Is this argument logical?

Topher
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Is this argument logical?

Not my argument:

 

Quote:
Believing in X is a rationally justifiable action if believing in X has positive consequences - i.e. a positive effect on the person's psychology. Whether X is true or false is irrelevant.

 

Let X be a religious claim, such as god exists, or Jesus rose from the dead, or an angel supports me, etc.

"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring" -- Carl Sagan


deludedgod
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The argument has a little

The argument has a little trick card up it's sleeve:

Quote:

Believing in X is a rationally justifiable action

It says "Believing in X" is rationally justifiable, not "X is rationally justifiable". Nonetheless, this isn't a very good argument. First of all, if one tries to formulate a belief by saying "I should believe in this because it has positive consequences" then one is explicitly acknowledging that they aren't actually "Believing in X" they are merely believing in believing in X. Here's a more helpful way to think about it. Replace the sentence "I believe in X" with the equivalent statement "I believe X is true" and we immediately see that one cannot begin with "I believe in X because X has positive consequences". If that were the case, you wouldn't necessarily believe in X. Believing X has positive consequences does not meet the criteria where we could say you "Believe in X". To believe in X you have to believe X is true. If you decide to believe X is true because you believe X has positive consequences then you have committed an ad consequentiam fallacy and therefore your belief is not rationally justifiable.


 

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

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Yah,the argument is not

Yah,the argument is not automatically valid for all cases. While it can be shown to work in some specific case, all that needs to happen is to show one failure and it becomes problematic.

 

Let me give you a case in point. IRL I know someone who happens to be a compulsive gambler. He has his own variation of a selection fallacy that justifies his behavior. So for him, believing in X justifies what he does and the fact that Y does not support his belief is irrelevant to him.

 

Say that I have $20. I spend $10 on lunch and I give him the other $10. He will put the whole thing on scratch tickets. Most of them will be losers but a few will be winners. Winning tickets are case X and losing tickets are case Y (and will be ignored).

 

So he wins $15, which will be put back into scratch tickets. Again, there will be many losers but there may be winners. Losers will be ignored and winners are important enough to put n back in. He will go through the cycle until he has nothing at all. However, every win will be added to the total for case X and all losers (case Y) are not important.


Half an hour later, he is pleased that he won over $200. The fact that he walked away with nothing in his pocket makes no impression on him. Nor does the fact that I will not be hungry before dinner. The only thing that even exists in his world is how much he won.

 

So if you reexamine your argument with that in mind, my friend believes in X and his belief is justified because of all the money that he won. Even so, he is still hungry. So is his belief justified?

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Isn't that just an example

Isn't that just an example of where the consequences aren't positive?
Surely if the premise holds (that good consequences follow) then it is valid.
I think Todangst's criticism of it was that when people starting thinking that way, they started under-estimating the bad consequences of falsity.

 

deludedgod wrote:
It says "Believing in X" is rationally justifiable, not "X is rationally justifiable". Nonetheless, this isn't a very good argument. First of all, if one tries to formulate a belief by saying "I should believe in this because it has positive consequences" then one is explicitly acknowledging that they aren't actually "Believing in X" they are merely believing in believing in X. Here's a more helpful way to think about it. Replace the sentence "I believe in X" with the equivalent statement "I believe X is true" and we immediately see that one cannot begin with "I believe in X because X has positive consequences". If that were the case, you wouldn't necessarily believe in X. Believing X has positive consequences does not meet the criteria where we could say you "Believe in X". To believe in X you have to believe X is true. If you decide to believe X is true because you believe X has positive consequences then you have committed an ad consequentiam fallacy and therefore your belief is not rationally justifiable.

You're right that someone couldn't come to believe something is true through the line of thought: "It is good to believe it, therefore I do believe it..."
That said, I think I can find some examples that evade your criticism.

If we were judging the beliefs of a person we were observing, we evaluate the rationality of their beliefs without their knowing.
So if a particular theist had a particular theology which had a positive psychological effect on them (good consequences) then an atheist observer would be able to acknowledge that this belief was good for the theist, even though it wasn't a true belief.
Because the theist doesn't hear this judgement (or doesn't believe the atheist when he says so), the theist still genuinely believes.
The atheist can then use the reasoning above to conclude that it's in the theist's best interests to believe, that believing in it is rationally justifiable, even if the theist does not know the justification.

Another point is how complex our minds our and how belief doesn't always come from our rationality.
We can allow ourselves to become "swept away" in an idea without worrying about the rational justification behind it.
There are methods we can use to make ourselves believe something, and sometimes we can use this to positive effect.
e.g. self fulfilling prophecies:
Someone with low confidence might have strong experience of failing and therefore the evidence would point to future failure.
But this would lessen confidence further and thereby make future failure even more likely.
It would be in their best interests to believe that they can, which would provide them with confidence and give them a better chance.
However, in order to do this they would need to somehow be able to ignore all the previous evidence.

Perhaps the argument could be seen as justifying taking a break from rational thought processes at appropriate times and places?


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Topher wrote:Not my

Topher wrote:

Not my argument:

 

Quote:
Believing in X is a rationally justifiable action if believing in X has positive consequences - i.e. a positive effect on the person's psychology. Whether X is true or false is irrelevant.

 

Let X be a religious claim, such as god exists, or Jesus rose from the dead, or an angel supports me, etc.

I'd say it's justifiable, but not rationally so. Any positive effect? It's possible to argue in a hypothetical environment that any action or behaviour that produces a positive effect is ... positive, but what relevance that has outside of that hypothetical environment is questionable.

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 DG beat me to the punch on

 DG beat me to the punch on the main point.  I'd like to add that once we start talking about "belief" being "rationally justifiable" we're opening up a gigantic can of worms that doesn't have any solution I can think of.

Look, belief is just holding something to be true, and it is not a choice.  It's an end product of the brain equivalent of algorythms chugging through data.  We are biologically designed as data processing and pattern finding machines.  If we find a pattern in a few bits of data, we are acting precisely as we have been designed to act.  As I've pointed out numerous times before, if a particular data processing machine has three things: a system of measure, an algorythm, and a goal, it can make a rational decision within that paradigm.  In other words, "rationally justified" in this context isn't well defined enough to make the argument coherent.

As DG has pointed out, beliefs are what they are, and it's very hard to address them other than to examine the object of the belief for empirical truth or epistemological validity.  If we decide to arbitrarily assign pragmatism as the measure of rationality in beliefs, sure, pragmatic beliefs are rational.  But that's just circular.  I can just as easily say that poetic beauty is the measure of rationality and beliefs, and then assert that any belief that is poetically beautiful is rational.  (After all, poetic beauty makes people happy!)  It's pretty hard to argue against any conclusion when you make it a given.

 

Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin

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This kind of reminds me of

This kind of reminds me of the "Jamesian Wagering" (referring to William James) put forward by a guy called Jeff Jordan as an alternative to the pascal wager.  It still has the drawback of being irrelevant to the truth, but may produce benefits that the truth doesn't.  Things like thinking positively after a surgery, or telling a patient that the placebo is actually a miracle drug, or ducking when somebody yells "Duck!" without checking whether there is actually something that requires your evasive manouver.


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This sounds like an argument

This sounds like an argument for the placebo effect. If a sugar pill can cure cancer by using the power of believing the pill were an actual cure, then I’d say it was justified. With X being religion, a lot of people need the placebo effect of religion to get them through certain times of their lives, whether it be the death of a loved one, the need to feel like a part of something or just the feeling that everything will work out in the end. What people do with their own lives doesn’t concern me as long as they don’t try to grind up those sugar pills and slip them into my morning coffee.

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Topher wrote:Not my

Topher wrote:

Not my argument:

 

Quote:
Believing in X is a rationally justifiable action if believing in X has positive consequences - i.e. a positive effect on the person's psychology. Whether X is true or false is irrelevant.

 

Let X be a religious claim, such as god exists, or Jesus rose from the dead, or an angel supports me, etc.

Yeah, it's called pragmatism. William James is smiling down upon you.

"Scientists animated by the purpose of proving they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study." - Alfred North Whitehead