Indeed, I've often described something that bugs me almost exactly like that: sometimes I have the feeling that, eg. a Christian sect has at some point adopted an axiom that blah-de-blah is implied by the bible, rather than just assuming it right out, and though I know all the reasons why, it jumps out at me as annoying that it looks like they introduced this extra layer of indirection to make it seem superficially more plausible (because, after all, the bible is a complex document and implies all sorts of things, it's conceivable it implies whatever abstruse thing they imagined).
Contrariwise, I'm not sure where to draw the line between "assume new premise" and "assume new conclusion from existing premises". It seems to depend how clearly the conclusion is or isn't obvious to us, which of course is ever so subjective. Imagining that there's a new law of physics, or an obscure already-implied loophole in the old ones, seem about equal in suspension-of-disbelief, even though they're different physically. The difference with the sociology example is that we have some intuition, and hence can say "blah de blah does NOT sound like a plausible consequence, but I'm sufficiently unsure to accept it for the moment."
(Of course, it falls down completely when the conclusion is sufficiently obvious and also sufficiently entwined you can't imagine the consequences at all, eg. 1=2)
I think you put it nicely with the phrase "cues to believe".
Thanks. I think that's very much what makes it palatable or not palatable: you can accept it, but hate it if it's slipped in under the rug somewhere and makes you say "is this really obvious??"
no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 06:37 pm (UTC)Indeed, I've often described something that bugs me almost exactly like that: sometimes I have the feeling that, eg. a Christian sect has at some point adopted an axiom that blah-de-blah is implied by the bible, rather than just assuming it right out, and though I know all the reasons why, it jumps out at me as annoying that it looks like they introduced this extra layer of indirection to make it seem superficially more plausible (because, after all, the bible is a complex document and implies all sorts of things, it's conceivable it implies whatever abstruse thing they imagined).
Contrariwise, I'm not sure where to draw the line between "assume new premise" and "assume new conclusion from existing premises". It seems to depend how clearly the conclusion is or isn't obvious to us, which of course is ever so subjective. Imagining that there's a new law of physics, or an obscure already-implied loophole in the old ones, seem about equal in suspension-of-disbelief, even though they're different physically. The difference with the sociology example is that we have some intuition, and hence can say "blah de blah does NOT sound like a plausible consequence, but I'm sufficiently unsure to accept it for the moment."
(Of course, it falls down completely when the conclusion is sufficiently obvious and also sufficiently entwined you can't imagine the consequences at all, eg. 1=2)
I think you put it nicely with the phrase "cues to believe".
Thanks. I think that's very much what makes it palatable or not palatable: you can accept it, but hate it if it's slipped in under the rug somewhere and makes you say "is this really obvious??"