Okay, so what motivated the brainwashing post below?
As I’m sure people are aware, there is occasionally this accusation that teaching religion to children is a kind of ‘brainwashing’. This was something I was pondering whilst waiting to get served at Burger King.
First, I had a thought about The Children of God. An exemplary instance of a brainwashing cult, one would think. I suspect also that most people would consider their practices – flirty fishing, love bombing, etc – to be a kind of brainwashing even if it turned out that their teachings were true. If so, this means – with caveats - the concept of brainwashing is independent of the truth or falsity of whatever it is being brainwashed (excuse grammatical nonsense there).
Perhaps then what defines brainwashing is that it involves employing a variety of psychological techniques that most people would consider rather extreme to the end of ensuring that people come to embrace a particular doctrine, or whatever, as being true beyond all doubt. I think this is an absolutely defensible position. However, there is a problem. For some people, such a definition seems to leave out too much. I’m thinking again here of the idea that a religious education – perhaps attendance at a Catholic school, or being brought up by religious parents, or attending Sunday school – is at least a kind of brainwashing (Yes, I know – this is about definitions, subtle distinctions, etc., but this is precisely what I’m musing on.)
Perhaps then what defines something as brainwashing is that it deals in the passing on of beliefs that are designated as being unquestionably true. Let’s call such beliefs ‘dogma’. There would have to be some systematicity about the process, but this is not an implausible idea. So the proposition would be that there is a kind of brainwashing going on when dogma is passed on a systematic kind of way. This allows in the teaching of religion as a kind of brainwashing.
The trouble is this particular formulation also allows in the way that I was taught history. I spent five years studying history at a grammar school. My teacher was an old style facts and dates kind of guy. He taught by writing notes onto a blackboard. We copied them down. There was no questioning, no dissent. Nothing to suggest that the details of history were contested, etc. But presumably people would not want to claim that I was being anything like brainwashed by my history teacher…
So maybe the thought is that a kind of brainwashing occurs when beliefs that have never been anything other than simply designated as being unquestionably true are systematically passed on. It might be true that my history teacher was hugely didactic in his approach, but in other arenas, of course, the kinds of things he was teaching us had been subject to rational scrutiny, etc., and had, at least in a limited way, passed the test. Perhaps that is it then. Except…
Well, first – I was taught history as if these facts were unquestionably true, and certainly that had never been shown in the court of rational scrutiny…
But also suppose, for example, that a supercharged Alvin Plantinga type person, had shown, in an academic context, that some particular religious belief is true. This would mean that the teaching of this particular belief would not be a kind of brainwashing, even if the people teaching it knew nothing of Plantinga’s arguments. To put this more starkly, people might teach what they take to be an article of faith as the unquestioned truth, but we have to conclude that this is not an instance of brainwashing, if it turns out to be the case that the particular belief had been shown to be true in the court of rational scrutiny. But that doesn’t seem to be right.
So maybe it has something to do with the fact that truth-claims are never true beyond all doubt, therefore to avoid the “kind of brainwashing” charge this has to be clear. Education should be about cultivating a restless and questioning spirit. But this makes my history lessons a kind of brainwashing. And actually my biology lessons too. (I can remember my biology teacher bringing scorn down upon my head because I suggested - as an eleven year old - that blood might be red when we cut ourselves because it is oxygenated; I said that it didn’t follow that it was red in our veins. I was making a logical point, rather than a factual point, but I was certainly given hell by my classmates for the next couple of months for being the boy who didn’t know blood was red.)
Anyway, at this point my Beanburger was ready, and I started to think about whether I wanted a large or extra-large fries. But it was these thoughts that motivated the previous posting.
Note: I’m sure this is full of holes. It was literally something I was thinking about whilst waiting in a queue at Burger King. (And obviously during the ten minutes it’s taken to write it down.)
Interesting post! I’ve responded here. (Summary: brainwashing should be thought of as instruction that is insufficiently responsive to truth and evidence. This seems to distinguish religious instructors from your history teacher.)
This seems to be a very loose definition of “brainwashing”. I had plenty of lousy teachers, and I don’t think that being poor teaching is brainwashing. It seems to lack the full coercive force that is usually connected with brainwashing.
It also seems to take for granted that all students are invested enough to want to learn how the world works and why, rather than just know the answers for a test. I recently began my freshman year of college at the age of 28, and the difference between my interest and the 18 year olds in my same classes was vast. In a Western Civilizations class in particular, the professor was interested in helping the class come to its own conclusions about past societies by reading primary sources and drawing conclusions. This was frustrating for many of my classmates, who would rather have been instructed: “The Greeks were like this… the Romans like this….” One student dropped the class midway through the semester with many unkind words for the professor. He was receiving his first “F” and had convinced himself it was all her fault. In most of his other classes which he told me were much more straightforward (i.e. the information was presented and was meant to be regurgitated) he was getting A’s. Obviously there was something wrong with this particular professor. The fact of the matter is he was uninterested in seeking the means to knowledge.
This may mean that much of learning in the young is coercive to some extent anyway. If you don’t go to school, you will be punished. If your grades are poor, you shall not achieve a lucrative career.
It also may mean that interest in real learning is very rare. That’s certainly my experience… but that is of course only anecdotal. This would mean that by and large scientific (and religious) understanding is rare.
As for religion, it can be taught in a scholarly manner, I think. But even if it usually isn’t, that’s not much different from what happens with scientific teaching.
So, I guess I’m saying that I think neither is a case of brain-washing. There is religious brain-washing, but it is usually marked by separation from one’s family and kool-aid toasts. I’m not sure there’s any scientific equivalent… probably a pseudo-scientific equivalent. Maybe some of those who twist quantum mechanics into a spiritual shape practice some brain-washing.
Sure, I entirely accept that this works as a definition. But it just is the case that some people want to broaden the definition. (And I can see their point.)
Do philosophers regularly eat at Burger King?
I suppose, in a way, academic teaching possibly even more dogmatic than religious teaching - but if really pressed I’m sure a good physics teacher would admit that there is the slightest chance that Einstein was wrong about the theory of relativity, and my history teacher is always quick to point out that the history textbook he so religiously asks us to work from (perhaps in the context religiously isn’t a good word here) is full of bias and political opinion, and that the only way to find historical truth is by looking at the original documents.
I’d say the distinction lies in the beliefs of the teacher, who knows that the science is almost definitely (but not certainly) true and the religious leader, who teaches that their faith is absolutely certain and unshakeable. In a way scientific education is still brainwashing (NewScientist shows what can happen to the careers of scientists that challenge long-held beliefs) but a scientist, as Richard Dawkins points out in The God Delusion, would be willing to throw out all his old scientific beliefs if a better proof was to present itself.
Jeremy:
Religion for the faithful is not primarily about beliefs and doctrines; it’s about a relationship with the deity or sacred figure. This connection with the ineffable is mediated by beliefs which are not treated in the same way as scientific theories, models etc. The beliefs are for the most part taken in the same way as pictures, images, analogies, allegories and symbols. They form a psychological channel for the chosen form of the deity or prophet or guru or incarnation. It is for this reason that many believers can also be scientists because they realize that the two sets of beliefs are not in conflict with each other. One is prose, the other is poetry.
Now of course there are some in every religion who are adamant that their ‘bible’ is equivalent to a scientific picture of the universe but they are greatly outnumbered by those who reject this sort of fundamentalism. A very slight acquaintance with any of the major religions will persuade you of the variety of beliefs on the same topic. In Islam for instance suicide bombing is martyrdom or infamy depending on which mullah you consult.
So Religion is not primarily an indoctrinated set of beliefs because if it were we would have to judge that it is failing at it. R.M.Hare has written a very lucid essay on the topic of indoctrination (Adolescents into Adults) in ‘Applications of Moral Philosophy’.
I occasionally have doubts about the way other people send their kids in for religious indoctrination, but then I have to pause to consider the fact that I have two kids who are anti-Bush fanatics, big believers in global warming and evolution, and skeptics about God. All at the age of 10!
They hear arguments in our house, but I’m not going to kid myself and say they get the beliefs as a result of the arguments. They’re too young for that. They have these beliefs because we have them. The process is not a lot different from what goes on in Sunday school. You could call all of it “brainwashing” in some mild sense.
Young children aren’t in a position to absorb “big ideas” in any other way. I think it’s important that they get off on the right foot, so I don’t feel like I’ve done anything wrong…but can’t criticize people who do much the same but have a different idea of the true “big ideas.”
But what they do probably get is some awareness that the beliefs are subject to argument and discussion, and that by itself pulls against indoctrination, doesn’t it?
Also note that (you said) they are skeptics about God. So they have some acquaintance with skepticism, and that too pulls against indoctrination, doesn’t it?
This is basically the same quarrel I have with Jeremy’s original account in the TE: that the children are taught “all about scientific procedure (you know, hypotheses, evidence, testing, black swans)”. He blew his own point with that parenthesis; all those stipulations pull against the claims he later makes - especially this one -
You can’t do both. You can’t teach skepticism, you can’t teach hypotheses, evidence, testing, black swans, and still teach unquestioning doctrine. If the need for and value of questioning are built into the teaching, then it becomes absurd to call that very teaching “unquestioning doctrine.”
I can see that it could be mixed, or patchy, or incomplete; that it could neglect to remind students often enough of the need to test and question; but if it really does teach hypotheses, evidence, testing, black swans, then it doesn’t teach [pure] unquestioning doctrine.
I like the word ‘indoctrination’ much more than ‘brainwashing’; I think it’s much clearer, much less subject to hijacking or expansion, and also much less about technique, and therefore much more relevant to everyday practice. Teachers and parents are unlikely to keep children awake for days on end or to put them in isolation cages, but they are very likely to indoctrinate them, accidentally or on purpose.
The OED’s definition is ‘The systematic and often forcible elimination from a person’s mind of all established ideas, esp. political ones, so that another set of ideas may take their place; this process regarded as the kind of coercive conversion practised by certain totalitarian states on political dissidents.’
I think usage is currently widening the meaning to include any coercive or manipulative inculcation of one or more ideas, without necessarily eliminating all others. Thus some sailors might be brainwashed one day to believe that a particular buoy is in Iraqi waters; when captured by Iranians, they might be re-brainwashed to believe that it is in Iranian waters. But they would still believe that port is left when you face the bow. And the label brainwashing for the beliefs about the buoy would be independent of what an internationally agreed chart (assuming there is one) says.
If that is correct, then, in current usage, mocking a child who points our that human blood is blueish in veins, and can’t be seen to be red in arteries unless you cut one (which is not recommended) can reasonably be labelled brainwashing.
I completely agree with Ophelia that ‘indoctrination’ is clearer. No teachers are perfect, and most teachers unthinkingly indoctrinate children with stuff which is true (eg the sun is hot) and stuff which is rubbish (eg there are 7 colours in a rainbow) and stuff which is debatable (eg the government by dismissible oligarchs which we currently call ‘democracy’ is the best form of government).
In my view, the concept of brainwashing has less to do with the content of the programming than it does with the control the programming exerts over the subject. The truth value of the programming is irrelevant. Consequently, it is logically possible for one to be brainwashed with the truth. (Note: not necessarily brainwashed by the truth, which is another interesting question in itself.)
Known rhetorical techniques like repetition, appeal to authority and appeal to fear can all be part of the techniques used to brainwash a person, but the substance of these techniques is irrelevant. All that matters for brainwashing to take place is that one’s volition is superseded and only reversible by some elaborate “deprogramming” process that likely requires assistance external to the subject’s mind itself. Nowhere in this view does the truth or false-hood of the programmed material come into play.
In essence, I look at it this way: When a man has control over his beliefs we tend to label him autonomous. When beliefs have control over a man, we tend to label him brainwashed (or indoctrinated).
The perplexing question highlighted in Jeremy’s thought experiment is this: How do we label a person who has no authority over his own beliefs (i.e. he cannot change them, even with his own volition), but, his beliefs happen to be perfectly aligned with “The Truth”? Is he autonomous? Or is he brainwashed?
This is a tough question because on the one hand, autonomy is highly desirable; but on the other hand, allegiance to the Truth is also highly desirable. When these two desires conflict, how do we distinguish between autonomy and brainwashing?
If you are tempted to argue that it is irrational for a person to consciously desire untruths, try entertaining the placebo effect or other instances where a person can desire untruths as well, such as the BHA converts in Jeremy’s thought experiment who wanted to fit back in with the established society. Those are good examples demonstrating how the truth could be detrimental to one’s personal experience and hence undesirable.
I think there are enough good reasons to sometimes prefer fantasy over truth that, if belief in the truth inhibits one’s ability to choose other beliefs, then the truth can tyrannically control a person’s life in the same manner that other brainwashed beliefs can. Without the ability to choose otherwise, a person is just as trapped by the truth as they are by false beliefs just as equally binding. Therefore, unmitigated beliefs in the truth can satisfy the conditions for brainwashing when autonomy is diminished.
One last thing on this subject–you could judge religious education harshly because it exploits the inability of children to think for themselves. They are gullible, and the sunday school teacher makes use of that to pass on improbable ideas like …well, I won’t go into the details.
But when I start criticizing this, I do wonder if it’s a case of the pot calling the kettle black. I have inculcated beliefs in my kids. It’s true that I’m also encouraging more critical thinking (as Ophelia pointed out above), so it’s not exactly the same. But there is one thing that’s the same, and that’s the kids’ inability to resist. Catholic kids are powerless to resist catholic indoctrination, but my kids are powerless to resist being turned into science-respecting unreligious liberals.
In the end, they will understand the arguments that support these beliefs, but by that time the beliefs will feel like part of their identity, so they will have a bias that disposes them to those arguments. That’s probably what I’m actually hoping!
There is an ethical question about how we implant ideas in kids that’s roughly the same whether the ideas or religious or scientific or political. But is this the subject of Jeremy’s posts…maybe not…maybe I’ve gotten off onto my own tangent? My view on this ethical issue–everybody’s entitled to teach their kids the truth as they see it.
Hence, perhaps, the need to take seriously W K Clifford’s claim in ‘The Ethics of Belief’. The whole issue seems like a powerful argument for the need to be cautious about belief-formation; to be minimalist rather than maximalist, to look for evidence, to ask questions, and so on. Which still leaves us in the same hall of mirrors, of course, but there you go.
Some kind of indoctrination is inevitable in bringing up children, because even the most questioning children ultimately want answers that are simple enough to understand and apply to their own lives, and a robust sense of right and wrong, whether based on Bentham or Saint Paul, is a good starting point in life. If you think of a personal moral system as a car engine, children need one that is fully assembled and works, not a heap of components. but if you also give them the toolkit of skeptical enquiry or whatever, they can do their own maintenance later on.
There’s something admirable about suspension of belief, a la Clifford, but I agree with the last comment. Well said!
Yeah - that’s why I said minimalist rather than zeroist! Some indoctrination is certainly indispensable - the ‘don’t touch knives/fire/a hot burner’ type and the ‘don’t hit/kick/bite/grab/whine’ type to name just two.
It would be kind of interesting to draw a chart or table that would map the inverse ratio between age and complexity of explanation - the move from simple (doctrinaire) ‘don’t’ to ‘because’ and beyond. Also to draw one like that with the implicit and explicit beliefs involved picked out in magenta ink.
Magenta–absolutely the best color in the crayola crayon box. (at least when I was a kid).
I think you have to indoctrinate more than that. It’s like innoculation. One thing you have to think about is what you’re up against. Since I live in Dallas Texas, I taught my kids about evolution when they were about 5. There’s no way I was going to let the creationists get to them first. I also had to steep them in liberal politics. My neighborhood went for Bush even the second time!
Well now that raises a whole new level of questions about indoctrination - the need to indoctrinate as innoculation against indoctrination.
That would be another reason secular education is preferable, provided it doesn’t indoctrinate itself.
The difference between indoctrination and education is not in the content but in the aim. With the progressive unfolding of maturity the educator hopes that the capacity to critically examine what is being presented will likewise develop and will be pleased even if the deliberations of the mature pupil bring them to a conclusion counter to his own. The indoctrinator will be deeply distressed by this. My personal observation leads me to believe that young adults will take against whatever you hold: for excellent reasons of course!
“pleased even if the deliberations of the mature pupil bring them to a conclusion counter to his own”
Why should I be pleased if my kids wind up believing things I consider blatantly false? Their independence of thought might be admirable, but “dearer to me is truth” (to quote Aristotle). Your prediction of a future rebellion is scaring me….there’s something in what you say. (Help!!)
Jean:
It’s all perfectly Hegelian really; thesis, antithesis, synthesis. When the children of devout atheists take to religion the breaking strain of their tolerance is tested. My friend’s two daughters did this, one became a devotee of Krishna and the other wanting to get married in a church took instruction prior to being baptised, such sticklers they are those Catholics. I will probably go to hell for teasing him with “One has swum the Tiber, so to speak, whilst the other, as it were, sports in the shallows of the Yamuna.”
Some atheists eg. Dennett, Dawkins, Stephen Law etc are of the opinion that Religious belief is so irremediably obtuse that the only possible explanation for it is brainwashing. Yes, forces the spectrum out, forces black and white in.
P.S. Aristotle was referring to his divergence from his master Plato on the matter of forms which indicates that the Academy was not an indoctrination centre.
I shall have to say more nice things about religion–fortunately I’m not militantly anti-, like some folks. Yes, Aristotle was saying truth was dearer than friendship. I just like the idea that it’s dear.
“but a scientist, as Richard Dawkins points out in The God Delusion, would be willing to throw out all his old scientific beliefs if a better proof was to present itself.”
The paradigm shift!
Isn’t this one of those ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ situations?
I agree with Kuhn’s paradigm shift by the way. A scientist ‘ought’ to throw out all his old scientific beliefs if a better proof was to present itself. But does this happen? Lamarcks theories of the heritability of acquired characteristics is considered redundant in the Darwinian age. But there are ’scientists’ using ‘orthodox’ Scientific methodology who still argue in favour of Neo-Lamarckism. They are of course in the minority, and the Darwinian majority may condemn such views as being psuedo-science and produce evidence justifying such a condemnation. Is this not an example of the ‘unquestioning adherence to doctrine’ that was originally being investigated by the Scienctific Brainwashing? thread?
Max Planck comments on this when he says:
“a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
Ok!Brainwashing.I think when the religious teacher teach to children good deeds(eg. do not steal,do not kill,…) which is called God-fearing,then it helps to promote peaceful life.We can say teaching religion is brainwashing when they teach unlwaful acts like terrorism.As long as teaching religion wont harm the people it doesnt matter if they teach children .Thats important,let them discover themselves while growing.