Can vaccine hesitancy be rational?

The science is in. There is widespread consensus in the scientific, specifically biomedical, community. The most credible members of that community have spoken. And our duly democratically elected leaders are listening and implementing policies based on this science. Our role as lay people and citizens is to attend to the directives of these authorities. The biomedical consensus is that we are in a struggle against a devastating biological threat to the global human community. The only hope we have of vanquishing this threat is to unite in solidarity. We do not have the luxury of time to wait until every imaginable quibble that may be raised has been settled. We are in an existential emergency and must act on less than perfect information. But we have every reason to trust the recognized scientific consensus and the governmental forces that have mobilized to enact the most considered strategy available to us: universal vaccination.

With this “dominant narrative” as background, it may seem impertinent to ask (but philosophers since Socrates are no strangers to impertinence), along with Cambridge philosopher Stephen David John, the modest, but fundamental, question: Can vaccine hesitancy be rational? We draw heavily from John’s presentation:

https://youtu.be/mfXkfdwv104

It is one thing to act for the general good and another to act for your own good. The reasoning back of these motives we will call “moral” and “prudential” rationality, respectively. Prudential rationality is the use of reason to serve your own ends. Moral rationality is the use of reason to serve the good of all. Generally, prudential rationality is the more potent and may easily out motivate moral considerations when they conflict. With this in mind, several strategies may be harnessed to direct mass action in a salutary direction.

Ideally, you want the motives to align. Compliance is more likely, with less hesitation and more reliability.

For purposes of engineering compliance, there are two situations in which these motives may align for a population of the rationally-capable:

1. Information known to the population, in fact, may support both kinds of rationality: a course of action may actually be both prudential and morally rational.

2. Information known to the population may merely appear to support both kinds of rationality: a course of action may seem to be both prudential and morally rational, irrespective of whether it is.

Drop the “rationally-capable” qualification and two more paths come into view:

3. Compliance may be secured without pretense to any form of rational cooperation through threat of physical coercion.

4. Compliance may be secured without pretense to any form of rational cooperation through fear of social, psychological, or economic consequences, short of physical coercion.

The first strategy for achieving compliance, though perhaps most desirable, is by far the most difficult to achieve. It requires that many contingencies align just so. We will focus discussion on these and what militates against alignment of motivation.

The third and fourth are objectionable due to modern democratic sensibilities…

The second path is what most nations have favored (so far) in responding to the current pandemic. The strategy motivating the measures in response exploits human susceptibility to fear and psychological malleability toward ends that are deemed by some to be justifiable on pragmatic grounds. “Something must be done. This is something. Therefore, we must do it.” (Politicians’ syllogism)

If the second path of vagueness and obfuscation, alone fails to quell suspicion, the fall back seems to be some form of the fourth strategy, what we may call “civilized coercion.”

The situation when all these strategies are unachievable – or unacceptable – is a breeding ground for rational hesitancy.

S. D. John’s short answer: “Yes, sometimes, and this is a giant problem.”

Full writeup in progress: https://vaccine-hesitancy.philosophy.exposed