I guess I am questioning whether making a great effort to shake yourself free of a bias is a good or a bad thing, on average. Making a great effort doesn’t necessarily get you out of biased thinking. It may just be like speeding up when you suspect you’re going in the wrong direction.
If someone else chose a belief of yours for you to investigate, or if it were chosen for you at random, then this effort might be a good thing. However, I have observed many cases where someone chose a belief of theirs to investigate thoroughly, precisely because it was an untenable belief that they had a strong emotional attachment to, or a strong inclination toward, and wished to justify. If you read a lot of religious conversion stories, as I have, you see this pattern frequently. A non-religious person has some emotional discontent, and so spends years studying religions until they are finally able to overcome their cognitive dissonance and make themselves believe in one of them.
After enough time, the very fact that you have spent time investigating a premise without rejecting it becomes, for most people, their main evidence for it.
I don’t think that, from the inside, you can know for certain whether you are trying to test, or trying to justify, a premise.
I guess I am questioning whether making a great effort to shake yourself free of a bias is a good or a bad thing, on average. Making a great effort doesn’t necessarily get you out of biased thinking. It may just be like speeding up when you suspect you’re going in the wrong direction.
If someone else chose a belief of yours for you to investigate, or if it were chosen for you at random, then this effort might be a good thing. However, I have observed many cases where someone chose a belief of theirs to investigate thoroughly, precisely because it was an untenable belief that they had a strong emotional attachment to, or a strong inclination toward, and wished to justify. If you read a lot of religious conversion stories, as I have, you see this pattern frequently. A non-religious person has some emotional discontent, and so spends years studying religions until they are finally able to overcome their cognitive dissonance and make themselves believe in one of them.
After enough time, the very fact that you have spent time investigating a premise without rejecting it becomes, for most people, their main evidence for it.
I don’t think that, from the inside, you can know for certain whether you are trying to test, or trying to justify, a premise.