Arguing With People Who Don't Know How

Most readers here have surely tried - and been frustrated by - attempts at discussing beliefs with True Believers. Whether the beliefs are religious, paranormal, or political, most simply don't know how to think critically and skeptically about things they are convinced are true. When they encounter someone who tries, a great deal of frustration is often the result: skeptics are frustrated over people who don't understand how to reason and believers are frustrated over people who ask so many annoying questions. Many skeptics just give up - but should they?

Phil Mole writes for the Skeptical Inquirer:

Each attempt to refute a fallacy causes our credulous acquaintance to commit about three new ones, which then require debunking of their own. And so it goes, until you're about twenty minutes into the conversation and realize you've gotten precisely nowhere. ... We can begin to understand what Leo Tolstoy meant when he said, "Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking; where it is absent, discussion is apt to become worse than useless."

Accepting Tolstoy's diagnosis, many skeptics may wish to shun conversations with anyone who cannot think and talk at our own level. This would be a mistake, even if based partially on reality. It's easy for us to congratulate ourselves for our critical thinking abilities, but harder to realize that these same abilities do not make us morally superior to anyone, incapable of learning from nonskeptics, or exempt from the responsibilities of teaching others.

If skeptics truly wish to further the cause of rationality, we have to be active members of an often-credulous society. This often requires an enormous amount of patience, but this patience is not misplaced. One truly heartening fact is that, as philosopher Julian Baggini has pointed out, the rules of argumentative logic seem curiously self-evident when spelled out. Most people seem to be able to understand the difference between good arguments and bad ones at some level, even if they don't always honor this difference in practice. Many people also seem capable of recognizing fallacies of language, and generally do not relish the idea of being ignorant.

I don't know if I always share Mole's optimism, but I'd certainly like to. The standards of good reasoning and arguments may be self-evident when pointed out, but people have an amazing ability not to see what is right in front of their faces. If proper standards invalidate a belief in which they have a great deal of emotional and psychological investment, then those standards are likely to be ignored or twisted. You can't underestimate people's ability to place emotional and psychological comfort over facts.

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