The Unthinkable and the Unthought

摘要: When people misrepresent their beliefs in response to social pressures, public discourse gets impoverished. Because is a basic determinant of individual perceptions and understandings, by-product the distortion private knowledge. This article highlights tendency for treated as unthinkable disappear from society's repertoire ideas, that is, become unthought. Two mechanisms are identified vehicles this destructive evolutionary process. The first intragenerational: As individuals we base many our judgments on proof. second intergenerational: We tend not think about matters forebears have settled. argument distinguishes between hard beliefs, which based direct observation, inference, analysis, soft exclusively