I think Eliezer Yudkowsky does the Dawkins thing about religious belief, too, in that she clearly has only a very partial understanding of it or experience of people who have it. For instance, I have known many people who quite openly said that they did not believe but felt they ought to, or wanted to, or some such thing, and I find it quite patronising of her to assume that it's a rarity to be able to distinguish the two states of mind or that she (not being my mental health professional) knows better than I do what is going on in my mind. I have certainly been conscious in the past of believing things that I did not want to believe, and I am conscious now of wanting to believe several of the things that I do in fact believe. I think all the permutations of that one are quite possible. I can also think of numerous reasons why Jesuits would encourage their novices to doubt. Sheesh, atheism really needs some writers who evidence broader imaginations than those two do (and probably has them, yes, I ought to get round to reading some Sagan at some point).
More seriously, for someone with apparently quite a lot of philosophical training, I find it very odd that she doesn't consider the possibility that the issue between the dragon-claimant and the questioner is a semantic one. Most English-speakers with philosophical training will be familiar with Wittgenstein's view that all philosophical problems are artefacts of language, and while that may or may not be true, it's certainly true of a great many of them. Failing to examine that possibility seriously weakens her whole argument about anticipation; rather than doing "fast footwork", it may simply be that the dragon-claimant had never expected anyone to think dragons were physical and is rather bemused about how to respond to the questioner.
Yudkowsky does at least seem more interested in increasing her understanding than Dawkins does, though (although I note that one of her commenters hints at the semantic issue and does not get a reply).
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-12-06 05:00 pm (UTC)More seriously, for someone with apparently quite a lot of philosophical training, I find it very odd that she doesn't consider the possibility that the issue between the dragon-claimant and the questioner is a semantic one. Most English-speakers with philosophical training will be familiar with Wittgenstein's view that all philosophical problems are artefacts of language, and while that may or may not be true, it's certainly true of a great many of them. Failing to examine that possibility seriously weakens her whole argument about anticipation; rather than doing "fast footwork", it may simply be that the dragon-claimant had never expected anyone to think dragons were physical and is rather bemused about how to respond to the questioner.
Yudkowsky does at least seem more interested in increasing her understanding than Dawkins does, though (although I note that one of her commenters hints at the semantic issue and does not get a reply).