"A lot of beliefs that are fundamental to who we are and to how we think about the world are influenced by things that appear to be arbitrary and irrelevant to the truth of the matter.”

Turi talks with Professor Miriam Schoenfield, of the University of Texas at Austin, to understand whether we can have any kind of certainty about the truth of our beliefs.

The children of Jews tend to be Jews, the children of Jains tend to be Jain, those brought up in the liberal agnostic West tend to be liberal agnostics… Much as the children of Liverpool FC supporters tend to support Liverpool. The fundamental philosophical premises of our most cherished beliefs are flawed: we’re conditioned to believe them.

Are we epistemologically stranded?

Listen to hear Miriam and Turi discuss:

• Doubt: “something that simply happens to us, without explanation, fluid and wordless”
• the Gestalt Shift, and how it’s different from just ‘changing your mind’
• Whether Rationalism is itself a belief system
• Whether emotional or spiritual experiences might get us closer to the truth than ‘thought’
• Why agnostics take smaller risks in politics
• And whether we ‘learn’ our feelings, in the same way as we ‘learn’ our beliefs

More on this episode

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