Ideas Before Policies

#Progressives must learn how to challenge ideas before debating policies. Only by debating ideas people know that the solutions depend on what we understand the problems to be in the first place.

Research in neuroscience and linguistics shows that we understand reality through #mental-frames composed of neural networks in our brains. These mental structures, or frames, structure our ideas, shape our reasoning, and impact how we act. They define common sense.

Facts require "frames" because they only make sense in context. As the philosopher Thomas Nagel put it succinctly, you can't have a view from nowhere.

Frames operate through the words we use to discuss the world around us by linking together values, principles, and ideal models of everyday things, like fairness, a living wage, and what a typical corporation does. Words and phrases trigger related frames deep in our unconscious minds that give them meaning. This is the mental process through which we understand what we hear and read.

A frame is a deep seated mental structure about how the world works.

• We use frames to understand facts. They are like filters or lenses we all use to interpret the world around us.
• Frames are burned in our brain and define our “common sense”.
• It is impossible to think or communicate without activating frames, and so which frame is activated is of crucial importance.
• Progressives often argue that the truth does not to be framed and that the facts speak for themselves. In reality, the truth must be framed appropriately to be seen as truth. Facts need a context.
• Progressives regularly mistake policies with values that are ethical ideas.
• Policies are not values though they are (or should be) based on values. For instance social security and universal health care are policies meant to codify values such as fairness, equality, human dignity, and common good.

For example, there's been plenty of talk about cap-and-trade, carbon offsets, taxes on fossil fuels, and investment plans for renewable energy. But there is hardly any talk about what all this means to everyday people or why public understanding matters. The way people think about and understand the climate crisis is vital to actually solving this problem.

The conservative position is: Protecting the environment harms the economy.

The progressive position is: A healthy economy depends upon a healthy environment.