Tag Archives: Critical Thinking

American Fascist: The Reality Show

23 Monday May 2016

Posted by in Fascism, Politics, Trump

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So, Herr Drumpf is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and the concern about fascism coming to America has itself taken on yet another layer of poignancy. Concerns are being raised by individuals as diverse as neo-con and Iraq war cheerleader Robert Kagan, and leading expert on the structural characteristics of fascist movements, Robert O. Paxton. It is Paxton’s work on the subject that most interests me here. While this post can be viewed as a follow up to my earlier one (hence the recycled picture), this post can also be viewed as the first of a two part series on aspects of those structural characteristic Paxton so carefully analyzed, and how they are visibly playing themselves out this election cycle. My argument here will be a fairly informal one – I’ll not be providing detailed endnotes or extensive quotations (although, such quotes as do appear will have their location in the Kindle text provided). This is because the details I’ll be offering from Paxton’s work are entirely uncontroversial readings of his arguments. Besides which, Paxton’s book is readily available, eminently readable, and an essential book for any citizen caught up in contemporary events.Fascists

My concern here is to remind folks not only of some of the essential characteristics that go into making a fascist movement – and fascism is always a movement, a populist one at that, and not a party or a collection of policies – and consider some of the ways the Trump phenomenon differs from other post WWII forms of conservative extremism, ways that actually push it closer to fascism. The movements I’ll be describing will be European ones, and most of what I’ll have to say about these European forms of conservative extremism will be based on chapter 7 of The Anatomy of Fascism. First, however, it will be useful to remind ourselves about the nature of fascism itself. Continue reading →

Luck is Not a Method; Hope is Not a Plan

25 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by in Critical Thinking, Inquiry, Logic

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Having taught a variety of philosophy courses in my less than traditional career, one of the ideas I am most committed to conveying to my students is that it is not good enough – not by a long shot – to simply be “right.” Quite the contrary: it is better to be mistaken for good reasons than to be “right” by accident. After all, even a broken clock is “right” twice a day, but that doesn’t make it a reliable timepiece. It takes a real commitment to inquiry and logic to be mistaken based on genuinely substantive reasons. And the most important difference is, of course, that if you are mistaken, but on the grounds of solid reasons, then that mistake can be rectified by finding and correcting the mistake in those reasons. Because if you are mistaken on the grounds of good reasons, then it is necessarily the case that the mistake is somewhere in those reasons.craps2

This can be a tricky notion for younger persons to accept. (It is an especially tricky notion for narcissistic sociopaths of any age to accept. Consider, for example, Donald Trump … ) The notion that “being right” is the only thing that counts, regardless of how one achieves that particular form of “right”, is arguably a driving factor behind a great deal of plagiarism. But conclusions that are achieved in fashions that are not methodologically sound are not “conclusions” of any kind, they are dogmatically asserted bullet-points, as cognitively vacuous as mere barnyard noises. Not only do such things fail to advance inquiry, they actively impede inquiry. Continue reading →

Just Giving it Away

31 Thursday Mar 2016

Posted by in Critical Thinking, Education, Health Care, Socialism

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I notice on social media that various conservatives are becoming increasingly irate at being reminded of the fact that things like roads, police, fire protection, are essentially socialist programs which they are not only happy to use without thought, but view as their well-deserved entitlements. Jim Wright, over at Stonekettle Station, set off something of a firestorm on Twitter for pointing out that, “Calling universal healthcare and public education free stuff is the same as calling a Navy aircraft carrier a free ship.” The conservative outrage, apparently, stems from the “fact” that things like roads, police, and fire departments, are the sorts of things that government is “supposed” to provide. What the self-righteous conservative objects to is all of that other stuff, like public education and healthcare, that socialists propose to just “give away.”

Gift

It is very hard to give a measured response to such immeasurable ignorance and hypocrisy. It really is not all that long ago that fire, police, and roads were the sorts of things that governments did NOT bother to provide. Part of the devastation of the Great Fire of London in 1666 was that there was no uniform, government provided and enforced system of fire protection and suppression. The introduction of the “King’s Highway” (“high,” because the road was built up above the surrounding ground, so that when it rained the road would not turn into an impassable quagmire) was something of a revolutionary approach to transportation. The idea of an actual police force didn’t really come into being in the European world until the 19th Century. In earlier times such tasks were handled by local thugs and warlords whose only claim to “law” was that there was no one around who might challenge their arbitrary decisions and actions. So why are these things suddenly just and only the sorts of things that government is supposed to provide? Specifically, if fire and police protection, roads, water and sewage, are the sort of things government is supposed to provide, then why are things like healthcare, education, minimal standards of living, access to basic resources such as information and community, examples of things that those nasty-evil socialists want to just “give away”? Continue reading →

Sending the “Wrong Message”

29 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by in Critical Thinking, General Philosophy, Humor, Logic

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One of the most singularly asinine claims that might be floated in any discussion is the one that follows the pattern that, “doing X will send the wrong message.” Characterizing such infantile twaddle as “asinine” is almost certainly an offense to all those statements in the world that are genuinely (but only) asinine. What makes such statements so unqualifiedly despicable is that they are all built around the fatuous presupposition that any act or statement is so unambiguously closed in its meaning that it can only send one, equally closed and unambiguous, message. Such childishness is of a piece with those who claim to take the Bible (or any other text) “literally,” as though the “literal” interpretation of any text were even possible in the abstract, much less actualizable in the concrete. I’ll have a few words to say on this latter topic at the end.404-error-page-not-found

What brought this to mind was a brief news story on the radio this AM, that mentioned how the Illinois legislative branch was considering a measure to decriminalize (note: NOT legalize, because that would generate huge amounts of revenue for the state, and we can’t allow that to happen … ) possession of small amounts of marijuana (I forget how much exactly). In addition, the bill would specify how much THC one could have in one’s system to be considered legally impaired for driving. Several law enforcement and “concerned citizens” groups oppose such actions on the grounds that it would “send the wrong message” to our delicate and oh-so-easily influenced youth. Well, as soon as the “wrong message” meme surfaces, you know the persons throwing this claim about are either stupid, lying, or both. So let us look at stupid first, lying second, and finish (as promised) with “textual literalism.” Continue reading →

Un-Cut

27 Sunday Mar 2016

Posted by in Logic, Mereology, Ontology

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I was reminded again this other day that the varieties of ways that things can be “together” easily exceed the kinds of ways that even smart people will often notice or imagine are possible. The issue I have in mind here is not a matter of relationship advice but rather of logic (although more than a few relationships would profit from even a smattering of basic reasoning.) In this instance, some things can be analyzed into genuine parts that can be separated in fact, while other things can only be analyzed into abstract “parts,” which are not ever separable in reality; there is yet a third type that can only be taken as a whole, even in analysis, without doing violence to the nature and meaning of the thing in question. Failure to recognize what type of thing or idea one is dealing with can lead one into fundamental errors which, while often terribly clever are, for all of that, still just flat wrong. My interest here will be with the first two of the above three.Scissors

Various common phrases are easily recognizable in this context, most especially the old saw about, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” This is especially true of organic unities. For while we’ve achieved a level of surgical finesse that can, under extremely delicate and rigorously right sets of circumstances, permit us to, say, remove an organ from a living being and replace it with another, this generally cannot occur without considerable trauma, frequent enough failures, and extraordinary skill to reassemble the whole that has been torn apart by the procedure. Such holistic entities are what the Greeks referred to as a-tomos, a word that roughly translates as “uncut.” It is from this Greek root that we get our term “atom,” which originally meant an undivided unity. Continue reading →

Halfway Around The World.

16 Tuesday Feb 2016

Posted by in Critical Thinking, Logic, model-centrism, Philosophy of Science

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“A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.” This well known saying is variously and unreliably attributed to a number of persons, from Mark Twain to Winston Churchill. But as long as one is not trying to steal the words for one’s self, it is less important who said a true thing, than that the thing said be true. Credit should be given, of course, when credit is due, and identifiable. But just because, say, Abraham Lincoln said a thing, that thing is not automatically true, any more than if Richard Nixon said something, it is automatically false. Now, it is not an ad hominem to call a liar a liar, nor is it a fallacy to question the credibility of a person whose credibility has been shredded by repeated abuses of the truth. Still, one must be very careful when it comes to either accepting or dismissing a statement merely on account of its source. If you dismiss an alcoholic’s statement that drinking is bad for you, on account of the fact that the person making the statement is an alcoholic (who is still drinking), you’ve committed the tu quoque version of the argumentum ad hominem. If anything, the alcoholic is better situated to speak with genuine expertise on the damage of alcoholism than, say, a more sober member of society.

Muddy Hiking Boots

But to return to our original point, there is an intransigence to falsehoods that is not easily dislodged by anything so inconsequential as reason and truth. There are many psychological studies (I’ll not link to any – they are easy to find) that point out that, for example, climate change denialism – devoid as it is of any shred of valid or scientific justification – nevertheless becomes more stubborn when it is confronted with logic and facts that admit of no rational dispute. The lie, as it were, digs in its boots. I’ll skip over any discussion of those rhetorical techniques that do seem to work, because such methods are not my interest here and it pisses me off that I’d ever have to resort to them. Rather, I want to look at those factors that let the lie out of the starting gate before the truth even knows that there is a race today. In particular, what is it that makes the lie so easy, and the truth so hard? Continue reading →

Pursuit of Happiness

04 Thursday Feb 2016

Posted by in Critical Thinking, Economics, Inequality, Politics

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A rather poor opinion piece was published by “News OK” (as in “Oklahoma;” I’ve several friends who are Okies) which, while unremarkable by itself, did open up some interesting topics for discussion. The editorial, written by Professor David Deming at Oklahoma University, while not very well informed, serves to illustrate several points of interest. First off, the author holds a Ph.D. in geology & geophysics, and so he has no more expertise in his opinions on matters of social and political philosophy than a plumber has speaking on medicine. We see here an example of someone using his Very Important Degree as evidently legitimizing his opinion. But compare: by the same accounts, I am a “Doctor” as well. But if you come to me for advice on, say, your cancer treatment, my response will be something along the lines of, “Pay attention to your MEDICAL doctor, and don’t ask me questions for which I cannot possibly offer an intelligent answer.” Legitimate expertise actually matters.scales-coins

In his opinion piece, Deming bemoans the supposed “fact” that, “an avowed socialist is a viable candidate for president of the United States.” Deming means, of course, Bernie Sanders, and thus in his first sentence demonstrates an astonishing cluelessness about the topics he would presume to lecture others on. Sanders is an avowed Democratic Socialist, and if one hasn’t bothered to learn the difference, one has no business saying foolish things on the subject in public. Deming goes on to announce that socialism – a word he obviously has no idea as to its many meanings – is a universal and unequivocal failure, citing the examples of the USSR and, more recently, Venezuela. It is telling that Deming fails to mention Sweden, or that socialism in the two countries he does name was imposed on cultures rife with staggering and endemic poverty, and exercised with authoritarian rule. A thoughtful person might suppose that such distinctions are important. But the fact that Deming gives no weight to the role of poverty and income inequality is our segue into the point I do wish to discuss: Deming declares that, “The United States is a constitutional republic founded on political equality, not equality of income or circumstances. … The Founding Fathers considered property rights to be sacred and paramount.” The first part is childish in in its naiveté, while the second is frankly disgusting in its utter bone-headed misrepresentations. These are the topics I wish to examine here, and they all pivot on the concept of “the pursuit of happiness.” I’ll start with Deming’s second, and more easily disposed of, claim. Continue reading →

“Teach” the “Controversy”

28 Thursday Jan 2016

Posted by in Critical Thinking, Inquiry, Logic, scientific controversy

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I’ve written on the subject of scientific controversies several times in the past, and have even highlighted this particularly disgusting piece of nonsense (“teach the controversy”) more than once. But state legislatures are coming back into session, and already the push for ideology over inquiry is becoming manifest. Because right-wing ideologues devoid of any particle of intelligence or integrity insist on pushing this piece of manipulative idiocy, I am going to stand here in my little corner of the world and push back.Stooges-as-Scholars

I find the rhetoric behind this phrase especially monstrous. This is because the people who produce this nonsense have no interest in teaching, only in indoctrination; no grasp of controversy, only of ex cathedra declarations; no capacity for inquiry, only for the regurgitation of tediously fatuous twaddle. So let us explore for a moment what it is about this particular meme, “teach the controversy,” that is so singularly despicable. Continue reading →

Fear Sum

22 Friday Jan 2016

Posted by in Altemeyer, Authoritarians, Critical Thinking, Fascism

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Persons whose mode of interacting with the world is significantly determined by fear are not in a position to think clearly or thoroughly. This is not some new-age fatuousness or Star Wars homily, simply an obvious fact. And note that the language used here is fairly deliberate: I’m not talking about persons who are afraid all the time – a truly dreadful, and genuinely pathological condition to even imagine! I mean persons whose conceptual, perceptual, and affective approaches to how they frame and engage with reality have a substantive, more-or-less constant, fear-driven component. Even as this component is not the single greatest part of the entire puzzle (indeed, such persons will often enough hardly even realize that it is there) the fact that it is there, even though it whispers more than shouts, its endemic presence gives it disproportionate influence over the affected people’s lives. It turns out that such persons are overwhelmingly conservative in their political and social outlooks.Terrified scream

People who have this substantial (albeit subtle) inclination toward a fear-driven account of, and interaction with, the world are not particularly less intelligent than other people. Endless sniping to the contrary notwithstanding, neither liberals nor conservatives are less intelligent or less educated than the other. Many famous conservatives have advanced degrees: Newt Gingrich has a Ph.D. In European history, and Ben Carson is, by all accounts (not just his own) an extraordinary neurosurgeon. (Although, in Carson’s case, it may be legitimate to wonder about his genuine intelligence, as opposed to clever puzzle solving abilities..) But one of the aspects of Authoritarian thinking – which is often, if not mostly conservative in nature – is its ruthless compartmentalization. One can be very intelligent and very well educated, but within the fear-driven parameters of the Authoritarian mindset, that intelligence and that education will not be permitted to range freely across the full spectrum of inquiry for very long, if at all. This compartmentalization allows ideas to exist independently of rational critique, and they can take on an emotional tinge – such as fear – which is not objectively merited. Continue reading →

Scholarship and Public Responsibility

24 Thursday Dec 2015

Posted by in Critical Thinking, Logic, On Bullshit, Public Philosophy

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The title addresses scholarship in general, but I will direct my remarks specifically toward philosophy, as that is the scholarship I am most familiar with.

Certainly it is the case that being a public person is a kind of exposure that is often uncomfortable for everyone. But the issue here is not what makes you cozy, but what fulfills your responsibilities.flasher

In a recent essay in The Guardian, James Mulholland offers what I find to be a deeply flawed argument against the idea of academics taking serious steps to make their work accessible to the broader public. Within my general academic area, this is known as “Public Philosophy.” Mulholland insists that, “It is time for us to reassess what we mean by public scholarship. We must recognise the value of the esoteric knowledge, technical vocabulary and expert histories that academics produce.” This is in the context of a world where, Mulholland tells us, “Academics are constantly encouraged to engage with the public more often,” advice which he rejects because, he insists, “this advice ignores the way that specialised knowledge already affects civic life. Specialisation has social importance, but often only after decades of work.”

Hearkening back to a quip by Heinlein, I might also add that, “Specialization is for insects.” Continue reading →