Cognitive Dissonance and Cultural Beliefs

Whereas I gave an example of a mammal and called it one.I gave an example of someone whose thoughts were dissonant. Straggler replies that if he had different thoughts then they wouldn't be dissonant. This is true, but hardly worth saying.

It might. It might not. There probably are people so morally scrupulous that they always give their own money to charity instead of other people's. Good heavens, I'm one myself.But sure, we can imagine someone who feels no moral conflict in stealing money to give it to charity, a letter-day Robin Hood, knock yourself out. However, in the example I gave, there is a conflict. That was stipulated, it's part of the example. It is not a critique of the example that you can imagine a different person who has different thoughts and different motives and therefore does not feel conflicted, any more than it's a critique of my saying that an elephant is an example of a mammal to reply that you can imagine a hat-stand which is not an example of a mammal.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

An interesting if nauseating example of this is the people who believe in "crisis actors".On the one hand, they think that nothing should be done about gun violence whatsoever because then we'd all become gay transsexual communists or something ... the details are not clear, but they are very vehement about them.On the other hand, it is hard to contemplate another school shooting and not think that something ought to be done.These two moral imperatives of action and inaction can be perfectly reconciled by the supposition that no school shootings ever happen.