My recommendation for a category that is missing: public beliefs which are harmful to express. Suppose we specifically target this aspect of your public belief definition:
“not only do I think that X is true, I think that any right thinking person who examines the evidence should come to conclude X.”
What if “right thinking person” is a fraction of a fraction of the population? What do we do when the belief violates some “sacred value” held by the general populace? In these cases, expressing even the most solidly backed belief publicly can have huge negative consequences.
Sure, it might be statistically better in the long run if these beliefs were expressed, but in the short term, you can lose your livelihood (or worse) for expressing them.
“Not only do I think that X is true, I think that any right thinking person who examines the evidence should come to conclude X” is a superset that itself contains both public and private beliefs.
It’s hard to do contemporary examples, for obvious reasons, but an easy past example might be something like “we should not treat every member of Group X as if they are in no meaningful ways different from the median member of Group X.”
(against “isms”)
I think there’s an important distinction to be made between legible and illegible (but still probably at least somewhat valid) reasons for one’s beliefs, but I think “public” and “private” is the wrong set of labels to use for that distinction, specifically because it will engender confusion about concrete-and-legible-but-not-speakable-aloud beliefs.
Or, to put it another way, I don’t want people to think that any belief that is not spoken aloud is not spoken aloud because it is illegible.
Or to put it yet another way: sometimes, illegibility-in-practice is because I have not yet done the work to put my reasoning into clear terms. But sometimes, illegibility-in-practice is the fault of the listener or the society, for being unable (sometimes violently) to handle what are, in fact, perfectly clear and reasonable arguments.
I think something bad will happen if we crystallize the distinction above under the terms “public” and “private.” I think that the distinction above is real and good and deserves handles, though.
Taking the term “private” literally, there are at least two reasons why a belief might be private.
The first is because of the reasons that this posts outlines: because one’s reasoning is illegible, because they don’t think that they have or can justify their reasoning by objective standards.
But another reason why a belief might be private is that, even though you think the arguments are solid and defensible, you expect that other people will have a strong negative reaction to your stating the belief, for non-epistemic reasons. There are always, in all times, things you can’t say.
And it is pretty bad if it becomes a default assumption that, if a person won’t share a belief, its because their arguments are implicit or their reasons not-fully-justified. That’s just not true.
..
Overall, that seems right to me, and I’m happy to find a different word for “private beliefs” that doesn’t have that problem. Any suggestions?
Maybe “personal”?
Overall, I’m not trying to crystalize terms here so much as point at distinctions. Rather than say “this is a personal/private belief” I currently think people should just spell out “this is a thing that I believe, but I don’t think that I’ve made the arguments well enough to think that you should buy it yet.” But I agree that if this becomes commonplace, it will become jargon, and we want to pick the jargon well.
I don’t have any good suggestions for terms to replace the ones you used; I do reiterate that the distinction you’re pointing out in the OP is a real and useful one.
My recommendation for a category that is missing: public beliefs which are harmful to express. Suppose we specifically target this aspect of your public belief definition:
“not only do I think that X is true, I think that any right thinking person who examines the evidence should come to conclude X.”
What if “right thinking person” is a fraction of a fraction of the population? What do we do when the belief violates some “sacred value” held by the general populace? In these cases, expressing even the most solidly backed belief publicly can have huge negative consequences.
Sure, it might be statistically better in the long run if these beliefs were expressed, but in the short term, you can lose your livelihood (or worse) for expressing them.
Came here to make approximately this comment.
“Not only do I think that X is true, I think that any right thinking person who examines the evidence should come to conclude X” is a superset that itself contains both public and private beliefs.
It’s hard to do contemporary examples, for obvious reasons, but an easy past example might be something like “we should not treat every member of Group X as if they are in no meaningful ways different from the median member of Group X.”
(against “isms”)
I think there’s an important distinction to be made between legible and illegible (but still probably at least somewhat valid) reasons for one’s beliefs, but I think “public” and “private” is the wrong set of labels to use for that distinction, specifically because it will engender confusion about concrete-and-legible-but-not-speakable-aloud beliefs.
Or, to put it another way, I don’t want people to think that any belief that is not spoken aloud is not spoken aloud because it is illegible.
Or to put it yet another way: sometimes, illegibility-in-practice is because I have not yet done the work to put my reasoning into clear terms. But sometimes, illegibility-in-practice is the fault of the listener or the society, for being unable (sometimes violently) to handle what are, in fact, perfectly clear and reasonable arguments.
I think something bad will happen if we crystallize the distinction above under the terms “public” and “private.” I think that the distinction above is real and good and deserves handles, though.
My paraphrase:
Taking the term “private” literally, there are at least two reasons why a belief might be private.
The first is because of the reasons that this posts outlines: because one’s reasoning is illegible, because they don’t think that they have or can justify their reasoning by objective standards.
But another reason why a belief might be private is that, even though you think the arguments are solid and defensible, you expect that other people will have a strong negative reaction to your stating the belief, for non-epistemic reasons. There are always, in all times, things you can’t say.
And it is pretty bad if it becomes a default assumption that, if a person won’t share a belief, its because their arguments are implicit or their reasons not-fully-justified. That’s just not true.
..
Overall, that seems right to me, and I’m happy to find a different word for “private beliefs” that doesn’t have that problem. Any suggestions?
Maybe “personal”?
Overall, I’m not trying to crystalize terms here so much as point at distinctions. Rather than say “this is a personal/private belief” I currently think people should just spell out “this is a thing that I believe, but I don’t think that I’ve made the arguments well enough to think that you should buy it yet.” But I agree that if this becomes commonplace, it will become jargon, and we want to pick the jargon well.
Your paraphrase passes my ITT.
I don’t have any good suggestions for terms to replace the ones you used; I do reiterate that the distinction you’re pointing out in the OP is a real and useful one.