86. Cognitive Biases & the Socratic Method | THUNK 

+Drew Copenhaver Wow, thank you, that's very flattering. I'm also happy to know you got something useful, too!

Wow. I'm honored! Thank you! :D

+String.Epsilon I was rather proud of that one. ;) Thanks! I hope I can keep knocking 'em dead!

THUNK If you'd sell a THUNK-shirt with that joke, I'll buy it. :P

+Igor Gdula Wow, thank you so much! That really means a lot to me. :)

+Caffa Jake The most fantastic resource for learning philosophy in the whole wide world (besides a competent college prof) is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The articles are well-written, thorough, & remarkably concise summaries of huge cross-sections of human thought. plato.stanford.edu/

THUNK Thank you, what practical steps do you think would be beneficial as part of an introduction to philosophy? and would there be specific (non-contextual) books to read in the beginning of reading philosophy? Thanks for the advice.

+Caffa Jake Take your time to think about stuff and understand it fully. And don't clamber to align yourself with any particular school of thought. The richness of philosophy (at least for me) lies in understanding *why* a bunch of very smart people have believed one interpretation or another of the world & our place in it, not in figuring out which house to sort yourself into. ;) As for books, it depends on what you're interested in. Do you have any particular branch of philosophy that interests you?

+THUNK I'm really interested in nature of human behaviour, especially in the modern day and social contract and continental philosophy. I also really like the appeal of rhetoric, logic and critical thinking in allowing you to justify and reevaluate your opinions and thoughts more accurately :)

+THUNK And Philosophy of Mind I should have added :)

+Jose Vera Cruz This is just a show appreciation for your appreciation comment. ;) I'm so happy you find the show a useful supplement to your education! Thank you!

Insightful lessons. Thanks

+tigerbalm ks Thanks!

+Canadian Apistevist This doesn't end the line of questioning though. You can easily continue on to "Do things that you have faith in always come to pass?"

nutyorerimed I know one could go further, that's not what I mean by a stumbling block. What I mean is that it is a common point of convergence of many different beliefs.

What word would you use?

Hypothesis

+ja524309 That's why I am here. Woohoo for reddit.

+James Heritage I'm glad you brought this up! We absolutely can't - the historicity of Socrates is definitely debatable. We probably won't ever know for sure. (Kind of appropriate, don't you think? ;) )

+THUNK File it next to the start trek transporter problem then.

+TheLacedaemonian300 - well put. Cubbies are stacked n we're taking it this year ;)

Rangers fan here, bump for the nice prediction!

Trigg Clark Thanks man! I totally forgot that I even made this comment.

haha now if only you bet a bunch of money on it

I think the point is that all these natural biases lead you to jump on conclusions that might seem right to you at first but as you pick them further apart by asking more questions you see where these ideas or thoughts lack of rational explanation.

+Roshkin I think the socratic method brings to light the biases one might have. Biases are usually so ingrained in us, that we might not be aware of them

I guess I'm failing to grasp why this works? Wouldn't you just answer the questions with your biases?

+Roshkin It could be argued the Socratic method is simply the product of cultural values people adopting it were brought up in, so is a bias itself. Fortunately there is a 3000 years old method which we can use instead, it's called empiricism. We use trial and error and test our beliefs. Who will win a football match? We play the football match and then we have an accurate factual answer.

Yeah I was thinking empericism would be a better approach.

+Peterson Silva I know the general idea, but I can't say I've read it yet. I'll definitely give it a look! I think we can only guess what Socrates actually hoped to accomplish with his method (if he actually existed as more than a literary device of Plato). In my opinion, the method is at its best when used as an instrument of rigor, clarification, & examination rather than "trolling." If Plato's representations of him are to be believed, although it's generally clear that Socrates has an agenda, it seems like a stretch to claim that his goal is solely to rile people up. I'm not sure what you mean by comparing the method as stated to Popper - could you clarify?

You know, I'm no epistemology expert, so correct me if I'm wrong, but after Popper the main goal of scientific inquiry and research in general became "testing" theories negatively to see what stands at the end as true instead of positively building proof of correctness. And that seems to be what you're describing here as the benefit to socrates' method; the fact that we get our assumptions and question them in order to strengthen them... Or discard them if they don't hold water. Granted, popper is talking about science and socrates, philosophy, but still :)

+Peterson Silva I don't think I ever mentioned discarding them. I agree that if we were asking questions simply to discover logical inconsistencies in a theory & thereby refute it, it'd be very similar, but I don't remember any Socratic dialogue which ends with Socrates shouting "HA! So stuff it!" It might be the word "theory" that's misleading - that's on me. I can see parallels between the two, but not all beliefs about the world are defined scientifically (not necessarily a bad thing). The Socratic method is more about elucidation than outright refutation, IMO. We might decide we don't like the implications of some belief & bin it, but I think the exercise of figuring out what those implications are is just as important as what we decide to do with them.

THUNK But is that distinction meaningful, though? Elucidation x refutation. Can elucidation reach a point at which you find a blatant inconsistency with what you're thinking (be it a "theory" or not), but you still want to hold on to it, and that is somewhat a noble objective? Isn't that why we hold Donald Drumpf supporters accountable of when they're shown how contradictory he is and they still vote for him?

THUNK Of course the distinction is meaningful in case elucidation _doesn't_ bring up an inconsistency... It is a different process. But when it doesn, shouldn't the two have the same outcome? And even if Socrates never said "So stuff it", wasn't that his goal? Do you think he would be OK with finding out somehing's not quite reight but still believing it? If he were, he'd have said he knew something about anything (because he chose to ignore the inconsistencies). But he couldn't ignore them, and as a consequence couldn't believe he knew anything, hence he said he knew he didn't know anything.

+Jason Diagorgano I hear you. I felt like there was a hole in my Critical Thinking series that I wanted to patch up - I think this is the purest form of the message of rigor I can manage (with the added bonus of differentiating genuine Socratic inquiry from the argumentative tactic of drowning opposition in questions). It's somewhat appropriate that I'd want to revisit rigor over and over, no? ;) But I think I nailed it here. I'm sure I'll be asking people to "think twice" in future episodes, but this is probably the last one explicitly about such.