Belief revision is incredibly hard. We're not very good at it. Belief revision while depressed is harder. I've got a bunch of symptoms of mild depression.
Here's what I wonder. If we could be so wrong about the outcome of the election, what else are we wrong about?
Philosophy is generally described of as having three main branches: epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. More or less, epistemology is how we know stuff, metaphysics is what stuff exists, and ethics is right and wrong. Again, more or less. Depending on the philosophy, the three inform each other.
For me, these three serve as anchors holding together a worldview. It is a liberal areligious scientific one, where it is right to help those less privileged. Where science tells us the most we can know about the world, and there are (effectively) no gods to save us.
Within epistemology, more or less, is the theory of minds. In particular, the theory of other people's minds. Of knowing about other people, and how we gain information about them. My theory of other people's minds has suffered a tremendous shock.
That shock is reverbing through the rest of my positions, casting doubt. I'm struggling with wondering how much of my epistemology is wrong. How much of how I gather and learn about information is mistaken. With such doubt, I have to wonder is my metaphysic is wrong. And with two unmoored, I question even my ethics.
With all three in question, I am left unmoored. For now, there is no knowledge I do not doubt.
This'll change. My expectation is I'll come back to largely where I was before, but this is a philosophical singularity.
I've started more fights online than usual, without ever meaning to. There's very loud subtext that everything is about the election. That's true, but its really about this unmooring. Questioning and wondering and that turns into aggression and depression.
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I certainly hear that.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to explore some other perspectives, you might try thinking about the way that conservative intellectuals try to bake epistemic humility into their thinking (e.g. "Chesteron's Fence").
ReplyDeleteDespite all that, climate change is real. No, pundits aren't allowed to use polling failure to question science.
ReplyDeleteDan Maruschak Reading. And what I'm reading sounds like unintelligible claptrap that I'd laugh out an argument. Do you have a source that doesn't sound so awful I could read through?
ReplyDeleteMatt Johnson how do we know that? That is, more or less, I'm asking for the epistemological groundwork for non-scientists to believe scientific findings.
ReplyDeleteLike, I get that you are being philosophical and stuff but no. I'm not being random and theoretical, there is literally a right wing pundit claiming that people being wrong in predicting this election proves that climate change science is fake. You want proof? Go read 30 years of science.
ReplyDeleteMatt Johnson I'm not just being dispassionate. I'm trying to process. One step in that, for me, is reaffirming a belief in how and why we believe things. Or finding a new process.
ReplyDeleteThat pundit has a stupid argument. Full stop.
But, the question remains: What is the reason -- the hook, or, to use Dennett's terminology, the crane -- that should make non-scientists believe that scientific findings are true?
Does that make sense?
A thing to remember: this is already getting played like it's a massive upswell of voters ratifying Trump. It's not. It's not the majority of Americans, its 18% of Americans.
ReplyDeleteThe only reason he's the presumed winner is because of gerrymandering and voter suppression.
This is not the voice of America. It's the distortion wrought by very clever, very dedicated, and very unscrupulous politicians.
Dan Maruschak The authoritarian in the quote is really quite very grating:
ReplyDelete-- Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.
That is, I control whether you are allowed to do a thing. I am the arbiter of wisdom. I am the one in charge. You are stupid and petty and must be stopped.
That sort of talk stops me in my tracks. Got a formulation of this sort of principle that isn't so wedded in authoritarianism?
William Nichols Sure, replace "I may allow you" with "I may withdraw my objection and stop working to oppose you on this issue".
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols: I would argue that the a good epistemological hook to explain science to non-scientists ... at least this week ... is precisely this election.
ReplyDelete"I don't know a lot of Trump voters personally. And yet, when I am presented with data collected in a trust-worthy manner that shows me the wider patterns of which my personal worldview is only a part, I accept that reality. I don't like it (in the case of the election or in the case of climate change) but I accept that, yeah, there's stuff beyond what I personally see and leveraging these sorts of tools is how I get a glimpse of those patterns."
Tony Lower-Basch That shows that you -- and I -- do accept that science works. It doesn't show that we ought to. that is, it is descriptive but not prescriptive. Right?
ReplyDeleteDan Maruschak So, again, this leaves open the question of: on what right do you stand up and say I do not have the right to do as I see fit?
ReplyDeleteIt is still authoritarian, and not showing a reason. It is merely saying that you will prevent others from taking action they see as right, but not -- as far as I have seen -- giving a reason for that. Am I missing it?
William Nichols: That makes sense. Can I back up and question the epistemological basis of any second-hand evidence? Are we getting into Descartes here? And if so can I counter with Hume, and argue from inferential "If you like cell phones, maybe you should trust the same intellectual tools that brought you those"?
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols It has nothing to do with "authority". It's not about the speaker interacting with the reformer, it's about whether the "reformer" the speaker is describing has a good idea or not. As to what right I have to stand up and say something: We call it democracy, i.e. our voices are allowed to influence policy decisions. You have that right, too. The general principle he's trying to illustrate is that there tends to be wisdom built into institutions -- people don't put up fences for no reason, they did it to solve a real problem they had at some point in the past. If you don't know how and why an institution operates the way it does it can be dangerous to make the default assumption that it's arbitrary, stupid, and useless.
ReplyDeleteJosh Roby And the electoral college, of course. Don't forget about that.
ReplyDeleteAnd something about all the polls failing in the same way. Systemic bias. How it could have happened, i do not know.
William Nichols The electoral college is the original gerrymander. ;)
ReplyDeleteJosh Roby I think that goes to the 3/5th compromise, but they are roughly tied in terms of shittiness and age.
ReplyDeleteDan Maruschak Its interesting to me that you don't read authority where I see it so plainly. I don't know what that says. Maybe its just my depression.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, I get that point. I don't think I can sign off on i, if for no other reason that I have never known a reformer who is so naive. I know lots of reasons why, for example, the electoral college exists. Or why redlining exists. Or why crack is illegal. And I'm not anybody, and for sure I am not in a position to pull down fences.
And I'm really really uncomfortable with the reasons those exist, and question whether these policies/institutions should continue to exist.
And I don't see this as being about the reformers ideas at all, but just a claim that reforms are probably wrongheaded.
I don't find it convincing. Sorry.
Tony Lower-Basch That'd be the standard back and forth to go from cartesian skepticism to a 21st century liberal rationalism. I'm not ready to go back there, as I'm still trying to explore other ideas like that of Dan Maruschak , even if his first attempt left me less than enthusiastic. I'm hopeful he's got something else for me to try on.
ReplyDeleteI am probably just not ready for people to be philosophical about it... sorry if that response was aggressive...
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols: Well, if you're fishing for radical notions, I'll toss one in: perhaps epistemology has no application to politics, in the same way that non-Euclidean geometry does not apply to carpentry. Thoughts?
ReplyDelete"I have never known a reformer who is so naive"
ReplyDeleteRemember how this post started with you realizing that if you didn't have all the answers about how the election was going to go, there may be other areas where you were overestimating what you knew? Maybe you don't know what you don't know. (And maybe you do, the point is to beware of intellectual hubris and unwarranted certainty, not to never do anything). I offered the example because it seemed to be in the spirit of what you were already interested in.
"I don't find it convincing. Sorry."
It wasn't written to be convincing. If was meant to articulate a point in a way that those inclined to believe in it would be likely to remember it, like a parable.
Dan Maruschak Basically, I still have no idea what reality the fence's rule is meant to represent, and don't know how it is meant to relate to the one we live is. I don't get it. It doesn't seem related to hubris, but rather to putting forth as many obstacles as possible to change.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I don't understand it. Maybe I can't understand it. Is there some other way of getting to a similar point? Perhaps a difference parable, a different thinker?
"I'm hopeful he's got something else for me to try on."
ReplyDeleteWell, I think the cultural cognition stuff from Kahan is very relevant to the questions of epistemology in a political context, and he's probably not opposed to you politically, it's more about studying the psychology of it, although there's also something of a philosophical component.
As I said earlier, I don't really have any real recommendations about political philosophy stuff you ought to read, most of what I think I know about what people think is sort of synthesized from reading articles, blog posts, etc., over the years.
"It doesn't seem related to hubris"
The story in the parable is about the "reformer". It's not about Chesterton being an amazing hero for standing up to the reformer. It's not about Chesterton having the authority to stop the reformer. It's a reformer who wants to tear down a fence because he assumes it's stupid, even though he can't explain why it's there, and Chesterton thinking the person would be wiser to educate themselves about the fence before agitating for its removal. You seem to think that it would be impossible for a person like this (or a person who maps to this via metaphor) to exist. OK? I'm not so sure.
Dan Maruschak: The whole thing makes me think about something I've heard in regard to accepting playtest feedback ... "If somebody tells you there is problem Y and you have to do X to fix it, it is quite likely that X is a terrible, terrible solution. It is somewhat likely that Y is not the real problem. But it is almost certain that there is a problem, and that starting at Y and working from there is your best chance of running it to ground."
ReplyDeleteSo I look at the parable you reference, and I think "Okay ... there's a fence. That's solution X. Is it the wrong solution? Sure, it might be. But it's a symptom of some real problem, and if it's the wrong solution than nobody has found the right solution yet."
That said ... all of this thinking assumes one universal intent. I've got roads in my neighborhood that are just awful ... dead-end and swirl around, and you can never get where you want to be. You know the problem they were (explicitly, on the record) made to address? "There are too many ways for colored folks to get from their neighborhood to our neighborhood." So when I've understood that original problem, and why it was solved the way it was, I want to rebuild the roads even more.
But hey, understanding it is good.
That, Tony Lower-Basch , sounds like what I normally think when I hear historical reasons for things.
ReplyDeleteMy standard assumption -- backed up by experience -- is that historical reasons are generally short-sighted, sexist, classist, and racist.