Introduction
Bermúdez delivers a compelling argument for the existence of “rational framing effects” and a promising proposal for using frame-sensitive education to reduce polarization. I have no criticism of this brilliant work. Instead, I'll expand upon Bermúdez's insight and show that a rational framing effect is a special consequence of a more widespread phenomenon that I'll call “normative polyphony”: the reality that an objectively single action may, with logical consistency, sustain diverse positive and negative judgments. Beyond its potential to explain rational framing effects, the described “polyphony principle” presents a special challenge for theory in moral psychology.
I'll elaborate my thesis by analyzing a passage in Dostoevsky's (Reference Dostoevsky1993) Crime and Punishment – the story of an impoverished young man named Raskolnikov who develops a moral rationale for committing murder, but who later finds he is unable to live with his guilt. In the novel's climax, Raskolnikov confesses his crime to Sonya – an unlikely ally and close friend of one of the victims. By my count, Raskolnikov offers seven distinct explanations for the crime, responding to pushback from Sonya, who is unable to reconcile who he is with what he has done. In some of these accounts, Raskolnikov justifies his action, while in others he condemns himself. Yet, the remarkable thing about these incompatible confessions is that each is internally coherent. I show below that this juxtaposition of internal coherence against external incompatibility is possible because Raskolnikov's normative evaluations are each supported by a unique narrative that selects relevant details from a host of competing characterizations, motives, contextual factors, counterfactuals, and so on.
The takeaway is this: A subjectively complex situation supporting diverse framings of the relevant details (i.e., ontological polyphony) can logically support a diverse polyphony of normative judgments (i.e., normative polyphony). As the ontological framing shifts, so may the sense of what is normatively best. This translation from ontological polyphony into normative polyphony is precisely what Bermúdez points to in arguing for rational framing effects – in, for instance, his examples from classic literature. However, the polyphony principle carries additional implications, especially for the field of moral psychology. We cannot adequately characterize the complexity of moral cognition as current models do, by appealing to value-pluralism (see Beal, Reference Beal2020). And we must move beyond the vague claim that people are imperfectly rational. There is an internal rationality to our moral inconsistencies, expressed in the protean logic of the polyphony principle.
Illustration
Bakhtin (Reference Bakhtin1984) developed the concept of “polyphonic” (i.e., “many-voiced”) art to characterize a distinctive feature of Dostoevsky's work. Whereas in “dialectical” art, different characters express viewpoints that stand in some implicit relation to a unitary idea of the truth, Dostoevsky's characters voice diverse truths – that is, complexes of beliefs and evaluations that each hang together coherently, despite the fact that they are inconsistent with other equally coherent accounts. And readers even find that polyphony exists intrapersonally: Contradictory ideas are sometimes expressed by a single character with such rigor that each idea is internally coherent. Thus, Dostoevsky suggests that humans live in polyphonic worlds and regularly navigate situations with multiple, sometimes contradictory rights and wrongs.
Although Bakhtin did not slice his idea more finely, Dostoevsky actually illustrates a relation between two distinct kinds of polyphony: Ontological (descriptive) polyphony supports normative (prescriptive) polyphony. This observation may raise an objection: How can one derive normative prescription from mere ontological description, inferring “ought” from “is”? The answer is what Shweder (Reference Shweder, D'Andrade and Strauss1992) called the reality principle: Sufficient information is often implicitly encoded into mere descriptive statements such that normative prescriptions can “in a straightforward way, be derived” from them – an argument sustained both empirically and anecdotally (e.g., Much & Shweder, Reference Much and Shweder1978). Elsewhere, I've added that we do not even need explicit description, but spontaneously derive a normative sense of what is appropriate from certain perceived details (Beal, Reference Beal2021; Beal & Gogia, Reference Beal and Gogia2021). Without rehashing the finer points of these related arguments, I'll point out that neither involves an illogical conflation of “is” with “ought.” Rather, the conditions for the emergence of the normative “ought” are contained within the ontological “is” – whether at the level of description or perception. The ubiquity of this logic is evident in every dispute where opponents ground their conflicting normative positions in divergent beliefs, interpretations, or framings of the details.
Through the confession, Dostoevsky illustrates this constitutive relationship between ontological and normative polyphony in intricate detail. As Raskolnikov's accounts change, Sonya takes on the aspect of a “holy fool,” a judge or priest, an enemy or competitor, a friend or lover, a proxy for one of the victims, and a child. In parallel, Raskolnikov's self-portrait morphs from a defender of the innocent to a petty criminal to a desperate victim to a spiteful narcissist to a visionary great man to a moral anarchist to a bug in just 12 pages. And these ontological reframings, both at the levels of description and perception, straightforwardly yield the normative quality of each confession: As a defender of the innocent and a believer in justice, Raskolnikov had been motivated to defend his mother and sister and Sonya (framed as helpless victims) from crippling poverty and sexual extortion; as a petty criminal, Raskolnikov's motive had been simply to steal; as a desperate victim, he had been struggling for survival within a cruelly impersonal social order; as a spiteful narcissist, he had wanted to lash out against the stupidity of those around him; as a visionary, he had committed the crime to realize his own exceptional nature; as a moral anarchist, he had wanted to “dare” to break with all morality; and as a disillusioned “louse,” he had committed the crime to punish himself for his own weakness and lack of originality.
Thus, each new account of the crime is marked by incompatible but sincere reframings of Raskolnikov's nature and motives, alongside reframings of his interlocutor, the victims, counterfactual events, and so on. These ontological reframings support, in a straightforward rational way, diverse positive and negative moral interpretations of the deed. Ontological polyphony potentiates normative polyphony. I consider this a theorem.
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Introduction
Bermúdez delivers a compelling argument for the existence of “rational framing effects” and a promising proposal for using frame-sensitive education to reduce polarization. I have no criticism of this brilliant work. Instead, I'll expand upon Bermúdez's insight and show that a rational framing effect is a special consequence of a more widespread phenomenon that I'll call “normative polyphony”: the reality that an objectively single action may, with logical consistency, sustain diverse positive and negative judgments. Beyond its potential to explain rational framing effects, the described “polyphony principle” presents a special challenge for theory in moral psychology.
I'll elaborate my thesis by analyzing a passage in Dostoevsky's (Reference Dostoevsky1993) Crime and Punishment – the story of an impoverished young man named Raskolnikov who develops a moral rationale for committing murder, but who later finds he is unable to live with his guilt. In the novel's climax, Raskolnikov confesses his crime to Sonya – an unlikely ally and close friend of one of the victims. By my count, Raskolnikov offers seven distinct explanations for the crime, responding to pushback from Sonya, who is unable to reconcile who he is with what he has done. In some of these accounts, Raskolnikov justifies his action, while in others he condemns himself. Yet, the remarkable thing about these incompatible confessions is that each is internally coherent. I show below that this juxtaposition of internal coherence against external incompatibility is possible because Raskolnikov's normative evaluations are each supported by a unique narrative that selects relevant details from a host of competing characterizations, motives, contextual factors, counterfactuals, and so on.
The takeaway is this: A subjectively complex situation supporting diverse framings of the relevant details (i.e., ontological polyphony) can logically support a diverse polyphony of normative judgments (i.e., normative polyphony). As the ontological framing shifts, so may the sense of what is normatively best. This translation from ontological polyphony into normative polyphony is precisely what Bermúdez points to in arguing for rational framing effects – in, for instance, his examples from classic literature. However, the polyphony principle carries additional implications, especially for the field of moral psychology. We cannot adequately characterize the complexity of moral cognition as current models do, by appealing to value-pluralism (see Beal, Reference Beal2020). And we must move beyond the vague claim that people are imperfectly rational. There is an internal rationality to our moral inconsistencies, expressed in the protean logic of the polyphony principle.
Illustration
Bakhtin (Reference Bakhtin1984) developed the concept of “polyphonic” (i.e., “many-voiced”) art to characterize a distinctive feature of Dostoevsky's work. Whereas in “dialectical” art, different characters express viewpoints that stand in some implicit relation to a unitary idea of the truth, Dostoevsky's characters voice diverse truths – that is, complexes of beliefs and evaluations that each hang together coherently, despite the fact that they are inconsistent with other equally coherent accounts. And readers even find that polyphony exists intrapersonally: Contradictory ideas are sometimes expressed by a single character with such rigor that each idea is internally coherent. Thus, Dostoevsky suggests that humans live in polyphonic worlds and regularly navigate situations with multiple, sometimes contradictory rights and wrongs.
Although Bakhtin did not slice his idea more finely, Dostoevsky actually illustrates a relation between two distinct kinds of polyphony: Ontological (descriptive) polyphony supports normative (prescriptive) polyphony. This observation may raise an objection: How can one derive normative prescription from mere ontological description, inferring “ought” from “is”? The answer is what Shweder (Reference Shweder, D'Andrade and Strauss1992) called the reality principle: Sufficient information is often implicitly encoded into mere descriptive statements such that normative prescriptions can “in a straightforward way, be derived” from them – an argument sustained both empirically and anecdotally (e.g., Much & Shweder, Reference Much and Shweder1978). Elsewhere, I've added that we do not even need explicit description, but spontaneously derive a normative sense of what is appropriate from certain perceived details (Beal, Reference Beal2021; Beal & Gogia, Reference Beal and Gogia2021). Without rehashing the finer points of these related arguments, I'll point out that neither involves an illogical conflation of “is” with “ought.” Rather, the conditions for the emergence of the normative “ought” are contained within the ontological “is” – whether at the level of description or perception. The ubiquity of this logic is evident in every dispute where opponents ground their conflicting normative positions in divergent beliefs, interpretations, or framings of the details.
Through the confession, Dostoevsky illustrates this constitutive relationship between ontological and normative polyphony in intricate detail. As Raskolnikov's accounts change, Sonya takes on the aspect of a “holy fool,” a judge or priest, an enemy or competitor, a friend or lover, a proxy for one of the victims, and a child. In parallel, Raskolnikov's self-portrait morphs from a defender of the innocent to a petty criminal to a desperate victim to a spiteful narcissist to a visionary great man to a moral anarchist to a bug in just 12 pages. And these ontological reframings, both at the levels of description and perception, straightforwardly yield the normative quality of each confession: As a defender of the innocent and a believer in justice, Raskolnikov had been motivated to defend his mother and sister and Sonya (framed as helpless victims) from crippling poverty and sexual extortion; as a petty criminal, Raskolnikov's motive had been simply to steal; as a desperate victim, he had been struggling for survival within a cruelly impersonal social order; as a spiteful narcissist, he had wanted to lash out against the stupidity of those around him; as a visionary, he had committed the crime to realize his own exceptional nature; as a moral anarchist, he had wanted to “dare” to break with all morality; and as a disillusioned “louse,” he had committed the crime to punish himself for his own weakness and lack of originality.
Thus, each new account of the crime is marked by incompatible but sincere reframings of Raskolnikov's nature and motives, alongside reframings of his interlocutor, the victims, counterfactual events, and so on. These ontological reframings support, in a straightforward rational way, diverse positive and negative moral interpretations of the deed. Ontological polyphony potentiates normative polyphony. I consider this a theorem.
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