Wednesday, November 18, 2020

In 2020 Obama Identified "An Epistemological Crisis" As America's Central Toxin. Here's How I Identified This Toxin In 2012 (This Post Has Been Updated)

 A Mediterranean Brigantine Drifting Onto a Rocky Coast in a Storm ...

Scientific Truth
A storm-wracked ship in a sea of superstition

Here is the essence of the calamity that besets America, a catastrophe that came to a head during the Trump administration.

"There are two ways of lying, as there are two ways of deceiving customers. If the scale registers 15 ounces, you can say: 'It's a pound.' Your lie will remain relative to an invariable measure of the true. If customers check it, they can see that they are being robbed, and you know by how much you are robbing them: a truth remains as a judge between you. But if the demon induces you to tamper with the scale itself, it is the criterion of the true which is denatured, there is no longer any possible control. And little by little you will forget that you are cheating."    


We are living through "The Death of Epistemology."

The Scientific Method -- our best probabilistic tool for determining Truth -- has fallen prey to "The Faithful."

By "The Faithful," I mean those prowlers "on the outskirts of The Obvious" who seek "exceptions" to "general rules" in order to "prove" there are no "real truths" other than Sacred Scripture -- be it Jewish, Christian or Islamic.

In the view of "The Faithful," "God's Truth" not only trumps all other "truth" but belittles both. (In no more than 20 years, "faithful" belittlement of anthropogenic global warming will seem as absurd as the pulpit-preached assertion that slavery was The Will of God.)

The Faithful's obsessive insistence on Absolute (And Absolutely Rigid) Truth, is a passion intrinsically inimical to the probabilistic nature of scientific truth.

Rigid Truth reveals the perfectionism of American neo-Puritans ever zealous to overturn widely-applicable truths (truths that can be corroborated statistically) in order to posit "exceptions" -- no matter how slight and dubious -- as divinely-ordained New Truths.

"God said it. I believe it. That settles it."

These "religious opinions" constitute an "Epistemological Caliphate" in which doctrinal and dogmatic assertions tower over scientific truth.

Intellectually colonized by this "Epistemological Caliphate," Paul Ryan proudly declares: "I don't believe in the validity of some polls." And so, Ryan gets to pick and choose: he alone is the arbiter - not of Truth, but of what he wants to believe in his Republic of Me. There are no touchstones ruled by Reason, just articles of faith, mostly ruled by childhood upbringing.

Image result for hitler "the big lie" "pax on both houses"

Conservatives And Liberals: "How We Ended Up In 2 Totally Divided Camps, Both Convinced They're Absolutely Right"

Short Form:
How The Values Of "Strict Father" -- Or "Nurturant Parent" -- Control Our Political Views

Long Form:
"Strict Father" And "Nurturant Parent": The Two World Views That Determine Our Political Values

St. Augustine Explains Why Trump Cultists Are Epistemologically Disabled


Ryan's "chosen" polls -- which is to say his non-rigorous truths -- carry the weight of believable "scripture," subjectively powerful, objectively "up for grabs." 

In Ryan's mind, acceptable polls are significant only insofar as they support his pre-existing articles of faith - only to the extent that they accord with pre-existing litmuses. 

According to the received idiocy, there is no need for terrestrial truths when Celestial Truth is on our side.

Most true believers believe in truths held from antiquity, and it is not their job to discover Truth but to confirm truth. 

And so it is that confirmation bias plays such a crucial role in everyone's life but particularly in the lives of conservatives who, by definition, are only interested in confirming forgone conclusions -- often conclusions set forth in sacred scripture

"Confirmation Bias And The Power Of Disconfirming Evidence"  

A few days ago, a Floridian who keeps Sean Hannity updated on both presidential candidates' recent appearances in Florida, made a revealing slip after Hannity expressed disbelief that an Obama event attracted 15,000 people. Without missing a beat, his Florida informant chimed in: "I don't think the crowd was as big as it was."

Immediately, she "corrected" herself: "I don't think the crowd was as big as reported."

Once we have accounted for a reasonable amount of confirmation bias and partisan "spin," either "facts mean something," or we find ourselves adrift in the same "Sea of Superstition, Magic, Gossip and Wives' Tales" that engulfed the entire world (and the collective consciousness of humankind) prior to the advent of Scientific Method.

For several centuries the Scientific Method -- vigorously advocated by America's Founding Fathers, under aegis of The European Enlightenment -- has been our only tool for exiting the swamp of superstition in order to reside on newly-formed "Islands of Rationality."

In this regard, I encourage you to read my earlier post, "Is Perfectionism A Curse? Paul Ryan Tells The Truth." 
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/09/paul-ryan-tells-truth.html

Notably, science makes tremendous leaps by using "theories" and their technological applications. The "Theory of Relativity" (which is NOT a Law) undergirds much of the modern world.

Nevertheless, "The Faithful" pretend that "theory" is not enough; that only inerrant Truth will do.

Tragically, the history of "inerrant Truth" is the cornerstone of Pascal's insight that "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." 

On the other hand, scientists -- largely operating on theoretical foundations based on probability -- are able to accomplish feats like the following.

It takes time for societies to exhaust their accumulated “cultural capital."

However, the assault on Reason and Scientific Method is so far advanced that -- absent the revival of Rationality -- we risk the re-normalization of witch hunts, "crusades" and "inquisitions."

Aquinas would be appalled. 
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/01/st-thomas-aquinas-natural-law-and.html

A Former Conservative Blogger On The Failures Of Right-Wing Media - A Brilliant Matthew Sheffield Interview With "On The Media" (Likely To Be The Best Broadcast You'll Hear This Month)


Arguing against those who said that natural philosophy was contrary to the Christian faith, (Aquinas) writes in his treatise "Faith, Reason and Theology that "even though the natural light of the human mind is inadequate to make known what is revealed by faith, nevertheless what is divinely taught to us by faith cannot be contrary to what we are endowed with by nature. One or the other would have to be false, and since we have both of them from God, he would be the cause of our error, which is impossible." 
"Aladdin's Lamp: How Greek Science Came to Europe Through the Islamic World" 
by John Freely

"Thomas Aquinas And Islam"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/05/thomas-aquinas-and-islam.html


Jenny McCarthy: Poster Girl For Self-Terrorization
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/11/jenny-mccarthy-americas-poster-girl-for.html

When epistemology is taken seriously, we find ourselves in a world of great breadth and depth.


Lamentably, the world in which we now live is such a shallow world that epistemology is ignored, or worse resides like a wraith in a forgotten shadowland between the opaque and the archaic.

Without giving real thought to the rich context of their lives, people are busy with "matters of consequence," surfing surfaces only. 

"What has come to an end is the distinction between the sensual and the supersensual, together with the notion, at least as old as Parmenides, that whatever is not given to the senses... is more real, more truthful, more meaningful than what appears; that it is not just beyond sense perception but above the world of the senses... In increasingly strident voices, the few defenders of metaphysics have warned us of the danger of nihilsim inherent in this development. The sensual... cannot survive the death of the supersensual."  Hannah Arendt

The issues in play are extraordinarily.

Yet the world, swept away by the crush of hyperactive modernity, is clueless to every proposition except the one that says: "I already know better."

"The coming peril is the intellectual, educational, psychological and artistic overproduction, which, equally with economic overproduction, threatens the wellbeing of contemporary civilisation. People are inundated, blinded, deafened, and mentally paralysed by a flood of vulgar and tasteless externals, leaving them no time for leisure, thought, or creation from within themselves."  G. K. Chesterton   Toronto, 1930

Neil Postman, Author Of "Amusing Ourselves To Death," A Great 20th Century Book

"We Know To The Extent That We Love": St. Augustine Goes To The Heart Of Epistemology


And now QAnon's normalization of lunacy muddies the waters further.

Alan: During my 1950s' childhood, any weirdo-relative living in an in-law apartment would have become a candidate for "insane asylum committal" as soon as s/he started spewing the kind of lunatic ideation that consumes Trump Cult, a coven of crazies who subscribe to QAnon, a new secular religion with its own messiah (i.e., Donald Trump) and its own resurrection (i.e., John Kennedy Jr. is not dead). 

And that's just the beginning.

Tom Hanks, Oprah Winfrey and Hillary Clinton are members of a vast Hollywood (and Democratic Party) cabal who operate a massive sex slave trade that also kills children to cannibalize them in Satanic blood rituals.

If you've got the stomach, you can learn more about this epochal normalization-of-insanity at: 
 

Discussion With 9/11 Truther Friend About Epistemology, Belief, Certainty And Purpose

The 9/11 Truth Movement: Where Does It Lead?

Daniel Webster Prompts A Review Of Conspiracism And Its Destructive Role In American Politics



"Whom The Gods Would Destroy, They First Make Mad"







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