You should defer to the expert consensus instead of thinking critically.
This is a personal favorite of mine from Michael Huemer (2005).1 Take any controversial public issue of your time. For me, this includes issues such as abortion and gun rights. To make this easier, let us assume there is a fact of the matter for these issues; that is, there is a right answer to these issues. There are at least 3 strategies you may employ to make up your mind on the matter: (1) deference–adopt the belief that most experts hold, (2) critical thinking–after conducting your own investigation of the issue, you assess the arguments and evidence to come to your own conclusion, (3) skepticism–withhold judgment on the issue.2 The puzzle is this: which strategy should you choose?
To help us choose, Huemer takes us on a quick detour with a simple thought experiment. Consider two devices, A and B, that measure some property F. A is 80 percent accurate, meaning “80 percent of the time it correctly reports whether a thing is F,” and B is 60 percent accurate (Huemer, 524). Presumably, you would choose device A to figure out if something is F. You want to use the device that is more accurate.
Skepticism is not an option if I want/have to form a belief on the matter so I think it’s more interesting to consider only the first 2 strategies. With this conclusion in mind, consider just deference and critical thinking. By using deference, you are more likely to form a true belief because an expert, especially a group of experts, is more likely than you (assuming you are a layperson on the issue) to arrive at a true belief on the matter. No matter how much research you may have done, you as a layperson are no match for a group of experts who have dedicated a lengthy portion of their lives studying the issue.
In this way, choosing deference is like choosing device A over device B. For me, this is a deeply disturbing conclusion. We preach the importance of critical thinking, but this argument shows that if we care about having true beliefs we should defer to the experts. Deference is more accurate than critical thinking so by the same reasoning that we choose device A we should choose deference over critical thinking.
When should we choose skepticism then? We choose skepticism in cases where deference is not possible. This may mean there is no expert consensus or maybe it is difficult for you to figure out what the expert consensus is.
But even in this case, you should not choose critical thinking. If there is no expert consensus and you arrive at some belief through critical thinking, why should you think you’re likely to have arrived at a true belief? After all, even the experts couldn’t agree on what the right answer is so it’s unlikely that you have arrived at the right belief. Thus, even in this case, you should not choose critical thinking and instead opt for skepticism.
And really anyone else who supports critical thinking. Those who teach critical thinking face a dilemma. Suppose you teach a critical thinking course and one of your students who took your course last semester tells you that after employing the critical thinking skills she acquired from your course she now believes we should abolish the use of the death penalty. Supposing that you are not an expert on this issue, should you now also believe that we should abolish the death penalty?
If you think yes, this is a strike against critical thinking. Why? You did not use critical thinking to arrive at the belief that we should abolish the use of the death penalty. So you should not agree with your student just yet.
I think Huemer is wrong here. I don’t have to answer yes (or no), meaning I am now fully confident (or fully unconfident) that we should abolish the death penalty. I could have a slightly higher or lower degree of confidence that we should abolish the death penalty, and I may be still unsure whether we should abolish it. But if you think no, this is also a strike against critical thinking. If the critical thinking skills you teach are what this student used to arrive at the belief that we should abolish the use of the death penalty, then your saying no is a “negative assessment” of those very skills you taught (Huemer, 526). Effectively, you are saying that using the critical thinking skills you taught are not enough to convince someone of the truth of your belief.
Asking the student for her reasons is also a strike against critical thinking because this means that her using critical thinking is not good enough for you to hold the same belief. The upshot is this: it seems that if I use critical thinking to form some belief then only I have good reason to hold that belief. Even if I tell others of the belief, they would not have good reason to hold the same belief unless they thought through the issue critically on their own.
And that’s the gist of the paper! To wrap up, here are a few common/interesting objections that Huemer anticipates.
You might object that we don’t have to choose between deference and critical thinking. We can weight the two in a new strategy that combines the two.
But Huemer replies that even in such a strategy you should give very little–if any–weight to critical thinking. Because a group of experts is more (probably much more) reliable than you are, it doesn’t make sense to give significant weight to critical thinking. This means that the new combined strategy will really be no different from deference.
You might object that Huemer misunderstands the aim of critical thinking. The aim of critical thinking is not just to form a true belief. The aim also includes things like forming a reasonable belief or a justified belief.
I think Huemer isn’t being very charitable with this objection. Surely, what you mean by raising this objection is that your belief acquired from deference is not justified by the same reasons the experts have. You don’t know why the experts hold the belief. This means that though your belief may be more likely to be true it is not justified. But Huemer points out that experts are more likely than you are to hold reasonable beliefs or justified beliefs on the issue so you should still defer to experts if the aim of critical thinking is to acquire reasonable or justified beliefs.
It’s also self-undermining in that if you defer to experts on whether to choose deference or critical thinking then you will find the consensus is to choose critical thinking. How paradoxical! You might object that Huemer actually offers a self-undermining argument. For you to accept his conclusion that you should choose deference or skepticism instead of critical thinking, you have to use critical thinking! How can you use critical thinking to arrive at the belief that you shouldn’t use critical thinking!
Needless to say, I don’t buy this reply. Huemer replies that the audience of his paper is other experts so that when people are deciding between deference and critical thinking the expert consensus will be for deference.
You might object that we still have to use critical thinking to identify who the experts are. Huemer actually concedes this and writes that he actually supports the more “modest thesis” that only for the issue itself we should not use critical thinking (529).