Sentientism | "Why bad beliefs happen to good people" - Philosopher Neil Levy - Sentientism Ep: 143 @Sentientism | Uploaded February 2023 | Updated October 2024, 1 hour ago.
Neil (sentientism.info/sentientist-pledge/neil-levy) is a professor of philosophy with research interests spanning philosophy of mind, psychology, free will, moral responsibility, epistemology & applied ethics. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics & professor of philosophy at Macquarie University, Sydney. From 2010, he was head of neuroethics at the Florey Institutes of Neuroscience in Melbourne. He has written many papers & books, including “Bad Beliefs: Why They Happen to Good People“.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”
Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The audio is on our Podcast: apple.co/391khQO & https://anchor.fm/sentientism.
We discuss:
00:00 Welcome
- Is Neil a #Sentientist ?
02:05 Neil's Intro
- Perpetual winters between Oxford & Sydney
- Philsophy of applied ethics, free will, epistemology
- Neil's episode on #DecodingTheGurus re: intellectual virtue signalling
03:55 What's Real?
- Brought up #jewish "very much a cultural thing... synagogue twice a year" in #southafrica Africa
- Jewish Saturday school
- Moving to #Australia & attending religious school
- At 11-12 "This doesn't make much sense to me - this god business. I've been a convinced #atheist ever since"
- "Being religious can be perfectly reasonable"
- Subjective rationality "how well are you processing your evidence given where you are?"
- "People are much more rational than we think... even #QAnon supporters... they're completely wrong... but if they believe what they're saying... they're rational given where they start"
- #Trolling & #bullshit
- "We've got lots of evidence people don't believe what they're saying"
- #Determinism & #freewill & "the epistemic condition on responsibility"... "nobody does have that kind of control over their beliefs... they've done the best they can with the evidence available to them"
- "Criticism comes cheap... so does praise"
- "Luck explains so much" constitutive & present luck
- "It gives us more to do... of the sort of things philosophers aren't good at"
- Teaching critical thinking, logic, fallacies "people get better... but they don't get better at using it outside the classroom"
- "In the classroom I give you evidence... they stipulate it... you just accept it"... "But in the real world you're faced with the continual problem... should I trust the evidence?"
- A key reason people don't update beliefs given new evidence is because "they just don't trust the evidence in the first place... and you can formally model why they shouldn't... given what they already believe"
- The "capital punishment views" experiment
- "If somebody shows me a prima facie plausible study showing that... all dogs have 5 legs... I'm going to think... that it's bullshit"
- Bayesianism
- Gullibility, dogmatism, #skepticism
- #QAnon , #Antivaxx , #homeopathy : JW "The same individual is able to be completely gullible when it comes to one set of propositions... at the other extreme can be completely denialistic about another set of sources"
- "I don't like these terms... gullibility, open-mindedness, skepticism,
- Kripke's "Defending Dogmatism" re: #astrology https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemic-paradoxes/
- Climate change denial: "Everyone should dismiss it... except climate change scientists... only if it makes some sort of sense should they engage with it"
- "We've got to rely on domain experts... then we've got to take their word for it... that does leave us vulnerable."
- Lysenkoism in the USSR causing crop failures "telling farmers to do things that didn't work"
- "What we've got to focus on is making sure that the political & social contexts are such that the domain experts can do their stuff"
- Risks of the hubris of experts: "They're lay people on everything else"
- "Have our own domains of expertise and have warranted relations of trust between domains"
- Some sympathy for the antivaxxers & climate change denialists "they can point to reasons why they shouldn't trust... some of those are good reasons"
- Even #vegan atheists aren't automatically right about everything else :)
- "The main reason I believe most of the things I believe is because someone I regard as reliable told me"
- "I think I'm right about lots of stuff - but that's not a reflection of my virtue - that's a reflection of my luck"
- #Moralluck
26:03 What Matters?
- "I'm anti-foundationalist generally" & giving up the idea of absolute certainty
- "I don't think we can have perfect actions"
34:02 Who Matters?
49:07 How Can We Make a Better Future?
... & much more!
#Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all #sentient beings.” More at sentientism.info/. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall sentientism.info/wall/.
Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. E.g.: facebook.com/groups/sentientism.
Neil (sentientism.info/sentientist-pledge/neil-levy) is a professor of philosophy with research interests spanning philosophy of mind, psychology, free will, moral responsibility, epistemology & applied ethics. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics & professor of philosophy at Macquarie University, Sydney. From 2010, he was head of neuroethics at the Florey Institutes of Neuroscience in Melbourne. He has written many papers & books, including “Bad Beliefs: Why They Happen to Good People“.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”
Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The audio is on our Podcast: apple.co/391khQO & https://anchor.fm/sentientism.
We discuss:
00:00 Welcome
- Is Neil a #Sentientist ?
02:05 Neil's Intro
- Perpetual winters between Oxford & Sydney
- Philsophy of applied ethics, free will, epistemology
- Neil's episode on #DecodingTheGurus re: intellectual virtue signalling
03:55 What's Real?
- Brought up #jewish "very much a cultural thing... synagogue twice a year" in #southafrica Africa
- Jewish Saturday school
- Moving to #Australia & attending religious school
- At 11-12 "This doesn't make much sense to me - this god business. I've been a convinced #atheist ever since"
- "Being religious can be perfectly reasonable"
- Subjective rationality "how well are you processing your evidence given where you are?"
- "People are much more rational than we think... even #QAnon supporters... they're completely wrong... but if they believe what they're saying... they're rational given where they start"
- #Trolling & #bullshit
- "We've got lots of evidence people don't believe what they're saying"
- #Determinism & #freewill & "the epistemic condition on responsibility"... "nobody does have that kind of control over their beliefs... they've done the best they can with the evidence available to them"
- "Criticism comes cheap... so does praise"
- "Luck explains so much" constitutive & present luck
- "It gives us more to do... of the sort of things philosophers aren't good at"
- Teaching critical thinking, logic, fallacies "people get better... but they don't get better at using it outside the classroom"
- "In the classroom I give you evidence... they stipulate it... you just accept it"... "But in the real world you're faced with the continual problem... should I trust the evidence?"
- A key reason people don't update beliefs given new evidence is because "they just don't trust the evidence in the first place... and you can formally model why they shouldn't... given what they already believe"
- The "capital punishment views" experiment
- "If somebody shows me a prima facie plausible study showing that... all dogs have 5 legs... I'm going to think... that it's bullshit"
- Bayesianism
- Gullibility, dogmatism, #skepticism
- #QAnon , #Antivaxx , #homeopathy : JW "The same individual is able to be completely gullible when it comes to one set of propositions... at the other extreme can be completely denialistic about another set of sources"
- "I don't like these terms... gullibility, open-mindedness, skepticism,
- Kripke's "Defending Dogmatism" re: #astrology https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemic-paradoxes/
- Climate change denial: "Everyone should dismiss it... except climate change scientists... only if it makes some sort of sense should they engage with it"
- "We've got to rely on domain experts... then we've got to take their word for it... that does leave us vulnerable."
- Lysenkoism in the USSR causing crop failures "telling farmers to do things that didn't work"
- "What we've got to focus on is making sure that the political & social contexts are such that the domain experts can do their stuff"
- Risks of the hubris of experts: "They're lay people on everything else"
- "Have our own domains of expertise and have warranted relations of trust between domains"
- Some sympathy for the antivaxxers & climate change denialists "they can point to reasons why they shouldn't trust... some of those are good reasons"
- Even #vegan atheists aren't automatically right about everything else :)
- "The main reason I believe most of the things I believe is because someone I regard as reliable told me"
- "I think I'm right about lots of stuff - but that's not a reflection of my virtue - that's a reflection of my luck"
- #Moralluck
26:03 What Matters?
- "I'm anti-foundationalist generally" & giving up the idea of absolute certainty
- "I don't think we can have perfect actions"
34:02 Who Matters?
49:07 How Can We Make a Better Future?
... & much more!
#Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all #sentient beings.” More at sentientism.info/. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall sentientism.info/wall/.
Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. E.g.: facebook.com/groups/sentientism.
