What changes a mind?

The Annual Question from the Edge website:

When thinking changes your mind, that's philosophy.
When God changes your mind, that's faith.
When facts change your mind, that's science.

At first I liked these three statements as a simple means of distinguishing what seems to affect people's thinking: philosophical thinking, religious thinking and scientific thinking. But.. the more and more I thought about these statements the less satisfactory they became and the more superficial they appeared. Why?

In each of these statements there is a catalyst that effects the way people think.

- Philosophers - reasoning - process of rational argument or debate of ideas
- God - the higher power - ideas codified in ritual, prayer, and text
- Facts - evidence - repeatable, consistently observed and independently confirmed ideas

Without giving greater or lesser weight to any of these three sentences, what they are all talking is about belief, what people believe.

What seemed to be missing in this is any discussion of 'truth' (such a tricky concept that). Truth is examined by:

- who is proffering a truth
- how a truth is arrived at
- how that truth is evaluated and perceived
- who is perceiving this as a truth

Reasoning comes into this equation and so does context. In each of these statements the new belief is arrived at through one's own thought processes and through drawing upon other's thoughts, philosophical, religious or scientific.

Anyway, on reading a popular science book on psychiatric disorders* recently I happened upon various definitions the author offered for delusion and the identification of deluded thought. At one point the author talks about delusion being determined in the psychiatry community by the 'truth-value' and how many people can be convinced of this, i.e. content. This definition of delusion has a weakness, belief of truth may vary depending on the context. So, the next definition was how the idea (deluded or not) is arrived, that is, logical (or probable?) nature of the idea, i.e. form. Who gets to evaluate this, their interpretive skills, assumptions or prejudices perhaps is also a weakness unless there is some ability to gain consensus, with the aim of avoiding 'group think'.

What I found most interesting though was how those that maintain deluded thought often disregard or dispute counter evidence or actively avoid being confronted that evidence. I thought perhaps what could have been added to that was actively undermine the veracity of the counter evidence also. But I think that is a whole different discussion about security of position and defensiveness. So perhaps there are three variables in arriving at a truth-value potentially that all contribute in some way to ascertaining its veracity:

- how the idea is arrived at - reasoning
- how widely embraced and endorsed the idea is - context
- how this idea is negatively tested - fallibility
- how this idea stands up in the face of evidence to the contrary - contestability

*From the Edge of the Couch: Bizarre Psychiatric Cases and What They Teach Us About Ourselves, Bantam Books, Dr Raj Persaud, 2004 - see review by psychiatrist Dr Vaughan Bell.

I'm sure there are lots of far better qualified thinkers spending hours thinking about this and dispute this blog. It is a rough sketch of thoughts - but I do think that the expression of deluded ideas and the behaviours of the deluded do offer insight on thoughts about truth and belief and maybe why such clashes are occurring between religion adherents and scientists over evolution.