How does philosophy not fall into the confirmation bias?

Question

Daoism and Buddhism in Eastern philosophies emphasize adaptation and flexibility, and critique rationality. They have different frameworks to understand the same phenomenon, and different goals for our reactions to it, and I understand and like them. However, because of their nature, it is necessary that they have different interpretations in different situations, making even practitioners disagree with each others. They may even claim that there are things that can only be understood by direct experience, and are ineffable or inexpressible, making the philosophy inevitably mystical. I think, even when everything is on the right track, we cannot know for sure that our intuition/wisdom is correct without verbalize it. How do they make sure that an interpretation is correct and not just confirmation bias?

(Daoism and Buddhism are just examples because they are familiar with me most. I suppose any philosophical schools can tolerate a degree of vagueness, except logical positivism I think.)

^{Related: Does following logic necessarily require one to conclude that they are objective and have no bias?}

Answer 1

The problem you mention is the same for all philosophy schools and also for the sciences. Around a core of skilled and experienced practitioners and scholars there is a fringe of half-informed folk with a variety of opinions and conjectures, and from the outside it may be difficult to distinguish the facts and the actual teachings from the cloud of dust surrounding them.

If you go to the heart of Buddhism and Taoism you find complete agreement as to the nature of Reality and its correct metaphysical description. This is a notoriously subtle view for which words that are rigorous will seem paradoxical. When Heraclitus states 'We are and are not' or when when a Buddhist says the self both exists and not-exists they speak rigorously. Thus when one Buddhist or Taoist says the self is real and another says it is not they are not necessarily disagreeing, just focusing on different sides of the equation. This leads a lot of people to assume there is controversy where there is none.

Confirmation bias may become a problem for anyone at any time but the practices of the Perennial tradition make it virtually impossible to fall for it. Theorising is not considered a substitute for establishing the facts and conjecture is discouraged. Anticipating what one is going to discover would be an obstacle to progress since it restricts our mental freedom and channel us into our own self-fulfilling prophecy. Reality would outrun our imagination and concepts and thus confirmation bias becomes impossible.

It is worth noting, however, that these traditions explain God as misinterpreted meditative experience, and this misinterpretation must have a lot to do with confirmation bias and an overly hasty interpretation of experience. So among meditators confirmation bias is a well-understood danger.

As long as Taoism and Middle Way Buddhism endorse the same metaphysical doctrine then the majority of debates can be settled by reference to it. As noted, however, many of those who endorse these doctrines hold heterodox or 'fringe' views, and this can create an effective smokescreen of debate and disagreement that will take same work to penetrate.

In general confirmation bias is not a problem in philosophy since sound logical analysis is not vulnerable to it. The real problem is unsound analysis caused by philosophical bias.

Answer 2

The entire reason for philosophy is the prevalence of confirmation bias. If we look at the situations in which 'philosophies' first arose, wherever we find them, they are in response to a habit of accepting reality without contesting the accepted interpretations of its most basic properties.

So the methods of disputation that make something philosophy in the first place are aimed directly at confirmation bias. The way to avoid this bias, then, is to do the philosophy right. But we really don't know exactly what that means. This is why the field keeps evolving.

We do know that it has been productive to keep a history of contests between ideas, so that we can avoid making the same old errors over again. We work at requiring that new philosophies answer for the failures to which earlier ones have fallen prey. In this way philosophy, at least in the West, prefigures a certain kind of science that focuses upon skepticism without totally giving in to it a as a basic principle.

But clearly, not every objection has been raised in any given case, so this is not proof against confirmation biases.

Answer 3

Philosophy may fall into all cognitive biases not just confirmation bias.

They may even claim that there are things that can only be understood by direct experience, and are ineffable or inexpressible, making the philosophy inevitably mystical.

Buddhism and Taoism talk about getting a pure state of consciousness that is to say a total thoughtless state of mind. For westerners is complicated since we are used to a Cartesian approach. see my question Descartes vs Buddha and we do not have a meditation culture at all. see my question on philosophy and mental health here.

In eastern philosophies mind and consciousness are two separated entities. The first do not produce thoughts it only witnesses them and in some cases it doesn't even have individuality nor death because it does not belong to the body. The mind (and ego) creates noise when it comes to having those experiences that you may consider mystical or not but the path has been explained numerous times in Yoga , Samatha, the nine paths of meditation here etc.

Language is created in the mind and can give you pointers to experience but in the end words are not enough to communicate an experience. eg. "Trying to explain what the blue color looks like to colorblind person"