The post-fact society

It's now fashionable to say that we now live in a post-fact society led by Donald Trump. However, the post-fact society has been developing for a long time and is not attributable only to the right.

Right-wingers did not give us political correctness, although they now defer to no one in being PC when being PC suits them, nor did they give us the new age or postmodernism. Nor do they have a monopoly on the "This is how it makes me feel as a member of such-and-such identity category" non-argument, which someone actually used on me after I had cited epidemiological data.

See also Intellectual Unilateral Disarmament.

Peter Thiel is no true gay Scotsman.

A while back, I wrote about the no-true-Scotsman fallacy and its use to argue away dissent in the LGBT community:

Orthodox queer people also use [the fallacy] to dismiss any viewpoint diversity within the LGBT ranks. People have answered my disagreement with the party line by saying, "Yeah, but you're not really gay."

Now, in The Advocate, Jim Downs writes,

Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire who made news this summer for endorsing Donald Trump at the Republican convention, is a man who has sex with other men. But is he gay?

* * *

By the logic of gay liberation, Thiel is an example of a man who has sex with other men, but not a gay man. Because he does not embrace the struggle of people to embrace their distinctive identity.

* * *

The gay liberation movement has left us a powerful legacy, and protecting that legacy requires understanding the meaning of the term "gay" and not using it simply as a synonym for same-sex desire and intimacy.

Regardless of one's views on Thiel's politics, it remains that case that last paragraph, Downs effectively admits to pulling a no-true-Scotsman on Thiel. The good news is that even on a site like The Advocate, the commentariat is overwhelmingly calling shenanigans on Downs's reasoning.

Every true Scotsman

I've previously blogged about the "no true Scotsman" fallacy, which involves redefining a category to exclude members of that category that are inconvenient to one's argument. The flip side, which one might call the "every true Scotsman" fallacy, involves redefining a category to include new members that would help one's argument. For example, people often argue that the countries with the highest standards of living are socialist. By what analysis do we know that those countries are socialist? Well, any sensible person can tell that they're socialist because they have such high standards of living. Never mind what those countries' own prime ministers think.

See also my rule of political and economic terms here.

Someone actually said this: Pure reason as a construction

In case you've wondered what deep thoughts are pondered in humanities departments, as reported by that ne plus ultra of journalistic excellence, The New York Times, I have exciting news for you. The newspaper of record has interviewed John D. Caputo, the Thomas J. Watson professor of religion emeritus at Syracuse University and David R. Cook professor of philosophy emeritus at Villanova University, who shares the following insights:

Postmodern theory tries to interrupt that expression [of referring to "we" with no analysis of who "we" are] at every stop, to put every word in scare quotes, to put our own presuppositions into question, to make us worry about the murderousness of “we,” and so to get in the habit of asking, “we, who?” I think that what modern philosophers call “pure” reason — the Cartesian ego cogito and Kant’s transcendental consciousness — is a white male Euro-Christian construction.

Someone's still appealing to postmodernism? Greetings, time traveler from the nineties. Also, are we sure that it's "pure" reason, not postmodernism, that's "a white male Euro-Christian construction"?

So what is the professor's proof that "pure" reason is a white male Euro-Christian construction?

White is not “neutral.” “Pure” reason is lily white, as if white is not a color or is closest to the purity of the sun, and everything else is “colored.” Purification is a name for terror and deportation, and “white” is a thick, dense, potent cultural signifier that is closely linked to rationalism and colonialism. What is not white is not rational. So white is philosophically relevant and needs to be philosophically critiqued — it affects what we mean by “reason” — and “we” white philosophers cannot ignore it.

What's that thing called again when you postulate what you're trying to prove? It has "reasoning" in its name, but it's not the good kind of reasoning. Also, I suppose that wanting pure anything is now the moral equivalent of ethnic cleansing.

Then there is this:

The trigger-happy practices of the police, not all police, but too many police, on the streets of black America should alert everyone to how profoundly adrift American democracy has become — attacking the poor as freeloaders and criminals, a distorted and grotesque ideological exaggeration of freedom over equality.

Nothing says "ideological exaggeration of freedom" like trigger-happy police.

Meet the new philosophy, same as the old philosophy.

The recent exchange regarding the dreaded book logic got me thinking about a Biblical-literalist church of which I had once been a member. At that church, the pastor and deacons encouraged us to go beyond head knowledge to heart knowledge and were even fond of saying — and I quote verbatim — "Don't reason." The religious right and the politically correct left refuse to recognize any commonality, even when it's that glaringly obvious, and thereby confirm what I said here.

I've learned a new politically correct snarl term.

From the recent exchange with an anonymous commenter, I've learned a new politically correct snarl term: "book logic." Now, whenever I'm losing an argument, I'll just shout, "Stop using your book logic on me!" Think it'll work before the board of appeals?

See also LGBT anti-rationalism.

I just know.

There are certain things that I just know. I do not know them on the basis of evidence; rather, my just knowing transcends the whole concept of evidence. I just know that it does.

For example, I just know what certain cities, states, and countries are like, without having been there or even read up on them. I just know what consequences an action will have; if that action has always had different consequences before, I just know that things will work out differently this time. I just know that someone whom I have just glimpsed across the room is the one for me.

Moreover, in religion, I just know what God wants me to do and, more to the point, what God wants you to do. You needn't bother pointing out contrary passages in the holy book of the religion in which I claim membership. I just know which passages are a crystal-clear expression of God's eternal will, which have been superseded, and which need to be interpreted correctly. For the last category, I just know what the correct interpretation is.

Furthermore, I just know all relevant facts about you, even when my only contact with you is over the Internet. I just know your socioeconomic background, your appearance, and all relevant details of whatever parts of your history you choose to bring up. I also just know your inner identity and mental state and how those things came to be. Please don't waste your time telling me that I'm mistaken, since I just know that you're lying.

There is no point in providing evidence or logic to gainsay what I just know. When those things contradict what I just know, I just know that the evidence must have been misconstrued and that the logic must be flawed.

Finally, it will do no good to point out that other people, or even you, just know something mutually exclusive with what I just know. I just know that everyone else is just making stuff up. How do I know that what I just know isn't something that I just made up? I just know.

How consistent is your view of religion?

In case you want to find out, here is a 17-question quiz:

In this activity you’ll be asked a series of 17 questions about God and religion. In each case, apart from Question 1, you need to answer True or False. The aim of the activity is not to judge whether these answers are correct or not. Our battleground is that of rational consistency. This means to get across without taking any hits, you’ll need to answer in a way which is rationally consistent. What this means is you need to avoid choosing answers which contradict each other. If you answer in a way which is rationally consistent but which has strange or unpalatable implications, you’ll be forced to bite a bullet.

I managed to get through without taking any hits or biting any bullets.

Making your case: You're doing it wrong.

The argument over alleged gay male racism is a specific case of something that I've seen happen all too often, namely, the sort of argument in which only one side presents evidence, while the other side presents speculation, appeals to emotion, and "Because I said so." We've all seen arguments like that, such as arguments over school funding in which only one side presents funding statistics and arguments over the Bible in which only one side provides direct quotations in context.

If evidence exists that fairly supports your position, cite it already. On the other hand, if the evidence genuinely supports only one side, what are you doing on the other side?

Crystals, forgive me, for I have committed political incorrectness.

It seems that persons of political correctness are such special snowflakes (or just flakes) that it's an outrage even to ask them in polite terms to explain, rather than merely assert, their positions. They may say, "You just don't get it," or they may just groan and walk away; on the Internet, your question may never even make it out of the moderation queue alive. If their positions are so marvellously true, shouldn't they want to demonstrate that truth, so that we unwashed masses may behold the truth that shall set us free?

Evidence: You're doing it wrong.

The other day, I had a conversation along the following all too common lines:

"We have evidence that [event described in holy text] actually occurred."

"What is that evidence?"

"No one has ever proved that it didn't."

When you try to reason with such people, arguments like this all too often elicit blank stares.

The Emperor's new argument, or: Oh, so that's why we should all be lefties

In this article on John Edwards, the author explains why we must accept liberalism as a whole:

Because one reason I was eager to back Edwards was there was no conflict in his campaign between the three tiers of modern liberalism, which often do fight each other. I see the three as:

1) Economic justice. This is labor movements, anti-poverty initiatives, fair taxation, health care reform, social services, government that is functional, etc. Anything that helps secure the middle class, bolsters the economy, and lifts people out of poverty.

2) Social justice. Feminism, anti-racism, gay rights, anti-colonialism, things like that---anything that divides people against each other on the basis of identity hierarchies.

3) Environmentalism and rationalism. Preserving the planet, promoting science, basically using the now to work towards a better tomorrow.

Obviously, a smart person sees how these are interrelated and that you really fail at anti-racism if you don't think about poverty and that you're not a good environmentalist if economic justice isn't part of your worldview, and you're not an effective feminist if you treat science like it's a lark.

In addition to the many proofs by assertion, the author throws in the "Emperor's New Clothes" argument (technically an appeal to personal interest), "Obviously, a smart person sees" that she's right. Try again.

We need more new thought and less "new" thought.

Reading queer Web sites could easily make one agree with Qoheleth that there is nothing new under the sun. Even on a site with the word "new" prominently featured in its name, many young pups are serving up "radical" "new" ideas that basically amount to warmed-over eighties political correctness. You'd think that someone would have consulted the institutional memory to see just how new the "new" ideas are.

More on New York vs. D.C.

One thing about New Yorkers that visitors from Washington tend to notice right away is a frankness about sexuality that much of the country lacks. A friend who has lived in New York since the seventies tells me that that frankness has been toned down since the seventies, but it is still there. In D.C., by contrast, no matter what happens on the back porch of the leather bar, we observe the polite fiction that we are all asexual and that the goddess has assigned us our sexual orientations solely as a social statement.

My friend also mentioned an aspect of growing up in New York, namely, exposure to viewpoint diversity. Such diversity has traditionally been anathema in D.C., although we see more of it as a more diverse crowd moves into the capital.

The gilded mean

The golden-mean fallacy, otherwise known as the middle-ground fallacy and the appeal to moderation, holds that a middle ground between two extreme positions must be true simply because it is the middle ground. It differs from actually proving that the middle position is the sound one.

Lazy thinkers can use the golden-mean fallacy to discount any position they don't like, without the bother of having to disprove it on its merits. For example, local journalists have been known to pair a pro-LGBT argument with an argument from the American Family Association or some such organization and grandly declare, with no further analysis, that because the truth is in the middle, both sides must be wrong.

Why some people don't think rationally

In the wake of birtherism, people are talking about the anti-rationalism of the right (since we all know that everyone else is completely immune). I have seen a variety of reasons for anti-rationalism, from intellectual laziness to the effects of religion to an emotional need to believe nonsense. While some people either cannot or will not think rationally about their pet issues no matter what, I believe that many other people do not pursue rational inquiry about such issues simply because no one has told them that it is an option.

For example, in the public schools that I attended, we studied formal logic for all of one grading period, and even then only in the context of geometry. No one pointed out any wider applicability, least of all the history teacher whose answer to every challenge was to restate his original assertion more loudly.

Later, when I did volunteer work in HIV education, I sometimes had to step callers through the process of understanding relative risks. I quickly realized that I was the first person to explain to them how to do so, and I could almost hear the light bulbs going on over their heads when they got it.

True Scotsman, party of zero, your table is ready.

A popular way to defend the indefensible, or otherwise to get around inconvenient counterexamples, is the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. In a nutshell, when you want to argue that no X would do an unpleasant act, and someone has the nerve to point out that Y, who is an X, did it, then you simply state that Y is not a true X.

Religious apologists, especially Christians, are masters of "No True Scotsman." When you point out behavior that identifies their religion as something other than all smiles and group hugs, they assert that no true member of their religion would exhibit such behavior. This leads to some interesting contradictions; for example, Catholics are Christians when people want to prove that America has an overwhelmingly Christian population, but not when anyone brings up the Inquisition.

Political apologists use it as well. For example, in the last century, apologists for communism argued that anything bad that happened in communist countries arose from the "fact" that those countries were using something other than true communism. More recently, a friend expressed concern over violence by someone identified as a leftist and said that no true leftist would do such a thing. When I explained "No True Scotsman" to him, he didn't budge, but said that even so, it was still the case that no true leftist would do such a thing.

Orthodox queer people also use it to dismiss any viewpoint diversity within the LGBT ranks. People have answered my disagreement with the party line by saying, "Yeah, but you're not really gay."

Strawberries are blue; therefore, the capital of Lithuania is Los Angeles.

As I've mentioned, I sometimes like to visit that vast repository of insane troll logic known as the reader comments on The Washington Post's Web site. Many posters follow the pattern of making up a "fact" and using a non sequitur to jump from that "fact" to whatever conclusion they want, thereby achieving twice the certainty. While I don't hope to reach such people, at least I can amuse myself and evidently a few other people by posting nonsense like the title of this post and explaining that it is every bit as logically sound and for the same reasons.

Reality is negotiable. Dogma isn't.

It often amazes me what strong reality-deflector shields some people have. One, when someone was decrying the evils of gay adoption, I asked whether she knew of the studies that directly contradicted her assertions. She responded that yes, she did. No "but," no "therefore," not even a token attempt to dismiss the studies' credibility — she acknowledged the reality but chose to believe the exact opposite anyway.

I wish I could believe that such a person was an isolated exception, but I have no reason to believe that. Many people have a much stronger need to believe than to know, and their beliefs can withstand any amount of evidence or logic. All one can do is to present one's arguments so that at least third parties will see who has an argument and who simply believes with perfect faith in belief with perfect faith.

You can't prove a negative? Who says?

According to a distressingly common urban legend, some law of logic holds that you can't prove a negative. A little reading in philosophy would show that no such law of logic exists. For one thing, how would you go about proving that you can't prove a negative, since the statement that you'd have to prove is itself a negative?

Moreover, as a practical matter, we prove negatives all the time. I routinely have to do so in my job. Typically, disproving a proposition B requires nothing more than submitting A into evidence, where A => ~B.

(Oops, my bad -- We're supposed to be talking about Lady Gaga now, aren't we?)