A Funny Argument About Voter ID Laws

Hi, I’m Seth. I heard a funny argument the other day. I ride the bus to campus, and all of the bus drivers employed by this company are libertarians, so I always get to hear libertarian talk radio on the bus. That’s where the funny argument came from.

The argument was about voter registration laws. Specifically, it was trying to defend the requirement that voters have a state-issued ID. Here’s how it went:

1. Voter fraud does happen, and it’s a crime.
2. If we can prevent a crime by legislating a law, then we should.
3. Requiring state-issued IDs for voters can prevent voter fraud.
4. Therefore, we should require state-issued IDs for voters.

I know what you’re thinking. Wow! This, from a conservative? Let’s go through it slowly, and see why this is so funny.

The host put forth a lot of effort in establishing premise 1. He even had a liberal listener call in and argue with him so he could yell about this one. He said that the debate thus far has centered on the amount of voter fraud, which is irrelevant. Democrats have said that voter fraud does not happen as often as Republicans claim, so we don’t need an ID law. The host said this doesn’t matter, because voter fraud does happen, even if only in very, very, very, very small amounts. He kept asking his liberal caller if voter fraud happens, and the liberal caller said, “I don’t know,” or “Probably a little.” This made the host mad, and he said the caller didn’t have the testicular fortitude to admit that it does happen, at least a little bit. Therefore, premise 1 is true.

Another way he could have established the truth of premise 1 is by referring to an actual legal case documenting voter fraud. But he didn’t do this, so I’m not going to bother. I don’t want him to say I lack testicular fortitude, so I’ll agree with premise 1.

Premise 2 is really funny because it’s obviously false. One way to see how false it is is by thinking of a crime that could be prevented by a really outrageous law. For example, we could prevent speeding by outlawing automobiles. We could even prevent drunk-driving by outlawing automobiles. This is starting to sound pretty reasonable! According to premise 2, libertarians should be clambering to outlaw automobiles. But they aren’t.

They aren’t applying premise generally because they know it’s false, and they only want to pretend it’s true in this one particular case, because they need it for supporting the conclusion they want. Imagine if they used this premise when thinking about extreme gun control laws. Outlawing all guns could prevent gun-related homicides. Therefore, we should outlaw all guns. Libertarians don’t reason this way because they know premise 2 is false. More things need to be considered before enacting legislation. You have to do a cost-benefit analysis.

For the automobile case, it is clear that preventing speeding is not a big enough benefit, given the extreme disruption to society such a law would cause. It just wouldn’t be worth it. Most people think the prevention of drunk-driving is also outweighed by the cost of the law. That’s why we don’t outlaw automobiles.

For the gun case, it would be pretty good if we could prevent all gun-related crime, but libertarians object on the grounds that it would be infringing on our rights, so no benefit could be big enough to outweigh that.

That is interesting, because it mirrors the voting case. Lots of poor people without IDs have the right to vote. Many of them have never had an ID, because they’ve never owned cars. Preventing them from voting unless they go get an ID is infringing on their rights. This should make libertarians really mad. They should be against this law, based on their own political philosophy. Premise 2 is contrary to the facts, and to what they believe. That’s really funny.

Premise 3 is also really funny, because it is false for the same reasons that libertarians say gun control laws wouldn’t work. I can almost hear Glenn Beck responding to premise 3, “Oh, require IDs to prevent voter fraud? Please, tell me more about how criminals don’t know how to get fake IDs.” We are already talking about a very small number of people who intend to commit voter fraud, and if they really wanted to, they could easily get a fake ID. Lots of college kids do it all the time.

If you imagine that this law had been proposed by the Democrats, then you can probably predict exactly how conservatives would object to it. They would object to premise 2 because voter ID laws infringe the right to vote of those who don’t already have IDs. They would object to premise 3 because criminals don’t follow laws, so the only people being prevented from voting are law-abiding citizens who don’t have IDs. These are actually pretty good reasons to disagree with the law, and they are fully consistent with conservative political philosophy.  It makes you wonder why they even like this law.  Oh, because it will prevent lots of poor people from voting, and poor people are likely to vote for Obama.  Now I remember.

I think this argument is so funny because it shows us how willing we are to ignore what we believe in order to defend a position that we want to be true.  Political conservatives aren’t the only one’s who do this, but they are the funniest example of it.  I hear the radio host say things on Wednesday that directly contradict what he said on Tuesday, and he pretends he doesn’t realize it.  That’s really funny.

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Seth Kurtenbach is a philosophy Master’s student and computer science PhD student at the University of Missouri.  His research focuses on applications of formal logic and game theory to questions about knowledge and rationality.  He is growing a mighty beard, in order to increase his philosophical powers [EDIT:  The beard is currently shorn].  Feel free to contact Seth at seth.kurtenbach@gmail.com with inquiries about philosophy, logic, guest blogging, or visiting to give a presentation!

Helpful resources:

Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org

YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current, NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup

Blogs: Zachary Ernst,  Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick, Rationally Speaking.

The (Un)Death of a Dream

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I sincerely want the zombie apocalypse to happen.  I want to wander the post-apocalyptic countryside with my katana (or machete) slaying the monsters all day and night. Such a cruel joke the universe has played in offering me the false promise of a coming apocalypse. Skeptics, gather your toolboxes, and prepare yourselves for what may be a painful debunking.

For years I clutched them to my breast as a harmless indulgence of my childish lust for the fantastic.  But now that stupid old reality has flirted with the notion of zombies, I must confront the dream, and let it die.  After much thought and cognitive dissonance, I’ve emerged with my skepticism intact.

But oh how I wish it were true.  I am sure I’m not unique in this regard.  My generation looks forward to the zombie apocalypse as eagerly as the greatest generation looks forward to the rapture.  We’ve grown up projecting our rage and alienation onto zombies, and then imagining ourselves wantonly slaughtering them without mercy.  We were born to kill zombies. The post-apocalyptic countryside is our promised land, in which we may finally vent our 20+ years of pent up social aggression.  We want this so bad, that even the slightest spark of pseudo-evidence might set our imaginations ablaze and burn down our carefully constructed rational worldview.

We are witnessing the birth of a paranormal belief cult, and if we’re not careful, we may serve as midwife.  The media feeding frenzy is capitalizing on our collective obsession with zombies, and providing stories that could be mistaken as evidence for zombies, perhaps offered humorously at first.  All it takes is time and internet incubation for this silly little fantasy to blossom into a genuine threat to public rationality.  As an avid fantasizer of the zombie apocalypse, it is with great sadness that I now prepare myself to debunk the forthcoming zombie craze.  Zombies have become a thing that will soon need be debunked. Soon, The zombie apocalypse will be our Nessie.  Our Bigfoot.  Our UFO’s.  As skeptics, it will be our enemy.  This realization ruined my day.

Of course, I do not dismiss the possibility of zombies a priori.  It may be that zombies are real and in the early stages of uprising.  I hope so.  But I’m skeptical.  I invite the rest of you, who also hope for a zombie uprising, to remain skeptical.  Let us adopt the position of James Randi in his quest for real magic; of Joe Nickell in his investigation of monsters; of Sagan on UFO’s.  We would be delighted if it were true, but we don’t let that determine what we believe, or even what we pretend to believe, for the lulz.  Even if you never took the recent events so seriously, you can recognize that many of the internet trolls, in their dark, damp, stinky internet caves, have taken it quite seriously, and really do believe that the event in Miami (and those elsewhere) heralds the zombie uprising.  Any tiny bit of encouragement we give the trolls now, we reap ten-fold five years down the road when we find ourselves scrambling to debunk the virally spreading zunkum (zombie-bunkum), should the zombie apocalypse turn out to be fictitious.

To conclude, I’ll say that the events reported by the media that have thus far fueled the zombie craze are insufficient to support the conclusion that the zombie apocalypse is happening.  I remain open-minded on the issue, but am inclined toward the negative, despite my desire for the positive.  But, I have been refining my post-apocalypse survival plan with my post-apocalypse partner, and we should be in good shape.  It is rational to be prepared.

Art by John Stephens @ http://thecinema12.blogspot.com/

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Seth Kurtenbach is a philosophy Master’s student and computer science PhD student at the University of Missouri.  His research focuses on applications of formal logic and game theory to questions about knowledge and rationality.  He is growing a mighty beard, in order to increase his philosophical powers.  Feel free to contact Seth at seth.kurtenbach@gmail.com with inquiries about philosophy, logic, guest blogging, or visiting to give a presentation!

Helpful resources:

Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org

YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current, NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup

Blogs: Zachary Ernst,  Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick, Rationally Speaking.

Good Old-Fashioned Cynicism

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Cynicism gets a bad rap these days.  The same is true of skepticism, but our little sub-culture is making some progress in restoring its positive connotation.  I think cynicism as a philosophical position deserves a second chance.  One of religion’s big attractions is its offering of a package deal.  It offers its believers an overall guide to life, in a variety of domains: moral, metaphysical, epistemic.  Humans like this sort of one-stop shopping.  It is easier to pick up a single package of philosophies than it is to root around town for singular philosophies in each domain.  Well, we offer religious believers with an alternative position on the God question and epistemic virtues when we cheer for atheism and skepticism.  But from a consumer perspective, this is not enough, because this leaves them having to seek out new moral and metaphysical positions.  We see this happen when newly minted atheists and skeptics wander down strange paths of nihilism, egoism, or solipsism.  Some good old-fashioned cynicism might be just what the doctor ordered.

Of course, the old-fashioned cynicism is not quite the same as the modern sense of the term.  Adherents of the current form of cynicism tend to be jaded and untrusting, whereas the ancient cynics strove for lives of simplicity and virtue.  They were immaterialistic in the economic sense, but materialistic in the metaphysical sense.  It may seem that the two cynics are completely different, and wholly unrelated.  But I don’t think so.  I think the modern-day cynics just need a few of their value-judgments adjusted, and maybe all will be right as rain.

Old school cynicism, like most solid philosophical positions, comes from the Greeks, and was influenced by Indian philosophy.  Basically, the cynics rejected social conventions of etiquette, religion, and morality, and probably other things as well, and chose instead to live a life of simple pursuits.  They sought to live in harmony with nature, become self-sufficient, and master their minds.  The latter two are familiar goals for many of us today, who value autonomy.  Skeptics strive to achieve mental autonomy by forming beliefs in accord with rigorous epistemic scrutiny, so this master of the mind is already familiar to us.  Becoming self-sufficient is sort of an ideal of American mythology, wherein one rises to riches from the rags of one’s bootstraps or something.  The cynical ideal of self-sufficiency strives for an element of this American ideal, but leaves out the “rise to riches” part.

I think modern cynics still have the core cynical property of rejecting convention and being generally anti-society, for societies of a certain sort.  This is the negative project of cynicism: to question social norms, values, and conventions.  If this is all a cynic does, she will behave as most modern cynics do.  However, with a slight tweak in values, and the motivation of a desire to live virtuously, I see no reason the modern day cynics can’t offer a positive philosophy in the domain of “meaning of life”.  It’s a meaning of life without the intentional, purposeful attachments that accompany religious meanings of life, sure, but still it is an approach to meaning in life.  We look at ourselves and see that we’re natural creatures of a certain sort, we observe a mental state called ‘happiness’ and see that its good, and that the one called ‘suffering’ is bad.  We see that certain behaviors tend to produce happiness, whereas others tend to produce suffering. These are facts about our species, some of which generalize to other species that are similar to us in relevant respects.  It is a sort of ascetism in that it rejects the value of wantonly accumulating material things, but it does so because it thinks this behavior is most conducive to being virtuous and happy.

Modern cynics are known for their value of cutting social satire.  Well, the production of similar satirical observations was a favorite past time of Diogenes, the most famous cynic ever.  On the good old-fashioned cynical view of the meaning of life, satire is highly valued.  I posted a blog the other day about old-timey American writer Ambrose Bierce, saying he was cynical and skeptical as shit.  I meant it in the old-fashioney sense.  His satire criticized social norms and values, he was skeptical about the justifications of religious and political claims, and I imagine he sought self-sufficiency (since he was an old-timey American), but he lacked some of the positive elements of cynicism.  Had he included the positive elements of old-fashioned cynicism, he may have been happier.

In short, with the powers of skepticism and cynicism combined, having properly explained the tenets of each, we’ve got ourselves a nice package-deal.  The epistemic position of skepticism, I think, leads to the atheistic God position (I know, Rocket, one can point to skeptical theists; I think they were doing it wrong) and the naturalistic metaphysical position.  The meaning-of-life position of cynicism (consistent with naturalism) leads to a moral position close to something like a hybrid of utilitarianism and Buddhism (I know I haven’t established these last claims yet; I’m just spit-balling now…), which reminds me a bit of Sam Harris’s moral view.

Our skepticism/cynicism mascot.

But, perhaps most importantly, (This is for you, Dave!), the word “cynic” comes from the Greek word κυνικός (kynikos), which means “Dog-like,” from the word κύων (kyôn), for “dog”.  We have a ready-made symbol for all of our bumper-stickers and tattoos and whatnot.  Plus, Americans love dogs, so that’s a selling point.  “American, don’t you wish you lived a life more like your dog’s?  Well now you can.  Try skepticism and cynicism as a package-deal philosophy.”

Of course, none of this will ever work, because the negative connotations of both words are too entrenched, and Americans have developed into lazy, vicious idiots, who will believe anything if it is written in gilded letters, served with a free buffet, and tells you “don’t worry, you don’t have to change anything about yourself.  Just believe in magic.”  I don’t know.  Call me a cynic.

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Seth Kurtenbach is a philosophy Master’s student and computer science PhD student at the University of Missouri.  His research focuses on applications of formal logic and game theory to questions about knowledge and rationality.  He is growing a mighty beard, in order to increase his philosophical powers.  Feel free to contact Seth at seth.kurtenbach@gmail.com with inquiries about philosophy, logic, guest blogging, or visiting to give a presentation!

Helpful resources:

Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org

YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current, NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup

Blogs: Zachary Ernst,  Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick, Rationally Speaking.

Ambrose Bierce: A writer you should read

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Ambrose Bierce was an American writer from the 19th century.

Ambrose Bierce, looking skeptical

Here are some excerpts from his celebrated The Devil’s Dictionary:

FAITH, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

RELIGION, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

SCRIPTURES, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.

RUBBISH, n. Worthless matter, such as the religions, philosophies, literatures, arts and sciences of the tribes infesting the regions lying due south from Boreaplas.

MAN, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.

ACADEME, n. An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught.

CHRISTIAN, n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.

ADMIRATION, n. Our polite recognition of another’s resemblance to ourselves.

ACADEMY, n. [from ACADEME] A modern school where football is taught.

ACCUSE, v.t. To affirm another’s guilt or unworth; most commonly as a justification of ourselves for having wronged him.

BOUNDARY, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other.

MIRACLE, n. An act or event out of the order of nature and unaccountable, as beating a normal hand of four kings and an ace with four aces and a king.

Bierce was cynical and skeptical as shit. His satire had a bit more bite than Colbert’s.

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Seth Kurtenbach is a philosophy Master’s student and computer science PhD student at the University of Missouri.  His research focuses on applications of formal logic and game theory to questions about knowledge and rationality.  He is growing a mighty beard, in order to increase his philosophical powers.  Feel free to contact Seth at seth.kurtenbach@gmail.com with inquiries about philosophy, logic, guest blogging, or visiting to give a presentation!

Helpful resources:

Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org

YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current, NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup

Blogs: Zachary Ernst,  Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick, Rationally Speaking.

Skepticism, Depression, and Addiction

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I’m Seth, and I have all three of those things.  I had the latter two before I caught the former, so I don’t think skepticism is responsible for my being depressed and an addict.  In fact, I think skepticism helps me deal with my two monkeys.  Before becoming a practicing skeptic, I relied heavily on my emotions and unreflective intuitions for guidance.  This got me into trouble.  Some people may be lucky enough to have a virtuously constituted character, such that their intuitions and emotions reliably guide them to prudent decisions, but I am not one of them.  In order to act wisely, it takes a lot of effort for me.  Skepticism develops my calm, slow-thinking rumination skills, such that I’m less impulsive and more cautious about following my gut.  This is a good thing for me, and I think it can help others with similar mental problems.

Abe Lincoln had depression, and he was pretty cool.

At Skepticon IV, JT Eberhard surprised many of us with a talk about why the skeptic community should engage society on issues related to mental health.  His argument was a powerful analogy:  As skeptics, we combat the pseudoscientific claims made by the homeopathic/alternative medicine community, and those of the anti-vaccination collective, because they can result in serious harm to patients suffering from medical conditions, for example, death. Similarly, American culture adopts pseudoscientific views about mental health, associating disorders with weaknesses of character and shunning counseling, and this can result in serious harm to patients suffering from mental disorders, for example, death. So, we should care about this cultural stigma against mental disorders, and raise consciousness about it.  That sounds pretty good to me.

I think there’s another way that skepticism can help.  Not only can skepticism raise public awareness about the scientific view of mental disorders, but it can also directly save lives by changing people’s decision-making processes.  We often encounter the claim that religion can offer a person a sense of meaning in life, and a feeling of comfort sufficient to ameliorate the effects of depression.  While in treatment, they told me I could quit drinking only if I surrendered to a higher power, and most people offer God as the very higher power one needs.  So, religion often claims two potential benefits over skepticism: 1) ameliorates depression; 2) “treats” addiction.  In fact, I think skepticism offers both of these benefits, and does so better than any religion.

Being a good skeptic is not about believing a certain set of propositions.  It is about conditioning one’s mind to slow down, and follow the grueling path of reason.  You can be a good skeptic who believes false things, true things, or nothing at all. It is all about cultivating a defensive, reflective mind, and being wary of adopting something on insufficient grounds.  It may not be immediately clear how this helps ameliorate depression, because most people associate depression with a feeling of sadness, and so assume the amelioration of depression is some sort of positive emotion.  So, for many, it makes sense that religion should ameliorate depression, because it includes beliefs about life and the afterlife that make one feel good.  Skepticism doesn’t really do this.  But that’s okay, because depression is really not about feeling sad.  Depression is the weight that presses you into your bed in the morning, so many times stronger than mere gravity.  It is the void that pulls on you, inviting you to experience the relative bliss of nothingness.  It is an acute awareness of, and even fixation on, one’s own mortality.  Death calls to a depressed person like the sea calls to a pirate.  For us, it seems like going home.  But, upon some sober reflection, we see that this is not really what we want.

Practicing skepticism develops this skill, or habit, of sober reflection. The same way skepticism can lead one away from religion, it can lead a depressed person off the ledge (I don’t mean that to be a reference to the movie.  I haven’t seen it.).  Skepticism allows you to question the thoughts and impulses that come to you like whispers in the night, from deep down in your brain.  You ask yourself, “Why do I want to do this? Do I have a good reason for thinking this? Is this a decision I would make after thinking about it more carefully?”  For us depressed types, the answer is often “no” when the thoughts and impulses come from our intuitions, or emotions.  Each time you confront an intuitive impulse with reason, you win a tiny victory, and you get better at it.  You learn to recognize that sometimes your brain does things that aren’t really in your best interest, or aren’t otherwise rational.  For me, I sometimes have vivid images of stabbing myself in the chest come out of nowhere.  This happens less frequently now that I’m being treated.  I’ve learned to acknowledge that my brain is just misbehaving when it does this, and that its not really something I want to do, upon due reflection.  Similarly, when I hear the call of the void, I acknowledge that my brain is probably low on some chemical, and that upon further reflection I’ll see that life is overall pretty good.  I think skepticism can help other people in this very same way.  And you don’t even need to believe any false things to experience the benefit!

Regarding addiction, I must say I still have a bit of resentment. For three months, one hour each day, I was forced to sit and listen to religious inmates talk about how I needed to surrender to the higher power – that I can’t quit drinking on my own.  Because I was in a state institution, a secular alternative was offered, called S.O.S. (Save Our Selves, or Secular Organizations for Sobriety), but this group was also run by religious inmates who merely didn’t take sobriety seriously.  They used the hour as an opportunity to goof off and complain about the staff, whereas the Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous groups at least took the sessions seriously.  I told the AA group I was an atheist, and that I didn’t believe in anything like the higher power they believed in.  They told me my higher power could be anything; even a coffee maker.  Others were more reasonable, and said the higher power could be something like the group itself.  But honestly, I just never felt like surrendering myself to the group.  I don’t like joining groups, let alone surrendering to them.

Well, I figured reason itself makes a decent stand-in for a higher power.  It’s not something I worship, and I don’t surrender to it in any meaningful sense, but with skepticism’s help I can put brakes on my brain, and let reason influence my decisions.  With brakes applied, I realize I never really have a good reason to drink.  Just like with religion, and just like with depression, I’ve conditioned myself to recognize the urges to drink for what they are: screams from the non-rational part of my brain, resting on cultural norms and chemical deficiencies in my brain.  They are things to be resisted by slowing down and thinking carefully, just like any other faulty rationalization.  When the passions flame up and start pulling on us, skepticism teaches us to do nothing for a while, until the flames die down. It is not always easy to do nothing, but it is always possible, I think.  Practicing skepticism makes it easier.

Group therapy definitely helps with depression and alcoholism/addiction, but I think the secular alternative to AA/NA needs to be more publicly available.  I’m sure there are lots of skeptics out there with problems like mine who aren’t keen on going to a thinly veiled religious service.  The secular alternative, S.O.S., is a program run through CFI, and you can look for nearby meetings here, or see about starting one in your own community, I reckon.  I should see about doing that.

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Seth Kurtenbach is a philosophy Master’s student and computer science PhD student at the University of Missouri.  His research focuses on applications of formal logic and game theory to questions about knowledge and rationality.  He is growing a mighty beard, in order to increase his philosophical powers.  Feel free to contact Seth at seth.kurtenbach@gmail.com with inquiries about philosophy, logic, guest blogging, or visiting to give a presentation!

Helpful resources:

Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org

YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current, NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup

Blogs: Zachary Ernst,  Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick, Rationally Speaking.

On Hume On Miracles

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A while back we had a preacher-man on Mizzou’s campus who looked and sounded like a younger John Malkovich with hair. I’ll call him John Malkovich in this article.

He approached me with the following strategy:  he would convince me to believe in the supernatural by appealing to David Hume’s empiricism, and relating his personal testimony of two miracles.  It’s not the worst strategy in the world, because he starts with what he has good reason to believe is common ground shared between us.  As a skeptic and naturalist, Hume is basically a hero of mine, so appealing to his philosophical principles and showing that something follows from them is a good way to convince me of something.  But showing that something follows from something else is hard to do. I helped him understand this, if only for a moment.

Empiricism holds that our beliefs about the external world are justified only insofar as the observable evidence supports them.  John Malkovich is a chemist, so he appreciates the value of empiricism, he said.  He starts his argument on this premise, that empirical observation is paramount when it comes to justifying beliefs.  He appealed to skeptic and empiricist David Hume to indicate that I, too, should adhere to beliefs that are justified by empirical evidence and observation.

I agree.

David Hume, Skeptical Badass

He then presented me with the following miraculous tales.  Initially, I was led to believe that these are first-hand accounts.

Miracle 1. An atheist in Germany leaves a hospital and observes a group of Christians gathered in prayer.  He approaches them and says, “The doctor just told me I have cancer.  Where’s God now?”  The Christians vow to pray for him.  One week later, the man returns to the hospital, and exits with good news.  He no longer has cancer!  Apparently, the Christians’ prayers were answered, and the atheist is now a firm believer.

Miracle 2. A woman’s apartment is full of ants.  She prays to God to get rid of the ants.  She falls asleep, and the next morning is telling her neighbor about how she had ants in her apartment before bed, but now they are gone.  The neighbor complains that before he went to bed last night, a veritable hoard of ants invaded his apartment, which is adjacent to hers.  She smiles knowingly.

What say thee, empirical skeptic? Canst thou even stand against this torrential current of evidence for the supernatural, or doth it knock thee over?  Even Hume himself would bend the knee to these tales!

My initial reaction, admittedly, was that Malkovich was telling me falsehoods, perhaps unintentionally.  I told him as much.  This was unproductive, as my reason for doubting that these events happened was not grounded in any particular observation.  My doubt resulted from the general beliefs I have about rumors, stories, and how they tend to become exaggerated and altered for the storyteller’s purposes.  So, I granted him that both of these things in fact happened as he told them.

In supposing that the events actually happened, I did get him to concede that these were not first-hand accounts, but rather at best second-hand.  This was useful because it undermined his own empirical grounds for the beliefs: he no longer observed the two potential miracles, but observed merely the report of miracles.  The two observations are very different.

I told him it was interesting that he should approach me with an appeal to Hume’s authority, as I happened to have David Hume’s Essay on Miracles handy in my bag.  I asked him if he would like to see what Hume actually says about miracles and empiricism.  He hesitantly said sure.  I think he was counting on me not knowing much about Hume other than that I should want to be like him, and then making claims about Hume that weren’t true, like that his position leads to the justified belief in miracles.  In fact, Hume explicitly lays out exactly why a belief in the miraculous is never justified.  For any purported miracle, there are at least two explanations:  1) it really is a miracle, 2) someone is mistaken.  In favoring an explanation, we must decide which is more probable.  It turns out, the second hypothesis is always more probable than the first.  So, Hume denies the justified belief in miracles on principle.

But of course, Malkovich now claimed to mean something different than Hume when he refered to miracles.  He didn’t mean that miracles are violations or interventions of the laws of nature, but rather the influence by God on events for the benefit of someone.  Okay, I’ll play along.

This got me the next concession: I am justified in believing these accounts of miracles only if there is no naturalistic explanation available.  This conforms to methodological naturalism, a basic tenet of empiricism and science generally.  He agreed, on the condition that I continued granting that everything actually happened as he presented it.

Here’s what I came up with.

Miracle 1. The atheist in Germany just received a false positive test result indicating that he had cancer.  Distraught, he exited the hospital and challenged the (perhaps annoying) Christians gathered near the hospital.  A week later (or however long it actually took to schedule a follow-up), he is tested again, and this time the results come back a true negative: he never had cancer in the first place.  Of course, the doctor may not have raised the possibility that the first test was a false positive, so the patient may not have been aware that he actually never had cancer.  The doctor himself may not have been aware that the first result was a false positive.  Thus, we have a completely naturalistic explanation accounting for the purportedly miraculous event.

Miracle 2. The ants moved on to the next apartment on their own, as ants sometimes do.

There we have it.  At this point, Malkovich was summoned by Brother Jed to return to his preaching, as Jed had need of the authority of a PhD chemist turned preacher-man.  I am interested for Malkovich to return to campus, because I’m eager to test my hypothesis that he will still be using this story to try and convince people in miracles.  What’s most alarming is that these are just not very impressive to non-skeptics.  Ants??

_________________________________________________________________________

Seth Kurtenbach is a philosophy Master’s student and computer science PhD student at the University of Missouri.  His research focuses on applications of formal logic and game theory to questions about knowledge and rationality.  He is growing a mighty beard, in order to increase his philosophical powers.  Feel free to contact Seth at seth.kurtenbach@gmail.com with inquiries about philosophy, logic, guest blogging, or visiting to give a presentation!

Helpful resources:

Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org

YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current, NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup

Blogs: Professor Zac Ernst,  Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick, Rationally Speaking.

Proudly I Am The Fool

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The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.

Psalm 14:1

Sometimes theists say this to me. They mean to call me a fool.  Of course, it’s not them saying it; they are merely quoting the bible.  If I weren’t properly medicated, that sorta thing might hurt my feelings.  I used to just tell myself, “nah, it’s not true, Seth.  You’re not a fool.”  But maybe I am a fool.  After all, it says so in the bible.

But let’s take a closer look at it, and see if we can’t find a more positive reading. Perhaps we can follow Tyrion’s advice, and wear the epithet like armor.

Fool

Harold Bloom tells us “there is no god but god, and his name is William Shakespeare.” So, let’s see what William Shakespeare thinks of the Fool.

The Shakespearean Fool archetype appears in a number of his plays, providing comic relief for the audience, but also representing a powerful statement about seeing through the bullshit of the powerful elite, full of self-delusions.

The Fool has the courage to violate social norms and question claims of authority.  In this way, the Fool is the best representative of skepticism from all of literature.

One thing all Fools have in common is that they fearlessly speak the truth to the socially powerful.  Fool (his name) in King Lear ruthlessly criticizes the eponymous character, and lives to tell about it!  Few others boast as much.  We skeptics should delight in being compared to so noble a character, fearlessly speaking in defense of truth, despite the potential social ramifications of doing so.

And don’t even get me started about Falstaff!  Falstaff is by far my favorite character in all of Shakespeare.  He is both Fool and Vice rolled into one.  Surely the bible says elsewhere that we atheists and skeptics are vicious.  I think later in that same Psalm passage we are accused of being corrupt and vile.  Well then, if any character represents us, it is Falstaff.

You see, Falstaff is an old knight who wanders the streets and taverns of the wrong side of town with the young Prince Hal, who later becomes King Henry V (“…we few, we happy few, we band of brothers…”).  He straightforwardly serves as a corrupting force for the prince, inviting him to question the righteousness proclaimed by the aristocracy, as well as the justification of what they deem to be virtues.  He also impiously dismisses religious authority.

He was definitely a heavy drinker, and in his death is reported to have cried out about drink.  This suggests that he drank himself to death.   To summarize, he was an anti-authoritarian impious corrupter of youth who challenged social norms and who died as a result of drinking.  Who else does this remind you of?

Socrates?  Me too!

So, Falstaff is an allusion to Socrates. That’s pretty neat!  In fact, Socrates himself was a sort of Fool character.  He is best represented by the character in Plato’s allegory of the cave who returns to the cave from the outside world, whose eyes are no longer adjusted to the dimness of the reality recognized by the prisoners.  He stumbles around and questions the importance of the shadows on the wall, and demands that the other prisoners question their received view of reality as well.  Eventually, Plato’s characters agree, the prisoners will kill the foolish stumbler; what he’s saying is inconvenient.  Surely this is a reference to the fact that the Athenians killed Socrates for impiety and corruption of the youth.  All he really did was wander around pointing out the unjustified assumptions made by the socially powerful, making them look stupid.  He may have been a Fool, but he definitely wasn’t stupid.

And the same goes for the rest of us Fools, I think.  Let the theists quote their Psalm.  Let us quote to them Shakespeare and Plato, who revere the Fool’s courage to question and probe the most basic assumptions of society.

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.

- As You Like It

I am wiser than this man … he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing … I do not fancy I know what I do not know.

- Apology

So, I’m pretty damn flattered that the bible would count me among the ranks of these folks.  And it’s in the bible, so you know it’s true.  You’re goddam right I’m a Fool.  And proud of it.

_________________________________________________________________________

Seth Kurtenbach is a philosophy PhD student at the University of Missouri.  His research focuses on applications of formal logic and game theory to questions about knowledge and rationality.  He is growing a mighty beard, in order to increase his philosophical powers.  Feel free to contact Seth at seth.kurtenbach@gmail.com with inquiries about philosophy, logic, guest blogging, or visiting to give a presentation!

Helpful resources:

Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org

YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current, NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup

Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick, Rationally Speaking.

The Intuitive Response to Criticism of Religion

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Hi, I’m Seth Kurtenbach.  Some hubbub recently developed regarding a recent Science article, or rather, its title.  Like most of the respondents, I haven’t read the article, but that’s okay, because I mean to comment only on the responses to it.  I’m told by a very reliable source that the study itself, consisting of five experiments approaching the issue from a variety of angles, was well-designed and well-executed, and that in the article the authors carefully discourage overly-zealous inferences from the results.  I want to focus on two things here.  First, I’ll seek an explanation for why Professor Ernst, the very reliable source, is so accommodating to religious belief, while elsewhere in his blog he is confrontational toward political positions rather than religious ones, appealing to similar rhetorical techniques as the atheists he decries.  I think this difference among his treatments of positions with which he disagrees is explainable in terms of social taboos.  Second, I will take a look at this theist’s intuitive response to Scientific American‘s report on the Science article.  His response is a good illustration of why intuition is a poor guide to critical thinking.

In his article on the religious belief stuff, Ernst writes,

But I also don’t come down on the side of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and the rest who often resort to rhetoric when it comes to questions of faith. I think they do everyone a disservice, and that a lot of people on all sides of this issue deserve a lot more respect.

This is interesting for two reasons.  First, earlier in his blog, Ernst explains that he’s an atheist, and that he’s not one of those “what’s true for some may not be true for others” sort of atheist,

I’m an atheist, and have been for all my adult life (and much of my life before that, too). I’ve never been shy about being an atheist, and I definitely don’t take the view that atheists and religious believers can both be “right” in any meaningful sense. If anything is true, it is that God either exists or does not exist, and there’s no middle ground to be had. Someone has to be wrong about the question of the existence of God. My opinion is that people who believe in God are wrong…

Now, I know Ernst personally, and I bet he’s got some pretty damn good reasons for being an atheist, and for disagreeing with the conclusion of theists.  I bet his reasons against theism are about as good as, if not better than, his reasons against free-market libertarianism.  He describes his position in that debate thus [his emphasis],

Of the people who profess to believe in the efficiency of unfettered free markets, there are actually two types: wingnuts and hypocrites.

Of course, after making such a strong rhetorical claim, he proceeds to give reasons backing it up.  They are good reasons, in my opinion, and I agree with him on the issue.

So, why the difference in treatment regarding theists and free-market libertarians?  Why so polite and respectful to theists, but so rhetorical and confrontational to free-market libertarians?  I think the explanation is simple:  it is still somewhat socially taboo to criticize religion, but political beliefs are perfectly fair game.  Dawkins and Dennett are often quick to point out this inconsistency of behavior.  There’s no reason that religious beliefs should be free from the exact same type of aggressive criticism that political beliefs receive.  I know Ernst thinks that there are at least two types of theists: dishonest (Plantinga) and deceived (Plantinga’s acolytes); why not give them the royal treatment as well?  It would make people feel uncomfortable, and probably hurt some feelings, but why is that a reason against such rhetoric, when exactly that type of rhetoric is used in political discourse?

Speaking of hurt feelings, let’s take a look at Trent Dougherty’s response to the title of the Scientific American article. Trent tells us that the article in Scientific American caused him to become angry and annoyed, and that these emotional responses prompted him to write a rhetorical, snarky response.  He also tells us that he’s writing the article in a rush, as he’s on his way to a conference (perhaps ironically, the conference is called LOGOS), so he doesn’t have time to remove the emotional snarkiness.  However, he also indicates that he deems his angry response appropriate after giving it some reflection.  I’m not sure how he had enough time to reflect on his anger’s appropriateness, but wrote the resulting article in a rush, late for a LOGOS conference.  Due reflection tends to calm me down considerably.  But then, I’m on quite a bit of Prozac.

It seems like Trent is primarily reacting to the title of the article, “How Critical Thinkers Lose Their Faith in God: Religious belief drops when analytical thinking rises.”  My limited knowledge of magazines suggests that titles are often the work of editors, interested in generating attention and controversy. Trent also notes that most of his anger is due to the stuff

“around” the article: that the study would be run the way it was, that so many important questions go unasked, the propagandistic title, the responses to and uses of it etc.

But, Trent mostly directs his anger at the article itself, primarily because it does not support the zeal of the title,

Now look back at the title. What a joke. There is not even a suggestion in the SA article about loss of faith in God. It is not even mentioned.

So, he’s mostly mad about the title, because it is about God and the article is not about God, yet nonetheless he’s determined to

go through [the article] line-by-line to keep focus during the rage.

I’m not sure Trent actually read the original article in Science, but he nonetheless critiques it in virtue of Scientific American‘s report on it (or at least the title of the report).  It seems his emotional response is causing him to completely lose focus on the proper target of his criticism.  This is a potential side-effect of intuitive thinking, I’d say.

Part of Trent’s critique defends theism in virtue of its intuitive appeal, asking, “Don’t we *want* people to think intuitively? Isn’t that better than the alternative?”  Given that the alternative is discursive, analytical thinking, I’d say ‘no’, intuitive thinking is not better, especially with respect to fundamental questions of reality.  I think Trent’s article is the result of mostly intuitive thinking, and it seems to highlight the problems with intuitive thinking.

_________________________________________________________________________

Seth Kurtenbach is a philosophy Master’s student and computer science PhD student at the University of Missouri.  His research focuses on applications of formal logic and game theory to questions about knowledge and rationality.  He is growing a mighty beard, in order to increase his philosophical powers.  Feel free to contact Seth at seth.kurtenbach@gmail.com with inquiries about philosophy, logic, guest blogging, or visiting to give a presentation!

Helpful resources:

Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org

YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current, NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup

Blogs: Professor Zac Ernst,  Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick, Rationally Speaking.

Literary Analysis and Skepticism

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Good tidings, fellow literate human. Seth Kurtenbach, here.  As an undergraduate, I double-majored in English and philosophy; two humanities disciplines.  I am currently in grad school for philosophy, but I’m in the process of transferring to the computer science PhD program. This transition from the humanities to science/engineering has lately had me reflecting on the value of the humanities disciplines.  A wise and just eye doctor once while making small-talk mused that grad school must be designed to make one hate his/her discipline.  In my experience, this is partially true, as I developed a topsy-turvey love-hate relationship with philosophy.  As a soon to be former humanities person, I’d like to note some of the wonderful things about the humanities that I discovered over the course of my studies.

I have for several years had a severe case of science envy.  As an English major and novice philosopher, I looked at the benefits science confers on humanity in terms of knowledge and technology, and then looked for analogous benefits in the humanities and found none.  Philosophy surely cultivates in one a deep respect for truth, and the desire to search for it, but I failed to see how philosophy contributed to humanity’s knowledge in the same way that science clearly did.  In science, things are tentatively settled, frequently with great confidence, by empirical observation.  Likewise, the study of literature failed to yield similarly tangible knowledge.  I wanted to participate in a field that paid for itself by its fruits.

Carl Sagan and other science advocates didn’t help!  So much ink and youtube data dedicated to celebrating science, and rightfully so, and hardly any for the humanities.  Who speaks for the humanities?  Massimo Pigliucci and youtube user SisyphusRedeemed do well to support philosophy, but what of the other humanities? Specifically, what about English?  On the back end of the so-called Science Wars, has English lost all intellectual value?  Maybe Post-modernism in some (all?) respects, but certainly not the entire discipline… right?!?  I feared as much.

So, I gravitated away from English, and toward the most rigorous and science-y corner of analytic philosophy: logic.  I’m glad I did.  I love logic.  But while in grad school, I’ve several times noted to myself that I miss analyzing literature, and discussing it with peers.  It was the activity itself that I enjoyed, the sharpening of my intellectual skills on a fictional whetstone.  It was an opportunity to reason about the best interpretation of data without the pressure of being factually wrong in the same way one can be wrong about a scientific fact.  It is the intellectual sandbox, or the sparring ring.

Upon due reflection, I think I see the value of the humanities.  I think they are basically why I am a skeptic.  With proper pedagogy, it can tend to make other students skeptical as well.  I recall the results of a relatively recent study, which indicate that the humanities and social sciences tend to make one less religious.  All the time playing in the sandbox, sparring in the intellectual ring, makes one better at asking questions and evaluating claims.  I’m not claiming it’s the only discipline that does this, but I think it does this really well because of its availability.  Sadly, not everyone finds science intrinsically interesting, so for those people the most they are likely to get out of a science class is the memorization of facts and procedures. Almost everyone is interested in good literature, good stories.

Also, at the beginner and intermediate level, most of the science learned is established scientific doctrine.  Novices learn the science that the vast majority of scientists are in agreement about.  There is little to be disputed, doubted, questioned.  However, any plot point, character decision, or literary technique can be questioned by anyone.  With the guidance of a teacher, students learn to examine things from multiple angles and converge on a best interpretation of the “data” (the ‘textual evidence’ as it’s called in the business).  The student develops the ability to think critically and ask substantive questions.

The study of literature develops the qualities of reflection and introspection.  In order to evaluate literature, a student must examine the impact it has on him or her, and deeply reflect on this.  This ability to reflect deeply on material and introspect about one’s thought processes is valuable for many domains beyond the classroom.  It is a transferable skill that the student gains.  The development of this skill is valuable for the student, and having students with this skill is valuable for society.  More reflective, introspective citizens tend to make better decisions on the large scale, I suspect.

Interpreting the elements of a story often involves reasoning abstractly about symbols.  To reason abstractly is to identify the properties of a particular that do not depend on  its concrete details.  For many non-mathematicians/logicians, this is the first and  best opportunity to develop the skill of higher-level thinking.  The books How to Read Literature Like a Professor and How to Read Novels Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster are excellent training manuals of sorts.  They also serve as excellent examples for how literary analysis develops these higher-level thinking skills.

Higher-level thinking is a valuable skill because reasoning well requires the ability to identify the general principles and forms that underwrite particular claims.  Of course, the study of logic does this explicitly, and identifies those very principles of good reasoning, but the study of literature serves as a sandbox to practice reasoning from particulars, to general principles, and back to particulars again.  This also develops the ability to consider potential counter-examples to general principles, as it familiarizes one with the relation between the two.  For those who do not explicitly study logic in high school or as undergrads, the study of literary analysis may supply the fundamentals skills they’d otherwise be missing.  And again, good literature is often far more interesting to people than formal logic.

Analysis and skepticism go hand in hand, in my humble opinion.  As the graphic illustrates, analysis involves breaking things and studying the pieces.  The things and their constitutive pieces need not be material, but may be things like concepts, ideas, abstract principles, etc.  When someone makes a claim, a skeptic breaks that claim down and looks at the pieces, and then decides if there are good reasons supporting the pieces.

Studying literature helps one practice analysis.  A story is a thing, and a reader’s job is to break it down into pieces and then reassemble them in such a way as to yield meaning.  A good teacher helps the student refine this ability of breaking stories down and studying the pieces.  They call the process a “close reading.”  Again, we see that studying literature serves as a sandbox for developing skills that are important for areas of one’s life beyond school.

Strangely, the value of literary studies does not derive from the academics conducting their research, but from the teachers imparting skills to students.  This is a striking disanalogy with the sciences, where a great deal of the value comes from the discoveries of academic research, in addition to the development of future scientists’ skills.

I suppose a case could be made that when an English professor publishes a book that analyzes the themes of Chaucer, he or she is creating a product that’s available to a larger audience than a semester’s classroom.  However, I think this is false, because most of the books written by professors, which constitute their “research”, are intended to be read by other academics.  Often, the intended audience is not the public at large.  Thus, the research conducted by literature academics are not directly valuable to the public.

However, one can think of academic publications as an opportunity for professors to practice the skills they teach amongst each other, in more challenging sandbox of sorts.  This ensures that their skills are highly refined, and justifies acknowledging them as experts of their fields.  However, if they are only conducting research, and rarely or never teaching, then they seem to be completely valueless.

To summarize, the fruits of English as a discipline come from the skills it develops in students, rather than any increase in humanity’s factual knowledge-base.  I think the study of literature develops the skills one needs in order to be a good skeptic.  Being a good skeptic is not just about knowing scientific facts.  It is primarily about developing a certain set of intellectual virtues and applying them in one’s everyday life.  Literature serves as a sandbox in which to develop these very skills, and the more students play in this sandbox, the better for them and society as a whole, I think.  So, as long as one focuses on teaching, rather than research, English professors may consider theirs an academic discipline that pays for itself by its fruits.

Xzibit and Formal Logic

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Hello.  Seth Here.  Today’s homily will be about the relation between the Xzibit meme and formal logic.  For some, formal logic is like the scary sister of the sexy informal logic you are trying to date.  You want to become as familiar as possible with informal logic, but you try to stay out of sight from formal logic.  Perhaps you spend hours looking at websites exploring every intimate detail of fallacies constituting the body of informal logic, so’s to better woo your mistress.  But to spend hours looking at websites exploring the intimate details of formal logic would just be twisted; a form of sadomasochism.  In some ways, yes, extended study of formal logic is self-torture, and to read about the formal logical pursuits of others is to delight in their suffering.  But in small doses, the drug is beneficial (I freely dance with multiple metaphors at the Ball).  I will show you that if you can reason about the Xzibit meme on the interwebs, you can do formal logic.

First, I want to crush this nasty rumor that informal logic is sexy and cool.  I will do so with an argument.

1. All logic is the study of good reasoning.

2. The study of good reasoning is about good form.

3.  To be about good form is to be formal.

4.  Thus, all logic is formal.

5.  Informal logic is logic.

6.  Informal logic is not formal.

7.  But from 4 and 5, informal logic is formal.

8. Thus, informal logic is a contradiction.

9.  No contradictions are sexy.

10.  No contradictions are cool.

11.  Therefore, informal logic is not sexy, and is not cool.

Informal logic is just a heuristic that makes some aspects of formal logic easier to grasp for the pathetic human brain.  It is actually just formal logic, heavily photoshopped.  Underneath every sexy fallacy from informal logic’s Spring Break album is a shy and demure invalid formal logic formula, waiting to bust out and rock your world.

Because everything is better if Xzibit is involved, I will let Xzibit show you that you already understand how formal logic works.

The Xzibit meme is over 3 years old.  In Internet time that is pre-historic, so I will refresh your memory.

In the show, Pimp My Ride, Xzibit takes the old junker of an episode’s guest and tricks it out in crazy creative ways, often implementing new features based on the guest’s individual goals, desires, and preferences.  The features implemented are such that they do not often appear in a vehicle.  For example, if the episode’s guest is an aspiring singer who loves singing in the car, Xzibit will include a mobile recording studio in the pimped out ride’s console.

The Internet quickly latched on to the formula, and exploited it in absurd ways.  Here is a simple example of the meme.

 

It has been recognized by Cracked.com and knowyourmeme that there is a general form to the Yo Dawg memes.  Based on what I’ve given you, it should be simple to arrive at the generalized form of the meme.  The good news is that this is all there is to formal logic.  If you can understand the general form of the Xzibit meme, then you can understand formal logic.

The general form is:

Yo dawg, I heard you like (X or X-verb), so we put a X in your Y so you can X-verb while you Y-verb.

The X’s and Y’s are variables in the formula.  We could further formalize the formula by giving symbols that represent ‘I heard you like’, ‘so’, ‘we put in’, ‘you can’, and ‘while you’.  This would be no different from how formal logic gives symbols that represent the connectives ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘if…then’, and ‘not’.

Suppose I present an Xzibit meme with the following text:

Yo dawg, I heard you like pool, so we put a pool in your car so you can swim while you drive.

On the face of it, it looks right, where

X = pool

Y = car

X-verb = swim

Y-verb = drive.

However, it should strike you as odd, because the first ‘pool’ is referring to billiards, a game, while the second ‘pool’ is referring to an artificial body of water.  Thus, two different ‘pool’s are being used in the formula, when it should be the same throughout.  This is the fallacy of equivocation.  Formally,

Yo dawg, I heard you like Z, so we put a X in your Y so you can X-verb while you Y-verb.

Z = pool (billiards)

X = pool (body of water)

Y = car

X-verb = swim

Y-verb = drive

This clearly violates the meme’s formula, which does not allow for liked objects that are different from objects put-into-Y.  The liked object (or liked verb) must be the object (or verb form related to the object) put into Y.  Because ‘pool’ has two different meanings, it equivocates.  This has to do with a violation of the formal rules.  And you thought equivocation was an informal fallacy!

If you understand how the general form of the meme relates to the particular example above, then you can understand how formal logic relates to natural language arguments.  In my argument above, against informal logic, we can formalize it thus:

1. All L is R.

2. R is G.

3. G is F.

4. Therefore, all L is F.

5. I is L.

6. I is not F.

7. I is F.

8. I is not F, and I is F; I is C.

9. No C’s are S.

10. No C’s are O.

11. I is not S and I is not O.

We represent each distinct concept as a letter.  We then follow the rules of categorical logic to assess it for validity.  I leave that to the reader.  It is the exact same process as evaluating an Xzibit meme.  Does it have the right form?

The Xzibit meme doesn’t stop at categorical logic.  It can also help you learn about higher order logic, and set theory.  One of the earliest mutations of the meme set X = Y, whereby the Interwebs discovered some of the hilarity of self-reference and recursion.

 

This stems from the set-theoretic notions tied to the definition of “we put in”.  Mathematicians have known for ages that hilarity ensues from sets containing sets!  For example, does the set of all sets that do not contain themselves contain itself?  LoL Frege and Russell.

 

So prevalent did the recursive version of the meme become, that a sub-meme of Xzibit recursion spawned.  His face need only be placed next to some recursive image for the meme to work.

Wineglasses in your wine glass.

Pizzas on your pizza.

And with multiple iterations:

We put a russian doll in your russian doll in your russian doll....

And of course, this version of the meme was a natural marriage with Inception.

If you understand these modified versions of the meme, then you can understand higher 0rder logic and set theory, no problem.

So, if in the past you have felt intimidated by formal logic, and have stayed close to the shore of informal logic, I urge you now to venture forth and fearlessly explore the riches that formal logic has to offer.  Not only will you truly be understanding logic, but it is no more difficult than understanding or crafting a good Yo Dawg meme.

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Seth Kurtenbach is a philosophy PhD student at the University of Missouri.  His research focuses on applications of formal logic and game theory to questions about knowledge and rationality.  He is growing a mighty beard, in order to increase his philosophical powers [EDIT: He recently shaved his mighty beard, and has thus lost all of his philosophical powers.    ].  Feel free to contact Seth at seth.kurtenbach@gmail.com with inquiries about philosophy, logic, guest blogging, or visiting to give a presentation!

Helpful resources:

Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org

YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current, NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup

Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick, Rationally Speaking.