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[Fried Egg]

In Thomas Sowell's "Conflict of Visions: Ideological origins of political struggles", he thinks the broad division between "left" and "right" rests on one's broad view of human nature itself - one that tends to either fall into what he called the Constrained and Unconstrained visions.

The unconstrained vision
Sowell argues that the unconstrained vision relies heavily on the belief that human nature is essentially good. Those with an unconstrained vision distrust decentralized processes and are impatient with large institutions and systemic processes that constrain human action. They believe there is an ideal solution to every problem, and that compromise is never acceptable. Collateral damage is merely the price of moving forward on the road to perfection. Sowell often refers to them as "the self anointed." Ultimately they believe that man is morally perfectible. Because of this, they believe that there exist some people who are further along the path of moral development, have overcome self-interest and are immune to the influence of power and therefore can act as surrogate decision-makers for the rest of society.

The constrained vision
Sowell argues that the constrained vision relies heavily on the belief that human nature is essentially unchanging and that man is naturally inherently self-interested, regardless of the best intentions. Those with a constrained vision prefer the systematic processes of the rule of law and experience of tradition. Compromise is essential because there are no ideal solutions, only trade-offs. Those with a constrained vision favor empirical evidence and time-tested structures and processes over intervention and personal experience. Ultimately, the constrained vision demands checks and balances and refuses to accept that all people could put aside their innate self-interest.

These broad philosophical views are what unites the thinking between the seemingly disparate set of political positions that the authors of the book in the OP believe do not exist.

Stephen Pinker refers to this in "The Blank Slate: The modern denial of human nature" where he states that he thinks this theory is the best to date. He refers to these visions as the Utopian and the Tragic visions of human nature.

It does seem to make sense (to me at least) that one's idea of human nature will at least inform one's political outlook.

[Good_Egg]

It does seem to make sense (to me at least) that one's idea of human nature will at least inform one's political outlook.

Indeed.

If you start from the notion of humans as drawn to evil, then you may well end up with the authoritarian right in wanting a strong heavily-policed punitive state that is well-defended against enemies at home and abroad.

If you start from the notion of humans as fundamentally good, but capable of being warped by bad experiences, then you may well end up with the leftists seeking to perfect humanity by eliminating poverty and discrimination as the way to utopia.

If you start from the notion of humans as holding a range of different values all of which are fundamentally neutral, then you may well end up with the libertarians, seeking to allow everyone to pursue their own notion of the good as far as possible, within an impartial framework of laws against interfering with each other's pursuits.

Sowell's notion of "moral perfectability" is a good explanation of a certain flavour of leftism. Which sees government as an instrument for good when in the hands of the enlightened. And sees the unenlightened masses as both fully equal in principle but to be despised and kept from power in practice.

But your quote here is still about compressing reality into a one-dimensional model.

[Fried Egg]

But your quote here is still about compressing reality into a one-dimensional model.

Perhaps, but it fits in with my idea that those on the right being far more concerned with incentive structures. What need does society have of tightly honed incentive structures unless humans are largely bound to act out of self interest? If humans are naturally unselfish, we don't need to worry about people abusing welfare systems as the vast majority will not abuse it. If humans are fully malleable, we can create any utopian society we want and don't have to worry about a human nature being at odds with it.

I feel that those on the left either take the position that humans no no inherent nature or else that we do but have a fundamentally noble nature and that it is only our bad society and culture that has corrupted us.

[Count Lucanor]

In Thomas Sowell's "Conflict of Visions: Ideological origins of political struggles", he thinks the broad division between "left" and "right" rests on one's broad view of human nature itself - one that tends to either fall into what he called the Constrained and Unconstrained visions.

Let’s try and see how that measures against the empirical facts, the fact being myself a leftist.

The unconstrained vision
Sowell argues that the unconstrained vision relies heavily on the belief that human nature is essentially good.

I don’t believe such thing, but I don’t believe it is essentially bad either. I’d rather support the view that good and evil are concepts made in society to regulate behaviors. Point against Sowell.

Those with an unconstrained vision distrust decentralized processes and are impatient with large institutions and systemic processes that constrain human action.

That seems contradictory. In any case, I do believe in the need to plan, organize and control human endeavors, which means centralized processes a the level of implementing broad strategies, but decentralized at the sub-levels, even requiring autonomy and decision-making powers at those levels. The larger the size of institutions, the harder to control their processes at every level, trying to do it simply will erode your own base. Point against Sowell again.

They believe there is an ideal solution to every problem, and that compromise is never acceptable.

I don’t believe that. You work with what you have, which does not necessarily mean you don’t look for ways to improve the real state of affairs to move to a better state, closest to an ideal state. So, there are compromises along the way. Marxists, for example, argued that a socialist state would carry elements of the bourgeois state, and that this was a necessary compromise before moving to a stateless, communist society. This of course was a dispute with anarchosocialists, who said the state had to disappear right from the start. I stay somewhere in the middle.

Point against Sowell there, too.

Collateral damage is merely the price of moving forward on the road to perfection. Sowell often refers to them as "the self anointed."

I don’t believe in such abstractions typical of idealists. I’m not a moralist either, and I don’t believe it’s something ingrained in socialist thinking. Point against Sowell there, too.

Ultimately they believe that man is morally perfectible.

No, I don’t, at least not in absolute, uniform, permanent terms. Such a path would lead to intolerance. We can improve society as a collective humanistic project and that includes setting a standard of living that is concerned with the integral well being of all, having eliminated social and material constraints to allow for the individual’s material, intellectual and moral development by its own choice. I think that is a universal aim of all political projects, but if that’s an attribute of leftists, I’m guilty as charged.

Because of this, they believe that there exist some people who are further along the path of moral development, have overcome self-interest and are immune to the influence of power and therefore can act as surrogate decision-makers for the rest of society.

I don’t believe that either. To delegate power seems to be a necessary trade-off between private and public life, rather than an ideal in itself. And I don’t get this obsession with morals as the main and perhaps only incentive to take a political and ideological stance. Everyone will have their own sense of good and bad and will evaluate political options accordingly, but that will happen across the whole ideological spectrum. Self-interest is perfectly compatible with service to the common good, given the interplay between personal and social needs.

Point against Sowell again.

The constrained vision
Sowell argues that the constrained vision relies heavily on the belief that human nature is essentially unchanging…

I assume he means the psychological aspect of human nature. Surely I don’t rely heavily on that view (man does change historically) and that will be a point for Sowell. However, as a leftist I don’t have to embrace the notion that everything human is a social construct, so I’ll give Sowell half a point there.

…and that man is naturally inherently self-interested, regardless of the best intentions.

I have objections to such thinking, because it presents a false dilemma. Self-interest, intinctive cooperative action and solidarity are not mutually exclusive, they intersect very often. Strategy games show this is true. Since I disagree, a point for Sowell.

Those with a constrained vision prefer the systematic processes of the rule of law and experience of tradition.

I don’t have any problem with the rule of law and order, systematic processes or tradition. Point against Sowell.

Compromise is essential because there are no ideal solutions, only trade-offs.

I accept trade-offs. Point against Sowell, again.

Those with a constrained vision favor empirical evidence and time-tested structures and processes over intervention and personal experience.

So do I. Another point against Sowell.

Ultimately, the constrained vision demands checks and balances and refuses to accept that all people could put aside their innate self-interest.

All those who work to put checks and balances aren’t putting aside their self-interest in favor of a common interest? Anyway, since I can endorse the first part of the statement, but not the second, I’ll give Sowell half a point.

These broad philosophical views are what unites the thinking between the seemingly disparate set of political positions that the authors of the book in the OP believe do not exist.

Stephen Pinker refers to this in "The Blank Slate: The modern denial of human nature" where he states that he thinks this theory is the best to date. He refers to these visions as the Utopian and the Tragic visions of human nature.

It does seem to make sense (to me at least) that one's idea of human nature will at least inform one's political outlook.

There’s here the implicit notion that whatever one thinks of human nature, it immediately translates into how one views society and how it can be organized and transformed, as if there could not be external forces and processes constantly presenting humans with new problems and needs. I think that’s a premise that could be easily challenged

[Sy Borg]

Actually, Sowell was correct as regards the constrained vision. The arguments made against these don't wash, eg.

Sowell: Those with a constrained vision prefer the systematic processes of the rule of law and experience of tradition.
CL: I don’t have any problem with the rule of law and order, systematic processes or tradition. Point against Sowell.
SB: Then your vision is constrained to come extent, not entirely unconstrained. We are not digital beings (yet) and have more options than 1 or 0. Point against CL.


Sowell: Compromise is essential because there are no ideal solutions, only trade-offs.
CL: I accept trade-offs. Point against Sowell, again.
Reply: Sowell's point was entirely reasonable.


Sowell: Those with a constrained vision favor empirical evidence and time-tested structures and processes over intervention and personal experience.
CL: So do I. Another point against Sowell.
SB: Another case where tendencies are illogically treated as absolutes. Another point against CL.

It's said that tradition is a solution to problems since forgotten. Thus, tradition should be taken more seriously than many progressives think, but that does not mean slavish acceptance. Sowell is talking about general tendencies for societies, not absolutes that are true for every individual.

[Pattern-chaser]

But your quote here is still about compressing reality into a one-dimensional model.

Yes, in this as in so many other subjects, our understanding is limited by the perspectives we choose to adopt. Most of reality is N-dimensional, where "N" stands for quite a large number; in some cases, ♾infinity♾. This follows from everything being connected to everything else. The connections sprawl across dimensions, and everything else too.

And if we achieve any 'success' in compressing reality, what will we gain? What could we learn from such a deformed thing?

[Fried Egg]

But your quote here is still about compressing reality into a one-dimensional model.

Yes, in this as in so many other subjects, our understanding is limited by the perspectives we choose to adopt. Most of reality is N-dimensional, where "N" stands for quite a large number; in some cases, ♾infinity♾. This follows from everything being connected to everything else. The connections sprawl across dimensions, and everything else too.

And if we achieve any 'success' in compressing reality, what will we gain? What could we learn from such a deformed thing?

True, but the very concept of "left" and "right" is one dimensional.

Either there is something, some broad philosophy or view of human nature, that unites the positions people take on different political issues, or there isn't. And even if there is, there is no reason to think there won't be many exceptions.

[Good_Egg]

And if we achieve any 'success' in compressing reality, what will we gain? What could we learn from such a deformed thing?

Simple models trade-off comprehensibility and ease of application against level of fit to reality.

A one-dimensional model (think of linear regression on one variable) may - depending on the dataset you're dealing with - explain quite a lot (maybe >50%) of the variation in the data. What you've learned with such a model is a substantial proportion of what there is to learn.

I don't think it makes sense to be against simple models in principle. You can reasonably be against complacency, or against ignorance of the limitations of the model. But the best trade-off (between simplicity and adequacy) seems like something that can only be judged on a case-by-case basis.

[Count Lucanor]

Actually, Sowell was correct as regards the constrained vision. The arguments made against these don't wash, eg.

Sowell: Those with a constrained vision prefer the systematic processes of the rule of law and experience of tradition.
CL: I don’t have any problem with the rule of law and order, systematic processes or tradition. Point against Sowell.
SB: Then your vision is constrained to come extent, not entirely unconstrained. We are not digital beings (yet) and have more options than 1 or 0. Point against CL.

I could have argued against Sowell’s identification of the left with what he calls “unconstrained vision” and the right with the “constrained”, but that was not necessary to make my point. Whether I’m characterized as having a constrained vision, half-constrained, unconstrained or whatever, is completely irrelevant. The point is to take Sowell’s descriptions of the left and the right and put it to test to see if they correspond with reality, using myself as an example, given that I’m identified, unquestionably, as a leftist. The result is that Sowell gets most, if not all, wrong.
So, Sowell loses all his points again.

Sowell: Compromise is essential because there are no ideal solutions, only trade-offs.
CL: I accept trade-offs. Point against Sowell, again.
Reply: Sowell's point was entirely reasonable.

Here you’re assuming Sowell is defending that “compromise is essential”, but I’m assuming Sowell is just describing what he thinks corresponds with the right and what he calls the “constrained vision”. Therefore it also becomes irrelevant what he endorses or rejects, the point is that gets wrong that this is an essential attribute of the right, absent in the left.
I get my points back.

Sowell: Those with a constrained vision favor empirical evidence and time-tested structures and processes over intervention and personal experience.
CL: So do I. Another point against Sowell.
SB: Another case where tendencies are illogically treated as absolutes. Another point against CL.

The same as the previous comment. I retain my points.

It's said that tradition is a solution to problems since forgotten. Thus, tradition should be taken more seriously than many progressives think, but that does not mean slavish acceptance. Sowell is talking about general tendencies for societies, not absolutes that are true for every individual.

Then it just proves that Sowell’s characterization is utterly simplistic, one-dimensional, working in the abstract. Since he uses a kind of psychological profile that could only apply to concrete individuals and not societies, his generalization is completely useless.

[Fried Egg]

Then it just proves that Sowell’s characterization is utterly simplistic, one-dimensional, working in the abstract. Since he uses a kind of psychological profile that could only apply to concrete individuals and not societies, his generalization is completely useless.

I'm sure few would deny that it is not an all encompassing and complete definition but, to be fair, if you are dismissing his arguments that he took an entire book to articulate based on the tiny extract I provided, that might be a little hasty.

I would like to provide a more extensive extract from Stephen Pinker's "The Blank Slate" in which he outlined how he interpreted Sowell's distinction (which he refers to as the Tragic vision vs the Utopian vision):

The most sweeping attempt to survey the underlying dimension is Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions. Not every ideological struggle fits this scheme, but as we say in social science, he has identified a factor that can account for a large proportion of the variance.

[...]

In the Tragic Vision, humans are inherently limited in knowledge, wisdom and virtue, and all social arrangements must acknowledge those limits. "Mortal things suit mortals best," wrote Pindar; "from the crooked timber of humanity no truly straight thing can be made," wrote Kant. The Tragic Vision is associated with Hobbes, Burke, Smith, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, the jurist Oliver Wendall Holmes Jr., the economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, the philosophers Isaiah Berlin and Karl Popper, and the legal scholar Richard Posner.

In the Utopian Vision, psychological limitations are artefacts that come from our social arrangements, and we should not allow them to restrict our gaze from what is possible in a better world. It's creed might be "Some people see things as they are and ask 'why?'; I dream of things that never were and ask 'why not?'" The quotation is often attributed to the icon of 1960's liberalism Robert F. Kennedy, but it was originally penned by the Fabian socialist George Bernard Shaw. The Utopian Vision is associated with Rousseau, Godwin, Condorcet, Thomas Paine, the jurist Earl Warren, and the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, and to a lesser extent the political philosopher Ronald Dworkin.

[...]

In the Tragic Vision, moreover, human nature has not changed. Traditions such as religion, the family, social customs, sexual mores, and political institutions are a distillation of time-tested techniques that let us work around the shortcomings of human nature. They are as applicable to humans today as they were when they were developed, even if no one today can explain their rationale. However imperfectly society may be, we should measure it against the cruelty and deprivation of the actual past, not the harmony and affluence of an imagined future. We are fortunate enough to live in a society that more or less works, and our first priority should be not to screw it up, because human nature always leaves us teetering on the brink of barbarism. And since no one is smart enough to predict the behaviour of a single human being, let alone millions of them interacting in a society, we should distrust and formula for changing society from the top down, because it is likely to have unintended consequences that are worse than the problems it was designed to fix. The best we can hope for are incremental changes that are continuously adjusted according to feedback about the sum of their good and bad consequences. It also follows that we should not aim to solve social problems like crime or poverty because in a world of competing individuals one person's gain may be another person's loss. The best we can do is trade off one cost against the other.

In the Utopian Vision, human nature changes with social circumstances, so traditional institutions have no inherent value. That was then, this is now. Traditions are the dead hand of the past, the attempt to rule from the grave. They must be stated explicitly so their rationale can be scrutinized and their moral status evaluated. And by that test, many traditions fail: the confinement of women to the home, the stigma against homosexuality and premarital sex, the superstitions of religion, the injustice of apartheid and segregation, the dangers of patriotism as exemplified in the mindless slogan "My country, right or wrong." Practices such as absolute monarchy, slavery, war, and patriarchy once seemed inevitable but have disappeared or faded from many parts of the world through changes in institutions that were once thought to be rooted in human nature. Moreover, the existence of suffering and injustice presents us with an undeniable moral imperative. We don't know what we can achieve until we try, and the alternative, resigning ourselves to these evils as the way of the world is unconscionable.

Again, the above is only an extract, and not the complete articulation of the point the author was trying to make. But I think it better illustrates these competing visions than my original extract did.

[Sy Borg]

Actually, Sowell was correct as regards the constrained vision. The arguments made against these don't wash, eg.

Sowell: Those with a constrained vision prefer the systematic processes of the rule of law and experience of tradition.
CL: I don’t have any problem with the rule of law and order, systematic processes or tradition. Point against Sowell.
SB: Then your vision is constrained to come extent, not entirely unconstrained. We are not digital beings (yet) and have more options than 1 or 0. Point against CL.

I could have argued against Sowell’s identification of the left with what he calls “unconstrained vision” and the right with the “constrained”, but that was not necessary to make my point. Whether I’m characterized as having a constrained vision, half-constrained, unconstrained or whatever, is completely irrelevant. The point is to take Sowell’s descriptions of the left and the right and put it to test to see if they correspond with reality, using myself as an example, given that I’m identified, unquestionably, as a leftist. The result is that Sowell gets most, if not all, wrong.
So, Sowell loses all his points again.

You are quick to proclaim victory, and with some very lazy logic. Yes, to disprove the claim "all crows are black" one only needs to find one white crow, but that doesn't detract from the fact that almost all crows are black.

Personally, I find both left and right to be unconstrained in their own ways, basing their ideas on ideals rather than pragmatic reality, which is why both the far right and far left inevitably do a terrible job at governing, ie. their policies fail to take advantage of opportunities due to their ideals.

It's not that individual idealists have unconstrained vision, but when you put a whole bunch of idealists together, they egg each other on, and move towards, if not unconstrained, a barely constrained, vision.

Sowell: Compromise is essential because there are no ideal solutions, only trade-offs.
CL: I accept trade-offs. Point against Sowell, again.
Reply: Sowell's point was entirely reasonable.

Here you’re assuming Sowell is defending that “compromise is essential”, but I’m assuming Sowell is just describing what he thinks corresponds with the right and what he calls the “constrained vision”. Therefore it also becomes irrelevant what he endorses or rejects, the point is that gets wrong that this is an essential attribute of the right, absent in the left.
I get my points back.

But in physical reality, compromise is needed. We can claim whatever we like, but in the real world, ideals must be shattered all the time for the greater good, because reality has no obligation to accord with our ideals.

Consider the difference between: "We must have a society of equity" with "What are the most effective ways over the short, medium and long terms to minimise poverty?". The former will say "Tax the rich", while the latter will focus on productivity because "tax the rich" has been done before and the result is capital flight, where society not only reduces its tax base (since the rich pay the lion's share of tax) but loses people who became rich by providing people with the stuff they want and need. So the good stuff goes off shore, onsold at inflated prices.

BTW, as you may have noticed I am not arguing from a right POV but from a pragmatic one. A pox on both houses!

It's said that tradition is a solution to problems since forgotten. Thus, tradition should be taken more seriously than many progressives think, but that does not mean slavish acceptance. Sowell is talking about general tendencies for societies, not absolutes that are true for every individual.

Then it just proves that Sowell’s characterization is utterly simplistic, one-dimensional, working in the abstract. Since he uses a kind of psychological profile that could only apply to concrete individuals and not societies, his generalization is completely useless.

No, it doesn't. Sowell is noticing a tendency in two groups with opposing ideologies. We may observe dynamics at different scales.

The key point here is: "tradition is a solution to problems since forgotten". We so often treat tradition as mindless and useless, without considering the historical context. I used to think that Christianity was bunk but I see that it, and many of its edicts, was the glue that held the west together, much like Islam, Hinduism, Confucianism, and so forth.

As always seems to be the case, Christians blew it by egregious abuses of power and taking ideals to extremes, far beyond anything the Bible said, putting more energy into saving non-conscious embryos than babies and toddlers.

Then again, such cognitive dissonance is everywhere in our still-immature societies. It seems unrealistic to expect reason to drive the human world when power, networking and competition have historically always been the main drivers, as as the case with many other social animals.

As we increasingly meld with technology, this will probably change in the future.

Left and right looks set to eventually refer to the level of machine orientation one has. The "left" will rebel, wanting to stay (quasi) natural, while the "right" will embrace the empowerment of tech. The new left will see that as immoral, and the new right will see it as a natural development.

Watch for the emerging battlefield regarding personal AI augmentation, both in terms of internal divisions and geopolitics.

[Pattern-chaser]

But your quote here is still about compressing reality into a one-dimensional model.

Yes, in this as in so many other subjects, our understanding is limited by the perspectives we choose to adopt. Most of reality is N-dimensional, where "N" stands for quite a large number; in some cases, ♾infinity♾. This follows from everything being connected to everything else. The connections sprawl across dimensions, and everything else too.

And if we achieve any 'success' in compressing reality, what will we gain? What could we learn from such a deformed thing?

True, but the very concept of "left" and "right" is one dimensional.

Either there is something, some broad philosophy or view of human nature, that unites the positions people take on different political issues, or there isn't. And even if there is, there is no reason to think there won't be many exceptions.

I think there is such a thing, and I also agree that there are "many exceptions". I think this is typical of the real world, yes? It's always more complex than our simple rationalisations might suggest.

[Count Lucanor]

Then it just proves that Sowell’s characterization is utterly simplistic, one-dimensional, working in the abstract. Since he uses a kind of psychological profile that could only apply to concrete individuals and not societies, his generalization is completely useless.

I'm sure few would deny that it is not an all encompassing and complete definition but, to be fair, if you are dismissing his arguments that he took an entire book to articulate based on the tiny extract I provided, that might be a little hasty.

That would be a fair point, just bear in mind that my comment is a response to someone else’s assessment on that book, which is why my response starts with “then”. But that’s a side issue, the core of my argument against Sowell is what I wrote in my direct response to your extract: his descriptions about what makes the distinction between left and right does not pass a simple test. When comparing those descriptions with my views as a leftist, they simply don’t match. We can debate how and why he got them wrong, but the primary fact is that they don’t work.

I would like to provide a more extensive extract from Stephen Pinker's "The Blank Slate" in which he outlined how he interpreted Sowell's distinction (which he refers to as the Tragic vision vs the Utopian vision):

The most sweeping attempt to survey the underlying dimension is Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions. Not every ideological struggle fits this scheme, but as we say in social science, he has identified a factor that can account for a large proportion of the variance.

[...]

In the Tragic Vision, humans are inherently limited in knowledge, wisdom and virtue, and all social arrangements must acknowledge those limits. "Mortal things suit mortals best," wrote Pindar; "from the crooked timber of humanity no truly straight thing can be made," wrote Kant. The Tragic Vision is associated with Hobbes, Burke, Smith, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, the jurist Oliver Wendall Holmes Jr., the economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, the philosophers Isaiah Berlin and Karl Popper, and the legal scholar Richard Posner.

In the Utopian Vision, psychological limitations are artefacts that come from our social arrangements, and we should not allow them to restrict our gaze from what is possible in a better world. It's creed might be "Some people see things as they are and ask 'why?'; I dream of things that never were and ask 'why not?'" The quotation is often attributed to the icon of 1960's liberalism Robert F. Kennedy, but it was originally penned by the Fabian socialist George Bernard Shaw. The Utopian Vision is associated with Rousseau, Godwin, Condorcet, Thomas Paine, the jurist Earl Warren, and the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, and to a lesser extent the political philosopher Ronald Dworkin.

[...]

In the Tragic Vision, moreover, human nature has not changed. Traditions such as religion, the family, social customs, sexual mores, and political institutions are a distillation of time-tested techniques that let us work around the shortcomings of human nature. They are as applicable to humans today as they were when they were developed, even if no one today can explain their rationale. However imperfectly society may be, we should measure it against the cruelty and deprivation of the actual past, not the harmony and affluence of an imagined future. We are fortunate enough to live in a society that more or less works, and our first priority should be not to screw it up, because human nature always leaves us teetering on the brink of barbarism. And since no one is smart enough to predict the behaviour of a single human being, let alone millions of them interacting in a society, we should distrust and formula for changing society from the top down, because it is likely to have unintended consequences that are worse than the problems it was designed to fix. The best we can hope for are incremental changes that are continuously adjusted according to feedback about the sum of their good and bad consequences. It also follows that we should not aim to solve social problems like crime or poverty because in a world of competing individuals one person's gain may be another person's loss. The best we can do is trade off one cost against the other.

In the Utopian Vision, human nature changes with social circumstances, so traditional institutions have no inherent value. That was then, this is now. Traditions are the dead hand of the past, the attempt to rule from the grave. They must be stated explicitly so their rationale can be scrutinized and their moral status evaluated. And by that test, many traditions fail: the confinement of women to the home, the stigma against homosexuality and premarital sex, the superstitions of religion, the injustice of apartheid and segregation, the dangers of patriotism as exemplified in the mindless slogan "My country, right or wrong." Practices such as absolute monarchy, slavery, war, and patriarchy once seemed inevitable but have disappeared or faded from many parts of the world through changes in institutions that were once thought to be rooted in human nature. Moreover, the existence of suffering and injustice presents us with an undeniable moral imperative. We don't know what we can achieve until we try, and the alternative, resigning ourselves to these evils as the way of the world is unconscionable.

Again, the above is only an extract, and not the complete articulation of the point the author was trying to make. But I think it better illustrates these competing visions than my original extract did.

Again, it can easily be demonstrated that people at both sides of the ideological spectrum can hold any of those visions.

The core of idealist philosophy rests on the doctrine that the world, humanity, reality, etc., progresses by changes in foundational ideas, rather than material factors, which are said to be subordinate to a fundamentally mental, spiritual or ideologically-based reality. Being a materialist, I reject such notions. You can’t explain society by generalizing mental predispositions, it has the be the other way around: explain mental predispositions based on how societies configure themselves in practice.

[Count Lucanor]

Yes, to disprove the claim "all crows are black" one only needs to find one white crow, but that doesn't detract from the fact that almost all crows are black.

If the proposition were: “almost all crows are black”, one would have to agree, but one would also have to agree that blackness is not essential to being a crow. The issue at stake is the use of the word “essential”. If the assertion is: “color is the essential attribute that distinguishes crows from pelicans”, showing pelicans and crows of different colors certainly will shatter to pieces that assertion, it will show that color is an accessory, accidental attribute, not an essential one. Just the same, having some psychological attributes (Sowell’s contrained and unconstrained visions) has no weight as essential attributes that distinguish left and right affiliations. Simple logic.

Personally, I find both left and right to be unconstrained in their own ways, basing their ideas on ideals rather than pragmatic reality, which is why both the far right and far left inevitably do a terrible job at governing, ie. their policies fail to take advantage of opportunities due to their ideals.

I think these differences, either the so called unconstrained or constrained visions, are found in individual characters and therefore can be present in all political sides. They don’t define each side.

Sowell is noticing a tendency in two groups with opposing ideologies. We may observe dynamics at different scales.

If Sowell thinks there is a strictly-defined ideology of the left vs a strictly-defined ideology of the right, he’s simply dead wrong. The word “tendency” will not help much that case.

[Fried Egg]

If Sowell thinks there is a strictly-defined ideology of the left vs a strictly-defined ideology of the right, he’s simply dead wrong.

No one here, nor Stephen Pinker (which should be clear from the first bit of my quote from him above) and least of all Thomas Sowell believes this is any kind of "strictly-defined" categorisation. So the existence of counter examples should be expected and does not necessarily conflict with the possibility that as broad, loose generalisations, there may be some validity to them.

Again, it can easily be demonstrated that people at both sides of the ideological spectrum can hold any of those visions.

Although I would agree that it's likely that many will deviate from those views at least to some degree, I find it hard to imagine that anyone who regards themselves as being firmly on the left would read that passage describing the "Tragic View" and find themselves agreeing with most of it. That just doesn't ring true to me but that's just how I feel about it.

I'm not clear what your overall position is on the essential question in this thread; is there a uniting philosophy or wirkd view that underpins most of the different and seemingly unrelated policy positions that we associate with on the left or the right?

To put it another way, why do we find those on the left tend to be broadly in favour of socialism, disapproving of nationalism and also think that the criminal justice system should emphasise rehabilitation over punishment/deterrent? On the face of it, these are three distinct positions that don't have anything in common and yet those who take those views tend to cluster on the "left". If this is true, there must be some reason for it, some underlying philosophy or world view that brings them together. So what is it? If you think Thomas Sowell's framework is so completely wrong, suggest something better.

The core of idealist philosophy rests on the doctrine that the world, humanity, reality, etc., progresses by changes in foundational ideas, rather than material factors, which are said to be subordinate to a fundamentally mental, spiritual or ideologically-based reality. Being a materialist, I reject such notions. You can’t explain society by generalizing mental predispositions, it has the be the other way around: explain mental predispositions based on how societies configure themselves in practice.

I can't see how this is relevant. It is not explaining society, it is explaining (or attempting to explain) why people tend to agree (or disagree) with certain propositions also tend to agree (or disagree) with others. Unless you deny that there is any broad based agreement, in which case it is meaningless to talk about the "left" and "right" at all.