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Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

psyche.co

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Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#221

Post by SummerlyMars »

coldtea wrote: post #213
SummerlyMars wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still difficult to parse. If I replace the parts that I don't understand with variables, I get > The move from a in which is understood to structure brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of that takes as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the . Consider all the differen…

Check my interpretation above (I did 3 levels, expanded simplified, quite simplified, and explain-it-to-me-like-I'm-18). It is indeed tedious writing, but her audience isn't the general public, is other academics and people who get off with this sort of think and have read 100+ other books on the same subjects. So, it's more like Dijkstra writing something to Knuth (and laying the technical language thick to save tim…

Thank you for your translation. That helps to clear up the meaning, and was much clearer than the sentence in question. That said, I don't believe it invalidates my criticism, as it's not the technical language that I'm opposed to. Given your comment about it being tedious writing, I think we may actually be in agreement, and that I expressed myself poorly.

The point I was attempting to make was that even if you replace the variables with anything that results in an intelligible sentence, it's still going to be difficult to read. Regardless of whether you understand the terminology. The structure of the sentence itself is contributing to the difficulty in interpretation. Could time have been saved by writing it in this style? Sure, but it takes the readers' attention away from the actual argument and forces them to spend extra effort on interpreting the sentence structure.

I see this as a problem with academic (and even popular) writing in general. It's far from being exclusive to either Judith Butler or philosophy.

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#222

Post by dragonwriter »

yters wrote: post #214
psyc wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and I have very different ideas of what the word ‘proof’ means. I have no doubt this is how it looks to you. From where I sit, we have theism and a lot of nebulous thought experiments that gel with the way religious minds already think, and atheism which is simply the default until the day God decides to grace us with a press conference.

There are tight logical proofs. Note I point out the ontological argument is now validated by computer. I am merely sketching them above. I also disagree atheism is the default. As Einstein says, simplify as much as possible, but no further. Atheism is incapable of explaining reality as we experience it. While simple it lacks explanatory power. Saying atheism is the default due to simplicity is like saying nothing is…

> There are tight logical proofs.

No, there aren't.

> Note I point out the ontological argument is now validated by computer.

While an invalid argument is useless, a valid one can still be no good.

Here is a logically valid argument:

Major Premise. all who post claims of proofs of God’s existence on HN should be killed.

Minor Premise. yters posted a claim of proof of God’s existence on HN

Conclusion. Therefore, yters should be killed.

Now, if I claimed I proved you should be killed, you would probably object, and claim there was a problem with the major premise. And I think many people would agree with you, but the correctness of the premises isn't relevant to logical validity, only soundness.

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#223

Post by yters »

dragonwriter wrote: post #222
yters wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are tight logical proofs. Note I point out the ontological argument is now validated by computer. I am merely sketching them above. I also disagree atheism is the default. As Einstein says, simplify as much as possible, but no further. Atheism is incapable of explaining reality as we experience it. While simple it lacks explanatory power. Saying atheism is the default due to simplicity is like saying nothing is…

> There are tight logical proofs. No, there aren't. > Note I point out the ontological argument is now validated by computer. While an invalid argument is useless, a valid one can still be no good. Here is a logically valid argument: Major Premise. all who post claims of proofs of God’s existence on HN should be killed. Minor Premise. yters posted a claim of proof of God’s existence on HN Conclusion. Therefore, yters…

Well that's the problem with all proofs. If the premises are false the proof is not sound. That doesn't preclude the proof being tight, i.e. as in well reasoned and logically argued. Outside of mathematics you will be hard pressed to find a proof where someone doesn't disagree with a premise or two. And even within math we have intuitionists and constructivists claiming things like proof by negation is invalid. So if your criterion for solid proof is one that everyone agrees with, you are bound to be perpetually disappointed. On the other hand if your criterion is proofs that highly intelligent people find convincing after fully understanding the argument, then I again submit to you the ontological argument which even Russell claimed was sound at one point in his life before walking that back and saying it is wrong for some unknown reason.

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#224

Post by yters »

bslorence wrote: post #219
anonuser123456 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name one prominent modern atheist that is clueless when it comes to the theism discussion and present one point he/she misrepresents/lacks understanding of.

Dawkins thinks that the first three "Ways" of Aquinas all hinge on the premise that a chain of causes can't proceed infinitely backward in time. This is a standard misreading that could be straightened out by a quick perusal of secondary literature, or just by reading a little more Aquinas, who makes clear elsewhere that he thinks the universe does not, in principle, need to have a beginning in time.

And plus he could look at Duns Scotus arguments which even grant an infinite causal chain, e.g. by forming a circle. Modern atheists are just very snobbish thinking everyone who existed before you could post online take downs on reddit was an idiot.

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#225

Post by maroonblazer »

yters wrote: post #189
mrkeen wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> Most of the modern atheists are clueless when it comes to the theism discussion. >> Name one prominent modern atheist that is clueless when it comes to the theism discussion and present one point he/she misrepresents/lacks understanding of. > The four horsemen are all woefully uninformed when they try to deal with standard arguments for theism. Repetition is not a good argument.

Dawkins' argument that the presupposition of god requires then yet another explanation of god. He doesn't realize this criticism applies to any posited ultimate cause, including physicalism. In fact this very issue forms the foundation for some of the classic arguments for God. The only way the regress can terminate is with an uncaused cause, which only can be met by a godlike being. So followed to its logical conclu…

I don't think Harris would claim he's making philosophical arguments aimed at philosophers. I think he would say he's making arguments against beliefs that most people (non-philosopher) hold. Most people who show up to church don't claim that they worship a god who just so happens to not be good. They believe in a god is perfectly good, who takes an interest in their personal lives and will decide the subjective nature of their experience after death.

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#226

Post by yters »

dragonwriter wrote: post #218
yters wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many proofs: - God is greater than the greatest imaginable thing, so must exist (this one is proven to be logically valid with computational theorem prover, and Bertrand Russell even said it was sound at one point in his life) - the world is intelligently designed - there must be a first cause, and that must be God - nothing in this world is perfect so there must be a transcendently perfect being - we can o…

> God is greater than the greatest imaginable thing, so must exist (this one is proven to be logically valid with computational theorem prover) Logical validity is a very weak thing to demonstrate (it is trivial to construct a logically valid argument for any position), to be a proof you'd need to show soundness. https://iep.utm.edu/val-snd/#:~:text=A%20deductive%20argumen... . Sure, if I give an axiom that “The grea…

I recommend you look into these things more carefully, e.g. read the wikipedia article on historicity of Jesus. I am just throwing out sketches of the many different well know arguments for theism that atheist believe they don't even have to engage with to have an intellectually robust position. Well fine, anyone can believe anything they want to believe, but that doesn't mean they've put any careful thought into their position.

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#227

Post by [deleted] »

wnoise wrote: post #188
monadic3 wrote: post #107

This article is pretty standard analytic bilk: demand readers use your definitions of words and complain about the decline of western civilization when they don't.

(a): The complaint is about using the same word in different ways, without marking the difference, which has the effect of hiding that the conclusions are unfounded. (b): It's a small part of the essay, one sin among many.

[deleted]

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#229

Post by denton-scratch »

boo_boo wrote: post #178
denton-scratch wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha! Well, "obviously" everything that I know must be truth; otherwise it would be mere belief. But for everything I think I know, there's someone that believes different. In that light, it seems unreasonable for anyone to think they have access to truth. So truth seems to be reduced (or elevated?) to something we can never reach, and only aspire to. It makes it into some kind of metaphysical object, whose nature can'…

> I think it's best to avoid talking about truth, when trying to do philosophy. Just do the reasoning, and draw some conclusions if you can. Yes, let's throw all of epistemology into the trash

Wouldn't be the first time a field of philosophy has been trashed. The logical positivists did their best to trash metaphysics (I think rather effectively).

Epistemology is theory of knowledge; it's a statement in epistemology (one which you might disagree with) that knowledge and truth are not the same thimg.

Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking

#230

Post by andybak »

> While pseudoscience is particularly prone to causal fallacies and cherry-picking of data, the most common fallacy in obscurantist pseudophilosophy is equivocation. This fallacy exploits ambiguities in certain key terms, where plausible but trivial claims lend apparent credibility to interesting but controversial ones. When challenged, the obscurantist will typically retreat to the safe house provided by the trivial interpretation of his claims, only to reoccupy the controversial ground once the critic has left the scene.

This is an interesting phenomenon which has become much easier to recognise now it has been given a memorable name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

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