I’ve always been a contrarian. Christopher Hitchens’ Letters to a Young Contrarian is one of my very favorite books. I will take a position against any recognized orthodoxy, often arguing the opposite side of a case to the one I truly support if I feel strong opposition is lacking. I like to probe and prod and push at ideas until they give way, or demonstrate their fortitude by standing up to rigorous scrutiny.
This tendency began early. I remember getting into heated discussions with my parents as a kid, standing my ground firmly but, I was convinced, reasonably. I’d question and wheedle and query incessantly, finding no good reason to change my position, and finally, after an endless back and forth, the dreaded words would issue from their mouths: “James! You’re so dogmatic!”
And I’d get very, very upset.
Few of us like to be considered dogmatic. It’s one of those words which has no real redeeming qualities. And to those, like me, committed to rationalism, skepticism and free inquiry, there are few traits we seek so ardently to avoid and to combat. One of our most frequent criticisms of religious faith is that it is, in our view, often dogmatic, a belief held without good reasons and in despite of contrary evidence.
But what is dogmatism, and how can we fight it?
Luckily, I recently had an opportunity to explore the nature and causes of dogmatism. In an excellent presentation at the Center for Inquiry Leadership Conference (the CfI is an organization dedicated to promoting science, reason and secular humanism), Prof. Judy J. Johnson of Mount Royal University shared her research into this very subject.
She began by expressing her view that dogmatism as a maladaptive response to unmet needs (for example the need to know, and the need to avoid uncertainty). Then, and most important, she detailed the 13 characteristics of dogmatism she has identified, of which (in her judgment) 6 are required to determine trait presence.
There are 5 cognitive characteristics: discomfort with uncertainty; defensive cognitive closure (for example ending a discussion before it has run its course); rigid certainty; compartmentalization (partitioning conflicting beliefs to prevent them interacting and causing cognitive dissonance); and lack of personal insight (a lack of distance from one’s own core beliefs and emotions).
In addition, Prof. Johnson outlined 3 emotional characteristics: belief-associated anxiety and fear (this makes fear a useful tool for the demagogue, since fearful people are easier to manipulate); belief-associated anger (seeing those who differ as opponents, “Don’t retreat: reload!”); and existential despair (people can lose their balance if they become disillusioned with the ideas they hold dogmatically).
Finally Dr. Johnson outlined the following 5 behavioral characteristics of dogmatism: a preoccupation with power and status (judging the messenger not the message); glorification of the in-group, vilification of the out-group; dogmatic authoritarian aggression (a form of aggression which tends to happen at the institutional level more than between individuals); dogmatic authoritarian submission (deferring to authorities for no good reason); and an arrogant, dismissive communication style.
Capping off her presentation, Dr. Johnson stressed that her taxonomy has little to do with intelligence and education, but is more about the dogmatic individual seeking to preserve their integrity and dignity in the face of what they perceive as a challenge to their identity. Thus smart, well-educated people are not immune from dogmatism! Of further importance (particularly for Humanists like myself), it is clear from Prof. Johnson’s taxonomy that aspects of some religious beliefs can be held in a non-dogmatic way. Someone who has never encountered the full range of arguments against a belief in God, for example, or in favor of evolution, might well be holding their position because it fits the best available evidence and reasons they have, and not because they are closed to investigating further. In addition, very many believers do not display the behavioral characteristics of dogmatism: most, in my experience, do not have a preoccupation with power and status, for example, or a dismissive communication style. I am doubtful that certain religious beliefs (like belief in God) can ultimately be held non-dogmatically with full access to the evidence and all the arguments, but I am open to persuasion on that point.
But lest I get too comfortable, it’s critical to note that while it’s easy to identify these characteristics in others – I was gleefully attributing them to my ideological opponents as Prof. Johnson concluded her talk – it’s much harder to recognize these characteristics in oneself. I found myself wondering, do I display six of these components sufficiently consistently to be considered dogmatic? Were my parents right?
It’s hard to tell. I can certainly see a few of these characteristics in myself, at least some times. I can display an arrogant, dismissive communication style (any other State of Formation contributors recognize this?). I sometimes feel belief-associated anger, when my most cherished principles are under attack (though most usually if that attack involves the denigration of human beings). And I think I sometimes suffer from a lack of personal insight, finding it difficult to distance myself and my core identity from my beliefs on particular issues. So that’s three out of six right there, and those are the one I can identify. So let’s say the jury’s out on me and my dogmatism – I’m open to any points of view on the matter.
How about you? Do you see the telltale signs of dogmatic thinking in your actions and interactions with others? It’s an important question. Being dogmatic means we aren’t evaluating the reasons behind our beliefs with a level-head, and we aren’t fairly considering the arguments of others. When it comes to our deepest commitments – religious, ethical or philosophical – dogmatism can be particularly pernicious. These core aspects of our worldview are the ideas which require the most scrutiny and investigation, but are often the ones, due to the mechanisms Prof. Johnson describes, which are most quickly shut-away for our protection.
How can we make sure that we are not simply protecting ourselves when we discuss these beliefs, and are in fact evaluating the evidence and reasons with clear eyes? How can we ensure that our most precious ideals are always available for criticism, and are never unduly protected by our dogmatic defenses? In short, how can we defeat dogmatism?
I’d appreciate your views.
Interesting points and a useful characterization of dogmatism.
I think it’s also important to recognize that our biases and tendency to focus narrowly and create fixed mindsets is adaptive for understanding our situation rapidly and acting on the current conditions. Second guessing our every decision is one of the worst things we can do in service of a fruitful life.
I don’t think it is just the ongoing attitude of self-doubt that propels us toward wisdom but understanding the way the mind focuses and learning the skills for perspective-taking when situations call for reflection.
We don’t need to analyze too far to recognize something fundamental, I think we can pretty much take for granted given the nature of the human mind that everyone relies on fixed mindsets by default. It’s not a matter of identifying whether we are dogmatic or not in that sense, it is our initial default. I strongly suspect that If someone were born with no propensity to take a fixed mindset they would be most striking in their inability to understand situations in a reasonable amount of time or to decide on appropriate responses. They would be, I think, extremely rigid in response to simple situations and extremely slow and constantly overwhelmed in response to more complex situations compared to the rest of us.
The difference that most distinguishes dogmatism in practice I think is the unwillingless or inability to take other perspectives when it makes sense to do so.
Thanks for this thoughtful and informative piece. I find your “jury is still out” quasi-confession particularly interesting. In the first place, this confession works to purchase you considerable rhetorical authority, because it prevents readers (such as myself) who might feel as though we’re the dogmatists in need of defeat from directing a tit-for-tat accusation of dogmatism at you–thereby enabling people on both “sides” to actually think about what dogmatism is and how it works. Paired with your acknowledgment that not all forms of religious belief are necessarily dogmatic, it places you and the believers in your audience on an equal footing. In short, a very successful move.
Read in light of Todd Stark’s perceptive comment, though, your felicitous rhetorical move becomes more interesting still, because it implies that both the skeptic and the believer occasionally rely on fixed, relatively unexamined mindsets out of practical necessity. In other words, your move challenges the binary relationship between dogmatism and reasoned, examined belief by suggesting that most of us in practice find ourselves between these poles. The matter then turns on sorting out the particularities behind Todd’s final phrase: “when it makes sense to do so.” How do we determine when our views need examination, when the time has come to let our natural defenses down and invite critique? Lurking here are some vexing questions about how self-knowledge works and the possibility of being “objective” about oneself. For my part, I think that, while people can be more or less perceptive about themselves, absolute self-objectivity is probably a chimera. I’m curious, therefore, to know your thoughts about navigating this muddled middle space in between dogmatism and the ideal of fully examined belief. That’s where I find myself living, and by your own admission you’re my fellow-traveler. Advice?
On the subject of dogmatism and rhetorical authority, you might find David Foster Wallace’s essay “Authority and American Usage” (in his collection _Consider the Lobster_) both informative and thought-provoking.
I appreciate this comment very much – I worked hard to try to be fair and even-handed in this post and challenge my own community with the consideration that we might (and most certainly do) act dogmatically on some occasions.
You and Todd raise a very interesting question, which Prof. Johnson addressed a tiny bit in her talk. One way of asking this (if I understand you correctly) might be “does it make sense / is it necessary to be dogmatic about some things, sometimes?”
I’m inclined to answer “no”, strictly sticking to the definition of dogmatism that Prof. Johnson offers. I don’t see a good reason yet why our foundational commitments could not be scrutinized in a way that avoids being termed dogmatic, even if we have to make certain allowances for them.
Perhaps it would help to get a specific example of a belief or mindset that you or Todd thinks might need to remain relatively unexamined.
Do you think we could translate a useful definition of dogmatism into a set of general principles for answering the question: “how do I know if I’m being dogmatic?” Assuming the quasi-pathological meaning of dogmatism in that case.
I guess my questions really have to do with how far we can scrutinize our foundational beliefs in practice. I’m just not sure that it’s possible to be thorough enough to avoid any hint of dogmatism.
An example would be the question of God’s existence. I think that agnosticism is the only absolutely defensible position on this question, meaning that any positive answer to it is dogmatic to some extent. There’s a significant difference between “There is a/no God” and “The preponderance of evidence leads me to believe that there is a/no God,” in that the latter formulation acknowledges that one’s conclusions are in provisional. In both cases, provided that one draws a conclusion, that conclusion is dogmatic insofar as some aspect of it simply can’t withstand scrutiny. Even so, the latter option is relatively more examined and thus relatively less dogmatic.
From my perspective, avoiding dogmatism is less important than being honest about the provisionality of what one believes. (Admirer of Kierkegaard that I am, I value awareness of the risks entailed in belief of any kind.) I think that complacency is a more fruitful “enemy” to oppose than dogmatism. The difference, as I see it, is that fighting complacency demands ongoing scrutiny of one’s beliefs sans the assumption that any absolutely examined position is attainable. (Yes, I’m a postmodernist.)
In terms of Todd’s question—“How do I know if I’m being dogmatic”—one litmus test from my point of view (which is usually rhetorical) is: “Am I writing as though the truth that I’m attempting to advance provides sufficient authority for me to attempt advancing it?” A vexing question, to be sure, and one that I admit I often have trouble answering in the negative.
I will respond more fully to this, but to start, can you clarify where you see a hint of dogmatism in the statement “The preponderance of evidence leads me to believe that there is a/no God”?
I’m traveling today, and so can’t reply at length. For the hint of dogmatism to appear in that statement the way that I meant it to, the word “believe” needs to be replaced with “conclude.” (Mea culpa.)
Ah I understand – so using the word “conclude” would, I suppose, represent what Johnson calls “defensive cognitive closure” and perhaps a discomfort with uncertainty, and hence is a hint of dogmatism. Fair.
On the issue of whether we can scrutinize our foundational beliefs without dogmatism, from my point of view all you need to be able to accomplish this is two competing sets of potential foundational positions. Then you can test them out vis-a-vis the other, without having to test them against some standard entirely external to the inquiry itself.
Thanks for your comments, Jason. I’m thinking that I would approach your question around my “when it makes sense” initially as a scoping question: is this a matter of finding general principles or a matter of domain-specific expertise?
I’m just finishing up a book by a neurologist named Robert Burton called “On Being Certain.” He raises some interesting questions related to this conversation. It’s partly a high-level review of work in various fields and partly a speculative synthesis of that work.
His underlying idea is that “thought” can be envisioned as a unitary comptational realm where aspects of it are distinguished by sensory mechanisms. This harkens back a bit to the debate over “mentalese” and he cites Stephen Pinker favorably but he relies on it only in a very high level way.
Thus in this perspective we believe we know something not specifically because of the chain of reasoning that preceded it but because there is sensory aspect to it that provides the feeling of certainty.
This goes along with the subsidiary idea that there is no privileged objective mode of thinking, only variously effective empiric methods. The tradition of distinguishing the context of discovery from the context of justification is favorably discussed but only briefly and seems to be an important part of the thinking.
This also seems to build on the ideas by Damasio in “Descartes’ Error” regarding the intriguing notion that there is no autonomous rational mind, but we have a powerful tendency to assume one, both in our thinking about logic (as in various forms of rationalism) and our thinking about intuition and gut feelings (as in Gladwellian “Blink” style intuitionism).
Separating out our sense of certainty as a true sensory element from our reasoning process “seems” right to me and is very consistent with the philosophy of skepticism that we are circling around. I’m wondering if it suggests specifics for evaluating our own thinking.
Burton leans toward Timothy Wilson’s thinking in “Strangers to Ourselves” which says that we have to use introspection to uncover our own biases, but we have to use it in a way that gets past our own perspecive, via leveraging our biases flexibly rather than assuming we can simply sidestep them.
That’s the core of “perspectivism” I think, the idea that we can’t just step out of our mindset, but we can take on the challenge of shifting mindset and learning from different mindsets in order to compensate for our own blindspots.
I think this has some real practical applicability to the issue of dogmatism.
Nice article. Felt I could relate to much of it. I believe it’s impractical to try and completely eliminate dogmatism. I find there’s a point when I analyze and second (or third?) guess myself so much that I start to go crazy.
One of the things that causes confusion for me is the possibility that different logically conflicting beliefs can both be logical depending on one’s belief system. I think in order to analyze something and form a new belief, you need other preexisting beliefs do it. Thus we end up building this belief system with all our beliefs supporting each other (or sometimes compartmentalized to avoid said cognitive dissonance). But at some point back along the belief building chain you need to accept some beliefs without analyzing them since you have no other beliefs to contrast them with. Basically you have to adopt an initial premise on faith. And because the chain will be built differently depending on what premise you start out with, it seems impossible to truly know if conclusions you arrive at are true, or just rational based upon your core beliefs.
Since going crazy isn’t desirable, I try and find a happy medium between analyzing stuff and eventually accepting things knowing they might just be subjectively true according to my perspective. I find this perspectivism often helps me understand other’s beliefs.
I often find myself disagreeing with someone but not necessarily thinking they are wrong. I think being aware of and sensitive to the characteristics of dogma also helps reduce, but not eliminate, dogmatism.
what are the six characteristics of Dogmatism that relates to personality traits?