This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Well one side has literally an orgy of evidence, while the other has zero. So they aren't both equally worthy of respect.
Naive empiricism is not a privileged metaphysical position. It too is based on the arbitrary assumption of the logical coherence of the universe, which is no less evidence free than divine grace.
Do you think it's air you're breathing?
Yes I do. Because we can measure it and if you take it away we die. There is a ton less evidence of divine grace, zero in point of fact.
What makes you think you can correctly evaluate the amount or legitimacy of evidence for some metaphysical position when you make basic mistakes like stating one can measure a model?
Air does not exist, it's a concept that is linked to a specific theory and corpus of observations that could be (and indeed has previously been) falsified at any moment. You may as well say that phlogiston must exist because it's clearly released by any combustible. The map is not the territory.
In any case, making such peremptory statements about this topic without any knowledge of Kant or consideration for any criticism of positivism is futile. We can't discuss evidence if you don't even know what evidence is.
Quibbling about what “air” is and whether it exists in the same way as phlogiston, and then bringing up Kant and positivism, is almost a parody of trying to avoid the obvious point that if we suck all the air out of your lungs or put you in a room without oxygen you will die, 100% of the time. By “metaphysical” you seem to mean “made up and you can’t disprove it with your wimpy naturalism.”
In contrast, divine power resists all attempts to study it in the same way Bigfoot eludes capture and Santa avoids showing up on radar. People do try though.
It’s very brave to bring up falsifiability as a standard when religious claims almost always avoid it. Religious faith and reason cannot be reconciled because the former is explicitly based on believing things without sufficient evidence as a virtue. “We don’t have demonstrable evidence and that’s a feature, not a bug.”
Leaving aside the fact that Saint Thomas Aquinas and millions of Catholics disagree with you, the existence of mystery should humble all ontological viewpoints. Which is my point.
The existence of mystery should not excuse holding beliefs without sufficient evidence, is a basic point of reason.
The most humble ontological view is perhaps one that assumes no deity, or anything else, without sufficient evidence.
So much of classical philosophy is simply special pleading and god of the gaps.
This is why I'm ultimately a (metaphysical) skeptic.
But when I hold to that position here people get mad because it reduces the majority of what we consider knowledge to trial and error. And then they try to exhibit their successes as evidence like every single person that's been wrong in history.
People act as if the only potent argument against skepticism isn't mere practicality. And sure, one has to act as if knowledge is possible. But that doesn't mean it is. And from that standpoint religion doesn't seem that silly compared to positivism.
At the least we all should have the humility to recognize that reason is limited in its understanding.
Religion is silly compared to positivism.
The way you can tell is that almost no on identifies as such after philosophers took a hammer to it for logical inconsistencies. And yet so many religions continue on, resolute in their beliefs that contradict what we know about reality.
Religion is way more wrong than logical positivism. Several orders of magnitude more wrong, both regarding the level of claim made relative to evidence, and the fact positivism was hoisted on its own petard and actually died off.
Religion gets a privileged position because it’s normal and people have strong emotional attachments to it. The evidence is laughably weak or nonexistent, and many religions practice a kind of epistemology that is directly opposed to reason and science. Apologists can’t prove skeptics (or competing religions) wrong by producing strong evidence, so they play philosophical special pleading games and hide their gods in the gaps and “non overlapping magisterial” as secular knowledge expands.
The fact that religions themselves can’t agree on core ideas and prove their case to other religions, let alone to militant atheists and fundamentalist skeptics, remains telling. The “there there” is humans on average prioritize emotion over reason and religions have developed to exploit that fact, while providing some adaptive (at least historically) benefits.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, I do.
Furthermore, if someone wishes to disagree, they can make an actual claim to the contrary and then defend it with something outside of their own head. Empty metaphysical non-arguments are deeply unimpressive.
Truth needn't impress.
But not to worry, I come prepared.
The only crowd I've ever known to take an interest in this sort of thing, outside of academic philosophers, are internet theists who've given up on ever winning an argument anyone else cares about. Imagine busting this out because you saw someone chortling at the idea that Star Wars lore is real, and you'll understand how it looks from the outside. The part where everyone gains so much epistemic humility that they quit snorting whenever someone brings up the will of the Force in a serious conversation just isn't coming.
I love Star Wars more than you probably suspect, but still I wonder which you think I am? Because I doubt your guess is correct.
You say this and yet most of the contemporary institutions this forum endlessly complains about are justified through philosophical frameworks that have direct lineage to that era of criticisms of logical positivism.
People say that epistemology doesn't really matter and then they go on to live in a world where they are morally beaten down on account of standpoint theory.
It's the darndest thing. People say reading Hegel doesn't matter because it's all airy nonsense and then go about their day making received assumptions that are almost totally down to his very specific view of the world being internalized by society.
In any case, I've never cared about popularity contests or ad hominems. I care about the truth and how people on every side of every argument are undeservedly certain of things they have absolutely no logical reason to believe.
Confident ignorance is objectively worse than doubtful error. Repent before Socrates.
Listen, people who want me to believe X need to be able to put forth something outside of their own skull that points toward X being true. Anyone who wishes otherwise is either a charlatan, or needs to understand that they are indistinguishable from one.
Of course. Justification is necessary. But let us not pretend that reason and logic are the only mechanisms that can be used to do this, or that no alternative to empiricism possesses such justifications.
Not when we just talked about the infamous inconsistence of logical positivism.
I'll consider worrying about the other mechanisms as soon as I see them come up in any context other than atheists dragging religion and someone wanting to chastise them without having to actually defend it. In a quarter-century of internet, so far that's literally never happened. Everyone seems perfectly content with logic and reason under every other set of circumstances.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link