According to me, it is possible to see “fact-speaking” and “belief-speaking” as complementary. To do so we need to take a step back and look at their function. Both modes of speaking aim to provide credibility to statements or narratives. Both modes do so using accuracy: “fact-speaking” strives at achieving accuracy in representing the outer world while “belief-speaking” does so in representing an inner world.
Which mode to choose
If we accept “fact-speaking” and “belief-speaking” as different modes of aiming to achieve credibility, we should ask ourselves which mode is more appropriate in which situation. The simplest answer would be that if we want a description of what ‘is’ or how things work (causality), we should turn to fact-speaking and if we want to give meaning to these findings, we should also turn to belief-speaking. Thus, for instance, a description of whether climate change is happening, and what causes it if it is happening, should not be answered by belief-speaking. But, what climate change means to us and how we should react to it cannot be prescribed by fact-speaking alone.
Limitations of belief-speaking
Unfortunately, the basis of our belief-speaking, our experiences, is limited. The only meaning we can credibly add to descriptions of reality is through our narrow lenses. Fortunately, this holds true only on the level of us as individuals. Collectively, we can do better.
Ask the crowd
In his book The wisdom of crowds (2004), James Surowiecki provides us with a way to come up with better collective knowledge: “ask the crowd /…/. Chances are, it knows.” Surowiecki tells us that if individual perspectives are aggregated in the right way, the crowd is consistently wiser than any individual in the realm of three types of problems: problems related to cognition, coordination, and cooperation.
To aggregate individual perspectives in the right way, a minimum requirement is that individuals should have at least some information about a subject. Next, there are three preconditions to be fulfilled: diversity of the group of individuals, independence, and decentralization. Surowiecki adds that the larger the group, the more accurate the outcome of the process will be.
Preconditions
Surowiecki’s first precondition is diversity. This diversity should not be understood in a sociological sense but in a conceptual and cognitive sense: many perspectives should be present among the individuals making up a crowd. It is important that not all individuals are very intelligent since that would limit the diversity. Presence of the naïve and the ignorant is crucially important. Biases and unfounded overconfidence are also warmly welcomed, as is selfishness. This neatly aligns with the ‘us’ attitude as described in blog post seventeen.
The second precondition is independence. Individuals should perform their thinking without interference from others: during the deliberation process, there is to be no communication among individuals, no negotiation, and no compromising. In addition, the individual outcomes of the deliberations should be presented simultaneously. The third precondition is decentralization. It is important that individuals base themselves on their local and specific knowledge and on their tacit knowledge.
When the crowd does not know
There are descriptions of reality that elude our individual and collective attempts to give meaning. What comes to mind are descriptions of absolute evil, such as concentration camps. The one thing that might help us to deal with this kind of descriptions is our ethics. Only our collective - not individual - sense of what is right and what is wrong can provide us with a road to giving meaning in these cases and coming up with a prescription of how to deal with them.
Hannah Arendt, in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem, gives us a description of how this should have looked regarding the Eichmann trial. She writes that the judges should have admitted that they did not care about Eichmann’s inner world, about his intent. In Eichmann’s view, he was just implementing what others told him to do, without base motives or inclinations. The judges should have embraced “the proposition "that a great crime offends nature, so that the very earth cries out for vengeance; that evil violates a natural harmony which only retribution can restore; that a wronged collectivity owes a duty to the moral order to punish the criminal" (Yosal Rogat).” According to Arendt, the judges should have ruled: “just as you supported and carried out a policy of not wanting to share the earth with the Jewish people and the people of a number of other nations - as though you and your superiors had any right to determine who should and who should not inhabit the world - we find that no one, that is, no member of the human race, can be expected to want to share the earth with you. This is the reason, and the only reason, you must hang."
