Sunday 6 October 2019

What is Truth?

"In the 1950s, the social psychologist Solomon Asch conducted his famous conformity experiments. Subjects had to solve fairly obvious perceptual tasks, but many gave wrong answers in order to align with the group: they disregarded the evidence right in front of them in order not to stray from the status quo. Since then, the experiments were repeated under various conditions, showing the detrimental effects of social pressure."

The social-conformity phenomenon is most frequently exhibited by religious apologists, who don't have an incontrovertible fact to stand on.

"Instead, what is emphasised are quick tools for evaluating arguments by putting ‘fallacy labels’ onto them."

Religious apologistswho don't have an incontrovertible fact to stand oncan be relied upon to ignore incontrovertible evidence. Depending on the forum, pointing out the inevitable fallacies, on which their counter-evidential fantasies are necessarily built, saves time and frustration.

"But even if adversarial criticism often incentivises conformity, this doesn’t make it wrong to look out for mistakes. After all, if we know that something is false, we do know more than before. Or so one might argue. However, spotting a mistake doesn’t automatically render an opposing claim true. If you convince me that p is false, I just know that: p is false. But it does not mean that q is true. As I see it, the idea that criticism is truth-conducive thrives on the idea that the number of possible claims about a given topic is finite."

Cherry-picking reliance on "I claim that's wrong, therefore my inculcated-invention exists" is mostly practiced by religious apologists, who don't have an incontrovertible fact to stand on.

"In philosophy at least, one is more likely to run into error than to hit the nail on the head. While this might seem frustrating, it can tell us something about the nature of philosophical claims: perhaps the point of philosophical arguments is not truth after all, but rather wisdom, or something like it."

In the case of philosophy: usually something like it. In the case of religious apologetics: repeatedly refuted, stubbornly-resistant failure to face mountains of incontrovertible evidence.

https://aeon.co/ideas/the-adversarial-culture-in-philosophy-does-not-serve-the-truth .

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