Where do the facts lead?

There is a price to pay for critical thinking, if you are an honest person.

The scientific method is really just an organized way of consistently applying the rules of critical thinking. Let’s take a closer look at the process and see what the implications of using the scientific method might be.

Because the scientific method includes testing one’s hypothesis, obviously the results are often negative. In fact, one of the main points of scientific studies is to attempt to disprove the hypothesis. At first this sounds counterintuitive; why would anyone go to the trouble of designing a study specifically to prove themselves wrong? But look at it from this perspective: a scientist believes that their study (and the associated findings) are going to replicated by other researchers. In fact, the progression of science depends upon it. So if a scientist feels strongly about a hypothesis, it is to his or her advantage to make the strongest case possible. If the hypothesis is able to stand up under the scrutiny of a study designed to disprove it, there is a stronger probability that the hypothesis is a fact. A good study will therefore look carefully at all the weakest areas and present the case why those weaknesses don’t disprove or discount the essential premise.

Now back to where the facts lead. If a study appears to be taking the hypothesis off the rails, a reputable scientist will not view that as a failure; instead it helps advance the field. Thomas Edison purportedly failed more than a thousand times in the development of the lightbulb, but he viewed each failure instead as a success: he discovered one more way to not make a working lightbulb! So “failures” in science are not viewed negatively. (The business people who fund studies of course find this very frustrating when they think they are paying for validation of their pet product, but that’s a different issue.)

Translating the processes of applying the scientific method to critical thinking skills, it means that, simply put, as facts emerge, they may lead you to a place that conflicts with what you believe to be true. Intellectual honesty compels you to either accept that you were wrong, or you have to reject the facts. But if they are facts, they can’t be rejected; the best you can do is go back to the data and see if what you thought was a fact was in fact, not.

Let’s take an example. I’m listening to a series of lectures on an age-old philosophical debate: is there such a thing as free will? And please understand that this is an ongoing debate (and has been for literally millennia), so I don’t pretend to have an answer. But at the very least, the fact that this IS an old debate means that there’s no simple answer. I’m not going into the debate here (I’ve looked at it before, and will likely revisit it as some point in the future on this blog), but it leads to some interesting (and disturbing) areas, for me at least. At first it seems obvious that, yes, humans can decide to do something or not, the definition of free will. But (again, without going into the details), the harder you look at the question the less likely it seems that we do. (If you’re really interested in pursuing this, I suggest you purchase the audio program I’m listening to from The Teaching Company called “Great Philosophical Debates: Free Will and Determinism.” Parts of it are heavy sailing, but you’ll find that many of your rock-solid convictions may not be based as solidly as you thought!)

Back to our example. Let’s say that, as I’m implying in the last paragraph, our cherished notions of having free will don’t hold up to some deep thinking. (And you’ll have to trust me unless you listen to the audio, but they don’t. At least not categorically). So where does that lead? If we don’t have free will (or at least not as we understand it), then that means our actions are determined by outside factors (the opposite of free will). But how do you hold people accountable for their actions if they weren’t responsible for them? In our justice system, we already make accommodations for people who don’t understand the consequences of their actions (innocent by reason of insanity is a classic, if sometimes unsatisfying, defense).

We don’t punish babies for grabbing candy in a store; they don’t know it’s not theirs and has to be paid for. We put it back and teach them over time that’s not done. But what if an adult has a tumor in their brain that shuts off the “mine/not-mine” equation (which, by the way, has been documented to happen)? Is it fair to punish them for something they have no control over? Most people would say no, or at least have to think about it.
Again, I’m not arguing the point of whether we actually have free will here, but using it to illustrate the point of this post. If we agree on a “fact” (in my illustration, that free will doesn’t exist), then there are actions that must flow out of that. If we don’t like where that takes us (in this case, the fairness of our justice system), the natural step is to go back and reject the fact. But if it is a fact, by its very definition it cannot be rejected; it just “is.”

Most people by now would be saying “OK, so without free will it isn’t fair to hold people accountable for their actions. But since I feel like I can make choices, others can too and thus may make choices to take something that isn’t theirs. It is appropriate to punish them when they do that, so we MUST have free will.” (And intuitively, this makes sense to pretty much everyone. We believe we have free will). This would lead most of us to reject the arguments against free will based on where that would take us.

But that’s exactly the wrong way to go about it. If we reject a “fact” because of where it takes us (again, making the distinction between a fact and an assertion), we’re being intellectually dishonest. We may not like where it leads, and we may even choose to pretend it isn’t really a fact, but it’s not being honest.

To be honest, that’s a hard thing to confront.