1 00:00:02,300 --> 00:00:07,583 In the previous lecture, we looked at the skeptical regress problem and I kind of 2 00:00:07,583 --> 00:00:12,532 introduced three different ways of solving that problem in practical life 3 00:00:12,532 --> 00:00:15,407 namely reassuring, guarding, and discounting. 4 00:00:15,407 --> 00:00:20,289 Those are three ways to solve the skeptical regress problem in practical 5 00:00:20,289 --> 00:00:23,432 life. And in the next three lectures what we're 6 00:00:23,432 --> 00:00:28,448 going to do is look at each of these in much more detail, more carefully, so as 7 00:00:28,448 --> 00:00:32,600 to understand how they work. Let's begin with assuring. 8 00:00:32,600 --> 00:00:38,241 Here's an example. I assure you that smoking is bad for your 9 00:00:38,241 --> 00:00:40,394 health. If I say, I assure you, 10 00:00:40,394 --> 00:00:44,740 then I'm trying to get you to accept that claim on my authority. 11 00:00:44,740 --> 00:00:49,901 Now, I might have some reason for saying that smoking is bad for your health. 12 00:00:49,901 --> 00:00:54,383 Namely, I've read the U.S. Surgeon General's Report, which sites the 13 00:00:54,383 --> 00:00:58,730 scientific evidence to show that smoking is bad for your health. 14 00:00:58,730 --> 00:01:03,590 But notice I don't actually say it, when I say well, it's obvious that 15 00:01:03,590 --> 00:01:08,521 smoking is bad for your health, or everybody knows that smoking is bad 16 00:01:08,521 --> 00:01:11,480 for your health, or I assure you certainly. 17 00:01:11,480 --> 00:01:16,667 Clearly, smoking is bad for your health. Then what I'm doing is I am trying to get 18 00:01:16,667 --> 00:01:21,407 you to accept that premise without actually citing the Surgeon General, or 19 00:01:21,407 --> 00:01:24,353 anybody. I haven't cited the evidence, I simply 20 00:01:24,353 --> 00:01:29,220 have indicated to you I do have evidence. I do have a reason to believe that 21 00:01:29,220 --> 00:01:33,767 smoking is bad for your health. But I haven't given you what the reason 22 00:01:33,767 --> 00:01:35,949 is. So what good is that? 23 00:01:35,949 --> 00:01:39,861 It's a lot of good, because what it means is that if I don't 24 00:01:39,861 --> 00:01:42,861 give the reason, you can't question the reason. 25 00:01:42,861 --> 00:01:47,882 If I simply say, everybody believes it, it's certainly true, then, you can't ask 26 00:01:47,882 --> 00:01:53,033 whether those people who believe it have any reason to believe it, or whether I 27 00:01:53,033 --> 00:01:55,772 have any reason to be so certain about it. 28 00:01:55,772 --> 00:02:00,923 If I don't give the reason, I've cut off your attack on the reason that I would 29 00:02:00,923 --> 00:02:03,424 give. So, assuring is kind of tricky. 30 00:02:03,424 --> 00:02:07,696 I say I assure you and if you can trust me, that's fine. 31 00:02:07,696 --> 00:02:13,133 But if you can't trust me, then you should be asking, well, what kind of 32 00:02:13,133 --> 00:02:18,210 reason does he really have. Now there are many ways to assure people. 33 00:02:18,210 --> 00:02:21,626 There are three kinds that we're going to look at. 34 00:02:21,626 --> 00:02:26,496 Authoritative, reflexive, and abusive. Let's start with authoritative. 35 00:02:26,496 --> 00:02:30,639 Authoritative is just what it says. It cites an authority. 36 00:02:30,639 --> 00:02:34,893 So I might say. I assure you that smoking is bad for your 37 00:02:34,893 --> 00:02:37,971 health. The Surgeon General, has shown that 38 00:02:37,971 --> 00:02:42,340 smoking is bad for your health, and I cite an authority, the Surgeon General. 39 00:02:42,340 --> 00:02:44,670 Okay. Fine, but, have you seen the studies? 40 00:02:44,670 --> 00:02:48,340 Have I cited the numbers? Have I told you when the studies were 41 00:02:48,340 --> 00:02:52,535 done, how many subjects, under what circumstances, which statistical tests 42 00:02:52,535 --> 00:02:55,506 were used? How do you know its causation instead of 43 00:02:55,506 --> 00:02:59,584 correlation, and so on and so on? No, I just say the Surgeon General has 44 00:02:59,584 --> 00:03:04,361 shown this and you're supposed to take my word for it, that those are good studies. 45 00:03:04,361 --> 00:03:08,380 Unless, of course, you share my assumption that The Surgeon General is 46 00:03:08,380 --> 00:03:11,735 trustworthy. So that's the way an authoritative 47 00:03:11,735 --> 00:03:15,984 assurance works. It sites an authority that the audience 48 00:03:15,984 --> 00:03:19,171 shares as authority with the other person. 49 00:03:19,171 --> 00:03:23,800 They share the assumption that, that authority is trustworthy. 50 00:03:25,200 --> 00:03:29,774 Now sometimes it's the Surgeon General and the Surgeon General is pretty 51 00:03:29,774 --> 00:03:33,534 reliable, but you also get this kind of thing from reporters. 52 00:03:33,534 --> 00:03:38,548 They say an unimpeachable source close to the President, has assured me that the 53 00:03:38,548 --> 00:03:43,185 President's plans are such-and-such. And they cite an unimpeachable source, 54 00:03:43,185 --> 00:03:45,880 but they won't tell you what the source is. 55 00:03:45,880 --> 00:03:49,390 And they won't tell you how the source knew it was true. 56 00:03:49,390 --> 00:03:54,167 So they're citing an authority, but they're not telling you what the 57 00:03:54,167 --> 00:03:59,297 authority or what reason the authority has for what the authority claims. 58 00:03:59,297 --> 00:04:02,740 Now if you trust that authority then that's fine. 59 00:04:02,740 --> 00:04:06,084 And if authority's reliable, then you might be safe. 60 00:04:06,084 --> 00:04:11,265 But if you don't know who the authority is, or where they got their information, 61 00:04:11,265 --> 00:04:15,068 there can be problems. Oh, and here's my favorite, here's my 62 00:04:15,068 --> 00:04:17,888 favorite. I sometimes hear students say, but, 63 00:04:17,888 --> 00:04:23,003 Professor Shannon Armstrong, my teacher in the other course said that, blah, 64 00:04:23,003 --> 00:04:27,830 blah, [COUGH] blah, blah, blah. Well, why do you trust your professors? 65 00:04:27,830 --> 00:04:31,776 Why do you trust me? You shouldn't be trusting me or your 66 00:04:31,776 --> 00:04:37,106 other professors, anymore than you are trusting an unimpeachable source close to 67 00:04:37,106 --> 00:04:40,775 the President. So, you have to trust somebody sometime, 68 00:04:40,775 --> 00:04:43,960 and you have to decide who you're going to trust. 69 00:04:43,960 --> 00:04:49,773 And then it's going to be okay to cite an authority in this kind of assurance, but 70 00:04:49,773 --> 00:04:55,291 you have to watch out for tricks when people start citing authorities that 71 00:04:55,291 --> 00:05:00,957 aren't really authorities, because even the best authorities sometimes do studies 72 00:05:00,957 --> 00:05:04,563 that aren't very careful and might even be wrong. 73 00:05:04,563 --> 00:05:10,376 A second kind of assurance is what I call reflexive, reflexive because it's talking 74 00:05:10,376 --> 00:05:12,769 about yourself. I believe that. 75 00:05:12,769 --> 00:05:15,347 I know that. I am certain that. 76 00:05:15,347 --> 00:05:20,332 I feel sure that. And your citing something about your own 77 00:05:20,332 --> 00:05:22,418 mental state. You feel sure. 78 00:05:22,418 --> 00:05:25,530 Great. You feel sure, but why do you feel sure? 79 00:05:25,530 --> 00:05:30,847 Notice however, that this assurance works because, people don't want to question 80 00:05:30,847 --> 00:05:35,761 what other people feel sure about. If I say, well I feel sure that this is 81 00:05:35,761 --> 00:05:38,790 going to happen. In many societies, it's going to be 82 00:05:38,790 --> 00:05:41,725 impolite to go, well, I don't feel sure. 83 00:05:41,725 --> 00:05:46,746 Matter of fact, I think you're wrong. Or, why do you feel sure?'Cause because 84 00:05:46,746 --> 00:05:52,940 then you're questioning the person. And, if that's impolite, then using this 85 00:05:52,940 --> 00:05:58,966 type of phrase, I am certain that, will get people to shut up and not say 86 00:05:58,966 --> 00:06:02,626 anything. But my favorite is when people say you 87 00:06:02,626 --> 00:06:07,785 know, I've held this opinion for years or I've thought about it year after year. 88 00:06:07,785 --> 00:06:12,879 It's really bothered me and you know, after careful consideration I've come to 89 00:06:12,879 --> 00:06:15,752 the conclusion that blah, blah, blah, whatever. 90 00:06:15,752 --> 00:06:21,042 And, you are supposed to say well since you've thought about it so much I'll save 91 00:06:21,042 --> 00:06:26,397 myself a lot of trouble of thinking about it and trust you and go along with what 92 00:06:26,397 --> 00:06:29,266 you say. Well if you let other people do your 93 00:06:29,266 --> 00:06:33,200 thinking for you, then that's up to you. But you're going to be misled in some 94 00:06:33,200 --> 00:06:35,274 cases, because they've thought about it for 95 00:06:35,274 --> 00:06:39,261 years and years and gotten themself in a tizzy and ended up with the wrong 96 00:06:39,261 --> 00:06:41,866 conclusion. So the fact that somebody has thought 97 00:06:41,866 --> 00:06:44,790 about it for years doesn't necessarily mean it's right. 98 00:06:44,790 --> 00:06:51,333 But somehow in conversation when you say I've thought about it for a long time and 99 00:06:51,333 --> 00:06:57,483 checked all the sources I could then, people take the fact that you've reached 100 00:06:57,483 --> 00:07:03,002 a certain conclusion to be okay for them to reach the same conclusion. 101 00:07:03,002 --> 00:07:07,869 And that's how this reflexive type of assurance works. 102 00:07:07,869 --> 00:07:11,904 The most fun of all is the abusive assurance. 103 00:07:11,904 --> 00:07:17,464 Here's another example from Monty Python. No, no nonsense. 104 00:07:17,464 --> 00:07:20,872 Maybe he's right. Maybe it is nonsense, 105 00:07:20,872 --> 00:07:27,687 but the point is that he gets you to except what he believes by abusing you 106 00:07:27,687 --> 00:07:32,580 and calling it nonsense. An the same thing happens when somebody 107 00:07:32,580 --> 00:07:37,374 says, nobody but a fool would think that!" Everybody knows this. 108 00:07:37,374 --> 00:07:44,713 If you say, everybody knows it, then you're saying, well if you don't know it, 109 00:07:44,713 --> 00:07:49,178 then you're a dummy. And, so, they are abusing you in order to 110 00:07:49,178 --> 00:07:54,007 get you to agree with them by making a conditional abuse that applies to you 111 00:07:54,007 --> 00:07:58,460 only if you don't agree with them. And you don't want to be a dummy you 112 00:07:58,460 --> 00:08:03,164 don't want to speak nonsense you don't want to say something that's stupid. 113 00:08:03,164 --> 00:08:07,993 So, when somebody says you'd have to be stupid to disagree with me about this 114 00:08:07,993 --> 00:08:11,254 then that's going to incline you to agree with them. 115 00:08:11,254 --> 00:08:16,021 Some of these abusive assurances are a little bit more subtle so, it's worth 116 00:08:16,021 --> 00:08:21,539 mentioning one that's used all the time. And this is what might be called, appeal 117 00:08:21,539 --> 00:08:25,753 to common sense. So it's just common sense that such and 118 00:08:25,753 --> 00:08:28,734 such. It doesn't matter what the such in such 119 00:08:28,734 --> 00:08:31,339 is. The point here is simply, that if you 120 00:08:31,339 --> 00:08:35,832 deny that, then you're telling that person that you lack common sense. 121 00:08:35,832 --> 00:08:40,391 Nobody wants to lack common sense. So if I said, it's just common sense 122 00:08:40,391 --> 00:08:44,363 that, it's just plain common sense. People say it all the time. 123 00:08:44,363 --> 00:08:49,507 But what they're doing is they're abusing their opponents, by saying that their 124 00:08:49,507 --> 00:08:53,936 opponents lack common sense. So it's a little bit more subtle, but it 125 00:08:53,936 --> 00:08:58,820 shows that abusive assurances occur, either suddenly or openly, all the time. 126 00:08:58,820 --> 00:09:03,377 So we've seen three different types of assurances. 127 00:09:03,377 --> 00:09:06,293 Okay? The first is authoritative. 128 00:09:06,293 --> 00:09:11,060 The second is reflexive. And the third is abusive. 129 00:09:11,060 --> 00:09:16,567 And their all used in common speech to stop the skeptical request problem. 130 00:09:16,567 --> 00:09:21,108 So why do we need any of these assurances in the first place? 131 00:09:21,108 --> 00:09:24,560 And the answer is, we've got limited time. 132 00:09:24,560 --> 00:09:27,884 You know, you can't go out and check every study. 133 00:09:27,884 --> 00:09:30,862 You can't go out and look into every issue. 134 00:09:30,862 --> 00:09:36,402 You've just got to accept authorities and listen to other people and learn from 135 00:09:36,402 --> 00:09:39,657 them. Or you'll never be able to figure out the 136 00:09:39,657 --> 00:09:44,851 issues that matter to you in life. That tells you why assurances are needed 137 00:09:44,851 --> 00:09:47,830 in general, but what about particular cases? 138 00:09:47,830 --> 00:09:53,435 Well when you're talking to a certain audience, if they share your trust of a 139 00:09:53,435 --> 00:09:58,968 certain authority, or if they trust you when you give a reflective assurance, 140 00:09:58,968 --> 00:10:04,209 or if what you're saying really is something that everybody with common 141 00:10:04,209 --> 00:10:09,596 sense believes in, then again, it can be perfectly fine to use an assurance. 142 00:10:09,596 --> 00:10:15,202 It saves you the time of having to go check out every issue, and it helps you 143 00:10:15,202 --> 00:10:19,570 avoid the skeptical regress problem in a very practical way. 144 00:10:19,570 --> 00:10:25,200 So assuring can be a really useful tool in argument. 145 00:10:25,200 --> 00:10:30,252 But you have to be careful because assurances are also subject to a lot of 146 00:10:30,252 --> 00:10:33,419 tricks that you have to learn to watch out for. 147 00:10:33,419 --> 00:10:38,472 We've already seen that you can sight authorities that are trustworthy and 148 00:10:38,472 --> 00:10:42,649 that's kind of obvious. But something that maybe a little less 149 00:10:42,649 --> 00:10:47,904 obvious is that people use assurances at points in their argument in order to 150 00:10:47,904 --> 00:10:51,713 distract you. If something really is questionable, they 151 00:10:51,713 --> 00:10:57,198 often say, well that's obvious. In order to get you to not pay attention 152 00:10:57,198 --> 00:11:01,025 to it. So when someone says that's obvious, it's 153 00:11:01,025 --> 00:11:04,631 certain, I'm sure. It's worth looking carefully, at what 154 00:11:04,631 --> 00:11:08,713 their so sure about, and asking yourself whether you agree with them? 155 00:11:08,713 --> 00:11:13,155 Because people try to paper over the cracks in their arguments, with these 156 00:11:13,155 --> 00:11:16,157 assurances. At least in some cases, and you have to 157 00:11:16,157 --> 00:11:20,059 learn to watch out for that. Another trick is when assurances get 158 00:11:20,059 --> 00:11:23,519 dropped. People will start off saying, you know, 159 00:11:23,519 --> 00:11:29,164 he believes this, I believe that. And then they drop it, and start talking 160 00:11:29,164 --> 00:11:33,397 as if it's true. Now, my favorite example of this was a 161 00:11:33,397 --> 00:11:38,650 case a few years ago, when there was a person caught in Germany, for 162 00:11:38,650 --> 00:11:42,570 cannibalism. And it started off with the reporters 163 00:11:42,570 --> 00:11:48,607 saying, well, he, the person accused of cannibalism, says that there are lots of 164 00:11:48,607 --> 00:11:53,767 other cannibals in Germany. And then it becomes it is reported that 165 00:11:53,767 --> 00:11:59,875 there are lots of cannibals in Germany. and then it became sources have said that 166 00:11:59,875 --> 00:12:05,078 as if the source are reliable. And, pretty soon they were saying there 167 00:12:05,078 --> 00:12:10,658 are lots of cannibals in German. And it moved from he believes it to there 168 00:12:10,658 --> 00:12:15,860 are lots of them. And that's the trick of dropping the 169 00:12:15,860 --> 00:12:19,905 assurance in a way that can be illegitimate. 170 00:12:19,905 --> 00:12:25,420 So assurances can be useful and they can also be misleading. 171 00:12:25,420 --> 00:12:31,326 And that's going to be true of all the different ways of stopping the skeptical 172 00:12:31,326 --> 00:12:34,931 regress. There can be uses and abuses of all of 173 00:12:34,931 --> 00:12:38,537 these tricks. For assurances we want to have an 174 00:12:38,537 --> 00:12:42,755 assurance when. First of all, somebody might question it. 175 00:12:42,755 --> 00:12:47,972 Second, the audience accepts the authority that is being referred to, 176 00:12:47,972 --> 00:12:53,955 and third, it would be too much trouble to actually cite the study and all the 177 00:12:53,955 --> 00:12:58,935 evidence and the particular people. Assurances are not appropriate when 178 00:12:58,935 --> 00:13:03,652 nobody would question the claim anyway then why are you wasting your time 179 00:13:03,652 --> 00:13:07,158 assuring people? When the authority that you are basing 180 00:13:07,158 --> 00:13:11,812 your assurance on is not really trustworthy because then why should they 181 00:13:11,812 --> 00:13:15,956 believe your assurances. And third when you've got plenty of time 182 00:13:15,956 --> 00:13:20,801 and it would be really easy to give the reason straightforwardly instead of 183 00:13:20,801 --> 00:13:24,480 simply assuring them. So, you've got good and bad uses of 184 00:13:24,480 --> 00:13:29,964 assurances and I hope we understand what they are and how to distinguish them, but 185 00:13:29,964 --> 00:13:35,180 lets just do a few examples just to make sure that we've got the general idea.