Mental Immunity by Andy Norman

I remember as far back as middle school I had a very, very difficult time comprehending or understanding anything that even resembled “philosophy”, or any book, assignment, or lecture that broached upon the teachings of Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle — to name just a few of the guys that we heard so much about from Mr. McDonnell in 8th grade. So when I found Norman’s book at my local bookseller a few weeks ago, I was intrigued by what it had to offer but slightly wary of the content, because I wasn’t sure how intensely “philosophical” it was and if I would have a hard time getting into the themes and understanding the analysis. As it turns out, getting “into it” wasn’t a problem at all, because Norman is a fantastic writer who weaves in and out of philosophical theory, history, and how human thoughts and ideas have proliferated — positively or negatively — over time. He also traces the root causes of some of our current social paranoia, why we react so emotionally when our ideas are challenged, our dysfunctional thinking on certain issues, and how infectious ideas and warped thinking have trickled down from generation to generation. It’s really a fantastic piece of work, but I did have to dig deep at points and re-read specific sections — kind of like how I tackled some of Plato’s writings way back in the day. It would have been neat to read a little bit more history and a little less philosophy, but that’s really just a personal opinion because Norman’s specialty is his focus on the evolutionary origins of human reasoning, science, human values, and helping us to clarify how to better reason with one another, think for ourselves, be curious about learning, and, most importantly, how to ask better questions. In 2022, curiosity is a bit of a lost art, but with Mental Immunity Norman seeks to find a way to make us all better thinkers, and that might be a good start to make us a more curious species after all.

• bad ideas re mind parasites, pathogens that quite literally infect minds
• minds have immune systems — operations that keep bad ideas at bay
• book about the mind’s immune systems — capacity to protect us from many of the bad ideas out there, and its glaring failure to protect us from divisive ideologies
• cultural immune systems as well: the things cultures do to prevent bad ideas from spreading, and why these systems are also prone to collapse
• Haidt: “groupish” creatures — our thinking is bent by the need for tribal solidarity
• ideology: system of ideas that are infectious, dysfunctional, harmful, manipulative, stubbornly resistant to rational revision
• outbreaks of ideological thinking end in tragedy
• bad ideas are like parasites, replicate, infect
• an idea can benefit a host, short term beneficial but long term harmful
• an idea can benefit a host while harming others
• bad ideas are parasites
• out minds are networked, susceptible and easily unhinged
• our minds are ends in themselves, they matter quite directly
• ideas are constantly rewiring our brains, remaking our minds
• we need to seek to understand and enhance mental immune function, the things minds do to shed bad ideas = cognitive immunology
• reasons are like levers, pry loose some ideas and shoehorn others into place
• groups use reasons to forge and repair shared outlooks
• need to become an advocate of responsible cognition
• not a preacher of responsible thinking but a practitioner of it
• myth busting is really what philosophers do — bad idea removal
• philosopher means lover of wisdom
• we gain wisdom by losing our misconceptions, wisdom comes in the absence of something bad
• Socrates invited people to share their ideas on important topics, then guide them through the process of testing those ideas — Socratic Method
• philosophy uses questions and reasons to test ideas, and pay close attention to what happens
• philosophizing is mostly just paying attention to the problematic features of ideas and helping others appreciate the drawbacks of becoming overly fond of them
• ask questions, suspend judgement, examine arguments carefully
• ethics — effort to develop our understanding of right and wrong
• epistemology — subdiscipline devoted to understanding how we know things
• epistemologists study how reasoning, evidence, and learning work
• philosophy’s efforts to promote wisdom have time and again fallen short of expectations
• investment in STEM hasn’t “stemmed” the tide of ideological thinking
• science can tell us what is, but not what should be
• we don’t reason clearly and productively enough about what matters
• our species remains distressingly prone to irrational thinking
• critical thinking paradigm has not served us particularly well
• reason, science, and critical thinking: each approach has limitations rooted in its defining concept
• confirmation bias, belief persistence, skewed by self interest
• everyone has biases, but it doesn’t follow that we’re all equally hostage to them
• “false equivalence” = failure on “both sides”
• some minds are comparatively susceptible to ideological fixation, and others are comparatively immune
• reasons and questions are like antibodies: used properly, they hunt down bad ideas and neutralize them
• we can learn to ask good questions and boost our immunity to bad ideas
• belonging to a community of scientists seems to strengthen resistance to ideological thinking; could belonging to a community of inquiry afford the rest of us similar benefits?
• a bad idea is one that is false, misleading, harmful, or otherwise problematic
• some will ask who’s to say whether an idea is good or bad? we are
• ideology is an interlocking system of bad ideas, a system of bad beliefs
• sacred values create moral rigidity and cognitive dysfunction
• when ideologies take root, they tend to become resistant to rational revision
• a mental immune system is a mind’s wherewithal for filtering and shedding bad ideas
• if the mind is a garden, its immune system is like its gardener
• mental immune function is what mental immune systems do: ask questions, test ideas, harbor reservations, revise opinions
• when a subculture browbeats dissenters into silence, it damages its own immune system
• before the hijackers (9/11) could commandeer the planes, bad ideas had to commandeer their minds
• at the very heart of the life of reason lies an act of submission, a willingness to follow good reasons where they lead
• negate that submission via an act of will, and thinking begins to go haywire
• growth mindset: attitude that one can and should learn even from inconvenient truths
• resilience, success in school, better relationships
• allows a person to live a less stressful and more successful life
• fixed = species of mental immune disorder
• religious habits of mind can corrupt a person’s understanding of right and wrong
• become deaf to reason’s call, and your moral compass is likely to go haywire
• identity protective thinking: when information threatens your identity, it’s very hard to think in fair minded ways
• if you lose the meta that beliefs should change with the evidence, then your susceptibility to conspiracy thinking, science denial, and moral rigidity increases
• subtractive learning: removal of unsustainable and disruptive ideas
• motivated reasoning: will think critically about views they dislike but spare their own views comparable examination
• a genuinely healthy mind is open to persuasion
• health requires an immune system in the Goldilocks zone: neither overactive nor underactive
• successfully modulate immune response, and often the body will heal itself
• many of our beliefs have an indirect impact on the wellbeing of others
• the idea that beliefs are private inhibits the identification and removal of bad ideas
• we need moral norms to regulate many things the law has no business regulating
• on left and right, settling for subjective truths prevents us from developing deeper understanding
• “who’s to say” has become a culturally conditioned reflex
• all you need is curiosity, or some way of shedding a little light on the subject
• just kicks the can down the road
• outrage prevents people from reasoning clearly and fairly
• deepity = something that looks true and wise until you clarify it, at which point it’s revealed to be false, foolish, trivial, or two edged
• “What about your beliefs effects on the well being of others?”
• “can we examine that together”
• “how do we keep the concept of faith from becoming a license to believe whatever one wants?”
• “perhaps he’d appreciate a chance to examine his assumptions”
• “I just want to examine this idea and find out if it’s true and genuinely helpful”
• intelligence is one thing, how you use it is another
• scientific attitude = willingness to go where the evidence leads
• Socratic method is suboptimal because it can become combative
• attempts to correct an ideological conviction can deepen moral or political rigidity — backfire effect
• culture warriors typically locate the evil ideas in others and the good ones in members of their own tribe
• escalate conversations into debates and debates into open hostility
• what conclusions can we reach together?
• what can we not merely say, but instead show to be true, to the mutual satisfaction of everyone in this room?
• responsible shared understanding
• role of facilitator, tried to urge students to seek common ground (author, in classes)
• take opposing ideas seriously, tested one another’s claims, maintained mutual respect
• collaborative learning exercise, collaborative inquiry
• reframe verbal challenges as growth opportunities
• inquirers welcome challenges, opportunities to learn
• some learning is subtractive: gain new information, reflect on things we already believe, discover that we don’t really know what we thought we knew
• reject both the stubbornly defensive posture of the believer and the aggressively militant stance of the culture warrior
• real thinkers engage others in collaborative inquiry — let’s be curious, work together, find out what is true
• cognitive immune health requires a collaborative spirit
• ideologues experience challenges as personal attacks
• genuine inquirers regard their beliefs as transients, ideas that have taken up temporary residence in the mind
• those who embrace the way of inquiry are ushered into a realm of extraordinary possibilities
• if you want others to be persuadable, you must make yourself persuadable
• you must turn around and see the world from the vantage point of an ideologue
• believing things upon insufficient evidence is not just unreasonable, it is unethical
• William James employed the language of rights to blunt the force of Clifford’s emphasis on responsibilities
• “everyone is entitled to their opinion” became an article of both religious and secular faith
• Clifford’s “sufficient evidence” standard came to prevail in science, tech, engineering and math, and James’ “right to believe” prevailed in politics, ethics, theology
• ideology fueled conflicts have consumed something on the order of 140M lives
• epistemic = having to do with belief, knowledge, cognition
• Clifford — some beliefs are simply not morally permissible
• your beliefs may not affect others directly, but they can’t help but impact others indirectly
• some faith based beliefs are probably beneficial, and some evidence based beliefs are probably harmful
• James understood that the world’s religions offer resources for battling depression, anxiety, existential despair
• developed a challenge to Clifford’s evidentialism
• James: no one should interfere with another’s right to believe
• libertarian ethos, cognitive liberties as paramount
• according to James, belief is involuntary
• author: we do influence our beliefs indirectly
• we decide which premises we’ll rely on in our thinking
• in fact, belief is partially, or indirectly, voluntary
• we should address irresponsible believing with respectful challenges, good reasons, and gentle humor
• Keep the faith = commitment to maintaining a positive attitude
• psychological and social rewards, boosts confidence and instills hope
• salvation, eternal life, God’s favor, afterlife
• relief from existential anxiety
• religious belief can ease fear of death, promote trust, bind people into tight collectives
• it’s possible to be too skeptical for your own good, deny yourself the benefits of a more trusting attitude
• suitable balance between suspicion and trust
• religious claims can be pragmatic mental health interventions
• valuable aspects of religious faith can be had without willful self deception
• James showed that religious wisdom can be functionally useful even when it is not literally true
• epistemic and pragmatic considerations matter — a great many divisive issues in the world would suddenly prove tractable
• highly religious societies tend to have high levels of social dysfunction, less religious societies tend to have lower levels of dysfunction
• stop worrying that secularization might prove catastrophic
• not enough to reap the psychological and social rewards of religious faith and ignore its indirect costs
• responsible christians must have the courage to do with their religion what Jefferson did with his Bible: purge it of destructive teachings
• indiscriminate acceptance of a religion’s teachings is nothing but an abdication of moral responsibility
• we already regulate belief, we just do it poorly
• critical thinking only rarely becomes a lifelong habit
• one thing to suppress speech and another to criticize it
• coercion is one thing, persuasion is another
• indoctrination is not teaching
• religions are complex belief regulation systems, ways of syncing up people’s beliefs
• belief regulation can be bottom up
• employ shared standards and friendly reminders
• us imposing reasonable restraints on ourselves
• responsible believing doesn’t just happen, it requires sustainable effort
• Peirce: confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, belief persistence, sunk cost fallacy = method of tenacity
• “way of belief” = tendency to find beliefs that work for you, and stick with them
• our belief systems are warped by tribal allegiance
• willful belief remains rampant, and cognitive immune systems operate at a fraction of their potential
• philosophers congregating in a Parisian cafe enjoy the interplay of diverse opinions; they then return to their flats, believing what it pleases them to believe = a priori method
• system of norms that prevails today
• armchair philosophers ask a lot of questions, introspect for answers, rely heavily on intuition
• inattention to actual evidence allows it to diverge from reality
• eventually, humanity hits on science: reality based cognition with “external” accountability standards
• a scientists commitment to evidence based believing involves a kind of submission, a relinquishing of the will to believe
• general norm of science — way of inquiry — key to building responsible, shared understanding of what matters as well as understanding what is
• recent decades, right to believe became a kind of orthodoxy: everyone is expected to let others believe what they like
• Peirce’s scientific method is akin to democracy: science starts with evidence and builds the system of knowledge from the ground up; democracy starts with the consent of the governed and builds on political legitimacy from the ground up
• whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking: Einstein
• “phagocytosis” = immune system’s process of identifying and devouring dangerous invaders
• Wobegon effect = human need to feel above average, illusory superiority
• a reason is a possibility dependent kind of thing
• reasons depend on human practices to be what they are
• they afford opportunities to change minds
• we use reasons to weave and repair complex webs of mutual understanding
• social learning = a process that involves swapping reasons, as humankind’s “superpower”
• we’re supposed to accept what can be shown to be reasonable and give up what is shown to be unreasonable
• we’re supposed to yield to better reason
• “reason’s fulcrum”
• Socrates — for why would God require X or prohibit Y, if, by hypothesis, neither had any value valuence — positive or negative, good or bad, right or wrong — until He said so?
• Hobbes, social contract theory = cultural, political, and ethical responsibilities are rooted in a sort of agreement
• large benefits while requiring relatively small sacrifices
• costs of reason’s fulcrum pale next to its benefits
• when allowed to function properly, reasons allow us to build shared understanding
• collaborative inquiry becomes possible
• imagine a world where everyone always yields to the better reason?
• we reason opportunistically: we bow to better reasons when it suits us but are not above ignoring them when convenient
• becoming civilized is a matter of submitting to the force of a better reason
• cost of yielding to better reasons is essentially that of having to learn
• I will, to the best of my ability, yield to better reasons in all things — freethinkers
• ideological rigidity is common among the elderly
• our minds are riddled with biases
• sometimes people manage to be reasonable, fair minded, and objective
• you can welcome unwelcome reasons and honor their potential to broaden and correct your point of view
• ideologies hijack minds, when spread, ideodemic
• ideological rigidity: better reasons, we are unwilling to yield to them
• a norm is a kind of standing expectation, they need to be renewed generation after generation
• Trump’s base experiences the norms of accountable talk as oppressive
• accepting that beliefs should change in response to new evidence is robustly associated with several dimensions of healthy cognitive function
• you’re reasoning to provide social cover — motivated reasoning, wishful thinking
• Do I really know this? How do I know it? Is my source reliable? Do my reasons bear scrutiny?
• real reasoning is about examining
• pro and con, to find out what is true
• don’t reason to win, reason to find out
• identity protective cognition — we’re averse to thinking thoughts that threaten our chosen identities
• human beings have a deep need to matter: we need to understand our lives as significant, as difference making
• Goldstein, the “mattering instinct”
• mattering protective cognition, doesn’t everyone indulge in less than scrupulous thinking to protect their senes they matter?
• when political or economic self interest damages reason’s fulcrum, moral reasoning also tends to go haywire
• we sell out reason for fame too
• when people endorse religious worldviews, they’re more susceptible to conspiracy thinking
• religiosity correlates with anti-intellectualism and political intolerance
• prevalence of faith based thinking makes it exceedingly hard for humanity to forge a shared, reality based understanding of what is
• a reason friendly religion: it would be a bit like belonging to a university community
• build institutions that are both quasi religious and reason friendly: institutions that can serve emotional and spiritual needs, while also nurturing and strengthening our reason giving practices
• imagine a religion that doesn’t exploit the will to believe, but instead celebrates the will to find out
• a vaccine is a compound we deliberately manufacture to help the adaptive immune system learn how to handle an unfamiliar disease
• instruct, teach, the mind how to identify and rid itself of some parasites
• you can get better at screening out bad ideas, and you can get better at letting in good ones
• more inoculant than vaccine
• curiosity is essential to healthy mental immune function
• philosophers have regarded failed thought experiments as significant negative results
• learn from failure and use it to refine and deepen moral understanding — subtractive learning
• philosophical inquiry has a long history of making people uncomfortable
• real enemy is unreason
• we have a moral incuriosity problem
• what deadens curiosity: conceit, lack of imagination, incomprehension, apparent lack of factual basis, relativism, moral cowardice
• if we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research — science quote
• research only happens where there is partial understanding
• consider replacing talk of knowledge with talk of understanding
• better understanding of reason’s requirements mean clear, explicit, well functioning, and shared
• philosophical idea testing leaves us with insights about the thing that isn’t
• like sculpting: you carve away the marble that doesn’t look like David, you end up a bit closer to David
• concept of human rights was originally a philosophical invention
• dialectically defensible, participants test ideas together
• to evaluate ideas, we need to consider challenges
• pay attention to clues that indicate something is questionable
• Socratic spirit: habit of peppering hypotheses with questions and seeing what happens
• students themselves to wield the questions
• no judgment should be treated as settled once and for all
• “regress” problem: power of why questions
• shows that the Socratic conception can inject dysfunction into our reason giving practices
• Plato saw the Socratic picture is less than ideal for building common knowledge
• Socrates was fundamentally a debunker
• little interest in building positive knowledge
• Plato needed uncontroversial examples, he found in Math
• believed that the clarity and rigor of math thinking was the key to a well ordered mind
• existence of a proof, conclusive arguments
• reasonable belief: beliefs and claims are reasonable just in case they’re supported by sufficiently good reasons
• reasonable judgments differ from unreasonable ones by being anchored or logically grounded
• Platonic Picture
• by what right do we treat any premise as first or basic? “quandary of basic belief”, which persisted, and philosophers failed to solve the quandary
• to date, we’ve not achieved an understanding of basic belief that is tenable
• curious confluence of philosophical, military, and political firepower allowed the ideas of Plato and Aristotle to exert enormous influence across much of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East for the better parts of 18 centuries
• radical skepticism, one that obliterates the distinction between reasonable and unreasonable belief, thereby undermining healthy mental immune function
• prior to Socrates and Plato, such skepticism was unheard of
• early Christian thinkers tried something different, saying that faith provides the true basis for knowledge, persisted for more than 1K years
• dark age: years of ignorance, superstition, disease, suffering
• things changed abruptly, perhaps partially because of a sea change in epistemological attitudes
• 1630’s, observation, experimentation, math reasoning could yield real knowledge
• Descartes: baseless, groundless, and unsupported claims are unworthy
• nothing merits acceptance unless something else supports it
• foundationalism = doctrine of knowledge rests on the stratum of “basic” beliefs, ensnared many of the greatest minds of the modern era
• Platonic picture has long created cognitive immune problems
• extreme and impractical skepticism, compels reactionaries to embrace a ferocious dogmatism
• Platonic picture is the root of the problem
• Hume — observed facts are uniquely suited to bringing factual reasoning to a close
• beliefs formed in the direct presence of the fact they depict form the foundation of factual knowledge
• empiricism is more problematic, because you can question perceptual judgements
• value judgements as fundamentally subjective, relative to an essentially arbitrary set of preferences
• partial solution to the problem of basic belief
• notion of evidence, evidentialism
• to be genuinely reasonable, a belief or claim must be backed by sufficient evidence
• unresolved questions feed a growing unease with the sufficient evidence standard
• empiricism matured into evidentialism
• evidentialism entails the illegitimacy of beliefs not supported by sufficient evidence
• subjective evaluation, with no evidential validity
• if you really immerse yourself in the evidentialist picture, all kinds of normative judgements start to appear unjustifiable
• saddles us with the conclusion that nothing really matters, even to ourselves
• despite progress, we need a better account of basic belief
• What exactly do you mean by that?
• to understand another’s point of view, make people feel heard
• ask questions and listen
• How do you know?
• challenges — signals that the challenger isn’t on board with something the claimant has said
• suspending judgement and seeking out non questions begging evidence, kind of evidence that doesn’t beg the question
• true test of a good idea is its ability to withstand challenges
• What makes you say that?
• Why do you doubt it?
• have the courage to argue from the convictions that you have
• voice the challenges that make sense to you, and answer them as you think best; you just understand that you might encounter considerations that require you to rethink them
• a belief is reasonable if it can withstand the challenges to it that genuinely arise
• New Socratic Model
• advises us to do what the world’s most skilled thinkers do: ask questions
• real pros make a habit of weighing cons
• consider pros and cons, upstream evidence and downstream implications, logical and casual properties, epistemic and pragmatic fallout
• growth mindset, learn from challenges
• sanctions open mindedness and scientific humility
• become intimately familiar with the challenges to a claim that arise in a domain, and make sure that you can successfully address them
• good argumentation is fundamentally a matter of marshaling presumptive premises to defend nonpresumptive conclusions
• quasi scientific inquiry: illuminating exploration of an idea’s pros and cons
• a premise needn’t be immune to all challenges to function as basic, it’s enough that it be immune to bare challenge
• up to them to find the grounds for doubt
• our knowledge rests on presumptions
• empirical and can be regarded as evidence based
• spring follows winter = basic claim
• science is special because it is committed to countenancing cogent challenges and making necessary revisions
• urges us to enrich our picture of how reasoning and inquiry work
• play with ideas, test them, ask questions, pose challenges
• minds are a searchlight
• what you believe affects the well being of others, so believe responsibly
• distinguish between good and bad faith
• important to unlearn alternative facts, work to uninstall bad information
• true wisdom requires you to clarify and order your thoughts
• who’s to say? we’re to say, who else will take responsibility?
• let go of the idea that value judgements can’t be objective; kindness really is a virtue
• treat challenges to your beliefs as opportunities rather than threats
• community of inquiry rather than a community of belief
• best supported hypotheses are in principle open to unanticipated challenges
• we merit the courage of our convictions only when we have the courage to part with them