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FreeThinkers Discussion Belief vs. Skepticism Presented March 22, 2016 1 Belief vs. Skepticism What is belief? • A degree of conviction that a proposition is true. • Essentially, it’s a feeling of certainty. • That feeling unconsciously associates a weight. – Examples of Weight or degrees of confidence: most of us are 100% confident the sun will still be in the sky tomorrow but we are only (depending on our health) 50% to 90% confident we will be there to enjoy it. • Belief is justified psychologically, emotionally. • Humans are pre-wired to believe, with a strong emotional need to be right. 2 Belief vs. Skepticism What is knowledge? • Awareness of a true proposition. • A proposition is true if it can be verified as fact. • Types of verification: – – – – – Self-evident apprehension of fact Corroborative evidence of fact Consistent within a theoretical framework Predictive, repeatable, testable Authoritative pronouncements • Knowledge is always personal, subjective, & contextual. • Knowledge is belief that happens to be true – that is consistent within a wider, verifiable framework.3 Belief vs. Skepticism Knowledge vs. Belief: • The circularity of these two concepts – Belief is the confidence that one is right – Knowledge is belief that is “actionable” – However, if one believes without doubt, one claims “to know” regardless of actionability. • Question: Is there anything we can know with absolute certainty? 4 Belief vs. Skepticism Belief is never value-free: • We are pre-wired to strongly desire to be right. • People argue all the time over trivial facts. • The desire to be right increases in intensity with the significance of the belief relative to moral behavior. • Can knowledge exist without emotion? • Can knowledge exist without consciousness? • Question: Is there such thing as objective knowledge? 5 Belief vs. Skepticism “Belief is believing a believer.” -- Mark K. • • • • • • Beliefs are self-reinforcing. Beliefs are tinged (or saturated) with righteousness. “Core beliefs” can merge with personal identity. Are we mentally free to choose beliefs? How free are we to change our beliefs? How much control do we really have over our core beliefs and our ability to change them? • Are beliefs essentially the spawn of the unconscious? • Are beliefs self-perpetuating? 6 Belief vs. Skepticism Enter skepticism – the great Usurper: • Regular beliefs usually have an element of doubt. • Core beliefs can be absolute and doubtless. – Absolute beliefs are “belief in belief”. – Absolute beliefs are an endless feedback loop. – Is there a trick to interrupting the feedback loop? • Belief in skepticism: – Skepticism is more than just simple doubt. – Skepticism is a core belief that no beliefs are absolute. – Humanity is divided into two fundamental types of intellect: those who believe in absolutes and those who don’t. – The true Believers vs. the true Skeptics 7 Belief vs. Skepticism Skepticism as a Core Belief: • Anything and everything can & should be questioned. • Obviously, it’s a challenge to others’ beliefs. • More importantly, skepticism is a tool for the conscious mind to challenge, overcome, and even change its own unconsciously-constructed beliefs! • As a core belief, skepticism is its own belief system. • As a core belief, it is its own loop-ending mechanism. 8 Belief vs. Skepticism Obvious targets for skepticism: • A personal god, dogmatic texts, religious fundamentalism, the occult, political histrionics, fear-mongering, bigotry, stereotypes, racial supremacy, etc. Less obvious targets: • The scientific establishment, human rights, liberalism, philosophical materialism, consensus morality, consciousness as an emergent phenomenon, the belief that the scientific method is the only source for knowledge, and more. 9 Belief vs. Skepticism Some (more or less) relevant References: • “The Righteous Mind – Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion” by Jonathan Haidt • “Doubt: A History” by Jennifer Michael Hecht • Secular Buddhism (example of atheist spirituality) • Anthropic Trilogy by Ed Fischer (another example of atheist spirituality) also (Ed is one of our members) • Belief – Wikipedia • Skepticism – Wikipedia • Gettier Problem – Wikipedia • The Atlantic – “Science Faith Is Different from Religious Faith” by Paul Bloom, Nov 24, 2015 • The core Intelligent Design position – FYI, Uncommon Descent, Nov 4, 2014 10 Personal Belief & Political Beliefs • • • Our beliefs about the world lead us to specific political beliefs as we try to design a political system that will provide the kind of society in which we want to live. The Righteous Mind by Johnathan Haidt explores these connections: Haidt’s book shows the foundations of various moral beliefs and the attraction they have for different political philosophies, we can begin to see the form of a discussion that bridges the gap, and the differences, between: – • How we use our individually accepted moral codes to determine how we treat other individuals we encounter in our daily lives and – How we use our individual moral code to decide how to treat large groups of people as we express our morality through our advocacy of the policies we want enacted by the government. The Amazon summary of The Righteous Mind says: – Why can’t our political leaders work together as threats loom and problems mount? Why do people so readily assume the worst about the motives of their fellow citizens? In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding. – His starting point is moral intuition—the nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are wrong. Haidt shows us how these intuitions differ across cultures, including the cultures of the political left and right. He blends his own research findings with those of anthropologists, historians, and other psychologists to draw a map of the moral domain. – He then examines the origins of morality, overturning the view that evolution made us fundamentally selfish creatures. But rather than arguing that we are innately altruistic, he makes a more subtle claim—that we are fundamentally groupish. It is our groupishness, he explains, that leads to our greatest joys, our religious divisions, and our political affiliations. In a stunning final chapter on 11 ideology and civility, Haidt shows what each side is right about and why we need the insights of liberals, conservatives, and libertarians to flourish as a nation. Personal Belief & Political Beliefs • • The challenge: what morality best serves a community by providing a foundation that allows unrelated people to live together peacefully and to enjoy the benefits of cooperation, specialization and the division of labor? Haidt proposes six potential foundations of morality. With some interpretation on my part the foundations can be summarized as: – – – – – – Care/Harm: This foundation makes us sensitive to signs of suffering and need; it makes us despise cruelty and want to care for those who are suffering. Fairness as proportional reward: This foundation supports righteous anger when anyone cheats you directly (when a car dealer knowingly sells you a lemon). But it also supports a more generalized concern with anyone who “drinks the water” rather than carrying their share for the group. • Fairness, important to all groups, nonetheless has subtypes: The left values fairness more when it is presented as equality, particularly equality of outcomes between groups (which is at the heart of social justice). The right values fairness more than the left when it is presented as proportionality — a focus on merit, which includes a desire to let people fail when they are perceived to have been lazy or otherwise undeserving. Liberty/Oppression: Everyone cares about liberty but: • To a liberal, liberty predominately means concern about the rights of certain vulnerable groups. • Conservatives and Libertarians hold the idea of liberty as the right to be left alone. Loyalty: This foundation evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of forming and maintaining coalitions. It makes us sensitive to signs that another person is, or is not, a team player. Authority: This foundation evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of forging relationships that will benefit us within social hierarchies. Sanctity: This foundation evolved initially in response to the adaptive challenge of the omnivore’s dilemma, and then to the broader challenge of living in a world of pathogens and parasites. 12 Personal Belief & Political Beliefs • • http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/donald-trump-supporters-think-about-morality-differently-other-votersheres Next, we looked at how each candidate’s supporters prioritize each of the moral foundations compared with the average American (Figure 1). Bars above zero indicate that the candidate’s supporters place more emphasis on that particular moral foundation compared with the average voter. Bars that dip down below zero do not mean those supporters do not care about the moral concern, only that they gave relatively lower ratings to it compared with the rest of our nationally representative survey sample. 13 Personal Belief & Political Beliefs • 1) Care (blue bars): The care foundation measures the psychological tendency to believe that morality requires caring for and protecting the vulnerable. A sample survey item asks respondents if they agree that “compassion for those who are suffering is the most crucial virtue.” Individuals who score high on this foundation tend to support a more activist government with a more generous safety net. – The most obvious thing to note is that supporters of the two Democratic candidates are high, whereas supporters of most Republicans are low. This is consistent with most studies of the left-right dimension: The left values care and compassion as public or political values more than the right does. (We note that all people, and all groups, value care to some extent; we are merely looking at relative differences among groups.) 14 Personal Belief & Political Beliefs – • • Rand Paul’s supporters score particularly low. We have consistently found that libertarians score lower on care and compassion compared with others — indeed, they score low on almost all emotions, while scoring the highest on measures of reason, rationality, and intelligence. – The Republican candidates who put forth a gentle Christian persona draw the most care-oriented Republican voters. Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson, and Jeb Bush supporters are the only Republican groups that are above the national mean or right at it (hence the blue bars don’t show for Bush and Carson). 2) Fairness as proportionality (green bars):Proportionality is the desire for people to reap what they sow — for good deeds to be rewarded and bad deeds punished. A sample survey item asks respondents if they agree that “people who produce more should be rewarded more than those who just tried hard.” – In practice, a strong desire for proportionality is highly predictive of a preference for small government and a dislike of activist government and the welfare state. (We only asked about fairness as proportionality in our survey, not fairness as equality — which is always higher on the left.) – The green bars show a very high correlation with ideology: As you move to the right, the bars rise. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio supporters score highest on this foundation. This pattern is consistent with these candidates receiving the most support from the Tea Party. In our earlier research, we have each independently reached the conclusion that Tea Party supporters are highly motivated by the sense that the government routinely violates proportional fairness, by bailing out well-connected corporations and by spreading a safety net of welfare benefits under people they see as undeserving of help. – Supporters of Democrats score the lowest on this foundation, particularly supporters of Bernie Sanders. This is consistent with Sanders’s emphasis on income redistribution, which many on the right see as a direct violation of proportional fairness carried out in the name of achieving equality of outcome. 3) Liberty (orange bars): The liberty foundation measures the psychological tendency to resist being controlled or dominated. A sample survey item asks respondents if they agree that “everyone should be free to do as they choose, so long as they don’t infringe on upon the freedom of others.” – Not surprisingly, Rand Paul’s supporters rate this the most important foundation, by far. Although Paul has said he’s a constitutional conservative, not a libertarian, his supporters reflect the moral profile of libertarians. – More surprisingly, Bernie Sanders supporters also score high. Sanders seems to be drawing the more libertarian elements of the left, consistent with his more libertarian views on personal freedom, gun rights, and dovish foreign policy. Libertarian-minded voters seem to choose Sanders if they are on the left on economic policy, and Paul if they are on the right. 15 Personal Belief & Political Beliefs – • Clinton supporters, in contrast to Sanders’s supporters, score slightly below the national mean. This may be one of the most important differences between the two candidates: Clinton attracts voters less concerned about individual autonomy. For instance, Clinton opposes legalizing recreational marijuana and until recently opposed legalizing samesex marriage, while Sanders supports legalizing marijuana and voted against DOMA back in 1996 when President Bill Clinton signed it into law. – The most outwardly Christian candidates — Huckabee and Carson — draw supporters who score low on the liberty foundation. This may reflect the fact that socially conservative religious voters tend to prioritize values of community and group cohesion over individual autonomy. – Notably, despite the frequent use of rhetoric about “liberty” on the right, only a few Republican candidates — Rand Paul and Ted Cruz — attract supporters that score much above average on this foundation. These results suggest that the Cruz campaign strategy to capture libertarian-leaning voters may be working. 4) Authority/loyalty/sanctity (red bars): For simplicity, we took the average of each respondent’s answers to all six questions for these three foundations, because they tend to go together as the foundations of social conservatism, and in this data set they generally tell the same story about each candidate. (See our supplemental blog post for graphs and extended analyses of each foundation separately.) Authority shows up in political life in strong support for the police and a “tough on crime” attitude; a sample question in our survey asked respondents whether it is relevant to moral judgment that “an action caused chaos or disorder.” Loyalty shows up in political life in strong patriotism and a desire to protect the flag; a survey item we used asked if it was relevant to morality that a person “showed a lack of loyalty.” Sanctity shows up in political life in culture war debates related to sexuality (including same-sex marriage) and also to the sanctity of life (including abortion). An item we used asked if respondents agreed that “some acts are wrong on the grounds that they are unnatural.” – Supporters of the Republican candidates tend to highly rate authority/loyalty/sanctity. Supporters of Democrats and libertarian-leaning Rand Paul do not. – Huckabee supporters most clearly show the classic social conservative pattern — they have high scores on all three of these foundations, as do supporters of Cruz, Carson, and Trump. – Sanders supporters score the lowest on these foundations and are joined not by Clinton supporters but by Paul supporters. Voters inclined to libertarianism tend to shun restrictions on individual action dictated by valuing authority/loyalty/sanctity. – Clinton supporters are more socially conservative than are Sanders supporters (although they are still slightly below the national mean on these foundations). 16