Phil 145, Week 8

Extraordinary beliefs

Challenging dubious beliefs (Gilovich)

How to respond?

• Give up: people are hopeless
• Relativism: everyone has a right to think how he or she wants. No culture is better than any other.
• Replace wrong ways of thinking with right ones: not possible because heuristics are so basic
• Compensatory strategies:
  • watch for problems and try to correct them:
  • avoid drawing conclusions from incomplete and unrepresentative evidence;
  • use good reasoning strategies such as inference to the best explanation.

Need better science education, including social science.

Schick's SEARCH formula:

1. State the claim.

2. Examine the Evidence for the claim.

3. Consider Alternative hypotheses.

4. Rate, according to the Criteria of adequacy, each Hypothesis.

• Testability: empirical evidence
• Fruitfulness: new predictions
• Scope: how much explained
• Simplicity: makes fewest assumptions
• Conservatism: consistent with other beliefs

E.g. the Easter bunny exists.

Applications

Homeopathy

Dowsing

Abductions by alien UFOs

Channeling

Near-death experiences

Assessing information on the World Wide Web

1. Are you getting information from sites produced by legitimate authorities such as scientific and educational organizations?

2. Is your information based on scientific evidence?

3. Are you avoiding being distracted by sites irrelevant to your educational goals?

4. Are there other more traditional sources of information (e.g. printed ones) that would provide the desired information more directly?

Updated March 3, 2003

Back to Phil 145.