Scott writes on what he calls getting Eulered: when someone tries to convince you of something or rebut something you believe using arguments (particularly mathematical ones) you are either not intelligent or not trained enough to understand.
I’ve never heard the term before, but I’ve thought of this. I am intelligent, but not exceedingly so, there are a number of things I won’t be able to understand, at least not fully or without much more effort and time than I am willing to put in.
So, I follow a simple heuristic: what does someone smarter than me who agrees with me on things I understand and is willing to put in time/effort think on the issue?
If you know he agrees with you on the things you understand for similar reasons as you, you know he reasons in similar fashion to you from similar presupoositions. If he reasons in a similar fashion as you, you then know that his thoughts on another issue you don’t understand will be the most reasonable approximation of what you would think if you were either smart or knowledgeable enough to be able to form an informed opinion on the matter.
No matter how smart you are you can’t know or understand all things. In the case where you can’t, the wise course of action is to fall back on those who think the same as you, but are either more intelligent or more knowledgeable on the subject matter.
All rational organizations outsource when it’s more efficient, so why not outsource your thinking when it is more likely to be correct if someone else does it for you?
Agreeing with someone because he generally agrees with you when you don’t understand the argument in question is usually the most rational form of action.
Of course, this is not an original heuristic, and is no different than asking, ‘what does my father, my priest, my teacher, etc. say?‘
But what if you move your intellectual outsourcing beyond a known individual to something greater. This is where tradition comes in: why outsource your thinking to a single individual when you can outsource your thinking to the collective reasoning of every single previously-existing mind of your society?
Is it not much more efficient and wise to follow the collective wisdom of thousands of minds much more intelligent and knowledgeable than yourself than to go through the intellectual labour of thinking something through for yourself and likely arriving at a rationally inferior position?
From this, is not the person saying, “I believe what my ancestors, the magisterium, my intellectual forebears believe” being more rational than the one who tries to reason everything out for himself?
Maybe, argument from authority, if the authority stands firmly upon a mount of tradition, is the most rational argument of all.
Maybe, argument from authority, if the authority stands firmly upon a mount of tradition, is the most rational argument of all.
Exactly. Yes. Tradition is especially important for you, “Free Northerner,” as you are focusing on Christianity and morality. Needless to say, Leftists hate tradition, or deference to tradition.
You are on the right path now FN. Keep it up. Even more epiphanies lie ahead.
A lazy position. If you don’t understand something, it does not mean that you can’t understand it, given some effort. Of course, it’s up to you if it’s worth the time and calories lost.
Maybe, argument from authority, if the authority stands firmly upon a mount of tradition, is the most rational argument of all.
Yes, particularly in matters of morality and religion. The problem of constantly reinventing the wheel is a real one, and one which creates substantial problems socially, culturally and morally.
Maybe, argument from authority, if the authority stands firmly upon a mount of tradition, is the most rational argument of all.
Yes. It encourages a depth most people aren’t able to get on their own, but are able to with assistance.
Theres the added bonus that such authority educated yourself to make the argument, and if you’re proven wrong it usually leads to more education, either futherong your understanding on the authority or to read another authority beyond the original you used.
Only a short commentary. Welcome to the Catholic church. Or at least almost there if you follow your argument in your life.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say it is the most rational argument, but it is often the most rational course of action. Not to mention, most of the time you study something, you realize people who came before you were onto something, even if we have expanded on their thinking. The idea that sticking with the wisdom of the ages is somehow a cop-out or intellectually stunted is itself a rather childish and foolish idea. It is perfectly reasonable for someone to do things as they were taught, as their forbears would have done them.
That isn’t to say one can show up in a philosophical debate and just say “well, pappy and grandpappy thunk this, therefore it’s right.” However, just because that’s not right, doesn’t mean we should dismiss pappy and grandpappy’s ideas out-of-hand either. Certainly if the “appeal to tradition” is fallacious in some sense, it’s obverse “appeal to anti-tradition” is as well. Indeed, it is a more perverse one in that at least tradition or the “tried-and-true” is something to fall back to when in doubt, whereas doing the opposite seems silly and nonsensical.
Even Sir Isaac Newton was modest enough to admit that he ‘stood on the shoulders of giants’.
So do we all, the giants being those who have gone on before us, and figured things out empirically; we do well to heed tradition.
“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father.”
― G.K. Chesterton, ‘Orthodoxy’
To “Norwegian David,”
The Roman Catholic Church is traditional? Certainly it isn’t as far as priestly celibacy. And, that’s doubly true coming from a Anglo-Saxon perspective.
Christianity is traditional. R.C.C. is but one branch.
For me so far, the big thing is more modest. Not so far as to say axiomatically authority is the best choice per se (may be), but more modestly, that relying on authority for truth is unavoidable.
I likely will never have any kind of personal confirmation those dots in the sky are “planets” that move around the sun, etc. I’m perfectly comfortable though that they are.
Our dependence on authority is in fact profound, and the notion of not taking things on authority is a fine principle ideally like, say, notions of ‘equality’, while in practice profoundly far from literal possibility. We can only work but the smidgeniest, tiniest actual distance in that direction.
It must be a sublime, awesome web of weights and measures we take of countless things to evaluate whether what we hear is true.
It’s an interesting part of our lives: we all do it, better or worse than the next guy: evaluate the truth of what we hear from others, and an enormous amount of what we know is what we hear from others.
So good post. Anyone who says he “takes nothing on authority”, there’s no such animal.
@Alan J. Perry
Sorry but i beg to differ. The Catholic church is traditional in the way Protestant denominations are not, since one of the pilars of Protestantism is the private interpretation of Scripture, where for the catholic you cannot interpret them without the recourse to Tradition and the fathers.
Since this was what the post was all about, i think my commentary was appropriate. Please note that donalgraeme agrees (implicitly If I understand him correctly) with me.
@ David from Norway:
Not all of Protestantism believes in private interpretation of Scripture; the Magisterial Reformers – Lutherans, Reformed, Zwingli-Moravians, etc. have catechisms and confessional standards just like the Church of Rome; it was only later Protestant movements, like what we call ‘evangelicalism’ in North America, that came to believe in private, personal interpretations of Scripture.
Reformed and Lutheran traditionalists are just as much traditionalist as Rome; simply younger traditions BUT we hold Augustine and other early church fathers in high regard, and do not see ourselves as having sprung forth ex nihilo in the 16th century, but standing in the traditions of Augustine and others, back to the early church. Naturally, you will disagree with us, but as per self-definitions, we confessional, Reformational Protestants consider ourselves as much traditionalist as no doubt you Roman Catholics do yourselves.
I think that, outside of formal education, the method you describe is how we learn. I find that sometimes I need to meditate on a matter before I can internalize the principles. Many of my favorite bloggers are the ones who understand the subject better than I, and I find them enlightening.
Many arguments are based on teachings of smarter men.