit to his wisdom, the Dalai Lama is but the foremost representative of the sangha who gather in ‘temples’ to reinforce their understanding of the Buddhist ‘[philosophy]’, dharma. Even as he adopts a more secular front, the Dalai Lama is still inevitably a spokesperson of religious conscience, amplifying the reality that our conscience is perennially intertwined with religion. With 84% of the world today drawing their conscience from organised faith[3], it is safe to say that theology can indeed elucidate the merits and shortcomings of humanity’s beliefs.

In this essay, I will thus use the baseline of ‘sincerely held beliefs’ to define ‘conscience’, considering their different manifestations in religious contexts. I will also break this question down into two segments:

Should we ask anyone to exceed obeying religion?

Can we reasonably achieve (1)?

In response to (1), it is important to dissect the definition of ‘conscience’ by establishing if it inherently gives rise to the commitment of deplorable acts, hence posing a negative externality to society and incentivising checks on religious morality.

1a Conscience should be heeded, since religion promotes amiability

I will concede that religion instils one with primarily virtuous morals. In most religions, sacred texts and their interpretations promote pious ways of life as a mean of fulfilling one’s divine obligation. Altruistic acts are prescribed to encourage the proliferation of goodwill, as evinced by the Islam pillar of zakat, referring to the encouragement of charitable monetary contributions amongst the able. In addition to adhering to a prescribed set of ethics, immoral acts are sworn off to avert deviating from a path of righteousness. In theistic religions, these transgressions are further elucidated as an immoral defiance of higher deities. Avoidance of sin, for instance, is stressed through the Islamic concept of Taqwa, whereby a moral contract is formulated between the humble man and higher deity, obliging the staving off of vice as a means of being cognisant of God’s potential wrath.

Furthermore, we can contend that many universal values are rooted in the moral baselines of different religions, proving that benevolence transcends cultural discrepancies and enables a more gracious human race. The principle of deference toward one’s elders, as encompassed in the salient Confucianist concept of ‘filial piety’, is deeply rooted in Chinese culture. Notwithstanding cultural barriers, identical concepts of honouring and respecting one’s parents are endorsed in both the Old Testament[4] and Qur’an[5]. Today, respect for one’s elders is a universally recognised virtue which strengthens family cohesion and holds together societal fabric[6]. Considering that conscience is primarily virtuous, it may seem difficult to go beyond it.

Rebuttal
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Yet, utopic societies heralded in religion texts have all but transpired on Earth, as individuals have committed deplorable and amoral acts whilst heeding religious conscience. Indeed, utopia can only be achieved in microcosms wherein the human conscience is homogenised and unchanging. This, however, does not hold true in society.

1b Conscience should not be heeded, since religion promotes animosity
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Indeed, there exists a plural number of religions, all of which profess different creeds, birthing fatal contradictions which stir discontent amongst man and distort natural goodwill. Monotheistic religions propagate the existence and worship of a singular God. To strengthen the legitimacy of His authority, proponents of these religions seek to discredit other deities, antagonising their worshippers as an expression of their own deference. In the Old Testament, Yahweh demands unchallenged fidelity from the Israelites, commanding them to ‘[kill those who] serve other gods’[7]. Similarly, the first pillar of Islam, Shahada, uncompromisingly stresses that ‘There is no god but God’. Whilst these proclamations serve to reinforce intra- faith unity, they irreconcilably sow discord by promoting triumphalism. Consequently, with the inability to achieve reconciliation being deeply embedded in one’s conscience, there will exist the perennial threat of inter-religious conflict, condemning any well-meaning unification attempt to failure. The Baháʼí faith’s proposed ‘new world order’, premised upon the unification of mankind and establishment of equity and justice, has provoked “[the] most egregious forms of repression, persecution and victimisation[8]”. Whilst well-intentioned, their innocent calls for homogeneity have incited enmity from monotheistic religions which view the Baháʼí belief in ‘Manifestations of God’ as fundamentally blasphemous. Today, as the 300,000 Iranian Baháʼís unwaveringly champion their cause of harmonisation, their government’s Islamic theocracy continues to repudiate any attempt to recognise or uphold their rights, paving the way for institutionalised persecution. Along similar lines, conflict between Abrahamic religions regarding rightful ownership of the ‘Holy Land’ (as so recognised in religious text) has incessantly divided the Middle East pre-dating the Crusades with no sight in end, creating an unresolvable conundrum under the guise of religious faith which has led to the loss of millions of lives. In the words of Karl Marx, ‘history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.’

Fracturing of religions furthermore accentuates polarisation, giving rise to radicalisation and even the perpetuation of religious extremism. Wiktorowicz[9] detailed how the openness of activist organisations can promote ‘acceptance of extreme norms’, creating a culture of indoctrination which can overwhelm the actor’s personal conscience and steer them towards committing violence. Often, this is further exacerbated through conflating extremism with political agenda. Hindutva[10] ideology complemented India’s drive for nationalism with reactionary religion by heavily prizing Indians’ Hindi identity, thus spreading quickly amongst the majority Hindu nation and leading to the pervasive ostracisation of non-subscribing citizens such as Muslims and Christians. Acts of ‘Saffron terror’[11] are furthermore enabled by a lax prosecution of extremist groups by governments, who have historically attempted to appease the majority of the electorate through non-intervention. This is thus further compounded in present day under the rule of the nationalist President Modi who has even sought to entrench Hindu superiority within the constitution. These acts of prejudice and oppression can be thus considered especially deplorable.

I have thus posited that religious conscience, whilst furnishing a largely virtuous moral compass for its believers, has the capacity to exacerbate sectarian disunity and spark turmoil. Thus, we can surmise that humans must do more than their own conscience to quash such tensions.

2 Can we do better than conscience, whilst still being reasonable?
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In defining the term ‘reasonable’, I will establish that one can only be expected to cast aside their conscience if given rational self-incentive to do so.

2a Secular institutions should rein in conscience
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Given the subliminal threat posed to earthly societies by religion, secular institutions are inclined to rein in detrimental impulses by imposing restrictions upon antagonistic religious practices. After all, religious instability threatens to spark wider unrest which might tear apart the very fabric of society, undermining the very stability which all authorities strive to uphold.

Hence, to enable disparate sects to coexist peacefully whilst harnessing the merits of religious conscience, I will foreground the assumption that secular authorities will adopt Mill’s harm principle in prohibiting the undertaking of all actions which harm other individuals. For this essay, I will establish the boundaries of ‘harm’ to comprise all aspects of physical hurt and “actions [which] are prejudicial to the interests of others”[12].

2b Secular institutions can reasonably rein in conscience
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Under the social contract, humans are – above all religious obligations – bound to state legalities, therefore relinquishing certain personal liberties in return for the reaping of state benefits. From a rational perspective, people should thus disengage from their conscience if it goes against the law and hence, self-interest.

This, however, places the onus of maintaining religious harmony upon the construction of laws which promote fair, yet free, religious expression. Therefore, we see the rise of three issues:

2bi Difficulties in qualifying harmful religious acts as deplorable or ‘prejudicial’

As aforementioned, inter-religious contradictions render the granting of unconditional autonomy impossible in a multicultural world, given that offence can be easily drawn from derogatory, yet faithful actions.

Rebuttal
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This conundrum is dealt with by non-libertarian governments through the criminalisation of all ‘words’, ‘signs’ or ‘visible representations’ which ‘[cause] feelings of enmity, hatred, ill-will between different racial groups’, as manifested in the penal codes of Singapore[13] and India[14]. Moon further narrows the definition of hate acts to ‘[degrading] racial groups [as being] less worthy than others’[15]. People should, hence, aim to uphold peace by averting the drawing of malicious comparisons to other religions in their own practices.

2bii Unwillingness of libertarian governments in restricting religion

In countries which promote free and fair religion through the relaxation of hate-discrimination laws, we might expect religious intolerance to flourish since it is no longer disincentivised by the state.

Rebuttal
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Checks against discrimination can also be undertaken by other members of society. Via the ‘cancel culture’ phenomenon, intolerant individuals who make their views public can be ostracised in both their personal and private lives, thus serving as a disincentive toward acting inappropriately in a public setting. Thus, if the state and judiciary fail, society can act as a final purveyor of morality.

2biii Tyranny of the majority and the enabling of systemic persecution

Lines between secular and religious authority can dissolve in regions where a singular religion forms a majority of the populace. Adopting of an official state religion may furthermore spark institutionalised discrimination if the interests of the majority are championed at minorities’ expense. In certain Arab countries, adoption of Sharia law as legislation has ‘[sanctioned] discrimination against minorities’[16] as detailed in Iran’s treatment of the Baháʼí. Indeed, strict compliance with Sharia entails segregating the non-Muslim population into two lower groups: ‘People of the Book’[17] and ‘Unbelievers’[18]. The former, bound to a contract of dhimmh, are barred from public practices of faith and interference in state affairs. The latter face the threat of being ‘killed on sight’, unless entering into an ‘āmān’ whereby they are granted impermanent safety. At the opposite end of the spectrum, we have seen a rise in institutionalised Islamophobia as many unjustly equate Islam with terrorism, thus unfairly infringing on their rights of expression. In Switzerland, a man was fined after uttering the Takbir in public, despite doing so in harmless context[19].

Concession
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In countries where the triumphalism of Islam is widely perpetuated, the pursuit of secular equality would subvert the social norm and attract unjust stigmatisation, thus rendering it unreasonable to expect Muslims to do better than following their own conscience since both divine and secular forms of authority are inherently flawed. Similarly, if Islamophobia is heavily ingrained into societal rhetoric, there is no conceivable incentive to uphold religious tolerance.

Tyranny of the majority can thus obscure cultural relativism, as both triumphalism and paranoiac xenophobia can undercut rationality.

Consequently, I will assert that we can only expect one to do more than heeding their conscience in secular and inclusive societies.

A premise for the future
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We must recognise that it is fundamentally difficult to qualify ‘righteous behaviour’ as the face of our society is ever-changing, complementing the dynamic boundaries of one’s conscience. Notwithstanding its fallibility, the progressiveness of secular law – as evinced by the weakening of Sharia in many Middle Eastern countries – indeed serves as a valid counter to the fixity of most religious ethics. Therefore, governments must serve as a check on religious polarisation since it is the only reasonable way through which we can expect people can do more than their conscience. It is only through this common consensus that we can effectively establish inter-religious amity.

Footnotes:

1 Younkins, E. (2005, July 15). Rousseau's "General-Will" and Well-Ordered Society. Retrieved July 15, 2020, from http://www.quebecoislibre.org/05/050715-16.htm

2 Bstan-ʼdzin-rgya-mtsho; Piburn, S. D. (1998). The Dalai Lama, a policy of kindness: An anthology of writings by and about the Dalai Lama. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion.

3 Hackett, C.; McClendon, D. (2020, May 31). World's largest religion by population is still Christianity. Retrieved July 15, 2020, from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/05/christians-remain- worlds-largest-religious-group-but-they-are-declining-in-europe/

4 Exodus 20:12

5 Surah Al-Isra 17:23

6 Zed, R. (2016, March 04). Faith Forum: Is the concept of 'filial piety' still valid today? Retrieved July 15, 2020, from https://www.rgj.com/story/life/2016/03/03/faith-forum-concept-filial-piety-still-valid- today/81294620/

7 Deuteronomy 13:6-9

8 Rehman, J. (2019, July 18). Situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran. United Nations.

9 Wiktorowicz, Q. (2005). Radical Islam rising: Muslim extremism in the West. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield

10 A movement which first gaining prominence in the 1920s as an opposition to colonialism,

11 A neologism describing acts of violence in the name of Hindutva

12 Mill, John Stuart (1859). On Liberty. Oxford, England: Oxford University.

13 Section 298A

14 Section 153A

15 Moon, R. (2019, January 18). Religion and hate speech. Retrieved July 15, 2020, from https://tif.ssrc.org/2019/01/18/religion-and-hate-speech/

16 An-Na'im, A. A. (1987). Religious Minorities under Islamic Law and the Limits of Cultural Relativism. Human Rights Quarterly, 9(1). doi:10.2307/761944

17 Referring to subscribers of other Abrahamic religions

18 Referring to subscribers of non-Abrahamic religions and freethinkers

19 Man fined 210 Swiss francs for saying 'Allahu akbar'. (2019, January 10). Retrieved July 15, 2020, from https://www.thelocal.ch/20190110/man-fined-210-swiss-francs-for-saying-allahu-akbar

Many people have committed acts, execrated and deplored by others, in obedience to sincerely held beliefs. Can we reasonably ask anyone to do better than simply to obey his own conscience?

A common objection to deontological ethics, and one it must address if it is to be upheld against ethical theories grounded in virtue or consequence, is its apparent demand to classify actions performed in accordance with an ill-informed conscience as ‘good.’ In attempting to resolve this, what must be conducted is a complete investigation of conscience, understood as the affective predisposition of the subject towards moral obligations, as regards its provenance, fallibility, and authority. Having established the nature of conscience thus, I contend both that obedience to one’s conscience is the only stipulation that may be made of a moral agent insofar as concerns [his] immediate moral responsibility; and that this obedience nonetheless cannot be a moral principle (duty), but derives its necessity instead from the subjective judgment of conscience itself.

1. On the Impossibility of the Acquisition of Conscience

Firstly, it seems we must determine whether conscience itself is an acquired or indigenous moral endowment – that is, whether its existence as a reflective and motivational power of subjective judgment finds its origins in the instruction of experience (“conscientia artificialis”), [1] or the laws of nature (“conscientia naturalis”) [2]. For if conscience existed only artificially, the moral feelings it aims

to affect (either positive or negative) would themselves stand in relation to duty as contingent, and so the acts of conscience would be rendered entirely arbitrary; hence, obedience to conscience would consist in mere habit, lacking both a rational and moral ground. The falsehood of this doctrine may be proven in two ways:

Directly and negatively, as merely a posteriori and empirically certain.

Indirectly and positively (i.e. by proof of the alternative), as a priori and apodictic.

And though the conditions of our argument, which seeks to establish as a priori certain that obedience to one’s conscience is the single demand of morality that may be made immediately, will only be satisfied by this latter proof, the illustrative simplicity of the former, and the peace of mind thereby afforded, warrant its inclusion:

Consider, for example, an individual ‘instructed’ such that any honest act they perform is followed in conscience by a sensation of guilt. What is meant here by ‘guilt’ if not knowledge of the violation of a duty? Or, if it need be expressed in more neutral terms, guilt is “the state of one who has committed an offense, especially consciously.” [3] Surely, then, it is not in the subjective judgment of conscience that this sensation, qua guilt, originates, as in this judgment is implied nothing more than the actual attribution of the honest act to the individual. In truth, it is simply that the individual believes honesty to be proscribed by duty. For if the contrary be maintained (that they believe honesty to be permitted or necessitated by duty), it would imply that one is capable of feeling guilt at the fulfilment of a duty, i.e. that an innocent person may enter the state of one who has consciously committed an offense, which is absurd.

What has been demonstrated, therefore, is that, provided we assume an indigenous human capacity to recognise moral (mis)conduct, conscience cannot be conceived of as a thing procured by experience. What remains to be demonstrated, and yet cannot be demonstrated by the above means, is that such a capacity actually exists. Therefore, we must turn our attention not to the provenance of conscience per se, but rather to that to which our conscience responds – as this, I will argue, may be identified with a natural (rational) consciousness of the moral law. Only once this foundation has been laid may we say with any conviction that conscience is not merely ‘not acquired’, but necessarily indigenous – that it “is presupposed on the part of feeling [Aesthetische Vorbegriffe] by the mind’s receptivity to concepts of duty as such.” [4]

2. On the Necessity of the Indigenous Endowment of Conscience

Just as Marx commenced his critique of political economy – not from any arbitrary point within, but at the level of its most fundamental unit – so, too, must an analysis of the grounds of conscience begin at the most basic unit in which moral economy deals, namely, law. A law spoken of generally is a regulation – that is, a limitation upon freedom by which an act is determined – and from this notion must follow a concept of causality. Indeed, a law is invoked in any mention of causality, as it is by way of the former that the latter is posited; for what is expressed in the relation of ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ is determination (in contrast with a lack of determination, which we call undetermined freedom).

But when we speak of ‘willing’, we cannot avoid reference to a kind of efficient causality; freedom of will*, unlike undetermined freedom, must consequently imply the nature of this causality, insofar as it exists not merely negatively, as exemption from determination to act by external causes, but (lest we fall into the unfortunate situation of Aristotle’s man, who, “hungry and thirsty, and both equally, yet being equidistant from food and drink, is therefore bound to stay where he is”) [5] positively, as an independent cause itself. The simple modus barbara results:

All causality is a kind of conformity to law.

Freedom of will is [the nature of] a kind of causality.

Freedom of will is a kind of conformity to law.

Of causality with respect to the natural world, i.e. to that in which the will plays no part, we observe that it conforms to the following law: that every efficient cause is determined to bring about an effect by an external force. Therefore, of causality with respect to the will, we conclude that, as it cannot conform to the same law as that of nature, it must conform to the alternative law: that the will, as an independent cause, is determined to bring about an effect by an internal force. To this self-determination, wherein the will must determine itself to act in accordance with laws given by its own nature, we assign the deceptive label of ‘freedom.’ Accordingly, the derivation of the form of the law of the will must be possible by use of the operations of the will alone; operations whose nature must themselves be understood as fundamentally rational, for it is by a process of reason that we are able to posit relations of causality, and thereby determine the appropriate action in accordance with a (self-)given law. Here, however, what is important to note is that the law spoken of is conformed to not, as with the physical laws of nature, as an objective limitation, but as a representational limitation.

But the law, spoken of as specifically moral, is also acted in accordance with, not as an object, but as representation (that is, not with a view to its effect, but as an end in itself, as duty). Furthermore, if it is to apply universally and without exception, its establishment must be possible prior to any given experience, such that every individual possesses the means to know it a priori. This being so, it is clear that the law which governs a free will and the law which governs a moral being are indistinguishable; for both find their wellspring in reason, both constitute representations, and, most crucially, both must apply universally, as for either to admit exceptional cases would undermine its foundation. Hence, from the real necessity of the one (the law of the will), demonstrated above, may be inferred the real necessity of the other – that law “which exists for the sake of the self, and not the law for the sake of which the self exists,” [6] in which ‘an indigenous human capacity to recognise moral (mis)conduct’ is fully visible.

3. On the Nature of Conscience

Having now grasped the sense in which it is proper to speak of the ‘origins’ of conscience, namely, as a concept presupposed by the recognition of duty by practical reason, it is possible to give its concept as pertains to its fallibility, or integrity, and the extent to which it is binding. In the first case, we are compelled to recognise, from the definition given, that conscience cannot arrive at misjudgments, precisely because the judgment of conscience is not an objective judgment of the obligatoriness of a particular act, but judges the subject [him]self, in whom moral feeling is evoked owing to his having engaged in this objective judgment; or, the very affective manifestation of conscience evidences the truth of its judgment. I anticipate some resistance to the suggestion that for conscience to err is an impossibility, however, the obstinacy of which is more easily seen when the nature of conscience is apprehended as a whole (under its fallibility and authority).

With respect to the second, what must be recalled is that conscience does not follow from duty, but is a presupposition without which no concept of duty, no moral imperative, could be formed. For while it is our knowledge of duty that enables us to speak confidently of conscience as natural and indigenous, it is the subjective condition of conscience, of susceptibility to moral feeling, by virtue of which discussions of obligation are possible at all. And from this ‘inescapability’ of conscience, it follows that conscience is absolutely binding, because if we consider not the validity of the body of moral knowledge constructed on its basis (the objective assessment of actions as either duties or not duties), but the voice of conscience alone prior to any qualification, self-awareness of a mistaken moral judgment (the only reasonable justification for the disobedience of conscience) is a manifest impossibility. Hence Hegel writes, “For the essence of the action, duty, consists in conscience’s conviction about it; it is just this conviction that is the in-itself; it is the implicitly universal self-consciousness or the state of being recognised, and hence a reality.” 7 In light of this, it is also clearer what is meant by the infallibility of conscience, viz. that its conclusion†, as that which binds subjectively, can be ‘mistaken’ only by proxy, by originating in mistaken premises (an objective misjudgment of moral self-consciousness).

4. Conclusion

To conclude, it should be evident from the above that there exists neither the empirical possibility of the rejection of the consequent judgments of conscience, nor the logical possibility of the rejection of its antecedent judgments. We, therefore, do not just embrace the negative (“We cannot reasonably ask any better than to obey one’s conscience”), but restate it: “There is no reasonable better than to obey one’s conscience.” Nonetheless, this restatement gives rise to two final questions:

Is obedience to one’s conscience itself a duty?

How is an ill-informed conscience to be overcome?

In truth, these questions strike at the same principle, of the distinction between the moral self-consciousness of the understanding, and the universal self-consciousness of conscience. To answer the first, we remind ourselves again that conscience is duty’s precondition, and so, just as it cannot be a law that one must obey the law, conscience cannot enter into relations of duty. Regarding the second, it is by now transparent that ‘ill-informed conscience’ is a misnomer, and that where before we saw an ill-informed conscience, we now perceive an undeveloped understanding, an incomplete moral self-consciousness which, simply by virtue of its residence within reason, bears the most primary duty of all: to seek, through recourse to the faculty of practical reason, full knowledge of its duties, and to orient itself in a manner conducive to their fulfilment. This is the task of ethics.

Author's Note:

At times, it may appear that I have adopted an inappropriately specialised ethical vocabulary, employing notions of ‘duty’ and ‘obligation’, to the exclusion of any non-deontologist. On this point, I both maintain that my reasons for doing so emerge in the unfolding of the argument itself, and stress the need, especially in moral philosophy, to avoid the use of an existing yardstick in the critical evaluation of a new one – we might call this an ethical suspension of the teleological. Nonetheless, I invite any reader, if they insist, to substitute my language with less precise terminology, to see if it does not produce the same result.

Footnotes:

1 Kant, Immanuel. Lectures on Ethics. Ed. Peter Heath and J. B. Schneewind. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 134.

2 Ibid., 134.

3 ‘Guilt’, Dictionary by Merriam-Webster,

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/guilt (accessed Apr. 1, 2020).

4 Kant, Immanuel. The Metaphysics of Morals. Ed. Mary J. Gregor. Texts in German Philosophy. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 200.

5 Aristotle. De Caelo, II, 13. Trans. J.L. Stocks. The Works of Aristotle Translated into English. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922), 295b.

6 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Arnold V. Miller, J. N. Findlay, and Johannes Hoffmeister. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, 639. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 387.

7 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Arnold V. Miller, J. N. Findlay, and Johannes Hoffmeister. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, 640. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 388.

8 Frankfurt, Harry. “Alternate possibilities and moral responsibility.” Journal of Philosophy. 66 (23): 829–39. (Journal of Philosophy, Inc., 1969), 829.

Endnotes:

* Freedom of will I take to be assumed, if not as a condition for the possibility of discussions of moral responsibility in general (as this requires the additional acceptance of what Frankfurt calls the “principle of alternate possibilities”) [8], then at least as a condition for the possibility of ethical discussions pertaining to obedience (insofar as these do, in fact, imply an alternate possibility; that of disobedience).

† It is misleading even to call it a ‘conclusion’, for the acts of conscience are mental effects, and are a product of practical reason only indirectly.

Bibliography:

Aristotle. De Caelo. Trans. J.L. Stocks. The Works of Aristotle Translated into English. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922.

Frankfurt, Harry. “Alternate possibilities and moral responsibility.” Journal of Philosophy. Journal of Philosophy, Inc., 1969.

‘Guilt’. Dictionary by Merriam-Webster. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/guilt (accessed Apr. 1, 2020).

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Arnold V. Miller, J. N. Findlay, and Johannes Hoffmeister. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.

Kant, Immanuel. Lectures on Ethics. Ed. Peter Heath and J. B. Schneewind. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Kant, Immanuel. The Metaphysics of Morals. Ed. Mary J. Gregor. Texts in German Philosophy.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

[1] Memories can be cruel. As a girl is about to raise her hand in class, the prior experience of being discouraged by a teacher emerges in her mind, the scene floating before her eyes, classmates’ voices rebounding inside of her ears, and she can feel the blush on her cheeks. People tend to try their best to put behind unpleasant memories, which, unfortunately, are often the more rememberable ones. To forget, one might think the best way is “not to remember." However, contrary to previously held beliefs, a team of neuroscientists led by Tracy Wang discovered that intentional forgetting was most successful when there was moderate activation of the material to be forgotten in relevant cerebral regions. In this essay, I will discuss how forgetting is undervalued in conventional pedagogies and explain why I believe findings from Wang's study have profound implications for helping students realise their best potential in classrooms.
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[2] Memorization has long been incorporated into pedagogies around the world. Memorising vocabulary, mathematical theorems, or physics laws often aids students in achieving high test scores, which usually serves as an important metric for measuring student performance. In some Asian countries, increased emphasis on test scores means more memorisation tasks for students, which raises concerns about equating the memorisation of knowledge with learning. Various strategies seeking to enhance memorisation have been proposed, including sleep regulation, physical exercises, and offering rewards (Ribeiro, 2014; Trudeau, 2008; Mitry, 2001).
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[3] Forgetting, on the other hand, is seldom associated with pedagogies. Many of us are frustrated with forgetting, when we fail to remember the facts for a big test or miss the deadline of an essay submission. However, many learning science theories have proposed that students are constantly affected by their learning environment, especially by negative memories from the past. Research has also shown that students benefit greatly from being able to forget unwanted memories. Bear and Malenka (1994), for instance, discovered that when acting on the same item, memorisation and forgetting are two different processes, which rely on long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD) respectively; however, when directed at different items, LTD does facilitate LTP. McFarlane and Humphreys (2012) took their findings a step further and found that the removal of unwanted information from students' brain contributed to a better memorisation of more important information.
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[4] Much of our forgetting is unconscious, unintentional forgetting, which is passive and irresistible (Maxcey, 2019). This type of forgetting, as Frankland et al., (2013) suggested, is a natural process that happens in the brain to clear up space. Hippocampus, the brain region associated with memorisation, draws connections between neurons and circuits physically and chemically (Fell, 2001). Continuously exposed to incoming information, the hippocampus, even when we are sleeping, is busy coupling and decoupling neurons. However, not all information is worthy of the hippocampus' attention — unimportant information is either filtered or overlooked — which leads to forgetting.
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[5] However, as discussed earlier, there are circumstances where we want to be able to forget something at will, be it an embarrassing incident, or previous failure. Whether the intention to forget affects our ability to forget has long intrigued both psychologists and neuroscientists. One of the earliest available researches exploring intentional forgetting was conducted by Lehman and Bovasso in 1993, in which they explored intentional forgetting in children. Two mechanisms for intentional forgetting have since then been proposed: direct suppression and thought substitution. In 2005, a team led by PT Hertel discovered that the mingling of the target neuron with other signals led to successful forgetting (Hertel, 2005). This result was in line with the thought substitution hypothesis, which states that forgetting is achieved when alternative memories, rather than unwanted memories, are activated. The direct suppression hypothesis, on the other hand, states that forgetting is successful when unwanted memories are inhibited. van Schie et al. (2012) found evidence for this resorting to the Think/No-think paradigm. When we are asked to forget something, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in our brain sends inhibitory signals to the hippocampus and prevent memory encoding in this brain region. Both the direct suppression and thought substitution hypotheses imply that in order to forget an unwanted memory, one needs to turn away from engaging with it.
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[6] A recent study conducted by Tracy Wang and her colleagues shed new light on the mechanisms of intentional forgetting. The team recruited twenty men and women to view a set of 200 images of faces and scenes on the screen. Next to the images were commands of either “TBF (to-be-forgotten)” or “TBR (to-be-remembered)”. While participants studied the images, the experimenter used fMRI to observe the activities of their ventral temporal cortex and sensory cortex. After this visual input, the participants are asked to recall the images they just saw. The main results of this study were twofold. First, the TBF commands were associated with enhanced brain activity. Second, participants were most successful at forgetting the TBF images when there was moderate, not too high or too low, brain activity when studying the images. As concluded by Wang et al., (2019): "An increase in attentional focus on TBF items during a deliberate forgetting attempt increases their memory activation, which in turn, facilitates their forgetting." Although it is unclear what strategy participants used — thought substitution, direct suppression, or both — to forget the items, contrary to previous assumptions, moderate processing of to-be-forgotten memories improves rather than inhibits the forgetting of these memories.
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[7] These findings have profound implications for education. Educators first need to understand the impact of negative memories from the past on student performance. They also need to incorporate methods that teach students how to navigate these negative memories through their learning experience. To minimise the impacts of negative memories, educators should help students learn to properly engage with their own memories rather than suppress or avoid them. One such practice is mindfulness, an approach by which students learn to observe their own thoughts and memories without trying to judge, analyse or suppress them (Valentine, 2019). Moderate engagement with unwanted memories might, in turn, improve students' ability to forget about those memories.
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[8] Practicing engaging with memories has benefits beyond just preventing students from being affected by unwanted memories. Learning to engage with one's memories improves people's attentional abilities. Malinowski (2013), for instance, discovered that mindfulness helps refine people's ability to allocate attention to information at the onset of input processing, and improves people's capacity for attention control.
​
[9] Furthermore, learning to engage with one's memories also improves people's abilities to cope with their emotions. When a student frequently recalls a stressful event, thereby starting to feel anxious or depressed, the pituitary gland - under the command from the hypothalamus - starts to stimulate the adrenal glands in his or her body, thus propelling the secretion of an excessive amount of cortisol. An excess amount of cortisol can compromise the student's immune system, rendering his or her more susceptible to diseases (Hoehn, 2010). Both the pain and possible sicknesses can give rise to a higher stress level, forcing the brain commanding the system to secrete a greater amount of cortisol. This way, the body and the brain mutually and negatively feedback to each other. With some emotional events removed from the brain, this feedback cycle will less likely be initiated - the way in which intentional forgetting benefits students in terms of their memorisation abilities and physical health. With the coordination between body and mind, the emotional state of students – during their studies – will be more stabilised and thus beneficial.
​
[10] One may misunderstand the significance of forgetting as only limited to prevent every negative emotion such as awkwardness, which is an absolute understatement. With a tremendous number of people joking that they are “depressed,” the severity of depression may not be overlooked. A recent study discovered that people with depressive tendency are more likely to recall negative experiences in the past (Xie et al., 2018). With some 350 million people across the globe suffering from this illness, according to a 2018 survey, depression is undoubtedly influencing the world population immensely (Licinio et al., 2018). Negative memories, both the cause and the symptom of depression, constitute a vicious cycle so malevolent that harms the hippocampal function and can even drive people suicide (Beck, 2009). Closely related is PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, which are mostly caused by the experiences of violence, rape, and war, which give rise to a frequent and morbid recall of these memories (Yehuda, 2002). In the aspect of forgetting unwanted or sometimes detrimental memories, the strategies to undermine or divert relevant brain circuits may be of use by breaking the thorny cycle. Incorporating the skill of “how to forget” in education will to a large extent prevent the aggravation of memory-related psychological syndromes like depression and PTSD, reducing the hospitality fee, suicide rate, and social turbulence. Therefore, if one takes a more in-depth view, “forgetting” becomes even more crucial to individuals and societies.
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[11]Integrating materials from psychology and neuroscience, I have demonstrated that forgetting can be an important learning strategy for students, who are under the constant influence of memories from their experience. Tracy et al., (2019) showed that forgetting is not a “laissez-faire” process — the intention to forget increases processing of the to-be-forgotten material, and contributes to its successful forgetting. Given this newly acquired insight about how forgetting works, educators shall develop strategies to help students better engage with their memories, and forget them when in need. With comprehensive and appropriate applications of the technique of intentional forgetting, we are expected to see further socio-economical benefits, as educational institutes are the reproduction of current, and hopefully future, society.
Author's Note

Though there is still a no small distance from my essay’s word account to the word limit of a John Locke Competition essay, I have ordered all the information I see as crucial in this paper. However, that is not to say that this essay is comprehensive or even almost comprehensive. Psychology and education are two areas of study that worth one to devote his or her life to pursue, so broad that an essay can never cover. So much so, what I have done is pitching a small corner in and trying to work out the most practical and potential application of a neuroscience insight with my effort.

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Humans have a natural tendency to process information in a way that saves time and minimizes cognitive efforts. We categorize things we observe into our existing knowledge, better remember what we have seen more recently, or are quicker to identify information that is consistent with our beliefs. While these patterns of thinking, referred to as heuristics, help us quickly make sense of the world and make expedited decisions, they often come at the expense of the truth. Given that humans have evolved to use heuristics in everyday decisions, how can we resist such “hard-wired” tendencies, especially when using heuristics may lead to faulty conclusions? In this essay, I will first demonstrate how heuristics can result in inaccuracies despite their evolutionary benefits, using stereotypes as an example to illustrate the negative implications of heuristics. Based on my analysis of the sources of biases in heuristic thinking, I propose ways in which we can intervene to resist this tendency of stereotyping others. Finally, I will discuss how such interventions can promote human flourishing.

Heuristics are evolutionarily adaptive strategies that enable humans to systematically process information and make decisions quickly (Haselton et al., 2015). We are most likely to rely on heuristics when we face a situation that affords limited time or information, as heuristics “reduce the complex tasks of assessing probabilities and predicting values to simpler judgmental operations” (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974, p.1124). From an evolutionary standpoint, using such mental shortcuts is particularly useful when one experiences a threat to one’s safety, as the cost of engaging in a slower and more complex reasoning outweighs the potential benefit of enhanced accuracy (Arkes 1991). In a study that induced participants to feel an ambient physical threat by lowering the light level of the room, participants showed a stronger belief than those in the control condition that outgroup men were violent, displaying the use of heuristics that associate outgroups with a greater risk (Schaller et al., 2003). This example shows that heuristic thinking is a deeply ingrained human tendency that gets activated even by the subtle cue of the environment.

Although heuristic thinking is useful under limited time and resources, it can also lead to systematic inaccuracies in our judgments or decisions. When people use a representativeness heuristic, they make automatic associations between the entity and the features of its categories based on a previously formed subjective impression, regardless of the objective truth (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). However, this can lead to erroneous overgeneralization, as these associations are often ignoring the individual characteristics of the entity in question. Stereotyping, a tendency to categorize individuals into groups and develop beliefs about them based on the group membership (Powell et al., 2002), is a clear example of how using a representativeness heuristic can lead to inaccurate beliefs about an individual. For example, a study conducted prior to the 2008 election found that participants thought of Obama as “less American” than British prime minister Tony Blair (Devos & Ma, 2013). Being White prototypically represents American-ness, and therefore, people categorized Obama based on the representativeness of his race rather than his true national identity. Like this example, even if we know the target in question, the power of heuristics is strong enough to influence our belief about others.

As the by-products of heuristic thinking, stereotypes negatively impact individuals on wide- ranging domains. When an individual becomes aware of the negative stereotypes about their social group, they feel anxious about confirming the stereotype (Steele & Aronson, 1995). The stress resulting from such “stereotype threat” depletes the person’s cognitive resources and impairs performance. A process like this affects how one perceives their own abilities even when the stereotype does not apply to them. As such, by engaging in heuristic thinking that generates stereotypes, people may end up stigmatizing others and creating a vicious cycle of letting the stereotypes become self-fulfilled. Then, how can we resist the urge to form erroneous beliefs about others based on heuristics, which seems hardwired and difficult to control?

One way to reduce automatic stereotyping based on heuristics is to have more frequent and high- quality interactions with members of a group that one has limited experience with. “Contact hypothesis” suggests that close interactions between majority and minority members can lead to reduced stereotyping and prejudice (Allport et al., 1954). Through learning more about outgroup members and forming relationships with them on a deeper level, people can de-categorize outgroup members and see them as individuals, focusing on their unique characteristics rather than automatically ascribing stereotypic characteristics to them (Gaertner et al., 1993). Increased interactions with outgroup members also reduce anxiety about the intergroup contact over time (Stephan & Stephan, 1985; Blascovich et al., 2001). As people are more likely to use heuristics when their attentional resources are constrained by the situation (Pohl et al., 2013), reduced anxiety could also lower the likelihood of using heuristics to form quick beliefs about outgroup members.

Also, exposing people to counter-stereotypical examples can reduce the bias that may result from using erroneous heuristics. Frequent interactions with diverse groups of people would increase the chance of encountering a person who does not conform to socially-constructed stereotypes, thus changing what is thought of as “representative” of a group in one’s mind. Research by Dasgupta and Asgari (2004), which examined the stereotypic beliefs about one’s own social group, provides compelling evidence that even a brief exposure to a counter-stereotypic exemplar can impact people’s automatic beliefs. In this study, female students saw pictures or read paragraph-long descriptions of famous women in positions of power (e.g., Ruth Bader Ginsburg, U.S. Supreme Court Justice), which is counter to the common stereotype that associates women with subordinate roles or less power. After seeing or reading about women in power, participants were quicker to associate women with leadership compared to those who saw control stimuli. The result was replicated by a year-long study that examined the longer-term effects of attending a college with a greater proportion of female leadership. Compared to the ones who attended a coeducational college, those who attended a women’s college were less likely to show automatic stereotypic beliefs about women. This effect was explained by how frequently one was exposed to female leaders (i.e., female faculty).

Another way to prevent people from forming inaccurate beliefs based on stereotypes is to interrupt automatic, heuristic thinking and to facilitate slower reasoning that can systematically correct one’s biases (Kahneman, 2011). When the circumstance affords one to use mental shortcuts, biases can creep in. This happens often in the evaluation process within organizations, but simple measures that disrupt the automatic process of heuristic thinking can prevent people from reaching these biased conclusions. For example, in one resume screening study, it was found that portfolios with the same qualification levels were four to six times more likely to get rejected when they had ethnic minority names (e.g., Arab names) as compared to ethnic majority names (e.g., Dutch names) (Derous & Ryan, 2012). However, anonymizing resumes and thus removing the cues that activate heuristic thinking has

been shown to reduce such biases (e.g., Åslund & Skans, 2012; Kang et al., 2016). Ambiguous evaluation criteria also invite biased evaluations based on the use of stereotypes instead of objective evidence of individual traits. Stanford researchers found that the performance reviews at a company with little evaluation guidelines showed a gendered pattern in the criteria used: women were criticized for being too aggressive, and men for being too soft (Mackenzie et al., 2019). When the researchers created a checklist to help managers use criteria consistently and reference specific data to base their evaluations, gender gaps in ratings were reduced.

Would resisting a tendency to use heuristics and stereotype others help human flourishing? A large volume of literature suggests so. One direct evidence comes from the results of multiple studies that used the “jigsaw classroom” paradigm (e.g., Blaney et al., 1977; Lucker et al., 1977; Aronson et al., 1978). These studies were designed based on the contact hypothesis in an effort to resolve the racial

tensions across the U.S. in the 1970s. In the “jigsaw classroom,” a diverse group of students were instructed to learn from each other and cooperate on tasks that required interdependence. Such close and respectful intergroup interactions resulted in a remarkable decrease in negative ethnic stereotypes (Blaney et al., 1977; Geffner, 1978). Coupled with the reduction in stereotypes, students in the jigsaw classroom showed better academic performance, greater liking of school, and higher self-esteem than students in traditional classrooms. In particular, minority students showed a significant improvement in their performance, which effectively narrowed the achievement gap between White and racial minority students (Lucker et al., 1977).

Benefits of reduced biases and stereotyping are not only apparent in individuals who are the targets of stereotyping, but also those who engage in the act of stereotyping. A study by Prati and colleagues (2015) found that a thought exercise to think about a gender counter-stereotype led participants to display less dehumanization of unrelated outgroups such as asylum seekers and the homeless. In other words, the intervention targeting stereotypes not only changed participants’ beliefs about the group in question, but also shifted their views on unrelated groups. Importantly, this effect was explained by the reduced reliance on heuristics. The finding suggests that interrupting heuristic thinking can enhance cognitive flexibility in individuals by helping them adjust their prejudiced beliefs about a wide range of social groups. Reduced stereotyping also opens individuals up to more diverse perspectives that enable them to think more innovatively and attain higher-quality solutions (Hoffman & Maier, 1961). These positive outcomes of the reduced biases are shown to lead to measurable business outcomes. A study by the Boston Consulting Group found that companies with more diverse leadership teams reported higher revenue and “earnings before interest and taxes” (EBIT) margins (Lorenzo et al., 2018). As such, reduced stereotyping, or the environment that provides opportunities for reducing stereotypes through intergroup contact, contributes to a greater flourishing of individuals and work groups.

Without a doubt, heuristic thinking is an evolutionarily adaptive tendency that helps humans navigate the world under limited time and resources. However, it is important to notice that it often leads humans to inaccurate beliefs about others as illustrated by the examples of stereotyping. Based on the empirical evidence from social psychology, I proposed various ways that can help people resist the natural tendency to rely on heuristics and stereotypes. While we should continue using heuristics under situational constraints, we should take a more analytic approach and remove possible biases in our thinking when we can afford time and cognitive efforts. Taking this balanced approach will have far- reaching positive implications for individuals and society.

Humans are continuously evolving beings. If we remind ourselves that slowing down at the right moment and checking our own biases can better serve others and ourselves, our beliefs about the world will gradually shift closer to the “true” state of the world, making the society a more fair and just place than before.

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Introduction

When voters vehemently defend a candidate after his or her weaknesses have been exposed, or smokers convince themselves that cigarettes are actually not as bad for their health as they appear, these instances highlight how personal preferences can generally influence beliefs. People have a tendency to reason their way to favorable conclusions, with their proclivities guiding how evidence is gathered, arguments are evaluated, and memories are recollected. These actions of reasoning are all driven by underlying motivations, leading to beliefs tinged with bias that can seem objective to the individual (Gilovich and Ross, 2016). Motivated reasoning, a phenomenon studied in social psychology, can be defined as the “tendency to find arguments in favor of conclusions we want to believe to be stronger than arguments for conclusions we do not want to believe” (Kunda, 1990). This concept often contrasts critical thinking, which is generally viewed as the rational, unbiased analysis of facts to form a judgment at the highest level of quality (Paul and Elder, 2009). In this essay, I will champion a case for motivated reasoning and in turn, prove why there is no such thing as “good” or “accurate” critical thinking. Instead, all reasoning, outside mathematics and formal logic, is essentially motivated reasoning – justifications that are most desired instead of impartially reflect the evidence.

An Evolutionary Perspective

Motivated reasoning has been a pervasive tendency of human cognition, since the beginning of time, as it is ingrained in our basic survival instincts. Evolutionarily, people have been shown to utilize motivated reasoning to confront threats to the self. Research shows that people

weighed facts differently when those facts proved to be life-threatening. In 1992, Ditto and Lopez compared study participants who’d received either positive or negative medical test results. Those who were told they’d tested positive for an enzyme associated with pancreatic disorders were more likely to believe the test was inaccurate and discredit the results (Ditto and Lopez, 1992). When it comes to our health and quality of life especially, we tend to delude ourselves. Although we may prefer that human decision making be a thoughtful and deliberative process, in reality, our motivations tip the scales to make us less likely to believe something is true if we do not wish to believe it. For instance, a study by Reed and Aspinwall found that women who were caffeine drinkers engaged in motivated reasoning when they dispelled scientific evidence that caffeine consumption was linked to fibrocystic breast disease (Reed and Aspinwall, 1998).

In addition to protecting their health, evolutionarily, humans use motivated reasoning to bolster their self-esteem and protect their self-worth. A common example of this is the self-serving bias, which is “the tendency to attribute our successes to ourselves, and our failures to others

and the situation” (Stangor, 2015). For instance, students might attribute good test results to their own capabilities, but perform motivated reasoning and make a situational attribution to explain bad test results, all the while upholding the idea that they are intelligent beings. The phenomenon of the self-serving bias is widely considered to be essential for people’s mental health and adaptive functions (Taylor and Brown, 1994). It is thought to be a universal, fundamental need of individuals for positive self-regard (Heine et al., 1999). That is, people are motivated to possess and maintain positive self-views, and in turn, minimize the negativity of their self-views – by glorifying one’s virtues and minimizing one’s weaknesses, relative to objective criteria. This basis begs the question of whether humans are truly ever able to process information in an unbiased fashion.

A Fight for Personal Beliefs

People not only interpret facts in a self-serving way when it comes to their health and well-being; research also demonstrates that we engage in motivated reasoning if the facts challenge our personal beliefs, and essentially, our moral valuation and present understanding of the world. For example, Ditto and Liu showed a link between people’s assessment of facts and their moral convictions; they found that individuals who had moral qualms about condom education were less likely to believe that condoms were an effective form of contraception (Ditto and Liu, 2016). Oftentimes, the line between factual and moral judgments become blurred in this way.

In the context of identity, there are powerful social incentives that drive people’s thought processes. People strive for consistency among their attitudes and self-images. Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory highlights this tendency – he found that members of a group who believed in the end of the world for a predicted date became even more extreme in their views after that date had passed, in order to mitigate their cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1962). Moreover, when it comes to voting, normatively, new negative information surrounding a preferred candidate should cause downward adjustment of an existing evaluation. However, recent studies prove that the exact opposite takes place; voters become even more supportive of a preferred candidate when faced with negatively valenced information, with motivated reasoning as the explanation for this behavior (Redlawsk et al., 2010). In a 2015 APA analysis, 41 experimental studies of bipartisan bias were examined, demonstrating that self-identified liberals and conservatives showed a robust partisan bias when assessing empirical evidence, almost to an equal degree (Weir, 2017). Additionally, neuroscience research suggests that “reasoning away contradictions is psychologically easier than revising feelings” (Redlawsk,

2011). Given the context of groupthink and one’s group identity, the bias’ prevalence is powerful and persistent. Ultimately, people are psychologically motivated to support and maintain existing evaluations, even when confronted with disconfirming information, as to take an opposing viewpoint against a group would damage one’s reputation and challenge one’s existing social identity.

The Illusion of Objectivity

With the exception of mathematics and formal logic, all reasoning, essentially, is motivated reasoning. When it comes to decision-making and critical thinking, total unbiased analysis or evaluation of factual evidence, is largely illusory. In reality, we act based on an incomplete vision, perceived through filters constructed by our individual history and personal preferences. To scientifically operate on an objective level cannot be achieved. Every second, we as humans receive and process thousands of bits of information from our environment. To consciously analyze all of the sensory stimuli would be overwhelming; thus, our brain utilizes pre-existing knowledge and memory to filter, categorize and interpret the data we receive. The brain extrapolates information it believes to be missing or eliminates those deemed extraneous, to form a considerably coherent image (Thornton, 2015). Each person has unique filters that prevent them from being unbiased, even on a granular level, to cope with life’s complexity. Whether we are aware of our biases or not, affective contagion occurs, a phenomenon where “conscious deliberation is heavily influenced by earlier, unconscious information processing” (Strickland et al., 2011).

Even in scientific journals, statistical analysis is utilized to provide a stamp of objectivity to conclusions. However, people tend to use statistical information in a motivated way, further perpetuating the illusion of objectivity. Berger and Berry argue that although objective data from an experiment can be obtained, “reaching sensible conclusions from the statistical analysis of this data requires subjective input,” and the role of subjectivity inherent in the interpretation of data should be more acknowledged (Berger and Berry, 1988). Similarly, in law, lawyers and advocates for both the prosecution and the defense utilize motivated reasoning to prove innocence or guilt. The judge’s job, on the other hand, is to eliminate motivational bias in their own assessment of evidence when drawing up a conclusion. However, the interpretation of the law can be skewed; sometimes, preferred outcomes, based on legally irrelevant factors, drive the reasoning of judges too, without their full awareness. Redding and Reppucci examined whether the sociopolitical views of state court judges motivated their judgments about the dispositive weight of evidence in death penalty cases. They found that judges’ personal views on the death penalty did indeed influence their decisions (Sood, 2013).

In the modern day, one of the greatest promises of artificial intelligence and machine learning is a world free of human biases. Scientists believed that operating by algorithm would create gender equality in the workplace or sidestep racial prejudice in policing. But studies have shown that even computers can be biased as well, especially when they learn from humans, adopting stereotypes and schemas analogous to our own. Biases can creep into algorithms; recently, ProPublica found that a criminal justice algorithm in Florida mislabeled African-American defendants as “high risk,” approximately twice the rate it mislabeled white defendants (Larson and Angwin, 2016).

Conclusion

Essentially, I demonstrate that all reasoning, aside from logic-based, is essentially motivated. Ultimately, to support preferred conclusions, people unknowingly display a bias in their cognitive processes that underlie reasoning. Even though we can never fully be rid of motivated reasoning, consistently striving towards an unbiased evaluation of facts is still key to achieving rigorous standards for decision-making. With today’s media landscape and the internet, a deviation from a purely fact-based evaluation has been amplified; it is now easier than ever to operate in an echo chamber and choose which sources of information fit one’s preferred reality. A report by Stanford’s Graduate School of Education found that students ranging from middle school to college were all poor at evaluating the quality of online information (Donald, 2016). Fake-news websites and the spread of misinformation that have proliferated in the past decade, all compound the problem. Mistrust of the media has increasingly grown to become a powerful tool for motivated reasoning. To restore our faith in facts, media literacy must take place. I champion improving existing channels of communication so that they help us to identify the roots of our biases, then encourage us to adjust our beliefs accordingly. Becoming aware of our deeply-rooted tendencies and thinking mechanisms is valuable, as it enables us to make decisions with more lucidity and transparency, and hopefully, for the betterment of our world.

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Ditto, P. H., & Liu, B. S. (2016). Moral Coherence and Political Conflict. Social Psychology of Political Polarization, 102-122. doi:10.4324/9781315644387-6

Ditto, P. H., & Lopez, D. F. (1992). Motivated skepticism: Use of differential decision criteria for preferred and nonpreferred conclusions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63(4), 568-584. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.63.4.568

Donald, B. (2016, December 15). Stanford researchers find students have trouble judging the credibility of information online. Retrieved 2020, from https://ed.stanford.edu/news/stanford-researchers-find-students-have-trouble-judging-credibility- information-online

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Redlawsk, D. P. (2011, April 22). The Psychology of the 'Birther' Myth. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/04/21/barack-obama-and-the-psychology-of-the- birther-myth/a-matter-of-motivated-reasoning

Redlawsk, D. P., Civettini, A. J., & Emmerson, K. M. (2010). The Affective Tipping Point: Do Motivated Reasoners Ever “Get It”? Political Psychology, 31(4), 563-593.doi:10.1111/j.1467-9221.2010.00772.x

Reed, M. B., & Aspinwall, L. G. (1998). Self-Affirmation Reduces Biased Processing of Health-Risk Information. Motivation and Emotion, 22, 99-132. doi:10.1023/A:1021463221281

Sood, A. M. (2013). Motivated Cognition in Legal Judgments—An Analytic Review. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 9(1), 307-325.doi:10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-102612-134023

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Strickland, A. A., Taber, C. S., & Lodge, M. (2011). Motivated Reasoning and Public Opinion. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 36(6), 935-944. doi:10.1215/03616878-1460524

Thornton, E. (2015). The objective leader: How to leverage the power of seeing things as they are. New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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According to Henry Kissinger ‘those ages which in retrospect seem most peaceful were least in search of peace. Those whose quest for it seems unending appear less able to achieve tranquility.” Comment on this claim in light of events since 1945.

Introduction
There has been much ink spilt in favour of the limited government. Bodies of empirical work confirm the economic benefits of free markets and the robustness of such evidence seems hard to deny: markets deliver economic growth and governments make plenty of mistakes. [1] [2] A cursory glance at such evidence may lead to the presumption that strong states hinder economic growth. That is, if markets and private transactions are the engines for economic growth, strong states may seem a mere obstruction. However, this laissez-faire line of thought overlooks the state’s role in providing the very background for such growth-conducive arrangements.

Indeed, much of recent empirical and theoretical work has been devoted to buttressing the exact opposite intuition. In work-related to the economic development of weak states in Africa, for instance, the factor crucial to the failure of economic development of African states has been identified as the state’s lack of capacity rather than an overwhelming projection of state power. [3] [4] More significantly, the main lessons learned from Acemoglu and Robinson’s seminal work in historical institutionalism show that growth requires an agglomeration of institutional factors that incentivize agents to behave in ways that are conducive to economic growth. [5]

Now, the aforementioned confusion arises because of a mistaken understanding of what ‘prerequisite’ means in this context. A strong state being a prerequisite for economic growth does not mean that a strong state is a sufficient condition for economic growth. This understanding of ‘prerequisite’ would make the question overly tendentious in favour of the ‘obstacle’ view. There are simply too many strong states that fail at delivering economic growth. For instance, in Venezuela’s case, widespread nationalisation scared foreign investors and inefficiencies in state-owned firms severely hindered economic performance. We may say without qualm that Venezuela was and is a strong state, albeit one in which the strong state acts as an obstacle to growth.

Thus, a proper understanding of ‘prerequisite’ should be that a strong state is a necessary condition for economic growth. That is, wherever there is economic growth, there is a strong state that undergirds that growth, while it is possible to have a strong state that does not deliver economic growth. I will argue that a strong state is a prerequisite for economic growth. I will argue that a strong state enables sociopolitical stability, which acts as the minimal institutional preconditions on which incentives for growth are guaranteed.

In defining state strength, I will stay neutral by following Acemoglu in measuring state strength as having two dimensions along state capacity: economic and political.[6] A state can be strong economically, in which case it has the capacity to utilize and direct resources throughout its territory. (i.e. through taxation and spending) If a state is politically strong, then rulers are not easily replaceable whereas the opposite is true for weak states. These definitions of state strength leave it open whether strong states are prerequisites or obstacles to economic growth because they measure the underlying capacity of states, which can manifest in ways that are conducive or opposed to economic growth.

Political Weakness, Unpredictability and Underinvestment
Political instability is defined as the propensity of a change in the executive, either by “constitutional” or “unconstitutional” means.[7] When there is political instability, social instability, measured by incidence of revolution, frequency in change of power and likelihood of war become much more likely.[8] In the absence of a politically strong state that guarantees such social stability, the following problem for economic growth arises.

​

First, institutional predictability is threatened, which significantly reduces consumer and investor confidence. A lack of consistent policies augmented by the likelihood of expropriation by various actors facilitates capital outflows. This is because investors’ propensity to invest depends on the knowledge that financial institutions will generate returns on savings and investments in the long-run; politically weak states fail to guarantee this due to the risk of unrest.[9] Moreover, inconsistent expropriation creates uncertainty for firms and makes the state a less attractive place to invest. Under these conditions, households are also disincentivized from saving with financial institutions, which are perceived to be insecure. The net effect is a decrease in the overall capital stock and significantly lower economic growth than in the counterfactual.

Second, continuity in infrastructural investments is threatened. Under conditions of political weakness, the state does not have sustainable infrastructure strategies because of persistent changes to policy priorities and a lack of transparency in infrastructure projects’ procurement.[10] This means that firms have little incentive to cooperate and invest and mechanisms such as public-private partnerships (PPPs) are likely to fail to be efficient.[11] Thus, for instance, politically weak states such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, suffer from chronic supply-chain disruption due to seasonal flooding and inadequate road networks. [12] [13] This represents a large obstacle to growth because crucial infrastructure such as transport infrastructure minimizes downtime and delays and allows for smooth supply chains, allowing industries to be consistently more productive.

This trend of political weakness of states further exacerbates economic weakness of states by laying ground for states’ inability to facilitate investments in high value-add industries. For instance, much of the literature on the resource curse attributes many resource-rich African states’ dependence on low-value and volatile raw materials to be based on just such a lack of state capacity to set up crucial infrastructure. [14] This is consistent with the observation that most weak African states have mainly been exporters of lightly processed or unprocessed natural resources which, when processed, increase in value by up to 400 times that of the original commodity.[15]

Instability, Clientelism and Waste
Political weakness also generates systematic incentives for wastefulness which saps economic growth potential. Socio-political instability owing to the political weakness of states means higher stakes for incumbent regimes and reliance of client-patron networks in regions where state power does not penetrate.[16] That is because there are divergent levels of penetration in state power, incumbent regimes require cooperation from regional players and survive by private goods provisions to their small winning coalitions instead of public goods provisions for the wider public.[17]

These clientelist networks are detrimental to economic growth in at least the following two ways. First, client networks often foster a culture of corruption in which regional players are able to run graft schemes through which much of the resources devoted to those projects are divided up for private gain.[18] Especially because clientelist networks often operate on the basis of guaranteed employment, “underinvestment stems from the need to keep offers of employment credible in order to increase the probability of re-election”.[19] As a net effect, clientelism creates a feedback loop which prevents businesses from being established, hindering economic growth and limiting tax revenue to already weak states, trapping them in a cycle of under-investment.[20]

Second, clientelist networks that stem from the weakness of states lead to wastefulness in public investments. Because weak governments need to consistently invest in the same actors that make up the winning coalition, redundant infrastructure investments happen. For instance, construction of the Kenyan standard gauge railway project was conducted at highly inflated prices, with land confiscation and unfair compensation, local procurement and employment benefiting regions affiliated with the ruling party.[21]

​

Strong States and Stability
In strong states, such crucial stability is preserved, allowing the state to generate institutional setups that are conducive to growth. In recent history, strong states have mainly existed in two different forms: authoritarian strong states and OECD-type democratic nations, which Acemoglu refers to as “consensually strong states.”[22]

In consensually strong states, there is a state-society consensus; firms and households trust the government and state actors opt to provide public goods to the taxpayers rather than expropriate for private gain.[23] This firstly allows firms and households to invest and save with relative long-term certainty, which generates higher returns on capital. Further, democratically strong states’ capacity to collect taxes permit government investment in infrastructure, legislature and the judiciary which ground the operation of markets. Finally, strong institutions shape the decisions made by the ruler, acting as a check on arbitrary decision making and preventing catastrophic decisions which could lead to economic ruin.[24] Given appropriate operation, this democratic stability creates a stable base for business activity, investor and consumer confidence, and thus sustained economic growth.

​

In contrast, authoritarian strong states are generally more interventionist, and exert more control over their markets: there are usually no fully functioning check-and-balance systems in place. This can drive economic growth or, if the strength is misapplied, can cause the strong authoritarian state to become an obstacle. For instance, strong authoritarian states’ ability to intervene in the private sector can lead to certain groups being favoured in return for support, which can reduce market efficiency, or leaders pursuing policies aimed at consolidating power and lining allies’ pockets rather than enriching the country. Strong authoritarian states’ ability to rewrite laws to their benefit makes private-state contracts insecure, reducing trust and business confidence, and misapplication of power can cause them to “become predators of private sector wealth”.[25]

History provides numerous examples of strong authoritarian states which hampered economic growth in these ways. In Hussain’s Iraq, frequent, arbitrary interventions in the market made the Iraqi economy highly unpredictable, leading to chronic problems in savings and investments.[26] Likewise, the USSR suffered due to government intervention and the development of a command economy with price floors and ceilings. This created inefficiencies and market collapses, which led to further controls, further inefficiencies, and further economic woes.[27]

On the other hand, a strong authoritarian state pursuing growth-oriented policies can act as a robust engine for economic growth. The so-called Asian Tigers - Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea - were all, to large extents, strong authoritarian states during periods of rapid economic growth. All four Tigers saw state-led investment in education, combined with government financing which created low-interest corporate loans to fuel business growth and ultimately the policies were carefully fostered economic incentives, rather than arbitrary interventions.[28]

An instructive example is found in the industrial strategy of Park Chung-hee’s military regime in South Korea, which saw exponential growth since the 1960s. The strategy was to direct massive state-led investments in high-value-add infrastructures and industries. For example, the 1973 National Investment Fund Act allowed funds collected from state bond issuance to be lent out at low-interest rates to companies engaged in heavy industry and chemical sectors. Policies such as these introduced long-term certainties in the financial system at a time when investment destinations were generally unpromising by ‘picking’ winners in conglomerates such as Samsung, Hyundai and LG. This contributed to a sustained increase in savings and investments.[29]

These targeted interventions, such as the demand that major companies deliver certain levels of production and profitability in return for government support, allowed private actors to pursue profits but, crucially, left them with the freedom to choose the means to that end.[30] These policies also aligned the interests of the government and conglomerates, encouraging cooperation for large infrastructure projects such as the Gyeongbu Highway and investments in state-led enterprise projects such as the Pohang Iron & Steel Company. Growing tax revenues also aided further investments in further large-scale infrastructure projects. [31] [32]

Conclusion
Alexander Hamilton once wrote “the state ought to excite the confidence of capitalists, who are ever cautious and sagacious, by aiding them to overcome the obstacles that lie in the way of all experiments,”[33] and these words are consonant with my findings. Strong states are required as a

minimal background for economic growth.

However, that doesn’t mean that strong states are a panacea. While strong democratic states which minimize market intervention are generally able to sustain moderate economic growth, strong authoritarian states show a much wider range of outcomes. Misdirected and arbitrary institutions can create obstacles to economic growth and even catastrophic outcomes. On the other hand, careful interventions and management of industry can create the type of growth seen in the ‘Asian Tigers’ economies.

​

I conclude that although a strong state is a prerequisite for economic growth, the extent to which this strong state acts as an obstacle or an enabler depends on policies, markets and institutions.

Footnotes

1 David Woodward, Debt, Adjustment and Poverty in Developing Countries: National and International Dimensions of Debt and Adjustment in Developing Countries (London, New York: Pinter Publishers in association with Save the Children, 1992)

2 Milton Friedman, An Economist’s Protest (Thomas Horton & Daughters, 1975)

3 Robert H. Bates, Prosperity & Violence: The Political Economy of Development (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009)

4 Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1992 (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1990)

5 Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. 2012. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (New York: Crown Business, 2012).

6 Daron Acemoglu, Politics and Economics in Weak and Strong States, Journal of Monetary Economics 52, (2005): 1199–1226

7 Alberto Alesina, Sule Özler, Nouriel Roubini, and Phillip Swagel, Political Instability and Economic Growth, Journal of Economic Growth 1, no. 2 (June 1996): 189-212

8 Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968)

9 Ari Aisen and Francisco Jose Veiga, “How Does Political Instability Affect Growth?” IMF Working Paper, January 2011.

10 WBG PPP CCSA, GGP, COST, and PPIAF, Disclosure in Public Private Partnerships: Jurisdictional Studies, August 2015, 7.

11 ibid.

12 IBP USA, Congo Democratic Republic Country Study Guide Volume 1 Strategic Information and Developments (Washington D.C.: IBP USA, 2012)

13 Atsushi Immi, Effects of Improving Infrastructure Quality on Business Costs: Evidence from Firm-Level Data in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, The Developing Economics 49, no. 2 (June 2011): 121-147

14 Michael Lewin, ‘Botswana’s Success: Good Governance, Good Policies, and Good Luck,’ in Chuhan-Pole, P., et al. (eds.), African Success Stories, World Bank Group, 2011.

15 “Information Brief: Enhancing Natural Resource Governance in Africa,” International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 2017

16 Bueno de Mesquita, James D. Morrow, Randolph M. Siverson, and Alastair Smith, Logic of Political Survival (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2003)

17 Wouter Veenendaal and Jack Corbett, Clientelism in Small States: How Smallness Influences Patron–Client Networks in the Caribbean and the Pacific, Democratization 27, no. 1 (2020): 61-80, DOI:10.1080/13510347.2019.1631806

18 Jean-Louis Briquet, "Clientelism," Encyclopædia Britannica, December 29, 2015, accessed July 15, 2020, h ttps://www.britannica.com/topic/clientelism

19 James A. Robinson and Thierry Verdier, The Political Economy of Clientelism, The Scandinavian Journal of Economics 115, no. 2 (2013): 260-291

20 3. African Development Bank, “Africa’s Infrastructure: Great Potential but Little Impact on Inclusive Growth” in African Economic Outlook 2018, 2018, 63-94.

21 Yuan Wang and Uwe Wissenbach, Clientelism at Work? A Case Study of Kenyan Standard Gauge Railway Project, Economic History of Developing Regions 34, no. 3 (2019): 280-299, DOI:

1 0.1080/20780389.2019.1678026

22Acemoglu, Politics and Economics in Weak and Strong States.

23 ibid.

24 Hilton L. Groot, Do Strong Governments Produce Strong Economies? The Independent Review 5, no. 4 (Spring 2001): 565-573

25 ibid.

26 Abbas S. Mehdi, "The Iraqi Economy under Saddam Hussein: Development or Decline," Middle East Policy 4, no. 1-2 (1995): 242+. Gale Academic OneFile (accessed July 15, 2020).

27 Michael Ray, "Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse," Encyclopædia Britannica, accessed July 15, 2020, h ttps://www.britannica.com/story/why-did-the-soviet-union-collapse

28 Groot.

29 OECD (2020), Saving rate (indicator). doi: 10.1787/ff2e64d4-en (Accessed on 16 July 2020), https://data.oecd.org/natincome/saving-rate.htm

30 Tae-gyun Park, The 8·3 Measure and Industrial Rationalization Policy: Economic Foundation of the Yushin System, 역사와 현실, no. 88 (2013): 101-144

31 최광승, 박정희는 어떻게 경부고속도로를 건설하였는가, 한국학(구 정신문화연구) 33, no. 4, (2010): 175-202

32 POSCO, “History of POSCO: 1967~1970 Foundation of POSCO,” Accessed July 15, 2020, h ttp://www.posco.co.kr/homepage/docs/eng6/jsp/company/posco/s91a1000012c.jsp

33 Chalmers Johnson, The Industrial Policy Debate (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1984),17.

Bibliography

Daron Acemoglu, Politics and Economics in Weak and Strong States, Journal of Monetary Economics 52, (2005): 1199–1226

Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. 2012. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (New York: Crown Business, 2012).

3. African Development Bank, “Africa’s Infrastructure: Great Potential but Little Impact on Inclusive Growth” in African Economic Outlook 2018, 2018, 63-94.

Ari Aisen and Francisco Jose Veiga, “How Does Political Instability Affect Growth?” IMF Working Paper, January 2011.

Alberto Alesina, Sule Özler, Nouriel Roubini, and Phillip Swagel, Political Instability and Economic

Growth, Journal of Economic Growth 1, no. 2 (June 1996): 189-212

Robert H. Bates, Prosperity & Violence: The Political Economy of Development (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009)

Milton Friedman, An Economist’s Protest (Thomas Horton & Daughters, 1975)

Hilton L. Groot, Do Strong Governments Produce Strong Economies? The Independent Review 5, no.4 (Spring 2001): 565-573

Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968)

IBP USA, Congo Democratic Republic Country Study Guide Volume 1 Strategic Information and Developments (Washington D.C.: IBP USA, 2012)

Atsushi Immi, Effects of Improving Infrastructure Quality on Business Costs: Evidence from

Firm-Level Data in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, The Developing Economics 49, no. 2 (June 2011): 121-147

“Information Brief: Enhancing Natural Resource Governance in Africa,” International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 2017

Chalmers Johnson, The Industrial Policy Debate (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1984),17.

Michael Lewin, ‘Botswana’s Success: Good Governance, Good Policies, and Good Luck,’ in Chuhan-Pole, P., et al. (eds.), African Success Stories, World Bank Group, 2011.

Jean-Louis Briquet, "Clientelism," Encyclopædia Britannica, December 29, 2015, accessed July 15, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/topic/clientelism

Abbas S. Mehdi, "The Iraqi Economy under Saddam Hussein: Development or Decline," Middle East Policy 4, no. 1-2 (1995): 242+. Gale Academic OneFile (accessed July 15, 2020).

Bueno de Mesquita, James D. Morrow, Randolph M. Siverson, and Alastair Smith, Logic of Political Survival (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2003)

OECD (2020), Saving rate (indicator). doi: 10.1787/ff2e64d4-en (Accessed on 16 July 2020), https://data.oecd.org/natincome/saving-rate.htm

Tae-gyun Park, The 8·3 Measure and Industrial Rationalization Policy: Economic Foundation of the Yushin System, 역사와 현실, no. 88 (2013): 101-144

POSCO, “History of POSCO: 1967~1970 Foundation of POSCO,” Accessed July 15, 2020, http://www.posco.co.kr/homepage/docs/eng6/jsp/company/posco/s91a1000012c.jsp

Michael Ray, "Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse," Encyclopædia Britannica, accessed July 15, 2020, h ttps://www.britannica.com/story/why-did-the-soviet-union-collapse

James A. Robinson and Thierry Verdier, The Political Economy of Clientelism, The Scandinavian Journal of Economics 115, no. 2 (2013): 260-291

Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1992 (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1990)

Wouter Veenendaal and Jack Corbett, Clientelism in Small States: How Smallness Influences Patron–Client Networks in the Caribbean and the Pacific, Democratization 27, no. 1 (2020): 61-80, DOI: 10.1080/13510347.2019.1631806

Yuan Wang and Uwe Wissenbach, Clientelism at Work? A Case Study of Kenyan Standard Gauge Railway Project, Economic History of Developing Regions 34, no. 3 (2019): 280-299, DOI: 1 0.1080/20780389.2019.1678026

WBG PPP CCSA, GGP, COST, and PPIAF, Disclosure in Public Private Partnerships: Jurisdictional Studies, August 2015, 7.

David Woodward, Debt, Adjustment and Poverty in Developing Countries: National and International Dimensions of Debt and Adjustment in Developing Countries (London, New York: Pinter Publishers in association with Save the Children, 1992)

최광승, 박정희는 어떻게 경부고속도로를 건설하였는가, 한국학(구 정신문화연구) 33, no. 4, (2010): 175-202

How is the modern world different from previous periods of history and why did it come into existence when and where it did?