Most of us are at the lowest level of scientific knowledge on most subjects, the level of “beer mat knowledge”–we know some trivial facts that we can bring up. Some of us are at the level of “interactional expertise,” where we can communicate with experts in a field in their own jargon. And a very few of us are at the level of “contributory expertise,” actually participating in a particular field and making new contributions to it.

Very rare is the person with contributory expertise in many fields.

Ok, I see what you are getting at. Interestingly enough, we actually discussed this last night at Cafe Inquiry (I was woefully ill prepared this month – we also discussed why people attribute stuff to gods) and I totally riffed off of your comment at 35.

I guess I never really considered dismissing something, just because quacks are raising the same concern. Having some friends who are hardcore quacks, I am well aware that such folks aren’t always wrong. That, and I take logic rather seriously (which isn’t to say that I always manage to be logical), trying hard not to engage is such obvious logical fallacies.

As far as the actual example you use, when it was relevant to youngest, I just figured there was no point in risking it. I don’t generally drink city water anyways, because I think chlorine tastes for crap. And refilling jugs for thirty cents a gallon wasn’t all that unreasonable. If it had been something that was more of a challenge to manage, I probably would have investigated more thoroughly. But to me it just wasn’t worth the time. The same was/is true of BPA in plastic. I am still rather skeptical of the claims, as I have seen conflicting reports. But I figure that it isn’t worth the risk when it is something that is easy enough to avoid.

Alan –

It’s a good article, but dangerous in some ways. This line of reasoning is already being used in a deft bit of casuistry by pedlars of hogwash.

Oh, I don’t think it is any more dangerous than being honest about a host of things that bolster the arguments of loons. Seeing what Greg is getting at, I have to agree with him and ultimately think that faith is exactly the word for it. I mean we are talking about a rather serious logical fallacy that uses much the same reason that goes into the claim that everything we don’t understand about the world and our universe, must be some god’s doing.*

The difference between this confusion of which you write and faith, is that we can get to the bottom of this if we wish.

But the point is that they don’t. The point is that they are making an assumption without evidence to support it – the fact that some quacks believe it is not any more evidence, than the claim that Darwin was particularly clever would be evidence for evolution. Without adding a whole lot of evidence of things actually discovered, that statement would assume that smart people are never wrong. The point here being that as you parse it down, the assumption becomes more evidently a faith statement.

It was way outside my field and a lot of work. You can’t do it with everything.

No you can’t. What you can do, is make statements that indicate your level of understanding and why you accept it. I know very little about climate change, excepting some parsing of studies that I have read. I could respond to arguments that attack methodology and I can explain exactly what my level of expertise is. If that is not enough, I have resources that I can send someone to. I can, of course, also point out overt evidence of global warning – but given the response to that is generally overt dishonesty, I generally don’t.

The word “faith” is inappropriate for what we do the rest of the time, because it equates it with the faith that people have in things that they already know are contradicted by evidence – or for which no evidence is known to exist.

You have this quite wrong. Faith is a belief in something that the person who is making a faith claim cannot provide concrete evidence to support. (many) Christians for example, believe that they have plenty of evidence to support the existence of and intervention of, in their lives. Likewise, the skeptic who decides something must be bullshit, merely because a quack also makes the claim, believes they have evidence to support their faith statement.

That is not the only way to define “faith,” but in the context of this discussion this needed some clarification.

That is what people mean by “faith,” and I feel it does no service whatsoever to muddy the definitions.

Ok, now you have hit on one of my huge fucking pet peeves. Who are these “people” you speak of and why the fuck should I care what they mean when they say faith? Language is not static, though some words are less fluid than others. Different people mean a host of different things when they use verbal language. This means that the more important a given conversation is, the more important it is to clearly define one’s terms. But as a general rule it also means that it is really fucking obnoxious to make claims about “what people mean” when they use a given term.

*Please forgive the runon from hell, I hope you catch your breath*

Actually, you an and should get to the bottom of both. That is not a distinction. What you are describing is not a difference in how one is wrong, but a difference in the motivations of the person being wrong.

Yes, that would be absurd, It is not what I’ve argued. I’ve argued that when you don’t know the detailed science you need to find a way to come to a reasonable conclusion. Then, I talked about trust, trusting sources, and so on, as well as inappropriate acceptance of a conclusion based on something more like faith.

Your comment is not based on rational argument or trust. It is based on faith, in a way, because you saw a few keywords and made a guess about the argument I was making.

There really is no substitute for good reading comprehension. Now, go back and re-read the post and feel free to comment again.

Of course, since you mention sophistry, that will not be allowed as part of your comments. Understand? That’s not rational. That’s just me being mildly offended that you are making me spend time on this.

Meh indeed.

Arguing that because someone doesn’t know what fibronectin is, that the decision to vaccinate is faith-based and non-skeptical, is the heart of the absurdity. Is a cutting edge researcher or doctor aware of the medical facets which will be used 100 years in the future to describe the immune system? Definitely not, but then, since they are missing probably fundamental pieces of the puzzle, they should also be considered fundamentally faith-based rather than skeptical (since you consider average even 4 year college-educated adults faith-based, when they know far more than experts from hundreds of years in the past).

No knowledge stands apart from axiomatic truths, and by your standards no one could be considered a skeptic.

Once you make the practical concession that only currently knowable (not future) and non-axiomatic should be subjected to skepticism, you still open the doors wide. It’s impossible that any single human could research all existing knowledge of every belief they have… and so you once again have defined skeptic in such a way as to eliminate everyone from consideration… not due to uncovering any novel facet of human personality or insight, but just a matter of course based on finite human comprehension.

If your personal definition is in line with that reasoning, I suggest you reconsider your understanding of the word. Accept that other people predominantly do not have this definition in mind, and look for another more reasonable one.

It’s far more reasonable to consider a skeptic to be someone who is WILLING to question any of their beliefs (provided it’s worth their time). To consider a skeptic as someone who actually HAS questioned and obtained proof for all of their beliefs, is useless as it’s trivially easy to the impossibility of such a skeptic.

Sorry if this is rude, but the article really just shows poor comprehension of skepticism.

Faith is belief unsupported by evidence. Depending on the importance of a given statement, I don’t trust people without evidence that I should. That doesn’t mean that I don’t believe them, it just means that I won’t take action based on what that person has claimed.

I don’t think you need to. But I do think one must realize that one is using “trust” and one must have a method for using trust.