All Concepts are NOT created Equal

“Logical errors are, I think, of greater practical importance than many people believe; they enable their perpetrators to hold the comfortable position on every subject in turn. Any logically coherent body of doctrine is sure to be in part painful and contrary to current prejudices.”
___ Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 1945

Some debaters like to argue that all opinions have equal value. To put it bluntly, this is utter nonsense because some opinions diverge greatly from truth. I value logic, so I find ridiculous ideas particularly irritating. Similarly, an argument may follow the rules of logic yet be palpably ridiculous because it is based upon unfounded premises. In short, it is pure fantasy. I value truth, as applied to reality, so I find phantasmagorical claptrap irritating unless it admits, as does fantasy or science fiction writing, to being fantasy.

We are daily exposed to cherished beliefs that are without empirical support or logical validity. Religious dogma aside, we are daily exposed to ideas that are without empirical support or logical validity.

The trick, obviously, is to discern the difference and to eschew conceptual detritus. There are some quite good websites that outline the principles of Critical Thinking.

Creationists seem to think that being critical of thinking equates to critical thinking. Needless to say, as in so much else, they are irritatingly illogical in their insistence that any of the various forms of creationism have explanatory merit concerning the origins of life, in particular human life. I'll have more to say on this topic elsewhere because creationism in all its fanciful incarnations is a pet peeve.

Silly Ideas Index:
ɷ Silly Ideas
ɷ Anti-Stupidity Quotes
ɷ Behe Retreats
ɷ Black Sheep are Sheep Too
ɷ Complexity Reductio
ɷ Error Filled Belief Systems
ɷ Free Speech or Propaganda of Hate?
ɷ In God, Distrust
ɷ Moral Absolutism
ɷ Myths Revered and Myths Exposed
ɷ Numbers Games
ɷ One Evolution, Many Creationisms
ɷ Out, Damned Spam!
ɷ Pet Peeves
ɷ un-designed intelligences
ɷ YEC yack

Quo Vadis?
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Black Sheep are Sheep Too

Aginners who hold ridiculous beliefs that run counter to received wisdom often cite the fact that others agree with their opinion, claiming that those who concur with the fact-logic-based knowledge of experts are easily-fooled sheep. In other words, other black sheep agree with their anti-expert prejudices.

If one wishes to hold a correct position, one must practice critical thinking, which is not to say that one must be negative about any propositions originating with an expert.

"Critical thinking involves assessing the authenticity, accuracy, and/or worth of knowledge claims and arguments. This process requires careful, precise, persistent and objective analysis of any knowledge claim or belief to judge its validity and/or worth."

It is folly to make the automatic assumption that those who are experts in empirical fields are necessarily, or even likely to be, incorrect in their assertions. Value-based disciplines such as politics are obviously much more vulnerable to personal biases, so the opinions of experts in these fields may be more suspect. Nevertheless, few individuals have the time or luxury to assess all available information in a value-based area, and we must rely upon the expertise of those who have expended considerable time and thought.

The more education one receives, the more that one realizes how little one knows, and the more that one must rely upon received wisdom. Still, one must assess the level of expertise and level of bias of those who pass opinions. It is not wise to trust opinions posted on a website that has been set up for the express purpose of attacking the opinions or positions of experts. (It could be argued that, in our disgruntlement, we attack the opinions of hate-tankers, junk-tankers, and those who display cognitive disorders. However, our criticisms are directed at illogic and misinformation, certainly not at expertise.)

Credible experts possess the following attributes:
1. sufficient expertise in the subject matter in question.
2. claims made are within area(s) of expertise.
3. adequate degree of agreement among the other experts in the subject in question.
4. not significantly biased by subjective motivations or prejudices.
5. expertise within a legitimate area or discipline (related to the subject matter).
6. the authority must be identified.

Quo Vadis?
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Fistians and Fuzzy Illogic

Fundamentalist Christians have taken to calling themselves evangelical Christians because "fundamentalism" excites deservedly negative sentiments. The name may have changed, but the problems remain the same.

I have decided to refer to rigid, right-wing, bigoted, Biblical literalist creationists as Fistians. These are the Christians who give Christianity a bad name because of their unJesusian lack of compassion and their obstinate ignorance in opposition to knowledge. (I considered coining the term Fustians, but opted to rhyme with Christians. I reserve 'fundamentalists' for anti-modernist movements in various religions. Besottism refers to a subset of zealots.)

Fistians and pseudointellectual advocates of intelligent design creationism share the religiosity-motivated credulity that typifies LAME thinking in the Misinformation Explosion Age.

David Colquhoun addresses this problem of intellectual dishonesty and fuzzy illogic in a Guardian Unlimited article entitled the age of endarkenment.

The past 30 years or so have been an age of endarkenment. It has been a period in which truth ceased to matter very much, and dogma and irrationality became once more respectable.

Colquhoun is author of the Improbable Science blog in which he expands upon his exposition of the reasons that we should be concerned about the "New Credulity.":

This matters when people delude themselves into believing that we could be endangered at 45 minutes' notice by non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

It matters when reputable accountants delude themselves into thinking that Enron-style accounting is acceptable. It matters when people are deluded into thinking that they will be rewarded in paradise for killing themselves and others. It matters when bishops attribute floods to a deity whose evident vengefulness and malevolence leave one reeling. And it matters when science teachers start to believe that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago.

In my opinion, the root causes of this problem of fashionable ignorance lies in a number of failures:
● the failure of educational systems to teach critical thinking skills and to instil a love of learning and truth-seeking.
● the failure of the media to make it clear which competing position is valid, rather than boosting ratings by pumping up the volume on issues that supposedly have no clear right side and wrong side.
● the failure of experts to insist that expert knowledge should not be discarded simply because it is opposed by a vociferous, jeering, ignorant rabble of the religiously motivated.
● the failure of those in power – such as Giorgio Dubaya Bush – to eschew endorsement of religiously motivated ignorance.
● the failure of polite liberals to point out the deluded and deceptive content of creationist pseudoscience and unfounded attacks on scientific knowledge.
● the failure of the lay public to doubt popular bandwagons and to realize that they must be cautious about what or whom to believe in this Misinformation Explosion Age.

And, very difficult or impossible to remedy:
● the failure of religious organizations to ensure that their ministers are well educated and not highly prejudiced.
● the failure of political organizations to ensure that those ministries that are tax exempt are not the religions that preach hatred, lies, and intolerance.
● the failure of search engines, websites providers, and publishers to assess the value of content (for example, search engines can determine whether a site is contaminated by spam and phishing, yet do not provide warning that content is false or unreliable.

Because peer pressure is not confined to teenagers, the public, as Madison Avenue well knows, will respond to that side of an argument that is presented flashily, passionately, repeatedly, and with the appearance of certainty.

The public, particularly that in America, has been deluged with messages from religion, which is treated with dare-not-criticize protection. As a result, America ranks alongside Iraq in its level of religiosity despite its position as the standard population (IQ=100) against which IQ scores are standardized.

However, the price paid for holding religious belief sacrosanct (if you will excuse the pun) includes the confusion of students, the deterioration of educational standards, and the near demise of critical thinking, knowledge, and rationality.

Most people reduce their efforts to the minimum necessary to meet expectations. So, if we permit continued dumbing down of standards and lowering of educational expectations so as to protect self-esteem, intellectual standards will fall still further. So long as we present the implicit and explicit message that truth does not matter and that every opinion counts, we will maintain the ever decreasing standards.

In nations that value education and intellectuals, politicians who live down to the "average guy" image are not elected to the most powerful executive positions. As the world has recognized with disdain, Giorgio, purchased Ivy League degree or not, would not have appealed to voters. More particularly, he would not have appealed a second time to voters were they able to detect executive deceptions.

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Fallacy Fallacy

Argumentum ad Logicam : Fallacist's Fallacy : Fallacy Fallacy : "Fallacio" :

This fallacy is akin to the two wrongs don't make a right adage. A fallacious argument lacks a convincingly strong logical connection between acceptable premises and relevant conclusion. However, a true conclusion could be tacked onto a fallacious argument (ignoratio elenchi). So, the fact of unacceptable premises and/or an illogical argument says nothing about the truth-value of the conclusion itself. Accordingly, one is not necessarily justified in concluding that a proposition is false simply because a fallacious argument has been presented for the proposition. (The professional proponents of intelligent [sick] design theory implicitly fall back on this escape clause.)

In commenting on the fallacies of logic inherent in creationist arguments, I realize that recognizing fallacies alone does not render creationist conclusions incorrect. Demonstration of the falsity of creationists' claims does require scientific exposition, but that voluminous topic is not the primary purpose of this site. The fact that I, along with experts in the relevant scientific fields, am convinced by the scientific evidence has, however, made me certain that creationists' conclusions are false, and this prompted me to examine the fallacies that must be present in arguments for false conclusions. I can think of no other huge body of fallacious arguments within an area where conclusions are subject to empirical scrutiny. So, religious dogma and creationist nonsense provides ideal fodder for critical thinking. The problem with creationist and intelligent [sick] design arguments–beyond their manifest ignorance of science–lies in the fact that they are fraught with fallacies.

It is theoretically possible, on grounds of logic, that creationists' and intelligent [sick] design proponents' criticisms of science could be well founded. In so far as scientists usually admit that their hypothesis or theory will be subject to subsequent revision, creationists and intelligent [sick] design proponents are correct that gaps do exist in scientific knowledge. Scientists regularly admit that science has unanswered questions. This is one of the features that makes the study of science interesting. The nature of scientific investigation is to incrementally refine the body of understanding. Rarely do scientific discoveries completely overturn previous paradigms. However, unlike the case for religious dogma, nor does science lay claim to having a complete answer.

In this regard, though, it is an argument from ignorance–ignorance of possibilities–to believe that disproving scientific explanations is even possible by intelligent [sick] design propositions, let alone that it could prove the existence of God. Just as a single exposure of a fallacious argument does not overturn creationist arguments, gaps in scientific knowledge do not discredit the broad subject of scientific understanding. To argue so is a fallacy of composition – extrapolating from a part to the whole. In thinking that attacking elements of science could disprove biological evolution, creationists and intelligent [sick] design proponents are creating a false dichotomy, ignoring the actual explanation of incomplete-but-accurate knowledge.

Creationist and intelligent [sick] design arguments, though often implied rather than being spelled out fully, do not constitute a body of argument remotely as strong as empirical scientific evidence, scientific hypotheses, or scientific theories. So, exposure of all or many of the fallacies in the arguments of creationists and intelligent [sick] design proponents is not to commit the fallacist's fallacy: "It is reasonable to, at least provisionally, reject an improbable proposition for which no adequate evidence has been presented. So, if you can show that all of the common arguments for a certain proposition are fallacious, and the burden of proof is on the proposition's proponents, then you do not commit this fallacy by rejecting that proposition. Rather, the fallacy is committed when you jump to the conclusion that just because one argument for it is fallacious, no cogent argument for it can exist." Fallacy Fallacy

Quo Vadis?
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Critical Thinking

We shed light on any subject by thinking analytically, or critically, about available information. Critical thinking can be defined as, “Reasonable reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do. More precisely, critical thinking involves assessing the authenticity, accuracy, and/or worth of knowledge claims and arguments. This process requires careful, precise, persistent and objective analysis of any knowledge claim or belief to judge its validity and/or worth.” Source: definition of critical thinking

The practice of critical thinking sets out to assess the validity of premises, logic of arguments, and reliability of conclusions. In practice, discerning the truth of an argument is not always a simple task. Core Concepts in Critical Thinking Introduction to Statements or Claims

An argument is a set of statements. The premises – facts or propositions – are intended to provide support for the conclusion. The conclusion is asserted to be true on the basis of the premises. If an argument is cogent, then a true conclusion follows logically from true premises.

Critical thinking is not equivalent to that vernacular meaning of skepticism that refers to a habitual, cynical attitude of incredulity. However, where philosophical skepticism equates to a methodology for obtaining knowledge through systematic doubt and continual testing, then skepticism is a phase of critical thinking.

Scientific method is akin to formalized skepticism in that it proceeds by rigorous scrutiny of falsifiable hypotheses. Any hypotheses that are demonstrated to be faulty will be discarded, and alternated explanations for empirical observations will be formulated and tested. Eventually, any reasonable hypotheses that are not disproven will be regarded as so acceptable as to be elevated to the level of scientific theory.

Quo Vadis?
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Logic

Logic can be symbolic or informal.

Symbolic logic examines the precise symbolic representation of logical concepts, the abstract relationships between these concepts, and the systematization of these relationships. Informal logic involves the application of logical principles to assessment the types of informal arguments and claims that we encounter in daily life.

Propositional logic is a branch of symbolic logic dealing with propositions as units and with their combinations and the connectives that relate them – if, then compound statements. Propositional Logic Terms and Symbols Proposition evaluator.

Categorical logic and categorical syllogisms are more concrete than is propositional logic – some, all, and/not. Venn diagram evaluator.

An understanding of Fallacies of Logic – recognized structural errors in argumentation – provides a shortcut to assessing the cogency of an argument. We most often encounter propositional arguments in daily life, while the logic of science, and of mathematics in particular, is more often categorical.

Quo Vadis?
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Ex Ducare

In a scene in "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie", Edinburgh schoolmarm Jean Brodie is under attack from headmistress Miss MacKay.

The dialogue runs something like this:
Jean Brodie: "Education is from the Latin, ex and ducare, meaning leading out."
Miss MacKay: "I wish there were a little more putting in!"

(Maggie Smith won a well-deserved Oscar for her role in this Jay Presson Allen adaptation of the multi-layered play based on Muriel Spark's novel.)

The key point of the book/play/movie is encapsulated when Miss Brodie says, "Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life."

Proponents of religion recognize this credulity and malleability of children when they campaign to insert religious teachings into the classroom or create dinosaur lie-oramas.

Modern education is, of course, probably more about putting in than leading out, yet both seem important at the university level. Critical thinking skills certainly seem particularly vital in an electronic age of unedited-crap-bombardment.

Although the US boasts some of the highest ranked universities in the world when comparisons are based on quality of research output, American 15-year olds rank dismally low in math (25th-28th), reading (12th-23rd), and science (20th-27th). The low rankings were reported for a 2003 comparison of more than 250,000 15-year old students from 41 countries. Why the discrepancy?

I have not found a posted explanation, but the answer probably lies in the mega-buck funding of America's top research universities. Take a look at the research scientists, post-graduate fellows, and graduate students of the top science research labs and you will quickly notice that the labs are heavily weighted with foreign-trained scientists. The US is draining brains from other nations because it has the funds to attract top scientists. This does not necessarily mean, though, that the quality of American university graduates stacks as high as the standards of research publications would suggest.

Another quality comparison can be performed by examining science course materials on university websites (.edu). The better American universities do provide high quality material, but many lecture notes from lesser colleges indicate that the courses for which they are posted are low in quality and informational content. By comparison, British (.ac.uk) websites suggest much more demanding undergraduate courses.

No wonder the usual inverse relationship between science education and religiosity fails in the US. It appears that many American universities provide a less than rigorous basic education in the natural sciences. Couple inadequate educational standards with the vehement creationism and anti-science machinations of religious fundamentalists and it is little wonder that the US has not progressed far since the ludicrous Scopes "monkey trial".

ɷ Inverse Correlations

Quo Vadis?
...section index...

Recommended

Critical Thinking:
Critical Thought

Evolution:
General Science and Evolution,
Human Evolution, Becoming Human: Paleoanthropology
List of pro-evolution or anti-creationism websites,
Panda's Thumb,
TalkOrigins The primary reason for this archive's existence is to provide mainstream scientific responses to the many frequently asked questions (FAQs) that appear in the talk.origins newsgroup and the frequently rebutted assertions of those advocating intelligent design or other creationist pseudosciences.