- What's the difference between healthy and foolish emotions? 73
- Will we ever realize Leibniz's "epistemic utopia"? 74 Should we want to?
- Have you ever had a course in formal logic? Or informal logic and critical thinking? If yes, was it helpful? If no, do you regret that?
- Do you grasp the distinction between sound and valid arguments? Do you think most people do? 82
- Do you snicker at the gateway drug argument? 84
- Do you think there's a rational case to be made for UBI? Has Andrew Yang made it?
- What do you think of Bertrand Russell's hypothetical teapot? 89
- Have you ever been the target or the perpetrator of ad hominem? 90
- What do you think of Dilbert's colleague's "rational process"? 91
- Do you think many of our fellow citizens "feel" like the boy in the cartoon? 92 How can we teach them to feel and think differently?
- Do you sympathize with the students who "look for loopholes"? 97
- ANY COMMENT?: "You can get in a lot of trouble these days if you try to lay out necessary and sufficient conditions for 'woman'." (See Michael Shermer below**)
- How do we get people to avoid dichotomous (black-white) and slippery-slope errors of thought? 100
- Does irreducible randomness in the subatomic realm have significant implications for how we live, or should live? 113
- Do you have any sympathy for Dilbert's boss? 117
- What should have been the probability estimate for the 2016 election, in light of its "last-minute shocker"? 118
- How safe do you feel, comparatively, behind the wheel, in a plane, or in the ocean? 120
- Should we embrace nukes? 122
- What's your understanding of Critical Race Theory? 123
- Are any of Pinker's statistical observations "psychologically obtuse"?
- Is "picking nits about what actually happened" actually nitpicky? 124
- Is it possible for news media ever NOT to be an "availability machine"? 125
- Is most progress too "stealthy" to be appreciated, except retrospectively? 126
- Do you get your news from Facebook or other small-picture sources? 127 Will you stop doing so, now?
- Does the Texas AG have a future in politics? 130
- Are "hot hand" streaks real? 132
- Have you ever "painted a bulls-eye"? 142
- Are you unimpressed by the Lincoln-Kennedy coincidences? 144
- Is it a worthy life-goal to "stick around... have some fun... and stay the course with honor"? 148
- Post your ch 3-4 questions and comments below...
“I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us - then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.
The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality (Helen Joyce)
Biological sex is no longer accepted as a basic fact of life. It is forbidden to admit that female people sometimes need protection and privacy from male ones. In an analysis that is at once expert, sympathetic and urgent, Helen Joyce offers an antidote to the chaos and cancelling. Shermer and Joyce discuss: What is a woman? What is a man? • conflicting rights: trans vs. women • sex vs. gender; who you identify as vs. who you are attracted to • cross-sex identification • gender dysphoria • social contagions • gender affirming care • puberty blockers, testosterone, hormone treatment • detransitioning • top surgery, phalloplasty, vaginoplasty • preferred pronouns: compelled speech ≠ free speech • trans sports • exclusive spaces, and more…
[NOTE Pinker's statement (100): "You can get in a lot of trouble these days if you try to lay out necessary and sufficient conditions for 'woman'."]
"IN THIS AGE OF SUPPOSED SCIENTIFIC ENLIGHTENMENT, many people still believe in mind reading, past-life regression theory, New Age hokum, and alien abduction... reveals the more dangerous side of such illogical thinking, including Holocaust denial, the recovered-memory movement, the satanic ritual abuse scare, and other modern crazes..."
In touch with reality
Why do so many of us believe in quackery and conspiracy? In his guide to thinking better, Professor Steven Pinker tries to make sense of the senseless.
Steven is joined by Jonathan Rauch, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and the author, most recently, of ‘The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of the Truth’ and by Ellen Cushing, Senior and Special Projects Editor at The Atlantic. What was it that finally convinced her that there isn’t really a global organisation communicating in cryptic symbols and masterminding world events by planting agents in governments and corporations.
Don’t expect a zebra
Why medical students are advised - if you hear hoofbeats behind you, don't expect to see a zebra. In his guide to thinking better, Professor Steven Pinker explores Bayesian reasoning.
Steven is joined by Talithia Williams, professor of mathematics at Harvey Mudd College and author of ‘Power in Numbers The Rebel Women of Mathematics’, and by Siddartha Mukherjee, professor of medicine at Columbia University and the author of the Pulitzer Prise winning ‘The Emperor of All Maladies A Biography of Cancer’
Together they’ll help you evaluate ideas, recalibrate your credences and maybe even think a little better.
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Lisa will present her report on Lisa Sanders on medical diagnosis on the 19th. We still need volunteers for report presentations on Jy 26 and Aug 2. Take a look at the coming chapters & see if you can find something you're particularly interested in. You can claim your topic in the comments space below...
Some presentation topic suggestions for ch 5-6:
- The Sagan Standard ("Extraordinary claims" etc.)...
Lisa Sanders on medical diagnosis (see her weekly column, book, and Netflix documentary)... [TOPIC claimed by Lisa Strayer]- Decision Theory and rational choice...
- Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (and "our morally misguided sense of the diminishing marginal utility of human lives"-R 184)
- Kahneman and Tversky on Prospect theory...
Someone displays instrumental rationality insofar as she adopts suitable means to her ends. Instrumental rationality, by virtually any reckoning, is an important, and presumably indispensable, part of practical rationality. However, philosophers have been interested in it for further reasons. To take one example, it has been suggested that instrumental rationality, or some tendency toward it, is partly constitutive of intention, desire, or action. To take another, more important, example, it has been argued that instrumental rationality is not only a part, but a special part, or even the whole, of practical rationality. This thesis appears to threaten the “rational authority” of morality. It seems possible that acting morally on some occasion might not be a suitable means to an agent’s ends. If so, then according to this thesis, it would not be irrational for her to refuse to act morally on such an occasion... (continues)
Is it the case that rationality is only good for devising efficient means to our chosen ends (desires, goals etc.), and cannot help us think about what those ends should be... and thus is entirely neutral with respect to value, virtue, character, goodness, kindness...? James would say that's too narrow a concept of reason and rationality. And if Kurt Vonnegut was right about the indispensability of the "rule" to be kind, what's the status of the rule? Is it a rational rule? A sentimental rule? Both? Neither?
For my part, I do want my rational deliberations to be informed by a kind of emotional intelligence. I don't want my thinking and feeling segregated in separate boxes. That of course raises the great challenge of getting the balance right between heart and head, intellect and our "passional" natures. Call it Spock's (or the Stoic's) dilemma. He's half-human. We're all human. If Aristotle's right, we're rational animals. We must, therefore, integrate and honor the parts of us that think and the parts that feel. We must overcome the violent and uncivilized passions, or re-channel ("sublimate") them. We can't just suppress them. Only the purest Vulcans can do that. And remember, they're a fiction.
We'll continue to talk about it. Looking forward to listening patiently to what we all think... and feel.
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Supporting Wm James's more expansive view of rationality as both instrumental AND experiential/existential: Sentiment of Rationality 2... SoR 3... (from Ed Craig)...
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Is it rational to make something of Nothing?--
Probable Impossibilities: Physicist Alan Lightman on Beginnings, Endings, and What Makes Life Worth Living--How our cosmic improbability confers dignity and meaning upon our shared existence. BY MARIA POPOVA
...in a cosmological sense, what exists is precious not because it will one day be lost but because it has overcome the staggering odds of never having existed at all: Within the fraction of matter in the universe that is not dark matter, a fraction of atoms cohered into the elements necessary to form the complex structures necessary for life, of which a tiny portion cohered into the seething cauldron of complexity we call consciousness — the tiny, improbable fraction of a fraction of a fraction with which we have the perishable privilege of contemplating the universe in our poetry and our physics.In Probable Impossibilities: Musings on Beginnings and Endings (public library), the poetic physicist Alan Lightman sieves four centuries of scientific breakthroughs, from Kepler’s revolutionary laws of planetary motion to the thousands of habitable exoplanets discovered by NASA’s Kepler mission, to estimate that even with habitable planets orbiting one tenth of all stars, the faction of living matter in the universe is about one-billionth of one-billionth: If all the matter in the universe were the Gobi desert, life would be but a single grain of sand... (continues)
Apropos of Nothing--Nonbeing belongs to that category of concepts that seem self-evident and self-explanatory, but have been objects of deepest perplexity for philosophers. July 21, 2022 issue
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Nothingness
Since metaphysics is the study of what exists, one might expect metaphysicians to have little to say about the limit case in which nothing exists. But around the fifth century BCE in China, India, and Greece, philosophers turned from what is, what is not (Sorensen 2022). Ever since, there has been commentary on omissions, holes, vacuums, and the possibility of an empty world.
This survey starts with nothingness at a global scale and then explores local pockets of nothingness. Let’s begin with a question that Martin Heidegger famously characterized as the most fundamental issue of philosophy... (SEP, continues)
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Confirmation bias refers to a type of selective thinking whereby one tends to notice and to look for what confirms one's beliefs, and to ignore, not look for, or undervalue the relevance of what contradicts one's beliefs... Skeptic's Dictionary
"More 'intelligent' people are more likely to twist the data to make it conform to what they already believe..."
I'd like to present on Lisa Sanders medical diagnosis information on July 19
ReplyDeleteIt's yours!
DeleteHave you ever had a course in formal logic? Or informal logic and critical thinking? If yes, was it helpful? If no, do you regret that?
ReplyDeleteI took a Logic class in college. It's been so long I forgot all the formulas. Some of these came flooding back such as the basics of "and" and "or;" however, the rest of the equasions were lost on me. I remember our professor giving us the mathematical equasions in an easy way to remember form. But that too is long forgotten.
I found some of the informal fallacies quite informative:
"straw man" - easy to knock down.
"argument from authority" - God, educators, politicians...known authorities say it...it must be true.
"ad hominem" - rebuttal by insulting one's character, motives, talents, values.
...and my personal favorite fallacy (not because I like it, but because it happens every day at an alarming rate): "appeal to emotion/affective fallacy" - that hurts my feelings, or "how can you deny this...look at this poor helpless child."
I found it very interesting that ad hominem, genetic and affective fallacies used to be no-brainer-blunders (Pinker p.92), but are now used at alarming rates in academic and journalism daily.
Ad hominem seems to be the default style of public discourse these days. It's abominable.
DeleteI'd never had a course in logic until I got to grad school and in my first year was designated a Teaching Assistant in John Post's logic course. It was sink or swim. I learned a lot. Our text, as I recall, was "Reasoning" by Michael Scriven. Wish I'd hung onto it, look how much amazon wants for it! --https://www.amazon.com/Reasoning-Michael-Scriven/dp/0070558825
When I taught my own logic course, we read Shermer's "Why People Believe Weird Things"...
Rarely do any of us sit down before a table of facts, weigh them pro and con, and choose the most logical and rational explanation, regardless of what we previously believed. Most of us, most of the time, come to our beliefs for a variety of reasons having little to do with empirical evidence and logical reasoning. Rather, such variables as genetic predisposition, parental predilection, sibling influence, peer pressure, educational experience and life impressions all shape the personality preferences that, in conjunction with numerous social and cultural influences, lead us to our beliefs. We then sort through the body of data and select those that most confirm what we already believe, and ignore or rationalize away those that do not.
DeleteThis phenomenon, called the confirmation bias, helps to explain the findings published in the National Science Foundation’s biennial report (April 2002) on the state of science understanding: 30 percent of adult Americans believe that UFOs are space vehicles from other civilizations; 60 percent believe in ESP; 40 percent think that astrology is scientific; 32 percent believe in lucky numbers; 70 percent accept magnetic therapy as scientific; and 88 percent accept alternative medicine... https://michaelshermer.com/sciam-columns/smart-people-believe-weird-things/
Actually, I now recall, I used the 1st edition of How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age (Schick & Vaughn), inspired by Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time.
DeleteA subsequent edition of Shermer included a chapter on why SMART people believe weird things. Don't they know better than to accept ghosts and aliens and conspiracies (etc.) without rational evidence? At some level maybe, but we all know how to rationalize our hearts' desires and smart people are good at rationalizing. "Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons."
I did take a logic course in my undergrad, actually I believe it was in the same room our course is in, with Dr. Magada-Ward. I too have forgotten most of our syllogistic algebra but always remembered several of the fallacies, ad hominem and the straw man in particular. My biggest take away was “clean thinking”, learning how to tune out the irrelevant information and only focus on the topic at hand. I think using the ideals of “clean thinking” is beneficial in certain situations but in so much of logic in this formal sense is theoretical in nature. As Pinker notes several times we cannot look at two opposing view points of an issue and say “Let us calculate” to determine who is right. However, logic plays a vital role in disseminating information as we receive it to identify these fallacies in reporting on issues. I think at least some formal teaching on logic is very beneficial because it teaches a person how to examine what information is being received and identify these fallacies and hopefully disregard them in determining their stance on an issue.
DeleteShould we embrace nukes?
ReplyDeleteWhat's your understanding of Critical Race Theory?
I'm going to lump these two together because Pinker kind of does. In Pinker's (pgs.120-125) discussion about media/politicians and statistics. (they're the damdest things right?) I love how he provides his reader with "alarming information" with "dread risk" and essentially causing "communal outrage."
The media covers things that suddenly happen...true. And things that suddenly happen are typically bad...true. However, using Pinker's logic from the previous chapter...does that mean that all media coverage is "bad" (shooting, famine, financial collapse)?
To proove his point he provides facts/falacies about the way media presents stories about nuclear power, shark attacks, people stuck by lightning, plane fatalities, and black Americans fataly shot by white police officers. Pinker alludes that media coverage consists of "bad" stories. Obviously this philosopher has yet to stay tuned to the b-block. Remember, bleeding is the lead. B-block and kickers frequently have fuzzy bunnies. But what people remember is the a-block.
That aside, Pinker is spot on. I would love to see the day when journalism and non-journalism (national news commentary, social media, politicians, word of mouth) provide evidence to back their stories. Include your math: homicide rates, CO2 emissions, war deaths, democracies, hate crimes, violence against women, poverty. I teach this in my digital media skills class. Put your money where your mouth is and provide your source. Don't cower behind your right to not reveal your source. To me not providing your source ranks up there with using the word "alledgedly."
I think you're right, it's in the very structure and mission of news media to latch onto what's new and surprising and startling. The old and familiar and commonplace isn't news. But it's real. The remedy is in large part to educate the people (beginning early on with logic and critical thinking tailored to children, and with courses in media literacy) and raise readers/voters who'll prefer deep context and background to "breaking news"... I'd like to be hopeful that that's still possible on a large scale. For now it seems, we're each on our own to seek out the deep context that tells the rest of the story. That's to be found in books and in the less breathless sources of media (the best periodicals and journals and websites).
DeleteHear hear! Offer a class in Media Literacy. I think I'm going to propose we add this class as an option in JOUR and allow everyone to take it.
DeleteI think Pinker lumped in Critical Race Theory incorrectly when talking about overreactions, though, at least the way I understand CRT. Universities and researchers have been using this theory as a way to understand how race has shaped the systems that determine how our lives function, like how our communities were planned with roads, schools, and neighborhoods. It was developed to study why we weren't seeing more equality in our communities after the Civil Rights Act was passed. After the George Floyd protests and the movement toward racial reconciliation, I feel that those who didn't want to see that progress used CRT as a "boogey man" to scare people into thinking that their children were being taught that white people were bad/evil. I see that as the overreaction. I would guess 99% of teachers in schools didn't know what CRT was, and had no idea if they were teaching it or not.
DeleteI completely agree, sensationalism is rampant and not just in news but in all media as it spreads through our society. For instance Facebook pushing the most controversial stories on the feeds of users, or Reddit whose system is naturally an echo chamber, people are using these outlets for things other than the consumption of information and still these issues pervade. But even in media literacy there are issues, my grandfather and I were recently having a conversation about electric vehicles. He is one that boasts “he deals in facts”, he was reciting prices per mile for both electric and gasoline automobiles, and the facts he included would lead me to believe that in fact gas cars would be cheaper over time. But then I looked up these figures, I found several websites with several different figures for these estimates. Is a person supposed to look up 3 to 4 opposing articles on a topic, find the methods used to calculate these figures, and compare all of that information on any given article? That seems unrealistic. In these instances we have to apply fundamental ideals on these issues, Covid-19 for example. During the pandemic I didn’t know how contagious it actually was, I didn’t know how bad the symptoms were, are the reporting systems used by hospitals faulty, is someone bolstering or repressing the number of cases to keep calm? I simply don’t know, there is simply too much information and too many sources so you have to implore a fundamental outlook, a cost benefit analysis. If the pandemic is in fact as bad as suggested, and the media isn’t overplaying it, what would the cost be if I were to treat it as if it isn’t as bad as reported and I was wrong? What would the cost be if it isn’t as bad as suggested and I treat it as if it is in fact that bad? To me the cost is greater in the first, so that is how I responded. The fundamental ideas will not always translate to action in the way my example did, and those instances are even more difficult to determine what is the “right” way to proceed.
Delete• Do you think many of our fellow citizens "feel" like the boy in the cartoon? 92 How can we teach them to feel and think differently?
ReplyDelete(In the cartoon and child responds to his teacher saying, “It may be wrong, but it’s how I feel” p. 92) the phrase “it’s how I feel” has always resulted in strife in relationships, especially family relationships. It starts with the terrible two’s when a child learns the word NO. It is fundamentally an immature way of dealing with life and other people. The only solution is maturity and critical thinking. I don’t think I have ever seen the phrase “Grow Up” have any positive effect at all when directed at an immature person.
Right. "Grow up" is right up there with "calm down" as THE wrong thing to say in many a given interpersonal situation. You'd think I'd have learned that by now!
DeleteBut seriously, we should be able to respect one another's feelings without having to validate them. We ought to be able to acknowledge that "how I feel" is not always how things are.
Gary, I love your response, "the only solution is maturity and critical thinking". I totally agree! It takes a mature individual to state that they are wrong. Admitting that you're wrong is an important part of life that most people these days just don't get. It is unfortunate because I feel like our world could learn a lot if more people were to admit that they were indeed wrong.
Delete• How do we get people to avoid dichotomous (black-white) and slippery-slope errors of thought? 100
ReplyDeleteIndeed, an entire category of informal fallacies arises from people being all too eager to think in black and white. There’s the false dichotomy: “Nature versus nurture”; “America—love it or leave it”; “You’re either with us or with the terrorists”; “Either you’re part of the solution or you’re part of the problem.” There’s the slippery slope fallacy: if we legalize abortion, soon we’ll legalize infanticide; if we allow people to marry an individual who is not of the opposite sex, we will have to allow people to marry an individual who is not of the same species. And the paradox of the heap begins with the truth that if something is a heap, then it’s still a heap if you remove one grain. But when you remove another, and then another, you reach a point where it’s no longer a heap, which implies that there’s no such thing as a heap. By the same logic, the job will get done even if I put it off by just one more day (the mañana fallacy), and I can’t get fat by eating just one more French fry (the dieter’s fallacy).
(First of all, everything is a shade of grey, nothing is purely black or white. Secondly, painting possible catastrophic results for a decision, while dramatic, is not likely to be what the result will be. Most results are mixed (some good, some bad).
Pinker, Steven. Rationality (pp. 100-101). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
The mañana fallacy is a tough one. Sometimes, oft-times, tomorrow never comes. And black-white thinking is almost always reductive and wrong. Remember that Trek episode in which two civilizations were at war because one of them was black on the left and white on the right, and vice versa?
DeleteBut we want things to resolve into our neat categories. We're not natively comfortable with complexity and ambiguity. Too bad, we live in a complex and ambiguous world.
• Do you have any sympathy for Dilbert's boss? 117
ReplyDeleteI never have any sympathy for Dilbert’s evil irrational boss…
Why are so many bosses Mr. (or Ms.) Pointyhead?
Delete• Is it a worthy life-goal to "stick around... have some fun... and stay the course with honor"? 148
ReplyDeleteThe gambler must eventually go bust. His aim can only be to stick around as long as possible, to have some fun while he’s at it, and, if he happens to be a moral agent as well, to worry about staying the course with honor. . . .
(Sure, I will stick around, have some fun, and stay the course with honor, but I will do so without gambling.)
Pinker, Steven. Rationality (p. 148). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Same. The only time I was ever in a Vegas casino was when the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy held its annual meeting there. The place sickened me, with its display of so many desperate gamblers having no fun at all. At the first opportunity I rented a convertible and drove to Red Rock Canyon for a taste of reality. What happens in Vegas can stay there, so far as I'm concerned.
DeleteDo you grasp the distinction between sound and valid arguments? Do you think most people do?
ReplyDeleteThe difference between a valid argument and a sound argument is very small, but that one small detail makes an immense difference. A valid argument reaches a logical conclusion based on certain premises, but the premises may or may not be true. A sound argument is based on true premises. The base or premise of an argument holds up the final conclusion, which is similar to how a structure has to have a strong base in order to stand. If the base of a structure is faulty, the structure will not last. If the premise of an argument is false, then it cannot withstand scrutiny. A sound argument will be able to withstand scrutiny and be recognized as something that can be trusted.
I think people would say that they understand the difference between a sound and valid argument, but they will often believe what they want to be true, despite whether the premises are true. As was mentioned last week, people have chosen to believe that the election was stolen even though it has repeatedly been proven otherwise. It is easier to spot the valid arguments of others than it is to see your own.
Lisa I agree with you that at the end of the day people will believe what they want to be true, even if it is false. It seems since the last election people's opinions have been formed based on what they think as an individual as opposed to what is actually been proven true. I think our political climate the past few years have been an eye opening experience looking at it in the lens of rationality. Every day we get further away from it and we need it now more than ever. I hope that one day our political climate will be filled with rational politicians as well as voters who critically think and not strictly believe ONLY what they think to be true.
DeleteThe difference between one's foundational premises being true or false is not so "very small" when, as you say, people willfully disregard reality in order to affirm what's false. Believing only what one wants to believe is surely indicative not only of an unsound argument but, indeed, of an unsound mind and a flawed character. But you're both right, this does seem to be an ingrained human proclivity. I still think it can be arrested, but we've got to do a better job of instilling the basics of "baloney detection" and sound critical thinking in our children from their earliest instruction.
DeleteI agree that what comes from disregarding reality is not small. I was thinking about small in terms of the two terms are very close in meaning. The "small" thing, being truth, makes all the difference! And we do need to do better about instilling critical thinking skills in our children!
DeleteWill we ever realize Leibniz's "epistemic utopia"? 74 Should we want to?
ReplyDeleteI do not think we will ever realize, or get to experience Leibniz's, "epistemic utopia", because too many people are not willing to admit they are wrong. When there is an argument, especially in our world today, the majority of people only care about being the one who is right. If someone has their opinion set on something it is hard to get them to change it, or even listen to another opinion. Unfortunately I know people who will never admit that they are wrong. How are we to grow as individuals if we can not admit that we are wrong?
I feel as if our world has become lazy when it comes to seeking out information. What I mean by lazy is that if someone wanted the answer to something they could google it and get 4 billion hits in less than a second. We have access to limitless amounts of information at the tap of a finger. With all this information coming in, how do we know this information is true? How are we to grow if we are not taking in accurate information??
I think our world is logically lacking. It is disappointing, because I wish we could live in Leibniz's "epistemic utopia" where individuals could admit their wrongs and be genuinely interested in learning. However, that will never happen. We have too much false information out in the world.
I think we should want to live in an epistemic utopia. I know I would want to. I feel as if society would work better together in such a place.
An over-investment in personal ego is surely a big part of the problem. We don't want to admit we're wrong, as you say, because we fear that we'll be diminished in the judging estimation of others. That whole self/other dichotomy, as the Buddhists say, subverts our commitment to seeking and saying what's true. That's another reason why I urge a collaborative "co-philosophy" approach in my classes. Let us reason together, not antagonistically and egoistically. Easier said than done, and again something we've got to teach early on.
DeleteDo you think many of our fellow citizens "feel" like the boy in the cartoon? 92 How can we teach them to feel and think differently?
ReplyDeleteI think that many of our citizens do indeed "feel" like the boy in the cartoon. I think that our citizens feel this way because they tend to share their opinions based on how they feel. I see this on social media a lot. I will scroll through comments on political posts and see people that are misjudging what the post is actually saying. These individuals respond (comment back) based on their emotional opinion. This is problematic and can lead to misconceptions, as well as, the spread of false information. Since affective fallacy is lead by an emotional response, it can lead to someone thinking that their opinion is better than everyone elses.
I think we can teach these individuals to feel and think differently by requiring a philosophy class in schools. It is important to teach kids and young adults from the beginning the importance of not leading opinions strictly based on your emotions. Leading with your emotions can create murky waters when trying to find the truth.
I think we could teach them to feel differently by identifying where their emotional response came from and discussing if the response was necessary.
I'm with you: philosophy (and "mindful" reflection on our emotionally distortive thinking) for everyone, in every school curriculum! ("You WOULD say that," responds the ad hominem critic...)
DeleteAfter reading chapter 3 and 4 of Pinker's book I wanted to learn more about fallacies. I found a quiz that I found funny. Who knew your food craving would determine your logical fallacy!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.buzzfeed.com/lang7/which-logical-fallacy-are-you-really-kbjzmtfeu
I couldn't get past the first question because I'm never hungry early in the morning...
ReplyDeleteShould we embrace Nukes? I understood this section to be more regarding nuclear power as a power source as opposed to nuclear weapons. Perhaps they go hand in hand. In regards to nuclear power, it is a tricky idea, as Pinker details there are but a few tragedies surrounding nuclear power that stick out in the public mind, of those the damage could be blamed on outside sources as opposed to nuclear power in and of itself. But is that necessarily a fallacious hasty generalization, or is there some value to this idea? In my opinion Pinker disregards human error in this section, the Chernobyl incident in a way he blames the Soviet Union, which may be accurate. However, who's to say that these administrative issues would not cause, potentially fatal, issues with nuclear power? I imagine we all have been privy to upper management making operational decisions that make no sense because they aren't the ones actually working in the field to intimately understand how things work. I am dealing with this now for the Tuition Free "program' if anyone is familiar with this. The same issues would likely arise in nuclear power and I believe it is a fair reservation for the overall implementation of nuclear power.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to nuclear weapons. This is even trickier, for me in an individual stance as a moral citizen I don't believe we should embrace nuclear arms. The potential for nuclear weapons to be used as intimidation is too high, we saw this in Ukraine not too long ago. From a moral stand point the potential for lives lost is just too great to embrace these weapons, unless you are the only one that has them. Which brings me to put on my Political Scientist hat, for most of politics I fall somewhere around center left, however in international politics I am much more Machiavellian. From a broad policy standpoint, while there are other countries which possess nuclear weapons we must possess them ourselves to secure our interests. As much as world peace is tantalizing the reality is we cannot assume that our neighbors will not use these weapons against us and as such we must have the means to fight back.
This points out yet again the blur between ideas, when we look at any given situation there are different elements at play, different roles you must fulfill in contemplating the actions that must be taken. In any given issue it is difficult to say that you would act the same way regardless of position that you are in. Is the Republican that whole heartedly disagrees with Donald Trump in the wrong for continuing to support the President publicly, while condemning him privately, because this allows them to continue having a say in policy and influencing the President to be less aggressive?