Can an intellectual still believe absurd things?

@joefromchicago,

While I don't believe in ghosts or the "supernatural", I do believe in UFO's.
Judging by your post, do you seriously believe that humans are alone in the galaxy?

1 Reply

Uh-oh. I just knew this thread would take a personal turn somewhere.

0 Replies

@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

I don't view this as a distinction between "book smarts" and "street smarts."

I'll consider this one of those absurd things from the title.

1 Reply

@Frank Apisa,

Frank Apisa wrote:

Well I, for one, would be worried about how we would determine which “beliefs” are “intelligently held” and which are “completely absurd.”

I see little difficulty in distinguishing them.

Frank Apisa wrote:

Is a “belief” that there are gods absurd…or intelligently held?

Is a “belief” that there are no gods absurd…or intelligently held?

Metaphysical beliefs are incapable of being proven or disproven. Those don't concern me. The fact that a devout Mormon might believe that the Garden of Eden was in Missouri or that Jesus visited North America is no more and no less absurd than any other metaphysical belief. On the other hand, the notion that the American Indians are descended from ancient Israelites is, I think, something that can be readily disproven using simple linguistic analysis.

1 Reply

@mysteryman,

mysteryman wrote:

While I don't believe in ghosts or the "supernatural", I do believe in UFO's.
Judging by your post, do you seriously believe that humans are alone in the galaxy?

I have no idea, but then a belief in the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life is not incompatible with a disbelief in reports of UFOs as evidence of that extraterrestrial life. Those are totally separate questions.

1 Reply

@joefromchicago,

there were no shylock indians...?

who knew

0 Replies

@ehBeth,

ehBeth wrote:

joefromchicago wrote:

I don't view this as a distinction between "book smarts" and "street smarts."

I'll consider this one of those absurd things from the title.

Consider whatever the **** you want. Let me know if you actually want to contribute something constructive to this thread.

0 Replies

@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

Can an intellectual still believe absurd things?

Of course! Indeed, the great strength of intellectuals is their power to discover truths that are absurd, that defy common sense. The Earth rotates around itself, although we can see with our own eyes that it's the sun rotating around us every day! Electrons and photons are particles and waves at the same time, and that's not a contradiction! The sum of two relativistic velocities never exceeds light speed. Propositions that sound perfectly reasonable ("event #1 happened at the same time as event #2, but in different places") turn out to make no sense because their truth or falsity depends on the speed of the observer. You look me in they eye and tell me these things are not absurd. And that's the point. The whole point of being an intellectual is believing absurd things. Intellectuals would be useless if all they did was regurgitate in academic jargon what common sense tells us in plain English anyway.

The downside of this is that intellectuals are prone to believing things because they absurd, not because they are true and in spite of them being absurd. For example, Marxism/Leninism, Freudian psychology, and the apocalyptic strains of global-warming concern, were all more popular among intellectuals than among the average citizen.

joefromchicago wrote:

Is there a point at which we can segregate one's intelligently held beliefs from those that are completely absurd, such that we can excuse the latter as mere aberrations? Or is there some level beyond which we must conclude that the absurd beliefs negate the sound ones?

I don't think there's necessarily a strong connection between the soundness of your beliefs and your power to think, which is what being an intellectual is about. I think soundness of belief comes mostly from keeping your eyes open and testing your theories against data. Artisans, who do this all their lives, hold sound beliefs about their trade, but that doesn't make them intellectuals about it. Theologians, on the other hand, can hold beliefs that are utterly bonkers, although they are without a doubt intellectuals. So I disagree with the unstated premise of your question her.

2 Replies

@Thomas,

Oh, so very well put, Thomas!

0 Replies

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Of course! Indeed, the great strength of intellectuals is their power to discover truths that are absurd, that defy common sense. The Earth rotates around itself, although we can see with our own eyes that it's the sun rotating around us every day! Electrons and photons are particles and waves at the same time, and that's not a contradiction! The sum of two relativistic velocities never exceeds light speed. Propositions that sound perfectly reasonable ("event #1 happened at the same time as event #2, but in different places") turn out to make no sense because their truth or falsity depends on the speed of the observer. You look me in they eye and tell me these things are not absurd. And that's the point. The whole point of being an intellectual is believing absurd things. Intellectuals would be useless if all they did was regurgitate in academic jargon what common sense tells us in plain English anyway.

That's just so much nonsense.

Do you think the earth's rotation on its axis is absurd? You look me in the eye and tell me that it is. Of course you won't, because you believe in every one of those statements. Why you'd imagine that I would think it's absurd is, frankly, a little insulting. And if you're suggesting that those scientific facts are absurd to the uneducated or the naive or the credulous, then all I have to say is that it's rather more than a little insulting.

Thomas wrote:

The downside of this is that intellectuals are prone to believing things because they absurd, not because they are true and in spite of them being absurd. For example, Marxism/Leninism, Freudian psychology, and the apocalyptic strains of global-warming concern, were all more popular among intellectuals than among the average citizen.

Who's talking about the average citizen? I'm talking about people who are purportedly intellectuals. The hoi polloi can believe whatever the hell they want.

2 Replies

@joefromchicago,

I'M sure that there is intelligent life in the universe considering the number of stars in exsistance. But we will never meet them.

0 Replies

@DrewDad,

You are irrantionally ignoring the irrationality of the proposition. I've not denied that cognitive dissonance exists, nor that it is common. However, the manner in which the source states the case in the post you made is an absurdity. If irrationality were "hard-wired," i.e., selected for evolutionarily, then there would be little to no rationality in humans today. Pattern recognition and associative thinking obviously have great benefits for humans, which is why they persist today. Pattern recognition and associative thinking are not axiomatically irrational. Quite apart from the subjective nature of an allegation of "irrationality," if they weren't useful, evolution would not select for them.

It may be that conclusions people draw from the exercise of these two useful mental activities can lead them to irrational conclusions. But it's an hilarious absurdity to suggest that irrationality can be the only product of their use, and that irrationality is an evolutionary advantage. This is a case of mistaking an artefact of certain thought processes for their nature. Were we "hard-wired" to think irrationally, where does rationality come from? Does the author suggest that rationality only arose after humanity so well established their survival that it could dispense with a necessary irrationality? Does the author suggest that "rationality" is aberrant but tolerated?

The proposition certainly cannot stand on any logical merit, your snotty fling about my world view notwithstanding.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Nice strawman.

1 Reply

@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

Do you think the earth's rotation on its axis is absurd? You look me in the eye and tell me that it is. Of course you won't, because you believe in every one of those statements.

I believe his point is that those ideas seemed absurd to most people, at the time they were first proposed.

1 Reply

@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

Do you think the earth's rotation on its axis is absurd? You look me in the eye and tell me that it is. Of course you won't, because you believe in every one of those statements.

Of course I believe in them! That's because I pretend to be an intellectual on A2K, and intellectuals love absurd-sounding statements, preferably ones that are true. Mind you, I'm not saying it's a good thing that some intellectuals go even farther and wave the truth requirement altogether. (Incidentally, they often wave it on some elaborate, distinctly intellectual theory of philosophical relativism, by which there is no such thing as truth anyway.) All I'm saying is that it's not necessarily an anti-intellectual act to wave it.

joefromchicago wrote:

Why you'd imagine that I would think it's absurd is, frankly, a little insulting. And if you're suggesting that those scientific facts are absurd to the uneducated or the naive or the credulous, then all I have to say is that it's rather more than a little insulting.

So what if my views are insulting? They are true: If I was living around the time when the first astronomer suggested that the sun is not rotating around the Earth, I myself would have found his views ridiculous, impossible to take seriously, in a word, absurd. They would have flown in the face of what I saw every day with my own eyes. Granted, it may be a little different in this age of satellite images. But the other propositions? The Onion didn't stop being satire when it turned out to offer by far the most realistic assessment of the Bush administration. Similarly, quantum mechanics didn't stop striking me as absurd just because I realized it was true. Indeed, that's an important reason I relish it. For I make pretensions at being an intellectual.

joefromchicago wrote:

Who's talking about the average citizen? I'm talking about people who are purportedly intellectuals.

So am I. I am using non-intellectuals as a statistical control for statements I make about intellectuals. For example, when post-modernist philosophy of art and deconstructivist lit-crit appeal to intellectuals but not to non-intellectuals, that tells us something about intellectuals. If they also appealed to the people you so disparagingly call the hoi polloi, it wouldn't.

2 Replies

@DrewDad,

DrewDad wrote:

I believe his point is that those ideas seemed absurd to most people, at the time they were first proposed.

Correct.

0 Replies

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

quantum mechanics didn't stop striking me as absurd just because I realized it was true.

True that.

0 Replies

@DrewDad,

It's no straw man. I continue to address the contention in the post in which you brought this up. If human evolution produced an inevitably irrational intellect, the implication is that tool-making, the domestication of plants and animals, the invention of writing, the invention and use of irrigation, the invention and use of warehouses--that all of these developments were the product of irrationality. I see that as an absurdity.

Quote:

I'm sorry that you disagree, but you are, in fact, irrationally tossing out evidence that competes with your worldview.

This was your snotty fling about my world view. I'd be interested to know what you allege that evidecne to be.

2 Replies

@Setanta,

The straw man is the idea that being wired for irrationality means that people cannot be rational.

I have not made that claim. I would not make that claim, as it is demonstrably false.

It doesn't change the fact that smart people make irrational choices, or believe irrational things, over and over again. And people make many of these irrational choices in the same way. It's biological, which I, for one, find fascinating.

1 Reply

@DrewDad,

Yourstraw men are to suggest that i've ever denied that people are irrational, or display cognitive dissonance. I have consistently objected to the claim that we are "hard-wired" to be irrational. The mechanism of natural selection is enhanced breeding opportunity. I can see no reasonable basis upon which to claim that being irrational enhances one's breeding opportunity. People of European descent are "hard-wired" to like sweet and fatty foods. For our ancestors in the periglacial steppes or the periglacial forests, that enhanced the probability of surviving the brutal winters, and living to reproduce. We no longer need to pack carbs and fat to survive the winter, and our dietary preferences can kill us. That doesn't mean that we are hard-wired to eat a fatal diet. Some people allege that we are hard-wired to be aggressive. That might enhance one's breeding opportunity if it means one gets one's needs rather than another. But one can also be aggressive in a situation in which it proves fatal for them. That doesn't mean that we are hard-wired to be suicidally reckless.

I don't object to the claim that pattern recognition or associative thinking can lead to irrationality. I object to the inferential claim that it is inevitable. Certainly some people will think they see patterns were none exist, or erroneously associate data or ideas. That doesn't mean that all pattern recognition and associative thinking will always lead to irrationality. I object to the conclusions drawn.

1 Reply

Can an intellectual still believe absurd things?

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know