There is considerable scientific evidence that arguing with people about their beliefs usually has an effect opposite of what you would hope (assuming, generously, that you care more about the effect your arguing has on others than the effect it has on you). I’m sure that most of you have seen reviews of the relevant literature. In any case, I have not the least interest in arguing about the evidence that arguing hardens, rather than changes, beliefs. Why? I insist that, as obviously negative as arguments are, the burden is on the arguer to provide strong evidence that arguing is, on balance, more beneficial than harmful.
It would be entertaining to observe the arguing of the most compulsive of arguers that they actually do not argue. But let’s make that a wee bit harder for them to do, and require that, whatever they regard their not-arguing to be, they present scientific evidence that it generally benefits the people with whom they not-argue. And, no, I have not overlooked the fantasy that the benefit is to the silent Onlookers, and that you are their Champion. Either provide us with evidence that there exists such an effect, or entertain us with your Kairosfocus imitation.
Tom,
Who are these compulsive arguers who claim that they do not argue? Could you identify some and supply some quotes from them?
I would argue that it’s arguable that arguing leads to more argument. Agreement may be more agreeable, unless, of course, we were to agree that argument is more agreeable for the arguers. But the true arguer would argue against even arguable agreement about arguing.
Glen Davidson
Also, let’s not forget the most important question:
Are these arguers FAKE PERSONS?
There’s quite a bit of evidence in the archives of this website, too! 😉
You have just described evidence that arguing changes minds.
Personally, I have always preferred thoughtful discussion to argument, though it might sometimes be hard to clearly characterize the distinction.
The best argument is living well.
A bucket of dead mice is more convincing than charts and diagrams; computers on a chip more compelling evidence of quantum theory than equations.
Hi Tom English,
There is scientific evidence that arguments can change minds.
http://lifehacker.com/can-rational-arguments-actually-change-peoples-minds-1590008558
Tom Stafford is Lecturer in Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of Sheffield.
Nice article. I’m persuaded. 🙂
But it seems to assert that persuasion is a skill that is orthogonal to reason.
🙂
Thanks for this, Vincent. Thoughtful piece.
Tom, what was the research you were relying on? It would be nice to have a look at some of that too!
Not altogether, since strong and causal arguments are persuasive under the right circumstances. Of course I’d say that the article does not actually touch on whether arguing (like what we do here) does any good, which seems to be what the OP was discussing.
Arguments that threaten egos (including worldviews) seem to be what are actually counterproductive, which is why many creationists/IDists simply cannot be persuaded by reason.
Whether persuasion by reason works shouldn’t really be in question, or we wouldn’t have, you know, science. Some arguers might object that, well, it works whether or not people are reasonably persuaded, but there’d be no scientific consensus (which isn’t always right, but seems fairly reliable on the basics, especially) if people weren’t persuaded by arguments that certain results come from certain causes. Another objection could be that it’s empiricism that persuades, not reason, but reason has to be a part of arguing that the hypothesis holds, that it was this cause producing this effect. Otherwise we’d just have endless catalogs of correlations, rather than theories and models of how causes produce effects.
Glen Davidson
That is why I consider persuasion a skill.
There are instances of persuasion that take place over years, decades and generations. Logic and reason might be effective in a few minutes or hours, but persuasion requires extinction of the behavior of believing the contrary. This may not happen in in an individual. In fact, it seems unusual for individuals to convert.
My rather glib earlier comment was intended to argue that in the long run, success is the best persuader.
Tom, didn’t you use to be a believer? I did. Something convinced you otherwise, me too.
Arguments and evidence change minds. It might not for everybody, but it happens nevertheless.
Don’t take the small subset of people we interact with in a place like this, as being an indication of people in general. The IDcreationist people we find here are the last vestiges of a basically intellectually dead movement. They’re those few who can’t and won’t ever change their minds. Everyone else changed their minds and left.
Isn’t there an expression that beliefs not based on evidence cannot be changed by evidence?
I think some anti-vaxers might be convinced by evidence. That would mostly involve evidence presented by trusted authorities. That’s a problem with conspiracy theories. The authorities can’t be trusted. And while I tend to trust consensus science, I understand why people are skeptical of some sources.
Who, for example, did not trust pet food manufacturers to keep deadly contaminants out of the food? Or trust the many tests and checks? Anecdotal evidence of bureaucratic failures leads some to activism and some to paranoia.
I don’t think there’s a single rational stance on some issues.
Yes that expression exists, and it’s clearly wrong. There’s many things I used to believe, not because of evidence, but which I subsequently stopped believing because of evidence.
These silly memes that “If you could reason with religious people, there’d be no religious people” need to go away and die. They’re false and counterproductive. Sure, such people exist, but as generalizations they’re false.
Tom,
Expanding on Rumraket’s question, which was specifically about religion, have you never had the experience of changing your mind in response to a reasoned argument?
My sense, as an occasional philosophy professor, is that students will (unsurprisingly) change their minds about stuff in which they’re not too deeply invested. But, of course, the longer they’ve held the view is a factor, as is whether they’ve pushed it publicly. Because, as said earlier, it’s ego-deflating to have to admit that you’re wrong about something–especially if you’ve been known to push it hard previously.
I argue with myself constantly and change my mind as a result of those arguments, but I don’t know what makes me think arguing with others would change their mind.
Mung:
And we’ve seen you do so in these pages, often unintentionally.
Rumraket,
What evidence triggered the change in belief?
To all:
I’m devoting quality-time to something else. I’ll return when when I get tired.
To pick an example, when I was a kid I used to vist my grandparents a lot. My grandfather who was an amateur astronomer used to tell me lots of interesting facts about astronomy. One thing he told me and which I belived for the longest time (in fact up until about 3 years ago) was that a unique feature of our solar system was the outer gas giants, Jupiter, Saturn and so on, served as great “vacuum cleaners” that gravitationally sucked in a lot of comets and as such, shielded and protected the inner planets from a lot of asteroid and cometary bombardment.
Then a few years ago I saw a presentation from an astronomer who was an expert in solar system modeling explaining that in fact, that belief while held by astronomers for a long time, is contradicted by actual computer modeling of solar systems. The outer gas giants often, it turns out, function as sling-shots that propel lots of debris from the outer, into the inner solar system and that, just as the gas giants do suck in a lot material, they also hurl a lot more inwards, instead resulting in powerful bombardment of the inner planets.
That’s an example of something I believed because I was told by an authority figure, yet which evidence later contradicted.
Rumraket,
Was your change in belief because you believed the presentation based on the expertise of the astronomer over your grandfathers?
My grandfather had no expertise in solar system modeling, he was of course merely relaying information he himself had read in a book or astronomy journal in his youth. I think the original claim actually wasn’t even supported by any modeling, it was just something that had been argued because it seemed intuitive at the time.
It wasn’t the say-so of an astronomer that changed my mind, it was the modeling, writing of articles and peer review. If he’d merely said that it isn’t true without mentioning the actual testing with computer simulations, that wouldn’t have changed my mind. Today we have tools that astronomers didn’t have 50 or 100 years ago. Even 50 years ago, trying to accurately model a solar system with half a dusin planets and thousands of small objects would have been extremely difficult for the technology at the time.
Rumraket,
Did any of the peer reviewed articles validate the accuracy of the models? How is the accuracy tested?
Computers with high end processors and parallel processing are able to process complex models and a friend of mine has been involved in writing the code for climate models. These models are very complex but are not yet predictive due to inaccuracies when put to real world tests.
If the basis of these models is General Relativity then I would agree that at least the assumptions are tested.
Yes, I think so.
But the more basic problem is that people do not agree on what to count as evidence. Creationists do not accept radiometric data a evidence for the age of the earth, while scientists do not accept biblical text as evidence.
I think, in most cases, resistance to evidence is the result of social pressure from friends and family.
It all boils down to our personal presuppositions.
We choose our presuppositions independent of the evidence and our presuppositions then determine what we consider to be valid evidence.
Our only hope is to set down and examine our own set of presuppositions for consistency. That is the very thing that most folks avoid doing like it was the plague
peace
Evangelism is based on persuading people about important things. If people were not persuaded quick enough then why is evangelists so successful?
Are not more people these days being persuaded to become vegetarian/veggan?
In fact history shows endlessly how easily people are persuaded. Commie, fascist, democracy, capitalistic, etc
no excxuses. its often the in competence of arguers and not the listeners.
many have been persuaded to ID from formerly disinterested circles.
YEC claims much gains in real people.
in our origin issues we deal with the officer corp of intellectual though on these matters.
So its harder and demands better arguers.
Somebody is wrong?! Somebody is being slow to see error!
I do think demographics are important. its more likely the smarter people are more open to persuasion then less smart. so the less smart would be slower to be persuaded.
it requires the right side to do it smart. the wrong side could do it smart but wouldn’t on a curve.
Thats why such small numbers of iD thinkers have caused such a noise in origin science. It shouldn’t be this way if they were the wrong dumber ones.
Instead it shows its small circles and the wronger/dumber side is not holding the fort.
This gets to the heart of the problem. For many people, whatever conflicts with prior convictions simply is not evidence!. The converse is also true, as we are seeing in the US almost daily — that whatever ratifies convictions IS evidence, even if it is fabricated.
For all too many people, this is the case. I read somewhere that of all the creationists who take (and graduate with) a degree in biology, 80% of them are STILL creationists. In general (though with exceptions as we see in this thread), education cannot cure creationism. Where reality and theological authority conflict, relatively few True Believers will choose reality.
You have summarized Morton’s Demon very well.
I wonder if you realize that my comments applied equally to “skeptics” as it does to Creationists?
It’s always easy to see bias and prejudice in others. The hard thing is to be able to see it in ourselves.
It may be hard but it’s necessary.
peace
Arguments do often change our minds if they are logical or evidence based…
However, one thing is absolutely essential for that to happen: we must to get rid of pride!
If only there were some way to distinguish between objective, empirical evidence and baseless religious claims.
The use of the adjective “objective” and “baseless” does a pretty good job of illustrating your own bias.
If only there was an objective reliable non question begging way to distinguish between what was objective and what was baseless. 😉
peace
I recently noticed this blog post (by Massimo Pigliucci):
Yet another frustrating conversation: why talking science to “skeptics” is a hopeless endeavor
It seems relevant to the topic.
Good point. Patrick simply commits the false dichotomy fallacy there.
Sometimes you can see on a person’s face the moment of confronting something unbelievable, or something requiring a reversal of faith.
Last night I watched Warren Beatty open an envelop, read the enclosed card, open the envelop again as if to see if there were another card, then hand the card to Faye Dunaway.
Both of these people were trapped in a situation where the evidence in their hand conflicted with what they knew or expected. Their particular situation had no precedent. They obeyed their instructions and read the card, with results that are rather amusing in retrospect.
I turned off the TV almost immediately and missed the follow-up. But having seen the moment of puzzlement, I was not shocked by the news this morning.
What they should have done is take the time to examine their presuppositions.
They did what most of us do. Try and Ignore the stuff that does not make sense and hope things will work out in the end.
peace
I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that Massimo sees our posts.
I knew the sentence could be read that way in isolation, and tried to clarify in what I wrote after it. I’m equating “change minds” with “change beliefs.” Thus hardening of beliefs is the opposite of what you hope to effect in the person (or “person”) with whom (or “whom”) you argue.
And you generally behave accordingly.
I worry that some people mistake their “lives” online for lives. In all honesty, I’ve often wanted to reply, “Get a life!” It would come across as a non sequitur. But my overarching response is that no one lives long enough to spend time the way that some people spend it here in the Zone. So let’s hope that they are indeed fake persons, and not real persons wasting away their lives.
Sounds like excessive concern. People read books, play games, do all kinds of things to pass time. I see nothing wrong with arguing online with real people. Some of do not live in an academic community or the equivalent. This is the only place where we can interact with practicing intellectuals.
There’s already a thread started here where you can share with us your objective empirical evidence of evil. “Evidence of evil” means objective evidence, doesn’t it? Evidence for objective evil. Want me to post the link for you to the relevant thread?
I guess I could go back to playing World of Warcraft. 🙂
We could all get together and start a guild called “The Skeptics” I suppose. We could play and argue at the same time.
But you’re right I think. I gave that up as a huge time sink and I’m not sure TSZ is much better.
Poor Mung thinks that “objective evidence for evil” is the same thing as “evidence for objective evil”.
I knew that someone would use argument equivocally. (You’re not the only one.) Did you not see Glen Davidson’s frolic in the second comment of the thread? There are 11 senses of argument in Wiktionary. I thought I’d made it clear enough which I had in mind: “2. A verbal dispute; a quarrel.”
I know for a fact that many people rationalize their arguing by observing that the arguments they use are rational. I associate this more with argumentative atheists than with argumentative theists. (I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve seen, in a closed Facebook forum, atheists give blow-by-blow accounts of their brilliant disputations, and end by saying that the “dumb fundies” were just too dumb to know that they’d been defeated by Rationality Incarnate. And then others in the group lay on with the praise, and with stories of their own.)
The “reasons to believe” Christians are even worse, starting out with conclusions, and then putting on a show of having weighed all the considerations, and arrived at those conclusions rationally. Such fabulous dishonesty is not an expression of faith. It’s inherently an admission that faith is inadequate. (You’ve written that your faith is falsifiable, as I recall. I’m going to break down here and write something I’ve avoided for years: category error.)
Truth is the first casualty of war. And culture war is no different.
You’re not going to link to an abbreviated list of his publications, and misrepresent it as the full list? The “vjtorley” of the comments sections is a very different beast from the “vjtorley” who (necessarily) presents as a nice guy in his persuasive essays. You’re very good at persuasive essays — so good that I’m sure you’re a student of the form.
Perhaps keiths will regale us with yet another OP on a subject he knows nothing about, objectivity.
Education was the key. My professors in religion and philosophy were outstanding. They certainly wanted me to be a Christian. But they most definitely were educators, not indoctrinators. I never doubted that there was a God. I thought that there was a lot of cruft I needed to strip away, to uncover a bright and shining kernel of Absolute Truth. So I stripped away and stripped away the inessential, and was aghast when, one evening in the spring semester of my junior year, I realized that there was nothing left.
There’s so much I could say about this experience. Indeed, there’s too much, and that’s why I’ve never managed to write about it. Here are a couple of quick remarks:
1. If your measure of success is to cause a human being to speak what you regard to be true, then you’re an indoctrinator. (Of course, I’m not speaking here of simple facts.) Furthermore, I believe that indoctrination is unethical, irrespective of the truth or falsity of the doctrine. The consequences of education are unpredictable, and educators have to accept that. I am genuinely thankful to some Christian educators who dealt straight with their students, and left it to them to make what they would of what they learned.
2. Abandoning belief in God did not instantly transform me psychologically. It took me 35 years to reach the point where I could say honestly that I was free of religiosity. There are scads of atheists who are as psychologically religious as they were when they were Christians, and who will continue to be as long as they deny that aspect of themselves. They obviously are trying to save people with the truth. I’m here to say, the truth does not set you free. When you are raised in a religion, it has a profound impact on the kind of person you are (and not all of it is bad). It’s not something that goes away when you say, “I don’t believe that anymore.”
Again, I meant disputation. Rational arguments that might work in discussions do not work in disputes.
I’m in close touch with grassroots evangelicals. I’ve seen awful changes come over some people as they’ve melded Republicanity with Christianity. The change in the Republican party has been hideous, also. It was a match made in Hell.
Those are very thoughtful and interesting. Good stuff for teachers to think about. I remember thinking when my kids were young that if one of them joined a cult or became a nun or something, I’d pay to have them “kidnapped and deprogrammed.” Your remarks suggest that such a response might not be much better than whatever the cult leaders do. While I believe there IS some intrinsic value to truth, being absolutely SURE of anything may be intrinsically evil.
Anyhow, thanks.