Bill at Diary of a Daoist Hermit featured a post today focused on a brief debate on the issue of Global Warming (Climate Change) he listened to on Democracy Now. Near the end of his entry, he wrote the following:
Each of us has biases; many that we are completely unaware of. They impact everything we experience or contemplate. We could no more rid ourselves of bias than we could decide not to breath or eat and expect to live!
If you think that last paragraph is dead wrong, then it suggests you are biased in a different direction. On the other hand, if you agree that biases are an inherent part of the human experience, then it could be said you have a bias in favor of the immutable nature of biases!
Let's say you think that a person can look at an issue or experience in an entirely unbiased manner. I would counter that all this shows is that you have a bias in favor of unbias-ness! But it's not a bias at all, you shriek. Can you be so sure? Maybe it's a bias in favor of thinking your conceptions are unbiased?
This could go on forever...
I attempt to understand the world around me. I look at the flow of complex interactions and give it a name: "the Dao". And that name is how I identify myself as a religious person to the people I meet. When I watched that interchange between Dyer, Gonzalez and Shiva, I couldn't help but feel like Gonzalez and Shiva had become totally unglued from the Dao and were following some sort of delusion or mirage. It underscores what is probably one of the most important virtues that I honour: the ability to look the truth full on and without bias. I don't suppose this would be considered a Christian virtue, I'm not even sure that it is a traditional Daoist one. But it seems very important to me. (emphasis added by me)This launched some pondering on my part about the concept of bias. I agree with The Cloudwalking Owl (Bill) that the ability to look at truth/reality head on is a Taoist virtue. However, I think the ability to do so without bias categorically is impossible!
Each of us has biases; many that we are completely unaware of. They impact everything we experience or contemplate. We could no more rid ourselves of bias than we could decide not to breath or eat and expect to live!
If you think that last paragraph is dead wrong, then it suggests you are biased in a different direction. On the other hand, if you agree that biases are an inherent part of the human experience, then it could be said you have a bias in favor of the immutable nature of biases!
Let's say you think that a person can look at an issue or experience in an entirely unbiased manner. I would counter that all this shows is that you have a bias in favor of unbias-ness! But it's not a bias at all, you shriek. Can you be so sure? Maybe it's a bias in favor of thinking your conceptions are unbiased?
This could go on forever...
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