Hi everyone! We are having a gathering this Sunday in Santa Monica (2-24-08; see the event listing nearby on this tribe page). I hope to see you there! Whether or not you come to Sunday's meeting, feel free to carry on a discussion by posting your own ideas here, either before or after the meeting.
Here's the "official" wording of this topic, which was the winner of the vote by email this week:
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WHAT IMPORTANT IDEA HAVE YOU RECENTLY CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? This query is posed by "The Edge," a website that posts one big question each year and solicits the responses of a slew of well-known thinkers. Most responses are just one or a few paragraphs long. You can read about this question and their list of contributors (165 luminaries) at www.edge.org/q2008/q08_index.html
To see what these thinker came up with, scroll about half way down the webpage, past the blurbs, to find where their responses start. Alternately, go directly to this link: www.edge.org/q2008/q08_1.html to see just the responses. Much was written, so this will serve as our OPTIONAL READING this month.
Whether or not you look at what they wrote, think for a bit about a significant philosophical, ethical or social idea or issue you've changed your mind about within the last few months or years. Come to our meeting and tell us about it, and most importantly, tell us why you changed your mind, and perhaps why we, too, should change our mind about it.
Though many voted for this topic and said they were curious to hear what others have to say, many also said they couldn't think of what they themselves have had a change of heart or mind about. Thus, I highly encourage you think on the matter ahead of time and write a few things down. Look at The Edge website to see if the words of some of the today's mavens inspire you to alter your views on something significant (or help you remember what you've already changed your mind about, but forgot about).
If you have trouble coming up with something, you might want to consider the related issue of why it is that so few of us change our minds about significant matters after the age of, say, 25 or so. What does this say about us? Is it a mark of our unreasoned resistance to new views or new data?
It took me a while to think of something important I've recently changed my mind about, and I’ll mention it here, since it's precisely on this point. I used to think that people regularly change their minds about significant matters for good reasons, and that we have at least some measure of control over what we believe. While I still agree with this idea with respect to beliefs that carry a small emotional charge, I'm more skeptical about our rational capacities with respect to our most emotionally loaded beliefs
My views have moved in the direction of Nietzsche, Freud and author Michael Shermer, who believe that nearly all of our important beliefs, especially our more personal or emotionally charged, "core" beliefs, are arrived at by non-rational means, in childhood or after. Most of our actual reasoning activity is reserved for matters that don't threaten our core beliefs, or it consists in finding reasons, evidence and clever justifications to support our core views. When it comes to our most important beliefs, almost all rationality is actually rationalization. This probably applies to most people, most of the time, and even to the most rational and intelligent of us, some of the time.
I would add that, when we change our minds about an emotionally charged, core belief, it's usually not for good reasons. This is probably the case, to give a controversial example, with most religious conversions and, on the flip side, with most cases of the loss of one's faith.
Additionally, I think that we have no direct control over our beliefs; we cannot change them by an act of will. Of course, we come across new information all the time, and it sometimes changes us, but we have little control over how that information changes our beliefs-- it acts on its own.
We can control what we choose to think, talk or read about, with what group of people we spend time with, and so on. We may even try to change our beliefs about some matter. These actions may (or may not) indirectly lead to our beliefs changing, on their own, but we have little or no control over the result. Though we may try to be as reasonable as we can be, and try to avoid wishful thinking, we have no guarantee of the outcome.
If the above is accurate, it's no surprise we have a hard time coming up with matters of importance we've changed our minds about! Moreover, when we have changed, it usually has not been as a result of good reasoning. But I am hoping all of you can persuade me that I'm wrong about this!
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For those interested, here are the full vote-by-email results for this month's topic:
1) What Important Thing Have You Recently Changed Your Mind About? (20.0 Votes)
2) Is Science Converging Upon The Truth, (14.25 Votes)
3) Is It Possible To Be Rationally Persuaded To Convert To A Religion? (12.5 Votes)
4) What Is A Psychoanalytic View On Attempting To Be Rational About Ethics? (9.0 Votes)
5) What Moral Obligations Do We Have To Obey The Laws And Legal Rulings Of Our Government? (16.75 Votes)
(You may have noticed that the votes do not come in whole numbers. This is not because fractions of a person turn in votes, but because you receive one vote for your top choice, a half vote for your 2nd choice (if you had one), a quarter vote for your 3rd choice, and so on.)
See you Sunday!
Brian
Here's the "official" wording of this topic, which was the winner of the vote by email this week:
-----------------------------------
WHAT IMPORTANT IDEA HAVE YOU RECENTLY CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? This query is posed by "The Edge," a website that posts one big question each year and solicits the responses of a slew of well-known thinkers. Most responses are just one or a few paragraphs long. You can read about this question and their list of contributors (165 luminaries) at www.edge.org/q2008/q08_index.html
To see what these thinker came up with, scroll about half way down the webpage, past the blurbs, to find where their responses start. Alternately, go directly to this link: www.edge.org/q2008/q08_1.html to see just the responses. Much was written, so this will serve as our OPTIONAL READING this month.
Whether or not you look at what they wrote, think for a bit about a significant philosophical, ethical or social idea or issue you've changed your mind about within the last few months or years. Come to our meeting and tell us about it, and most importantly, tell us why you changed your mind, and perhaps why we, too, should change our mind about it.
Though many voted for this topic and said they were curious to hear what others have to say, many also said they couldn't think of what they themselves have had a change of heart or mind about. Thus, I highly encourage you think on the matter ahead of time and write a few things down. Look at The Edge website to see if the words of some of the today's mavens inspire you to alter your views on something significant (or help you remember what you've already changed your mind about, but forgot about).
If you have trouble coming up with something, you might want to consider the related issue of why it is that so few of us change our minds about significant matters after the age of, say, 25 or so. What does this say about us? Is it a mark of our unreasoned resistance to new views or new data?
It took me a while to think of something important I've recently changed my mind about, and I’ll mention it here, since it's precisely on this point. I used to think that people regularly change their minds about significant matters for good reasons, and that we have at least some measure of control over what we believe. While I still agree with this idea with respect to beliefs that carry a small emotional charge, I'm more skeptical about our rational capacities with respect to our most emotionally loaded beliefs
My views have moved in the direction of Nietzsche, Freud and author Michael Shermer, who believe that nearly all of our important beliefs, especially our more personal or emotionally charged, "core" beliefs, are arrived at by non-rational means, in childhood or after. Most of our actual reasoning activity is reserved for matters that don't threaten our core beliefs, or it consists in finding reasons, evidence and clever justifications to support our core views. When it comes to our most important beliefs, almost all rationality is actually rationalization. This probably applies to most people, most of the time, and even to the most rational and intelligent of us, some of the time.
I would add that, when we change our minds about an emotionally charged, core belief, it's usually not for good reasons. This is probably the case, to give a controversial example, with most religious conversions and, on the flip side, with most cases of the loss of one's faith.
Additionally, I think that we have no direct control over our beliefs; we cannot change them by an act of will. Of course, we come across new information all the time, and it sometimes changes us, but we have little control over how that information changes our beliefs-- it acts on its own.
We can control what we choose to think, talk or read about, with what group of people we spend time with, and so on. We may even try to change our beliefs about some matter. These actions may (or may not) indirectly lead to our beliefs changing, on their own, but we have little or no control over the result. Though we may try to be as reasonable as we can be, and try to avoid wishful thinking, we have no guarantee of the outcome.
If the above is accurate, it's no surprise we have a hard time coming up with matters of importance we've changed our minds about! Moreover, when we have changed, it usually has not been as a result of good reasoning. But I am hoping all of you can persuade me that I'm wrong about this!
-----------------------------------
For those interested, here are the full vote-by-email results for this month's topic:
1) What Important Thing Have You Recently Changed Your Mind About? (20.0 Votes)
2) Is Science Converging Upon The Truth, (14.25 Votes)
3) Is It Possible To Be Rationally Persuaded To Convert To A Religion? (12.5 Votes)
4) What Is A Psychoanalytic View On Attempting To Be Rational About Ethics? (9.0 Votes)
5) What Moral Obligations Do We Have To Obey The Laws And Legal Rulings Of Our Government? (16.75 Votes)
(You may have noticed that the votes do not come in whole numbers. This is not because fractions of a person turn in votes, but because you receive one vote for your top choice, a half vote for your 2nd choice (if you had one), a quarter vote for your 3rd choice, and so on.)
See you Sunday!
Brian
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Los Angeles
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