The Nature of Scientific Controversies

12 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by Gary Herstein in Climate Change, Creationism, Logic, Philosophy of Logic, Philosophy of Science

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Climate change Denial, creationism, Logic, Science

The title of this post is, among other things, a play on Kuhn’s classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The purpose of this post is to set out a collection of “quick and dirty” rules of thumb for non-specialists to be able to determine when a putative “controversy” (as reported in the press) is a genuine scientific controversy. Quick and dirty rules of thumb are the best that anyone can ever hope to achieve on this matter, because the determination of genuine versus specious controversy is inherently qualitative and deeply sensitive to context. Nevertheless, a very solid set of evaluative tools can be quickly assembled and mastered with relative ease by anyone prepared to apply logic to facts. This post is something of a “part 2” to my earlier, What is Science?

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Closed Mindedness

25 Saturday Oct 2014

Posted by Gary Herstein in Critical Thinking, Genetic Fallacy, GMO crops, Philosophy of Logic

≈ 1 Comment

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Critical Thinking, GMO crops, Logic

Claims about “closed” and “open” mindedness get tossed about with considerable enthusiasm, with the former being BAD and the latter being GOOD. Many of those tossing the terms about are persons who either object to, or have little or not capacity for, basic logical rigor or critical thinking. There are concepts involved that do merit rather more praise or blame than purely neutral indifference, but matters are a little more subtle than folks sometimes allow. This seems like a good time to touch on these subjects.

Closed mindedness, in its severest form, is straight-out dogmatism. Dogmatism is one of the seven categories Robert Altemeyer uses in characterizing authoritarian style thought processes in his book. Given that I’ve touched on some of Altemeyers ideas in these previous posts, it might seem more natural to include a discussion of dogmatism with that collection. However, for my discussion here it is more appropriate to pair the concepts of open and closed mindedness with one another (which Altemeyer does not particularly do), and the specific concept of closed mindedness I’ll be looking at here is rather more than just the extreme case of dogmatism. But dogmatism is certainly a case – an extreme one – of closed mindedness, and by the nature of its extremity it draws the lines of our topic in particularly sharp relief. So let us begin there.

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Thinking about Thinking 3: Statistical modes

22 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by Gary Herstein in Climate Change, Critical Thinking, Philosophy of Logic, Philosophy of Science

≈ 5 Comments

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algebraic reasoning, Climate change Denial, Critical Thinking, Logic, mathematics, Relational thinking, Statistics

Statistical thinking is one of the most important formal methods of engaging reality available to human beings. Sadly, it is also one of the more difficult, because human beings, in general, have absolutely no intuitive sense regarding probabilistic claims or statistical analyses. The people who do such things – even the ones that do them poorly – only reach such a stage of analysis after a significant amount of disciplined education. For the rest of us (and I must perforce include myself in this list) our statistical guesses only rise to the level of the merely appalling on those rare occasions that they are not completely idiotic. Quite usable texts can be had for the downloading (although the interested reader might consider supporting the Open Intro foundation), but one still requires no small measure of determination to “climb Mount Statistics” on one’s own. It is a challenge I’ve never completed at any substantive level, making this post more than a trifle daunting. However, even lacking any measure of expertise on the subject, there remain a few intelligent things that can be said, even by someone like me.

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Logic, Principles, Evidence, Facts

13 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by Gary Herstein in Critical Thinking, Philosophy of Logic

≈ 23 Comments

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Critical Thinking, Inquiry, Logic, Philosophy

There is a hierarchy of relational structures involved in any rational inquiry. No step or stage of this hierarchy may be legitimately skipped, although in various contexts certain of them may be relatively invisible. As might be guessed by the title of this entry, that hierarchy is the one that runs between logic, principles, evidence and facts. In essence, this is a “meta-relation” between that which is universal – logic, that which is general (in the sense of genera) – principles, that which is specific (in the sense of species) – evidence, and that which is particular – facts. Now, anyone familiar with the works of Peirce and Dewey (see for example, HERE, HERE and HERE) will not find what I have to say in this post especially surprising. Nevertheless, the basic ideas presented seem like ones that deserve a broader audience than just and only scholars in American Pragmatism. And I have long found this litany – logic, principles, evidence, facts – to be a useful one, such that I am inclined to repeat it often enough that having a citable explanation will be of value.

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What Is Science?

09 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by Gary Herstein in Philosophy of Logic, Philosophy of Science

≈ 14 Comments

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Critical Thinking, Logic, Science

Having floated the problem of legitimate authority the other day, it is worth considering some of the things that make an authority legitimate. And in that regard, few things in the world are supposed to occupy the role of legitimate authority to the extent that science does. So what is science, and what lends it the weight we justifiably give it?

Well, the first and most important thing to recognize is that science is not a body of pronouncements nor a collection of “facts”; rather, it is a self-correcting method of inquiry. From the foregoing, we can see that, qua “method of inquiry,” science is essentially a process, not a product. And qua “self-correcting,” we can see that the process is one of constant test and re-examination where previous conclusions are themselves treated as only provisional and subjected to renewed critique and inquiry.

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