As long as we live, we have to believe in something or other. Yet hardly a day passes by without our witnessing ourselves disagreeing with our fellow men on one issue or another. John may think the movie Entering The Void so exciting that he won't hesitate to rush off to buy a ticket to see it again. Mary may say she can't wait for it to end because it is so violent and its depiction of sex is so explicit. Some will say we must have universal suffrage now. Others think we should do so step by step. Some think a compromise acceptable. Others think it is not. Who is right? Who is wrong? Who should we believe? And why? Why do we believe what we believe? How should we make up our mind when our beliefs conflict with the beliefs of our fellow human being? What advice can our philosophers offer us in that regard? I turn to "Deciding What to Believe" in The Undercover Philosopher by Michael Philips (2008)
Philips says that in general, a healthy dollop of skepticism makes sense but the question is how much is enough? In relation to what? "We don't want to escape the grip of failed authority only to rush headlong into the arms of cynics or cranks, " he says. But does that mean we can have no guidelines?
His first guideline is that we should doubt authoritative sources with strong track records only when we have good reasons to. So, what are good reasons? He suggests nine prima facie possibilities. We should doubt a conclusion of an authoritative source if::
1. we are directly competent to evaluate the arguments, evidence, methods and assumptions that generate the conclusion;
2. the relevant conclusion conflicts with the conclusion with another trusted source;
3. we have doubts upon the competence of the people who drew the relevant conclusions;
4. we have reasons to question the honesty of those who proffer to us the relevant conclusion;
5. we have reasons to doubt the objectivity or the point of view of those who arrive at the relevant conclusions;.
6. the relevant conclusion conflicts with common sense;.
7. the relevant conclusion conflicts with our personal experience;
8. the relevant conclusion conflicts with our intuitive judgement; and
9. the conclusion conflicts with our faith.
Often, we are not competent to evaluate the relevant original evidence relating to an issue because we simply do not have the necessary expert knowledge and are forced to rely on the judgement of the experts. But sometimes, the opinions of the experts in the same field may differ and at other times, the opinion of the expert of one field may be contradicted by the conclusions on the same set of facts by an expert in a different field e.g. the difference in viewpoints of the clinical psychologists and those of the research psychologists on the issue of "recovered memory". Often, we may have reason to doubt the so-called "expert" status of the holder of the relevant opinion e.g a general practitioner's opinion on that of the specialist, the quality of the opinion of a journalist who has not been trained in the relevant science upon various "science" topics . In addition, it is possible that the data may have been faked, and the conclusions spunned. If the opinion of two claimed experts differ, we must ask who has more motive to lie and who has the most effective safeguard against lying: e.g. is the conclusion that certain drugs are helpful in a research study the result of a research institution sponsored by a drug company? Do the researchers have a stake in the outcome of the research?
The history of science has taught us how sometimes, our common sense may seem incompetent to judge the results of the relevant scientific research (the flat earth theory which had been held for thousands of years, the difficulties faced by Copernicus and Galileo's heliocentric theory). But common sense may have a stronger claim to our belief in sociological or psychological matters. If the conclusions do not square with our own experience, we should always ask ourselves whether or not our own conclusions have been skewed by our perception, memory or prior thinking. In the case of medicine, we may certainly trust our own subjective feelings on whether we have or have not improved after taking certain medicines, irrespective of whether the results may or may not be properly attributable to merely a "placebo effect". But when the result conflict with our intuitive judgement, we should again be alert to the possibility that our beliefs may be based on inaccurate background information, theories, beliefs or assumptions or unreliable heuristics and the possibility that our conclusions may be colored by our own subjective hopes, fears, moods and emotions. We should especially be careful if the conclusions of scientific experts based on fact-based evidence conflict with those of our own faith-based beliefs, which are often beliefs without evidence. We should therefore doubt the conclusions of certain spiritualists, psychics, crystal-healers, cultists etc.
Should we subject all our beliefs to close examinations and reject all but those found to be based on sufficient evidence? Whilst theoretically, this should be done, in practice, it is impossible because even if we have the necessary expert knowledge, we may not have the time eg. so called "historical truths"! In fact, in daily lives, we rely on our beliefs on the effects of taking various medicines, certain foods, certain beliefs in our child-rearing practice, social interaction, the meaning of certain words, education, ethics, finances etc. without any serious reflection or any real investigation into the basis of our beliefs. But we should always keep in mind the possibilities of error in our judgement because our thinking might be affected by our subjective desire, wishes and prejudices.
How much time we spend on researching and reflecting a decision depend on whether or not there is a deadline by which we must act one way or another. Generally, the more urgent it is, the lower should be our requirement for careful research. Another criteria is the importance of the effect of our decision: the more seriously it may affect our lives or the lives of others, the more time we should spend on doing the relevant researches and examining the relevant evidence before arriving at our decision.
Do we always want the truth? In practice, we think of nothing of shading, spinning and often may even utterly forsake the truth if doing so may help us to avoid hurting someone near and dear to us (lover's talk). Many of us may even admire people who deliberately "misrepresent" the truth for us e.g artists, actors, ad writers. Here the criteria is harm. We should always ask ourselves the question: how much harm would be done to ourselves or to others if we choose to believe what we want to believe and act thereon and if there is some good in so believing and acting, we must ask oursleves how the good balances out the harm. In this respect, a principle of proximity may be helpful such that generally we should give more weight to the interest of our family, friends, neighbors than strangers, fellow citizens and unknown people in distant lands in the order of their emotional, social or geographical distance from us. But even here, there should be an exception .If the principle is important or the harm great, then we should give more weight even to the interest of people living very far from our town, region or country eg. in issues relating to war, climate change, ecological degradation which may affect the lives of billions of people and spend more time on ensuring that our views are justified..
In the end, how much justification we need for our beliefs will depend on personal factors like our subjective needs, interests, passions and responsibilities. We invest as much time into justifying our beliefs as that may contribute to our well-being. But as far as the others are concerned, the more the accuracy of our belief and our conduct based thereon may affect others, the more time we should invest thereto. Even though we may sometimes act on beliefs without any good evidence ( e.g certain religious beliefs) because we simply do not have sufficient time, nor the need, nor the capacity to investigate every one of our beliefs, we should do so only subject to the principle that our belief does not result in any significant harm to the others. There is always a price to be paid for being a whistle-blower in exposing the lack of justification of the beliefs of many of the people we meet in life, including those who wield great power over our lives. If we insist on being a Socrates, we must be prepared to pay for so insisting. Socrates had to end his life with hemlock because he insisted on speaking what he thought was the truth!
Does that "belief" have something to do with the recent HK govt. and the so called "democratic union"? Since both parties declare that they are on the road/course searching for democracy... Belief should be concrete , but can it be conned?
回覆刪除[版主回覆06/22/2010 19:11:00]This is one of the factors prompting me to explore further the question of how much we should investigate the basis why we believe what we/others beleive but not the only one. We have often been taught to that our action must be based on the truth or on true beliefs. Is that possible? Is that practicable? If not possible in all cases, are there any guidelines on when we should investigate further and when not?
For me, I believe both of the HK government and the democrataic union. They try to find suitable way of demonracy for HK people. As you had mentioned :
回覆刪除Who knows the truth ( only the historic evidence can tell ). Can we wait ...
We have no guidelines anyway, I choose to trust them, at least we don't stop at the same point, we should start and go on our adventure. Actually life is full of adventure.
[版主回覆06/23/2010 09:07:00]I share your view. We must move ahead. Whilst it is good that we stick to our principles, we must remember that principles are no more than that, "guides to action". If we do not allow our guides to action to meet with the actual environment and when they do, to adapt themselves to any changes they may encounter in the environment so that they become motors of "action", they can be considered to have become mere political "dogma". The difference between a political "idea" and a political "dogma" is that there is no further the possibility for any "life" or of "growth" in a political "dogma". I am always for growth. The civic party and the social democratic party act upon the type of mentality popular in the 19th century ie. a kind of "mechanical" division/polarization of the world into either/or. I do not think that their kind of thinking is suitable for the 21st century, the century of postmodernism, where it is permissible for all kinds of ideas to co-exist at the same time and which can combine, re-combine in accordance with random opportunities afforded by the accidents of "chance". They think their own particular form is the "best" solution. But they fail to recognize that their "best" solution is not acceptable to Beijing at this particular point in time. They choose to turn a blind eye on the political reality that whether they like it or not, Beijing is still the Central Government for the whole of China. They choose to ignore the reality that Beijing can veto any resolution we pass at our Legislative Assembly and that any political reform "solution" our legislators propose must have its "blessings". They have allowed their "dogma" to blind themselves to the political reality. No one can be blind to reality and still expect to succeed. Politics is the art of the possible. Politicians cannot maintian their purity. Their "art" is not to be "pure" at all cost, but to achieve their aim with "minimal" compromise to the "purity" of their ideals. They have chosen to maintain their their "purity" of purpose, "purity" of "aim" when what they might be doing is merely to maintain the "purity" of their "face", their "image" and their "principles", which latter are merely matters of tactics and stategies, not necessarily part of their ultimately aim. They have permitted the part to override the "whole", the tail to wag the dog. They are probably doing that for what they subjectively think to be certain "political gains" for their own "leaders". They know that they will not succeed and yet have chosen to deliberately not to succeed. They can easily succed by slightly "changing" their position. But they have chosen not to change at all. Whilst I can understand and sympathize with them, I do not think they are acting wisely or for the ultimate interest of the whole of Hong Kong.
With the ever increasingly powerful communication tools today, propagation of and information has become much faster and widespread. The world is inundated with information that one may find oneself at a loss. Much of the information maybe not be believable because there are people who out of malice, start out to mislead while others may supply information casually without prior verification of the data. The Wikipedia, for instance, allows viewers to input their own stuff validity of which nobody is sure of.
回覆刪除Elzorro is right; we should exercise our own judgment with common sense and with full conscience. In our busy everyday life we can go nuts if we check on the validity of each and every thing. We can only believe in what does the least harm to ourselves and to others. Even in matters like purchase of equipments or medical treatments, always seek second opinion, if not more, if time allows.
[版主回覆06/23/2010 13:52:00]Information, misinformation explode in this "age of information". We suffer no longer from lack of information but a surfeit of it. The question is no longer how to "obtain" information" but how to 'screen" information". We can only do so by considering their relevance to us, their importance to us and those to whom we are connected in varying degrees of emotional and social proximity. Whether we like it or not, we are already living in the the age of the so-called "gllobal village". Considerations of national boundaries, or race, of sex, of age, of culture should no longer have the kind of importance more appropriate to a static, agricultural society with whom our Chinese values are still so closely linked. We should think like a global citizen, not a Chinese, an American, a Russian, a Frenchman, an Englishman, an Italian, a German, a Spaniard, an Arab, an Indian, a Japanese etc. As such a global citizen, we should think only of quasi-universal principles and believe and live accordingly.