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Correspondence to Geoff Keeling, Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol, Bristol BS6 6JL, UK; [email protected]
I begin with a statement of the problem.1 First, according to Levy’s descriptive commitment, we live in a ‘post-truth’ era where many political actors, including voters and politicians, are unreceptive to evidence against their political views. Second, according to Levy’s prescriptive commitment, it would be a good thing if political actors were more receptive to evidence against their political views. It would, at least, enable people to make more informed political decisions. Third, according to our best psychological evidence, when we present people with evidence against their deeply held commitments, this often causes them to hold these commitments more firmly. This is called the backfire effect.2 3
Here is the problem that Levy addresses:
(Q) How can we make people more receptive to evidence against their political views conditional on the existence of the backfire effect?
Levy’s aim is to provide an answer to (Q) and explain why his answer is morally permissible. In what follows, I first explain Levy’s answer to (Q). I then explain Levy’s argument for the moral permissibility of his answer and argue that his argument fails to support its conclusion.
Levy’s answer to (Q) draws on a mounting body of psychological evidence in favour of the claim that the way in which evidence is presented to people affects their receptiveness to that evidence.4 For example, if someone from our own political standpoint presents evidence against one of our political beliefs, we are more likely to be receptive to this evidence than if someone from a contrary political standpoint presents that same evidence. Levy proposes that policymakers should exploit this phenomenon. On Levy’s view, policymakers should develop ‘nudge’ policies which manipulate the sources through which individuals receive evidence against their political beliefs in order to make them more receptive to this evidence.
What makes nudge policies different from coercive policies is that nudges do not limit the set of options available to the agent, but instead exploit known cognitive heuristics and biases to present choices in a way that increases the probability of the individual choosing an option that is in their best interests.5 A standard example is...