Syad-Narrative as a Philosophical Practice Method to Minimize Cognitive Biases

Abstract

 The term ‘health’ doesn’t merely apply to physical, social, and psychological spheres, but also extends to the philosophical sphere. Philosophical Counseling has recently emerged as a productive method to resolve issues concerning one’s philosophical health, by employing Socratic dialogue and related techniques to cross-examine the relevant thoughts, values, intentions, and actions, to spur realizations that alleviate the issues. In this paper, I introduce two interdependent ancient Jain philosophical doctrines that may be applied fruitfully in Philosophical Counseling practice, namely, Anekāntavāda, which is ontological, and Syadvada, which is epistemological. Anekāntavāda is the doctrine of non-one-sidedness, that is, that reality is multi-faceted, and Syadvada is the corollary doctrine that knowledge is therefore necessarily relative and perspectival. I exapt some ways in which these twin doctrines may be fruitfully applied to resolve various issues connected with the sorts of cognitive biases and bounded rationality that often present themselves in Philosophical Counseling sessions. Research has proven bounded rationality and heuristics to be the principal causes of cognitive biases. This paper discusses the causes and impacts of cognitive biases on the processes of judgment forming and decision making and focuses primarily on two applications of the two Jain doctrines: (1) to understand the multiple dimensions of reality through Anekāntavāda in order to minimize reliance on heuristics and bounded rationality, and (2) to identify and minimize specific cognitive biases. The objective is to propose Anekāntavāda and Syadvada as methodological tools of Philosophical Counseling that may be used to reduce bounded rationality, and to propose the blend of Syadvada and Narrative Therapy – the “Syad-Narrative” method – to attenuate cognitive biases and thus to yield productive outcomes in Philosophical Counseling.