Introduction
Blog post 140 proposed a tentative mechanism for leeway. Human beings appear simultaneously dependent upon correction and resistant to it. They require reality contact to navigate the world, yet they also depend upon continuity systems that provide coherence and orientation. Leeway was described as the condition under which epistemic vigilance remains sufficiently open for reality to challenge continuity before defensive closure occurs.
This mechanism seems reminiscent of Levinas’ work. In this blog post, a potential alignment will be probed.
Beyond correction
At first sight, Levinas appears far removed from cognitive science. Andy Clark discusses prediction and correction. Hugo Mercier discusses epistemic vigilance. Nick Chater discusses continuity and coherence. Levinas discusses ethics. Yet a deeper similarity may exist.
Levinas argues that human beings continually interpret the world through categories that make reality intelligible. The danger arises when these categories become complete. Levinas calls such closure totalite: a condition in which everything is reduced to what already fits within one’s existing understanding. The Other interrupts this closure. The Other is not merely another object to be understood. The Other confronts us with something that exceeds our categories. Something remains irreducible.
Leeway and alterity
The previous blog posts approached leeway as the possibility of encountering an ontology one does not share without immediately experiencing it as a threat. From a Levinasian perspective, one might say that leeway creates a temporary suspension of totality.
This does not mean abandoning one’s continuity system. Nor does it mean abandoning judgement. Rather, it means allowing the possibility that reality exceeds one’s present interpretation of it.
Clark suggests that successful action requires correction. Chater suggests that continuity is continuously reconstructed. Levinas adds another possibility. Perhaps correction remains possible because reality is never fully exhausted by continuity. There is always something, or rather an Other, that exceeds the categories through which continuity understands itself.
The role of the Other
Reality often becomes visible through those who inhabit different experiences, relationships, institutions, and ontologies. The Other introduces possibilities that continuity could not generate alone.
From this perspective, leeway is not merely openness to another person. It is openness to the possibility that reality may arrive through another person. Whereas mediated reality was viewed as problematic in blog post 134, maybe it should be seen as a precondition for self-correction.
A tentative conclusion
This possibility casts a different light on Mercier’s observation that human beings are not primarily gullible. If people possess sophisticated forms of epistemic vigilance, then meaningful revision cannot depend simply on lowering their defenses. Something else must happen.
Perhaps leeway emerges when an Other makes aspects of reality visible that one’s own continuity system cannot fully generate on its own. The Other does not suspend vigilance. The Other seems to provide a different access point to reality. Through encounters with the Other, continuity may become capable of noticing discrepancies that would otherwise remain invisible.
This may also help explain Levinas’ insistence on ethics as the basis for the encounter with the Other. The encounter cannot primarily be an attempt to influence, persuade, or correct. It must first create a space in which the Other is allowed to remain Other. Such a space does not require the suspension of vigilance. It requires the suspension of immediate closure. Only then can continuity remain sufficiently open for realities that exceed its existing categories to become visible.
In this perspective, leeway may be understood as the ethical and cognitive condition under which reality can still enter continuity through the Other.
Caveat
This perspective should not be understood as implying that all auto-correction comes through the Other. Reality can challenge continuity through many pathways of which the Other is just one, albeit possibly a privileged one.
What would make this perspective relevant for the process of increasing democratic resilience is that it may provide a deeper explanation for why encounters with Others can matter. If realities that exceed existing continuity systems become visible through others, then leeway may represent one of the conditions under which democratic societies remain capable of self-correction.