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.
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.
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.”
Episode webpage: https://youarenotsosmart.com/2022/05/01/yanss-231-why-we-often-cant-choose-what-we-believe-thanks-to-the-fact-that-certainty-is-a-feeling-and-not-a-conclusion/
Media file: https://stitcher.simplecastaudio.com/aa9f2648-25e9-472a-af42-4e5017da38cf/episodes/2ebb0ed1-f0ae-4f89-a478-8d6ccac52bbd/audio/128/default.mp3?aid=rss_feed&awCollectionId=aa9f2648-25e9-472a-af42-4e5017da38cf&awEpisodeId=2ebb0ed1-f0ae-4f89-a478-8d6ccac52bbd&feed=N5eKDxJI