On Condemning Certainty

Barking Dingo praises this quote from Mark at Liberty Just in Case:

I've always believed that the more certain you are of your political opinions, the more chance there is that you are mistaken. When I believe I'm 100% correct, that's a warning sign to take a long look at the other side of the argument.

I normally agree with Mark. But Mark and Dingo are well wide of the mark here.

Initially, I'm not plumping for ignorance. Those taking political positions have an obligation to be fully informed. This necessarily requires both an appraisal of the facts and logic of others and the willingness to re-assess should circumstances change. But, thereafter, certainty isn't a sin; that's a nihilistic corollary of faddish postmodernism, as Charles Krauthammer recently explained:

The campaign against certainty is merely the philosophical veneer for an attempt to politically marginalize and intellectually disenfranchise believers. Instead of arguing the merits of any issue, secularists are trying to win the argument by default on the grounds that the other side displays unhealthy certainty or, even worse, unseemly religiosity.

Why this panic about certainty and people who display it? It is not just, as conventional wisdom has it, that liberals think the last election was lost because of a bloc of benighted Evangelicals. It is because we are almost four years from 9/11 and four years of moral certainty, and firm belief is about all that secular liberalism can tolerate.

Do you remember 9/11? How you felt? The moral clarity of that day and the days thereafter? . . . A few years of that near papal certainty is more than any self-respecting intelligentsia can take. The overwhelmingly secular intellectuals are embarrassed that they once nodded in assent to Morrow-like certainty, an affront to their self-flattering pose as skeptics.

Thus, certainty isn't a sign of stupidity. Indeed, sometimes certainty is too severe a standard, as Tony Blair farsightedly clarified before the Iraq invasion:

We cannot be certain. Perhaps we would have found different ways of reducing it. Perhaps this Islamic terrorism would ebb of its own accord.

But do we want to take the risk? That is the judgement. And my judgement then and now is that the risk of this new global terrorism and its interaction with states or organisations or individuals proliferating WMD, is one I simply am not prepared to run.

This is not a time to err on the side of caution; not a time to weigh the risks to an infinite balance; not a time for the cynicism of the worldly wise who favour playing it long.

Their worldly wise cynicism is actually at best naivete and at worst dereliction.

In other words, in an American context, Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon, respectively. By contrast, President Reagan understood this; his "success was founded on his unparalleled ability to simplify, a truth that draws hoots and smirks from liberals."

Animals depend on instinct. Humans, on the other hand, have the capacity to acquire, improve and exploit judgment. It would be a sin -- even for secularists! -- to discount it. And though both our process and conclusions may differ, we needn't fear confidence:

Sometimes, I'm certain about my judgment. I might be wrong . . . but there's no one else’s judgment on which I can rely.

So supply statistics and syllogism showing my slip-up. But don't skeptically slight self-confidence as a shortcoming.