The coherence we attribute to ourselves, and the one we really have
We readily tell ourselves as coherent people applying principles. Work on introspection suggests the order is often the reverse.
The explanation sometimes comes after the position
Several pieces of experimental psychology have shown that people confidently justify choices they did not make, when led to believe that they did. This result, obtained on simple preferences, indicates that the production of reasons is partly independent of the decision it claims to explain.
That does not mean our reasons are false or our principles façades. It means that the feeling of having reasoned is not proof of having reasoned, and that felt coherence is a poor indicator of actual coherence.
The phenomenon has a use: producing reasons makes it possible to communicate, to convince, to coordinate. What poses a problem is not the production of reasons, it is taking it for a faithful account of what happened inside us.
What measurement shows
On a multidimensional questionnaire, most people discover at least one tension: a strong requirement on one axis that ought, in principle, to translate elsewhere, and does not. These tensions are the rule rather than the exception, including in very well-informed people.
They are simply explained. Our positions were formed at different moments, on different subjects, with different information, and nothing ever obliged the whole to harmonise. An opinion is not deduced from a system, it is accumulated.
Logical coherence and coherence of values
Two often conflated requirements must be distinguished. Logical coherence forbids maintaining a proposition and its contrary. Coherence of values would have all positions follow from a single principle: that is a far stronger requirement, and nobody satisfies it.
Accusations of incoherence almost always bear on the second, while borrowing the authority of the first. Spotting that slippage is enough to defuse a good part of the accusations of contradiction in public debate.
What to do with a tension once spotted
The first temptation is to make it disappear by revising the least invested position, which produces a façade coherence. The second is to declare it non-existent, which leaves it intact. The useful route is more modest: examine whether the two positions really bear on comparable situations, because a difference of situation may be enough to lift the apparent tension.
When the tension resists that examination, it deserves to be kept as it is. A position held in the knowledge of its tension with another is more solid than a smoothed system whose edges have been planed down for the demonstration.
Why this makes a profile interesting
A perfectly coherent profile, in which all the dimensions point the same way, is either the sign of a very systematic way of thinking, or that of a rapid answer aligned on an identity. Both exist, and the second is more frequent.
The most instructive profiles are those containing one or two discordances. They are what indicate where the person really arbitrated, rather than followed.
Key points
The feeling of having reasoned is not proof of having reasoned: reasons are sometimes produced afterwards.
Tensions between positions are the rule, because opinions accumulate instead of being deduced.
Accusations of incoherence conflate logical coherence with coherence of values, which nobody satisfies.
A profile with no discordance at all often signals an answer aligned on an identity.
This article describes documented mechanisms and disagreements. It recommends no position, no party and no vote, and commits to no reading other than that of the work it cites.
And you, where do you stand?
The Civix test situates your convictions on six dimensions and matches you with one of the twelve profiles, without ever telling you what to think.
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