Dixon
11-01-2011, 04:20 PM
by Dixon Wragg
WaccoBB.net
One of the common ways people short-circuit meaningful discussion is by taking the position that evidence and proof are irrelevant to them. They may claim that they don’t think about evidence when deciding upon beliefs, instead apparently feeling that beliefs form inside them through some magical process divorced from grosser concerns like evidence and proof, the clunky mental mechanisms of less enlightened souls. People tell me, for instance, that any logical critique of their belief is irrelevant at best, because it’s not about “linear” logic (“linear” being a term they use for proper logic, with the implication that it’s inferior to some vague alternative logic that underpins their cherished beliefs); instead their belief is something they “know” from their experience, in some direct sense that transcends reasoning.
What this means is that we are often unconscious of the reasoning and evidence that underlie our conclusions and beliefs—and in many cases we’d prefer to remain unconscious of our thinking process so as not to see its flaws. If we can successfully ignore the fallacies in our thinking, we can feel like we’re enlightened! Hallelujah!
Often people take offense when I question things they “know from their experience”. In these situations, I hasten to clarify that I’m not questioning their actual experience, just the conclusion they reached from it—a distinction which seems to be new to many.
Experience never gives us conclusions directly; there is always some reasoning, however conscious or unconscious, proper or fallacious, lengthy or brief, between the experience and the conclusion we reach. That’s why people having the same experience can reach widely disparate conclusions. Such logical processing of experience ranges from very conscious sophisticated deliberations lasting many years to “quick and dirty” unconscious assumptions about what the experience means. These assumptions can come about so automatically and unconsciously that we confuse them with the experience itself.
https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/images/SmokeFire.png
Here's a simple example of an assumption about what an experience means: "Where there's smoke, there's fire." Here it’s smoke that implies fire, so the detection of the former implies the presence of the latter. And, whether we take this platitude literally or metaphorically, it’s true often enough to be useful if applied appropriately cautiously. My point here is that the experience of detecting smoke does not, in and of itself, give us the conclusion that fire is involved. It is only in combination with our working assumption about smoke implying fire that we get from the experience to the conclusion.
In the simple example given, the smoke is the evidence which is, through a logical process, deemed proof of the conclusion. Someone who smells smoke and quickly swings into action to fight a fire may think they have reached the conclusion (“Fire!”) from direct experience, but in fact there is another layer between the experience and the conclusion: inference (https://www.onelook.com/?w=inference&ls=a) from evidence. This is a sort of thinking even when it’s so quick and automatic as to be beneath the threshold of conscious attention. As far as I can see, experience never leads to any conclusion without some thinking, even if it’s as simple as just one assumption that we haven’t even consciously noticed we’re making. And since thinking can be fallacious, assessing the rightness of our conclusions involves critiquing that thinking by examining the evidence and the inference process that led to the conclusion.
This means that exempting your belief from critique, based on your position that your belief is given directly by experience without evidence and logic being involved, is nonsensical at best, and an evasive copout at worst. https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/images/ancientastrologer3.jpgIf you make a vague statement like “I know astrology is true because I’ve experienced it” and I question that belief, I’m not questioning your experience. How could we reasonably question experience? Experience is whatever it is. I’m questioning your reasoning about the implications of your experience. Note that the statement “I know astrology is true because I’ve experienced it” isn’t a statement about your experience so much as it’s a statement about your conclusion, phrased in a way which confuses your direct experience with your conclusion about its meaning! And since we’re all fallible, questioning our own and each other’s conclusions is a growthful process, not an insult or attack.
As phenomenologists (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology) tell us, clear thinking requires distinguishing our direct experience from the layers of interpretation, bias, and distortion overlaying it. This includes becoming more aware of our mental/emotional processing of our experience so that we can notice our inferences about what implies what, and then question them.
Here are some suggestions for a sort of consciousness practice/meditation:
Examine your thinking/feeling with an eye toward teasing out the strands of assumption, interpretation and distortion from the direct experience upon which you’ve overlaid them.
Notice the logic (however unconscious it may previously have been) whereby you spin the raw straw of direct experience into the gold of conclusions and beliefs.
Learn new ways to distinguish the real gold of truth from the fool’s gold of fallacious beliefs, both of which arise from the process of interpreting our experience.1
Each time you examine the relationship between an experience and your resulting conclusion/belief about its meaning, notice what specific thing you observed is the evidence for whatever you think it proves, then ask yourself “Does this really imply that? And if so, to what degree of certainty?”
Notice the numerous ways in which the ego twists the raw reality of experience into false conclusions which bolster ego-based concerns (power, security, self-righteousness, certainty, etc.) through illusion-generating processes such as wishful thinking, uncritical acceptance of dogma, fallacious logic, egocentric and sociocentric thinking, etc.
The main point I’m trying to convey here is that logic, evidence and proof are not really irrelevant to anybody, nor are they the province only of certain types of thinkers or certain types of beliefs. Every belief anyone has is based on evidence which they think proves that belief, even if they haven’t consciously cognized (https://www.onelook.com/?w=cognize&ls=a) their reasoning process. Those who sidestep logical critique by holding that they’re “not into” evidence or proof are simply unconscious of the ways they interpret their experience as evidence and proof every day. With varying degrees of tentativeness, we take our lover’s affection as evidence proving their love, or their perceived coldness as evidence proving their indifference. We take a striking coincidence as evidence proving that we have psychic powers, or that things are going according to God’s plan. We take the perceived accuracy of our horoscope as evidence proving that astrology is valid. We take an intense feeling of subjective certainty as evidence for whatever we feel certain about. The examples are ever present in all of our lives, if we but pay attention to our thinking/feeling processes.
One impediment to evidence-based dialogue is that some people, when asked to substantiate a claim, infer that they’re being insulted. They seem to feel that not just taking them at their word implies that they’re being seen as stupid, crazy or dishonest. It helps to be sensitive to signs that this may be happening and to reassure people that your requests for evidence aren’t predicated upon insulting assumptions about them.
Another obstacle has to do with ego trips related to certain psychosocial realities. On several occasions when I’ve asked someone to cite evidence for a claim, they’ve responded with something like “I don’t have to prove anything to you!” Of course, an obvious interpretation of that behavior is that they may not want to engage in critique of their claim because they’re simply closed-minded. But in fairness, we must remember that we humans are apes, with a strong animal legacy of dominance/submission dynamics which can taint our interactions. https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/images/images.jpg In psychological terms, asking for evidence, proof, logical support can be felt as an attempt to structure the interaction as a dominance/submission relationship in which the questioner is “one-up” and the answerer “one-down”—thus the resistance.
I always respond to that resistance by saying something like “It’s not about proving anything to me. Who the hell am I? I’m nobody, and you don’t owe me anything. It’s about engaging in dialogue to help each other figure out what’s likely to be true and what isn’t.” Sometimes that assuages the other discussant’s ego concerns enough to salvage the conversation. And when it doesn’t work—oh well, sometimes you just can’t penetrate people’s armor. Remembering that we too may be armored at times, we can at least take the opportunity to beef up our empathy for the other person.
NOTE
1. Probably the best way to learn to better distinguish truth from fallacy is to study Critical Thinking. See, for instance, our local resource the Foundation for Critical Thinking (https://www.criticalthinking.org/). And the columns in this series of mine, "The Gospel According to Dixon", preferably read in numerical order, introduce some of the basic tenets of Critical Thinking as applied in daily life. Links to the columns in this series can be found[/URL]here (https://www.waccobb.net/forums/content.php?52-The-Gospel-According-to-Dixon).
https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/ImagesforMembers/DixonCroppedSmall.jpgAbout Dixon: I'm a hopeful monster, committed to laughter, love, and the Golden Rule. I see reason, applied with empathy, as the most important key to making a better world. I'm a lazy slob and a weirdo. I love cats, kids, quilts, fossils, tornadoes, comic books, unusual music, and too much else to mention. I’m a former conservative Christian, then New Ager, now a rationalist, skeptic and atheist. Lately I’m a Contributing Editor at the [U]Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form (That’s right!), and my humor is getting published in the Washington Post and Fantasy and Science Fiction. I’m job-hunting too, mostly in the Human Services realm. Passions: Too many -- Reading, writing, critical thinking, public speaking, human rights, sex and sensuality, arts and sciences, nature. Oh, and ladies, I’m single ;^D
WaccoBB.net
One of the common ways people short-circuit meaningful discussion is by taking the position that evidence and proof are irrelevant to them. They may claim that they don’t think about evidence when deciding upon beliefs, instead apparently feeling that beliefs form inside them through some magical process divorced from grosser concerns like evidence and proof, the clunky mental mechanisms of less enlightened souls. People tell me, for instance, that any logical critique of their belief is irrelevant at best, because it’s not about “linear” logic (“linear” being a term they use for proper logic, with the implication that it’s inferior to some vague alternative logic that underpins their cherished beliefs); instead their belief is something they “know” from their experience, in some direct sense that transcends reasoning.
What this means is that we are often unconscious of the reasoning and evidence that underlie our conclusions and beliefs—and in many cases we’d prefer to remain unconscious of our thinking process so as not to see its flaws. If we can successfully ignore the fallacies in our thinking, we can feel like we’re enlightened! Hallelujah!
Often people take offense when I question things they “know from their experience”. In these situations, I hasten to clarify that I’m not questioning their actual experience, just the conclusion they reached from it—a distinction which seems to be new to many.
Experience never gives us conclusions directly; there is always some reasoning, however conscious or unconscious, proper or fallacious, lengthy or brief, between the experience and the conclusion we reach. That’s why people having the same experience can reach widely disparate conclusions. Such logical processing of experience ranges from very conscious sophisticated deliberations lasting many years to “quick and dirty” unconscious assumptions about what the experience means. These assumptions can come about so automatically and unconsciously that we confuse them with the experience itself.
https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/images/SmokeFire.png
Here's a simple example of an assumption about what an experience means: "Where there's smoke, there's fire." Here it’s smoke that implies fire, so the detection of the former implies the presence of the latter. And, whether we take this platitude literally or metaphorically, it’s true often enough to be useful if applied appropriately cautiously. My point here is that the experience of detecting smoke does not, in and of itself, give us the conclusion that fire is involved. It is only in combination with our working assumption about smoke implying fire that we get from the experience to the conclusion.
In the simple example given, the smoke is the evidence which is, through a logical process, deemed proof of the conclusion. Someone who smells smoke and quickly swings into action to fight a fire may think they have reached the conclusion (“Fire!”) from direct experience, but in fact there is another layer between the experience and the conclusion: inference (https://www.onelook.com/?w=inference&ls=a) from evidence. This is a sort of thinking even when it’s so quick and automatic as to be beneath the threshold of conscious attention. As far as I can see, experience never leads to any conclusion without some thinking, even if it’s as simple as just one assumption that we haven’t even consciously noticed we’re making. And since thinking can be fallacious, assessing the rightness of our conclusions involves critiquing that thinking by examining the evidence and the inference process that led to the conclusion.
This means that exempting your belief from critique, based on your position that your belief is given directly by experience without evidence and logic being involved, is nonsensical at best, and an evasive copout at worst. https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/images/ancientastrologer3.jpgIf you make a vague statement like “I know astrology is true because I’ve experienced it” and I question that belief, I’m not questioning your experience. How could we reasonably question experience? Experience is whatever it is. I’m questioning your reasoning about the implications of your experience. Note that the statement “I know astrology is true because I’ve experienced it” isn’t a statement about your experience so much as it’s a statement about your conclusion, phrased in a way which confuses your direct experience with your conclusion about its meaning! And since we’re all fallible, questioning our own and each other’s conclusions is a growthful process, not an insult or attack.
As phenomenologists (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology) tell us, clear thinking requires distinguishing our direct experience from the layers of interpretation, bias, and distortion overlaying it. This includes becoming more aware of our mental/emotional processing of our experience so that we can notice our inferences about what implies what, and then question them.
Here are some suggestions for a sort of consciousness practice/meditation:
Examine your thinking/feeling with an eye toward teasing out the strands of assumption, interpretation and distortion from the direct experience upon which you’ve overlaid them.
Notice the logic (however unconscious it may previously have been) whereby you spin the raw straw of direct experience into the gold of conclusions and beliefs.
Learn new ways to distinguish the real gold of truth from the fool’s gold of fallacious beliefs, both of which arise from the process of interpreting our experience.1
Each time you examine the relationship between an experience and your resulting conclusion/belief about its meaning, notice what specific thing you observed is the evidence for whatever you think it proves, then ask yourself “Does this really imply that? And if so, to what degree of certainty?”
Notice the numerous ways in which the ego twists the raw reality of experience into false conclusions which bolster ego-based concerns (power, security, self-righteousness, certainty, etc.) through illusion-generating processes such as wishful thinking, uncritical acceptance of dogma, fallacious logic, egocentric and sociocentric thinking, etc.
The main point I’m trying to convey here is that logic, evidence and proof are not really irrelevant to anybody, nor are they the province only of certain types of thinkers or certain types of beliefs. Every belief anyone has is based on evidence which they think proves that belief, even if they haven’t consciously cognized (https://www.onelook.com/?w=cognize&ls=a) their reasoning process. Those who sidestep logical critique by holding that they’re “not into” evidence or proof are simply unconscious of the ways they interpret their experience as evidence and proof every day. With varying degrees of tentativeness, we take our lover’s affection as evidence proving their love, or their perceived coldness as evidence proving their indifference. We take a striking coincidence as evidence proving that we have psychic powers, or that things are going according to God’s plan. We take the perceived accuracy of our horoscope as evidence proving that astrology is valid. We take an intense feeling of subjective certainty as evidence for whatever we feel certain about. The examples are ever present in all of our lives, if we but pay attention to our thinking/feeling processes.
One impediment to evidence-based dialogue is that some people, when asked to substantiate a claim, infer that they’re being insulted. They seem to feel that not just taking them at their word implies that they’re being seen as stupid, crazy or dishonest. It helps to be sensitive to signs that this may be happening and to reassure people that your requests for evidence aren’t predicated upon insulting assumptions about them.
Another obstacle has to do with ego trips related to certain psychosocial realities. On several occasions when I’ve asked someone to cite evidence for a claim, they’ve responded with something like “I don’t have to prove anything to you!” Of course, an obvious interpretation of that behavior is that they may not want to engage in critique of their claim because they’re simply closed-minded. But in fairness, we must remember that we humans are apes, with a strong animal legacy of dominance/submission dynamics which can taint our interactions. https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/images/images.jpg In psychological terms, asking for evidence, proof, logical support can be felt as an attempt to structure the interaction as a dominance/submission relationship in which the questioner is “one-up” and the answerer “one-down”—thus the resistance.
I always respond to that resistance by saying something like “It’s not about proving anything to me. Who the hell am I? I’m nobody, and you don’t owe me anything. It’s about engaging in dialogue to help each other figure out what’s likely to be true and what isn’t.” Sometimes that assuages the other discussant’s ego concerns enough to salvage the conversation. And when it doesn’t work—oh well, sometimes you just can’t penetrate people’s armor. Remembering that we too may be armored at times, we can at least take the opportunity to beef up our empathy for the other person.
NOTE
1. Probably the best way to learn to better distinguish truth from fallacy is to study Critical Thinking. See, for instance, our local resource the Foundation for Critical Thinking (https://www.criticalthinking.org/). And the columns in this series of mine, "The Gospel According to Dixon", preferably read in numerical order, introduce some of the basic tenets of Critical Thinking as applied in daily life. Links to the columns in this series can be found[/URL]here (https://www.waccobb.net/forums/content.php?52-The-Gospel-According-to-Dixon).
https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/ImagesforMembers/DixonCroppedSmall.jpgAbout Dixon: I'm a hopeful monster, committed to laughter, love, and the Golden Rule. I see reason, applied with empathy, as the most important key to making a better world. I'm a lazy slob and a weirdo. I love cats, kids, quilts, fossils, tornadoes, comic books, unusual music, and too much else to mention. I’m a former conservative Christian, then New Ager, now a rationalist, skeptic and atheist. Lately I’m a Contributing Editor at the [U]Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form (That’s right!), and my humor is getting published in the Washington Post and Fantasy and Science Fiction. I’m job-hunting too, mostly in the Human Services realm. Passions: Too many -- Reading, writing, critical thinking, public speaking, human rights, sex and sensuality, arts and sciences, nature. Oh, and ladies, I’m single ;^D