Re: The Attack on Truth - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Posted by Russ Abbott on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/The-Attack-on-Truth-The-Chronicle-of-Higher-Education-tp7586189p7586197.html

Senator John Thune recently issued this tweet. 

You can argue that it's a denial of truth. But really, it's more like a tribal call. He is saying "I hate Obama," and he will be applauded by those who also "hate Obama." It's not a matter of truth.

Here's Krugman's post on it: http://goo.gl/6a4yue.

Here's my Google+ post: https://goo.gl/tt19Jz

-- Russ

On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 3:11 AM glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

I enjoyed both the article and others' reactions to it, especially Grant's distinction between determined vs. determinability.  My own reaction was one slightly tinged with nausea.  Yes, it is lamentable when one's ideas, one's ideology, allow(s) one to deny "truth" (new evidence).  But it is that very same thing that allows one to lament the denial of truth.

McIntyre seems to be just as willfully ignorant as those he accuses, by assuming

  a) there _exists_ a singe, One True Truth, and
  b) we (all of us or an in-group few of us) can approach that Truth.

The point has been made most clearly by Orgel's 2nd Rule: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orgel%27s_rule .  Why is it that we think that what we think is better (or more real, or more effective, or more ... whatever) than what _is_?  Why is it that we think so intently about what we think?  We're like a bunch of navel-gazing drug addicts, thinking intently about our own thoughts while the world moves on around us.

There's a kind of circularity to McIntyre's lament (as well as other truthers who continually lament the "truthers" -- 9/11 or whatever, or the deniers that continually complain about the "deniers" -- climate change or whatever).  The most frustrating instance of this circularity is the escalation to absurdity exhibited by the ongoing co-evolution between "social justice warriors" and "political correctness freedom fighters" (for lack of a better term).  At some point, the frequency of the circular back and forth out paces the recovery time needed by my "outrage neurons".

At some point, all the finger-pointing, all the childish "yes it is" "no it's not" "yes it is" back and forth makes me wish people like McIntyre would soften their own rhetoric just enough to exhibit more self-doubt and less other-doubt.  it would have been more palatable if, e.g., he'd ended the article with "I do my best, but often fail respect the truth." ... or something of that sort, rather than ending with the implication that he's _always_ capable of respecting the truth and knows full well that he always infallibly does, especially right now in this article.

But, as Russ points out, other-doubt is profitable, while self-doubt is not.

-glen

On 06/08/2015 06:19 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Philosophy haters do not read the linked article.  It mentions Andy Norman.  He is a member of the faculty at Carnegie Mellon, in the department where I used to work.  My daughter was a friend of his when they were in high school in the 1980s.  I am old.
>
> Frank
>
> http://m.chronicle.com/article/The-Attack-on-Truth/230631/

--
⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella
There's a chamber that should always be full


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