Welcome to one of the most active flamenco sites on the Internet. Guests can read most posts but if you want to participate click here to register.
This site is dedicated to the memory of Paco de Lucía, Ron Mitchell, Guy Williams, Linda Elvira, Philip John Lee, Craig Eros, Ben Woods, David Serva and Tom Blackshear who went ahead of us.
We receive 12,200 visitors a month from 200 countries and 1.7 million page impressions a year. To advertise on this site please contact us.
|
|
|
RE: Is Logic Necessary To Win an Argument.
|
You are logged in as Guest
|
|
Users viewing this topic: none
|
|
Login  | |
|
  
runner
Posts: 357
Joined: Dec. 5 2008
From: New Jersey USA
|
 RE: Is Logic Necessary To Win an Arg... (in reply to Brendan)
|
|
|
|
Brendan, your reading list is excellent, and the advice presented is welcome and useful when one is discussing issues with those who share the "rules of debate". The difficulty comes when one's opponent in discussion has every part of their being--intellectual, psychological, social, emotional--committed to a position, a belief structure, that almost literally gives them a reason to live. I have several times noted how Eric Hoffer probingly explored and explained the phenomon of ideological obsessive certainty in his landmark book The True Believer. Hoffer made it clear that one cannot "win" an argument with a true believer by using the ordinary tools of evidence, logic, etc.; instead one must produce a profound emotional shock, a reversal of polarity, so to speak, to effect change, and even then one often gets a new ideology that is as profound in its control of the person's personality as was the old. Somebody--I don't remember who--noted that the only ways that True Believers ceased to be a powerful opposing force in argument or in actual policy was when they were either crushed (at the polls, say, or on the battlefield) or when the last of them died out (often the case in science disputes as the new theory replaces the old). One needs only to visit other message boards scattered everywhere around the Web to see True Believers at work, even denying, in one instance, that the earth turns on its axis. "Mitt der Dummheit kämpfen die Götter selbst vergebens": Against stupidity (or ideological conviction), even the gods struggle in vain (Schiller).
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Feb. 22 2015 16:00:58
 |
|
BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
|
|
RE: Is Logic Necessary To Win an Arg... (in reply to Brendan)
|
|
|
quote:
When Alan Sokal unveiled his fabulous hoax, the editors of Social Text complained that he had broken the rules of academic engagement. They were right about that, but so what? He could never have made his point so well while keeping within those rules.
The "Sokal Hoax" revealed the shallow, jargon-filled nonsense so beloved of "post-modern," literary critics and "cultural studies" types published in journals such as "Social Text." Sokal entitled his article "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." In the article Sokal reviewed various current topics in physics and mathematics, and, tongue in cheek, drew various cultural, philosophical, and political morals that he felt would appeal to fashionable academic commentators who question the claims of science to objectivity.
One of Sokal's "footnotes" reads: "Just as liberal feminists are frequently content with a minimal agenda of legal and social equality for women and 'pro-choice', so liberal (and even some socialist) mathematicians are often content to work within the hegemonic Zermelo–Fraenkel framework (which, reflecting its nineteenth-century liberal origins, already incorporates the axiom of equality) supplemented only by the axiom of choice."
After reading the article and Sokal's admission that it was all a hoax, some wag, referring to the post-modern, Lit-Crit deconstructionists running rampant in U.S. university English and Cultural Studies Departments, said: "I invite anyone questioning the objective facts established by science to step out of my second-story office window, and on his way down explain once again why gravity is simply a Western social construct."
The editors of "Social Text" deserved all the opprobrium and ridicule heaped upon them. What irritated them more than Sokal's breaking the rules of academic engagement was that they fell for it, revealing their own lack of academic rigor and their shallow pursuit of the latest academic "trend."
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Feb. 22 2015 23:11:19
|
|
runner
Posts: 357
Joined: Dec. 5 2008
From: New Jersey USA
|
|
RE: Is Logic Necessary To Win an Arg... (in reply to estebanana)
|
|
|
While not a scientist myself, my undergraduate and graduate education was in a science (geology). The habits of thought and the approach to phenomena that science both requires and inculcates have had a profound effect upon the way I consider the Bigger Issues that engage us as both private and public individuals. Were it in my power, I would mandate for all high school students a year-long course that would take as its core the development of a major scientific theory--plate tectonics would be a prime example. Step by step, the students would be led through the introduction of the new technologies that enabled new data to be gathered and new questions to be asked, and how new hypotheses were evoked to structure the new data, and then the coherence of many separate threads into the grand unifying theory that is plate tectonics, or modern cosmology, or evolution, or whatever. Thus the students will have the benefit of knowing both about a major intellectual achievement, and also about the rigors and habits of mind and respect for demonstrability and transparency that science demands. This approach to "science teaching" would thus reject the current emphasis in most schools on students learning a lot of mostly useless "facts": names of things, lists of things, theories presented as context-free and history-free utterances from "scientists" out there somewhere--all quickly forgotten as irrelevant and pointless. Instead, the students recapitulate in this full-immersion course all of the complexity and blind alleys and trial runs that typify the birth of a new way of looking at a big chunk of the world, but a process that is ultimately guided and channeled by an adherence to the methods and structures of scientific analysis and enquiry.
Can you imagine the opposition to such an educational proposal--having students become intimately familiar with how science works as a way of getting at demonstrable, reproducible truth? I see the torches and pitchforks already......
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Feb. 23 2015 0:23:54
|
|
BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
|
|
RE: Is Logic Necessary To Win an Arg... (in reply to runner)
|
|
|
quote:
Can you imagine the opposition to such an educational proposal--having students become intimately familiar with how science works as a way of getting at demonstrable, reproducible truth? I see the torches and pitchforks already......
....from both ends of the spectrum. From the "Post-Modern" "Lit-Crit," "Cultural Studies" Department types who claim there is no "truth"; that what we claim as truth in Science, Anthropology, History or any other field is simply a "social construct," no more valid than a Hottentot's view of the world from his perspective in the Kalahari Desert. To the "Creationist," "Fundamentalist" types who claim that the earth is 6,000 years old and that evolution is "just a theory" (demonstrating their ignorance of what a theory is--they actually, but unknowingly, mean hypothesis, and they are wrong on both counts).
And then there are the "Conspiracy Theorists" who believe that we did not land a man on the moon in 1969 (they claim it was filmed at Meteor Crater near Flagstaff, Arizona); that Area 51 is where the U.S. Air Force keeps captured aliens preserved in containers (instead of being a test site for secret, advanced aircraft); that the contrails of jet aircraft are really "Chemtrails" (designed to chemically reduce habitable areas, thus reducing population); that vaccines cause autism; and the list goes on and on.
I sometimes wonder if the level of ignorance is greater today than in the past, or if it is a function of the internet, which allows anyone with a crackpot opinion to appear erudite to other crackpots willing to accept it.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Feb. 23 2015 1:07:06
|
|
runner
Posts: 357
Joined: Dec. 5 2008
From: New Jersey USA
|
|
RE: Is Logic Necessary To Win an Arg... (in reply to BarkellWH)
|
|
|
Bill, while I entirely share your contempt for the Lit-Crit, all truth is a social construct crowd, they are thankfully a tiny, silly minority who in conducting their own affairs pay no attention to their on-campus posturing. They run, not walk, when diagnosed with, say, atrial fibrillation, or hepatitis, or HIV, or whatever, to the best specialist they can find; the Witch Doctors and shamans are left to fend for themselves. A similar case involves confirmed Solipsists seeking desperately to convince non-existent Others of the correctness of the Solipsist position.
The Creationist/Intelligent Design crowd is another matter. They work to gain control of local and state boards of education, and thus spread their nonsense throughout school systems. And they cannot be reasoned out of their peculiar views, because they are an integral part of their religious experience--they are True Believers. The conspiracy theorists fall into the same category, only replacing religion with ideology, (supported by "facts" gleaned from the Internet), or with a serious mental/brain pathology. You're right about the Internet--the easy availability of any "facts" you want on the Net allows for the full expression of that Defiant Ignorance that now typifies so many Americans when presented with uncomfortable and/or new realities.
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Feb. 23 2015 4:02:15
|
|
Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
|
|
RE: Is Logic Necessary To Win an Arg... (in reply to runner)
|
|
|
Personally, I think the internet plays a large role in the present awareness of widespread incorrigible ignorance.
When I was a teenager sixty years ago you could go to a fundamentalist tent meeting or the local bar and hear stuff just as bad as what is on the internet now.
In fact, when I arrived at the University of Texas, an older fellow student invited me to such a meeting in downtown Austin. He was a biochemistry graduate student, readying himself for a distinguished career. He was from the tiny town of Joshua, near Fort Worth. When people would look puzzled, he would say, "It's just down the road from Godly." From a poor family, he and his four brothers all made names for themselves in learned professions.
At the tent meeting, after the sermon and congregational speaking in unknown tongues, the faith healer called for people to come forward to be cured of what ailed them. My friend and his accomplice volunteered. The accomplice staggered spastically and made apparently uncontrollable sweeping gestures. The faith healer repeated the story he was told. The "sufferer" had been that way since birth. The medical profession was powerless in the face of his affliction.
The healer laid on his hands. The spastic motions stopped. The "sufferer" put on a big smile and began praising both the Lord and the healer. The healer went into his ecstatic patter.
Then my friend who had accompanied the "sufferer" down to the front appeared to be stricken with seizures. He jerked about, moaned, screamed and seemed to spit blood. He fell to the ground.
The rest of us rushed forward to carry him out writhing and flailing, while we shouted, "The Devil done went into him!" and the like. The reporter for the Austin American-Statesman, tipped off in advance, wrote it up for the newspaper.
But that was as much publicity as it got.
RNJ
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Feb. 23 2015 20:31:37
|
|
runner
Posts: 357
Joined: Dec. 5 2008
From: New Jersey USA
|
|
RE: Is Logic Necessary To Win an Arg... (in reply to Ricardo)
|
|
|
Of course, the big big problem with Creationism (or Creation Science, as they are pleased to call it) or Intelligent Design in the schools is that its partisans want it taught as Science. It is not science; never has been science; never will be science. If we have an interest in what is taught in our schools, we will be vigilant in keeping nonsense out of the science classroom. The reason I like my idea of immersing students in the nitty-gritty of the formulation of a major scientific theory is that the students will understand the stringency that scientists place on the integrity, reproducibility, and public availability of data, and on striving always to avoid preconceived answers. In fact, many scientists report often trying to think of all the reasons their bright idea of the moment might be wrong. This whole area is a public policy concern if we value American excellence in education.
Regarding conspiracy theories, they are never--to my best recollection--the first theory about What Happened. There are first several mostly plausible theories put forward, differing perhaps in whether it was this or that factor or factors at play, and some consensus evolves from this--Al Qaeda terrorists seized control of planes filled to the brim with jet fuel, flew them into the Towers, and the Towers burned and collapsed as the building's materials were stressed beyond their engineering limits. Then, always later, always as a political, ideological, or psychotic response, the conspiracy theory--Dark Forces (pick your favorite) at Work to sabotage the building, etc., etc. AGW concerns as a conspiracy of thousands of scientists, socialists, communists to destroy freedom and capitalism, under the master control of Kenyan Socialist Muslims who don't love America like you and I do. This area too is a public policy concern, in that conspiracy theorists here also directly impact on what sort of future our children inherit.
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Feb. 24 2015 17:54:57
|
|
BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
|
|
RE: Is Logic Necessary To Win an Arg... (in reply to Ricardo)
|
|
|
The problem with adopting a laissez faire attitude toward education and debate over core scientific and historical facts is that it lends equal credibility to both sides, and most young students are not equipped to sort out the truth with evidence-based research, particularly if their teacher is pushing a fraudulent idea like "Creationism." If you read the Pew Research Center's polls, many adults are incapable of reaching rational conclusions themselves. According to Pew, less than half of Americans believe that human activity contributes to global warming, and fully one-third believe that humans have existed in their present form since time began.
Moreover, we live in an age where "pop" culture and psychology reign supreme. And many of those "pop" idols in the forefront of scientific and historical illiteracy are almost proud of their ignorance. Jenny McCarthy, who vociferously carries the anti-vaccine banner, was famously quoted on Oprah Winfrey as saying, "The University of Google is where I got my degree from." Rosie O'Donnell is one of the so-called "truthers," who believe the U.S. Government engineered the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers on 9/11. Rosie O'Donnell!!! (As if she had a degree in structural engineering!) Sheer ignorance on display.
We have certain fringe academics who claim that Cleopatra was a black African queen, completely ignoring the undeniable historical fact that she was a Greek Ptolemy. One public school in upstate New York taught that the Founding Fathers of the United States got the idea for the separation of powers and other elements of our government from the Algonquin Confederation, rather than John Locke and Enlightenment philosophers. This is all twaddle. It may make certain groups "feel good about themselves," but it is fraudulent history.
The fact is, being right does matter. Doubting established scientific and historical facts has consequences. People who believe vaccines cause autism undermine "herd immunity," and we are seeing the results in increased cases of measles and other childhood diseases. Those who deny the fact of evolution deny biology, for biology is incomprehensible without it. Portland, Oregon is one of the few major cities that do not fluoridate their water supply because it means the government puts "chemicals" in the water. Good luck with increased cavities and dental bills.
I think a big part of the problem is that many (maybe most) people do not have a grasp of what science (and evidenced based research, including historical research) is all about. They think science is just a collection of "facts." Viewed in that light, it becomes a question of "my facts" vs. "your facts." Science is not a collection of facts. It is a method. The scientific method should be allowed to work itself through the issues and let it determine one's view. The same with historical research, which should reach conclusions based on the evidence, not on one's emotional wish for an ahistorical outcome.
It is important to combat this ignorance if we want to enhance our knowledge-based society and our role as fully-rounded citizens and human beings.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Feb. 24 2015 20:11:37
|
|
Ricardo
Posts: 14801
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
|
|
RE: Is Logic Necessary To Win an Arg... (in reply to BarkellWH)
|
|
|
quote:
I think a big part of the problem is that many (maybe most) people do not have a grasp of what science (and evidenced based research, including historical research) is all about.
Well, I for one don't think that is the bigger problem. The issue I have, as a former student, is the science is treated as ONE Subject, and then you have others in a totally different place. That lets students choose what to "like" or not like from the start which I think is no good. Now it requires, perhaps, a very special type of teacher, but students should learn how everything is integrated...science math chemistry history evolution music....they are all ONE subject. It should ALL be interesting and interconnected. Instead what happens is students are ashamed of dumb questions they relate to an expert who is at a loss and can't break down a fundamental problem because the true problem lies outside of the scope of the teacher's experitise. This from 1st grade on through college level I have seen as a major problem that allows creative minds to run rampant rather than get nipped in the bud or set on proper tracks.
I often think about dinosaurs...all kids love em. They know they were old but most teachers bring out crayons and have kids color em whilst treading carefully around issues of evolution that might lead to religious historical contraditions. But why not simply forget evolution for now, and look at dinosurs as a way to engage kids in ideas of geology, astro physics, chemistry, plant biology, oceanograpy, climate changes,etc...all fascinating topics that could be touched on in simple ways dealing with loveable dinos. But, no it never happens.
Now I read about fringe science ideas that are disposed of as ridiculous because they fly in the face of established models too sharply. My point is that there is room for creative thinking, and "stupid questions", so long as the STUDENT is willing to find their own answers in leu of a Proffessor that is too narrow minded (the vast majority, take your pick of discipline). Being able to let go of establshed beliefs, even if they be about filing your nails and compas what is jazz flamenco etc, is hard for every student and the main challenge in advancing.
Ricardo
_____________________________
CD's and transcriptions available here:
www.ricardomarlow.com
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Feb. 25 2015 16:02:14
|
|
 New Messages |
 No New Messages |
 Hot Topic w/ New Messages |
 Hot Topic w/o New Messages |
 Locked w/ New Messages |
 Locked w/o New Messages |
|
Post New Thread
Reply to Message
Post New Poll
Submit Vote
Delete My Own Post
Delete My Own Thread
Rate Posts
|
|
|
Forum Software powered by ASP Playground Advanced Edition 2.0.5
Copyright © 2000 - 2003 ASPPlayground.NET |
0.09375 secs.
|
Printable Version
