How the profiteers who market Thermageddon offend against the principles of formal logic
Guest post by Monckton of Brenchley
LOGIC is the heartbeat of all true learning – the soul of the Classics, the Sciences and Religion. Once everyone studied the Classics, to know that in logic there is a difference between true and false; the Sciences, to discern where it lies; and Religion, to appreciate why it matters. Today, few study all three empires of the mind. Fewer study the ordered beauty of the logic at their heart.
Is Private Fraser’s proposition that “We’re a’ doomed!” logical? I say No. G.K. Chesterton once wrote: “When men have ceased to believe in Christianity, it is not that they will believe in nothing. They will believe in anything.” The belief that Thermageddon will arise from our altering 1/3000th of the atmosphere in a century is in-your-face illogical, rooted in a dozen fallacies marked out by Aristotle as the commonest in human discourse.
“Consensus” is the New Religion’s central fallacy. Arguing blindly from consensus is the head-count fallacy, the argumentum ad populum. Al-Haytham, founder of the scientific method, wrote: “The seeker after truth does not put his faith in any mere consensus. Instead, he checks.”
Two surveys have purported to show 97% of climate scientists supporting the supposed “consensus”. In both, 97% agreed little more than that the world has warmed since 1950. So what? One involved just 79 scientists, hardly a scientific sample size. Neither was selected to eliminate bias. Neither asked whether manmade global warming was at all likely to prove catastrophic – a question expecting the answer “No.”
Claiming that the “consensus” is one of revered experts is the argumentum ad verecundiam, the fallacy of appeal to authority. T.H. Huxley said in 1860, “The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties: blind faith the one unpardonable sin.”
Believers talk of a “consensus of evidence”. Yet evidence cannot hold opinions. Besides, there has been no global warming for 18 years; sea level has risen for eight years at just 1.3 in/century; notwithstanding Sandy, hurricane activity is at its least in the 33-year satellite record; ocean heat content is rising four and a half times more slowly than predicted; global sea-ice extent has changed little; Himalayan glaciers have not lost ice; and the U.N.’s 2005 prediction of 50 million “climate refugees” by 2010 was absurd. The evidence does not support catastrophism.
Believers say: “Only if we include a strong warming effect from CO2 can we explain the past 60 years’ warming. We know of no other reason.” This is the argumentum ad ignorantiam, the fundamental fallacy of argument from ignorance. Besides, natural variability is reason enough.
They say: “Global warming is accelerating, so we are to blame.” Even if warming were accelerating, this non sequitur is an instance of the argumentum ad causam falsam, the fallacy of arguing from a false cause. They go on to say: “CO2 concentration has risen; warming has occurred; the former caused the latter.” This is the post hoc ergo propter hoc sub-species of the same fallacy.
They say: “What about the cuddly polar bears?” This is the argumentum ad misericordiam, the fallacy of needless pity. There are five times as many polar bears as there were in the 1940s – hardly, as you may think, the profile of a species at imminent threat of extinction. No need to pity the bears, and they are not cuddly.
They say: “We tell the models there will be strong CO2- driven warming. And, yes, the models predict it.” This is the fallacy of arguing in circles, the argumentum ad petitionem principii, where the premise is the conclusion.
They say: “Global warming caused extra-tropical storm Sandy.” This inappropriate argument from the general to the particular is the argumentum a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid, the fallacy of accident. Individual extreme events cannot be ascribed to global warming.
They say: “Melting Arctic sea ice is a symptom of global warming.” This unsound argument from the particular to the general is the argumentum a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter, the fallacy of converse accident. Arctic sea ice is melting, but the Antarctic has cooled for 30 years and the sea ice there is growing, so the decline in Arctic sea ice does not indicate a global problem.
They say: “Monckton says he’s a member of the House of Lords, but the Clerk says he isn’t, so he’s not credible.” This is the argumentum ad hominem, a shoddy sub- species of ignoratio elenchi, the fundamental red-herring fallacy of ignorance of how a true argument is conducted.
They say: “We don’t care what the truth is. We want more power, tax and regulation. Global warming is our pretext. If you disagree, we will haul you before the International Climate Court.” This is the nastiest of all logical fallacies: the argumentum ad baculum, the argument of force.
These numerous in-your-face illogicalities provoke four questions: Has the Earth warmed as predicted? If not, why not? What if I am wrong? And what if I am right?
Q1. Has the Earth warmed as predicted? In 1990 the IPCC predicted that the world would now be warming at 0.3 Cº/decade, and that by now more than 0.6 Cº warming would have occurred. The outturn was less than half that: just 0.14 Cº/decade and 0.3 Cº in all.
In 2008 leading modellers wrote:
“The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 years or more, suggesting that an absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the observed warming rate.”
Yet the linear trend on the Hadley/CRU monthly global temperature anomalies for the 18 years 1995-2012 shows no statistically-significant warming, even though the partial pressure of CO2 rose by about a tenth in that time.
The modellers’ own explicit criterion proves their scary predictions exaggerated. Their vaunted “consensus” was wrong. Global warming that was predicted for tomorrow but has not occurred for 18 years until today cannot have caused Sandy or Bopha yesterday, now, can it?
Q2: Why was the “consensus” wrong? Why do the models exaggerate? The climate-sensitivity equation says warming is the product of a forcing and a sensitivity parameter. Three problems: the modellers’ definition of forcing is illogical; their assumptions about the sensitivity parameter are not falsifiable; and their claims that their long-term predictions of doom are reliable are not only empirically disproven but theoretically insupportable.
Modellers define forcing as the net down-minus-up flux of radiation at the tropopause, with surface temperature fixed. Yet forcings change surface temperature. So the definition offends against the fundamental postulate of logic that a proposition and its converse cannot coexist. No surprise, then, that since 1995 the IPCC has had to cut its estimate of the CO2 forcing by 15%. The “consensus” disagrees with itself. Note in passing that the CO2 forcing function is logarithmic: each further molecule causes less warming than those before it. Diminishing returns apply.
Direct warming is little more than 1 Cº per CO2 doubling, well within natural variability. It is not a crisis. So the modellers introduce amplifying or “positive” temperature feedbacks, which, they hope, triple the direct warming from CO2. Yet this dubious hypothesis is not Popper- falsifiable, so it is not logic and not science. Not one of the imagined feedbacks is either empirically measurable or theoretically determinable by any reliable method. As an expert reviewer for the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, I have justifiably excoriated its net-positive feedbacks as guesswork – uneducated guesswork at that.
For there is a very powerful theoretical reason why the modellers’ guess that feedbacks triple direct warming is erroneous. The closed-loop feedback gain implicit in the IPCC’s climate-sensitivity interval 3.3[2.0, 4.5] Cº per CO2 doubling falls on the interval 0.62[0.42, 0.74]. However, process engineers building electronic circuits, who invented feedback mathematics, tell us any loop gain much above zero is far too near the singularity – at a loop gain of 1 – in the feedback-amplification function.
At high gain, the geological record would show violent oscillations between extremes of warming and cooling. Yet for 64 million years the Earth’s surface temperature has fluctuated by only 3%, or 8 Cº, either side of the long- run mean. These fluctuations can give us an ice-planet at one moment and a hothouse Earth the next, but they are altogether inconsistent with a loop gain anywhere near as close to the singularity as modellers’ estimates imply.
Surface temperature changes little, for homoeostatic conditions prevail. The atmosphere’s lower bound, the ocean, is a vast heat-sink 1100 times denser than the air: one reason why 3000 bathythermographs deployed in 2006 have detected no significant ocean warming. The atmosphere’s upper bound is outer space, to which any excess heat radiates harmlessly away. Homoeostasis, then, is what we should expect, and it is what we get. Thus the climatic loop gain cannot much exceed zero, so the warming at CO2 doubling will be a harmless 1 Cº.
Yet the overriding difficulty in trying to model the climate is that it behaves as a chaotic object. We can never measure the values of its millions of defining parameters at any chosen moment to a sufficient precision to permit reliable projection of the bifurcations, or Sandy-like departures from an apparently steady state, that are inherent in the evolution of all objects that behave chaotically. Therefore, reliable, very-long-term modelling of future climate states is unattainable a priori.
The IPCC tries to overcome this actually insuperable Lorenz constraint on modelling by estimating climate sensitivity via a probability-density function. Yet PDFs require more, not less, information than simple estimates flanked by error-whiskers, and are still less likely to be reliable. The modellers are guessing. Their guesses have been proven wrong. Yet they continue to demand our acquiescence in an imagined (and imaginary) consensus.
Q3: What if I am wrong? If so, we must travel from physics to economics. Pretend, ad argumentum, that the IPCC’s central estimate of 2.8 Cº warming by 2100 is true, and that Stern was right to say that the cost of failing to prevent warming of that order this century will be about 1.5% of GDP. Then, at the minimum 5% market inter-temporal discount rate, the cost of trying to abate this decade’s predicted warming of 0.15 Cº by typical CO2-mitigation schemes as cost-ineffective as Australia’s carbon tax would be 48 times greater than the cost of later adaptation. At a zero discount rate, the cost of acting now exceeds that of adapting in the future 36 times over.
How so? Australia emits just 1.2% of Man’s CO2, of which Ms. Gillard aims to cut 5% this decade, abating 0.06% of global emissions by 2020. Then CO2 concentration will fall from a predicted 410 μatm to 409.988 μatm. In turn predicted temperature will fall by 0.00006 Cº. But the cost will be $130 billion ($2 quadrillion/Cº). Abating the
0.15 Cº warming predicted for this decade would thus cost $317 trillion, or $45,000/head worldwide, or 59% of global GDP. Mitigation measures inexpensive enough to be affordable will thus be ineffective: measures expensive enough to be effective will be unaffordable. Since the premium vastly exceeds the cost of the risk, don’t insure. That is a precautionary principle worthy of the name.
Q4: What if I am right? When I am proven right, the Climate Change Department will be swept away; Britain’s annual deficit will fall by a fifth; the bat-blatting, bird- blending windmills that scar our green and pleasant land will go; the world will refocus on real environmental problems like deforestation on land, overfishing at sea and pollution of the air; the U.N.’s ambition to turn itself into a grim, global dictatorship with overriding powers of taxation and economic and environmental intervention will be thwarted; and the aim of science to supplant true religion as the world’s new, dismal, cheerless credo will be deservedly, decisively, definitively defeated.
Any who say “I believe” are not scientists, for true scientists say “I wonder”. We require – nay, we demand – more awe and greater curiosity from our scientists, and less political “correctness” and co-ordinated credulity.
To the global classe politique, the placemen, bureaucrats, academics, scientists, journalists and enviros who have profiteered at our expense by peddling Thermageddon, I say this. The science is in; the truth is out; Al Gore is through; the game is up; and the scare is over.
To those scientists who aim to end the Age of Reason and Enlightenment, I say this. Logic stands implacable in your path. We will never let you have your new Dark Age.
To men of goodwill, lovers of logic, I say this. It is our faculty of reason, the greatest of the soul’s three powers, that marks us out from the beasts and brings us closest in likeness to our Creator, the Lord of Life and Light. We will never let the light of Reason be snuffed out.
Do not go gentle to that last goodnight – Rage, rage against the dying of the light!
I have wondered how this thread will end. Would it end in a torrent of heat or end by slowly cooling down an a frozen state?
This poem applies, I think, pretty well.
John
some are in above their heads
some just ankle deep
downy myths in tattered shreds
littering dramatic threads
may end up as a compost heap
or serve as comfort in the night
to the fearful in their beds
after they turn out the light
and darkness spreads
while reason sleeps.
the yardstick each may use to measure
those with wit who dwell upon it
might express this well in sonnet
but more appealing to the vain
oops…please overlook the trailing quatrain that didn’t hit the cutting room floor… sorry
‘that which is true is provable’
Actually, in science, this is not itself true. In science, nothing is ever absolutely ‘proven’, it only goes from unknown validity to probably true, with the knowledge that at some future date it may yet be shown false. An example is Newtonian laws of gravity, pretty well ‘proven’ until at a later date they were shown to not always work (based on new data). You can’t just go around making up axioms like ‘that which is true is provable’, declare them to be true, and then say that because they are this other thing follows. The axiom itself is not provable even if you can show that it is a ‘natural law’ (which you can’t), since even those are only considered probably true until possibly at a later date shown partially or completely false. It is, however, a lot easier to disprove something and show it to be false, like say that the planets are not riding on crystal spheres.
the set of distinguishing characteristics rather than a list of all possible morphologies
I would have to go with this idea for the definition of ‘religious’. I would also not agree that all religions or people belonging to them are ‘religious’, some religions to be designed from the beginning to be ‘religious’, others are not. An example of the latter is Christianity (as originally given), which claims to be founded on fact, “that which we have seen and heard”, despite the fact that many of its followers (or those who say they are) act in a ‘religious’ manner, and eschew fact. In many cases, this is because people see the religion (any religion) as a great way to gain power and wealth, and people gain control of that religion and drive it in the direction of ‘religious’ because, after all, you do not want people questioning your right to the gold and virgins, do you? This is basically as the “Iron Law” below:
Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.
A perfect example of a near instantaneous iron law transformation is markx. He is declared God, and what does he do? Does he try and use his new found authority to make people better or something? No, he immediately tries to only support the organization itself, IE himself (being sole member of said organization), with gold and virgins, to be delivered without question, of course, because you don’t really want people to wonder why they are ponying up all that, do you?.
The only way to fix that problem is penance, put markx in a hair-shirt and banish him to the wilderness where he will subsist on a diet of locusts and wild honey. He will, of course, then attract a following of college age types who Want To Believe In Something, as his type tend to do. Half of them will be female, and some will have rich daddies, and…
Oh I give up!
This reminds me of the story of Phil. Phil declared himself God, and attracted a following who believed that he was. One day Phil and his followers were walking donw the road, and a bolt of lightnig struck Phil. His followers looked up and said “there’s something bigger than Phil”.
i’m using a stricter definition of truth that makes it possible to be distinguished in all cases.
one of the distinguishing characteristics of truth is that it exists only in some specified context.
if there is no specified context, how can one begin to test the validity of a proposition?
truth, is any proposition, which, in the given context, can not be contradicted.
then, i’m using a definition of logic that distinguishes it from all else.
logic is the art of non-contradictory identification, for which the only axiom is that a thing is itself.
this is an axiom and a definition known as the law of identity.
truth, is any proposition, which, in the given context, can not be contradicted.
so you may have difficulty applying logic or testing the validity of a notion for which the context has been dropped. for example, to resolve the issue of whether or not ‘gravity is true’ it will be necesary to specify a context in which it is to be tested. once you have presented it as a forma proposition, then it will be amenable to validation or falsification. by the law of implication, if it is not presented as a formal proposition, it can not be validated.
see how easy it is when you have valid definitions?
if you have a problem with godel, i’ll help you over that hurdle. it doesn’t require a leap.
Legatus says: January 11, 2013 at 5:27 pm
“….markx….. is declared God, and what does he do? Does he try and use his new found authority to make people better …No, he immediately tries to only support the organization itself, IE himself (being sole member of said organization), with gold and virgins, to be delivered without question…”
Sir. You grossly underestimate me!
I had every intention of lavishing some of said gold on said virgins ……I’m sure it would make them better people…
However, given the lack of said tribute, plan B above looks OK …. except for the hair shirt…..
http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_copybook.htm
Anthony, I took your suggestions, did some thinking, and came up with something even you might agree to, ending corporate socialism. I’m not going to re post the whole thing here, but ask instead that you read it. If you really are interested in engaging all readers, might this is the kind of thing you would use as a guest post?
Pat no I will not use that as a guest post because once again you use the word denier. You really need to get that word out of your system and give up your hatred, before anyone will take you seriously because at this point I certainly do not.
Pat Ravasio says:
January 12, 2013 at 3:13 pm
Anthony, I took your suggestions, did some thinking, and came up with something even you might agree to, ending corporate socialism. I’m not going to re post the whole thing here, but ask instead that you read it at http://www.buckyworld.me If you really are interested in engaging all readers, might this is the kind of thing you would use as a guest post
==================================
Pat, you show such poor judgement to put this link on a skeptic blog. And really, I have seen your comments here, and none made any contribution and some were offensive. So, are we interested in engaging all readers? emphatically NO. Go offend elsewhere, please.
otropogo!
that is frikn awesome! it needs a gallery for exhibition.
now if we can get j.w. on the stick…
no doubt Anthony can find even better reasons not to invite an essay that proposes communism as a remedy for socialism…lol
i bet otropogo could dissect that essay in a way that would make Dexter applaud.
sorry to say, it only afflicts me with an urge to rhyme and i can’t find one for ‘peristalsis’
An excellent summary for those with a scientific ot mathematical background. It’s the kind of summary I would like to copy to my MP. Unfortunately, most politicians, the kind of people whose thinking needs to change, won’t understand some of the key technical points in, for example, Question 3. Their eyes and brains will glaze over. Such argumentation should be augmented, not replaced, by a translation into lay language. “In ordinary language the foregoing means…”
About the idea that something is not true if it cannot be proven:
There is this thing, it is called a fact.
A fact does not care if you can prove it.
A fact does not care if you believe in it or agree with it.
A fact does not even care if you know about it.
It just is.
Examples:
(then) There was a time when people thought that the sun went around the earth, all the ‘great scientists” thought so, and everyone could see that it was so. Yet it was a fact that it was the spinning of the earth that caused that phenomena, and the earth went around the sun. Neither idea was provable at that time , does that mean that the sun went around the earth? Did that mean that there was no sun, no earth? Did its unprovability mean anything at all, or change how things really were?
(now) It is a fact that there are laws, universal laws, that govern how the universe operates. Currently, the models of the universe, quantum theory, string theory etc, are not shown to be proven fact, and currently there is not even a way to tell with certainty which of these, if any, is true. The whole universe’s laws, and therefor the whole universe (which would not exist without them), is unprovable. Does the universe care? Does it give a *insert personally proffered profanity here* ?
Conclusion, the statement that a thing is not true if we cannot prove it is shown false by the fact that there have been things in the past and still are in the present that are unprovable yet are still true. The statement has been falsified.
Now, it is a fact that either there is a God, or there is not.
If there is, it is a fact that that God has the characteristics it does have.
This fact, like all facts, will not care if you think you can prove it or disprove it, agree with it, or even know about it.
It just is.
The idea is to say that God is immaterial, and therefore will not jump into our test tubes and consent to be measured and ‘proven’, and therefore does not exist. This is an attempt to define away the problem, by insisting that God must remain immaterial (what if it chooses not to?), and insist that that God might not also leave evidence all around of its necessary existence (such as, say, the big bang resulting in an impossible, even “preposterous” universe). There are upwards of a billion people on this planet (several hundred million at least) who say that God did indeed show up in material form. Therefore, you cannot just define away the problem by insisting that God did not show the proper evidence when so very many people say that that is exactly what happened. (Note, the other 5 or 6 billion people on the planet may believe in religions that make no such claims of material evidence, you may consider those unprovable, however, they do not represent all religions, you cannot just lump all religions together and insist they are the same when they are not.)
The first key to scientific enlightenment is to understand the idea a fact.
The key to the scientific method, to understand that a fact does not care what you think about it.
You discover facts that already existed, you did not create it’s existence by your belief or proof.
Facts don’t care what you think.
They just are.
Or, to put it in it’s most basic form:
To understand the concept a fact is to realize that you are not God.
It’s a start.
Legatus,
Renee Descartes put “facts” in their place when he said “cogito ergo sum” (usually translated, “I think, therefore I am”). For this simple statement to make sense actually requires some cogitation, as it is only your rant about what is “fact” that made me grasp the intended meaning of Descartes’ words, namely, that existence is a byproduct of consciousness.
So – “facts”, like ourselves, do not exist except through our consciousness, and what we term “facts” are merely concepts that two or more conscious beings have agreed to consider “real”, “meaningful”, “accurate”, etc… Thus, while our consciousness, and hence, “existence”, may (with a bit of luck) last a lifetime, the existence of “facts” is much more tenuous.
Your logic is incomprehensible when you accuse me of advocating the extermination of religious people. Would you accuse someone advocating the elimination of HIV or malaria of plotting the extermination of all of their victims?
otropogo says:
To my mind, the only justifiable discussion of “religion” is as a pathological process, with a view to eliminating it. Ditto for patriotism, tribalism, and nepotism.
Sooo, define the problem away by insisting that all people believing in or even discussing “religion’ (as defined by you, or should I say, not defined by you, just labeled as such) are to be labeled insane and eliminated? Kinda like we eliminate all beliefs we do not agree with by labeling them ‘deniers’, right? “With a view to eliminating it” how, exactly? You have just labeled them insane, what, mental asylums, drugs, or something more extreme, say, a ‘final solution’? You did say “eliminating”, after all.
Or perhaps you ‘merely’ want a milder solution, that computer program that will censor anyone’s speech. Who will program it, you? What if I insist on talking about that which you do not approve anyway, what, exactly, will you do?
Will you allow that program to analyze your own “tautologies, verbiage, words of purely emotional import, and logical inconsistencies” and censor you as well? What would be left of this post if you do? Just that one sentence above would be eliminated, Lets try it:
“My mind”, who cares, I have no religious morality, and care not if you are my countryman, or of my tribe or even my family, what do I care about that is on your mind? Logical inconsistency, you cannot say you want me to believe that and still say “my mind” and expect me to care.
“To my mind”, “only justifiable discussion”, “is as a pathological process”, “with a view to eliminating it”, stated that these are purely personal beliefs (“my mind”), shown further by no evidence to back up these statements (“tautologies”, “a series of self-reinforcing statements that cannot be disproved because they depend on the assumption that they are already correct).
They are also “words of purely emotional import”, being merely and purely personal bias (“my mind”), and rather bloodthirsty bias as well, calling anything you don’t like “pathological”, IE insane, and “eliminating it”.
Sounds like your computer program will be carefully programmed to work only on people other than yourself.
Odd that.
So, eliminate “religion”, “patriotism, tribalism, and nepotism”, that means the person does not believe in any religious morality or any group larger then themselves, not even their own family. They are purely selfish, that is the result of what you say you want.
Lets play a game, lets say that is exactly what you want. I enter your house. I am exactly what you say you want, I care about no one but myself. I have a gun, to make sure I get what I want, because that is all I care about. I wish to take all your stuff, because I care nothing for you. I also wish to amuse myself by doing painful and eventually fatal things to you and your family.
Talk me out of it.
John Beare says:
“In ordinary language the foregoing means…”
For the logic part at least, without the Latin, see here http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html
Legatus says: January 14, 2013 at 9:10 pm
“….wish to amuse myself by doing ….things to you and your family.
Talk me out of it….”
I fear you may have here cleverly and finally debated yourself up your own fundament, Legatus.
No matter how I examine your latest thoughts, I can only reach the conclusion you have serious psychological problems.
Legatus
your first example does nothing to falsify my statement that ‘if something is true, it is provable’ and if what i stated was fact, then that fact cares not whether you know it and is true regardless of whether you agree with it or not. (for a distraction, see info at the asterisks)
you said:
“Conclusion, the statement that a thing is not true if we cannot prove it is shown false”
of course, i never said anything like that. if you are implying that i did, please reread what i typed to correct your misapprehension.
you are proclaiming an assertion is true and that it is unnecessary to know it that it may not be possible to know it much less prove its truth.
it’s an interesting self parody to attempt a logical proof that logic is unnecessary to a proof that logic is necessary to believe something is true. that is, indeed, a nice distillation of the essence of religion, which is self contradiction.
🙂
***
to measure the speed of rotation of the earth was probably accomplished at least 3000 years ago by means of widely spaced structures with a hole in the roof.
at high noon of a certain day, the sun will send a perpendicular shaft through the hole, known by marking the floor underneath by a plumb bob lowered through the same hole.
at the moment this occurs, a timer of any kind is started.
one then watches for a flash of light from a mirror at a similar structure a known distance away which indicates that the sun has just cast a vertical shaft there.
knowing the distance between the 2 structures and the time it took between the occurrence of solar perpendicularity at each site allows you to measure speed of earth’s rotation and also the circumference of the earth at that latitude.
Legatus,
You pretend that human feelings of love, compassion, companionship, etc. – in short, all of the positive emotions displayed by people, are the result of religious indoctrination. This shows an amazing ignorance of both anthropology and zoology.
Why do you assume that murder, rape, pillage, sadism, etc., are the natural proclivities of humanity, rather than aberrations? Do gorillas, chimps, and bonobos, our closest biological relatives, have religion?
otropogo – descartes was refuting the old hack ‘if an existentialist falls in the forest…’
he was acknowledging that one’s existence is self evident by observing that if ‘there is an entity which does something, it presumes the existence of the entity that does it’
otropogo asks legatus:
“Why do you assume that murder, rape, pillage, sadism, etc., are the natural proclivities of humanity, rather than aberrations? ”
legatus – the list is incomplete. include the pathological ism and the question answers itself.
markx says:
Legatus says: January 14, 2013 at 9:10 pm
“….wish to amuse myself by doing ….things to you and your family.
Talk me out of it….”
I fear you may have here cleverly and finally debated yourself up your own fundament, Legatus.
No matter how I examine your latest thoughts, I can only reach the conclusion you have serious psychological problems.
The description of the ‘me’ included in that tale should have been a clue. It was a description of someone with no belief in religion, country, tribe, or family ties and obligations. It is a purely hypothetical construct designed to show a point. It is very obviously thus. Can you actually not see this, or are you simply using what you said here as an ad hominim argument (“he is evil, I don’t have to listen to him”) to get out of having to consider the problem? I will show another tale told by someone, a quite similar one, to show how this sort of hypothetical tale is done.
To show the problems with relativism, the idea that morality is merely relative, this tale was told: Situation, you are a Jew, it is WWII Germany, you are hauled in front of me, I am an SS officer. Under the idea of relative morality, as described in the book every SS and Luftwaffe officer carries, it is the morality of my country to kill you, because you are a Jew. Talk me out of it.
The idea of this tale is to present the believer in relative morality a problem that shows the fault of that concept. Under that concept, there is absolutely no argument to talk the SS officer out of killing you, since he already believes in relative morality, as you do, and the ethics of his culture says to kill you.
In the tale I told, the same idea is used. It does not matter that most people who do not believe in religion or country etc do not invade peoples houses with mayhem in mind. What is the only important thing is that the person invading your house does not believe in these things, just as you do not believe in these things, and because of that, you have no argument about why the invader should not do any evil he desires. It is that fact that your and his beliefs leave you with no argument that will work that is the entire point of the tale.
Now, do you suppose that the person in history who actually told this tale, who clearly was not an SS officer (he merely asked the other guy to imagine him as one, as I did here), and who told it well after WWII to a non Jew, while in a discussion about relative morality, “had serious psychological problems”? The person he told it to understood the hypothetical nature of the tale. In the tale I told you, that also is clear. It is first clear because you have already seen that I do believe in at least some of the things I describe the hypothetical ‘me’ as not believing in. It is further clear because I am obviously not actually invading your home, am I? The “lets play a game” should also have been a clue, don’t you think?
Now that we have dealt with your effort to duck the issue by pretending that this obviously hypothetical tale is grounds to just call me crazy in a personal attack, can we get on with the question?
Can you talk me out of it?
“It’s wrong!” I have no concept of that, I have no morality from religion, or ethics of my culture since I have no culture, no country, no tribe, not even family ties to get it from. I do not even have the above “relativism” type of morality.
I have no morality at all, where would I get it from if I believe in no group of people higher than myself? Under the idea no “religion”, “patriotism, tribalism, and nepotism”, that leaves the only place I can get any idea of morality from is what I want right now, and only that.
Actual examples:
Ancient China, every couple of hundred years, the old empire would crumble under the weight of bureaucracy and associated corruption, what would always follow is a time of banditry, as people who no longer believed in any group other than themselves did whatever they wanted to enrich themselves.
The UN, they believe in no country or patriotism (or say they don’t), result is that many of them have turned to using the power of the UN to personally enrich themselves (CAGW having been found to be the most promising avenue for that).
I have now carefully explained all this such that you have no excuse to not understand it. Do you understand it now. Can you answer it?
otropogo says:
Legatus,
You pretend that human feelings of love, compassion, companionship, etc. – in short, all of the positive emotions displayed by people, are the result of religious indoctrination. This shows an amazing ignorance of both anthropology and zoology.
Why do you assume that murder, rape, pillage, sadism, etc., are the natural proclivities of humanity, rather than aberrations? Do gorillas, chimps, and bonobos, our closest biological relatives, have religion.
*Ehem* you also said ” patriotism, tribalism, and nepotism” did you not? Do you learn any morality from your family (“nepotism”), your tribe (people you associated with at least), your whole culture (“patriotism”)? When society break down, many people throughout history have turned to banditry. Not all, of course, but far far more than before, and more would if they did not have the remnants of morality taught by their former culture (and usually religion). My (obviously) hypothetical tale was merely to demonstrate that there is no reason to even have any morality at all if you do not believe in “religion”, ” patriotism, tribalism, and nepotism” (culture and family). See my post to markx for more explanation of exactly what I meant and hoped to accomplish by that tale. I am not saying that people who do not believe in these things will lack *all* morality, merely that they will have no reason to have any (and thus history shows that many will lose all morality). I am showing you the consequences of your belief.
Another consequence of your belief is government corruption. This is best seen in the UN, where some say they are now above patriotism, and that tends to manifest as massive corruption (and nepotism). Why work for the benefit of your people when they are not your people? The world is simply too big to care about, so they care about themselves. If this were not true, we would not have this whole UN led global warming scare, would we? Acquire and spend 59% of the worlds GDP to stop something they know is not happening? They know (if they have two working braincells) that the amount of money they say they ‘need’ would break the world economy and doom millions or even billions to death. Do they care? Why should they? An example if ever there was one.
“gorillas, chimps, and bonobos are non sentient, and cannot be compared to us. They do have tribalism and probably nepotism. Tribe may sometimes compete and even go to war (skirmish at least) with other tribes http://wildlifenews.co.uk/2010/tribal-wars-of-chimpanzees/ . It appears you may have to downgrade your ideas about how wonderfully moral chimps are.
Humans, however, are far better at war, and far more ruthless http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/05/never_give_up_your_weapons.html (a tale of ancient warfare and ruthlessness). Humans, after all, are sentient, and thus not like chimps. No chimp ever did this, despite their tribalism. Chimps do not even know what morality is, and thus cannot decide to be totally immoral, as here.
Legatus:
your main premise is stated “Under the idea no “religion”, “patriotism, tribalism, and nepotism”, that leaves the only place I can get any idea of morality from is what I want right now, and only that.”
that’s a frightening confession.
your ‘tale’ is typically flawed as well:
“Under that concept, there is absolutely no argument to talk the SS officer out of killing you”
the premise is that there is no alternative outcome. where there is no alternative, morality can not be an issue because morality is the science of choosing among alternatives.
why do i totally believe that you surround yourself with people who are paralyzed by paradoxical anecdotes?
Legatus
your first example does nothing to falsify my statement that ‘if something is true, it is provable’ and if what i stated was fact, then that fact cares not whether you know it and is true regardless of whether you agree with it or not. (for a distraction, see info at the asterisks)
First, according to the scientific method, a thing may be true even if unprovable as such. According to that method, true things are not actually ever completely provable, although untrue things are completely disprovable. See here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYPapE-3FRw Thus, according to Richard Fenman and the scientific method (as believed by all other scientists as well), your above statement is false. Oh, you can get close, but total proof will elude you, someone will always come along later and show some problem with your proof. Just as Isaac Newton and his proof of gravity, now shown to be less-than-true (see the video).
What I am saying is that a thing may be a fact even if you currently cannot prove it. Let me put it this way:
then, I’m using a definition of logic that distinguishes it from all else.
logic is the art of non-contradictory identification, for which the only axiom is that a thing is itself.
this is an axiom and a definition known as the law of identity.
truth, is any proposition, which, in the given context, can not be contradicted.
Note, I am defining fact as a truth as above with the given context being all that is, this entire universe plus whatever may be outside this universe. Whatever things are true about all that is are true, regardless of whether we can prove them or not. A fact just is. I call this set of factual things “reality”. It is that which is true whether I like it or not.
I am using the word ‘fact’ rather than the word truth, so as to save the word truth for things we know about, know are true, as distinct from things that are true even though we may not know about them (the set ‘facts’ is thus larger than the set ‘truth’).
Otropogo seems to think that things are only facts if he agrees they are. He states “that existence is a byproduct of consciousness”. However, things outside of himself exist regardless of his consciousness, example, they exist while he sleeps and is not conscious, and existed before he was born, thus before his consciousness, In fact, many things existed before anyone was born, before there was any conciseness (of this universes sentient beings). The only way anything that exists can be a byproduct of consciousness is if that consciousness has the power to create reality, solid, physical reality, simply by being conscious of it, by willing it. In short, for Otropogo to be correct, Otropogo must be God (obviously false, markx is God).
I look at Descartes a bit differently, because I take what he started to it’s logical conclusion:
I think, therefor I am.
(He stopped here because he had locked himself in a hotel room and thus did not see anyone or much of anything except himself.)
You think something different, therefore, you are to (You need to get out more Descartes).
You think something I never thought of, or don’t like, etc, clearly, you are not me, not a figment of my imagination.
There are also things out there I don’t like, if it were all just my imagination, they would be different.
(I would have the gold and virgins, not markx.)
My conclusion, the universe exists, reality, what a concept (really, get out more, live a little).
I conclude this because exactly 100% of the evidence supports it (so get out there and gather some evidence, dude).
Therefore what I know, or believe, does not change the universe, does not change what are, or are not, facts.
As for this:
you are proclaiming an assertion is true and that it is unnecessary to know it that it may not be possible to know it much less prove its truth.
it’s an interesting self parody to attempt a logical proof that logic is unnecessary to a proof that logic is necessary to believe something is true. that is, indeed, a nice distillation of the essence of religion, which is self contradiction. 🙂
I think you were having a little too much fun.
I’m sure it was sinful.
I’m not sure in exactly what religion it is considered sinful, but I’m sure there must be one, somewhere…
About the only thing I disagree with (pretty much the only thing that makes sense) is this a nice distillation of the essence of religion, which is self contradiction
This, distilling, IE lumping together, the essence of religion, assumes all religions are the same, that they are not based on proof. Well, most of them are not, but not all of them. Christianity, alone I believe, states that it is based entirely on fact (even stating that if it was not, it would be untrue), and states what those facts are, facts that they saw then, plus facts that can be seen now (including the entire universe, IE the set of all facts we can see). Other religions go on what this thread is calling the ‘religious mindset’, IE belief that is not fact based. For that matter, many people who call themselves Christians probably don’t know the extent that it claims to be fact based (in the original writings), and have come to reject physical facts of the universe in favor of ‘faith’, not knowing that their own writing states that they should not do so. Their ignorance does not change what that writing says, however. Thus it is not the fault of the religion itself that many of them have a ‘religious mindset’ when it comes to truth, since their own religion does not ask them to, quite the opposite. Thus you cannot just lump Christianity (as originally given) with ‘religion’.
This difference from all other religions may be why Christianity turned out to be such fertile ground for the scientific method. This was especially true when protestantism came along, with it’s insistence on only believing what was written (“show me”), which natural translated into doing the same for the material universe. They could also be called ‘skeptics’, since they no longer just took the priests word for it, but insisted on checking it out for themselves.
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Great idea, few teeny problems:
Lack of an accurate enough timer, for that matter, no clocks of any kind.
Inability to signal a great enough distance to make up for the lack of accuracy of their timers.
They were, hover, able to do something sorta like this to determine that the earth was spherical and how large it was, later partially remembered by Columbus, but having lost the measurement part, he though he had landed in India, much to the dismay of the ‘Indians’ (Native Americans).
Throughout most of history, however, most people in most places did not know, and could not prove, whether the sun went around the earth (most thought so) or what. The earth still went around the sun, however, regardless of what they thought. That is called “reality’, that is called ‘a fact’.
Legatus:
your main premise is stated “Under the idea no “religion”, “patriotism, tribalism, and nepotism”, that leaves the only place I can get any idea of morality from is what I want right now, and only that.”
that’s a frightening confession.
Yes, it is.
So?
Note again, the above is true IF I believe in none of those things, I do, so the above is not true for me, I am not claiming that that is true about me personally. I point out again that I am merely stating what would be true if I did believe that way, to show what would logically follow. I point that out because you use the word “confession”, despite my obvious hypothetical intent, as if I were confessing it of myself. If I were, would I not be agreeing with otropogo instead?
What obviously follows is, if I do not believe in anyone’s morality outside my own, no God, no country, no tribe, no family, then who does that leave? Only me.
your ‘tale’ is typically flawed as well:
“Under that concept, there is absolutely no argument to talk the SS officer out of killing you”
the premise is that there is no alternative outcome. where there is no alternative, morality can not be an issue because morality is the science of choosing among alternatives.
why do i totally believe that you surround yourself with people who are paralyzed by paradoxical anecdotes?
There is, indeed a clear and plain alternative:
The SS officer can choose not to do what his culture demands, basically, he would have to abandon his own morality that he had been taught in his culture. This is clearly and obviously the alternative. Or are you saying that it was not in the culture of SS officers to catch and kill Jews? One wonders why they did it then, and so many of them, and to so many Jews.
So there is a plain, obvious alternative, how then, is this paradoxical?
BTW, in the original story, the guy playing the SS officer then stated “I am a Christian, so I will let you go”, thus taking the above alternative.
If he was not, under the morality all of them were taught to believe, he would drag the Jew away and kill him, and no argument from the point of view of relative morality would be valid and could change his mind. History shows this to be true, about 6 million times.
otropogo says:
Your logic is incomprehensible when you accuse me of advocating the extermination of religious people. Would you accuse someone advocating the elimination of HIV or malaria of plotting the extermination of all of their victims?
Diseases are not thoughts.
I am pointing out the logical consequence of exactly what you said. First, “pathological”, that is, all believers in any religion (or nation, tribe, family) are judged by you to be insane, sick, probably dangerous. So, how are they to be ‘treated’, exactly, hmm? Is this to be done involuntarily, by force, and if not, it won’t be very effective, will it? Do you want it to be effective? How far are you willing to go to assure that it is? You want, after all, to “eliminate”, wipe out completely, you obviously will have to go pretty far to do that, right?
And this computer program, exactly what is it supposed to do about speech? You said “analyze it”, what if it find any of these things, what, exactly,. will it do? Who will program it, and decide what, exactly, count as “tautologies, verbiage, words of purely emotional import, and logical inconsistencies”? Might the programmers bias count things that do not actually follow those, but that the programmer does not like, as being those? Will the programmer count all religion of any kind, even if it does none of those, as those? Who decides?
Ideas have consequences.
Legatus says:
January 16, 2013 at 12:08 am
otropogo says:
Your logic is incomprehensible when you accuse me of advocating the extermination of religious people. Would you accuse someone advocating the elimination of HIV or malaria of plotting the extermination of all of their victims?
Legatus says:
“Diseases are not thoughts.
I am pointing out the logical consequence of exactly what you said. First, “pathological”, that is, all believers in any religion (or nation, tribe, family) are judged by you to be insane, sick, probably dangerous. So, how are they to be ‘treated’, exactly, hmm? Is this to be done involuntarily, by force, and if not, it won’t be very effective, will it? Do you want it to be effective? How far are you willing to go to assure that it is? You want, after all, to “eliminate”, wipe out completely, you obviously will have to go pretty far to do that, right?”
Legatus,
Your need to put words into your opponent’s mouth in order to “debate” him underscores the feebleness of your argument. Simply saying something is “a logical consequence” doesn’t make it so. You seem to have a need to work yourself into a self-righteous lather. The simple answer to your rant above is “No, wrong!”
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Legatus says:
“And this computer program, exactly what is it supposed to do about speech? You said “analyze it”, what if it find any of these things, what, exactly,. will it do? Who will program it, and decide what, exactly, count as “tautologies, verbiage, words of purely emotional import, and logical inconsistencies”? Might the programmers bias count things that do not actually follow those, but that the programmer does not like, as being those? Will the programmer count all religion of any kind, even if it does none of those, as those? Who decides?”
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As for the computer program I proposed – the only role I suggested for it is an analytical one, that would note, and perhaps rank, content that is contradictory, illogical, and meaningless, and/or lacking any function except to arouse emotion.
For example, when a news broadcast says, “a brutal murder was committed”…, the program might flag the word “brutal”, as simply inflammatory. Is there such a thing as a non-brutal murder? Has anyone ever used the expression ” a gentle murder”?
It could even go farther, pointing out that “murder” is a legal concept, and a category of crime decided by a court of law, not a cop or a journalist. The proper description would be a “suspected homicide”.
We often hear that a fugitive “may be armed and dangerous”, seldom if ever “armed but not dangerous”, often armed with a “high calibre firearm”, never with a “low calibre” or “rimfire” firearm.
Such a program would be particularly helpful to people accused of “Star Chamber” crimes (ie. those in which the public never gets to review the evidence), most notably, those relating to “child pornography”.
It could well start with the term “child pornography” itself, pointing out that in most jurisdictions, the law sanctions activities that involve neither what is commonly called “pornography”, nor what are commonly considered “children”.
It would underscore the inconsistency of criminalizing this one inherently harmless activity on the grounds that it could lead to harm by inspiring imitation (ie. causing the consumers or producers of child pornography to sexually abuse children), while failing to apply the same logic to the ubiquitous production, distribution, and consumption of materials depicting torture, rape, and murder .
It would save people a lot of wasted time and effort by pointing out the contradictions in lengthy cover-ups such as The 9/11 Commission Report.
The program would have to be open source, of course, so that anyone could review and critique the code. It could make its findings known by ratings on various scales, by means of colour-coded highlighting of text, by producing footnotes to selected passages, etc.
A common reaction to the expression of concerns such as the above is “I don’t care, it doesn’t concerns me, because I’m not a murderer, pedophile, terrorist, etc.”
Even if that were true (please note that the Star Chamber movement is busy finding new ways to make anyone they choose a pedophile or a terrorist by simple electronic sleight of hand), the stupifying effect of passively absorbing and repeating illogic must have consequences for both our intellectual and emotional health and ultimately, for our ability to survive as a species with the powerful technology at our disposal.
I don’t propose that such a program should be government sponsored, quite the contrary. Religious organizations and other associations of zealots could produce their own version of such a non-destructive, open-source, censorship program – but I would be very surprised, since its code would inevitably reveal the illogical foundation of their creeds. On a more positive note, I can imagine legitimate (ie. BS-targeting) competing versions – the more the merrier!
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