When Should We Discard Explanations That Are Intuitively Appealing?
When Should we Discard Explanations that are Intuitively Appealing?
Intuition, knowing or considering something to be likely from an instinctive feeling and not from conscious reasoning, is a difficult concept to deal with. Intuition can be often be true, but also lead us down a path of poor judgement. The difficulty with intuition is knowing when to accept it or when to reject it. Complicating this dilemma is dealing with explanations that are intuitively appealing. The more we want an explaination to be true, the more difficult it becomes to reject the explanation. Thus, when should we discard explanations that are intuitively appealing? In short, explanations that are intuitively appealing should be discarded when, after sufficient analysis and applying reason to the argument, the explanation is proven false.
In the realm of religion there are several examples of intuitively appealing explanations. One of the most appealing of which is Christianity's belief that there is the existence of an eternal after life. Evidence of its existence is primarily based in the beliefs of individuals. These beliefs are primarily based on religious writings and teachings. In that most of these writings are based on individual accounts of events which occurred over 2000 years ago, we are unable to substantiate these writings and teachings with any evidence. That said, there is an equal void in the existence of empirical evidence to prove the religious writings and teachings which support the existence of an eternal after life to be false. So, even though there is no proof of the existence of an eternal after life, conversely, there is no basis for discarding this explanation because there is no definite way to prove that this is not true. Therefore, given the possibility that either point of view may be true, the explanation should not be discarded.
When we consider the statement “Thomas Jefferson was a good and moral individual,” given he was one of the founding fathers of
Intuition, knowing or considering something to be likely from an instinctive feeling and not from conscious reasoning, is a difficult concept to deal with. Intuition can be often be true, but also lead us down a path of poor judgement. The difficulty with intuition is knowing when to accept it or when to reject it. Complicating this dilemma is dealing with explanations that are intuitively appealing. The more we want an explaination to be true, the more difficult it becomes to reject the explanation. Thus, when should we discard explanations that are intuitively appealing? In short, explanations that are intuitively appealing should be discarded when, after sufficient analysis and applying reason to the argument, the explanation is proven false.
In the realm of religion there are several examples of intuitively appealing explanations. One of the most appealing of which is Christianity's belief that there is the existence of an eternal after life. Evidence of its existence is primarily based in the beliefs of individuals. These beliefs are primarily based on religious writings and teachings. In that most of these writings are based on individual accounts of events which occurred over 2000 years ago, we are unable to substantiate these writings and teachings with any evidence. That said, there is an equal void in the existence of empirical evidence to prove the religious writings and teachings which support the existence of an eternal after life to be false. So, even though there is no proof of the existence of an eternal after life, conversely, there is no basis for discarding this explanation because there is no definite way to prove that this is not true. Therefore, given the possibility that either point of view may be true, the explanation should not be discarded.
When we consider the statement “Thomas Jefferson was a good and moral individual,” given he was one of the founding fathers of
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