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Framing--Religion and Science

Posted June 23rd, 2010 by Jim Lee in Framing

I recently saw a video by Richard Dawkins on Fora TV. In the talk, Dawkins mentioned the two different approaches of secularism/atheism with regards to religion: one, which he called, Militant atheism, and the other, he called the Framers. I was quite amused by his knowledge, as I thought  previously that he was mostly not aware of the kind of work that community such as Integral Institute is putting forward.

link: http://fora.tv/2010/03/01/Meet_The_Author_Richard_Dawkins

Here are some thoughts on framing:

 I, myself, tend to think as a secular humanist. I am sympathetic with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris. From my perspective, we need both militant atheists and framers--framers in this case, means the "framing" of a language as to tease, lure, and gently orient a behavior. Examples would be what George Lakoff often refer to as the framing of language by the conservatives such as "tax relief," "partial-birth abortion." When a progressive personality argues against "tax relief," and supporting instead more social programs, the argument is already framed to go against the progressive argument because "relief" in this case means unburdening of suffering.

Another example could be the disparity of percentage of consent organ donors in European countries. In some of the countries, the question is framed as, "Check this box if you DO wish to be an organ donor." And majority of the people do not become organ donors in those countries. In some of the other countries, the question is framed as, "Check this box, and we will remove you from the list of potential organ donors." And most people do not check the box, and they become organ donors.
 
The following is a response to a fellow poster, since I have taken an hour to write it, I thought it would be better to post it in a more visible place. 
 
Question from another poster: 
Is framing only done by conservatives?
 
It's done by conservatives and liberals alike. It was simply the example that came to my mind. Liberal framing can include the switch of "global warming" to "climate change." As global warming was seen as a Leftist issue, repetition of the word "global warming" was not helping the cause. (since when it's winter, it sure ain't getting hot. )
 
Other conservative framing include: (I will simply paste here:)
"In one recent memo, titled ''The 14 Words Never to Use,'' Luntz urged conservatives to restrict themselves to phrases from what he calls, grandly, the ''New American Lexicon.'' Thus, a smart Republican, in Luntz's view, never advocates ''drilling for oil''; he prefers ''exploring for energy.'' He should never criticize the ''government,'' which cleans our streets and pays our firemen; he should attack ''Washington,'' with its ceaseless thirst for taxes and regulations. ''We should never use the word outsourcing,'' Luntz wrote, ''because we will then be asked to defend or end the practice of allowing companies to ship American jobs overseas.'' (source: http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/dont_think_of_an_elephant:paperback/new_york_times_article)
 
Another progressive framing was a term introduced by Lakoff regarding how conservative members in California state legislatures were able to thwart some progressive measures. Lakoff wanted to frame this political phenomenon as "minority rules." The logic of the framing would fall along the lines of--What determines legislature in a democracy is majority rules. However due to the supermajority, or 66%, requirement to pass some bills in California, it allows the minority party to hold the gate. In summary,  supermajority, which is often acceptable to most people when it comes to important measures, is framed as "minority rules", or anti-democratic, which is not acceptable to most people.
This phenomenon--where respondents give two different answers to the factually-same, but differently framed question-- is well-known to the Nobel Prize winner Kahneman. Kahneman was a psychologist who won the Economics prize(one of the only two non-economist to win the prize). He demonstrated irrational behavior in economic decision making, and hence challenges the dominant position of the Dismal Science--That when it comes to an economic decision, most human beings are rational, and have an enlightened self-interest. And because most human beings are rational, even though there can be special cases of irrationality, the market, through the invisible hand, will be rational price-setters for goods. 
Kahneman demonstrated, through numerous experiments, why people are not rational, and as Lakoff would add, often not even conscious. 98% of the waking life is not conscious(in the self-reflective sense.).(and my own subjective experience seems to confirm the claim. )  Experiments were done where a control and experiment group were asked to rate the price of an ordinary coffee mug. In the control, before the price evaluation, the subject is shown an ordinary, relatively neutral movie clip. Where as in the experiment group, the subjects are shown with a sad, sentimental video. What we find is that the experiment group tended to appraise the coffee mug(and other items) at a higher price range than the control group! When the subjects are asked whether the movie affected their decision making, the typical answer is "NO." There are many poignant experiments, due to time and energy constraint (I am getting a little tired from typing) I will not mention here, I will give you a few links for some readings. 
Back to the framing example about supermajority vs. minority rules. Kahneman wrote about how patients, when facing a critical surgery operation, chose different things depending on how the risk of the operation is framed. If the operation is described as having 10% chance of failure, more patients will refuse the operation than if it's framed as 90% of success! Notice how both claims entail the same fact, but to the perception of the patient, IT IS NOT! There are so many poignant examples of this, I only wish Wilber would talk about them! (stop repeating the same content ><)
 
 
A picture is worth a thousand words, a documentary is worth ten thousand, Here's a good link for you if you are interested in framing:
http://video.pbs.org/video/1479100777/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3707_money.html
Explore the wiki citations on Lakoff, framing, Kahneman etc. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lakoff
http://fora.tv/2009/08/03/Politics_of_Language_George_Lakoff
 
Idk how much you are aware of the Integral's involvement in framing. Although Integral community did not call it framing, the changing of language suited to a particular audience is essential the same idea. For example, in one of Wilber's dialogue with Hunter Lovins, Ken mentioned the changing of environmentalist language according to the audience. Because a religious audience, or a mythic-membership audience, would not resonate with the language of "Mother Nature being raped by humanity. Or humanity is like cancer conquering the womb of the Mother Goddess." This type of language is OK with a lot of students in progressive university, it is OK with some "tree-hugging"(in a positive sense) environmentalist. But "Mother Nature," to a monotheist religion, in our case, Christianity, is an immediate turn off. In fact, Mother Nature is like Santa Claus to a lot adult Christians, it's a myth, a human construct, and a heresy to His Almighty. 
So when an environmentalist wants to accomplish something, and he has to garner the support of secular/religious group alike, he can change the language of his communication without compromising his principles. He would instead, talk about "stewardship of the earth." About protecting the family through the means of environmentalism...about national security through development of alternative energy. These are language that resonate with a blue audience. And by no means is it lying, manipulation or pandering. 
 
I am currently studying in a university, and I am aware of all the anti-capitalist, anti-Christian, anti-corporate atmosphere of the university. And that in my opinion, can really need some guiding wisdom from the integral community. About the distinction between ideal and the means to reach the ideal. There's so much ideal in the University, and so energetic, but so much of it is wrongly channeled to its own special kind of hatred. 
Integral community, in turn, needs to be aware of the problems with the coding of a system. I deliberately avoided using green to describe the academic culture, or "blue" to describe the religious. The world is so much more complex than that. This kind of color-framing can in fact damage the reputation of Integral rather than helping it. 
 
What we need is more skillful communication, a Gigaglossary lexicon for the Integral community