If I’m understanding you correctly, it seems like your worry with applying (D1) to pseudoscience is that it feeds into confirmation bias by making you feel like you’re right to dismiss something you already don’t think is useful (in a way that you wouldn’t dismiss it if you did think it was useful). As I summarize in the next paragraph, Ballantyne agrees with you that it’s easy to apply (D1) too often, but maybe even this case that’s supposed to be an example of using (D1) correctly is problematic.
Being charitable to Ballantyne, we can imagine that his “considered view” that “astrologers’ evidence and skills do not constitute a reliable method for establishing their claims” is supported by testimony from trusted, reliable, and relevant experts (physicists, astronomers, etc.) who have debunked astronomy without controversy. Thus, there’s no reason to check horoscope when trying to predict whether a date he’s planning will go well (for example), because he has good reason to believe that there’s nothing valuable to learn from it.
Religion, postmodernism, and critical theory all seem more controversial to me than things like astrology. Without the broad rejection by the educated public that astrology has, it seems like religion and the rest would (and should) appear more difficult to trespass upon safely. In other words, pseudoscience is an edge case not just because we already believe it’s useless, but because almost everyone thinks it’s useless, and there are plenty of trustworthy and accessible resources explaining why. This is unusual though, so when it comes to religion, postmodernism, and critical theory, “reasonably accepting (D1) will typically require considerable effort,” as it should.
That said, I’m not super familiar with debates about postmodernism and even less so with critical theory, so I may have mischaracterized the debates on those fields’ usefulness.
If I’m understanding you correctly, it seems like your worry with applying (D1) to pseudoscience is that it feeds into confirmation bias by making you feel like you’re right to dismiss something you already don’t think is useful (in a way that you wouldn’t dismiss it if you did think it was useful). As I summarize in the next paragraph, Ballantyne agrees with you that it’s easy to apply (D1) too often, but maybe even this case that’s supposed to be an example of using (D1) correctly is problematic.
Being charitable to Ballantyne, we can imagine that his “considered view” that “astrologers’ evidence and skills do not constitute a reliable method for establishing their claims” is supported by testimony from trusted, reliable, and relevant experts (physicists, astronomers, etc.) who have debunked astronomy without controversy. Thus, there’s no reason to check horoscope when trying to predict whether a date he’s planning will go well (for example), because he has good reason to believe that there’s nothing valuable to learn from it.
Religion, postmodernism, and critical theory all seem more controversial to me than things like astrology. Without the broad rejection by the educated public that astrology has, it seems like religion and the rest would (and should) appear more difficult to trespass upon safely. In other words, pseudoscience is an edge case not just because we already believe it’s useless, but because almost everyone thinks it’s useless, and there are plenty of trustworthy and accessible resources explaining why. This is unusual though, so when it comes to religion, postmodernism, and critical theory, “reasonably accepting (D1) will typically require considerable effort,” as it should.
That said, I’m not super familiar with debates about postmodernism and even less so with critical theory, so I may have mischaracterized the debates on those fields’ usefulness.