Framing questions this way makes people feel like they have the option to not answer. I’ve found subjects are usually more receptive to continuing treatment when questions are framed as just that—questions—and when you show your interest in a conversation by asking follow-up questions.
YM told me of his experiences, what he’d gone through in his life, and what he felt.
PB: That’s really interesting. But I have a question. How do you know the thing you felt was caused by Jesus?
Four points to note: (1) Use of the passive voice doesn’t make Jesus the actor in the sentence as it would with the active voice, “How do you know Jesus caused the thing you felt?” If you construct your statement with the passive voice, the subject may be more likely to be open to alternative causes. (Active voice: Mary tuned a violin. Passive voice: A violin was tuned by Mary.) (2) Because this is a question, YM can give individual responses that can then be broken down and targeted for refutation. This is important because there may be specific moments in the intervention when the subject is too doxastically entrenched in a particular hypothesis. When this occurs, an alternative line of questioning may help advance the conversation. In other words, one may also find additional fertile ground for creating doxastic openness when the list of conversational topics expands. (3) I’ve found that questions, as opposed to statements, tend to be less threatening as people feel they have the freedom to answer as they like. For example, the declarative statement, “That wasn’t Jesus. That feeling was produced by the complex interplay of your own neurobiology and culture. Experiencing Jesus never happens to indigenous peoples who are cut off from the world. That alone should tell you you’re delusional,” does not act to increase the subject’s doxastic openness (Kim, 1979, p. 203), but rather furthers doxastic entrenchment by creating threatening or adversarial relationships. (4) This question resets the Socratic conversation, beginning again in wonder. YM would then offer a hypothesis that could be targeted.
YM basically went on to say he “just knew” it was Jesus and he felt it was true in his heart.
PB: That’s interesting. But a lot of people feel some religious belief in their hearts, Buddhists, Muslims, Mormons, people who think the Emperor of Japan is divine. But they can’t all be correct. Right?
I specifically avoided the word “you.” For example, I did not say, “So how do you know your belief is true?” This can be threatening, as it may be perceived as creating an uncomfortable environment by placing the focus on the subject personally as opposed to the hypothesis. In discussions of faith in particular, it’s crucial the Socratic clinician differentiate between people and propositions (Boghossian, 2002a). Faith is a deeply personal experience for people, and the more faith as an epistemology can be separated from faith as an identity, the easier the transition from stage 3 (elenchus) to stage 5 (action). Cultivating togetherness and not stressing differences continues to move the conversation forward.
I was attempting to open YM up to alternative ways of conceptualizing his experience—providing a more objective way for him to view the cause of his feelings.
The conversation went back and forth a few times, with YM reiterating that he just felt it to be true.
PB: So what do you think accounts for the fact that different people have religious experiences that they’re convinced are true?
Again, this is posed in terms of a question, resetting the Socratic method back to stage 1 (wonder). At this point rapport has been established and YM does not feel threatened (Clark, 1992; Horvath & Luborsky, 1993; Szimhart, 2009, p. 260). The use of the word “you” is again avoided, so as to allow the subject the possibility of escaping from his own situated experience. To create a framework where the faith being discussed is essentially treated as someone else’s faith benefits the discourse, because getting too personal about something so intimate can be very threatening.
YM: I don’t know.
Bingo! A glimmer of doxastic openness. YM partially removes himself from the equation. The faith virus has received its first vaccination.
PB: Yeah, I don’t know either.
I immediately modeled the behavior of openness and uncertainty that I’m attempting to engender in the subject. “I don’t know” is a deceptively powerful statement. It also leads the subject to think, correctly, that you don’t have all of the answers and that not having all the answers is okay. And it is okay, not just for me to not have all the answers, but for anyone and everyone including the subject.
(Long pause)
A pregnant pause is a very useful, nonthreatening technique, typically used in sales, to get the result you want. Often the uncomfortable silence will be filled by an answer; regardless, it allows the discourse to move forward, but if the dialectical space isn’t filled you can continue at your leisure.
PB: So people who deeply and genuinely feel these experiences—these religious experiences—do you think they understand that they might not be caused by what they think they’re caused by?
I had this conversation years ago. Today, I would no longer ask such a leading question. Instead, I’d more carefully construct a framework and ask other questions about which he’d form additional hypotheses that I’d then continue to target for refutation. One effect of this constant targeting and undermining is to create a chowder of epistemic uncertainty—with individual propositions floating untethered from their cognitive foundation. By targeting virtually every proposition that populates his worldview, I’d be able to undermine his confidence in what he holds as true. Once this is accomplished, the specific belief caused by the faith virus—in this case Jesus Christ revealing himself—can then be dialectically isolated, made hollow, and extirpated.
I jumped ahead because of his age, but also because I saw an opportunity to drive a wedge into his belief system—separating the faith virus from his other cognitions—and frankly because I was less experienced.
YM: Some probably do. Some don’t.
This statement is a hypothesis. It seems rather obvious and there was no point in targeting it for refutation. Also, by not targeting reasonable hypotheses at this juncture, the subject may feel he has just enough to grasp onto so he’s not drowning in uncertainty.
PB: Yeah, that’s probably right. But you’ve thought about the feelings you had not being caused by Jesus. Right?
(Long pause)
Again, note the passive voice.
YM: No.
I was somewhat surprised by this answer. I thought ego alone might have led him to answer in the affirmative.
PB: So is it possible that the feelings you had were not experienced by Jesus?
(Long pause)
I repeated the question.
YM: I don’t know.
Jackpot! He went from certainty to uncertainty—from absolute confidence to doubt; from precontemplation to contemplation; from thinking he experienced Jesus to being unsure. This particular intervention had ended. However, I was acutely aware of the danger he would face when he returned to his faith community. I was concerned he’d be pulled back into his faith delusions by loved ones or by clergy. For the next few weeks I made late night visits to the gym to look for him. I wanted to administer a follow-up treatment and see how he was doing. Unfortunately, I never saw him again. I’ve always regretted not giving him my phone number.
Intervention 2: Unsuccessful
The following is a conversation I had the morning of July 16, 2012, with a friend of the family. I’ve been engaging her on the topic of faith for more than five years, but to no avail.
PB: So tell me, in one sentence, why, after all of our conversations, do you still retain your faith?
(Long pause)
PB: You don’t have to answer now, you can tell me later.
HD: Okay. Let me think about it.
(Very short pause)
PB: Okay, what’s your answer?
(Laughter)
HD: Because it gives me comfort. It’s ingrained in me.
This is the hypoth
esis: “It gives me comfort. It’s ingrained in me.” It’s what’s targeted for refutation in the elenchus.
A little humor, if it’s sincere and well met, goes a long way to cementing the therapeutic alliance. Humor is an incredibly effective and underused dialectical technique, probably underused because there are so many ways it can backfire. But when successful almost nothing is more effective in advancing rapport.
PB: Do you think slave owners were granted comfort knowing that they’d have others to till fields for them?
An admittedly over-the-top counterexample, but in the context of our relationship it was appropriate. I’d tried various intervention strategies and they’d all been unsuccessful. Consequently, I often experiment in our conversations. Street Epistemologists are flexible and are encouraged to experiment and develop their own script and style. It’s important for your growth and for the development of the techniques to experiment and develop your own ideas and strategies.
HD: Oh, Peter. Those two things aren’t alike at all.
PB: You’re right, but my point is that not all things that give you comfort are morally good, or even good for you, right? Like the homeless alcoholic near the underpass who clings to his bottle.
My immediate goal was obvious: to get her to acknowledge that not all things that give one comfort are good. I again used a rather extreme example in the hope this would increase the likelihood she’d accept my counterexample, thus undermining the hypothesis.
HD: I’m not harming anyone. I’m not one of these people who pushes my beliefs on others.
PB: Do you think you’re harming yourself?
This question was popularized by German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). It’s also a question I frequently use with those who hold their views less tenaciously. Sometimes this question can create just enough cognitive space to make one aware of possible contradictions in one’s reasoning. It does this by forcing people to reflect on a new line of inquiry (justice toward oneself) and then seeing if the belief in question is a form of injustice toward oneself.
This question is also effective on a much broader level: I often use it when asking people about epistemological systems, “Do you think using a bad way of reasoning, a way of reasoning that takes one away from reality, is a form of injustice toward yourself?” This is also very Socratic—thinking in terms of harm to yourself or society as a measuring stick.
HD: What do you mean?
PB: I mean do you think having a belief because it’s comfortable and not because it’s true is a form of harm to yourself?
HD: I never said it wasn’t true.
She might not have explicitly stated that her faith beliefs weren’t true, but if she believed they were true then in response to, “why, after all of our conversations, do you still retain your faith?” she would have said, “Because it’s true.” Because this was not her first response, my suspicion was that her verbal behavior didn’t align with her beliefs.
PB: Are the beliefs in your faith true?
HD: I don’t know Peter. They make me feel good, and you seem to want to take that away from me.
I knew she wouldn’t claim her faith beliefs were true, only because we’ve had similar discussions before. I never allow people to steer these discussions from faith is true to faith is beneficial (comforting) unless they explicitly acknowledge that faith is not a reliable guide to reality. In this case, however, I was targeting “it gives me comfort” for refutation, as I genuinely do think she receives comfort from her faith.
PB: I don’t want to take away your comfort HD. I just don’t understand how much you could be comforted by something you know isn’t true. Did you ever watch professional wrestling with Vince McMahon?
Now, I’m setting the stage for the counterexample—I’m attempting to undermine the hypothesis: faith gives her comfort. I also wanted to bring more levity into the conversation, in the hope that this would act to lubricate the discussion and make her beliefs more likely to become unstuck.
HD: No, but my husband used to.
PB: Well, maybe you can explain something to me. I’ve never understood how people can root for a “wrestler” [finger quotation marks] when they know the outcome is rigged. When you know who’s going to win, you know the match is fixed, I just don’t get rooting for someone in that context.
HD: It makes people feel good.
PB: Yeah, that’s what I don’t get. How so?
HD: Because people want someone they like to win.
PB: I guess that’s kinda like faith. You know it’s false but you subscribe to it anyway because it makes you feel good?
I inserted the word “false” here hoping she would just resign herself and accept that her faith beliefs are actually false. I wanted her to wonder, “Should one subscribe to a belief because it makes one feel good?”
(Long pause)
PB: What if I told you that you could feel good because of something that actually worked? Something that was real. Reason makes you feel good. It makes me feel better than eating bacon. [laughter] It makes me feel awesome to know that I can solve problems based on something real. What would it take for you to open yourself up to that gift?
Here I used specific language from the cult exiting literature. There’s a body of research that analyzed factors influencing why people had fallen prey to cults. The phrase “open yourself up” and the word “gift” are frequently used to indoctrinate people into faith systems. These terms may also be effective in nudging people toward embracing reason.
HD: I’m fine just the way I am.
It appears the intervention was not effective. However, one can never really be sure what long-term effect a treatment will have. I will continue to engage HD on the subject of faith and will continue to try to help her by experimenting with different dialectical strategies. I remain hopeful HD will eventually abandon her faith.
Intervention 3: Ineffective
The following Socratic discussion is from a research study I conducted with prison inmates at a nearby prison (Boghossian, 2010). The purpose of the study was to improve subjects’ critical thinking and moral reasoning abilities, and to increase their desistance to crime.
The subject, Subject 6, had been incarcerated for approximately nine months and was a recent born-again Christian. I did not have institutional review board (IRB)approval to help the subjects abandon their faith,4 so I did not continue the particular line of questioning. If I did persist, I would have targeted specific beliefs about what he conceptualized to be the historical Jesus. His doxastic closure about specific propositions was too entrenched—as often occurs in the initial stages after one catches the faith virus. There was some room in this conversation to create an openness with ancillary beliefs, so that’s what I attempted.
Subject 6: You made a comment about Jesus needing to be clever.
Researcher (PB): I was asking, was Jesus clever?
I reset the conversation to wonder. I made sure he offered the hypothesis that I would then target for refutation. When administering Socratic treatments, make sure to offer as few hypotheses as possible. If you get stuck and are unsure how to proceed, reset the conversation back to wonder. For example, you could say, “Do you think Jesus needed to be clever?”
Subject 6: He chose to die. He was God incarnate. His purpose was to be the sacrificial lamb for all sinners.
These are all hypotheses, all potential targets for refutation. I choose sacrifice for no other reason than that I find this concept interesting. Generally speaking, if you select something you find interesting or about which you have a particular knowledge, pursue that line of inquiry—it has a greater chance to be effective, or at the very least, engaging and educational—thus benefiting your own intellectual curiosity.
Researcher: Okay, so would you consider Him a greater man for having made that sacrifice?
There was no questioning the divinity of Christ at this point in the treatment (because I did not have IRB permission to do so). The subject wa
s clearly in the precontemplative stage. The goal, then, was to elicit doxastic openness in other areas of his cognitive life. I again went back to the idea of sacrifice.
Subject 6: Absolutely.
It’s easier to elicit contradictions from responses that indicate certainty as opposed to ambiguity. Certainty requires overwhelming warrant—in other words, one needs an ironclad justification before one can claim one knows something as an absolute truth. Showing someone doesn’t have the necessary justification to warrant belief in a claim in which they’re certain is fairly easy. With subjects who are not suffering from severe doxastic pathologies, it makes for an effortless elenchus: all one has to do is find some condition that could possibly hold that undermines the truth potential for the belief in question. (For example: “All Asians are good at math.” To undermine this hypothesis all one would need is a single example of an Asian who is not good at math. However, refuting, “Most Asians are good at math,” is considerably more difficult.)
Researcher: Okay, so what if the lesser men around Him were actually clever and prevented Him from achieving that mission?
Subject 6: The lesser men didn’t want Him to achieve His purpose.
Researcher: Yeah, but if the lesser men, who were clever, prevented Him from achieving His purpose, then couldn’t ya say that the virtue that He should have had was cleverness because that would have enabled Him to achieve His purpose? I mean it couldn’t have been a sacrifice unless He chose it, and in order for Him to have chosen it, He had to have the possibility of choosing otherwise. Therefore He could have not chosen it and failed.
Subject 6: He achieved His purpose.
This response indicates he’s prehope. The subject is suffering from a severe form of doxastic closure. The more closed the subject is about certain beliefs, the further up the belief chain—the higher in the house, to use our foundationalist metaphor from chapter 4—one must go. Ideally, one would find a belief in which the subject placed a reasonable degree of confidence, and then administer a Socratic treatment targeting that specific belief. The hope is that because the foundational belief is too entrenched, the way to loosen the foundational belief is through the ceiling boards in the attic. Once the attic is demolished, one can destroy the top floors of the house and work one’s way down to the foundation.
A Manual for Creating Atheists Page 12