There's a difference between saying that biases are bad for rational and critical thinking, and saying there are "good and bad biases". — Christoffer

If you say that biases are bad for rational thinking, you are saying that biases are bad in that respect. I used that premise, that there are bad biases, to demonstrate that if there are bad biases, there must also be good biases. Therefore you position, that all biases are bad for rational thinking, is incoherent.

You need to demonstrate examples of good biases and how you deductively arrive at valuing them as good. — Christoffer

No I don't need to give any examples of good biases. I explained why already. I made the demonstration using the premise you provided, that there are bad biases. From that premise I was able to demonstrate that there must also be good biases.

You are still not recognizing that the problem is with your premise, that biases are bad. This is itself a bias which by that premise is bad. But since there are bad biases, there are also good biases, so all you need to do is replace that bias with a better one. However, you are firmly wedded to your bias, and you adhere to it as if you think it is a good bias, while all the while insisting that there is no such thing as a good bias, in a completely incoherent manner.

I pointed out that your argument requires you to unbiasedly show what is a good bias and what is a bad bias in order to conclude that nothing can be argued without bias. — Christoffer

I went through this already, biases are a natural and essential part of the human being. Therefore it is impossible for a human being to be unbiased. And, a person's biases are evident in the premises of one's arguments.

Why do you think I need to show what constitutes a good bias, in order to demonstrate that a human being cannot argue without bias? That makes no sense.

I pointed out that you break your own logic by saying that nothing can be argued without bias and then explains how we need an unbiased system to know what is good or bad. It is a never ending circular argument. — Christoffer

You keep making this assertion without demonstrating anything, where's the circular argument you keep mentioning. I explained why there is no circle. Good is proper to the process, logic, it is not proper to the bias. It is only your faulty premise that biases are bad, which forces the conclusion that there must be good biases.

See, you want to adopt the proper premise, that biases are natural, and fundamentally neutral. You keep saying this about biases, as if you understand the reality about them, but then you contradict yourself by insisting that biases are bad. Because you hold this bias, that biases are bad, I am required to communicate with you on your own terms, the terms you understand, therefore speaking about biases as if they could be bad or good, and so I am compelled to show you that your bias is a bad bias.

If you would give up that bias, that biases are bad, then we could proceed to talk about them as something neutral, and perhaps make some progress. But if you keep insisting that biases are bad for rational and critical thinking, when in reality biases are an essential part, as a natural part, of rational and critical thinking, then I'll have to keep showing you that there must also be good biases which actually support rational and critical thinking. Then your bias gets exposed as a bad bias. So give it up please, release that bias, then we can start talking about biases as a neutral part of rational and critical thinking.

Bias is neutral because it is a natural phenomena — Christoffer

OK, if "bias is neutral", as you say here, then will you rescind your claim stated above, that "biases are bad for rational and critical thinking". You cannot have it both ways. If they are bad for rational and critical thinking, then it is impossible that they are neutral.

If I describe how bias is bad for critical thinking then you need to understand what that means. The neutral phenomena of bias makes it hard for our mind to process complex concepts without conforming to presupposed groupings of information. This is the psychology of bias. The bias itself is neutral, the effect it has on critical thinking is bad. — Christoffer

I really can't believe that you cannot grasp the incoherency in this statement. Do you understand what "neutral" means? If the "phenomena of bias" affects critical thinking in the negative way which you describe, so that you can say that it is "bad" for critical thinking, then it is blatant contradiction to say that bias is "neutral". It is neutral in relation to what? Obviously not in relation to critical thinking, because you affirm that it is bad in relation to critical thinking. In what respect do you think that bias is neutral, when you describe it as bad?

Only if you adhere to false dichotomy about this. You are proposing a black & white error in reasoning by saying this is clearly wrong because you don't seem to understand the concept of unbiased reasoning and summarize it as trying to remove bias completely rather than it being a tool to spot and suppress bias. That you interpret me saying "reduce bias" with "remove bias" shows this false dichotomy in play here. — Christoffer

This is all nonsense. You recognize that true "unbiased reasoning" is impossible, yet you desire to retain your irrational goal of unbiased thinking, so you replace "remove bias" with "reduce bias" as an alternative to "unbiased". But bias is not a quantitative thing, so this really makes no sense. And all you are left with is replacing one bias (to be truly unbiased) with what you think is a better bias (to have a reduced quantity of biases), while you have no stated principle to say that one of these bad biases is better than the other.

You are basically describing my own theory of duality in mind for critical thinking, just in other form. — Christoffer

Right, because I am demonstrating the defects of your theory. I describe your theory in my own words, then show the faults.

So you are basically saying that we need critical thinking, which is unbiased in form, in order to evaluate what is a good or a bad bias? You describe a separation in which one part is evaluating the other through logic, which is the same as what I describe when talking about mentally stepping back and observing the automatic self at a distance, spotting its behavior of biases and categorizing them as blockages of the concept being formed. — Christoffer

And if you would continue with your "stepping back and observing the automatic self ", you would see that "the automatic self" is the problem, not the biases. Biases are inherent, essential, and integral to concept formation. They facilitate concept formation, they are not "blockages". The "automatic self" however does not deliberate, it does not exercise free will, and this is where the problem lies. An individual will have numerous biases, and if these act like gravity, then the problem is with your concept of the "automatic self", which does not resist the pull of gravity (the bias) through its capacity of free will.

Gravity is neutral, how do you interpret gravity as "an inclination to act"? I mean gravitation in its literal sense. — Christoffer

In no way can gravity be represented as "neutral". Neutral would be like something balanced, an equilibrium, but gravity is a force which pulls in one direction. A force is not "neutral".

Again,

Bias is a neutral process.

The negative effect that bias has on critical thinking makes bias bad for reaching valid conclusions. — Christoffer

How can you make such blatantly contradictory statements? Bias is a neutral process, with a negative effect. You really do not understand the meaning of "neutral", do you?

No, it's a failure of understanding my writing on your part. To once again explain my own writing in detail: — Christoffer

Obviously I cannot understand your writing. It's blatantly contradictory and incoherent.

You are talking about a universalized good and bad since you position them as foundational, so of course you have to define it. — Christoffer

You my friend, are the one who has positioned good and bad as foundational, by assigning "bad" to bias in relation to critical reasoning, when biases are foundational to reasoning. You see biases as having a foundational role in thinking, then you turn around and say that this role is bad. It is you who needs to define good and bad. You have even stated, "These psychological prejudices have the function of enabling us to act fast and not get stuck in cognitive loops whenever we try to do any type of basic task or problem solving in everyday life." And you want to say that this is bad for critical reasoning, when critical reasoning is necessary for many our basic tasks? By what definition of "bad" do you claim that the ability to act fast and not get caught in cognitive loops when assessing a situation, is something "bad"?

Demonstrate it, quote something or whatever, I want to see an example of this since it is over and over the core of what you write. — Christoffer

OED, good:"1. having the right or desired qualities; satisfactory, adequate. " See, a definition of good is highly possible.

The wave function collapse occurs due to the photon being affected by itself producing a collapse in different realities down to a single outcome, depending on schools of interpretation in quantum physics. — Christoffer

Right, the photon causes itself to have a wavefunction breakdown. Tell me another, buddy.

I’m also slightly vexed by Wayfarer’s use of secular humanist Horkheimer as a weapon in his battle against secular humanism, although it’s fair to do so. — Jamal

There is, as I've noted in another thread just now, a tension between philosophical rationalism and naturalism. I think it's because philosophical rationalism in some sense ascribes reason to the Universe at large. In the Aristotelian system, that is implied by the fourfold nature of causality, which proposes that things exist for a reason, whereas that has generally been rejected by science after Galileo. There was also the widespread belief in the 'logos' which was understood as an animating universal principle (perhaps unfortunately) co-opted by Christian theology as 'the Word'. I don't know if Horkheimer elaborates on that point, but from what I've read, I think he's identified something similar in what he describes as the 'subjectivisation' of reason in the modern era as a consequence of the erosion of objective (or, better, transcendent) reason.

if reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? The power of reason is owed to the independence of reason, and to nothing else. (In this respect, rationalism is closer to mysticism than it is to materialism.) Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it. — Leon Wieseltier, The God Genome

Yes, Horkheimer's account is pretty much in line with yours, but there are three things to note here.

First, with the Greeks, subjective and objective were not separate, logos being originally subjective--"I say"; so subjective reason is not new. Second, logos as the animating principle of the universe was just one manifestation of objective reason, another being the reason of the bourgeois Enlightenment. Thirdly and most importantly, he does not lament the loss of past manifestations of objective reason and does not see objective reason as necessarily transcendent.

He discusses some attempts to bring back objective reason:

Today there is a general tendency to revive past theories of objective reason in order to give some philosophical foundation to the rapidly disintegrating hierarchy of generally accepted values. Along with pseudo-religious or half-scientific mind cures, spiritualism, astrology, cheap brands of past philosophies such as Yoga, Buddhism, or mysticism, and popular adaptations of classical objectivistic philosophies, medieval ontologies are recommended for modern use.

But the transition from objective to subjective reason was not an accident, and the process of development of ideas cannot arbitrarily at any given moment be reversed. If subjective reason in the form of enlightenment has dissolved the philosophical basis of beliefs that have been an essential part of Western culture, it has been able to do so because this basis proved to be too weak. Their revival, therefore, is completely artificial: it serves the purpose of filling a gap. — Horkheimer, The Eclipse of Reason

Then he launches a critique of modern Thomism.

Interesting, I must go back and read more of the original.

There’s an interesting tension in it. On the one hand he doesn’t openly lament the loss of the old manifestations of objective reason, motivated no doubt by the hope that some sort of Marxist humanism is the right kind of objective reason for the twentieth century; but on the other hand the tone is often one of lament, nostalgia, and pessimism.

EDIT: It might also be worth noting that in his later years he became even more pessimistic, and more sympathetic to religion.

I actually do have an e-copy, I've read sections of it, but must find the time to give it a more thorough reading. I had encountered his criticism of the malign effects of Darwinism on philosophy on another site, that is what caught my eye (but only as a critic of scientific materialism, *not* as an ID sympathizer.)

If subjective reason in the form of enlightenment has dissolved the philosophical basis of beliefs that have been an essential part of Western culture, it has been able to do so because this basis proved to be too weak. — Horkheimer, The Eclipse of Reason

When I was studying comparative religion, I had a theory that the kind of enlightenment prized in yoga and Buddhism - not Enlightenment in the European sense! - was similar to what the early gnostic schools had been based around. And that the victory of what came to be Catholic orthodoxy was because it was much more politically expedient to organise belief, than the esoteric knowledge represented by gnosticism which it ruthlessly suppressed (even up to the time of the Cathar massacres).

I found a scholar by the name of Elaine Pagels, whose book Beyond Belief affirmed a similar thesis. It concerns exegesis of the Gospel of Thomas, a Gnostic text that was found in Egypt in 1945 as part of the Nag Hammadi Library discovery. Through analysis of the sayings found in the Gospel of Thomas, Pagels demonstrates its themes of self-discovery, spiritual enlightenment, and the pursuit of a direct connection with the divine. She reveals the influence of Gnosticism on the Gospel of Thomas and examines its contrasts with orthodox Christianity and the political and theological tensions that led to the suppression and exclusion of Gnostic texts from the canon of the New Testament. She explores the power struggles within early Christianity and how the emerging orthodoxy based on the Gospel of John sought (successfully) to define and control the faith. And as always, history is written by the victors.

At the time I was doing this reading, I had the view that this was a watershed in the history of Western culture, and that had more of the gnostic elements been admitted, it would have resulted in a much more practice-oriented and 'eastern' form of spirituality. The fact that these exotic forms of religion have had such a huge impact in Western culture the last few centuries is because that approach was suppressed in, and absent from, its own indigenous religious culture. That's what made it 'weak'.

I actually do have an e-copy, I've read sections of it, but must find the time to give it a more thorough reading. I had encountered his criticism of the malign effects of Darwinism on philosophy on another site, that is what caught my eye (but only as a critic of scientific materialism, *not* as an ID sympathizer.) — Wayfarer

I was not quite happy with his criticism of Darwinism, because he often fails to distinguish Darwinism and popular Darwinism, the latter including Social Darwinism.

Otherwise, I found the sections about positivism, pragmatism, and Thomism a bit tedious, partly because they are very much of their time and not fit for purpose--regarding the first two--in a critique of contemporary analytic philosophy or pragmatism.

When I was studying comparative religion, I had a theory that the kind of enlightenment prized in yoga and Buddhism - not Enlightenment in the European sense! - was similar to what the early gnostic schools had been based around. And that the victory of what came to be Catholic orthodoxy was because it was much more politically expedient to organise belief, than the esoteric knowledge represented by gnosticism. I found a scholar by the name of Elaine Pagels, whose book Beyond Belief affirmed a similar thesis. It concerns exegesis of the Gospel of Thomas, a Gnostic text that was found in Egypt in 1945 as part of the Nag Hammadi Library discovery. Through analysis of the sayings found in the Gospel of Thomas, Pagels demonstrates its themes of self-discovery, spiritual enlightenment, and the pursuit of a direct connection with the divine. She reveals the influence of Gnosticism on the Gospel of Thomas and examines its contrasts with orthodox Christianity and the political and theological tensions that led to the suppression and exclusion of Gnostic texts from the canon of the New Testament. She explores the power struggles within early Christianity and how the emerging orthodoxy based on the Gospel of John sought (successfully) to define and control the faith. And as always, history is written by the victors.

At the time I was doing this reading, I had the view that this was a watershed in the history of Western culture, and that had more of the gnostic elements been admitted, it would have resulted in a much more practice-oriented and 'eastern' form of spirituality. The fact that these exotic forms of religion have had such a huge impact in Western culture the last few centuries is because that approach was suppressed in, and absent from, its own indigenous religious culture. That's what made it 'weak'. — Wayfarer

Interesting. I'm happy enough to agree that "the victory of what came to be Catholic orthodoxy was because it was much more politically expedient to organise belief, than the esoteric knowledge represented by gnosticism," but since my conception of history is much more materialist (in the Marxian sense) than yours, I don't accept your emphasis on the primacy of ideas. That's not to say, by the way, that I believe in a crude economic determinism or the one-way causal power of the mode of production, but it was no accident that the gnostic element wasn't admitted, and therefore I think that such a counterfactual history doesn't tell us much.

Unless, maybe, we ask, "what would society have had to be like to allow gnosticism to take hold?". But then, gnosticism is what it is owing to its heretical, outsider status, and how much of that character would have been preserved in its institutionalization? Think of how much the words of Jesus, as accepted in Catholic orthodoxy, were performatively contradicted in medieval Europe.

There is no way of distentangling religious thought and social reality or of preserving the purity of a set of ideas, unless they have become museum pieces. And even then, we interpret them.

Well, if religion meant something different then the question of the relationship (I meant to say) with philosophy might have also been very different. It always seems obvious to me that the way it's interpreted on this forum is very much a product of a specific historical background.

Insofar as I know what you mean, I might agree.

I updated that post as I had omitted something important. What I'm trying to get at, is that there is an experiential (or even empirical) element in gnosticism which was lost with its suppression, whereas it stayed very much part of the mainstream in Indian and Chinese religion. In the West, I think that experiential dimension might have been represented in some forms of philosophical spirituality, but it ultimately vanished altogether with the fideistic emphasis on 'salvation by faith'. And that this has had ramifications for culture.

I wonder if by "experiential" you also mean personal, as opposed to ritualistic?

In the sense of ‘known first person’ not ‘particular to the individual’ or ‘private’.

There is no way of distentangling religious thought institutions and social reality

I believe in the reality of the soul, but language is misleading. To claim that the soul is a real thing, is already to misunderstand the subject of the discussion, because there is no such thing in the empirical sense. But then, neither does the mind exist objectively. (One of the unfortunate implications of Descartes' dualism is mind as 'res cogitans', 'thinking thing', which is an oxymoron.)

We can infer that others have minds, but the mind is never an objective reality for us. We only ever know the mind in the first person, in its role as the capacity for experience, thought and reason; even then, it is not known, but what knows (ref.) But what it is that thinks, experiences and reasons is not an empirical question (and indeed that is 'the hard problem' from the perspective of the objective sciences).

The Greek term for soul was 'psyche' which is, of course, preserved in modern English, in the term 'psychology' as well as in general use as another name for mind. There is an unresolvable debate over whether psychology really is a scientific discipline due to the intractable nature of mind from an objective point of view.

So for mine, 'soul' refers to 'the totality of the being' - synonymous to 'mind' in the larger sense that includes the unconscious and subconscious domains. It is more than simply the body although we're clearly embodied minds (and whether there is or can be a disembodied mind is perhaps nearer to the actual question.) But it's also far more than the conscious mind, the aspect of our own mind that we are able to articulate. So by the 'totality of the being', I mean, taking into account all of our history, our talents, inclinations, proclivities, and destiny. That is what I take 'soul' to denote, and I do believe that it is real. — Wayfarer

But the claim that the soul is a real thing, a thing that exists before birth and survives our body death, is something that plenty believe is an actual thing. A thing that either physical or ethereal exists as an entity in which our experiences, memories and sense of being remains and exist outside of us. It is precisely this that has no evidence or support whatsoever and remains in the realm of religious belief, fantasy and delusions.

However, as you view it, soul as something closer to our "mind", in similar manner as one would view concepts like a "mind upload" and what that would mean, for that there is logical support. Which is what I mean when I say that rationalism can provide arguments that have an inner logic even if there's no scientific and empirical support yet. If there is a logical and plausible possibility to upload a mind, that could be viewed as a "soul" that becomes detached from the body. In the most common view on soul, it would be precisely that by definition.

But that is very different from the idea of a soul that exists before birth or something that remains after death. If we are talking about the energy of the body kickstarting at the formation in an egg and the energy flowing away after death as heat, then I would never call that by anything other than what it is, energy, and energy is not a soul.

An objection I have to the use of religious terminology of natural phenomenas is that it uses language to apply a spiritual meaning where there shouldn't be one. It is like when evangelists move their goal posts of what the definition of God is every time a scientific discovery shows that their previous beliefs are clearly wrong, God is in the sky, he is the sun, he is all around us, he is the first cause, he must be whatever is outside our universal bubble and so on. Applying God to whatever fits the scientific understanding of the time and never giving up the term "God". That is a religious bias that forces that person to always include God into a concept of reality. But it is just shifting goal posts to fit the biased religious narrative.

This use of religious language for concepts that really doesn't have to do with the religious concepts of a soul creates unnecessary hurdles in dialogues and discussions of the concept.

What you describe is not something I would call a soul, because that term has too much religious baggage and when you mention a soul, my interpretation goes straight to the religious interpretation of something existing as a transcendent entity of experience beyond our world that is detached from our body, for which there's no support.

What you describe is something I am also ascribing to, that there is a totality of something, a holistic thing that cannot be described as purely a thing of itself. I usually talk about that as emergent effects creating a holistic concept. This primary and overarching concept of being does not really have a name, that I can remember, that doesn't unnecessarily connect to religious concepts and beliefs. In latin, maybe animus corporis, but even that is just "the soul of the body".

My point is that I think religious terminology muddies the waters of understanding certain concepts in better and more precise ways. I think we ought not to use soul for something that isn't specifically religious in meaning.

Of course. I understand that this is part of what is required by the art of philosophical hermeneutic, re-interpreting an ancient text in light of subsequent advances in scientific understanding. — Wayfarer

And I think a problem today is that many take old and ancient philosophy literally because they are considered relevant today, without doing so. Due to this, many think they have solid arguments today based on them, when they are in fact, in their literal interpretation, flawed or not working with today's knowledge.

I view old and ancient philosophy as support for modern arguments. They function as metaphors, analogies, exploratory systems that help navigate the complexity of modern arguments, because modern arguments have a heightened complexity due to how much is explained in science. For instance, metaphysics today requires an almost perfect understanding of physics, to a point where it might be more relevant to just do physics than wander around in metaphysical confusion.

I have agreed with the vast majority of what you have typed on this thread, but I think you are harsh on 'positivism.' Without it, Einstein's theory of relativity would be declared fact. Big bang theory would be declared fact, and this would perhaps mean science would not continuously challenge and scrutinise both. No theory in science is ever declared fact, because of stances such as positivism.
You yourself keep suggesting that empirical testing/evidence, is the final arbiter.
To me that's what positivism asserts as well, it stands as a good, much needed guardian against accepting anything on faith alone. Sometimes there is little choice but to accept something on faith, but positivism dictates that you should remain reluctant to do so, and I think that's a wise stance to take.
Even the fundamentalist Arab muslims like the advice of"trust in god but tie up your camel" — universeness

I was merely pointing out that positivism have a problem accepting things like theoretical physics due to it never using observable testing in its process. I don't think we actually need positivism because science overall is basically what positivism is. What I mean is that positivism is a school of philosophy and in philosophy there's not much observable testing being done, which means that positivists should just do science since there's little difference between them. If analytical philosophy is about exploring concepts through logic and positivists require observable testing, then it's just the same as philosophy and science, rather than rationalism and positivism. The criticism I have to positivism is that philosophy needs a level of exploration to function well and the rigid stance in positivism makes it better suited to just be science instead.

Perhaps an aside but, IME as a born, raised and educated ex-Catholic, the distinction between orthodoxy and Ms. Armstrong's emphasis on orthopraxy lacks much of a difference in so far as in the main, ceteris paribus, religious practices and religious beliefs are strongly correlated. — 180 Proof

That quote was from Wayfarer which I responded to, just so you don't answer me as if I quoted it. :wink:

If you say that biases are bad for rational thinking, you are saying that biases are bad in that respect. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm starting to think that you are just intentionally distorting your interpretation to keep making the same argument.

What you try to force feed into the discussion is that there are good and bad biases. To say that biases are bad or negative for critical thinking is a fact about critical thinking. It does not mean that there are good and bad biases. You need to read up on the psychology behind this concept and how it relates to critical thinking.

No I don't need to give any examples of good biases. I explained why already. I made the demonstration using the premise you provided, that there are bad biases. From that premise I was able to demonstrate that there must also be good biases. — Metaphysician Undercover

No you didn't, you made no actual argument that shows any of that. And yes, you need to give examples of that because if you claim there are good and bad biases, you need to actually show some example of that. You have a burden of proof when you claim this and you have not provided an argument showing that there are any value scales attributed to specific biases. Stop with the nonsense.

Bias is a concept in psychology. If you cannot apply to the definitions of a concept that is widely accepted, then you are just applying your subjective fantasy to already applied terminology. It's like if I was to say that the state of matter that is a liquid is considered preferable to the state of gas and when water becomes gas it goes from good to bad. It is nonsensical.

You are still not recognizing that the problem is with your premise, that biases are bad. — Metaphysician Undercover

Again, bias is a neutral phenomena that is bad for critical thinking. This is a well known and acknowledged fact in psychology and you are just wrong trying to force any other interpretation of it just because it doesn't fit the narrative of your argument.

I went through this already, biases are a natural and essential part of the human being. Therefore it is impossible for a human being to be unbiased. And, a person's biases are evident in the premises of one's arguments. — Metaphysician Undercover

You do not understand what critical thinking means, therefor it is impossible to explain the phenomena of bias in psychology and how critical thinking functions to mitigate it.

You keep making this assertion without demonstrating anything, where's the circular argument you keep mentioning. — Metaphysician Undercover

p1 You assert that there are only good and bad biases.

p2 You assert that arguments in philosophy are made by good or bad biases in the premises.

p3 You assert that to reach an understanding of what is a good or bad bias you need to use logic and rational reasoning that doesn't have biases.

Conclusion: Your premises does to function together. p1 is a claim of biases having arbitrary values, without any example or logic behind such a statement. p2 is a claim that premises in an argument functions on values in biases for the premises used, disregarding how deduction and induction actually works. p3 is a claim that in order to know what is a good or bad bias (and which would provide evidence for p1) we need to use logic, deduction, something that is essentially unbiased. This means that p3 counters p2 since we need arguments of unbiased logic that doesn't have biases in the premies, but in p2 you claim there are no unbiased premises. So you need p3 to support p1 but then p3 counters p2 and your final conclusion counters p3.

So no, you are just confused.

See, you want to adopt the proper premise, that biases are natural, and fundamentally neutral. You keep saying this about biases, as if you understand the reality about them, but then you contradict yourself by insisting that biases are bad. — Metaphysician Undercover

Biases are a neutral psychological phenomena. The effect of bias on critical thinking is negative. Critical thinking is the process of removing personal beliefs in the process of deduction and induction. The effect on critical thinking by bias is that it introduces belief and arbitrary preferences to the process, meaning, it has a negative impact on what critical thinking is aiming to do. I.e The effect of bias on critical thinking is negative or bad.

If you cannot understand how these two (neutral and bad) can exist together in this context, then you are either not capable of understanding it or you are just trying to force a a faulty interpretation onto it in order to get your argument to work. But in the end you are just misinterpreting or not understanding the basics and therefor you build an entire counter argument on false grounds.

OK, if "bias is neutral", as you say here, then will you rescind your claim stated above, that "biases are bad for rational and critical thinking". You cannot have it both ways. If they are bad for rational and critical thinking, then it is impossible that they are neutral. — Metaphysician Undercover

A neutral psychological phenomena. Is hunger a good or bad phenomena? Answer me that.
Then answer me this, can hunger be bad for the health of the individual?

If you cannot apply concepts in psychology when we are in fact speaking of psychological phenomenas, then you are just ignorant of the scientific foundation for what I'm writing about.

I really can't believe that you cannot grasp the incoherency in this statement. — Metaphysician Undercover

Oh, the irony.

If the "phenomena of bias" affects critical thinking in the negative way which you describe — Metaphysician Undercover

As psychology describes.

This is all nonsense. — Metaphysician Undercover

The irony

Right, because I am demonstrating the defects of your theory. I describe your theory in my own words, then show the faults. — Metaphysician Undercover

Exactly, you describe my theories in YOUR own words, distorting them and confusing yourself to the point of nonsense and ignorance of psychology.

And if you would continue with your "stepping back and observing the automatic self ", you would see that "the automatic self" is the problem, not the biases. — Metaphysician Undercover

You do not understand what I'm talking about. I'm taking the concept of the system 1 and system 2 as a foundation for deliberate separation in mind when conducting critical thinking, so as to internally observe the reasoning being made. If you don't even understand the basics in psychology, I cannot help you.

In no way can gravity be represented as "neutral". Neutral would be like something balanced, an equilibrium, but gravity is a force which pulls in one direction. A force is not "neutral". — Metaphysician Undercover

It's a neutral physical force in terms of your usage of "good" and "bad" as values. When you say a "good" and "bad" bias, you are not talking about a plus and minus, larger and lower, maximum and minimum, higher and lower effect, you are talking about human value systems applied to a neutral force. The force itself does not have good or bad values. "Good" and "bad" are human concepts of arbitrary values, they aren't applicable to gravity as a force. The force itself does not have such values, but the effect of falling from a skyscraper is bad for you. Which is what I'm saying when I say that biases are a neutral psychological phenomena and that how they affect your critical thinking is bad for reasoning.

I'm starting to wonder if you have a problem reading and understanding text overall since I need to explain these basic semantics of it all.

Obviously I cannot understand your writing. It's blatantly contradictory and incoherent. — Metaphysician Undercover

Oh... the irony again.

You my friend, are the one who has positioned good and bad as foundational, by assigning "bad" to bias in relation to critical reasoning, when biases are foundational to reasoning. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, you don't understand simple english and the semantics of my argument. And it's you who have claimed there to be good and bad biases and that philosophy has a purpose in finding out which are good biases and which ones are bad. It is just an uneducated mess that ignores psychology and the entire core of critical thinking, which is a core tenet of philosophy.

OED, good:"1. having the right or desired qualities; satisfactory, adequate. " See, a definition of good is highly possible. — Metaphysician Undercover

You said:

The important point here, is that it is possible to define "good", therefore it is possible to judge biases on the basis of this definition. — Metaphysician Undercover

So, when you answer with the textbook definition of what "good" is, you clearly show that you simply don't understand english or are unable to interpret text correctly enough to understand what I actually asked you to define. I asked you define what good is in relation to how you use the value of "good" to be applied to a "good" or "bad bias.

So, with the textbook definition of "good" that you provided, how do you arrive at a conclusion that a bias have "right", "desired", "satisfactory", "adequate" qualities and not the opposite to those definitions?

All those definitions of "good" are just as arbitrary as the word "good", which means it doesn't matter that you have the textbook definition of "good", you still need to apply the arbitrary value as an objective category for the bias you are evaluating.

In essence, how do you find out if a bias is "right"? If a bias is "desired"? If a bias is "satisfactory"? if a bias is "adequate"? Without it being an arbitrary value for the bias?

Because, as you should know about deduction and induction, the premises need to be true, they cannot be arbitrary opinions or else your argument fails.

It is this simple semantic logic that renders your entire conclusion about "good" and "bad" biases broken and you seem totally oblivious to it.

Right, the photon causes itself to have a wavefunction breakdown. Tell me another, buddy. — Metaphysician Undercover

As I said, you don't understand quantum physics, or you only care for your subjective understanding and won't care for the objective, just as you don't do with psychology. And if you don't seem to understand the simple semantics of the above, then how would I ever be able to explain quantum physics to you?

Interesting. I'm happy enough to agree that "the victory of what came to be Catholic orthodoxy was because it was much more politically expedient to organise belief, than the esoteric knowledge represented by gnosticism," but since my conception of history is much more materialist (in the Marxian sense) than yours, I don't accept your emphasis on the primacy of ideas. That's not to say, by the way, that I believe in a crude economic determinism or the one-way causal power of the mode of production, but it was no accident that the gnostic element wasn't admitted, and therefore I think that such a counterfactual history doesn't tell us much. — Jamal

I believe that you approach a very significant and important ontological subject here. If gnosticism turns one inward in a spiritual quest, this activity can only be a part of the overall process which produces enlightenment. That is because in the act of finding oneself through the inward process, one's true position in the environment, one's social context, cannot be revealed, being dependent on the reality of the changing circumstances of a spatial-temporal existence, the external surroundings. So the spiritual revelation derived from turning inward is only a halfway point in true enlightenment, because finding oneself also requires putting oneself into context through a return, or turning outward.

Understanding the nature of the turning back outward is the pivotal issue. This turning outward is represented in Plato's cave allegory as the philosopher's return to the cave after seeing the light. Notice I described it as "putting oneself into context". This is because we recognize that through the capacity of freedom of choice, we have the power to create our own social context. So one's place in the social environment need not be where the forces of nature have put that person, it may be a place which the person has prepared for oneself. The common representation could be "home".

The reason for my claim of ontological importance, is that this inward process, with the consequent turn around, alters one's perspective on social conformity. Without the inward adventure we tend to perceive the environment and social context as causing us to conform to the norms and conventions which have shaped our learning process. Causation is represented by external relations. Ontologically, this gets represented as the top-down formal causation of conformity.

However, with the inward journey of enlightenment, we approach the causal force of the will, and we can apprehend the true causal force of social conformity as coming from within, the will to conform. This justifies the materialist (Marxist) bottom-up type of causation as the true nature of the causal force which produces social conformity. What is required for the reality of the social contract is more than just a passive consent to be ruled over, but an active role in causation. In other word, we do not go through the gnostic journey to find oneself, arrive at the residual "will", and think now it's time to roll over and be flogged.

In the sense of ‘known first person’ not ‘particular to the individual’ or ‘private’. — Wayfarer

Ok. :chin:

There is no way of distentangling religious thought institutions and social reality

Is this a rewording to make a statement that you agree with? If so, what you’ve got here is a truism, since institutions are social reality.

The criticism I have to positivism is that philosophy needs a level of exploration to function well and the rigid stance in positivism makes it better suited to just be science instead. — Christoffer

I certainly don't care, if a person who chooses not to accept a theory, as absolute fact, until it has irrefutable empirical evidence to back it up, calls themselves a positivist/logical positivist/neopositivist philosopher or a scientist or both. I do find cumbersome language for the sake of more accuracy, does have a 'too far,' cut off point. I prefer 'tin of beans' to 'A metallic cylindrical receptacle, sealed at both ends, containing legume vegetation, suspended in a flavoured condiment.'

If we are talking about the energy of the body kickstarting at the formation in an egg and the energy flowing away after death as heat, then I would never call that by anything other than what it is, energy, and energy is not a soul. — Christoffer

We come into the world with proclivities, tendencies, traits, character, talents, and so on. These are all characteristics of living beings that are not reducible to physical forces. (One of the motifs from Buddhism, which is said to eschew the idea of soul, is that each individual is actually a 'mind-stream' (citta santāna) that manifests from life to life - a process, not an entity.)

I agree that using the term ‘soul’ carries religious connotations and that it’s not an especially useful term. But I don’t agree, on those grounds, that it is a meaningless term, or connotes an obsolete or supestitious idea.

It is like when evangelists move their goal posts of what the definition of God is every time a scientific discovery shows that their previous beliefs are clearly wrong — Christoffer

That is typical of fundamentalism, not so much of the classical tradition.

If so, what you’ve got here is a truism, since institutions are social reality. — Jamal

I understand that marxism will generally depict religious ideas as being product of culture and society. But consider Buddhism, if you can call Buddhism a religion. It is certainly a social institution now, but it originated as a renunciate movement, deliberately outside social convention.

To say that biases are bad or negative for critical thinking is a fact about critical thinking. It does not mean that there are good and bad biases. You need to read up on the psychology behind this concept and how it relates to critical thinking. — Christoffer

You are not getting it Christoffer. You recognize that bias is a natural, inherent and essential part of any thinking, yet you insist that there is a type of thinking, "critical thinking", within which bias is bad. Since bias is an essential aspect of thinking, then to remove it from thinking would incapacitate and annihilate the thinking. Therefore we cannot say that it is bad for any type of thinking, because it supports that activity, "thinking", as a necessary part of it. So to remove bias from any type of thinking would make that activity impossible. Therefore to remove bias from critical thinking would actually be bad because as a form of thinking it relies on bias , and to remove the bias would make it impossible to perform that act of critical thinking. Therefore, since critical thinking is a form of thinking, and bias is a necessary and required aspect of all forms of thinking, bias must be good in relation to critical thinking, and it cannot be bad.

It seems to me, like your education allows you to recognize that bias is fundamentally a neutral aspect of thinking, yet you have a deep seated bias which tells you that bias is bad for critical thinking. Since you cling to this bias, you cannot draw the logical conclusion that since bias is a natural, neutral, and essential aspect of all thinking, it cannot be bad for any type of thinking. Instead, you continue to repeat your bias, holding it up as a "fact" about critical thinking.

Again, bias is a neutral phenomena that is bad for critical thinking. — Christoffer

Well, if you cannot understand how it is contradictory to say that a neutral phenomenon is bad, I don't see much point in continuing this discussion.

If you cannot understand how these two (neutral and bad) can exist together in this context, then you are either not capable of understanding... — Christoffer

That is the correct answer, I am not capable of understanding that because it is contradiction. Sorry if this disappoints you when it means your attempt to deceive me has failed.

It's a neutral physical force in terms of your usage of "good" and "bad" as values. When you say a "good" and "bad" bias, you are not talking about a plus and minus, larger and lower, maximum and minimum, higher and lower effect, you are talking about human value systems applied to a neutral force. The force itself does not have good or bad values. "Good" and "bad" are human concepts of arbitrary values, they aren't applicable to gravity as a force. The force itself does not have such values, but the effect of falling from a skyscraper is bad for you. Which is what I'm saying when I say that biases are a neutral psychological phenomena and that how they affect your critical thinking is bad for reasoning. — Christoffer

Clearly no force is neutral, as "force" means to exert power or effort, and "neutral" means to not be inclined toward movement in any direction. So your attempt to rationalize your contradiction in this way, fails miserably.

Yes, good and bad are human judgements, but so is "neutral" a human judgement as well. And you judge bias as bad for critical thinking, so you cannot also judge bias as neutral, without contradiction.

No, you don't understand simple english and the semantics of my argument. — Christoffer

I suppose you're referring to the semantics of deception here, also known in philosophy as sophistry.

So, with the textbook definition of "good" that you provided, how do you arrive at a conclusion that a bias have "right", "desired", "satisfactory", "adequate" qualities and not the opposite to those definitions? — Christoffer

By your own description of bias Christoffer. You said that a bias is a gravitation toward what is preferable. Doesn't "preferable" imply what is satisfactory or desired? Since this is the definition of "good", then we ought to conclude that biases are good. Where do you get this idea that biases are bad?

Just checking as a non-philosopher here. Aren't biases generally like axioms or presuppositions, which provide a kind of foundation to one's thinking?

Since bias is an essential aspect of thinking, then to remove it from thinking would incapacitate and annihilate the thinking. T — Metaphysician Undercover

Sounds to me like this is accurate. Even a quest to remove biases is itself a bias, even if it might seem to be a performative contradiction?

Is a potential task of philosophy to question and perhaps dismantle axioms (beliefs, biases) one holds to find enhanced approaches to thinking and living? I can't help but find myself in a realm of 'good' biases and 'bad' biases and how this is determined strikes me as needing to be bias led.

I think bias has more of a connotation of being unconscious, subjective or held on emotive grounds. Different to axioms which by definition are open to scrutiny.

Sure, but don’t people hold presuppositions (axioms) which they don’t know they have? E.g., Reality can be understood through science? And aren't conscious biases also important?

I still think a presupposition or an axiom is different to a bias. I suppose you could say that a strongly held but unexamined belief might constitute a bias. And that there are ‘cultural biases’ that are held by many people who take them as ‘the way things are’. Some will characterize religious attitudes like that but I think the same can be said of scientific materialism.

The main problem with our usual understanding of secularity is that it is taken-for-granted, so we are not aware that it is a worldview. It is an ideology that pretends to be the everyday world we live in. Most of us assume that it is simply the way the world really is, once superstitious beliefs about it have been removed. — David Loy

OK. I must not be understanding what the discussion between C and MU is about then.

I agree that Meta’s logic is sometimes baffling :lol:

Actually I guess ‘confirmation bias’ would often be very difficult to expose and often effective as an accusation. See this case of.a biased investigator accusing juries of bias.

:up:

I understand that marxism will generally depict religious ideas as being product of culture and society. But consider Buddhism, if you can call Buddhism a religion. It is certainly a social institution now, but it originated as a renunciate movement, deliberately outside social convention. — Wayfarer

And as such, a product of culture and society. But sure, it wasn’t institutional. Not sure what the point was here.

I believe that you approach a very significant and important ontological subject here — Metaphysician Undercover

That’s the way I roll :cool:

But I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Interesting though.

And as such, a product of culture and society. But sure, it wasn’t institutional. Not sure what the point was here. — Jamal

The point is that it’s not a product of culture and society. It preceded them, as did the axial age religions generally.

Everything humans do is a product of culture and society, and always has been.

Marx said that after turning Hegel on his head. I won’t argue the case beyond noting dissent.