Posted by Clark

He claims that what we call our beliefs are not really conclusions which we rationally come to, but are instead (most of the time) simply our acceptance of a story or explanation of a phenomenon which is (most) in harmony with the conclusions which we have reached “preconsciously”.

In other words, he sees our conscious selves not as being like the president in the oval office of our minds, but rather as press secretaries which report on what has already happened rather than playing that active of a role for the most part.

Accordingly, when conflicting evidence arises, Boyer says that we don’t reason through to another independent conclusion, but instead simply modify the the falsified belief as little as possible until a suitable equilibrium is found again.

Thus you can see that you version of what Boyer is claiming isn’t all that off, if it is at all. Here is another quote which probably serves as a better representation both as to the content as well as the scope of Boyer’s claim:

“So we have tow quite different pictures of how a mind reachesa verdict. On the one hand, we sometimes weigh evidence and decide on its merit. On the other hand, there seems to be a great deal of underground beliefmaking going on that is simply not reported. When we discuss religious concpets and beliefs, we tend to assume that these are processed in the mind along the lines of the first model, a kind of Judge and Attorney system in the mind. We assume that notions of supernatural agents, what they do, what they are like, etc. are presented to the mind and that some decisionmaking porcess accepts these notions as valid or rejects them. But this may be a rather distorted view of how such concepts are acquired and represented.” (304)

It is right after this that Boyer writes the quote from my last comment. 

Posted by Jeff G

Yes, but it is precisely this claim that I am attacking via the rejection of volitional control of beliefs. I think Peirce was ultimately making a cognitive claim and working out its philosophical implications.

One might agree that one has lost an argument, yet still believe. But to impugn a person for this is silly if they don’t have control of their beliefs. Further this can quite often be rational. Consider a sophomore arguing with a professor. The professor can harness better arguments and the sophomore realizes he can’t win in the argument. But rather than simply doubt his position he merely doubts his knowledge and skills to engage his professor. That is he doubts not his belief but his contextual knowledge that would enable him to argue for his belief.

While I think this happens a lot in academics, I also think it is the reason why people with certain religious claims (say young earth creationism) doubt. They think that if only they had the information they would need to argue they would win the argument.

So the question is, is that wrong? And if we attack it in the religious context must we not also attack it in the academic context.

That is, what is the role of ignorance in our arguments and what are the epistemological implications?

Now I think Peirce has a good answer to this. We continue as a community to inquire and investigate all things. As we do this naturally these other inquiries will affect our beliefs. So we may not have direct volitional control of our beliefs but we can change them indirectly through inquiry.

So to me the obvious attack on say young earth creationists isn’t that they continue to believe despite losing arguments. Rather it is that they don’t continue to inquire. They intentionally cut off inquiry. And if they have a epistemic sin it is that. They ought instead continue to read, study and inquire in biology, geology and so forth. Few do. 

Posted by Clark

What I am arguing against are those beliefs which we cling to, not only out of habit or convention, but out of a willful refusal to give a beleif up when arguments are (objectively speaking) entirely on the other side of the debate.

But even this definition isn’t entirely right by most lights, for I don’t think that the refusal to give up a belief really needs to be all that willful or conscious. Indeed, I would suspect that most argument continues, in practice, because a person is simply looking for evidence or argument to shore up a belief which they have without really being at all aware of why they believe it.

Pascal Boyer mentions this in his book “Religion Explained” but I have not seen many other resources on this “tendency”:

“What is contained in the explicit thought – what we usually call a ‘belief’ – is very often an attempt to justify or explain the intuitions we have as a result of implicit processes in the mental basement. It is an interpretation of (or a report on) these intuitions…
“So what does it mean to say that someone ‘has’ a belief? Superficially, it means that they can assent to a particular interpretation of how their minds work.” – Boyer, 305,306

I realize that “proper” reasoning rarely, if ever, happens and that “apologetics”, as I call it, is probably the rule rather than the exception. There isn’t really a line dividing one from the other, but setting up a false dichotomy helps to draw out many of the features of argumentation which, ideally, should be avoided. 

Posted by Jeff G

Now I’m clearly not saying you are making that. And I tend to think that, except for some narrow arguments, most ID arguments are simply bad and can be shown such.

But it does seem like most of us naturally adopt some positions we simply can’t doubt, for what ever reason. Pretending that we can put these positions on the table in a way we do doubt them seems to be advocating a kind of bad faith. (I’m here following Peirce’s criticism of Cartesian doubt – but I think it has wide application) That’s not to say we shouldn’t inquiry and question. But it seems your (1) is hard to take seriously except in the form we can think in the abstract that we are wrong.

For instance I’m quite willing to say I may be wrong and I’m not really staying late working on the computer. Perhaps my flu has caught up with me and I’m delerious in bed. I can give a kind of faux-nod to your (1) but really, I just can’t will myself to doubt that I’m really here.

Now I’m sure you’ll say that this doesn’t apply to the kinds of discussions you target. But I’m not sure but what it does. I think the solution is to continue to inquire. But if the requirement for “proper argumentation” is something I think humanly impossible then something is wrong. 

Posted by Clark

Posted by Jeff G

Now some might use ID arguments (which haven’t yet been remotely established) as apologetics. But I think this has less to do with their intentions than their use and context the arguments can be put to.

Put an other way, Dawkins might sincerely believe that evolution demonstrates atheism. He may have religious aims in his preachings. But I’d not consider the majority of his books apologetics. (Well, perhaps a paragraph or two here or there)
 

Posted by Clark