When should you engage with difficult arguments against your cherished controversial beliefs? The primary conclusion of this book is that your obligations to engage with counterarguments are more limited than is often thought. In some standard situations, you shouldn't engage with difficult counterarguments and, if you do, you shouldn't engage with them open-mindedly. This conclusion runs counter to aspects of the Millian political tradition and political liberalism, as well as what people working in informal logic tend to say about argumentation. (...) -/- Not all misleading arguments wear their flaws on their sleeve. Each step of a misleading argument might seem compelling and you might not be able to figure out what's wrong with it. Still, even if you can't figure out what's wrong with an argument, you can know that it's misleading. One way to know that an argument is misleading is, counterintuitively, to lack expertise in the methods and evidence-types employed by the argument. When you know that a counterargument is misleading, you shouldn't engage with it open-mindedly and sometimes shouldn't engage with it at all. You shouldn't engage open-mindedly because you shouldn't be willing to reduce your confidence in response to arguments you know are misleading. And you sometimes shouldn't engage closed-mindedly, because to do so can be manipulative or ineffective. -/- In making this case, Jeremy Fantl discusses echo chambers and group polarization, the importance in academic writing of a sympathetic case for the opposition, the epistemology of disagreement, the account of open-mindedness, and invitations to problematic academic speakers. (shrink)

This article explores shifting definitions of propaganda, because how we define the slippery enterprise determines whether we perceive propaganda to be ethical or unethical. I also consider the social psychology and semantics of propaganda, because our ethics are shaped by and reflect our belief systems, values, and language behaviors. Finally, in the article I redefine propaganda in a way that should inform further studies of the ethics of this pervasive component of modern society.

Religious fundamentalism has been suspected as a product of simple cognitive structuring. On the other hand, recent publications have shown that cognitive structure formation is not as simple as was previously thought. The concept of the Ability to Achieve Cognitive Structure revealed that not everyone was able to form simple cognitive structure. This study employed a total of 187 Indonesian university students as participants. By the mean of Structural Equation Modeling, this study treated the desire for simple cognitive structure as (...) a “new” latent variable and examined its relation with intratextual fundamentalism using AACS as moderator. The desire for simple structure was reflected by the Need for Cognitive Structure, the Dogmatism, and the RWA. The fundamentalism was reflected by the Intratextual Fundamentalism Scale. The result showed that fundamentalism, among other things, was a product of desire for simple cognitive structure. This study also showed that AACS moderated the relation in which high AACS would lead to higher fundamentalism while low AACS would not. Implications of the findings for social psychology and cross-cultural understanding of religious fundamentalism were discussed. (shrink)

Predicted relationships between media preference and authoritarianism were derived from theoretical and experimental studies. It was hypothesized that authoritarians would be more likely to believe their preferred media sources than would nonauthoritarians, and that the authoritarian’s position on political issues would be closer to the position represented by positively evaluated media but farther from the position of negatively evaluated media. Results from mail questionnaires obtained from 445 Detroit adults supported the hypotheses. Coercive force also was strongly related to authoritarianism when (...) the media were described as disagreeing with the views of important political leaders. (shrink)

Implications of the Level of Dogmatism and Selected Psychosocial Conditions for a Propensity for Risky Behaviour among the Soldiers of the Polish Army Land Forces The article presents the results of a study concerning a propensity for risky behaviour, conducted on regular soldiers of the Polish Army Land Forces. Its aim was to verify whether a level of dogmatism and selected psychosocial conditions were related to a propensity for risky behaviour among the soldiers. The research partially confirmed the hypothesis of (...) psychosocial determinants of a propensity for such behaviour. Young and shortserving soldiers appeared to be more inclined to undertake risky behaviour than older and long-serving ones. A tendency to avoid risky behaviour was displayed by soldiers from small towns as compared to groups of respondents from larger towns. The results of the research did not indicate a significant relationship between the propensity for risky behaviour and the level of dogmatism, education, personal corps, professional position. (shrink)