Rational beliefs should be able to withstand scrutiny and opposing arguments. The inability to do so indicates that the belief is more about personal bias and emotional investment rather than objective analysis.
This is nonsense. Arguments can exist even if you don’t know them or if you are unable to formulate them.
You are mixing up the pure existence of arguments with the personal ability to formulate such arguments.
How ‘emotion’ suddenly appears in your logic is beyond understanding. (Did you mean ‘intuition’ maybe? Please look up ‘intuition’ right now)
This is not unpopular nor is this an opinion
This is literally the process of falsification in the scientific method.
Doesn’t seem to be very popular
Well this is the internet.
What OP says is not a hot take at all. In reality this is the default way the brain works and is biologically ingrained. I’m interested in cognitive science and do read and listen to podcasts about how we think. Here’s a good podcast episode exploring this idea:
You Are Not So Smart: 231 - On Being Certain - Robert Burton
In this episode, we sit down with neurologist Robert Burton, author of On Being Certain, a book that fundamentally changed the way I think about what a belief actually is. That’s because the book posits that conclusions are not conscious choices and certainty is not even a thought process. Certainty and similar states of “knowing,” as he puts it, are “sensations that feel like thoughts, but arise out of involuntary brain mechanisms that function independently of reason.”
What’s the sincere counter-argument to this belief?
I posted it below already
Counter-argument for this would be that some deeply held ethical convictions might be difficult to argue against because they are based on fundamental values that many consider non-negotiable. These beliefs can be rational, yet difficult to counter without feeling a profound moral dissonance. “Don’t litter” would be a good example that’s really difficult to honestly argue against.
I believe gravity is real.
I just can’t come up with a sincere counter-argument.
I must be extremely biased and emotional.
I guess I’m emotional about whether I should breathe oxygen or not.
That’s not exactly what I mean by belief and you know it.
Speaking of sincere counter-arguments…
I think I’d settle for having actual, preferably objective reasons for one’s argument to indicate a reasoned position. If someone says I believe the moon landing didn’t happen because of the direction of the shadows, then that’s a reasoned position in this sense I’m talking about. After all, we can reason ourselves into incorrect beliefs.
The function of drumming up counter-arguments against your own argument is to identify weaknesses. Merely asking the question of, “How are shadows expected to work on the moon anyway?” suggests that one’s disbelief in the moon landing may be taking something for granted.
The difference between a reasonable person and someone driven by emotion is how they handle the discrepancy between their incorrectly reasoned argument and reasoned counter-arguments. Basically, the reasonable person must consider the counter argument, or at least not reject it out of hand.
On the other hand, as Hume said, reason is driven by emotions. So, the difference between the two may be an illusion to begin with.
I perhaps worded the title a little poorly. I’m effectively arguing for steelmanning: if you have a view on a certain topic and thus disagree with the view of someone else, then for the very least you should be capable of repeating back to them their own argument in a way that they agree with. This way you’re demonstrating that you actually understood what they said rather than disagreeing with the strawman version of their argument. If one is uncapable of presenting in an honest way any such opposing views to that of their own then there’s a good likelihood that they actually haven’t considered alternative views but instead landed on it for mostly emotional and intuitive reasons.
This mostly applies to topics of which there is a significant amount of disagreement about as well as fringe views going against the mainstream. Such consideration is less important when talking about facts that there’s a broad consensus on.
An example would be a person opposing a political movement but when asked to list some of the stated goals of said movement they then fail to do so. How can one oppose something they don’t even understand?
Counter-argument for this would be that some deeply held ethical convictions might be difficult to argue against because they are based on fundamental values that many consider non-negotiable. These beliefs can be rational, yet difficult to counter without feeling a profound moral dissonance. “Don’t litter” would be a good example that’s really difficult to honestly argue against.
I like this take.
Absolute horseshit.
What’s the counterargument to the belief that nothing exists outside of nature, that religion is a bunch of fairy tales?
If something did exist outside of nature, there’s no reason you should be able to know about it. Rules of logic wouldn’t necessarily apply and it is not something you could reliably apply statistics to.
This is handwaving bullshit. You’re basically saying “it’s magic shit inconsistent with everything we understand from empirical observation or theoretical frameworks”.
Yes, you’ve got it. And it is hand waving bullshit that I absolutely do not agree with, but if you can’t incorporate the fact that it’s a real thing that a reasonable person can believe then you are under-thinking it.
You are underthinking the definition of reasonable. How can it be reasonable and handwaving bullshit?
Because it’s not reasonable, the person is. A person can be reasonable without holding all reasonable beliefs. I’m willing to bet you have misconceptions about the concept of simultaneity that would not hold up if you learned the math behind special relativity, but it doesn’t make you unreasonable because you haven’t learned the niche weird stuff that happens near the speed of light. just assume that things happen in a certain order because that’s what it seems like and don’t worry that they can happen in a different order for someone in a different inertial frame of reference.
LOL, bro, is your actual counter to this putting on the fedora and flexing the neckbeard as hard as you can?
Religion is clearly rubbish! How can you argue against that!
If you were actually an atheist of any caliber, you would be familiar with apologetics enough to not be so dismissive in an inadvertently hilarious manner.
Christ. This really is Reddit.
Wonderful observation.
It’s really our duty to be familiar with both sides and be ready to debate.
Of course, exception guy will be in the thread pointing out extreme edge cases in which we all agree that there is no alternative to the accepted opinion (“R*pe is bad, mmkay?”)… But this is besides the point.
In that case a counter argument is to appeal to the predator not knowing what he/she was doing which can happen. However it does not make the act of ruining a person’s life justifiable and the predator should be held accountable.
Everybody makes mistakes, but mistakes on this level are still bad.
I believe the sun will rise tomorrow and if I said to you I had a sincere counterargument I’d be lying.
Pardon me for being utterly emotional about things I guess lol.
This is a good example showing OP was being too broad. I like the sentiment but think they should limit it to topics for which there is a sizable amount of genuine dissent (meaning we don’t have to invent an argument for an hypothetical unreasonable contrarian) and that aren’t easily demonstrably falsifiable (meaning we are covering opinions and theories, not matters of objective fact).
OP likely was meaning to apply this to controversial social policies or philosophical questions exploring what values people prioritize. Too often loud voices demonize “the other side” and dismiss them out of hand with strawmen.
Sunrise is a matter of perspective though and I don’t think it is a very well refined scientific explanation of a broad set evidence. Ask a polar bear or an emporer penguin at this time of year. Or consider the majority of places in our solar system.
that’s a hypothetical, not a counterargument.
yes if i lived in one of the polar circles the sun may not rise. but i don’t live there.
this whole thread just needs a dictionary and some tea. buncha ppl stressing out and arguing semantics about pretty well-defined terms.
An asteroid or a rogue planet that we somehow failed to detect could collide with the earth, stopping its rotation. Unlikely but not impossible.
that’s a hypothetical, not a counterargument
