Here’s another thought experiment. Imagine that something like this is true of the United Kingdom: It is a thoroughly and harmoniously religious country (though in fact belief in God is no more rationally justified in this world than it is in our world). People live happily. They sing hymns together. Burn incense. They share the fruits of their labours. That kind of thing. In this society, there is little in the way of what we would recognise as education. Children are taught about God, about the importance of family and community, about the traditions of the society, but that’s pretty much it.
However, in this world there exists a renegade group – let’s call it the British Humanist Alliance (BHA) – which spends its time railing against this orthodoxy (it’s a campaigning organisation: it insists there is no God, produces pamphlets on something called Darwinism, plays fast and loose with the truth when constructing opinion polls, that kind of thing). Anyway, the BHA hit upon a plan to improve their profile. They decide to kidnap a few children, and then to introduce them to a new-fangled way of finding out about things called ‘Science’. This they accomplish. The children are closeted away for a few years and they’re taught all about scientific procedure (you know, hypotheses, evidence, testing, black swans, that kind of thing). At first, the children resist these new ideas, but the pressure of their teachers is relentless, and in the end, they thoroughly embrace the new worldview and the tools that it provides.
Once they hit adulthood, the BHA release their converts back into the wild telling them to go forth and spread the message of scientific enlightenment. At first, the converts approach their task with relish. But they find the world is resistant to their message. Their parents, though overjoyed to see them alive, are unable to reconcile themselves to the new message that they are preaching, and eventually they disown the children. Their old friends are similarly distant, not understanding their new alien ways. The converts’ initial enthusiasm diminishes, and they find themselves longing for the old ways: for the happy singing, the joy of worshipping the God they no long believe to exist, the togetherness engendered by a shared belief. But try as they might, they simply cannot believe as before. It is literally impossible. They understand the difference between faith and justified belief, and they just cannot embrace a faith. They know that their way of finding out about the world is the right way, but they wish it were otherwise.
As it turns out, they live lonely, miserable, friendless lives. Lives that in utilitarian terms are considerably worse than they would have been had they not be subject to the scurrilous BHA kidnapping experiment.
So there are two questions:
a) Were these children brainwashed? And if not, why not? (Their education was little different from a scientific education we’d receive in our world: just more intense, and rather better!)
b) Were they victims of child abuse? (Leaving aside the kidnapping thing. Was the simple teaching of scientific method an instance of child abuse?)
c) If the answer to a) is Yes; and/or the answer to b) no – are there any implications for our world? (Possibly not).
Funny you should ask.
“But try as they might, they simply cannot believe as before. It is literally impossible.”
That is exactly the wall I always hit when I buckle down and try to think seriously about what religion has to offer. The odd thing is that despite not being a joiner and not really personally particularly wanting opportunities to gather and hold hands and sing hymns and so on, I can very easily imagine wanting to - not imagine abstractly, but imagine my way into the state of mind. I can genuinely see the appeal, and see how very regrettable it is that there is nothing secular that is comparable (not really comparable). But what I can’t imagine is being able to take the logical next step, because the inability to believe would be an obstacle - despite the fact that I know perfectly well that lots of people do go to church and so on for fellowship kinds of reasons and don’t really believe.
That doesn’t answer your questions though.
a., no, although that may entail a narrow definition of brainwashing. b, not exactly, no, but what was done to them was perhaps cruel. But then I could just summon Mill to point out that it’s better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.
c. I don’t think there are implications for our world; I think there are implications only for truly hermetically sealed worlds where there is literally no hope (no possibility) of change of mind, where the saturation is 100%. There’s never been such a world, not even in the Middle Ages.
The assumption that all people living within your theocratic world will be happy content beings is wrong. If you have had any experience of religious people you will know that they bicker and fight amongst themselves as much as they argue with us non-believers. That I believe is part of the human condition, and is partly the reason why we have so many different religions on our world.
The other problem is that you see the two positions as diametrically opposite. While I agree that a Humanistic education would not include any teaching about ‘God’ or religion, a Humanistic education would go some way to teach the “importance of family and community”.
What do you mean it’s wrong!? This is my thought experiment. The world is as I described it!
Isn’t this just Plato’s Cave, but with scientism instead of math?
“Were these children brainwashed? And if not, why not? (Their education was little different from a scientific education we’d receive in our world..”
The thought experiment scenario has more to it than just education. The kidnapping and isolation from parents leads the reader inevitably to think that there was little education at all, rather indoctrination. But this is not spelt out. All we are given is the content of the courses, not the teaching methodology. It is the latter that would help us to decide between education and brainwashing.
There are too many different factors in play in this thought experiment to allow us to answer the question. Indeed if this were a game of cards I would have to say the deck is stacked.
I don’t think your thought experiment would turn out the way it does because science isn’t just a way of looking at the world, but a way of acting in it. Your “brainwashed” children may have some members who can demonstrate the efficacy of their new thought system by developing useful technologies - e.g. medicines that cure rather than prayers that don’t.
I wouldn’t call your Alliance’s method brainwashing. Such techniques are a way of enforcing orthodoxy . A scientific education is the opposite because it encourages scepticism and the readiness to change ideas in the face of evidence, and not dogmatism and the propensity to persecute in the face of heresy.
Paul says:
I said:
And also:
Of course the deck is stacked! It’s a thought experiment!
It is quite possible to answer hypothetical questions based on a particular scenario.
Interesting that you think it possble to be indoctrinated into the scientific method, though…
Andy
So what you’re saying then is that scepticism, critical thinking, etc., is a kind of orthodoxy.
Interesting…
I want to know more about this part…
The ‘in utilitarian terms’ is interesting - so you’re saying that in other possible terms their lives are (perhaps) not worse?
Perhaps there are compensations. You don’t rule that out at least. There are fewer friends (though you don’t say why they can’t be friends with the BHA crowd, or with people around the world via the Internet), but perhaps there are intellectual activities. You say there’s not much real education in this UK, but are there also no libraries? Is this UK on Mars?
We seem to have to add a lot of extra factors to make the abductees’ lives as grim as you simply assert they are. It’s your thought experiment, of course, so we can just accept that their lives are miserable because that’s what you said - but at the same time it’s part of the thought experiment to ponder whether social isolation is too high a price to pay, so these variables do seem relevant. It seems to me that how miserable they would necessarily be depends heavily on the state of technology, libraries, communications, travel, and similar factors. Are we to assume that they live in tiny pre-industrial villages and are too penniless ever to leave? Or is this a modern industrial prosperous UK. It makes a difference. (That’s why 19th century novels are so full of isolated clever miserable people in villages who are desperate for something better.)
Jeremy:
You wrote “Leaving aside the kidnapping thing. Was the simple teaching of scientific method an instance of child abuse?” Then why introduce the “kidnapping thing” at all, if not to emotionally colour the debate ? I will make clear what I implied earlier: I find your experiment a failure because it has too many different factors to be weighed against each other. In a proper experiment we try to keep all influences constant except one and then vary it to see what changes. Such a thought experiment would involve a description of brainwashing techniques but omit the kidnapping and isolation from family. You cannot seriously claim that we are supposed to ignore these.
You also wrote “Of course the deck is stacked! It’s a thought experiment” . When I wrote that the deck was stacked I meant that you were emotionally manipulating us towards a particular conclusion, with the kidnapping and isolation. However an experiment implies an open-mindedness if not ignorance of the result beforehand.
I do indeed accept it is possible to brainwash people to believe anything, even the truth and Reason. The end results of brainwashing are blind obedience and an inability to see certain things except in accordance with the brainwashing. I cannot see anything about brainwashing that rules out being brainwashed to see the truth about something or to understand logic. It is unlikely that brainwashing techniques would be used to achieve these ends but not impossible.
It’s not an industrial UK. I wasn’t going to make the mistake of positing a UK that can only exist with the technology provided by scientific innovation!
It’s rural, Gemeinschaft rather than Gesellschaft, etc.
BHA was dispanded after a particularly egregious polling incident in which they inadvertently counted a Calvinist sect as atheists.
[laughing]
Paul
Errr. Yes I can. Not least you seem to be the only person currently worrying about the kidnapping (which is just a piece of amusement). Just pretend it didn’t happen! :-)
So what it boils down to is that the BHA gang unintentionally turns some happy round pegs in round holes into Jude the Obscure/Maggie Tulliver types, with even less possibility of escape to wider horizons than Jude and Maggie have. That would be cruel and futile, though not quite abuse (in my view). But it has few if any implications for our world (in my view), not least because there has never been such a place. No matter how pious, isolated, communal, fruits-sharing a place may be there is always conflict, disagreement, rivalry, feuding; so even if people are made overall less content by education, it’s never the case that they’re yanked from Perfect Happiness to pure misery; it’s from one patchwork to another, and the calculation is just too complicated to make.
a) Where these children brainwashed?
No. Because brainwashing is an attempt to bypass critical faculties and install an unquestioning adherence to doctrine; it is not being drilled in methods of thought that advance by asking difficult questions and deferring to cogent arguments. If it were, any good education would be brainwashing.
b) Where they victims of child abuse?
No (rather than being kidnapped, perhaps their BHA parents sent them to a controversial ‘secular school’). Maybe their acquisition of wisdom, or their obedience to rational thought, could compensate for the bad consequences. Failing this, they could try to elicit sympathy by comparing their low socail status to that of the early Christians.
But there is an unquestioning adherence to doctrine here. It happens that the doctrine describes the best methods to find out about the world, but it is no less a doctrine for that.
Which, of course, is precisely the issue that this thought experiment was designed to highlight. :)
Now wait a minute Jeremy Stangroom. What do you mean ‘unquestioning adherence to doctrine’? You didn’t say that. You said:
If they’re taught ‘evidence, testing’ then they’re not taught ‘unquestioning adherence to doctrine’, are they!
Yes, that evidence, testing, etc., are the *only* way to find things out about the world. (With caveats, obviously, in terms of the kind of things we’re talking about here.)
I see your little game - but you’re cheating. You mixed the terms. You talk about embracing a worldview, spreading the message, preaching, but you also made the mistake of saying ‘they’re taught all about scientific procedure (you know, hypotheses, evidence, testing, black swans, that kind of thing).’ I say that’s a cheat!
Very naughty.
You didn’t say that.
You are stacking the deck!
Naughty.
You first question purely concerns the definition of “brainwashed”, your second (which seems to change the parameters of the experiment at the last minute) concerns the definition of “child abuse”. Since these are just questions about the meaning of words, and words and meanings can be assigned to one another arbitrarily, it’s hard to see (in answer to your third question) how a simple maatter of definition can have implications for our world.
Try telling that to people serving prison sentences for child abuse. Of course the way we conceptualise things has implications for the world.
There’s this, too.
And that’s unquestioning adherence to doctrine? So you’re saying that scientists and people who’ve had a scientific education possess an unquestioning adherence to doctrine? So you’re saying that all scientists and scientifically educated people, as a result of their scientific education, adhere unquestioningly to a doctrine about science or scientific procedure?
Really?
I’m not sure it’s that contentious a claim that science holds that for certain kinds of truth claims scientific methodology is the only appropriate strategy of enquiry.
No. I’m asking if this is the case in any particular instance is the education that produces it a kind of brainwashing?
Aren’t we falling slap into an excluded middle? Has this thoroughly and harmoniously religious country no science and technology? No Copernicus and Galileo? No scientific method? No Popper?
And whyever should a practitioner of the scientific method not cherish worship of God?
Has this hypothetical world not read countless papal documents conforming orthodox belief to the theory of evoloution and the Genesis texts to scientific hypotheses of big-bang cosmology? Not been exposed to the idea that Truth (Divine Revalation) cannot contradict Truth (scientific paradigms). Are none of these hypothetical scientists believers?
I’m not sure whether this hypothetical world is an internally consistent construct in the first place.
Nope. None of that. It isn’t our world.
Okay, but that’s narrower than “are the *only* way to find things out about the world.” I thought you meant ‘find things out’ and ‘world’ in the broadest sense there.
Ah. Well it could be, if done badly; but if it were done properly (if it were done well) then I would say no.
And even if it’s done badly…it leaves (or creates) a loophole that makes brainwashing somewhat more difficult. It’s that word ‘testing’ - it’s hard to learn that principle at all without at least opening oneself to the realization that questioning is possible and useful; that realization cuts against indoctrination and brainwashing.
But then Theo Hobson or Alister McGrath or someone would just say I think that because I’m brainwashed. But then they’re wrong.
Jeremy:
That’s what you wanted to highlight? So if a good education is one that does not brainwash, and any ‘good’ education is brainwashing, than a good education has to be a ‘bad’ education (because nobody wants to be brainwashed)?
So what is good education? Content? Methodology? You seem to hold that BHA and Orthodoxy compete in content education. Some of the respondents above insist that BHA education means methodology. It’s “This is the truth” vs. “How one arrives at truth”.
But this hypothetical world has a scientific renegade group and also had Darwin. It circulates pamphlets, so that “scientific method” has pentrated the world-view of at least some of these hypothetical believers. So I still say this world is internally inconsistent. (Also if they have pamphlets, they have printing, if they have printing, they have technology, so it can’t be a primitive south sea islands paradise.)
Secondly, when these abductees are “released” back into this world, is not even one of them intelligent enough to attempt the Truth cannot contradict Truth synthesis? Why should it, objectively, be literally impossible?
Even the pre-Renaissance “real” world’s theologians made accomodations with the proto scientist Aristotle. Does your hypothetical world not even have an Aristotle?
In response to your comment on my response, how we conceptualise the world has implications, what labels we put on those concepts doesn’t. Your first two questions are about two emotive labels which you don’t define. The latest posts seem to be getting bogged down in what is and isn’t brainwashing, which could maybe have been avoided if you’d made it clearer what (value judgements?) your thought experiment was designed to test. (For all this talk of science, you seem to have gone into the experiments without developing an hypothesis).
As for all those people who are in jail for child abuse, I’m sure the term is very carefully defined in the laws that put them there.
(a) yes, insofar as it matters, given that the question is about the definition of an emotive label as A McNabee says (b) ditto (c) no, because your world is not peopled with members of the species Homo sapiens, so thier moral and political world is not the same as ours (since our sense of morals is derived solely from our evolution as Homo sapiens).
They understand the difference between faith and justified belief Can you please expalin the difference, with reference to the problem of induction. Thank you.
To make myself clearer……the reason for for claim about your world not being people by Homo sapiens is you description It is a thoroughly and harmoniously religious country…… People live happily…….They share the fruits of their labours. That kind of thing.
(Also, of course, Ophelia’s point about hermetically sealed worlds, absence of on Planet Earth.)
Jeremy,
I agree that a science education that excludes epistemology could be compared to brainwashing.
However, you did originally allude to a process that involved “evidence”, “testing” and “black swans”. I agree with Ophelia that this would be thin ice for brainwashers; these particular lessons could invite embarrassing questions for the indoctrinator/ teacher.
Also, could it not be suggested that, unlike religion, it is difficult to convincingly teach science without touching upon the issue of good reasons for belief.
It’s an interesting thought experiment but a slightly perfidious one as people are inclined to read it as an allegory.
If it were simplified then the questions of what constitutes brain washing and qualifies as child abuse might be more accessible.
Ah - you see, I was taking the education not to exclude epistemology, for the reasons mentioned. I thought it was meant explicitly to include it. Now I’m not sure what JS actually intended.
The no-epistemology version is very like Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee (if I remember it correctly) - all technology, no epistemology.
It’s an interesting thought experiment, but I think part of what makes it interesting is that it’s inconsistent in some places and implausible in others, so we’re having fun poking holes in it!
Maybe that’s actually the experiment. That would be amusing. ‘Can people detect what is wrong with this thought experiment?’
“So what you’re saying then is that scepticism, critical thinking, etc., is a kind of orthodoxy.
Interesting…”
No, I said the opposite! I was saying that your definition of the humanist alliance education as brainwashing was inaccurate because brainwashing is about orthodoxy, but scientific education isn’t.
Sorry if I didn’t make that clear last time.
Where is it inconsistent!? I haven’t conceded any such thing.
And I’ve got to say that its less implausible than a talking pig that’s about to be eaten!
You lot are soooooo difficult! :)
Londiniensis: BHA are refugees from France, where there is some kind of embroynic scientific consciousness. They are quite literally the first people to bring these ideas to the UK.
Pontetilla: There’s nothing at stake with whether they are homo sapiens like us.
Andy: Your first post certainly suggested that there was a scientific orthodoxy (to do with scepticism and critical thinking).
Mr McNaboe: The whole point of asking people why they felt scenario did or didn’t involve brainwashing was precisely to ensure this wasn’t simply about labels.
If I’ve missed anybody else… sorry!
No I know you haven’t, but do you ever concede? (Of course it could be that you’ve just never conceded to me and that that’s because I’ve always been wrong.)
It’s inconsistent in what you say about what the BHA teaches. The BHA know science well enough to teach it to others, and not only that but teach it better than it is taught in our world; yet you claim “But there is an unquestioning adherence to doctrine here.” Either that’s inconsistent, or you’re making an assertion that science is [always] taught as unquestioning doctrine in our world. I don’t think that’s true.
I don’t see why I’m making that assertion…
My view is that methodological naturalism is often accepted as dogma (in our world). I get that this will be denied, but I don’t buy the denials.
But I’m not sure how this affects the thought experiment. I’m simply arguing that in the thought experiment world science is taught as the way to understand the (natural) world; and that any justification for this position will be internal to a rational discourse. (So there’s no view from nowhere.)
I don’t think this is inconsistent.. do you think so?
I took you to be making that assertion because you said it (11:58 comment):
The ‘here’ refers to the teaching.
I can accept that methodological naturalism is sometimes or even often accepted as dogma in our world, but your claim looked to me like a claim that it always is, and that it’s inherently that. I think you’re shifting your ground! You keep slightly altering your claims in response to comments.
I do think what you’re arguing is a little inconsistent (only a little because, again, you’ve altered it slightly), in the sense that if science is taught in the thought experiment world better than it is in this one, then the teaching would be more careful than that (because it at least sometimes is even in this world). I think science would be taught as the best way humans so far know of for humans to understand the natural world. I think there’s a big difference between saying the way and the best way (so far discovered etc etc).
a) My premise here is that brain washing is something one does to change the thought processes of an individual. If the children are taken before indoctrination into the religion thing then no, if taken after then yes.
A problem is that a rational mind will have difficulty with religion anyway, how do you test it’s validity. It’s a bit hard to write the report after you’ve died, which is when as detailed in the literature you get the reward thing.
b) Except for massive gratuitous physical abuse, abuse is a relative term, I may consider religious indoctrination to be child abuse, but a religious person will not. In the so called west we have had various interpretations of abuse over the years, so no definitive definition of abuse exists. So in the environment of their up bringing no this was not child abuse and as they were released into the wild as adults the point is mute after.
iThere’s nothing at stake with whether they are homo sapiens like us Yes there is, if you consider, as I do, morality to be an artefact of evolution. Whatever the answer in their world to your questions (a) and (b), it would have no bearing on our (Homo sapiens’) world, which has a different morality.
Of course your thought experiment could claim that the population of your world has exactly the same moral sense as Homo sapiens except in relation to the differences revealed by your initial description; but I think the claim probably posits soemthing that no-one can actually imagine in useful detail (rather like a being greater than which nothing can be conceived).
I don’t think I’m shifting ground so much as clarifying. The trouble is that to specify this kind of thought experiment properly would take many more words than a blog can stand.
Also, I wanted its purpose to be a little mysterious. (Because obviously I knew what kind of reaction it would provoke.)
But I don’t need it to have a bearing on this world. I just need people to give reasons. You can even make clear how you view these not-homo sapiens, and how your judgement is mediated accordingly.
Does ‘As it turns out, …’ imply causality?
(a) No. Nothing in the thought experiment indicates the kids were brainwashed–no hypnotizing or drug-induced gullibility, or the like. Presumably as they were learning scientific method it made sense to them.
(b) No. Apart from the kidnapping, it wasn’t child abuse. The BHA had good reason to think the scientific method would enable these kids to discover truths and these truths would help them live better. The fact that everything goes so badly for them–they feel alienated, their parents reject them–is completely fortuitous. It couldn’t have been predicted.
(c) No relevance to the real world. The benefits of a scientific outlook are not normally trumped by any sense of alienation that might come with it. For example, in parts of the world where people believe in witchcraft rather than science, they wind up with things like AIDS. They successfully avoid disease by adopting a more scientific outlook. And they don’t wind up alienated and rejected. How they combine traditional and scientific ideas is tricky, but they do…and so do 95% of people in western societies.
a) Were these children brainwashed?
Depends on what you mean by ‘the pressure of their teachers is relentless’. If they were physically or emotionally hurt every time they invoked their parents’ god(s), yes. If the teachers just kept on giving examples of the success of black swans etc, and listened sympathetically to the children’s ideas about their parents’ god(s), no.
aa) And if not, why not? Because patient repetition of rational arguments, coupled with sympathetic refutation of refutable arguments, is not brainwashing.
b) Were they victims of child abuse? (Leaving aside the kidnapping thing. Was the simple teaching of scientific method an instance of child abuse?)
No. There is a fundamental human right to unconstrained curiosity about the world.
c) If the answer to a) is Yes, are there any implications for our world?
Yes. Brainwashing is wicked in all possible worlds, and should be prevented.
cc) If the answer to b) is no, are there any implications for our world? Yes. Madrassas and ‘faith’ schools should not be tolerated in any possible world.
d) Is reliance on black swans etc a dogma? No, it is the best method we know of for constructing useful and reliable models of how any possible world works, including a world where there are frequent and unpredictable suspensions of otherwise reliable laws of physics by one or more deities. No such model is ever claimed to be the final and complete story.
“Mr McNaboe: The whole point of asking people why they felt scenario did or didn’t involve brainwashing was precisely to ensure this wasn’t simply about labels.”
And how does asking that question ensure that? If brainwashing is a label?
And how do you abstract from the kidnapping? Were they kidnapped or not? If so, it was child abuse (or reprehensible anyway). If not, are you asking whether teaching children science is child abuse if it means they’re going to clash with their folks? The answer must be no.
A cleaner way to ask this might have been a scientist living near a village with 100% religious belief. If any local kids stumble into the clearing where the scientist lives, this scientist, who has amazing powers of pedagogy, offers them sweets if they’ll listen to him for an hour, and in the course of that hour teaches them the whole science thing in a way that will stick. Then sends them back to the village…
“…more plausible than a talking pig that wantys to be eaten.”
I don’t know what you’re talking about! But seriously, a decent thought experiment has to control its variables. Ideally it should change just one or two things from the way the world is - if we want to use it to think better about the way the world is, of course. My worry about this one is that too many things would have to be different from our world for this scenario to be possible. Being thus so far removed, its difficult to relate back any lessons from that world to ours.
How can you possibly be brainwashed into skepticism and reliance on evidence? Really, I wish someone would tell me so I can use this technique on my students.
But kidding aside, the post strikes me as too tendentious to be worth discussing. There’s obviously a huge difference between learning how to find things out for yourself and having some preset ideas jammed into you. The word “brainwashing” is just an emotive ploy to disguise this.
Ah. That’s what I’ve been thinking all along, but without knowing what the norms (if any) are. I thought perhaps the norms were that it’s the experimenter’s experiment and it’s a violation of the norms to quarrel with any of the variables. So it’s helpful to get corroboration from someone who does know what the norms are!
Yes, but not (necessarily) if the point of the T. E. is about conceptual clarification. Then the goal might be best attained by making the T. E. as far removed from the real world as possible.
And, as I indicated in my first post, whether this particular T. E. has relevance for the real world is moot.
But that wasn’t its point.
And yet you couldn’t resist…
Hm. You said in a reply to me above that you hadn’t conceded something - so that seems to imply that you would concede a point if you thought anyone had made a valid objection - so that seems to imply that you don’t think anyone has made a valid objection, and that your claim
is intact?
I think it’s been battered!
Really? Which posts?
Yes really; many posts.
Ah. I think you think that that statement was about our world. But it wasn’t. If you look, it was a response to G. E. Edwards’s
I was just saying that in my thought experiment world it was as if they were adhering to a doctrine (albeit a doctrine that was sceptical in nature). That’s what I meant by “here”. Perhaps I should have expressed it more clearly.
My view about the real world - as I think I’ve said before - is that many of the commitments of many scientists are dogmatic in nature (though obviously not in principle). I think that was the wider point of that whole psychic experience post on B&W, wasn’t it?
The thought experiment was designed to raise the issue of whether the concept of brainwashing is understood in such a way that it can be applied to people who end up adhering to a doctrine that actually is the best way to get at the truth - on the assumption that this doctrine is held in such a way that (a) it cannot but be held; and (then later) (b) it is de facto immune from criticisms that come from viewpoints that are contra methodological naturalism (and perhaps metaphysical naturalism). ((b) is a later addition because I find (a) interesting regardless of (b), so didn’t spell out (b)).
I might explain what motivated this thought experiment in another post. People might find it surprising, since actually I’m kind of on the side of the majority here. :)
Ah - I did raise the possibility that that statement was meant to apply to the thought world rather than this one, somewherere, but wasn’t sure if that was right.
Yeh, that was the point of the psychic experience post, and of course I’ve had it in mind. But then as you no doubt remember, some of the claims you made about its implications got no takers at all.
The thing about dogmatic in nature though not in principle - I can buy that, but I think the distinction is important. I think it matters that people can in effect ‘know’ a lot of things yet still realize and accept that all those things are in principle open to question. I think that’s (mostly) not a mere formal or lip service difference but one that militates against real dogmatism.
Cool about motivation post possibility.
Which obviously I felt was entirely consistent my point! :)
I know, I know, I know! In fact I had another sentence pointing out why I disagreed, but I deleted it so as not to go on and on - but I should have left it.
” I still think it’s not legitimate to claim that our skeptical responses to your account of your personal experience are evidence or examples of dogmatism.”
There are so many good reasons why we should not take your account at face value that it just seems unreasonable to me to claim that that refusal is dogmatic. Nobody claimed certainty that it wasn’t true, we merely refused to take it on trust - that’s the opposite of dogmatism!
You are soooooo difficult. :- )
But actually it wasn’t quite that. The bar was set so high that this kind of testimony tout court was ruled out on the grounds that it could never be certain.
I think that is getting quite near to a dogmatic refusal to entertain the possibility that strange experiences that are necessarily opaque to public observation, verficiation, etc., are the possible subject matter of scientific examination.
But we can’t have that argument again! :)
“But we can’t have that argument again! ”
I know, that’s another reason I deleted that sentence the first time!
But I did accept at least part of your point, and agree that it is of interest - I did agree that because that kind of testimony is inherently unreliable, it may be unlikely to be investigated carefully even if it is accurate. (I say ‘may be’ because actually I think there is careful research into experiences like yours.) I just didn’t and still don’t agree that that makes the skepticism dogmatic.
[...] so what motivated the brainwashing post [...]
Have just found the site.
Interesting thought experiment.
Obviously methodology (of the abducting teachers) and the terminology (what do we mean by brainwashing, child abuse) are critical in this thought experiment.
Regards methodology. That abduction occured, and the teachers applied pressure, and did not release the abductees until they were adult ‘converts’ to their scientific ‘creed’ and ordered them to ‘preach’ this creed. Suggests to me that if by our terminology we understand one aspect of the term ‘Brainwashing’ as being the instilling of attitudes/beliefs in the absence of free will and conscious assent:- then I believe that in this thought experiment brainwashing has occured.
That the children eventually ‘believed’ in the new teachings does not imply free and conscious assent, but rather it does suggest that the method (brainwashing) succeeded in its intent.
By a similar approach questioning whether it is Child Abuse. Ignoring, as you have asked, the aspect that they were abducted:- It is not child abuse to teach a method that by its own ‘language games’ (hypotheses, experiment, observation, verification, falsifiability) is a reasonable and rational truth. Even though it conflicts with previously held assumptions and beliefs. But it may well be an abuse of power.
Implications for our world? Well, I concur with you that some Scientific methodology has the character of an unquestioning adherence to doctrine. But is that not consistent with the language games and rules of the natural sciences?
[...] is a reworking of a post that originally appeared on the Talking Philosophy [...]