Thus playing the Devil’s Advocate is a valuable intellectual tool for the aspiring orator or public intellectual. Rose is right; Dawkins, wrong.
The ability to play devil’s advocate may indeed make you a better orator, and thus better at “public” intellectualism. But I don’t think this is the point of the article. The point is that the human brain is a messy, biased thing that can convince itself of almost anything, and if you want to be reacting to reality itself, instead of to your own wishful thinking, you don’t want to encourage habits of thinking that would make you better at convincing yourself of untruths. And given the messiness of human reasoning (priming, etc), even if a public intellectual resolved to base his own beliefs off one process while playing the devil’s advocate in public, he is likely to contaminate his personal beliefs in the process.
The ability to play devil’s advocate may indeed make you a better orator, and thus better at “public” intellectualism. But I don’t think this is the point of the article. The point is that the human brain is a messy, biased thing that can convince itself of almost anything, and if you want to be reacting to reality itself, instead of to your own wishful thinking, you don’t want to encourage habits of thinking that would make you better at convincing yourself of untruths. And given the messiness of human reasoning (priming, etc), even if a public intellectual resolved to base his own beliefs off one process while playing the devil’s advocate in public, he is likely to contaminate his personal beliefs in the process.