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Episode 47: Street Epistemology with Mark Solomon
45 Plays1 year ago
Everyone has a set of beliefs. Increasingly, it seems like we wonder how so many people can hold opposite or contradictory beliefs -- puzzling if we think there's an objective reality. We have a great conversation with Mark Solomon, a clinical psychologist and the host of the Being Reasonable podcast, about Street Epistemology, a conversational method of probing why we believe what we believe.
https://www.beingreasonableshow.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@BeingReasonable
Special Guest: Mark Solomon.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction of Episode and Guest
00:00:09
Speaker
Welcome to Cognation. I'm your host, Rolf Nelson. And I'm Joe Hardy. On today's episode, we're talking to Dr. Mark Solomon, who's a licensed clinical psychologist.
What is Street Epistemology?
00:00:21
Speaker
And he's going to talk to us today about a technique called street epistemology. So we'll learn a little bit more about what street epistemology is all about and what some of the purposes of it are.
00:00:33
Speaker
how it can be applied.
Beginning the Practice of Street Epistemology
00:00:34
Speaker
Welcome to the show, Mark Solomon. Thanks for being with us. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here and talk to two fellow psychologists about the dialectic I'm practicing. Awesome. So street epistemology, maybe words that people are not necessarily familiar with. So what do we mean when we are talking about street epistemology?
00:00:56
Speaker
Yeah, that's an excellent question. An excellent question to start off with is that street epistemology is two parts of the word. Epistemology really means the study of how do you know what you know? How do people gain the knowledge that they believe that they have? And that's really in a nutshell what epistemology is, is the study of knowledge. And with
00:01:19
Speaker
the street aspect of it, all that means is epistemology for the lay person. Epistemology, you know, in use for someone who is on the street and wants to practice discussing how do you know what you know. And before we get into some of the details of that, so how was it that you got into this practice or found it to be a useful way of thinking?
00:01:43
Speaker
Yeah, another good question. The way I fell into it, it was really around 2016, and it was around the time. It was actually shortly after the elections we had in our country, and I was feeling actually pretty down. I was feeling down and worried and concerned and actually a bit fearful about where our country was and where it was heading.
The Role of Street Epistemology in Belief Examination
00:02:07
Speaker
The way I was looking at it, and it appears with how you guys are looking at it as well, is that I saw that we were kind of in two different camps, two different silos. And we had these sets of beliefs in our country that were just vastly different from each other.
00:02:25
Speaker
And it seemed like one silo couldn't even have a discussion with the other silo because for whatever reason, maybe it was, um, we were using different epistemologies to come up with our beliefs or for whatever reason, we couldn't have that discussion. And I wanted a way to bridge that gap. I wanted to, it was kind of a, for me, it was, I wanted to think I was doing something that was helping the situation. And that's when I was, I think I was just surfing.
00:02:55
Speaker
the internet and I was on YouTube and I came across a Gentleman named Anthony magnabasco and another gentleman named read nice wonder who were practicing a dialectic called street epistemology And I was I saw in action I saw them talking to people with with all sorts of beliefs and having them self-examine their beliefs and how they know or purport to know what they knew and I was I was kind of Florida how powerful that
00:03:25
Speaker
Dialectic was in.
00:03:28
Speaker
the examination of one's belief.
Introducing the 'Being Reasonable' Podcast
00:03:30
Speaker
And even to the point where after a conversation, a street epistemology conversation, people would maybe change their confidence in their belief some, which when other people have discussions about beliefs, especially in formats like debate and things like that, they rarely see that happen. In fact, after walking away from a debate with someone with a different belief, that person seemed to be even more entrenched in their belief
00:03:56
Speaker
than they were before they even started having the conversation. So I thought maybe they were onto something and that's when I started my podcast to kind of explore that on my own. Yeah, and you've been doing this for a few years now and you have a great collection of examples of street epistemology on your podcast and I don't think I mentioned that yet. So your podcast is called Being Reasonable. That's right. So being reasonable, you can find it on the podcast
00:04:25
Speaker
It's a podcast you can play on any platform you'd want. And also, more recently, I've been doing more YouTube videos, and I'm kind of been gravitating more towards that, mostly because that's where the street epistemology community is. But also, it's better to see these kind of conversations when you can actually look at the conversation, actually have two people looking at each other, having these very difficult conversations about beliefs, which actually they aren't difficult, that conversation when you're having a street epistemology conversation.
00:04:53
Speaker
not in the same sense when you're just having a debate about it. Because it really should be a non-threatening conversation. It should be very pleasant. You've developed a really good rapport with the person, hopefully. And you're really on a journey with that other person to examine the belief they want to discuss. And you really try to nail or drill down to the reasons they have for believing the belief or those seem to be reliable reasons for that belief.
Clinical Psychology and Street Epistemology
00:05:23
Speaker
Now your background particularly is in clinical psychology. So you may be a little more equipped to just jump out and sort of manage these kinds of things than your average person who might jump into it. Is there anything that you've learned on how to
00:05:41
Speaker
And like you said, I think really important to keep people with you and not seem like a divisive thing. So any techniques that help in keeping, well, first we wouldn't say opponent because it's not, it wouldn't be like a verbal spar, I suppose. Partner. Partner. Yeah. Your conversational partner. Are there ways to keep your conversational partner engaged and
00:06:05
Speaker
and not defensive about some of the positions they may have. Yeah, that's excellent. Because you don't want defensiveness in a conversation like this, because defensiveness is a killer of these sorts of conversations, especially if you want to discuss a belief where someone may choose to lower a raise or confidence level on the belief by the end of the conversation. Defensiveness is never helpful.
00:06:31
Speaker
I don't know how much being a psychologist has helped with these conversations except for rapport building. When you're a psychologist, a clinical psychologist, probably the first thing they teach you day one in clinical psychology school is basically how to develop rapport with somebody, how to reflect people's statements they say to you, and how to
00:06:58
Speaker
be non-judgmental and have those sorts of conversations, which after a practice with a psychologist probably does become second nature, but maybe not as much for other people who aren't used to having those kinds of conversations. But it's really just you're learning how to have these very having conversations in a non-judgmental, very positive manner. I guess Rogerian psychology would probably be the best way to describe it.
00:07:23
Speaker
Yeah. And that's one of the first things that I had thought of is that comparison to Rosarian psychology too. And I don't know if our listeners are all familiar with that. I was thinking about cognitive behavioral therapy in terms of, you know, thinking about questioning your beliefs, you know, examining your beliefs. Is that true?
00:07:40
Speaker
What would the consequences be if that were true? That sort of work. Yes. That's an excellent point, Joe. A lot of street epistemology is definitely aligned with cognitive behavioral therapy and how that is performed.
Demonstrating Street Epistemology: A Mock Conversation
00:07:56
Speaker
and what you said about the examination of beliefs, but also there's aspect of street epistemology where you set up these kind of hypothetical tests where people can perform on themselves to see if, you know, reality testing of what their belief is, what they believe about the universe is true or not. And that's very, also very much aligned with cognitive behavioral therapy as well. True.
00:08:19
Speaker
Yeah, cool. I wonder if it would make sense to try to go into a little demonstration of this in the context of this group. Maybe you could work with one of us to do this. I was talking with Rolf earlier yesterday, and I was thinking about myself. I'm like, I don't know. I don't have a lot of
00:08:38
Speaker
deeply held beliefs in that sense. I mean, I get and I was thinking about that from an epistemological standpoint, I guess, I think I'm a pragmatist, maybe, in terms of my epistemology. So basically meaning that, you know, I think of knowledge in terms of its power and utility rather than, you know, I don't really have, I'm not a skeptic in the sense that I think that this is possible to know things, but I don't, I don't have like super deeply held beliefs that I would
00:09:06
Speaker
you know, die on the hill on that many, I guess. Maybe I'm not aware of them. I'm sure I do have them, I guess. Maybe I'm not aware of them. I think you're telling me that you have beliefs, but provided with the kind of information that you would require to change your beliefs, you'd be willing to change your beliefs. I think I'm saying something a little bit stronger, actually, which is that I actually don't. I sort of constitutionally, but then I think also intellectually
00:09:36
Speaker
actively don't hold beliefs.
00:09:40
Speaker
I have, I update my prior, I have a set of, well, I have a set of prior weights on concepts, right? And then those weightings are updated somewhat continuously. And if I were to ask you, when you say you don't have beliefs, like what, in your mind, what is the definition of a belief then for you, would you say? Yeah, good question. Yeah, I guess in terms of that, what I'm really thinking is along the lines of someone, when someone says they believe in God,
00:10:07
Speaker
I don't believe in God or not believe in God. I believe that, for example, the fact that there are many different types of religions and some of them are mutually exclusive is good evidence that they can't all be true. And then therefore that there is probably at most one true belief in that regards. And then it's very unlikely that any one of the existing religions
00:10:36
Speaker
captures that belief correctly. Interesting. Yeah, that's your point. And Rolf, are you seeing it the same way? Yeah, I'm thinking, I mean, I do tend to think like Joe in that way that I don't feel like I have as many strong beliefs that I would die on the hill for. And I'm sure I do have strongly held beliefs that are maybe not entirely supported by the evidence. It's hard to sometimes
00:11:03
Speaker
Um, maybe they're, maybe they're latent, right? They're underlying certain, uh, decisions that you kind of make. It's part of being human, isn't it? It's just, uh, we have these sets of beliefs. We're not kind of like software operating in our brain and we don't even know. We don't even realize that there, we have these assumptions. Um, and, uh, and how we go about our lives sometimes trying to confirm these assumptions without even knowing it, you know, how we can't even so difficult to stand back from them.
00:11:33
Speaker
And if we want to do a mock street epistemology conversation, sometimes what I would do would be like, is the earth round or flat? Because there's a kind of a dichotomous belief there, either it's round or it's flat. And it just makes it very easy to discuss as opposed to something that's more maybe abstract, like a deity. So sometimes those are good conversations to have just to showcase what a street epistemology conversation looks like.
00:12:02
Speaker
if we were sort of getting to the core of my beliefs, and say I was a round earther, say I didn't believe in flat earth theory, and I still needed to confront this a bit. So how would something like that go about? Okay, so if you are a... So this is kind of interesting about this technique of street epistemology. Anybody can use it. There's no... Nobody owns it. You can be a flat earther and use this technique to discuss, to talk to someone who believes in round earth.
00:12:32
Speaker
And, uh, or you could be a round earther and use this technique who's with somebody who believes in a flat earth. Anybody can use the technique and because it's, if it's, it should be, um, not about the person, it's about the, the, the, the belief and how we can drill down to the epistemology behind the belief. And so if you were a round earther.
00:12:55
Speaker
Okay, so I'll state that right now. So I am a round earther and that's the belief. Yeah, there you go. I guess I do have some beliefs, right? Because I also agree with that. Right, right. And so if you're a round earther and after we established rapport and we're all seem to be driving well together and sometimes I'll need to get a definition.
00:13:16
Speaker
Um, about, uh, you know, first of all, I need to understand the claim, your belief about what you mean by round earth, but I think we can pass that. I think I know what you mean by the claim. And also I'd want to know your definitions. If we need to kind of iron out any of your definitions of things I don't understand or things that people might have different definitions about, but this is pretty straightforward. So then once we get past that, then I'd want to ask you, what is the main reason?
00:13:44
Speaker
or reasons, what is the primary reason why you believe the belief that the earth is round? And even, I mean, that's a good thing for, that feels like an instructive thing to just think about, well, duh, it's so obvious, you know, everybody knows that, but okay, is that where the source of your belief is coming from? What is it? Like, why do you believe it?
00:14:09
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I would say you have to think about it for a second. You can believe the earth is round for many different reasons. You can believe the earth is round because your parents believe it. And they told you that. Well, that's a very different reason from someone else who has, I mean, it could have very different reason why someone else believes the belief.
00:14:25
Speaker
Yeah, I'm thinking about it for myself. I definitely felt like as I examine that really the reason I believe it as I was taught that in school. I mean, fundamentally, like when I was a child, I was taught that the earth was round. And that's that's I mean, I never actively questioned it beyond that. It's interesting that you're thinking about it like, wait, how do I why do I believe that? We just sometimes we assume the belief we assume it.
00:14:51
Speaker
And Rolf, would you say why you believe the Earth is round? What would you say? It seems as though I've seen pictures of around Earth. It appears as though
00:15:11
Speaker
around Earth is... You've seen pictures that are... I've seen a globe. They're circles, right? I've seen pictures that are circles. I've seen globes. That's not the same thing as round. I've traveled what I assume... I mean, I've been in a plane, so I don't see everything. So, you know, this could be consistent with a flat Earth too, but I've traveled to places where it seems as though I've gone around the globe. Perfect.
00:15:40
Speaker
You know, you can, you know, I guess I've tested, you know, looking out at the ocean, you can see the the sails come up from a boat. Of all those reasons, and there seem to be really value coming up with a series of reasons, like you've seen pictures, you've seen the horizon, you've been taught it in school, of all those reasons in
00:16:05
Speaker
this might be difficult for you to answer. If you were to choose one of those reasons that may be the primary reason how you know what you know, what would you say, do you think? I think to be honest on this one, it's almost an appeal to authority. It's almost an appeal to sort of a general consensus. Okay. Not something that I've had time to sort of empirically test myself.
00:16:32
Speaker
This is really interesting. It seems so consistent with so many other beliefs or so many other facts that it seems to accommodate that. This is great. This is wonderful. This is really going to show how street epistemology works. And before I get into that, something you said I don't want to get too far away from is that you said, I hadn't really thought about it, but it seems so obvious to me. You said something along those lines.
00:17:02
Speaker
I bet you could imagine me having a conversation with someone who believes, let's say, in a particular deity and they say the same thing that, I don't know, it just seems so obvious to me without having to explore their epistemology. And it's interesting that you said that because oftentimes people say, well, it's just so obvious without thinking, well, wait, how do I know what I know? And so with you, you said that there was maybe an appeal to authority
00:17:32
Speaker
was maybe the primary way you know what you know. And so maybe I would ask you, there's many ways you can go here, but sometimes you can use a thought experiment. For example, let's say Tony is sitting next to you and Tony, let's say believes that the earth is flat. He really has a high confidence
00:17:56
Speaker
that it's flat and we haven't talked about confidence levels yet, but let's just say he has a high confidence level that is flat and you have a high confidence level that the earth is round. And when I asked Tony, how does he believe?
00:18:08
Speaker
the earth is flat, he says, well, he appeals to authority. He says that, well, an authoritative figure told him that. And so I would want to know, I would ask you, do you think how Tony has come to his belief, is that a reliable way to know that his belief that the earth is flat is true?
00:18:32
Speaker
And I would say, no, I don't think an appeal to authority is
Exploring Confidence Levels in Beliefs
00:18:39
Speaker
something that would justify that belief. So now we're starting our, we're starting to treat epistemology. We're talking about how people know what they know, the reasons behind what they believe, and are those reliable reasons to have that belief? And one thing we didn't really discuss
00:19:00
Speaker
But we're discussing now are these things called confidence levels is that people can hold beliefs very confidently. Like usually I like to use a Likert scale, like seven out of seven, or people might hold onto a belief not very tightly at all. Oftentimes when I do talk to people who are flat earthers or round earthers, they're usually seven out of seven. But people can be all arrayed a whole different range about that. And that can also steer the conversation about the kinds of conversations we have as well.
00:19:31
Speaker
So back to the conversation. So then I would want to know, so it seems like appeal authority might not be the best way for Tony to know what he knows that the earth is flat. I'm wondering what would be maybe the second best way Tony could know what he knows, like what would be another way if we were to have a conversation of Tony, how he could know what he knows.
00:19:59
Speaker
So sure, then I guess I would say maybe the best way for Tony to know is to integrate empirical facts into this, to take all the information that we have, what we know about astronomy, what we know about all of these other things, and how does one theory or the other fit with the facts best? Yeah.
00:20:24
Speaker
So now you're talking about a very different way of knowing is that I think you're talking about science or the science that seems to be behind that the earth is round or sciences you've interpreted it. And you could talk to me about different aspects of science. And then maybe I would ask you questions like, well, if
00:20:50
Speaker
all of a sudden we were to talk to astrophysicists. I don't know what branch of science we would be talking to, but they would say, you know, we've looked at this more and we realize that we're not quite as certain as we were that the earth is round. Would you then reduce your confidence in the belief that the earth is round or would you think you still have your confidence that the belief is round at the same level?
00:21:23
Speaker
Yeah. I think for me it would, it would matter, you know, like what the reasons for that were, you know, like what was the evidence that was being brought to bear? Yeah. For that change. Exactly. And so it's really interesting because if you, if I'm talking to somebody and let's say the reason why they believed something was based on this specific science and let's say the science were to change, yet they would still have the belief, it sounds like,
00:21:52
Speaker
we haven't discovered the primary reason for the belief because if the reasons were to change and they were to still have the belief, what does that say about the reasons? That's good. Okay. So, okay. Let me
00:22:10
Speaker
integrate that for a second. Yeah. It's a different way to think about this. It's really interesting. Yeah. And then when I'm appealing to sort of my intuition about this too, and I think, why do I really think the earth is round and not flat? Part of it is a flat earth seems like an insufficient explanation because there's no, what's under it? Where does it exist? What is it a part of?
00:22:37
Speaker
It's harder to integrate the rest of the universe with that sort of flat earth. What is on the underside of a flat earth if it's flat? It feels like it fits a larger system in a way. So is there a... Are you saying, I'm just trying to understand your epistemology at this point. Yeah.
00:22:58
Speaker
Are you saying that you use the word feel? Yes. Yes. Okay. So in some sense, it's a sort of maybe a pattern recognition. So it's not a deductive reason. It's an inductive reason for believing something. Yeah. So it doesn't, it's not jiving with everything you know about how the world
00:23:22
Speaker
works. It would seemingly change so many other different facts that it would be inconsistent with a larger worldview. If the world was, I'm not saying this is the case, if the world happened to be flat, would you be okay with it? Would you want to know it? Absolutely, yes.
00:23:50
Speaker
I would want to know that the world is flat if it were. Would it change you? It would, I think. I think for me it would change a lot of things because I'd be like, well, all of this science and these globes that we have and
00:24:11
Speaker
these geodesic calculations that we use to figure out how long it's going to take to get somewhere in a plane, for example, or in a boat.
Methods of Knowing and Their Insights
00:24:20
Speaker
I would be like, wow, someone is playing a long game there. It's a long con. Well, if it came out, let's say the truth is that the world is flat,
00:24:31
Speaker
It would change me quite a bit. I mean, it would have implications on probably everything I know. I could see everything I think I know. I think it would put me in kind of could put me in a bit of a tailspin. I don't think it would.
00:24:47
Speaker
not in a sense that would crush me, but I would just have to re-examine everything I thought I knew about the world. And so when we're having these conversations, we're not just having conversations about whether you believe the Earth is flat or round. We're having some pretty serious conversations, it turns out, because
00:25:06
Speaker
It's not often not just about the belief. We're talking about, maybe how I go about knowing things. I've been doing this all wrong, and I should be going about knowing things a different way. And so that's why in street epistemology conversations, we're drilling down to the reasons behind the belief, how someone goes about forming beliefs. Because once we can talk about that sort of stuff,
00:25:34
Speaker
oftentimes we can realize that the belief itself really isn't that important because if the manner you go about forming beliefs doesn't seem to be a really reliable manner about forming beliefs in general, typically that person is going to
00:25:49
Speaker
start forming all sorts of beliefs that probably aren't aligned with what is objectively true in the world. And so you may talk about one belief or this belief, but we're really not getting to some of the bigger issues here that need to be discussed.
00:26:05
Speaker
Yeah, no, absolutely. So when you're thinking about having these conversations come, how do these conversations come about? Like, are you looking to have these conversations with certain particular types of people or people coming to you to like examine beliefs? How does that how does that come about? Yeah, so I have these all different ways. I mean, you know, I think most people who have street epistemology conversations are doing them privately with friends and family and that sort of thing. But I'm producing content, I'm
00:26:32
Speaker
I'm having these conversations to show people what they're like, like to show people how to do them, what a proper, hopefully, and what a proper street epistemology conversation looks like, and also what ones that fall apart look like as well. I want to show those too.
00:26:46
Speaker
And, um, and so I want, um, I want people to, to see all sorts of beliefs. So on my podcast or YouTube channel, I've talked with people with every single belief under the sun and I will talk to anybody with any belief. Really. It doesn't matter to me because.
00:27:03
Speaker
Honestly, when I'm talking about the belief, I don't really start... you have some of these conversations, you start... you don't think about the belief anymore. You just really try to... okay, I got the belief, you jettison the belief and then just start talking about epistemology and that sort of thing. So, sometimes I'll set up...
00:27:18
Speaker
I live in a small town, and sometimes I'll just set up a little booth. I'll probably look a little bit crazy sitting there and just come talk to me about your belief, and I just ask people about their beliefs. Or sometimes I'll invite people on my show who have strong beliefs and this or that. There's as many ways you can have this conversation, these kind of conversations. And I really try to have them many different ways just so I can show people what they're like.
Street Epistemology and Faith
00:27:44
Speaker
I think it's useful, and I'm just still thinking about imagining what the world would be like if it were a flat Earth too. But giving opportunity to ponder what the world would be like if it were under these different sorts of scenarios, I think it's really useful.
00:28:05
Speaker
sort of promotes a little thing we'll have, you know. Yeah, that's great because you're able to see it from the other side. And when I have these conversations, I really try to be, I really try to same team these conversations. I really kind of go on a journey and I even will tell people I'm having conversations. If what you're saying is true,
00:28:27
Speaker
legit, true, objectively real and true. I want to know it. I want to believe it. I'd rather not believe something that's false. So help me go through your process. How do you know what you know? Take me on this journey and so then I can go with you. We can examine the reliability of the way you know what you know.
00:28:45
Speaker
And then maybe we can discover some things together. And it's so much less threatening than talking about, often about the belief itself, because when we're talking about epistemology, we're just talking about how people tend to know what they know, as opposed to beliefs that people seem to hold very tightly, like very specific beliefs.
00:29:07
Speaker
Right. I'm interested in how this intersects with faith, the concept of faith, because I guess as I'm thinking about the concept of faith, why I went down that road in my mind was thinking about, you know, are there going to be people who just are not interested in examining how they know what they know, right? They just don't find that to be a useful or thoughtful, you know, useful or effective method. This is great. Maybe this is some of that. Maybe this is some of the examples of where it didn't work. I don't know.
00:29:36
Speaker
Well, oftentimes I'm talking with people who have maybe a belief in a specific deity, and I'm trying to drill down to their epistemology, maybe at some point in the conversation they'll bring up faith. And oftentimes when people bring up the word faith, very quickly I need to find out what they mean by the word faith. And I'll ask probably you, Joe, when you say the word faith, what does that word mean to you?
00:30:01
Speaker
I think, yeah, what I was thinking of in this context was specifically, you know, a belief that you hold almost in, you know, contradistinction to evidence, to the contrary, and that you somehow, you hold more, it's more powerful or has more weight because there's tons of evidence against it. And that faith is kind of an act of, you know,
00:30:30
Speaker
a specific positive act that you do as a person in service of a particular belief? That's a very common definition of belief that I get. And sometimes when I get that definition, let's say I'm talking with somebody who has a strong belief in a God and they'll say, we'll drill down and eventually maybe you'll get to the epistemology is faith. And with this definition is believing in something without evidence that that thing is
00:31:00
Speaker
true. And then maybe my next question is, is that how I'll start asking questions about that? How do we know things that we don't have evidence for?
00:31:12
Speaker
And that usually leads us down some very interesting paths. And people can answer it very different ways, but they're really drilling down to, well, how do I know things that I don't know? And we usually are waiting for these moments of aporia, where I'm talking with someone and I ask a question like that, and all of a sudden,
00:31:36
Speaker
There is in this happens in psychotherapy too when you were someone kind of reaches an aha moment where they just stop talking and you can just see the wheels turning and they're just thinking and if you're Whether you're a good therapist or a good street epistemologist what you do at that point is say nothing just let them think and just let them take it in and and that's where
Analyzing the Effectiveness of Street Epistemology
00:32:01
Speaker
I find that the meaningful change happens when they're just, all of a sudden, there's a moment of self-reflection of like, wait, that didn't make sense to myself. And I want them to have this common inner dialogue with themselves. Like, how do I know this? Like, wait, did I say that? Like, why? That didn't make sense. And that's where I want, that's where I think the change happens.
00:32:24
Speaker
Yeah, I guess it's interesting because, you know, Rolf also mentioned something earlier that I, that I was, that struck me, you know, just as interesting, which was he was saying he felt like something was true. There's this phenomenological experience. And I hated hearing myself say that too.
00:32:47
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting because when I talk to people they have, that's like, how do you know it's true? Like, I feel it. Yeah. Yeah. But there's something to it, right? I mean, it's kind of a little bit deeper than, you know, it's easy to, you know, eschew it and say, oh, well, you know, that's just a feeling. There's no good reason behind that. But at the same time, I think it is truly a lot of
00:33:08
Speaker
on a day-to-day basis, how we act on beliefs is something that feels right. And that feeling is not nothing. Yeah, it's not a shortcut, but it's also not nothing. It's based on, it's a phenomenological experience of the accumulation of data that has happened over time. That data may be unreliable for a variety of reasons, but it's also not nothing.
00:33:36
Speaker
No, I didn't mean to say that. I definitely don't mean to say it was nothing because beliefs are very powerful. And beliefs, I'm sorry, feelings can be a very powerful way to know something. And depending on what that thing is, it could be a very reliable way of knowing whether something is true. I have a very strong belief that my favorite ice cream is vanilla and I have very strong feeling about it. I mean, I just have this very strong feeling
00:34:05
Speaker
that my favorite ice cream is vanilla. And so it seems like that's a pretty, that's a reliable way to know that my favorite ice cream is vanilla, let's say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. And so that kind of gets me to this thought about, you know,
00:34:24
Speaker
do you have an underlying epistemology that supports your work? Or, you know what I mean? A flavor of epistemology that you go for.
00:34:36
Speaker
Yeah, so we're going meta on this. So to have these kind of conversations, I have to have some kind of framework I'm working at. And I try to, when I'm having these talks with other people, I really try to use other people's framework and try to use their, the way they see the world, and have those discussions within that framework.
00:35:00
Speaker
But it's, that's, you know, easier said than done. And also there's certain things that just a certain premises that have, I have to accept for these conversations to work. One is that they're, you know, for factual claims, that there is some sort of objective truth about it. I might not know it. My conversational partner might not know it. We might not have any handle on that whatsoever, but it's out there somewhere. And also that.
00:35:30
Speaker
The idea of, which goes along with this, is that whatever is objectively true in the world, that you and I share this world, that I can't have my own truth and that be true, and you have your truth and that be true, especially if those truths are opposing.
00:35:52
Speaker
So let me ask another question too. And this comes from, there's a series of books that comes out that sort of asks questions of a whole bunch of scientists that part of the edge is the, let's see, what's his name? John Brockman comes out with these books. And there was one called, what do you know is true but cannot prove? So asking just a whole bunch of smart people
00:36:21
Speaker
what thing about the world could you not, you know, you couldn't defend to the core, but something that you nevertheless believe is true. And maybe for you, this might be that, you know, street epistemology is, you know, it's... I see.
00:36:41
Speaker
tending towards uncovering truth or something like this. And I think it's not a trivial question, too. You can certainly believe something, which is you don't have that empirical support for it. But there's something still, even so. And maybe it's just that it's an unprovable assertion.
00:37:08
Speaker
But it does elicit all kinds of interesting answers from people and not just sort of irrational ideas, too.
Overcoming Debate Entrenchment
00:37:17
Speaker
Yeah, we bring up a great point. I mean, you know, I going to make an assumption here that the three of us probably go about our epistemologies with these sorts of things may be fairly aligned in this assumption, but that I
00:37:36
Speaker
with these kind of dialectics and whether this way of having conversation works, I would want to know the science behind it. And that's what we're doing now. We're actually developing studies and we're in conversation with researchers to try to tease out the special sauce of why a street epistemology conversation we think, and this is a number of us having
00:38:05
Speaker
you know, thousands of public conversations that are being published, why they seem to be helpful and much more helpful than other methods that we could compare it to, like debating and things like that. What is it about a street epistemology conversation that seems to
00:38:24
Speaker
put a rock in somebody's shoe that we think can cause meaningful change over time. And so we're right now running those or in the process of starting those, actually even designing those studies to do that. And then we're kind of maybe in a better footing to have that, you know, back up the dialectic, if that's how research turns out.
00:38:51
Speaker
Yeah, I guess that's an interesting angle there. You mentioned this a couple of times about debate as being a particularly bad way to have someone change their mind, I guess. Someone's going to come away from a debate believing more strongly the thing that they argued for most of the time. Yeah, I mean, there's something called a backfire effect. I know there's
00:39:15
Speaker
There's a controversy whether that's a thing, but it's just the idea that when you have these sort of intense conversations with somebody who's opposing belief in yours that you walk away, just the exact opposite, what you want to happen happens. That they're more entrenched in their belief and you're more maybe more entrenched in your belief and nothing good happens with that. And there's some reasons we think about why that may be, at least from my perspective over these other kinds of conversations.
00:39:44
Speaker
is oftentimes when we're having debates, we're not drilling down to the epistemology of the other person. And so we're not talking, we're never on the same page. So if I'm like trying to support what I believe in facts and the reason why my conversational partner, they didn't arrive to their belief based on facts, well, I can give them any fact in the world. They're not going to change their belief because that's not how they arrived to the belief in the first place.
00:40:14
Speaker
They never used reason, in that sense, or facts to get there. And so I really would behoove me to know how they got there and then talk about whatever it is, how they got there. Was it by feeling or was it by their neighbor believes it or their community believes it or they're told by their pastor or whoever?
00:40:34
Speaker
I need to really drill down to the primary reason why they believe the belief and then discuss the reliability of those reasons. Are those reasons good reasons to hold a
Applying Street Epistemology in Daily Life
00:40:46
Speaker
belief like this? And they may very well be. They could be. And if they are, I'm willing to change my belief. I'm willing to raise or lower my confidence on the belief they have. But I'm not going to know this until we have these kinds of conversations about that.
00:41:01
Speaker
Yeah, I guess the way the argument goes for debate is when you're in a debate, you're actively seeking out supporting information for your position. So you're reinforcing your confirmation bias. And what you're suggesting with street epistemology is something very different. You're not actively seeking out support for your position.
00:41:23
Speaker
It's almost the opposite of a debate. Yeah, you're looking at what about the things that I believe, what about the evidence or support from my belief is true or not true? Help me believe your belief. I like that way of thinking of it. Yeah, help me believe your beliefs. I can state it in a way that you would accept.
00:41:45
Speaker
Right. Walk me through it. How did you get there? I want to take me through it. I want to know how you went about believing the belief. And again, whatever that belief is, it doesn't matter to me. I say that to myself, but I want to know the method. How do you go about forming the belief in this case? And this is a reliable way to know what you know. And we don't seem to be having too many of those kinds of conversations.
00:42:12
Speaker
And I would just, you know, my goal here is that many more people, at least, and I know these, what we're talking about here can seem kind of abstract. And I really would hope people just, if not just my channel, anybody's channel, there's a lot of people who practice what I practice is a number of people who do it. And just, if you look up the term street epistemology and just watch these conversations in action.
00:42:36
Speaker
And you can see how, wow, there's a different way to have these talks. There's a different way. And maybe the next time when you find yourself at Thanksgiving with your, with your uncle Peter or whoever, and they start talking about their uncle Peter and his crazy belief about this or that, then you can all of a sudden have a much more meaningful exchange with your uncle Peter because you're no longer debating him. You're,
00:43:03
Speaker
you might be a bit confusing to him at first because you're just doing things in a completely different way. Yeah. I think it seems to me that one of the places where this might break down is when people are stating beliefs that are not on the level.
00:43:20
Speaker
And it feels to me that there's a lot of the issues that we're having. Well, there's a good faith argument that I believe in this thing and that may not be well founded in terms of evidence, but I think especially in terms of the political arena, I get the sense a lot of times that people are making arguments that
00:43:41
Speaker
allow them to be viewed as being a part of the team, a member of the team, and motivated reasoning that supports certain positions that basically helps their team move forward in terms of popularity or gaining power or so on and so forth. So it feels like this might be problematic in that context because people don't really actually believe or they're not actively
00:44:11
Speaker
inquiring about their belief. Is excellent, Joe. And then sometimes when I think that's happening, like if someone has a belief that's more of an expression of their identity, like, hey, by expressing this belief, I'm expressing I'm part of this in-group, and we all believe the same thing, and we have these good feels about ourselves because we all hold this belief, regardless of whether it's true. I drill down to that. I ask questions about that sort of question.
00:44:42
Speaker
if you were to not have this belief, just, you know, just, or a hypothetical here, would this change your life? I mean, would you have, would you still have the same friends? Would you still hang out in the same group? I mean, would you have to move out of your neighborhood, out of your town? And sometimes when people think about it, like, well, kinda, I mean, cause, you know, a lot of times we've choose to live nowadays in neighborhoods with people who are like-minded with us, you know?
00:45:11
Speaker
And so it's quite possible that if they change the belief on this or that, that would say
Personal Reflections on Belief Examination
00:45:18
Speaker
a lot more. And so we actually talk about that. And I do ask the question whether if this belief were true, would you want to know it? And after a street epistemology conversation, sometimes people, or during a street epistemology conversation, sometimes people may say, you know, I'd rather not know it.
00:45:39
Speaker
because there's so many positive benefits from this belief that me knowing it would hurt me. I would be not a, you know, I would feel good about myself. I could be depressed or, you know, if it's maybe it's a religious belief, like I, maybe I wouldn't go see my, I would think I wouldn't go see my dead father after I die and like, okay, well, I mean, that's a powerful and that's a, it's a,
00:46:04
Speaker
It seems to be a legitimate reason to hold a belief other than whether the belief is true. There's other reasons. And then so I might stop the conversation there. So I just think there's an interesting aspect of it. So one question that I'm sure you must get asked a lot is what's changed your mind or what's updated your beliefs in these conversations? Have you? Yeah, great.
00:46:34
Speaker
And it's not all about convincing. It's about going through an argument. But is there any time in which you have found yourself a little bit confronted and needed to update your beliefs on this? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that would be a huge benefit too, right? Is getting the opportunity to examine some of those things. Right. I think you're right. I think
00:46:57
Speaker
I think, you know, I have a series of conversations where I went out and talked to anti-vaxxers at a vaccination rally, anti-vaccination rally. And I just, I thought that that was interesting. And I kind of, before I had my, I think I was a fairly strong vaccination supporter and I probably still am, but I think
00:47:27
Speaker
I walked into those conversations and I just heard just a multitude of epistemologies and it was so interesting because some
00:47:40
Speaker
I'm trying to reason through in my own head that, well, that didn't really resonate. But some like, oh, well, I can see. I get that. That resonates with me or how I would want to know things. I would want to know this or that. And so it kind of makes me kind of see more of the finer points of beliefs in that. But also that, you know,
The Future of Street Epistemology
00:48:07
Speaker
It's very difficult to change our beliefs. And I've noticed that about myself. After doing this dialectic, I tell myself that if I'm holding a belief that's not true, I really do want to know it. I tell myself that.
00:48:27
Speaker
In practice, it's really hard to do that because, and I try to, you know, self-examine why do I hold this belief or that belief, and it's really, it's challenging. And it's easier, and sometimes I'll have other, I have friends who practice street epistemology, and I'll have them
00:48:47
Speaker
perform the dialectic on me about maybe a belief that I have and we'll do that to each other because it's easier to have someone else do that to you than for you to do it to yourself. Because I'm in the belief, it's hard for me to step out of it. And it's easier to have someone else do it to me. And that's the sort of power of conversation and the power of being able to sit down and do this.
00:49:11
Speaker
So if you, I guess what would be your hopes for this in terms of having an impact on the world? Like, do you want more people to learn the technique and have more of these conversations? Like, and what would that, what do you think that would do if people did that? Yeah, I just, oh man, I just, I just want to, it's probably pie in the sky, I don't know, but I just, I want to raise the sanity water line here, you know? You know, if half of our country
00:49:40
Speaker
is has this really intense beliefs that vaccines don't work and they'll kill you. And then the other half of the country believe that we all must take vaccines because they're gonna save our life if we have this killer virus coming down in the next few years. I would imagine there's a truth out there somewhere about that. And I would like to be able to live
00:50:07
Speaker
with and have a way to have those kinds of meaningful conversations where we can have, we can actually have these discussions and flesh out how we know what we know and without, you know, the name calling and without the tribalism. And so we can actually get to maybe what's true and real and maybe just have a more just more human flourishing and just less suffering, really.
00:50:36
Speaker
Well, I couldn't, I think that's well said and I couldn't agree with that statement more. I think that sounds, it sounds like a good sell. Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah. So maybe that's a good place to wrap there. And I guess I would ask one last question, which is what are you really excited about going forward with this stuff?
00:50:54
Speaker
Yeah, so it's really interesting how people are taking this dialectic. There is a gentleman named David over at Sound Epistemology. I check out his YouTube channel as well. And the way he does street epistemology really showcases how when we talk about the belief itself, how largely unimportant
00:51:23
Speaker
That can be. The way he does street epistemology conversations is he'll have someone with possibly an intense belief sit down and talk about it, someone he doesn't know. And he'll basically tell them, don't tell me what the belief is. I don't want to know it. I just want to know the main reason why you believe it. And then they start there and they even, they never even discuss the belief. They just, you know, the person who has the belief obviously knows what they're talking about, but David never knows.
00:51:52
Speaker
And then I've tried doing that, and other people have tried doing that as well. And it just showcases how, when we're talking about beliefs, how we really might be talking about the wrong thing. Very cool. Well, yeah, thank you very much, Mark, for being on the show. Really enjoyed the conversation. And I think, yeah, look forward to further conversations. And again, your podcast is being reasonable, can be found on any podcast venues.
00:52:20
Speaker
and thanks so much for being with us. Thank you guys, I really do appreciate it.