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SOCRATES, LEONTIUS AND THE ANTI-VAXXERS
In Plato’s Republic, Socrates tells his interlocutor Glaucon a story about Leontius, the son of Aglaeon:
“[Leontius] was going up from the Piraeus along the outside of the North wall when he saw some corpses with the public executioner nearby. He had an appetitive desire to look at them, but at the same time he was disgusted and turned himself away. For a while he struggled and put his hand over his eyes, but finally, mastered by his appetite, he opened his eyes wide and rushed toward the corpses, saying: "Look for yourselves, you evil wretches, take your fill of the beautiful sight." (Book IV 440a)
Plato makes two different points in telling this story. First, he is making an empirical observation that the power of a person’s appetitive desires will sometimes be their master, even though the person is disgusted by what their appetite forces the person to do.
Second, Plato is also making a non-empirical evaluation of Leontius’ behavior. ‘Disgust’ means ‘revulsion’ or ‘strong indignation.’ If we are revolted by the sight of something, then that is something that we prima facie ought to not to look at. Leontius even goes further in his assessment of what he has done by calling his eyes ‘evil wretches’ because they have taken their fill of ‘the beautiful sight’ (the corpses).
In the next passage Socrates says, “Yet surely, the story suggests that anger sometimes makes war against the appetites as one thing against another… And don’t we often notice on other occasions that when appetite forces someone contrary to his rational calculations, he reproaches himself and feels anger at the thing in him that is doing the forcing…” (440b)
Leontius knew that he ought not to look at the corpses and that there was a rational calculation that led to this knowledge. However, Leontius’s appetite was forcing him to do something that was “contrary to his rational calculations.” A calculation, whether rational or irrational, has no power to resist or to force anything. Knowing full well that he ought not to look at the corpses, Leontius gave in to his appetites. It was only after he looked that he became angry at himself for failing to do what his rational calculator (reason) told him not to do.
Plato uses the story of Leontius as proof that there is an element of the soul (psyche or mind) by which we feel anger and have other emotions (e.g., love, jealousy). Plato calls it the spirited element – its' function is to support the rational element of the soul – the element with which we do our rational calculations. One of the spirited element’s jobs is to hold back the excesses of the lowest element – the appetitive element – the element that forces us to look for water when thirsty, food when hungry, and even to look at dead people when this is possible.
Plato writes that when appetites are excessive, they are proclaimed by the rational calculator as evil or bad and the spirited element will follow and execute the instructions of the rational element. “In the faction that takes place in the soul, it is far more likely to take arms on the side of the rationally calculating element.”(440d).
The spirited element does not only work against our personal appetites. Socrates tells Glaucon that this element also works when “a person believes he is being treated unjustly.” This moral belief is the result of a calculation by the rational element and “his spirit boils then, and grows harsh and fights as an ally of what he holds to be just.”
To sum up, the rational element or reason calculates that it would be irrational for Leontius to look at the corpses, although Socrates does not make clear why this act is irrational. Because the spirited element is asleep and does not “take war” against the appetitive element, Leontius’ appetite forces him to run up the hill and look at the beautiful corpses.
Let’s bring Plato’s tri-partite theory of the mind into the 21st century and apply it to an example of what today’s scientists say is clearly an irrational belief: “Vaccines, including anti-Covid vaccines, are dangerous and should be avoided.” If it is a scientific fact that immunizations do not kill people or cause childhood autism, then the belief that vaccinations are hazardous is irrational. What is hazardous for children, adults and the elderly is not getting vaccinated.
If we apply Plato’s theory, then the rational element of the mind tells us only the truth about immunizations[1], namely that they are “one of the triumphs of modern medicine” (Gorman). The spirited element is ready to back up the rational element against the behavior of the appetitive element, but there appears to be no appetite that would force people to avoid getting vaccinated.
It would appear that Plato’s theory cannot explain why there are millions of people who cling to the irrational belief that vaccines are dangerous despite the fact that vaccines are not only not dangerous but they have saved millions of people from death. Why do they reject the findings of science about the success of immunization?
A short answer by contemporary psychologists can be found in many 20th and 21st century studies of human reasoning. What they have found is that the way we reason is not fact-based, except in science laboratories. The reasoning of the typical anti-vaxxer is not a scientific calculation about vaccine safety. It is not “intellectualist,” that is, it is not a belief drawn from scientific data. The anti-vaxxer belief is “interactionist.” The belief about the danger of vaccines is a belief drawn from a social perspective. If Mary tells her friend Joan that she has heard on social media that vaccinations cause autism, then Joan is likely to believe this without asking for evidence, and if Joan tells Fred the same thing at work, then Fred is also likely to believe her, and so on.
Another feature of human reasoning that contemporary psychologists have discovered is known as ‘confirmation bias,’ “the tendency that people have to embrace information that supports their beliefs and reject information that contradicts them” (Kolbert, 5). Instead of suspending my belief that vaccinations are safe when told by an anti-vaxxer that three hundred thousand children died from vaccinations, I immediately reject this as hogwash before I find out whether this number is true.
Humans are social animals. They live in communities, large and small: Neighbors, family, friendship groups, tribes, villages and cults. The concept of community implies much more than the concept of a group. A community member has certain moral obligations and rights, including the duty to interact, cooperate and collaborate with others in ways that will benefit the individual member and the community. The urge to interact is powerful. It is so powerful that anti-vaxxers will reject scientific studies about vaccinations, and declare that all such studies are “fake,” or “bogus.”
Finally, we should understand that explanation is not justification. The psychological explanation of how people reason about such things as the safety of vaccines does not tell us whether it is justifiable or unjustifiable to get vaccinated. That is another story. The ethics of how people ought to reason is quite different than the psychology of reasoning.
This brings us back to Leontius. Let’s bring him into the 21st century. Suppose he has heard from friends that vaccinations are dangerous. Because he has heard this from friends and many others in his social group, he embraces this belief and refuses to look at contradictory data. He also has no appetite that is contrary to what his reasoning tells him about the danger of getting vaccinated. Therefore, his spirited element has nothing to do except join in angry arguments with those who keep telling him otherwise.
A few weeks later Leontius contracts and dies of Covid-19.
____________________________
References:
Gorman, Sara and Jack Gorman. 2016. Denying to the Grave: Why We Ignore Facts that Will Save Us. Oxford University Press.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. 2017. "Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds." New Yorker. February 19.
Mercier, Hugo and Dan Sperber. 2019. The Enigma of Reason. Harvard University Press. .
Plato, Republic. 2012. C.D.C Reeve, ed. A Plato Reader: Eight Essential Dialogues. Hackett Publishing Co.
[1] Plato says that reason is “always wholly straining to know where the truth lies” (581b). Beliefs are assessed with respect to the goal of finding the truth. If the truth is found, then the belief is rational. If it is false, then the belief is irrational.
