Ideological epiphenomenalism

Ideological epiphenomenalism is the view that ideological behaviour and discourse that at first glance seems to have a social impact actually fails to do so. Pure forms of ideological epiphenomenalism are probably rarely explicitly defended, but are sometimes implicit in the arguments of some analysts. (Typically, they would retreat to more moderate versions when attacked, motte-and-bailey-style.) Less pure forms - that say that ideology has at least a minimal impact - are more common, but I’ll mostly focus on relatively pure forms here.

One salient example of ideological epiphenomenalism is arguments that in spite of enormous efforts to prevent racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination, they remain as strong as ever. On this view, anti-discrimination initiatives and discourse have very little effect, appearances notwithstanding. But that’s implausible on priors - especially since there are strong norms supporting them in many quarters. People just won’t be unaffected by all of these initiatives and all of this discourse that they’re surrounded by - that’s not how human psychology works. And in fact, we have seen that people have changed views on many of these issues (though certainly racist and sexist views are still common).

Another example of ideological epiphenomenalism is arguments that people who seem to be engaged in some ideological pursuit are actually only in it for selfish purposes. On this view, people couch their selfish interests in ideological or altruistic terms for marketing purposes, but at the end of the day, their true motivations are selfish - and therefore, we can analyse their behaviour purely on the basis of their self-interest. All this talk about ideology and morals is a mere epiphenomenon, which doesn’t actually have much influence.

There are two things that are wrong with this analysis. First, even if people couch their selfish interests in ideological terms, that doesn’t mean that ideology is causally inefficacious. Even purely selfish people would, insofar as they’re trying to appear ideologically driven, adjust their behaviour to make it seem to fit better with that ideology. This means that ideologies would still affect purely selfish people’s behaviour in a major way.

Second, ideological behaviour can’t be explained by selfish preferences alone in any event. Selfishly motivated ideological behaviour is often explained by it impressing third parties. But that raises the question why third parties are impressed by ideological behaviour. In the end, we have to posit that people have some sincere ideological preferences. And that’s not surprising - having such sincere preferences or emotions makes you more trustworthy, and as such likely has evolved as a commitment device.

There is a lot of talk of politics and ideology. Much of it is based on bad arguments and motivated reasoning, which leads people to dislike it. That may be part of the reason why some analysts say that it has small or no causal power. But whether you like it or not, ideology has a lot of influence. Much of it may be confused, but it’s not a side-show.

The fact that ideology has an influence makes the world less deterministic and less predictable. If people's behaviour was purely based, e.g. on their material self-interest, it would be easier to predict it. It would be easier to analyse and predict social events. That may be another explanation for the belief in ideological epiphenomenalism. But in fact, the social world is messy, with lots of hard-to-predict events. The causal power of ideology is an important reason for that.