Rational Philosophy

More on the philosophy of thought.

I wrote yesterday about how we don’t think as much as we think we think. I opined that perhaps that’s OK most of the time, but pointed out that lack of thought on some things can be dangerous. I’ve since landed on a few examples.

The faculty and administration at the University of Kentucky have been struggling since last April to dispel a baseless rumor that the school had dropped its Holocaust course for fear that it would offend muslim students. (The rumor began when a school in Birmingham, UK, stopped teaching a Holocaust class.) Thousands of people have gone to the lengths of sending e-mail to the university faculty and administration complaining of the cancelation… which never happened.

In another piece, the Times reports on a report from a new education advocacy group called Common Core. The piece tells us that many teenagers are woefully ignorant of basic aspects of history and literature. It then connects this ignorance to the focus of No Child Left Behind on reading and math tests, that have, apparently, reduced schools’ focus on liberal arts.

But the piece didn’t compare the ignorance of teenagers now to the level of ignorance prior to No Child Left Behind. Which left me curious. I dug out the Common Core report and found that it claimed that its methodology made such a direct comparison impossible. I then dug around and found an education advocacy website that had dug out Federal testing data that does show comparative numbers. Apparently, teenagers may actually know a little more now about history and literature than they did a few years ago.

(I’d love to take an opportunity to slam No Child Left Behind, but Common Core’s data can’t help me there!!)

Which brings us to the master of thoughtlessness, our current president, George Bush. Bush criticizes higher taxes for gas companies saying it will only make gas prices higher. And that we should be investing in oil refineries close to home to increase widespread use of renewable energy.

In each case, a little bit more thought would go a long way.

Before sending an e-mail criticizing an institution for some action or inaction, it would seem wise to verify that the source of our information is legitimate. A chain e-mail, for instance, shouldn’t be deemed sufficient.

As for the NY Times, it shouldn’t require its readers to go and fact check a story’s rhetoric. One would expect the reporter to have thought about the impact of the story and done the appropriate homework to verify its claims and hype.

And Bush should be enrolled in a class for remedial thinking. His over-simplistic and emotional reaction to energy policy ignores the basic problem. Burning hydrocarbons has a much higher price tag than the cost of extracting and refining those hydrocarbons. Reducing or reversing global warming, if it’s possible, will result in huge costs. We need to begin acknowledging those costs and collecting them now through a gas company surcharge or at the pump.

But how do we know when we should give things more thought? Ironically, I’ve noticed that I tend to prefix my own ill-conceived rhetoric with words like “I think” or “I believe.” When I can catch myself speaking from the hip, I can sometimes acknowledge that I haven’t really thought something through as fully as I need to if I’m going to express an opinion on it.

On a brighter note I came across a wonderful new venture — the creation of an on-line encyclopedia of species — The Encyclopedia of Life! A worthy effort to spread knowledge.

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

On sexism, racism and any other ism: Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, Gloria Steinem; the importance of drawing distinctions, and the unfortunate side-effect of bigotry.

Gloria Steinem’s Op-Ed yesterday — “Women Are Never Front-Runners” — shows that even a fervent anti-ismist can get tangled up in her own knitting. Ms. Steinem laments that Hillary Clinton faces an uphill struggle convincing voters that she’s a viable leader just because she’s a woman. Steinem contrasts Clinton’s task with Obama’s, arguing that Clinton has it harder. Although Steinem presents no evidence, I wouldn’t try to argue that she’s wrong. Unfortunately though, her thesis swells with the rhetoric of bias, ending with what’s supposed to be a rallying cry against isms ‘We have to be able to say: “I’m supporting her because she’ll be a great president and because she’s a woman.”’ And this would demonstrate lack of bias how?

Human beings have developed an extraordinary ability to draw distinctions and categorize the world around them. Consciousness requires that we do so. The first glimmer of consciousness rests on the awareness that there is a self and a non-self. From this primary and fundamental distinction we begin to separate the world into up and down, in and out, hot and cold, blue and pink, soft and hard… This ability has been honed to a fine point because it has provided an evolutionary benefit. The better able we were to draw distinctions, the more skilled we became at identifying safe foods to eat, suitable materials for clothes and tools and shelter, etc.

In another story today, brewers pursuit of ever hoppier beers and consumers pursuit of ever more gratifying flavor, gives an example of just how far we’re prepared to go along the road of differentiation and distinction. The whole enterprise of humankind rests to a large degree on the striving for new distinctions.

But the faculty to draw distinctions, while it can be trained or enhanced, is fundamentally indifferent to the nature of those distinctions. In other words, although some of us can’t distingush Bach from Hayden we can all distinguish a jackhammer from a songbird, a pen from a pencil, and our own cell-phone ring tone from everyone else’s. We draw distinctions so naturally that they become easy pegs for our murkier judgments.

This is where isms come in. When we derive arbitrary judgments from a characteristic, no matter how well distinguished that characteristic may be, we fall into the trap of the ism.

By all accounts, Hillary Clinton is a woman. Identifiying her as a woman is not an ism. Saying she’ll make a better or worse leader because she’s a woman is an ism. There’s no rational basis for making such a connection. (We can easily find many examples of both men and women leaders who are wonderful and many who are awful.)

To get to an ism from a distinction we have to apply flawed logic and reasoning, or blind ourselves to logic and reason. Racism in all its forms, for example, requires the racist to suspend his or her faculty of reason. But why do we do that?

Isms are born of ignorance or fear. Either we are too ignorant to understand that our judgments are flawed, or we are afraid of some group that’s different from us, or of losing our power over them, or of being forced to recognize their equality.

The antidote to isms is reason and logic, persistenly, patiently, blindly, and tirelessly applied.

For a rational, science-based explanation of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

PS. Of the IPAs I’ve tasted, my personal favorite is Smuttynose IPA. Highly recommended.