Can we trust what we believe, with Miriam Schoenfield

On Opinion

English - August 19, 2020 14:49 - 31 minutes - 28.4 MB - ★★★★★ - 9 ratings
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Previous Episode: Emotional Politics: how ‘angry populism’ made President Trump, with Karin Wahl-Jorgensen

Next Episode: Why do we believe Conspiracy Theories, with Karen Douglas

"A lot of beliefs that are fundamental to who we are and to how we think about the world are influenced by things that appear to be arbitrary and irrelevant to the truth of the matter.”

Turi talks with Professor Miriam Schoenfield, of the University of Texas at Austin, to understand whether we can have any kind of certainty about the truth of our beliefs.

The children of Jews tend to be Jews, the children of Jains tend to be Jain, those brought up in the liberal agnostic West tend to be liberal agnostics… Much as the children of Liverpool FC supporters tend to support Liverpool. The fundamental philosophical premises of our most cherished beliefs are flawed: we’re conditioned to believe them.

Are we epistemologically stranded?

Listen to hear Miriam and Turi discuss:

Doubt: “something that simply happens to us, without explanation, fluid and wordless”the Gestalt Shift, and how it’s different from just ‘changing your mind’Whether Rationalism is itself a belief systemWhether emotional or spiritual experiences might get us closer to the truth than ‘thought’Why agnostics take smaller risks in politicsAnd whether we ‘learn’ our feelings, in the same way as we ‘learn’ our beliefs