Many hold strong beliefs and opinions, however not many know the roots of their belief. If a person agrees to explore it, both of you will learn something new and fascinating. The problem is finding someone who wants to think and ask the questions. This goes for both. Many want to “convince” someone, but how much do you truly know about the thing you’re trying to prove?
This also comes back to the “why?” game so many kids play. Parents get annoyed by it, but are they really annoyed at the game or their lack of knowledge depth? Play the game, find out how deep you lake of knowledge goes
I don’t believe that’s true. People have different value hierarchies, so you won’t necessarily agree with them no matter how much you clarify knowledge.
For example, my value hierarchy changed when I got attacked on the street once. It made me realize how terrifying it was to see my life about to end, and that moved “staying alive” up the hierarchy.
Now I think taking away people’s weapons is a terrible thing. But I can’t convince anyone else of this by talking to them about it, unless they value the protection of life as powerfully as I do.
I thought I valued my safety, but I really didn’t. I took a lot more risks before that happened, because I valued fun, social status, money, exploration over safety.
So my values shifted, without any new knowledge of the world (at least not that I can convey in words), and as a result my decisions and worldview changed.
It sounds horrible, but I don’t know if I could alter another’s philosophy on this by talking. I’d have to disguise myself as a stranger and beat them half to death, then come back as myself again to really get on the same page.
Why should I do that?
Be very careful @dominicHillson, you are close to realising that the dumbest 95% of people defaulted to their views and rationalise their surrounding beliefs. The important part is that at no point have they or will they verify their beliefs. They are literally copying others and aren’t aware of it. If you press them most of the time they will get progressively more “uncivil”. There is a reason fascists genocide their enemies and don’t care about honesty or correct language. Power is how you go against nature, and if you are wrong, the only way to “win”.
If you guys want to rebuild your beliefs so they are actually true, you have to start with figuring out what truth is. I know philosophy is a scary and worthless sounding thing, but its literally the attempts to understand things through reason(literally having reasons for believing) and refining those views.
Epistemology is the philosophy of truth and knowledge. Some examples of epistemological thinking are
- Are the people around me a reliable way to determine truth? ex. In a Hindu region, the average person will vouch for Hinduism, in an Arabic region, Islam etc etc. Can mutually exclusive things in different regions become simultaneously true just because people around them believe it?
- Are experts a reliable way to determine truth? ex. Blood letting was a common profession, as was astrology.
- Are family members a reliable way to determine truth? ex. one family believes one thing, another believes the opposite.
- Are the most popular people a reliable way to determine truth? ex. Hitler could be argued as a popular person in his area and time, so also could any random influencer.
- Are the most powerful people reliable sources of truth?
You can clearly see a path this takes, so let me give a silly story.
The most popular politician during a debate says “You all trust me and my skill! That’s why I’m popular. The answer to the great question is three!”. Then, the expert mathemagician takes the spotlight to answer the question of one plus one. “Clearly an expert knows the answer and not some silly politician! After great calculations, the answer, is four!”. The crowd thinks, clearly the answer must be either three or four, maybe the uncertain could compromise to three and a half. If only there was some way to reliably come to a true conclusion.
To me personally, truth is the most internally consistent configuration of information that I have, cleaned up using cognitive dissonance as my guide!
This process is generally referred to as The Socratic Method. As you said, the devil is in first convincing both parties within a debate that they should be searching for shared understanding through the process of attacking and defending ideas, not attacking and defending each other.
