The “G” Word

29 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by Gary Herstein in Altemeyer, atheism, Critical Thinking, God, Whitehead

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atheism, Critical Thinking, God, Whitehead

Philosophers need not be physically courageous (such as soldiers, police officers, or fire fighters), but they should be morally brave. So permit me to swallow my trepidation and make an initial offering about the much vexed “G” word – that is, “God.”

There is actually quite a great deal of very good stuff out there in the world on the subject; sadly, little of it ever rises to the surface of popular consciousness. But let’s start by considering some of the more grotesquely fatuous twaddle that is out there, so that we can end an a relatively high note.

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Season’s Greedings

25 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by Gary Herstein in Personal History, war on christmas

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Personal, war on christmas

Americans have long exercised a vexed relationship with the Christmas season; and I say “Americans” here, because the vexation has long preceded the existence of the “United States.” If one takes seriously the tales told in the Gospels, then the Winter Solstice bears no possible connection to the birth date of Jesus. The stories very clearly state that shepherds were minding their flocks in the hills when the Star appeared. But shepherds would never permit their flocks to wander about the hills in the late days of Autumn, early days of Winter. So by irrefutable Biblical evidence, we know that Christ’s birth would never occur at “Christmas” time.

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Tortured Logic

20 Saturday Dec 2014

Posted by Gary Herstein in Critical Thinking, Ethics, Martin Luther King, Objective Morality

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Morality, Torture, Utilitarianism

So, the Senate’s report on torture has come out. Former Vice President Dick Cheney, as singularly despicable a human being as has ever crawled out from under a rock, assures us that this program was approved at the highest levels. Is a crime a crime if Important People decide not to call it such? For example, the excuse given by one active participant in the CIA’s blatant torture of prisoners (conducted without regard for the prisoners’ guilt or innocence – to say nothing of basic human decency – and the repeatedly demonstrated FACT that such methods never produce reliable information; more on this momentarily) was that three out of four past Attorneys General of the United States had approved of the practices.

As Jon Stewart points out in the previous link, the three were all Attorneys General appointed by the Bush administration, which administered the programs of torture as a matter of policy orchestrated at the highest level. Stewart’s approach – via satire and such humor as one may bring to bear in the face of our public complicity in crimes against humanity – to the contrary not withstanding, his argument nevertheless bears appreciation. Continue reading →

Until It Bleeds – Until It Burns

07 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by Gary Herstein in Ethics, Ferguson, General Philosophy, Race

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being human, Ferguson, Morality, Race

The predictable, self-righteous clucking by privileged White commentators of various stripes that followed especially upon the Ferguson rioting (which followed upon a grand jury result that shows every sign of having been aggressively manipulated so as to avoid, even preclude, any indictment of the White cop who killed an unarmed Black teenager) betrays a level of willful obtuseness that is truly beyond all measure. Add to this now the similar refusal to indict in the Garner case in Staten Island, and the shock and outrage in minority communities has reached levels not seen since the 1960’s. This rage continues to leave many people – almost entirely White people, and regardless, almost certainly members of some significantly privileged collection of people – completely dumb-founded as to the reason why this rage is fulminating in so many minority communities, a rage that often expresses itself blindly in violence. Why are black people, especially, so angry? Why do they lash out so violently at their own communities? These respective cases went before their grand juries, and when presented with all of the evidence, the grand juries said that there was not evidence enough for an indictment. Isn’t this how the system is supposed to work?

But that, of course, is precisely the problem: that IS how the system is supposed to work. The system IS supposed to dismiss the value of minority, especially black, lives. Because the system that we live in is one of monstrously institutionalized racism in which black people can be safely viewed as not even human by people who insist that this is not a problem. Yes, the system “worked.” Such “working” is the moral catastrophe of our age.

I wish to make two points here, the first is quite patently clear, while the second and longer point will be far more problematically speculative. Point #1 is that, while rioting – which is not at all the same as civil disobedience – is almost certainly not helpful, it is understandable. The second, far more speculative, point is an approach toward such an understanding that I’ve not seen suggested elsewhere.

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What is a Fallacy?

03 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by Gary Herstein in Critical Thinking, Logic, Philosophy of Logic

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Critical Thinking

There are many more ways of reasoning poorly than there are of reasoning well, just as there are vastly more ways of getting lost than there are of proceeding directly to your destination. (A quick note on that last analogy: not every circuitous path is a mistake; depending on time and tide, sometimes there are aesthetic values other than efficiency of travel and timeliness of arrival at play in an actual journey.) Even the most detailed catalog of fallacies must content itself with providing little more than a generic list. My favorites such list is The Fallacy Files; besides their basic list, the Files also provides a well worked out taxonomy. But what is a fallacy? I can give a list of bird species without ever saying what a bird is. The Files do offer an answer to this question, but I wish to propose a slightly different approach. Where I am going is definitely outside the mainstream when it comes to saying what a fallacy is, but I believe a substantive argument can be made for the case I present here.

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HERSTEIN’s FIRST LAW

01 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by Gary Herstein in General Philosophy, Philosophy of Logic, Psychology

≈ 10 Comments

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being human, Climate change Denial, Critical Thinking, Race

Never underestimate human capacity for denial.

I first formulated the above phrase – and flattered myself by naming it – some decades ago; so long, indeed, that I’ve no clear idea when I first said it. Other people have probably said similar things, long before I ever first quipped the idea. But my first contact with the phrase was in my personal act of formulating it. The second person to invent the wheel still invented it if she didn’t know about the first person. The earliest example of the exact quote (it is important that you search on the quote, otherwise the search registers all the words, regardless of their order) that I can find on Google brings up the pseudonym of “Logic Deferred” as first stating the phrase publicly back in February of 2010. Feel free to click on the pseudonym to see who it is that comes up. But as I said, I’ve used the phrase for many decades now.

And I am quite sincere about this statement: Never underestimate human capacity for denial. Smart people can be the worst cases when it comes to denial, because rather than using their intelligence for inquiry, they will use it to justify their ideology.