Mission of Reason - - Resources for Reasoning

Taking Responsibility for our Ideas

This MOR resource is an effort to open up the questions
about where ideas come from, and how we are
accountable for using them regardless of where it is
claimed they come from.

Critically Reviewing Media
In a world where mass media like television, magazines,
video games, books, and newspapers shape our impression
of the world so strongly. We all have a responsibility to
critically consider the assumptions of our society and the
assertions that we are presented with in the media. This is
particularly true if we are involved in authoritarian, dogmatic,
or political groups that are trying to get us to act based on
the pictures of the world and the portrayals of our own
identity that they paint for us.

Responsibly Managing Belief
When we decide to take action or say things that will impact
others, we have a responsibility to base our decisions on the
best knowledge available and minimize our reliance on belief.
People in many groups cherish belief over knowledge, but
this tends to drive people to minimize the value of education,
staying informed, and reasoning through to a sensible
decision. Instead, these people skip to a decision based on
some casual, inherited, or suggested belief and spend vast
amounts of time rationalizing their convictions. This
irresponsible behavior closes questions before they are ever
fairly addressed. Being responsible about one's convictions
means being ever open to reviewing ideas in the light of new
evidence and analysis.

Responsibility for Disclosure of Certainty
When we feel fervently about something but don't have any
tangible evidence linked with sound reasoning to support
that it is so, we have a responsibility to acknowledge the level
of verifiability as based on testable facts. This is because
human beings are often led to fervent convictions based
merely on social pressure, desire, and allegiance. We may
have stories passed down for millennia through groups that
are accepted based on allegiance, but many of them, like
stories of Zeus, are not testable. Fervency is not certainty,
though most zealous people equate the two irresponsibly.
Once we disclose our actual level of verifiability we can get a
better sense ourselves for how certain we should be about
something.

Acknowledging Society's influence in Ourselves
Many people say, "My conscience tells me I must do this" as
we feel an inner pang of guilt, or as we feel moral indignation
as we tell other people they are doing something wrong.
Often we feel that this inner voice that tells us what is right
and wrong is some sort of absolute authority, a message
from "god" or the voice of our "soul." But if we only step back
and look at others doing the same thing in another culture,
we can say, "They say this only because their society, their
institutions, their peers, and their leaders imprint these
values on them instead of other values." Once we can say
that about our own values, we can begin to take
responsibility for what we think in the face of how it actually
helps and hurts others, and how relevant it really is based on
evidence. Values are often mindlessly propagated as
absolutes just because of the desire to be seen as agreeing
with others in our group. Having the courage to stand up
and say, "This traditional value, this idea I grew up with as
self-evident, is really something that is hindering social
development: is a bold step to a new world of rational inquiry,
inquiry into ourselves that bears the fruits of learning and a
better society. It's taking responsibility for your own ideas.

Responsibility to Debunk
When the leaders of groups we participate in stand up and
make absurd untestable assertions, fuel bigotry, or incite
inhumane behavior, we have a responsibility to stand up and
oppose such speech. If we do not, then we have no reason
to expect that we will continue to live in a world that is not
ruled by bigotry, absurdity and cruelty. Turning the other
cheek and laying quietly just because someone else is the
target is no excuse.

Responsible Political and Religious Freedom
Absolute freedom is an illusion people have when they are
not thinking clearly about how societies work and the
responsibilities we all have to make good decisions. But
there are real tangible freedoms that can be acquired in a
society in varying degrees For instance, we are not free to
turn into a bird and fly away just because someone says we
are free to do so. In a society that values freedoms there
are also social limitations. Thoughtful societies restrict the
freedom of its members when exercising these freedoms
impose on the freedoms of others. A balance or
judgment-call must be made by someone as to which
freedoms are important on a relatively continuous basis.
When we talk about freedom we must take responsibility for
discussing this idea in real terms and not absolutist magical
terms that do not apply to the real world. One of the most
intractable apparent freedoms is the freedom of Religion.
This is because the statement "freedom of religion" mixes the
characterization of "freedom to say what you really think, to
be honest" with the idea of "freedom to act to change society
and influence others as though certain religious ideas one
has are unquestionably true." If we drop the ideas of religion
and politics and view this from a psychological perspective,
one can see that when people have misconceptions about
reality, it is important to limit their influence on society and
others, take away their authority because they cannot be
responsible enough. Otherwise they can often be
dangerous and even hurt others unnecessarily because of
their misreading of reality. People should be able to express
what they really think, but in a climate where people hold
freedoms that impact each other it is important that all the
citizens demand of each other that when an idea is spoken, if
it is a baseless assertion, a fairy tale, or an accusation that
someone is an enemy, that we offer them no credence
unless they provide substantive support. This is what
happens in many healthy parts of our society. People who
make unsubstantiated claims and promises in order to take
money from others can be sued for fraud. People who talk
bad about others and discredit them in ways that are
unsubstantiatable can be sued for liable. Yet our politicians
seem readily able to claim that those not of their religion can
only, "legislate sin", and that it is only through certain values
and purportedly magically developed directives that "justice"
can be dispensed. This is a perennial politico-religious
argument that fulfills both sides of the legal liability described
above, and yet seem to stand as shielded from the normal
enforcement of requiring substantiatable claims when one
affect others. These religious assertions are not
open-ended and unresolved because we have yet to
discover this (supposedly until after death.) They are open
questions only because they are non-falisifiable questions
that are meaningless in the real world except to determine
allegiance. If we look at their social sources, their substantive
function becomes obvious. When an accuser says someone
is bad because I they it in a dream or because a magical
friend told them so, the accuser seems irresponsible when
they try to use that to convict someone in court. Their claim
is baseless, as unsubstantiatable as the accusations in the
witch trials of Salem or the claims of authority one claims
coming back from the temple of Zeus. But we allow such
assertions to be enforced in our society in a way that limits
the freedom and respect of others. Why? It is because
jumping on the bandwagon of these assertions empowers
people. It gives people access to the resources and
relationships of the legacy religious communities that use
these ideas. Perhaps the members actually internalize these
ideas uncritically until they really believe they are absolutely
true. But it is with either knowing or unknowing abuse of
unsubstantiatable claims that these people have abrogated
the responsibility of holding themselves accountable to
sensible thinking. One might feel that imposing this
requirement on a person's thinking is to limit their freedom of
thought, but let's look at the flip side of this coin. To accept
ideas, and forward them devotionally in order to gain group
empowerment, we are really losing our freedom to critically
analyze those ideas as we lose our social and intellectual
ability to consider these ideas critically and consider other
options viable. When we have a religious leader telling us
that other ideological group is 'evil' because they do not
follow "our dogma" and that we should change society to
"free them to think like us", Is that really free thinking when
we agree and look for political freedom to enforce it? When
we are in a group that has dogmatic ideas as a mandate for
group participation, are we really free to say what we really
think unless we think exactly as we are told? Or is their
strong pressure to slavishly conform to the mandates of that
group? This is the responsibility to conform and to obey that
suppresses the responsibility to speak candidly about what is
real and what is fantasy. That is not taking personal
responsibility for our own thoughts but passing the
responsibility on without question.

That conformity is not the first type of freedom presented
above. Really then, it's not the second type of freedom
either. Until we are free to question the ideas of our
institutions openly, down to their core, we are not free in our
mind. That's not free religion or the freedom necessary to
maintain a democracy. And when our mind is not free, as
Thoreau suggested, we are more imprisoned than if shackles
were on our hands and we have lost all sense of personal
responsibility.

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MOR - Taking Responsibility