Saturday, January 09, 2021

Street Epistemology as a method of interacting

"Street Epistemology" is a method of engaging Christians invented by Peter Boghossian and explained in his book, A Manual For Creating Atheists. The method is essentially the same thing as the Socratic method except that it's more focused. In the Socratic method, instead of making ham-fisted arguments, you ask questions of the other person to lead them to your conclusion. Street Epistemologists use the same strategy except they apply it specifically to the subject of epistemology and even more specifically to make the point that faith is not a reliable or legitimate foundation for justified true beliefs. And since Street Epistemologists think that belief in Christianity rests on a foundation of faith, they figure if they can undermine faith, they can undermine a person's belief in Christianity.

I don't think there's anything wrong with this strategy. However, having run into a number of Street Epistemologists on the internet, I do have a problem with how they implement it. For example, in my most recent encounter with a Street Epistemologist, he came into a forum and started asking open-ended questions about Christianity. He portrayed himself as if he were an open-minded inquirer who was just looking for information. But as soon as somebody would take the time to answer any of his questions, he'd respond with something that amounted to, "Well, how do you know that?" Those who took the bait would try to answer his follow up question, and when they did, he'd again say, "How do you know that?" I'm paraphrasing, of course.

His strategy was to keep asking, "How do you know that?" until he eventually found the bedrock of what they believe and why they believe it, namely, blind faith. What bothered me about his method was that it was disingenuous. He wasn't actually interested in why anybody should believe Jesus is God, or why anybody should interpret the Bible a particular way, or why anybody should trust the Bible in the first place. He was interested in epistemology. And he wasn't just trying to gather information for his own benefit. He was there to undermine everybody else's beliefs. Since he was not forthcoming about his intentions, everybody else was jumping through his hoops thinking they were helping him.

After a couple of exchanges with him, I suspected he might be a Street Epistemologist. After the third or fourth exchange, it became obvious that he was trying to do Street Epistemology on me. When I confronted him about it, he tried to shame me for not wanting to play the game by suggesting I was too weak-minded to want to have my beliefs challenged.

I found his whole approach to be dishonest and manipulative. And this has been my experience with almost every Street Epistemologist I've run into on the internet. There has only been one exception. There was one person who sent me a private message and asked if I'd be willing to basically submit to being cross examined about the justification for my beliefs. He made it clear he wanted to challenge my epistemology. Although I didn't participate, I did appreciate his honesty in what he was trying to accomplish.

If you're a Street Epistemologist, I recommend taking that person's approach. Be honest with people about what your intentions are. Some people might be willing to submit to the "interview" or "cross examination" or as some of you call it, the "conversation." But a lot of people won't. Let me explain why a lot of people (especially myself) don't want to play the game.

It's a matter of preference in how a person want's a conversation to go down. If you want to have a conversation about epistemology and whether faith is a legitimate basis for belief in Christianity, I'd rather you just tell me that's what you want to talk about instead of mindlessly saying, "How do you know that?" after everything I say until you get there. Save us both some time and cut to the chase.

Most people don't like being cross examined. When you have a "conversation" in which one person is asking all the questions and the other person is basically on the witness stand, it's a very one-sided conversation. Only one person is doing all the work while the other person is just lazily asking "How do you know?" type questions. That's not even what I would call a conversation. Any child can ask, "How do you know that?" and make their parents eventually squirm with, "I dunno?" or "Because I said so." It's a very lazy way to try to have a conversation. It's actually a lazy way to use the Socratic method.

While I'm all for the Socratic method in general, I don't want to be in a conversation where that's all that's going on--just one person asking all the questions. I'd rather it be used as a supplement to arguments you might make in a two-way conversation. If you think there's something wrong with something I believe, I'd rather you just tell me why you think I'm wrong so we can talk about it. A conversation ought to be a two way thing, but the person who is asking the questions is barely even a participant in the conversation since they are offering no point of view of their own.

There are lots of people who would probably be more than willing to sit on the witness stand. If you want to engage people in this kind of game, you should be honest with them about it. That way, people can opt out if they want, or you can get a willing participant. And if somebody opts out, don't try to shame them for it. That's another childish middle school playground tactic, and it just turns people off. I would be much more likely to play the game if Street Epistemologists were just more forthcoming and didn't ask disingenuous questions and use manipulative tactics. I find it very off-putting.

Here are three posts related to this topic:

Tactics vs Street Epistemology

Working out an epistemology

What is faith? part 1

2 comments:

Psiomniac said...

Oh, they really didn't know what they were getting into, I pity any unwitting interlocutor who attempts a tangle with you on epistemology!

TheFlyingCouch said...

That rings a bell. Someone in a youtube comment recently had a series of 10 or so statements, and he said that if you disagreed with him to respond as he'd like to chat. His first statement said (I'm paraphrasing), "what you know about God came from someone else" (so not first-hand experience knowledge), and then a few questions later, with huge gaps between points, "what I believe about God is probably wrong". Since it was pre-planned (probably copy and pasted), had nothing to do with the topic of the video, and the fact yes and no didn't feel right for the questions, it felt like a trap and I couldn't place my finger on it until later, but I could tell the game was rigged. It does sound like what you're describing. I wonder how it would have gone. The fact that what laid behind his first question alone undermines most of our knowledge would have been fun to ask him about. Have any of us taken the time to patiently track the sun and planets over time ourselves and determine what orbits what? Or were we taught in grade school that the sun is (roughly) in the center of the solar system and the planets go round it? You could ask the same about any other belief concerning any other area of science.

Clicked on your links at the bottom of the post and read: "Politely refuse to answer the person's leading questions." So I passed (sort of).