Sorry, I meant using motivated cognition as a norm itself. Using motivated cognition for evaluating hypotheses. I.e. I mean what people usually mean by motivated cognition, “you believe in this (hypothesis) because it sounds nice”.
Here’s why I think that motivated cognition (MC) is more epistemically interesting/plausible than people think:
When you’re solving a problem A, it may be useful to imagine the perfect solution. But in order to imagine the perfect solution for the problem A you may need to imagine such solutions for the problems B, C, D etc. … if you never evaluate facts and hypotheses emotionally, you may not even be able to imagine what the “perfect solution” is.
MC may be a challenge: often it’s not obvious what’s the best possibility is. And the best possibilities may look weird.
Usual arguments against MC (e.g. “the universe doesn’t care about your feelings”, “you should base your opinions on your knowledge about the universe”) may be wrong. Because feelings may be based on the knowledge about reality.
Modeling people (even rationalists) as using different types of MC may simplify their arguments and opinions.
MC in the form of ideological reasoning is, in a way, the only epistemology known to us. Bayesianism is cool, but on some important level of reality it’s not really an epistemology (in my opinion), i.e. it’s hard/impossible to use and it doesn’t actually model thinking and argumentation.
If you want we can discuss those or other points in more detail.
Sorry, I meant using motivated cognition as a norm itself. Using motivated cognition for evaluating hypotheses. I.e. I mean what people usually mean by motivated cognition, “you believe in this (hypothesis) because it sounds nice”.
Here’s why I think that motivated cognition (MC) is more epistemically interesting/plausible than people think:
When you’re solving a problem A, it may be useful to imagine the perfect solution. But in order to imagine the perfect solution for the problem A you may need to imagine such solutions for the problems B, C, D etc. … if you never evaluate facts and hypotheses emotionally, you may not even be able to imagine what the “perfect solution” is.
MC may be a challenge: often it’s not obvious what’s the best possibility is. And the best possibilities may look weird.
Usual arguments against MC (e.g. “the universe doesn’t care about your feelings”, “you should base your opinions on your knowledge about the universe”) may be wrong. Because feelings may be based on the knowledge about reality.
Modeling people (even rationalists) as using different types of MC may simplify their arguments and opinions.
MC in the form of ideological reasoning is, in a way, the only epistemology known to us. Bayesianism is cool, but on some important level of reality it’s not really an epistemology (in my opinion), i.e. it’s hard/impossible to use and it doesn’t actually model thinking and argumentation.
If you want we can discuss those or other points in more detail.