On Beliefs and Prejudices: Confessing my Intellectual Sins

[gusl]

"Those are my principles. And if you don't like them ... I have others"
- Groucho Marx

"Prefiro ser uma metamorfose ambulante,
do que ter aquela velha opinião formada sobre tudo"
(I'd rather be a walking metamorphosis,
than have that old formed opinion about everything)
- Raul Seixas

This has been a recent theme in my mind, as evidenced by the Socrates post.

I often defend positions that I am not convinced about. Often, I do it just to incite argument, because I believe argument can be a good way of refining one's beliefs (also because I enjoy arguing). So sometimes I play devil's advocate. But more often than not, I guess I am committed to defending libertarian ideas, whether or not they are correct. For example, I'm not convinced that it's a good idea to liberate guns completely given the world as it is today, but I'll still defend the libertarian position (although I would probably act the opposite way in a libertarian group). It now troubles me that I can be so "ideological".

But I often argue about something because I think I'm probably right, even though I don't know enough about the subject, and don't even know the arguments behind it. And at these times I can be incorrectly dismissive. I am guilty of the fallacy of heroes and villains. I am biased towards arguing for the "ideology" of my heroes: Pinker, Adam Smith, etc.; and against the "ideology" of my villains: Marx, Keynes, etc. There's some circular reasoning here too: "this idea is wrong therefore this author is wrong", and "this author is bad therefore I have no reason to trust his judgement".

So, given that, I really can't blame people for thinking that I'm a right-wing nut, a materialist nut, a Bayesian nut or whatever. I can only hope that they will take my arguments for what they are. Unfortunately, one's image can change a lot when one's beliefs become known. "Right-wing nut" is a hard image to have, but I may have done just that after making a pro-gun argument to Cecília. Part of the problem is pragmatic: people don't interpret an argument as just an argument. They believe you have goals for defending what you are defending, besides intellectual curiosity. And I'm afraid I could be guilty of that too. When I have a strong political belief, I may want it to be implemented in practice. If I become fixated on the political goal, I can forget the intellectual goal: to investigate and prove my point. I may also be guilty of using rhetoric, i.e. bad philosophy, to further these goals. Well, political goals such as the implementation of a particular policy seem far-fetched, but I can think of a plausible non-intellectual goal, namely individual persuasion: my goal may sometimes be to make allies, to get people to agree with me.
Finally, I am sometimes guilty of evasion: in order to protect beliefs which I'm already committed to (i.e. to avoid costly belief revisions), I may be confirmation-biased and wishful-thinking...

Another idea is that my mind is NOT consistent, like I idealize it should be. I can jump in and out of beliefs as they suit me. Similarly, there is no reason my beliefs need to be consistent.

Books on Self-Deception

Enlighten me, Lord Socrates, for I have fallacied.

Comments

Interesting catharsis.

[ex-borodin321.livejournal.com]

Not to be adversarial, but I find most libertarian/anarcho-capitalists to be a little unsure of their position, at least on an intuitive level. I think it has something to do with accepting fundamental arguments which lay the ground work for certian ideological goals, yet don't jive with the individual's moral sense.

Borodin