Philosophy, et cetera 2008-06-18

Suspecting Wishful Thinking

It's curious how often people accuse each other of rationalizing, or holding a position "because they want to believe it" rather than because they have genuine reasons for thinking it true. Sometimes people do engage in wishful thinking, of course. (Sometimes they even admit as much -- e.g. some theists explicitly cite pragmatic reasons, such as 'comfort', for believing in God.) So sometimes such accusations may be warranted. But often they're simply a result of ignorance of the other person's reasons -- if you don't really understand why they hold the position they do, it's all too easy to imagine that they do so for no good reason at all, in which case less charitable explanations will suggest themselves. Such dismissal carries an obvious epistemic risk, however, since you lose the opportunity to learn about their reasons if you assume ...

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