(D1) I am trespassing on another field, but that field does not feature any relevant evidence or skills that bear on my view about p;
(D1) also covers the realm of pseudoscience: “I believe the substantive claims of astrologers are false … But I’ll admit that astrologers have evidence and skills that I lack. My considered view, however, is that astrologers’ evidence and skills do not constitute a reliable method for establishing their claims, and so I am justified in dismissing their claims.” (Ballantyne, 380). We don’t have to wait to hear what pseudoscience has to say about a topic, because pseudoscience wouldn’t tell us anything useful anyway.
This doesn’t seem convincing from outside, unless you already believe that pseudoscience has nothing useful to say. Imagine using the same approach on religion, postmodernism, or critical theory. If you believe they are full of hot air, you can use your expertise in e.g. psychology to explain it all as cognitive biases or status-seeking behavior. But if you take them seriously, you will be like “smart people who studied this for their entire lives wrote literally thousands of books on this topic, and this guy is not even familiar with 1% of it”.
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.
This doesn’t seem convincing from outside, unless you already believe that pseudoscience has nothing useful to say. Imagine using the same approach on religion, postmodernism, or critical theory. If you believe they are full of hot air, you can use your expertise in e.g. psychology to explain it all as cognitive biases or status-seeking behavior. But if you take them seriously, you will be like “smart people who studied this for their entire lives wrote literally thousands of books on this topic, and this guy is not even familiar with 1% of it”.
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.