You don’t have a right to believe whatever you want to

Daniel DeNicola
aeon.co
Originally published May 14, 2018

Here is the conclusion:

Unfortunately, many people today seem to take great licence with the right to believe, flouting their responsibility. The wilful ignorance and false knowledge that are commonly defended by the assertion ‘I have a right to my belief’ do not meet James’s requirements. Consider those who believe that the lunar landings or the Sandy Hook school shooting were unreal, government-created dramas; that Barack Obama is Muslim; that the Earth is flat; or that climate change is a hoax. In such cases, the right to believe is proclaimed as a negative right; that is, its intent is to foreclose dialogue, to deflect all challenges; to enjoin others from interfering with one’s belief-commitment. The mind is closed, not open for learning. They might be ‘true believers’, but they are not believers in the truth.

Believing, like willing, seems fundamental to autonomy, the ultimate ground of one’s freedom. But, as Clifford also remarked: ‘No one man’s belief is in any case a private matter which concerns himself alone.’ Beliefs shape attitudes and motives, guide choices and actions. Believing and knowing are formed within an epistemic community, which also bears their effects. There is an ethic of believing, of acquiring, sustaining, and relinquishing beliefs – and that ethic both generates and limits our right to believe. If some beliefs are false, or morally repugnant, or irresponsible, some beliefs are also dangerous. And to those, we have no right.

The information is here.

Research and clinical issues in trauma and dissociation: Ethical and logical fallacies, myths, misreports, and misrepresentations

Jenny Ann Rydberg
European Journal of Trauma & Dissociation
Available online 23 April 2017

Introduction

The creation of a new journal on trauma and dissociation is an opportunity to take stock of existing models and theories in order to distinguish mythical, and sometimes dangerous, stories from established facts.

Objective

To describe the professional, scientific, clinical, and ethical strategies and fallacies that must be envisaged when considering reports, claims, and recommendations relevant to trauma and dissociation.

Method

After a general overview, two current debates in the field, the stabilisation controversy and the false/recovered memory controversy, are examined in detail to illustrate such issues.

Results

Misrepresentations, misreports, ethical and logical fallacies are frequent in the general and scientific literature regarding the stabilisation and false/recovered memory controversies.

Conclusion

A call is made for researchers and clinicians to strengthen their knowledge of and ability to identify such cognitive, logical, and ethical manoeuvres both in scientific literature and general media reports.

The article is here.

Most Popular Theories of Consciousness Are Worse Than Wrong

Michael Graziano
The Atlantic
Originally published March 9, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

In the modern age we can chuckle over medieval naiveté, but we often suffer from similar conceptual confusions. We have our share of phlegm theories, which flatter our intuitions while explaining nothing. They’re compelling, they often convince, but at a deeper level they’re empty.

One corner of science where phlegm theories proliferate is the cognitive neuroscience of consciousness. The brain is a machine that processes information, yet somehow we also have a conscious experience of at least some of that information. How is that possible? What is subjective experience? It’s one of the most important questions in science, possibly the most important, the deepest way of asking: What are we? Yet many of the current proposals, even some that are deep and subtle, are phlegm theories.

The article is here.