👈🏼 previous note, 01.02.04. Epistemic Self-doubt
| growth | epistemic status |
|---|---|
| seed | ✅ confident ~ I don’t need to worry that I will feel or be perceived as credulous because saddhā is like water to the oil of credulity |
| Soma makes the consoling observation, citing D I 34, that ‘criticism in the sense of careful judgment belongs to the fundamentals of the doctrine and is necessary for reaching right understanding (sammādiṭṭhi)’, such that ‘a teaching should not be accepted by a reasonable person without investigation, particularly if he wants to live in conformity with it’. ’Study of a teaching through inquiring into it is unfavourable to credulity; but such study may produce faith in the teaching if it is true and intelligible.’ ^soma-credulity |
Remaining unquestioningly attached to the worldview I inherited is the sort of credulity I should fear, rather than fearing I will be perceived as credulous for my willingness to believe in a Buddhist worldview by so-called rational materialists or other folk who hold themselves to be sophisticated because they have heard about modern science.
How many modern-day science zealots have you met whose inquiry into their own beliefs have been unfavourable to credulity? Very few, I would hazard to guess ~ because unquestioned attachment to the worldview we inherited is a much more comfortable epistemological terrain to inhabit than the space of uncertainty one finds themselves hurtling through after they have let go of one worldview and have yet to find another,