Real Open-mindedness and Skepticism

[_Some Schmo]

Just to be clear, I’m not disputing that there could be some philosophical naïveté in the video. I’m mostly curious to what EA’s referring.

Also, I recognize that EA may not want to be specific about it since it might tip off certain “wise people” as to a starting point for a counterargument. If that’s the case, he could just PM me with them for my own education, if he feels so inclined.

[_EAllusion]

For one, there isn't the demarcation between "natural" and "supernatural" concepts in the way he talks. When he talks about supernatural, he's really just talking about things not typically accepted to be part of the natural world by people like him. He seems to understand this well enough with the use of ironic quotes and the phrase "so-called" but as a result he makes statements that seem to beg the question against the supernatural. After all, when person says a lamp shade moving shows there's a ghost about, they're are making a positive case for ghosts on the basis of the observation of a lamp shade moving being what one would expect if ghosts were about. When someone says, "Well, can you explain it!" or something like that, they almost certainly are engaging in an argument for ignorance, but superficially they also have their positive case they are comparing against other available theories. There's some lacking nuance there.

DCP would eat that up and dismiss him as taking the supernatural off the table a priori by saying nothing can support it.

That's not really what's going on, but it could seem that way. The person here really is just attacking argument from personal incedulity, an idea anyone should be able to get behind, regardless of what crazy things they personally believe in.

If I were playing troll, I would go after the implied evidentialism. There are certain kinds of claims that don't need evidence in support of them to have a reasonable case for them. Essentially none of them are things we typically call supernatural, but if you want to disagree with this, it might be prudent to focus on that and ignore the general thrust of it.

For what it is worth, I get called close-minded by believers in new agey ideas and/or pseudoscientific pyschological interventions all the time for expressing skepticism. I'd enjoy strapping them down and making them watch this A Clockwork Orange style as much as the next person.

[_EAllusion]

There are also lots of ideas worth dismissing without any in depth consideration. We only have finite resources available to us. We only have so much time and mental energy to examine things out there. Likewise, we all are limited in our abilities to one extent or another to carefully analyze a case for something. I don't know if the video goes this far, but there is a naïve idea floating out there of some ideal observer fairly considering every idea they happen upon and applying a skeptic's acid test. Sometimes, the appropriate thing to do is to just ignore ideas that don't meet some standard of prior likelihood because there are more fruitful things to be spending one's time on if the goal is efficient pursuit of understanding the world. Really, insofar as that is our goal, we should tailor our resources to ideas that best mesh with our prior framework for understanding the world. We can't give everything equal consideration, nor should we.

That said, we ought to be hypothetically open to every idea and willing to change views as evidence and argument allows. Some ideas just deserve more consideration than others.

[_marg]

Could someone, E.A. included, please give me an executive summary of what E.A.'s argument is. These philosophical types like to talk and talk rather than being concise, clear and to the point.

[_Chap]

Could someone, E.A. included, please give me an executive summary of what E.A.'s argument is. These philosophical types like to talk and talk rather than being concise, clear and to the point.

Reaction to first sentence: It is always reasonable to ask for clarification or further explanation.

Reaction to second sentence: In my view (for what it is worth - I am just an anonymous voice that can be freely ignored) EAllusion is being just about as clear and concise as it is reasonable to expect him to be when talking about the difference between (for instance) "the natural" and "the supernatural", or indeed about whether there is any inherent difference to talk about. Would you, for instance, reject a technician's explanation of why your TV blew up on the grounds that he just "talked and talked" about such things as current, voltage and power ratings, concepts which might puzzle a non-electrician to the extent that she said he was not being "concise, clear and to the point"?

[_marg]

So Chap you are saying you are unable to give an executive summary. If someone asked you what E.A.'s argument was in essence you couldn't condense it. If you can't do that, then in your own words what was E.A.'a argument?

[_cinepro]

I liked these thoughts from the video:

"It's not a virtue to be easily persuaded by people."

"If you've accepted false ideas uncritically, and closed your mind to anything that contradicts them, you won't recognize true ideas even when the evidence is overwhelming."

"When you're trying to make it seem unreasonable for someone to want evidence before changing a significant attitude or take a significant risk, the mere fact that your claim requires a suspension of critical thinking should indicate it's not the other person that needs to demand less evidence, but you that needs to demand more."

[_Tiktaalik]

Could someone, E.A. included, please give me an executive summary of what E.A.'s argument is. These philosophical types like to talk and talk rather than being concise, clear and to the point.

His post is 4-5 paragraphs.

Is it really that difficult to just read it?

[_marg]

I did read it, though I do have a busy day atm, granted however after reading it, I don't know what the key concepts were.

Is it really that difficult to outline what the key concepts are, if you know?

[_Tiktaalik]

Alright, I'll have a go at it.

As I understand it, EAllusion's point is that the video's author is presuming ontological naturalism (i.e. the position that nature is all there is, and that there is nothing outside of nature, or "supernatural").

Someone who wished to dispute the video could attack it at that level because it doesn't provide a defence of this assumption. (But since when can a YouTube video lay out and defend an entire metaphysical/ontological framework?) However, if someone were to attack the video on this level, they'd be ignoring it's substantive point: that the argument from ignorance gets us nowhere and isn't really "open-minded" at all.

EAllusion, please correct me if I'm misinterpreting what you've said.

(Edited to clean up some phrasing.)