{"id":23663,"date":"2012-12-12T17:56:14","date_gmt":"2012-12-12T22:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=23663"},"modified":"2013-02-16T12:00:30","modified_gmt":"2013-02-16T17:00:30","slug":"the-wise-man-doubts-ofte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2012\/12\/the-wise-man-doubts-ofte\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wise Man Doubts Often, And Changes His Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[This is Part 1 of a 4-part series. <a href=\"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2012\/12\/faith-is-a-work-in-progress\/\">Part 2<\/a>. <a href=\"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2012\/12\/on-learning-from-false-models\/\">Part 3<\/a>. <a href=\"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2012\/12\/the-opposite-of-epistemic-humility\/\">Part 4<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m happy to have a chance to do a guest stint here at Times and Seasons, and over the next two weeks I want to use my borrowed soap box to talk about epistemic humility.<\/p>\n<p>Epistemic humility is an awareness of the limits of our ability to know. It is an admission that we are ignorant of things that are true and that we accept as true things which are not. Hence the title, which comes from a longer saying of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Akhenaten\">Akhenaten<\/a>: &#8220;The wise man doubts often, and changes his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubts not; he knows all things but his own ignorance.&#8221; In this piece I hope to explain why epistemic humility is a serious concern, and in subsequent pieces I\u2019ll shift the focus to implications and responses.<\/p>\n<p>Although it has become something of a buzzword recently, the philosophical history of epistemic humility is long and rich, with Plato\u2019s Socrates serving as the original model.\u00a0 In his Meditations, Descartes outlined a radical doubt that cast everything we perceive through our senses into question. Hume forcefully argued that induction is irrational. Box famously said \u201call models are wrong\u201d, and there\u2019s no reason to except our cognitive models. And of course we have Donald Rumsfeld\u2019s unknown unknowns: Because our ignorance is by definition unbounded, nothing that we currently take as fact is safe from revision or reversal based on new information.<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2w0fInUhtnk\" height=\"315\" width=\"420\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/center>The natural response to these arguments tends to be tacit acceptance coupled with a dismissal of their practical relevance. Whether our first brush with solipsism comes from Descartes or the Wachowskis, we eventually decide that since we can\u2019t ever really know whether or not we\u2019re a butterfly dreaming we\u2019re a person we\u2019ll just carry on as though the question had never come up. But \u00a0I deeply believe that the problem of our reaction to uncertainty is vitally important to our spiritual health as individuals and our social health as communities.<\/p>\n<p>Given the fact that humans are imperfect, in both the sense of being flawed but also of being incomplete, uncertainty is a necessary condition for growth. We cannot revise our beliefs while we are certain in them. In addition, uncertainty is a prerequisite for faith in a morally significant sense. Ignorance stemming from our undeveloped natures is a fact which we seek to overcome in this life, and ignorance of our eternal origins is an integral element of this mortal probation, freeing us to will to believe in an act that reveals, creates, or changes our nature. In both cases: ignorance is undeniable and certainty is damning.<\/p>\n<p>And yet try as we might, a sense of certainty seductively insinuates itself into the our behaviors of belief. At even an unconscious level, we find uncertainty uncomfortable. It\u2019s a primary component of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cognitive_dissonance\">cognitive dissonance<\/a>, and many varieties of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_biases_in_judgment_and_decision_making\">cognitive biases<\/a> serve precisely to manufacture a greater sense of certainty while insulating our beliefs from doubt.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s more: neither intelligence nor education can help us avoid these reflexive spasms towards certainty. On the contrary, cleverness and awareness of the problem generate their own particular kind of cognitive bias: <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bias_blind_spot\" target=\"_blank\">bias blind spots<\/a>. According to a recent study (and this should be alarming to those who aspire to be part of an intellectual community!):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>None of these bias blind spots were attenuated by measures of cognitive sophistication such as cognitive ability or thinking dispositions related to bias. If anything, a larger bias blind spot was associated with higher cognitive ability. Additional analyses indicated that being free of the bias blind spot does not help a person avoid the actual classic cognitive biases.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>All this means that even if we acknowledge the logic of epistemic humility, in our actions we deny it far more often than we realize. Unconsciously suppressing cognitive dissonance entails unconsciously rejecting uncertainty. \u00a0(You might \u00a0even say that the natural man is an enemy to certainty.)<\/p>\n<p>In order to be open to growth, we cannot merely assent to the logic of epistemic humility. We need to proactively embrace it, and I can think of two ways that we can do this. The first is to strive to enact <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Krister_Stendahl\">Stendahl\u2019s rules for religious understanding<\/a> in all of our interaction with people with whom we disagree:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>When you are trying to understand another religion, you should ask the adherents of that religion and not its enemies.<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t compare your best to their worst.<\/li>\n<li>Leave room for &#8220;holy envy.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>These rules will not inoculate us from error\u2014nothing can do that\u2014but they provide a way to <em>enact<\/em> epistemic humility. (I\u2019ll return to a more detailed discussion of the relationship between these rules and uncertainty in a later post.)<\/p>\n<p>The second thing we must do is refuse to subvert cognitive dissonance through fictitious beliefs. I can probably explain this best with an example. I once had a discussion with a friend about the Second Coming (as Mormons are wont to do), and he expressed a high degree of confidence that we\u2019d go through the whole world-ending apocalypse thing starting within the next 20-30 years. I responded by asking him if he was investing in his 401k, and he said that he was. At the maximum amount matched by his company, no less! I then asked him how much he expected to get back out of his retirement savings account in 30 or 40 years given the whole end times that would be happening in the interim.<\/p>\n<p>Now the point here is not to debate the fine points of modern portfolio theory or risk-hedging as they relate to\u00a0 Armageddon. As it turns out, you can take your money out of a 401k without penalty for things like buying your first\u00a0 home, but that wasn\u2019t his strategy. It hadn\u2019t even <em>occurred<\/em> to him to consider his retirement planning side-by-side with his end-of-the-world anticipation. The two worlds\u2014religious belief and practical consideration\u2014were compartmentalized. I would argue that, since he was actually acting on the practical considerations, his belief in the imminence of the Savior\u2019s return was, therefore, largely fictional. Although he didn\u2019t realize this, of course, it had become a merely <a href=\"http:\/\/www.juliansanchez.com\/2009\/08\/03\/symbolic-belief\/\">symbolic belief<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Cognitive dissonance, as with frostbite, is most dangerous when you stop feeling it. Contradictions within our beliefs should not be buried because they are the irritating grain of sand from which pearls of truth are made. Perhaps this is similar to what Joseph Smith had in mind when he said, \u201cBy proving contraries, truth is made manifest.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the next two posts I will provide two detailed examples\u2014one religious and one secular\u2014of this stubborn but humble refusal to back down in the face of confusion. After that, I\u2019ll talk more about a more dangerous rejection of epistemic humility than compartmentalization and symbolic beliefs and provide examples and strategies for combating it.<\/p>\n<p>And after that, I suspect my time will be up.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[This is Part 1 of a 4-part series. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4] I\u2019m happy to have a chance to do a guest stint here at Times and Seasons, and over the next two weeks I want to use my borrowed soap box to talk about epistemic humility. Epistemic humility is an awareness of the limits of our ability to know. It is an admission that we are ignorant of things that are true and that we accept as true things which are not. Hence the title, which comes from a longer saying of Akhenaten: &#8220;The wise man doubts often, and changes his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubts not; he knows all things but his own ignorance.&#8221; In this piece I hope to explain why epistemic humility is a serious concern, and in subsequent pieces I\u2019ll shift the focus to implications and responses. Although it has become something of a buzzword recently, the philosophical history of epistemic humility is long and rich, with Plato\u2019s Socrates serving as the original model.\u00a0 In his Meditations, Descartes outlined a radical doubt that cast everything we perceive through our senses into question. Hume forcefully argued that induction is irrational. Box famously [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1156,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,1058],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-guest-bloggers"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1156"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23663"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24593,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23663\/revisions\/24593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}