Rationalization is the great enemy of moral progress, and thus of deep pragmatism.* If moral tribes fight because their members have different gut feelings, then we’ll get nowhere by using our manual modes to rationalize our feelings. We need to shift into manual mode, but we need to use our manual modes wisely. We’ve seen some of this already (explaining how in addition to why), but we can do more. We can learn to recognize rationalization, and we can establish ground rules that make it harder to fool ourselves—and each other.
