Last month, I explored the idea that empiricism and critical thinking are (or should be) core values in social justice.
On the other hand… how good of an idea is that really? While we may agree that critical thinking is a good thing, just because a community values critical thinking does not mean they are good at it. In fact, communities that value critical thinking are often bad at it.
This is an easy observation to make, here, because I don’t need to argue for it, I just need to gesture at what we already know. In short, we are a community that’s been burned. The skeptical, atheist, and Rationalist communities all valued critical thinking in slightly different ways, and each has had its problems. All the praise of critical thinking did not save us.
We are also familiar with bastardizations of critical thinking. For example, “do your own research” is (in the minds of people who believe it) a critical thinking value. Question authority and all that. It’s not very good practice—as anyone with a PhD understands that doing your own research is pretty hard to get right—but it still serves to demonstrate my point. One may place a high value on critical thinking, and consequently adopt practices that fail to serve that value.
So, communities that value critical thinking are not good at it: that’s the raw observation. It’s worth asking, is it actually true though? It is an easy observation to make, because we are a community that’s been burned. Maybe that makes us biased.
In what sense has critical thinking failed as a community value? Has it failed because our communities did not achieve complete consensus? Or were there specific critical thinking practices that were less than ideal (as I say about the practice of fallacy spotting)? How do communities that value critical thinking compare to communities that don’t value critical thinking? Perhaps communities that value critical thinking aren’t perfect, but are still an improvement.
Perhaps the worst thing I could say about critical thinking, is that it feels like an empty value. Saying that we value critical thinking is like saying that we believe people should think about things the right way. Sure, but everyone already believes that. Nobody believes the opposite, that people should think about things the wrong way. Critical thinking as a value lacks specificity.
It might be useful to talk about more specific values, like… seeking reasons why you might be wrong, and admitting it if you are. The value of listening to people over theorizing about them in absentia.
not sure how relevant this is, but I feel there is a deeper problem in our society in general, where we collectively value confidence over all else. To the point where confidence becomes more important than competence/correctness to a lot of people.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen/heard randos discount an expert’s assessment of something, because the expert acknowledges/concedes there is a chance of failure/uncertainty, while they listen to some other “self-proclaimed-expert” because they “have more confidence”
I feel like this maybe translates to skepticism/critical thinking/rationality, by being willing to question yourself. The people who can do that, all else aside, I think are more likely to arrive at better answers/more accurate conclusions, but are maybe less likely to be listened to/respected by others.
And I’m reminded of that bit about the guy who wanted doctors to wash their hands (before there was a thorough understanding of the germ theory of disease, if i remember correctly…), and was bullied into a mental breakdown, but later turned out to be right.
Or, more recently, the idea of checklists in operating rooms, which doctors opposed because they took it as an insult to their competence, as opposed to a basic check/fail-safe.
Or, more crudely, the popularity of fucking orange asshole…
Also, a big problem I’ve seen is people believing oversimplified things about people on “the other side”- like always saying “the cruelty is the point” (https://tellmewhytheworldisweird.blogspot.com/2025/01/im-not-sure-about-cruelty-is-point.html ) or claiming that conservatives support “pro-life” policies because “they think women are property.” Sure, you could make an argument that on some level, the key foundational belief that “pro-life” ideology is based on is “women are property”, maybe that’s true, but you have to actually *make* the argument, not just post it in a tweet like it’s obvious (this is why I’m glad I’m not on twitter or any similar site any more, people are always posting these one-liners mischaracterizing people they disagree with). Also “every accusation a confession”- I think we should stop saying that too.
I suspect that in the same way thinking of yourself or your community as ‘good’ people causes everyone to stop doing the work to actually be decent people, so too thinking of yourself as a critical thinker short circuits the parts of your mind which should be checking your work.
There’s a reason smart people tend to be really fucking dumb sometimes, and it’s because they know they’re smart, or believe themselves to be, so they assume they’re right about shit without ever actually checking or thinking about it particularly deeply.
The value that genuinely matters in humility, but it almost certainly suffers a similar problem, it’s possible to be wildly arrogant about how humble you are.
mmm, i disagree with part of that, PN. i’ve seen enough of fash america to know cruelty absolutely is the point, much of the time. it’s a culture of brutality that equates righteousness with masculinity and defines masculinity as hard-hearted dispassion – punishing the undesirable and hurting others to elevate you and yours. not everyone who votes fash is like that, but the leaders all are, to a one.
@Ian King:
Speaking as a smart person who was thankfully kept at least somewhat humble by other members of my family (my grandfather was a high school principal, he had practice at deflating know-it-alls), I fully agree. In many cases the core problem is that someone who is smart gets arrogant about it. (I specifically mentioned Dawkins over on Bébé’s blog about that being where he went actively off the rails, because other people were daring to talk back to him.)
@Perfect Number, Bébé Mélange:
The other part of the problem with the statement here is… at what point to we get to PRATT (Point Refuted A Thousand Times)? It’s all very nice to say we shouldn’t generalize people, and I agree with that in principle. But the whole point of ‘you actually have to make the argument’ ignores the fact that in many of these cases the argument has been made, multiple times, and it has been actively ignored.
(The whole ‘pro-life’ thing being hypocritical is easy to show as ridiculous on its face because almost all of the people who scream about abortion then actually don’t care about the children after they’re born or about the health of the mother. We know they don’t care about the health of the mother because there are many documented cases of existing children becoming orphans because the mother died of septic shock as a result of doctors refusing to do something akin to an abortion. Not to mention that if you trace the timing, the evangelical ‘Moral Majority’ wasn’t against abortion until Bob Jones University v United States, years after Roe v Wade’ originally the evangelicals considered abortion a Catholic issue and not one they cared about. It was always about not admitting that it was really about racism.)
It’s true that simplifying the other side can cause people to get defensive and pull away. But at some point you have to ask yourself, if someone was going to feel insulted by this, how reliable an ally would they actually be? And given that each of us has limited time and energy, how much is it worth it to spend that time dealing with someone who has every appearance to be unlikely to take us seriously or is just being an active troll. Sea Lions are a thing in this sort of discussion.
At some point ‘I don’t have the time or energy for this, let someone else explain reality to this person’ has to become a thing for our own mental health. Saying ‘you need to make the argument’ ignores that point.
I would contend that you are looking too far down the chain of thought to reach any reasonably useful conclusions.
Critical thinking is reliant on knowledge. Knowledge is reliant on information. Knowledge is created by having enough information on a topic to accurately define the terms, and to evaluate the accuracy of the information gathered. I’ve often found that when people who are knowledgeable about a topic disagree, critical thinking can be used to identify and clarify the disagreements, which can lead to agreement. Obviously, people who are not knowledgeable about a subject may never acquire enough knowledge to resolve their disagreements. But at that point they are not relying on knowledge for their opinions.
Long ago, as a nascent thinker, in high school, I was part of a teacher-led discussion club. It was started before I joined as a method for some troubled students to talk through any issues they were having. By the time I was invited to join it was mainly just a forum for a few students to talk about any topic they wanted, dissent was allowed but insults were discouraged.
One of things we learned was that when we disagreed the first thing was to clarify the terms we were using. Often the disagreement was found to originate in the differences of our definitions. In the schism within atheism, this was quite obvious. Some atheists defined “atheism” narrowly, as the absence of religion. Other atheists defined “atheism” more broadly, as requiring a replacement of religious teachings of reality and morality with observed reality and non-religious morality. This difference in definition exists to this day. In other words, there is no agreement on the definition, and so there can be no agreement on the implications or future actions which depend on those beliefs. Both sides believe they are engaged in critical thinking.
Rational thinking, to my mind, is gathering information and using that information to generate knowledge. Once a person/society has knowledge, that can be used to judge the accuracy of additional information. Information incompatible with that knowledge is usually summarily rejected until a sufficient amount of incompatible information collects, which is when knowledge then changes. That is a (very short) summary of what Thomas Kuhn was saying sixty years ago (and was immediately misunderstood).
Rational thinking is a process of collection, assimilation, and processing information reaching a conclusion. To my mind, critical thinking is examining the conclusion and assessing the possibility that it may be incorrect by comparison with other information or knowledge. Let me assume that you have put both rational and critical thinking under one umbrella term of critical thinking. Is that type of thinking a community value? The answer from history is a resounding no.
Generally, societies settle on a general method of performing tasks. It doesn’t matter what the task is. Farmers will plant the same way using the same crops. Hunters will hunt the same game and there may be myths about why it is not acceptable to hunt other game. Some animals will be kept as pets in some societies but as food in others. This even extends to thought, some ideas are not thought of, morality is not questioned. Change in all aspects of life is discouraged as being disruptive.
The above is what happens in the absence of other pressures. Farmers who sell their crops will change what they grow based on market value. Hunters will do the same. This is not critical thinking but economic thinking, i.e. maximizing a return. Economic thinking will deplete a resource. Critical thinking will conserve a resource to maximize long-term profits, while economic thinking will prioritize short-term profits. It is clear from our community behavior that critical thinking is not as important as economic thinking.
Critical thinking requires the creation of experts, i.e. people who are knowledgeable, and then following their advice. To have that happen the leaders/stakeholders of the community has to trust the experts. This isn’t all that common. Critical thinking may add value to a community, but it is not a community value as communities do not appear to need or rely on it. Sometimes it’s actively discouraged by a community.
My $0.02.
@flex,
Oh, I don’t agree at all with that characterization of atheist schisms. I prefer a more minimal definition of atheist (actually even more minimal than what you mentioned, as I don’t think atheism requires an absence of religion). But that has hardly anything to do with the question of the movement’s scope. The fact that anyone thought so is, IMHO, indicative of a lack of activist experience.
And even the question of scope was mostly just a proxy for more substantive disagreements. People didn’t like expanding atheism’s scope to include social justice, because they had substantive disagreements with social justice. And to be fair, I would have opposed expanding atheism’s scope if the proposed expansion was into an area I disagreed with, like transphobia.
@7, Siggy, who wrote,
Fair enough. But again, with all respect, I submit we are disagreeing about definitions. What you are describing is what, without additional discussion with you, I came to see as A+. Where atheism is narrowly defined, but there was an effort to add social justice to atheism and create a movement. I don’t have a problem with that.
The reason I feel that atheism is more than simple the lack of religion is because I see religion as a time-saving device for morality. That is; one of the core tenants of religion, all religions, is that by following by the rules of that religion (even ones which have no deity, or a multitude thereof) the person will act morally. Religions, in effect, are telling people what is moral behavior and what is not. People are not required to think about the morality of their own actions, they just need to follow the guidelines and they will be moral. Abortion was not an important moral issue until the religious leaders made it so. And because the religious believers did not consider the moral implications of a complete ban on abortions, they simply parrot the moral judgement of their leaders. There are countless examples throughout history of this type of behavior by religious leaders, justified by their belief they are he voice of a deity. Religion also offers a get-out-of-hell-free card: redemption. If you act immorally, but are repentant, you can be forgiven.
As an atheist, I see examples throughout history of religious believers having abrogated their thinking about morality to their religious leaders, and being convinced absolutely horrific actions are moral.
An atheist has a choice. An atheist can choose a set of morals to follow, be they religious or secular. Or they could find a person they admire and copy their morality, which almost inevitably leads to disillusionment. Or, develop their own moral ideals. Now there is nothing guaranteeing that a person creating their own morality will become interested in social justice. They may embrace epicurism, or nihilism. They may look at the world, as even many religious people do, as a battle to be fought and a war to be won. But something will fill that void, they will develop values to live by, even if their conception of right and wrong does not mirror that of other people.
A lot of atheists, from what I see, adopt the morality of their surrounding culture. That morality is often derived from local religious customs. There is nothing wrong with that.
But the introspective atheist recognizes that their personal morality does not come from religion. It is a result of their own experiences, what they were taught, how they feel, who they admire. The lack of religion leaves voids which each of us fills in different ways. In my opinion, the lack of religion, atheism, implies more than just a lack of religious belief, but also a growth of other beliefs which is filled for many people by religion.
In my case, the lack of religion has helped me to understand the unfairness of inequality, and my own privilege, better. I understand the fragility and resilience of life, all life, better. I understand my own mortality better. I understand that the nature of human society, regardless of whether people are religious or not, causes pain without reason. I understand that some of that pain can be alleviated, but at the same time there will always be people who get pleasure from power, so the battle will never end. I fight, in my own small way, for social justice because of my atheism.
But I understand that if your definition of atheism is different than mine you might still reach the same conclusions but not by the same route. There are many paths to fighting for justice.
@flex,
Incidentally, I also have very strong disagreements with your entire approach to talking about religion. I have a reluctance to make sweeping generalizations about a very broad social phenomenon. Is any of that true of all the varieties of Shinto, Buddhism, Confucianism? It seems like… an extravagant narrative. And quite unnecessary as far as the political agenda of the atheist movement went, as they rarely had anything useful to say about eastern religions.
And yeah I know that people in the atheist community made generalizations of this sort all the time. Yeah, and I never liked it. Kind of an example of widespread bad critical thinking among people who espouse critical thinking as a value. It lacks humility, it theorizes about groups of people in absentia, it is a failure to listen to experts on the subject, etc.
@9, Siggy, who wrote,
Fair enough. I’m describing my own reading and experiences, yours will differ. But what I have read of Buddhism and Confucianism suggest that even they teach a moral code. I have not read much Shinto, but what little of what I’ve read suggests the same. But, as you say, there are hundreds of slightly different versions of all of these so it’s certain I haven’t read about all the various sects. So I am making a generalization, but I hope not an unfair one.
I think you are also right to question sweeping generalizations. While in this case, my feeling is that it is justified to say that a core aspect of religion, all religion, is the teaching of morality, I can understand how you (and many others) may think this is too broad a statement. I do not believe that all religious individuals accept/approve of all the moral statements their religion makes, only that part of the definition of religion includes the creation and teaching of a moral code. From which it follows that a person who is not religious does not get training in a religious moral code and must find their morality outside of religion. As I mentioned above, a non-religious person may well get their morality from their local religious community, and I’ll also state that religious people will get some of their morality from non-religious sources. Note that we are now talking about individuals, not religion in general. I would not assume that any individual, religious or not, received their morality from any source. The only way to learn that is to talk to them about it (and most people have never thought about it). My contention is that a core aspect of religion, as a social structure, includes the teaching of morality.
It is also, as you say, unnecessary as far as a political agenda. I am happy to ally with someone religious if we share a common understanding of what needs to be done.
@ Bébé Mélange and jenorafeuer
Yeah, I agree with a lot of what you’re saying. I think the MAGA leaders are cruel and power-hungry, in a way that’s very different from the average Republican voter. For some of the leaders, it *is* true that “the cruelty is the point”, but for some of them, being cruel to minorities is a strategy to make themselves look more powerful, and I don’t think it’s helpful to decribe that as “the cruelty is the point.”
As for what I said about “you have to make the argument”- yeah I don’t want to be like “we are required to make a whole nuanced argument every time we want to vent about something.” I think people on the “other side” have complicated reasons for what they believe, and we shouldn’t talk about them in oversimplified ways, as if they’re just evil for no reason, BUT ALSO I don’t think we have to do the work of *understanding* those reasons. If you’re trying to convince them to change their minds, then you would need to understand their thinking, but if that’s not your goal, then no you don’t really have to.
(But also, I see people in blog comment sections saying “the cruelty is the point” wayyyy more than I think is warranted- I don’t think a good argument *has* been made for applying it to so many situations. This could be related to which blog comment sections I read- I don’t know how much of an overall trend this is.)
I’m just concerned that people on “our side” will have the impression that people on the “other side” are walking around thinking to themselves “I hate women so I’m voting for [whatever bad policy]” or some other one-dimensionally evil thought, and that’s just not realistic at all, and I worry that this makes it so much more difficult to talk to people and let them learn and change their minds, if we assume they believe all these things which they don’t believe. Sure, maybe on *some level* they hate women, but they don’t think of themselves that way.
About “pro-lifers” being hypocritical because they don’t care about babies who are already born- yes, the “pro-life” movement as a whole is really hypocritical about that. (That’s why i use the scare quotes!) The sorts of laws that get passed by “pro-life” politicians and described as “pro-life” laws, they’re all about making it more difficult to get an abortion. Not about, like, valuing life. If you talk to the average “pro-life” voter, they would probably say they also want policies that will help babies who are already born (at least, I grew up conservative Christian and I heard “pro-life” people saying that, back then- but also they were Republicans who didn’t support welfare because, uh, reasons) but the movement as a whole doesn’t prioritize that AT ALL. There’s a real disconnect between the average “pro-life” person and the things that are done by politicians that those average “pro-life” people voted for. To some extent I’ve tried to get them to notice that- pointing out “hey if we had good sex ed and access to health care, that would reduce the number of abortions, and pro-choice politicians are the ones supporting those policies, so maybe vote for them.”
@Lochaber, @Ian King, actually sort of to all of you
As well as being prepared to questions ones own assumptions, one must also be prepared to question any heroes – as jenorafeuer alludes to with Dawkins unquestioning intellectual support isn’t good for anyone as a person or for a movement. We need to be able to separate our ideas from our person or come to that from any movement, as being made up of people movements will make mistakes. Which brings me to the problem of too many people preferring to support the confident over the questioning (which I was sure one of you mentioned, but I can’t now see), to me this is related to the desire of so many for a simple answer to questions that they can remember and so be right. Which is of course the antithesis of always being prepared to question. The ‘heroes’ problem seems to me to be emblematic of that desire for certainty.
And I’ve lost where I was going with all of that.
flex, I expect the typical religion has one or more collections of expected behaviors (some have different expectations from different groups, for instance laypeople vs clergy vs monastics, or men vs women and so forth), but only some of those expected behaviors are related to what we would consider morality, and at least in some cases the religions acknowledge this. For instance, in Judaism many of the rules are acknowledged to be arbitrary (see the various kashrut laws), but they are very important in defining the community.