How to Become a Really Good Pain in the Ass: A Critical Thinker’s Guide…- Dr. Christopher DiCarlo

Presented by Christopher DiCarlo, PhD, Philosopher of Science and Ethics, advisor and board member, Center for Inquiry Canada

About the Speaker

Dr. Christopher DiCarlo is a Philosopher of Science and Ethics whose interests in cognitive evolution have taken him into the natural and social sciences. His personal research focuses on how and why humans reason, think, and act the way they do. He is interested in how and why the human brain has evolved to its current state and what cross-cultural and cross-species behaviour can provide insight into universally common modes of reasoning.

Dr. DiCarlo is an outspoken activist for freethought, humanism and secularism. He is a fellow, advisor and board member of Center for Inquiry Canada. He is also a fellow of the Society of Ontario Freethinkers and board advisor to Freethought TV.

He is a past Visiting Research Scholar at Harvard University in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences: Department of Anthropology and the Peabody Museum of archaeology and Ethnology. Here, he conducted research for two books he is currently writing entitled: The Comparative Brain: The Evolution of Human Reasoning and The Evolution of Religion: Why Many Need to Believe in Deities, Demons, and the Unseen.

Dr. DiCarlo’s new book, How to Become a Really Good Pain in the Ass: A Critical Thinker’s Guide to Asking the Right Questions, was released by Prometheus Books in July, 2011.

About the Event

Summary with commentary for the August 31, 2011 CFI- Michigan meeting.

The topic for this meeting was How to Become a Really Good Pain in the Ass: A Critical Thinker’s Guide to Asking the Right Questions. It was presented by Dr. Christopher DiCarlo.

Dr. DiCarlo’s talk title was the same as the book that had written and that was for sale at this meeting. Both his oral presentation and his book were highly accessible, sprinkled liberally with humor and presented in an engaging style.

The provocative title refers to how once one becomes sufficiently adept at the skills of critical thinking and then begins challenging others whose arguments are sloppier or poorly supported; that this is not ingratiating or well- received by most people. One, in effect, becomes a royal pain in the ass. In one portion of his book, DiCarlo lists some of the greatest pains in the ass in history, including Socrates. Socrates was deemed such a nuisance and irritant due to getting others to see for themselves their own logical fallacies and inconsistencies of thought, that he was ultimately put to death!

Everyone has opinions and asses, and what issues from both the typical issuer of opinions and the typical rump is, sadly, too often of the same value. In asking the right questions, after becoming well- steeped in the ways of the critical thinker, one holds others accountable for what they base their arguments upon and how they formed them to begin with. Beliefs that are founded upon faulty reasoning are vulnerable to the critical thinker’s clear examination. This process of critical examination is one that will likely expose the fallacies and lack of supporting premises on which the assertion of the other is based; essentially pointing out that the other does not know what he or she is talking about. Any questions, now, on why one becomes a pain in the arse when one insists that others provide the basis for their beliefs and assumptions?

Dr. DiCarlo, the award-wining lecturer on bioethics and philosophy of science, discussed how our cognitive evolution left us with what has been referred to as Caveman Thinking. This is the legacy that we inherited from our Pleistocene ancestors, where magical thinking and belief in big invisible forces and supernatural agency led to group cohesion, and a hyper-drive fight or flight tendency that could save one’s life and leave them intact to live another day, reproduce, and thereby leave behind progeny with the same proclivities. In today’s world that way of regarding the world is counter-productive. But because we come pre-packaged to reason so poorly, critical thinking skills are so very difficult for us to master. Even our brain architecture shows that that the newest regions to have evolved are the ones that we use to reason with in a more deliberative fashion, so nearly the entirety of our evolutionary past is that of ancestors that were not even capable of rational, intellectual rumination.

One way to determine how one interprets the world and life, and upon what basis one forms one’s beliefs is to answer what Dr. DiCarlo called the Big Five Questions. These are: What Can I Know? Why Am I Here? What Am I? How Should I Behave? What is to Come of Me? One major split that will emerge straight off, is that of answering these big questions in a supernatural or a naturalistic manner. This is because we develop values and beliefs that we regard as true, but with those who view the world through a supernatural lens tend to form big T truth responses, while those who have a more scientifically naturalistic way of viewing the world, fall more reliably upon small t truths. The former are convinced that they already possess The Truth, while the latter subscribe to a more provisional form of knowledge, where what one holds to be true at one time may be superseded by newer and better information.

The way in which one answers the Big 5 Questions provides a powerful tool for insight into how the responder will look at all manner of other questions in life. Professor DiCarlo said that this would be a very good way of getting to who the core person is when speed dating or otherwise trying to know a great deal about what makes another person tick in short order. He also fully expects that many who read his book will answer the Big Five somewhat differently after completing it, than they had before integrating the tools of critical thinking; before they read the book. This is why he revisits the Big Five at the end of the book.

Even if you are already possessed of a naturalistic and questioning type of mind; one who arrives at small t truths, or else one who establishes a sort of hybridized response (incorporating some beliefs that cannot be ascertained by naturalistic and critical thought, along with well-reasoned values, you will, if you are like most people, still benefit from learning the techniques for constructing logical arguments and for detecting the flaws in your own and others’ arguments.

As an example from my own experiences: I was never given to be receptive to supernatural claims (ghosts, angels, gods, etc.), even from my earliest years of life. However, I was a natural born sucker for claims of divining rods, pyramid power, or flesh and blood beings such as extraterrestrial organic beings and Bigfoot. It was not until I steeped myself in scientific thinking and how the laws of nature operate, as well as when I could finally come up with sound challenges against maintaining the beliefs that I had, that I could begin to extricate myself from the old patterns of regarding the world. Even so, it would be many, many years before I would learn the more technical aspects of critical thinking and the ways of constructing logical arguments.

Constructing arguments is an apt way of stating this process, since the Society of Ontario Freethinkers board member, DiCarlo, actually portrayed the way of building a logical argument in a visual way, as a structure, complete with a foundation, walls and a roof. This is a highly useful tool to conceptualize argument formation and to check other arguments for design flaws or soundness of construction. In this model, the foundation is composed of the underlying assumption/s. The walls are built of premises and the roof is the conclusion. Just as with a material structure, if the foundational assumptions are weak, nothing can be built upon it of quality. If the premises do not support the conclusion, it is the same as feeble walls charged with holding up a structural roof. If all components work together, however, one ends up with logical validity or structural integrity. Conversely, if any part is weak, the whole thing collapses.

Dr. DiCarlo introduced us to the ABCs of critical thinking and these were, in fact, laid out alphabetically, to include the DEFs as well.

A is for Argument and he spends some time defining the term and how to construct logical arguments as well as developing the skills of detecting flaws in belief statements.

B is for Bias, which involves influences from a myriad of sources including, but not limited to, our upbringing; media exposure; our religious training; socio-economic background; ethnicity and culture; education; friends; family and authority figures. All of these factors and others contribute to the formation of our own personal portraits of reality (or worldview.)

C is for Context, which involves elements such as time, place, and circumstance. This takes in an acknowledgment of how one is basing one’s argument upon limitations and challenges arising from time and place and other contextual influences. In fact such acknowledgment of one’s own biases, contextual influences, limitations of knowledge about a given subject, etc. are all part of what DiCarlo described as the Rules of Fair Play for Critical Thinking.

Going to the DEFs: D is for Diagramming, which involves the already- addressed building of arguments as a visual construct , but includes dissecting verbal or textual claims in much the same way that one would diagram a sentence, as an English major, for clauses, prepositional phrases, and other components of language; only, in this case, the diagramming is to check for logical supports or fallacies that are contained in the arguments. Diagramming arguments, DiCarlo writes (on page 87), brings about clarity and fairness in interpreting meaning and intention.

E is for Evidence which is what should be used to support arguments. Not every claim or assertion is significant enough to demand evidence from the one making the claim. Joe may say he just had a dinner discussion with his mother and this may pass, unchallenged. However, if you know for a fact that Joe’s mother has been deceased for a decade, you would be understandably concerned with getting to the bottom of that claim. This is summed up in a succinct and memorable way by the late Carl Sagan: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Furthermore, along this line: the burden of proof rests with the one who is making the extraordinary claim, not with the one questioning the assertion. If Joe says that he built a perpetual motion machine, since the existence of this device would defy the known and well-established laws of physics, it is for Joe to support this extraordinary claim, not for you to prove the non-existence of it. One may, however, argue against the logical inconsistencies and fallacious thinking that Joe will likely employ to try to support his amazing claim.

F is for Fallacies. While Dr. Dicarlo addresses logical fallacies in depth in his book and fleshed them out well in his talk, even with the inherent time limitations, I will mostly list these here, with only brief explanatory notes.

Ad Hoc Rescue references adding extraneous propositions that do not add convincing evidence to the claim or argument.

Ad Hominem is a form of attack that focuses on the person instead of the argument or premises.

Ad Ignorantiam. This is where, when one does not have certainty about the validity of a given assertion, one leaps to a complete denial of it; or, conversely, one wholeheartedly accepts a premise because one does have absolute knowledge of it being false. This fallacy is frequently seen among Creationists: I cannot see how unguided natural forces could have produced all the perfection of living systems, therefore it MUST be that the God of the Bible was responsible for it all!

Appeal to Authority. This may include anything from a sacred text to a leading expert in a field. It is not always wrong to take guidance from expert opinion or the institutions specifically related to the critical examination of a given area of expertise or discipline. The trick is sorting out unreliable sources from reliable ones and to investigate what biases or influences may be factors in what they have to say. What is the basis of the claims made by given authorities in a specific area of knowledge?

Ad Populum regards appeals to popularity. This is also referred to as the majority rules fallacy. A majority of people can believe something or not accept something else, but this alone should not increase our sense of reliance upon that viewpoint. More than half of Americans not only do not accept evolution but believe that life arose basically as it is expressed in the Bible.

Appeal to Emotions. This is where one targets the limbic system responses, rather than attempts to make use of rigorous skeptical analysis in making one’s argument.

Appeal to Force. A fallacy that is also known as the scare tactic fallacy.

Begging the Question is a form of circular reasoning or tautology, where one assumes as a premise what one hopes to support as a conclusion. As an example: The word of the Bible is true. For it says, right in the Bible, that it is the word of God, and God would never allow the Bible to contain false information. The premise does not support the conclusion—it presupposes it!

Common Cause or third-cause fallacy. With this fallacy there are two things that occur simultaneously and we infer that one caused the other to happen. Sometimes, however, it is the case that neither A causes B nor that B causes A, but that the cause of either or both was actually C.

Confusing Cause and Effect. This is the cart before the horse fallacy, or where we mistakenly indentify the effect as the cause or the cause as an effect; misinterpreting the causal relationship between things.

Disanalogy—or the apples and oranges fallacy. An example of this is Rev. Paley’s association of watches and watchmakers with biological organisms and a divine Creator. This is where we get the non sequitur, which is Latin for “it does not follow.”

Equivocation. This fallacy arises when one uses a term, phrase or sentence in an argument with two different meanings. One example is with the term theory, which has a very different meaning when it is used by a scientist than when it is used in the lay vernacular way. Creationists will attempt to discredit the scientific theory of evolution by substituting the common use of the word (as a hunch or guess) for what scientists mean (a very well-established conclusion based on a robust cluster of unifying facts which provides a fruitful model in which to understand a given area of scientific endeavor.)

Extraordinary Claims Fallacy. One should consider—when one hears an extraordinary claim produced: what is the level of authority or expertise regarding the claim. How reliable have the past judgments been by the source? How much experience does the claimant have with the putative source of support for the claim?

False Dichotomy. You are either with us or against us. Feast or famine. We are good; the enemy is evil. This black and white way of ordering everything in life is commonly seen in the religious fundamentalist or authoritarian conservative mindsets. As one exemplar of this habit of thought once put it: I don’t do nuance.

Hasty Conclusion. This is also referred to as the jumping the gun fallacy. Fear, ignorance, prejudice, and other biases can often lead us to make quick or rash judgments. Hasty conclusions are often drawn because we have been convinced of an argument before a sufficient amount of evidence has been gathered.

Confirmation Bias. This regards the self- fulfilling prophecy. It involves actively seeking out support for one’s personal viewpoint at the expense of acknowledging or thinking about disconfirming evidence or argumentation.
Post Hoc Fallacy. An example of this is: Vaccinations cause autism. One followed the other so a causal connection is made in the mind of one who is susceptible to this fallacy.

Red Herring, or the beside the point fallacy, or even the smoke screen fallacy. It occurs whenever one uses a premise that is irrelevant to the conclusion which is deployed to distract one away from the topic at hand.

The Slippery Slope Fallacy. This is a metaphor describing the compounding effect or long-term consequences of our actions. Once we get started, we may not be able to stop. It becomes a fallacy when one can demonstrate that starting with point A, one does not, in fact, necessarily go on to point B or other subsequent dreaded points along the way in an irrevocable and inexorable decline. It may be shown, even, that one may readily return to point A after all.

Some other examples of unfair argumentation include the Tu Quoque (you too!) one and the Straw Man device (introducing a distracting, extraneous subject in which to attack, and then to ascribe this to one’s opponent’s intentions, so as to deflect a direct attack upon the core and relevant argument.)

Dr. DiCarlo also discussed the approaches used in deductive and inductive reasoning and the situations and circumstances that each of these may be most effectively employed when investigating a problem or argument.
He laid out the scientific method in the following steps: Observation; Hypotheses; Predictions; Experimentation and Data Collection; Hypothesis Confirmation or Hypothesis Falsification; or Suspend Judgment until further better support or clear falsification can be gained; Seek out competing or alternative hypotheses that may provide an equally plausible or likely explanation.

The scientific approach involves if/then statements, and therefore makes predictions based upon observations and hypothesis formation which may then be tested. This leads to further fruitful research and discovery and allows for falsification (coming up with some circumstance or instance that would cause the conclusion to be undermined, or even discarded entirely.) All of evolutionary theory would be falsified if, for instance, a single confirmed hominid fossil was ever found in geological strata from the Devonian period of Earth history. Repeatability is also important in the scientific endeavor. If the experiment has been constructed and run correctly, then any researcher, anywhere, should be able to repeat it and derive the same results.

Look for biases in research results. Ask who conducted the study and what was the motivation for it? Who funded it? One is wise to follow the money (research emanating from the tobacco industry that claims the inherent safety of cigarettes is rightly found to be dubious, for instance.) What was the methodology—was it conducted in a scientifically sound or flawed manner?

Consistency is so important to critical thinking that it has been called the guiding principle of rational thinking. If always or never statements are made, these can be shown to be inconsistent with a single counterfactual incident.

Professor DiCarlo also introduced the Three Laws of Thought: The Law of Identity (X is X); The Law of Noncontradiction (whereby a statement about the state of being of something and its negation cannot both be true); and The Law of the Excluded Middle (where any meaningful claim cannot have middle ground between core truth values; one cannot be a little bit pregnant, for instance.)

Simplicity was discussed, which is also known as parsimony and traditionally triggers mention of Occam’s Razor. One should avoid using factors, causal agents, etc., in support of an argument that raises far more questions than are answered, due to the use of those factors. If one is proposing a far greater mystery to answer a smaller question, this is unfruitful and frustrates logical arguments. An example is saying that the answer for any given smaller question is that God (the ultimate unfathomable and mysterious agent or cause) did it.

Magician and professional paranormal claim debunker, James Randi, created a million dollar reward as a challenge to anyone who can demonstrate psychic or paranormal ability under scientific testing conditions. The reward remains unclaimed. It is often noted that if anyone actually possessed special powers such as mindreading, telekinesis, clairvoyance, and so on, that they would not be fringe parlor trick performers but would likely rule the world. In addition, such powers would confer such an enormous competitive reproductive advantage upon the possessor that those like them would quickly overwhelm the population and these gifts would eventually be commonplace.

Spiritualists and psychics always say POSITIVE things. They say what one wants to hear and this makes their messages all the more convincing and causes the mark to be more forgiving of the charlatan when the statements are completely off the mark. You will never hear a spiritualist medium declare that your dearly departed loved on is ashamed of you or is wailing away in eternal hellfire. The one who is being given the reading often assists the putative psychic by providing useful information or saying something that rescues what would have stood as a demolished assertion by the huckster.

They, furthermore, issue vague statements when fishing for something to work with (“I’m seeing a woman with a name beginning with an ‘E’” / “Yes! That is my sister Ellen who died of cancer!”) They will also make pronouncements that are ambiguous; this is most prominently seen as a tactic used by astrologers or those who do psychic readings. They will say that one is generous but also frugal. One is kind and caring but is also tough-minded when need be. The statements are so general and ambiguous that the individual receiving the reading can find something to salvage (remembering the hits or what fits) while forgetting the misses, or what does not ring true.

Language problems (where parties are not on the same page as to meaning and terminology; or in flat- out misuse of language where no sensible meaning can be derived) were addressed and it was here that Framing was introduced too. How one frames an argument influences how we interpret the arguments. Death is an emotionally- charged word, so people have constructed the phrases death panel and death tax, disingenuously, for political benefit. There is a visceral distaste for the subject that kicks in before one can critically examine the issues on their actual merits or genuine flaws.

Euphemisms are often used in arguments to obscure the issue or weaken the connection between the descriptor and the described. Handicapable is one example. Another is how one now gets oneself a pre-owned car, rather than a used one.

Vagueness and Ambiguity. Two examples: Ted is a liberal thinker. Heather is a good student. Vagueness is imprecise in meaning and ambiguity results from a term with different meanings; vague is fuzzy whereas ambiguous contains clear enough concepts but the application is uncertain.

Here are two humorous examples that Dr. DiCarlo gave that were taken from advertisements: Chi-Chi’s. When you feel a little Mexican (Is one fondling a small person from Mexico?). Pork. The one you love. (Is this an encouragement for a certain sexual behavior?)

Dr. DiCarlo mentioned some of the greatest pains in the ass in history. Socrates has already been mentioned in this regard. He was arguably one of the greatest pains in the ass in Western thought because he developed a method that enabled him to ask the right sorts of questions, which gradually bothered people. The Socratic Method was one of cross- examining people about their beliefs—especially their most cherished beliefs—where he would feign ignorance regarding the various ideas, concepts and issues being proposed in order to get people to explain more clearly why they thought and acted as they did. They would eventually be confronted with their own fallacious and errant thinking patterns in an embarrassing way, as their own actual ignorance and fuzzy thinking was exposed. Inconsistencies in others’ arguments and claims was what he made a career of exposing and what led, ultimately, to his demise.

In dealing with piety, Socrates famously asked if the gods love pious actions simply because the acts are pious, or if the actions are pious just because the gods love them? Socrates pointed out how an independent reason failed to be established in this attempted link between deities and the virtue of piety. What is it about the pious action, as an intrinsic value, that the gods find favor in? It says nothing about the act of piety but only about the gods’ reaction to it. If the gods loved torturing cats, would this action become a virtue, because it was loved by the gods? Socrates likened himself to a gadfly that buzzed around society (often depicted as a lazy horse) in order to get it stirred up.

Having one’s beliefs challenged is extremely uncomfortable. People feel that subscribing to beliefs helps shelter them against uncertainty and, with what we now know from Terror Management Theory, it even acts as a buffer against fears of one’s own mortality when one can keep one’s worldview shored up, often by any means necessary.

Engaging in an argument with the attitude of genuine interest and provisional agreement of another’s viewpoint (as Socrates did) makes an end run around initial defenses and guardedness. The other person issues a great deal of verbiage that becomes a feast for the critical thinker to dissect and, if fallacious in reasoning, demolish, by using the speaker’s own illogical premises against his or her own conclusions.

Reflective ignorance is the term used to describe that practice. Socrates and the great historical skeptics, who were fleshed out more in DiCarlo’s book, felt that the unexamined life is not worth living. It takes incredible integrity and courage to confront others with proof of their own irrational arguments but it is also courageous to make oneself aware of one’s own biases and examples of fallacious thinking and to own up to them. Too, the student of critical thinking will not always prevail in logical argumentation. Another may come at an argument with more sound premises. The skeptics (or pains in the ass) from history encouraged people to go where the information leads rather than having a passive acceptance of comforting storylines without a basis in natural reality. Socrates did not die for a specific set of supernatural beliefs but for using a well- developed method of analyzing the beliefs espoused by others.

One great gift that he gave to the world is at the heart of the Dr. DiCarlo’s book: highlighting the dichotomy between supernatural and natural understandings. There is a true distinction between knowledge regarding matters of the natural world and knowledge regarding the supernatural notions. Supernatural attempts to understand the world deal with matters that lie beyond any naturalized understanding. By definition, supernatural causation or agency cannot be studied and discussed in the same manner as other types of information; they exist (if they exist) outside of nature and therefore cannot be observed, tested, falsified or corroborated. No predictions can be made and no data can be collected from the supernatural realm.

Skeptic did not originally mean doubter, DiCarlo explained. The Greek term, skeptikos, refers to inquirer or investigator. Its original reference was to Pyrrhonism; named after its founder, Pyrrho. Pyrrho’s assertion was that all our senses—sight, sound, touch and smell, and taste—and all the proposed supernatural theories of his day, contradict one another when they refer to the nature or essence of things. Like Socrates, he made a distinction between supernatural claims and what can be observed in the natural world. He found that it is very difficult to form ideas, based on supernatural claims, that can lead to fruitful connections to what is known and has been discovered. Pyrrho found peace of mind through not becoming vexed over matters that are insoluble via naturalistic reasoning. Pyrrho was most indifferent toward fanatical dogmatists (a word that is derived from dogmatikos, meaning doctrinaire thinker) who held supernatural beliefs to be absolutely certain.

Those who answer the Big Five questions with absolute certainty are often non-reflective and are often unaware and oblivious to the fact that they really do not possess such knowledge. The critical thinker is a pain in the ass; the other end of the spectrum includes those who may be defined as HUAS— those who suffer from Head-Up-The-Ass-Syndrome. An effective PITA can pull the head of the uncritical thinker out of his own nether orifice. Thus liberated, the former HUA is able to see clearly that he did not, in fact, possess genuine Truth about the nature of reality.

The Reality Measuring Stick was a conceptual tool that Professor DiCarlo discussed at length. Without such a device, a supernatural account is entirely without conviction, for we cannot even begin to measure its accuracy.
All world religions rely on faith which, in turn, makes most of the propositions quite dubious and impossible to measure.

I will now turn to the Gold in the Dark Room example as to knowledge claims that our speaker presented. Stating the absolute certainty about the Truth of one’s supernatural beliefs is like saying that you are holding the one golden cup in a dark room; a lightless room with others who are holding cups, any one of which that might actually be the sole golden one or ones of other metals. Even if you, indeed, had that one golden cup in your hands, you would not know it. To say that you had absolute knowledge of possessing it would be a baseless and unsupportable claim. We have no way of measuring supernatural claims (no Reality Measuring Stick), so the supernaturalist is always in the dark in his absolute, big T Truth claims. The skeptic, neither being able to absolutely verify nor absolutely disprove a supernatural claim, falls back on suspending judgment, or epoche, as the ancient skeptics called this position. All supernatural claims from all people cannot all be true, since they all differ from one another. However, it is logically consistent that they may all be wrong, or that no one is (to continue with the initial concept) holding the golden cup.

Sextus Empiricus (think empirical knowledge) lists ten modes regarding the relativity of appearances. These were further developed by the philosopher Aenesidemus. The first pertains to the different ways that different species experience the world (echolocation in bats; infrared heat sensing pits in snakes, ultraviolet light sensitivity in insects, etc.) Which is the most accurate description of reality? There is no Big T absolute Truth that can be arrived at by the interpretation of the world around any single species.

The second mode is about the differences in perception between individual human beings. As aforementioned, there are all sorts of societal, familial, cultural, background, and other influences that bias us, individually, toward certain sets of suppositions and beliefs. Experiences are all subjective.

The third regards the differences between impressions formed by the separate senses, even within the same organism. I have often noted that we form gestalts that are generations of our own personal realities, and that these gestalts are composed entirely out of aspects and fragments in which no single part reflects reality with great fidelity. We make a synthesis of reality out of an accumulation of non-reality components. I have found, as an artist who is fascinated by visual perception, that there is no local color in an object that corresponds with that object directly (one can find no spot of apple red in a red apple, for instance—but synthesized in the brain, it forms a gestalt that contains the local hue that we experience.

Furthermore, I have noted elsewhere, that there is no absolutely correct model of anything in the real world that can be constructed. For a model to directly correspond to what it is reflecting or pertaining to, it would have to be an exact replica. So we would be at the same place we began from: we cannot conceptualize the actual subject, so a perfect model is equally incomprehensible. Scaling it up (as we would do with an atom model) or down (as with a model of the solar system) or simplifying it, or re-orienting it, or any other manipulation, gets us further and further away from the actual real subject, in order to make it more comprehensible… or more real… to us. I find this to be a fascinating conundrum.

Fourth mode: Our perceptions are always under the influence of circumstantial conditions. One may experience the same event/read the same book/see the same play, etc. at different points in one’s life and with different moods and other contributing factors, and find them to be quite different experiences at each exposure over time.

Fifth: Different orientations, positions, and distances all conspire to alter our perception of what is being witnessed, due to the different perspectives (we talk of having a new perspective on something in everyday speech.)
Sixth: Mixtures. Human perception is never direct but is always through a medium. The beautiful sunset occurs as a result of pollutants in the air that scatter light, and the sun itself is a star but due to its relative proximity to us, we see it in the yellow range, whereas all other stars in the night sky appear white.

Seventh: Composition. Objects appear different according to variations in their quantity, color, motion, and temperature. Sextus used, as an example, how silver appears bright and shiny but silver filings appear dull and black. Which is the capital T True composition? Again, because visual perception is of enormous interest to me, I must mention here that we form our basis of the visual reality of everything that we see from our interpretations of the cues thrown up to us by given objects and the environment, which is triggered by how we have learned to interpret those cues. It is not a direct 1-1 experience. A circle depicted with a dark, curved top and a light curved pattern at the base is seen as concave; one with the reverse arrangement is understood to represent a convex shape. This is a learned interpretation, stemming from living our lives in environments where light almost always falls on objects from above (both natural and artificial light.)

What any object is next to influences its appearance; the lighting conditions alter the objects appearance dramatically (what is the True lighting?) and the quantity of light distorts the object to us as well (some objects appear larger or smaller, for example, depending on the intensity or type of light on them. We see what is not there (lost edges that we fill in mentally, even though they cannot actually be directly seen), while we fail to perceive what is there so often (especially violations of expectation: we perceive mostly through expectations that follow standard cues—rather than seeing what is actually there.) What falls outside of those cues is often missed.

We create more firm edges and boundaries than what our eyes can detect (this is why virtually any drawing one is likely to see will depict bounded forms with outlines and we have no problem with this representation, even though this does not reflect reality at all. If one views an object through a tiny aperture, one will overshoot the object to find oneself viewing the background, due to the actual indistinctness of boundaries, when parts of an object are seen in isolation.

Eighth: Relativity in general. All experiential and environmental factors provide a plethora of different interpretations of reality to us. Which is the absolute reality?

The 9th mode is based on consistency or, alternately, rarity of occurrence. Familiarity with a more innately extraordinary object may reduce the impression that it makes upon our consciousness, whereas another, intrinsically lesser event or object, may cause us to focus more attention upon it and have greater interest in it, if we have had less experience with it.

The 10th and final mode deals with ways of life, customs, laws, mythical beliefs, and dogmatic assumptions, all of which can be put in opposition to each other. This mode, originally constructed by an ancient thinker, takes in such a recent concept as cultural relativism. A person born and raised in Pakistan may have a different worldview than one who was a native of Oslo, Norway, for instance.

Another ancient skeptic, Agrippa, dealt with reality and supernatural claims, using five different modes. The first is about the discrepancies and dissenting opinions as to the True nature of Reality from a supernatural perspective, regarding answers to some of the Big Five Questions. Since we have not developed any definitive way of determining which guesses measure up better on the Reality Measuring Stick, we cannot possibly say which dogmatic view is more correct in answering questions along the line of the Big Five.

Next Agrippa asks supernaturalists to provide grounds for their conviction of their absolute Truth claims. Once an appeal is made, we can ask what they ground their support of their claims upon. When they do appeal to specific grounds, they require an unmovable measuring stick in order to convince us. This leads to endless regresses of appeals to grounds, which appeal to further grounds… ad infinitum.

The 3rd mode deals, again, with relativity. Our individual perspectives, biases and worldviews give as many views of what constitutes absolute reality as there are people who hold to the notion of absolute Truth to begin with.

Then there is the mode that pertains to hypothesis or assumption. The dogmatist starts off with the assumption of possessing the ultimate tool for determining absolute Truth but cannot produce this tool upon request by the skeptic. There is no evidence or proof to back up the extraordinary claims, whereas, rightly, there should exist extraordinary proof and evidence in support of the amazing claims.

The fifth mode is a powerful tool that also attacks the proofs of the dogmatists. It is based on circular reasoning and denies the dogmatists’ attempts to beg the question by asserting in their premises what they are attempting to prove in their conclusions.

Dr. DiCarlo writes of the Munchhausen Trilemma, which involves circularity of reasoning, the infinite regress, and the arbitrary foundation.

The practical criterion concerns itself with acquiescing to the appearances of things; neither affirming nor denying the true nature of them. This has been laid down in four aspects: The guidance of nature and its laws. The constraint of bodily drives—we must maintain our corporeal needs in a practical and naturalistic manner. The tradition of laws and customs, which is necessary for a well- ordered society and accepted by the skeptic.
Instruction in the arts. This is a Humanistic principle that deals with self- fulfillment in developing one’s own talents and skills, for both personal satisfaction and the betterment of life for others.
These are all pragmatic and commonsense ideas for human experience.

A good skeptic today is, above all, responsible for the manner in which he or she attains, revises, and acts on information, and only becomes a pain in the ass to someone who is unwilling to entertain the possibility of alternate viewpoints.

As skeptics, we have an obligation to continue to establish universal rules of reasoning in an effort to hold people accountable not only to their beliefs but, more importantly, for their actions, which may be harmful to others if left unchallenged.

No supernatural knowledge about the universe or ourselves has been attained demonstrably and no concepts derived from supernatural thought has found universal adherence. This is because, unlike natural phenomena that can be described in specific ways that are understandable across time and cultures, supernatural interpretations and constructs are idiosyncratic and amorphous; they resist universally agreed upon descriptions.

It is extremely important to determine the presuppositions or assumptions of those with whom you engage in discussion and to make clear to them your presuppositions as well.

As noted earlier: It is a good thing to be aware of your own biases and ignorance on given subjects and then be ready to revise your beliefs as new or better information becomes available to evaluate. It is a humbling experience to be aware of one’s own examples of uncritical thinking and we level the playing field when we understand that we, like everyone else, do not have absolute Truths that we may operate upon. Our approach, however, is a bottom- up one of slowly building up, with the accumulation of knowledge and discovery. The supernaturalist, conversely, feels that he is given absolute Truths from above (or beyond) that are not connected to other aspects of life or nature, and that one is not to question or test, and where no foundation exists to base conclusions upon. The supernaturalist must make a leap of faith. The naturalistically- based person, by contrast, climbs up a solid foundation of well-established and well-supported conclusions to arrive at higher vantage points in order to see ever further into nature and reality.

There are different forms of supernaturalism such as theistic supernaturalism (pertaining to gods as active, intervening agents); and paranormal supernaturalism, which includes everything from clairvoyance to telekinesis and anything else that falls outside of natural explanation and Nature’s Laws.

Those who have a supernatural basis for their sense of absolute Truth tend to use immunizing and insulating tactics. They avoid meaningful discussion or examination of their core beliefs and appeal to ignorance. If we cannot even have a common understanding of what the terms and premises are, why bring them into the discussion? What do supernaturalists base their conclusions upon? How can they know anything about the qualities and characteristics of supernatural agents?

The Big Five revisited: What can I know? Why am I here? What am I? How should I behave? What is to come of me? We can answer them purely naturally. We can answer them purely supernaturally. We can combine our answers with both natural and supernatural explanations. We can choose not to respond at all. As noted, how one responds to these questions gives us a great deal to go on about other assumptions and premises that they will likely have on other issues and concerns.

Dr. DiCarlo showed us that we have the tools by which to reason and that we have the sciences as a means to comprehend the natural world. But having these tools at our disposal is one thing. Using them and actively developing critical thinking skills is another. You have the ways and means of being a gadfly or a pain in the ass. Go forth and become one!

Synthesized by Charles LaRue