I want to talk to you today about epistemology.  Epistemology, of course, is that subset of philosophy that concerns itself with the nature and origin of knowledge.  That is, how we know what we know.  Of course, sometimes we only think we know.  And sometimes what we think we know, is in fact rather bizarre.  That leads us to one of the fundamental epistemological questions of our time.  Namely, “Why do people believe weird things, and how might they avoid doing so?”  And that will be the topic of our epistemological explorations this morning.

     Let me start by considering how we know what we think we know.  It all starts with our basic sensory apparatus.  Our physical bodies are designed so as to react differentially to varieties of physical and chemical stimuli present in our surrounding environment.  Our eyes react to variations of light, and so we see.  Our ears react to vibrations of the air, and so we hear.  Our nose and mouth react to the presence of particular types of molecules, and so we smell and taste.  And our entire body reacts to forces impinging on it from outside, and so we feel through the sense of touch.

     All of this provides us with a massive amount of information about the world around us, which our brain then processes and combines into a mental picture of that world.  And so what we “know” about the world results from sensory data filtered through the inferential reasoning processes of our minds.

     Of course that is an oversimplified account.  After all, I know many things that I have not sensed directly.  The development of language – a way of communicating in abstract, symbolic terms – allows us to benefit from the direct experience and reasoning processes of others through interpersonal communication.  But ultimately, our knowledge is rooted in someone’s sensory experience processed through human reason.

     Before I go on, I’d like to raise the question of why we want or need to know anything in the first place.  I guess the simplest answer is that it’s just basic human nature.  We’re naturally curious.  We have a natural drive to understand.  But that doesn’t really tell us much.  Why is that our nature?  One plausible answer is:  survival.  We need to understand our world in order to survive in it.  Otherwise we wouldn’t be here to ask the questions in the first place.

     And so our ability to understand the cause-and-effect way the world works allows us to make sense of things, and to be able to act with a reasonable expectation of the outcomes of our actions.  The more we understand – the more accurate knowledge we have – the more likely we are to make our way successfully through the endless tests and trials that face us every day of our lives.

     I’d like to return now to the first half of my original question.  That is, why do people believe weird things?  Another way of stating the question is, how does our “knowing” go wrong?  Why are we susceptible to making or accepting incorrect inferences?  Why are we gullible?

     One reason, that applies unavoidably at nearly every level, is the lack of complete and unambiguous information.  To begin with, our sensory apparatus samples only a minute portion of the potential information available around us.  The rest is filtered out lest we be totally overwhelmed.  What’s amazing is that we do as well as we do, given that highly limited sampling.

     But, already at the simple perceptual level, those limitations affect us.  Optical illusions illustrate what happens when available information is ambiguous.  You’ve probably all seen some of those, like the reversible staircase, or the lady who can appear either young or old, depending on how you look at her.  And at higher levels of reasoning too, the same sets of facts often lead to different conclusions, mutually exclusive, yet each consistent with the incomplete facts.

     One of the best tools we humans have come up with for testing conclusions or claims is science.  Scientific method provides ways of analyzing information with the specific goal of testing claims.  One concise definition of science is “the systematic enterprise of gathering knowledge about the world and organizing and condensing that knowledge into testable laws and theories.” [Voodoo Science, Robert Park, p. 198]  Through observation, induction, deduction, forming and testing hypotheses, and verification, scientists aim to increase objective knowledge, basing conclusions appropriately on external validation.  But even those who attempt to reason scientifically are susceptible to error.

     That leads us to another whole category of how we can go wrong in our quest to understand the world.  And that’s faulty reasoning.  Even with sufficient data and a belief in science, we may often draw bogus conclusions.  In the book, Why People Believe Weird Things, which was the primary inspiration for this sermon,  Michael Shermer discusses twenty-five fallacies that can lead our thinking astray.  I won’t take time to talk about all twenty-five, but would like to mention a few of the common problems with our thinking.

     First, anecdotes – stories told in support of some claim – do not make science.  Anecdotes are told by fallible human storytellers, and without corroborating evidence from other sources, are of limited value.  An example here would be stories of encounters with, or abductions by, extraterrestrial aliens.  Lacking additional evidence – especially physical evidence of the aliens or their spacecraft – many of us find the stories unconvincing.  But a sincere, impassioned story may be persuasive.

     Next, scientific language doesn’t make science.  An explanation of psychic phenomena in terms of quantum physics, for example, means nothing unless accompanied by specific evidence in the form of experimental testing and corroboration.

     Here’s one I like: heresy does not equal correctness.  This one may be a danger to those of us who are proud of being heretics. “They laughed at Copernicus.  They laughed at the Wright brothers.”  And look at who had the last laugh.  Nineteenth century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once  wrote: “All truth passes through three stages.  First, it is ridiculed.  Second, it is violently opposed.  Third, it is accepted as self-evident.”  A grain of truth, perhaps.  But alas, being laughed at or ridiculed is no guarantee of being right.

     Then there is the problem of rumors being confused with reality.  A common form of rumor today is the urban legend.  Urban legends have been with us for years, but seem to have gained strength and momentum with the increasing use of email.  You know the kind of story I’m talking about.  Like the one about the two students who got back late from a ski trip and missed their final exam in chemistry.  They told their professor that they had gotten a flat tire, so he gave them a makeup final the next day.  Placing the students in separate rooms, he asked them just two questions: 1) “For 5 points, what is the chemical formula for water?”, and 2) “For 95 points, which tire?”
 

     Some of the rumors that have been around for years and refuse to die are:

· The secret ingredient in Dr. Pepper is prune juice.
· A woman accidentally killed her poodle by drying it in a microwave oven.
· Giant alligators live in the sewers of New York City.
· George Washington had wooden teeth.
· A flying saucer crashed in New Mexico and the bodies of the extra-terrestrials are hidden in an Air Force warehouse.

    Another common fallacy is after-the-fact reasoning, also known by its Latin name: post hoc, ergo propter hoc, which means literally, “after this, therefore because of this.”  We sometimes forget that correlation does not imply causation.

    Yet another common error is hasty generalization, drawing conclusions before the facts warrant it.  This error causes and reinforces prejudice.  A handful of members of a group are used to judge the entire group.  This is an instance of working from insufficient data.

    We might also make the mistake of judging the merits of a particular claim based on who is making the claim.  We’re more likely to accept the pronouncements of a Nobel laureate than those of a discredited scam artist.  But a Nobel laureate may be wrong, especially outside his or her area of expertise. And a scam artist may, at least occasionally, be right.  In order to judge fairly, we need to examine the evidence.

    A final error that I would like to add is wishful thinking.  We may occasionally be susceptible to a questionable idea just because we really wish it were true.  In fact, the world would be a more attractive place if it were true.  An example of this, for me, would be the “Hundredth Monkey” phenomenon.  In the 1950’s, supposedly, Japanese scientists gave potatoes to monkeys on Koshima Island.  One day one of the monkeys learned to wash the potatoes, and taught this skill to others.  When about a hundred monkeys had learned the skill – the so-called critical mass – suddenly all the monkeys knew it, even those on other islands hundreds of miles away, apparently through the establishment of some sort of collective consciousness.

    Based on this idea, various groups, including proponents of Transcendental Meditation, have proposed getting enough people to meditate at the same time so as to form a critical mass, and thereby induce a significant planetary change in consciousness.  I find that a very attractive idea.  But alas, my wishing it does not make it so.  I’ll have to keep trying to make change the old fashioned way: by actually doing something.

     Given all the ways of going wrong in judging the validity of all sorts of stories and claims, where is the hope?  How can we best avoid being sucked in by those who would exploit our gullibility?  I would propose that our best hope is a healthy skepticism.  Michael Shermer, who is incidentally the publisher of Skeptic magazine and the director of the Skeptics Society, defines a skeptic as “one who questions the validity of a particular claim by calling for evidence to prove or disprove it.”

     The greatest tool of skepticism I have already talked about: that is, scientific method and thinking.  But the healthy skeptic must beware of falling prey to the fallacies that I’ve been talking about.  Giving lip service to science isn’t the same as practicing it responsibly.

    The healthy skeptic must also keep in mind the limitations of skepticism itself.  As Shermer puts it, “The flaw in pure skepticism is that when taken to an extreme, the position itself cannot stand.  If you are skeptical about everything, you must be skeptical of your own skepticism.”  And so skepticism has the potential of leading us into the abyss of intellectual paralysis, void of any positive beliefs or convictions.

    I return once again to one of my perennial themes: balance.  When it comes to trying to figure out what to believe or not believe, there are two types of errors we can make.  A Type 1 error is believing a falsehood.  A Type 2 error is rejecting a truth.  The trick is to minimize both Type 1 and 2 errors.  The extreme skeptic will be great at rejecting falsehood (thus avoiding Type 1 errors), but will likely dismiss many truths along the way (thus making Type 2 errors).  On the other hand, the extremely gullible will accept everything that’s true, but will also be saddled with many false beliefs as well.

    The best hope, then, is a balanced skepticism, which seeks out as much information as is available, is careful to avoid fallacies of reasoning, and is humble enough to acknowledge when a definite conclusion is just not possible.  If sufficient information is lacking, even a skeptic may choose to believe. The key is to be open to new information – to be open to being proved wrong, or at least not completely right.

    When it comes to religion, the kinds of questions we ask may well not be answerable to the satisfaction of a skeptic – even a healthy, balanced one.  As such, even a staunch skeptic may base religious belief on something other than intellectual rigor.  Martin Gardner, one of the best known of skeptics, considers himself a philosophical theist, or a fideist.  He explains:
 

Fideism refers to believing something on the basis of faith, or emotional reasons rather than intellectual reasons.  As a fideist I don’t think there are any arguments that prove the existence of God or the immortality of the soul. . . If you have strong emotional reasons for metaphysical belief and it’s not sharply contradicted by science or logical reasoning, you have a right to make a leap of faith if it provides sufficient satisfaction.

    One of the tests that I use when forced to take a position based on insufficient data is to consider which type of error is likely to have the greater negative consequences.  This is the exact problem faced by our criminal justice system.  Is it worse to imprison an innocent person, or to let a guilty one go free?  Is it worse to execute an innocent person, or to let a guilty one live?  Those broader meta-questions need to be considered along with the degree of certainty concerning innocence or guilt.

    And so I commend to you this morning, for your consideration, skepticism as an antidote for gullibility, but not as an excuse for avoiding belief and conviction and action.  I commend a skepticism tempered by humility, by an openness to new ideas, and by a quest for balance.

     In closing, I’d like to share an excerpt from a 1987 lecture by Carl Sagan, titled “The Burden of Skepticism”:
 

    It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas.  If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you.  You never learn anything new.  You become a crotchety old person convinced that nonsense is ruling the world.  (There is, of course, much data to support you.)

     On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish useful ideas from the worthless ones.  If all ideas have equal validity then you are lost, because then, it seems to me, no ideas have any validity at all.

 May we each strive to find the balance between skepticism and openness, cherishing our doubts, not for their own sake, but as the acid that will eat away the false, and leave standing a stronger and more secure truth.

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