Or: How a paper claiming ‘doxastic addiction’ and ‘doxastic pushers’ are real but that megacults (religions) involve neither clearly shows instead that religions are wholly based upon both.
Carrie Figdor proposes that we (well — epistemologists, at least) should acknowledge the existence, and deleterious nature, of ‘doxastic addiction’. This epistemic disorder involving the inability of persons to control and change their own beliefs, says Figdor, relates to the kind of testimony that people become irrevocably hooked on and is important for setting the limits of free speech:
According to Figdor doxastic addiction occurs when ‘doxastic pushers’ — epistemically vicious agents who manipulate the trust of others thus undermining their ability for cognitive control — remove a person’s ability to control their beliefs, which control they surrender to ‘doxastic pushers’:
The pusher and their epistemic dope make the doxastic addict dependent upon the dopamine and oxytocin cookies (rewards) that are associated with such beliefs due to such social and affective outcomes as social affirmation, in-group membership, feelings of affirmation, feelings of having mitigated social threat, and a cheap sense of elevated epistemic acuity (among many other dynamics):
Doxastic pushers, says Figdor, are pernicious agents who seek to inoculate the disinformation-based beliefs of their customers by prewarning that detractors (malevolent and/or misguided detractors, of course) will attempt to debunk the ‘information’ that they are pushing:
Doxastic addicts, Figdor suggests, are those who are unable to change their beliefs and are thus addicted to the pushers’ doxastic product. Their loss of control of their beliefs is reinforced by their propensity to fail to identify trustworthy information sources and testimony, and thus the doxastic pusher — usually an epistemically vicious agent — is able to restrict the addict’s thought by restricting who they trust for testimony, thus hijacking their cognitive control:
Figdor states that it is not yet clear why some people are not able to retain doxastic control and control of their thoughts in these circumstances:
However, this is partly ill-informed and partly disingenuous. There is much evidence that several individual differences in psychological phenotype are correlated with misinformational and disinformational beliefs and the inability to identify and vet misinformation and disinformation. There is also a lot of evidence that much variation in the psychological phenotype is heritable. Twin studies with monozygotic twins raised together indicates this is as much as 50%–80% for different phenotypic traits such as personality, propensity to mental disorders, and g score (intelligence).
In fact I am very fond of Figdor’s approach. I find convincing the disciplined argument that doxastic addiction is not just a metaphor for physiological kinds of addiction like drug addiction, but that it is a genuine and deleterious addiction grounded in neurological and social reward mechanisms and reinforcement like gambling addiction:
However, Figdor wobbles badly when it comes to megacults (religions) which — in the usual bizarre, boring, tedious, completely inappropriate, intellectually dishonest, and unambiguously wrongheaded way — are given a resounding pass.
Religions, says Figdor, and not examples of the kind of social echo chambers and filter bubbles in which doxastic pushers deal their dope to the epistemically disordered, because a bunch of laudatory, blatant misinformation and disinformation to the effect that “weligion mostly dun good fings an’ is benerficalistic to serciety an’ stuff”:
“Ish only dem fernatical weligius types wot dun bad fings.”
Groan.
Fail.
Blatant misinformational nonsense alert. Doxastic pusher warning! (Move over, Saint Jordan Peterson and Alex Jones, you have serious competition.)
The social context of approval or disapproval of an addict’s behaviour is not the sole, not the most important, determiner of whether they are an addict. This applies to drug addicts and gambling addicts alike. The problem is absolutely, obviously, comprehensive-evidentially-supported-obviously, caused by both social influences and the social environment, and psychological properties of the person “in the person”. Figdor has just made this case herself in support of her own model!
According to Figdor and a host of other doxastic pushers (who, frankly, put Alex Jones to shame as paradigm, archetypal doxastic pushers) it is only when religious belief is fanatical that it becomes a problem, but megacultists (religious believers) are mostly not doxastic addicts, and megacult leaders (clerics) are not doxastic pushers.
Except, of course: they couldn't possibly more obviously be exactly that.
Yet, Figdor joins in the usual chorus of doxastic pushers with the usual insidious, dis-informational blather. My goodness no — gods forbid and may it never be that megacults (religions) are obviously, unambiguously, completely, and comprehensively based on exactly the kinds of undermining of people’s ability to control their beliefs that Figdor has just so diligently described and analysed:
I could make this table a lot longer with ease, but six rows is more than enough to drive the point home.
The assertions about megacults (religions) being primarily beneficent and beneficial to society are so blatantly, clearly, historically, sociologically, and social-psychologically wrong and wrong-headed as to be embarrassing and — frankly — deleterious and offensive to Figdor’s own analysis as well as in general terms. Interestingly Figdor is not only completely failing to recognise the obvious, unambiguous, coherent and undeniable applicability of her constructs and concepts to megacults (religions) but is obviously and unambiguously joining megacult doxastic pushers (priests, gurus, imams, pastors, rabbis, monks, friars, deacons, bishops, and a host of other socially undesirable and blatantly obvious doxastic pushers) in their mission as epistemically vicious sociopathic agents of chaos sold as order and social decorum.
A Christian megacult priest and an Islamic megacult Imam couldn’t possibly be more obviously doxastic pushers according to Figdor’s model. Islamic and Christian megacultists — for the most part- couldn’t possibly be more exemplary doxastic addicts living in misinformational and disinformational echo chambers and filter bubbles.
Congratulations to Figdor on an excellent model and some great conceptual engineering — which I endorse and applaud. Not so much kudos for being herself a megacult (religious) doxastic pusher, however.
Photo by Jomarc Nicolai Cala on Unsplash
