What can a Pope from the 16th century teach us about skepticism?
Subject: Counterarguments - Pope Sixtus V’s Devil’s Advocate
Event: Mother Teresa becomes a saint, 2016
The path of sound credence is through the thick forest of skepticism. -George Jean Nathan
What is your position on vegetarianism? If you are a vegetarian, your mind probably goes to making the case for why it is a healthy alternative to eating meat. If, however, you are a carnivore, your mind probably turns to evidence that supports your diet.
Most people’s first instinct is to find arguments that support their position rather than to seek out or even acknowledge evidence that challenges their position. The general tendency to see what we want to see rather than seek out disconfirming evidence is called confirmation bias.
For hundreds of years, the Catholic Church had an established process for determining whether or not a candidate for sainthood would be canonized. Much like the adversarial system of a court trial, there were two sides: one arguing the case for canonization and one presenting the case against it. In 1587, Pope Sixtus V established the advocatus diaboli, or devil’s advocate, to search out any character flaws or other evidence that would counter the case for canonization. (The position was also called the Promotor Fidei, or promotor of the faith.) In 1983, Pope John Paul II eliminated this position, removing this skeptical inquirer from the process.
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Image by Yama Zsuzsanna Márkus from Pixabay
Therefore, on September 4, 2016, when Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997) was officially declared a saint by the Catholic Church, there was no official devil’s advocate to argue against her. The church did, however, invite an atheist, Christopher Hitchens to present his case against Teresa’s canonization (1).
The devil’s advocate lives on in the English language as a handy reminder of how strategic thinkers can prevent confirmation bias and groupthink. It is a helpful metaphor for injecting strategic skepticism into the thinking and decision-making process. We know the human mind often likes the path of least resistance and is often blind to alternative positions. The devil’s advocate challenges us all to be skeptical and to build skepticism into our decision-making process, whether we are making decisions as a group or as individuals.
So, once again: What is your position on vegetarianism? And how can employing the devil’s advocate avoid the pitfall of confirmation bias and help you build a more sound position?
Challenge - Put on Your Thinking Caps: Although it is always good to employ a Devil’s advocate in the thinking or decision-making process, often the Devil’s advocate is outnumbered; therefore, it can be an intimidating role. One alternative approach is what thinking expert Edward De Bono calls parallel thinking. For example, imagine your town council is proposing to replace all traffic lights with traffic circles. Begin by having everyone in the room symbolically put on their yellow thinking cap. The yellow cap symbolizes thinking that focuses exclusively on the value and benefits of the proposal. After everyone has worked as a team to generate the positives of the proposal, they then symbolically take off their yellow cap and put on their black cap: this is the devil’s advocate hat, where everyone intentionally focuses on reasons that the proposition will not work. Parallel thinking eliminates the adversarial approach where people’s egos and emotions overwhelm rational thinking. With parallel thinking, everyone is facing in the same direction at the same time rather than facing off against each other, and only one mode of thinking is permitted at a time. This way you will still generate a number of pros and cons, but you’ll do it together as a team. What is a proposal that might be presented to your city council -- a change that would improve your community? Work together with at least two people to try out the parallel thinking method. Write out your proposal; then, flip a coin: heads means everyone begins yellow hat thinking and tails means everyone begins with black hat thinking.
ALSO ON THIS DAY:
-September 4, 1957: On this day the Arkansas National Guard was called out to prevent nine black students from attending Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. The students were eventually able to attend, however, when President Eisenhower federalized National Guard troops and ordered them to protect the group of students, who became known as “The Little Rock Nine.”
September 4, 1998: On this day, two Ph.D. students from Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, formally incorporated their new company Google. The story of the word Google, however, long pre-dates the internet. In 1938, while on a walk with his nephew in the New Jersey Palisades, mathematician Edward Kasner challenged the nine-year-old, Milton Sirotta, to come up with a name for a 1 followed by 100 zeroes. Milton’s ready response was “googol.” Kasner liked the word so much he introduced it to the world in 1940 in his book Mathematics and the Imagination. The change of the word’s spelling from googol to Google happened more than fifty years later. Page and Brin originally called their search technology “BackRub”; however, in September 1997 they had a meeting to brainstorm ideas for a new name. The story goes that at that meeting the name googol came up, but when it was typed into a computer to search for available domain names, it was misspelled as google. The name was available and was purchased before the misspelling was discovered, so Google stuck (3).
September 4, 2001: On this day Ruth J. Simmons, the 18th president of Brown University, presented the Opening Convocation Address. At one point in her speech she challenged the students as follows:
You know something that I hate? When people say, “That doesn’t make me feel good about myself,” I say, “That’s not what you’re here for.” If you come to this place for comfort, I would urge you to walk to yon iron gate, pass through the portal and never look back. But if you seek betterment for yourself, for your community and posterity, stay and fight. Fight for the courage to be a true learner. Fight for the dignity of your intellect. (2)
September 4, 2018: On this day The Coddling of the American Mind was published. In the book, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt argue the goal of education should not be to make the student comfortable; instead, the goal should be to make students think. As a result, it should “Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.”
Sources:
1-Gilovich, Thomas and Lee Ross. The Wisest One in the Room: How You Can Benefit From Social Psychology’s Most Powerful Insights. New York: Free Press, 2016: 147-8.
2-Ruth J. Simmons. “Text of the President’s Opening Convocation Address.” 4 Sept. 2001. Brown University News Service.
3-Steinmetz, Sol and Barbara Ann Kipfer. The Life of Language. New York: Random House, 2006: 167.
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