To Doubt, Perchance to Think…

As a skeptic, I doubt. But to what extent and under what circumstances does it remain reasonable to doubt? Does being a ‘true’ skeptic mean that I should doubt absolutely anything and everything, even my own skepticism? My view is that it is untenable to doubt literally everything, not logically possible to do so coherently.

To reject all claims to fact because one cannot confirm or know something absolutely, to practice epistemic nihilism, is, I hold, manifestly unreasonable. I hold further that it is rational to accept the statements of trained experts, not on the basis of authoritarian dogma, but upon the known reliability of those statements they have made and continue to make when speaking within their area of expertise, their area of competence, and so long as one is not given sound cause to doubt those statements.

This is not to say that someone can only be trusted within the confines of a series of letters before or after their names, within the restrictions of a piece of paper hanging from the wall behind their desk, or only within the limits of a narrow specialty, for some people have stellar competency in a number of areas by way of prior training and experience — true polymaths — though these are uncommon to say the least. Sadly, much to my chagrin (Cool! I actually have a chagrin!), I am not one of these.

It IS to say, however, that when any claimed expert makes a statement of fact, that the alleged expert in question be known as reliably trustworthy and to have sufficient ability or familiarity with the matter expounded upon. All it takes to verify someone’s claimed credentials is a simple mouse-click or phone call to the right person.

Do I claim academic or scientific expertise? Well, not yet — though I do have a number of interests that led me to familiarity with certain topics in addition to skeptical issues: for one, as a Cthulhu Mythos geek I can spout off the names, proper pronunciations of said names, the origins, habits, histories, home planets, and even biological details of a variety of Lovecraftian monsters and gods, though this is not much help outside of role-playing gaming circles. It has led, however, to my screen-name and the name of this blog. But I’ve rambled enough…

Knowledge exists, and some people have more than others. This is a fact of life. Those who have more we call ‘experts.’ The fact, the recognition, that some have more knowledge than others is not elitism. To reject this on the basis that it offends one’s beliefs or disagrees with one’s ideology, claims of an ‘establishment’ conspiracy, or simply on reflexive contrarianism, is not skeptical, and not rational. It is to deny, not to seek the truth, but to obstinately refuse it.

What this boils down to is my view that experts acting within their field should generally be trusted, though with the concession that no one is infallible, no one person is an expert in everything, and no one can see the whole picture all by himself or herself — believer or skeptic. That takes the work of a community of experts coming to a broad consensus, which unlike a political consensus is not groupthink, not a vote, and not a popularity contest.

A consensus is reached only after the differences, biases, and other individual quirks have been hammered out, and an overall view, that of the Big Picture is achieved within that community. A scientific consensus, even though still not completely infallible, is a recognition of reality at any given time. Unless there is good reason to do otherwise, a consensus by a community of experts can generally be trusted, more so than the claims of any single individual.

Those who a priori reject the conclusions obtained from a large body of carefully gathered evidence, and who claim that the process of science is somehow broken and that the entire scientific community is wrong, must be able to objectively demonstrate how and why all the experts are wrong and where and how the system is broken or their claims cannot be taken seriously. Sorry, but them’s the breaks…

Post 6716

To me, the investigation of dubious claims takes a back seat to increasing my understanding of the psychology of belief. I don’t want to prejudge people, I want to actually understand how, why, and in what way people, from believers to skeptics and everyone in between believe what they do. I want to know, not just suppose, how belief structures are formed, acquired and protected by those who hold them.

Most people are fairly decent as long as you leave them alone, and many of my friends, loved ones, and casual acquaintances are themselves prone to views and beliefs that I myself don’t harbor. They’re wonderful people, though some times there are a few that for the sake of my sanity, I can only take in small doses.

There’s a chap whose blog I sometimes frequent, a professed psychic whom I have reason to believe is sincere, and whom I can respect, though not without some criticism at times. Does he really have psychic abilities?

As a skeptic, I agree to disagree with him on the validity of psi-research, so as to avoid providing tinder for the common believer straw man of skeptics, I won’t argue from the impossibility of psi, only its implausibility given our current understanding of physical laws.

Will psi ever be reliably demonstrated no matter who is conducting the study protocol, regardless of their personal beliefs and attitudes? I don’t think that the history of psi-research paints a very pretty picture, and I don’t think it’s likely that this will happen, but it would be cool. All hail discordia!

Logical Fallacies — Special Pleading

Special Pleading, or ‘covering one’s ass,’ is a form of argumentation skeptics routinely encounter, and is the concoction of excuses, often called ‘reasons’ by those prone to use them, also known as the ad hoc (or ‘in this case only’) hypothesis, and post-hoc reasoning. This is most often used in the form of arguments that try to ‘explain’ special reasons or invoke a presumed special case in an attempt to rescue a particular claim despite any logic or evidence against it, to dismiss a question, argument, explanation, or lack of evidence as somehow and uniquely not applying to the claim to be salvaged from the jaws of death.

• I took the paranormal challenge, but I couldn’t pass it because I was overwhelmed by the doubt of the skeptics present, which scrambled my powers…

• I failed the test because the stars weren’t right…

• The spirits weren’t favorable to my winning the challenge…

• I was unable to pass the preliminary test because the guy conducting it was a magician who cheated to make me fail by using sleight of hand…

• I couldn’t get a ‘hit’ on my remote viewing test because the target images in the envelope didn’t have a single, distinct, easily visualized (read: easily guessed…) feature for me to to focus my powers on…(remote viewing is myopic?)

• Psychics are real, despite what skeptics claim, but parapsychology has been unable to prove it for over 150 years because researchers have all along been looking in the wrong places and using the wrong methods…

That last one was actually suggested by someone I spoke with a couple of years back. However, even if this is a valid reason for the persistent failure to independently replicate positive results from earlier studies in later studies using the same testing paradigm, unless the claimant can suggest what those correct methods and places might possibly be, it is not very helpful, and brings us no closer to establishing the Psi hypothesis than before. And if the claimant can suggest the correct ways and places, then please, they should kindly inform the parapsychologists of what those are so that they can finally end this (not so) Great Debate once and for all!

This fallacy is prevalent in parapsychology with the so-called Experimenter Effect, recently dubbed by disgruntled parapsychologists the Wiseman Effect (after psychologist Richard Wiseman… Wow! I wish I was notorious enough to believers to have a logical fallacy named after me!) where skeptical disbelief, even accusations of repressed skeptical disbelief in those who sincerely hold themselves to believe, is said to produce an effect that literally in and of its magical self cancels psi-ability in a laboratory demonstration. How can the proponents of psi lose? After all, if you get a positive effect-size, it’s due to a psychic effect, and if you don’t it’s still due to a psychic effect! Really… how do you test that by itself to know if there’s anything really going on? –You can’t. However, here is the non-paranormal form of the experimenter effect that can be tested apart from psi with any area of science.

…and stealing from myself, there’s this one from one of my older posts…

• There really are pixies playing in my garden, but you can’t see them because they’re shy and don’t want you to see them, magically invisible to both optical and infrared light, and can’t be made visible by sprinkling stuff on them because they’re also intangible at will, and oh, did I also mention that you can’t hear them because they’re supernaturally silent whenever they feel like it?

Special pleading can be and often is carried to ridiculous lengths in gross disregard of the skeptics’ rule of thumb known as Occam’s razor, a tool of reason in which smaller leaps of logic are considered preferable to great ones, and in which “elements should not be multiplied unnecessarily,” or more to the point, beyond the plausible ability of the available evidence to support them.

Any argument using this fallacy is thus rendered both unfalsifiable and unprovable, and any idea in science should be framed in testable form, or it is not science. It does no good to say, “you can’t judge my claim because of special reasons X, Y, and Z,” or to provide any other arbitrary excuses that something won’t work, or can’t be tested.

Science is messy, and there are times when a theory must be refined so that it better conforms to the data, but this is not the use of post hoc reasoning: the amendments made to a set of ideas in science are those hypotheses that can be tested independently of the theory, and are those factors which are known to separately exist and have been observed in some fashion.

It’s bad form to have to come up with not only untestable, but irrelevant reasons to prop up an idea that not only fails the test of observation, the test of explanation, and the test of prediction, especially when it has no proverbial leg to stand on as with any flawed idea that forever remains such.

(Last Update 2010/04/02, Text, Image and Link Added)

Contrasts: SETI & UFOlogy

UFO believers who wish to claim an air of scientific legitimacy, or on the other hand perhaps as a sort of tu-quoque argument, will often compare UFOlogy with the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program. It seems to me that they are vastly different, and hardly comparable. Any attempt to compare them is a false analogy.

First, the questions they ask are logically distinct, for where SETI basically asks “Is there intelligent life elsewhere in the universe?,” and answers this with “Perhaps,” UFO ‘experts’ ask “Are we being visited by intelligent life from elsewhere in the universe?,” and answer this with an unequivocal “Yes!” The tentative thinking of the one, and the certitude of thought of the other alone is enough to set them apart.

SETI doesn’t presume the existence of aliens, it merely concedes that they are possible, and probable, unlike UFOlogists who presuppose the existence, and in a further logical leap, the visitation of Earth, of and by intelligent beings from other worlds as a given by definition.

SETI, unlike most UFO organizations, employs a rigorous approach to evidence, and upon the reception of any seemingly anomalous signals from space, first attempt to eliminate and isolate as many conventional sources of random noise and signal aberrations as are then conceivable, before accounting for all and even then, do not rush to declare to the media the announcement of alien contact, employing multiple independent confirmations and cross-checking before making a statement.

After all, if alien intelligence were a certainty, why look? A good example of the process is described in Carl Sagan’s novel Contact, which describes it in more detail than I can go into here.

This is in stark contrast with many UFOlogists, who not only express a certainty of the existence of ETIs, but declare that they are already here, and that impending evidence to reveal the Truth™ of the alien presence by the governments of the world is ‘just around the corner.’ They’ve been saying that for decades now, conspiratorial claims and all.

This, in spite of what we have good reason to think we know at present of the size and age of the universe, the evolution of life on Earth, and the limits on interstellar, much less intergalactic, travel imposed by distance and currently understood physical laws, even near-light velocity travel.

SETI is science, using probabilistic thinking, scientific methodology, and logic, employing an extremely high bar for evidence, for the stakes of the discovery of alien intelligence would be high, and would have a monumental impact on human society. If they are to confirm such contact, they must make sure that no mistakes are made, because the world is watching.

UFO mythology, on the other hand, is pseudoscience, declaring as a proven fact alien visitation and employing at times near-nonexistent standards of evidence, conspiracy theories, logical fallacies, and otherwise unscientific reasoning. It is also a pronounced failure of the human imagination. And this is supplemented by a naive, sometimes callous, disregard for the human fallibilities of even the most dependable eyewitnesses and the anecdotal testimony they relate, not realizing that a mountain of crappy evidence is still crap.

Mind you, I’m not anti-alien, and as a science-fiction fan I would be delighted if we made such contact. But if it comes down to either declaring alien visitation every time there’s an odd light in the sky, or using science and reason to confirm genuine extraterrestrial contact beyond a reasonable doubt, I’ll opt for the latter, thank you very much.

MC Hawking — What We Need More of is Science

This one’s good but a bit inflammatory for some…

Logical Fallacies– the Argument from Ignorance

Ya know, one of the first things you find out as a skeptic is the fact that all of us humans are vastly ignorant of most of what there is to know, but ignorance isn’t bliss — it’s oblivion, and this post deals with a logical fallacy that capitalizes on one’s own ignorance, attempting to make it seem like knowledge. This is known as the Argument from Ignorance, or the Appeal to Ignorance, the Argumentum ad Ignorantiam for you Latin buffs.

This fallacy involves the attempt to make a positive statement, yea or nay, on a claim of fact using what is not known, rather than adequate relevant data, and often takes the general form of:

“No one (to my knowledge or satisfaction) has proven X to be true (or false), therefore it’s false (or true).”

Some examples of this…

• No one has proven definitively that Godzilla doesn’t exist, therefore I conclude that Godzilla is real…

• No one has proven absolutely that secondhand smoke causes cancer, so it must be harmless…

• I’ve never seen any conclusive proof that the Apollo astronauts landed on the Moon, therefore it’s a hoax…

…etcetera

It is not a fallacious appeal to ignorance when one has knowledge of a lack of evidence for something for which evidence should logically be had, and it is known what this evidence should be. Nor is it fallacious to act upon incomplete data for precautionary purposes, such as the threat of terrorists, who can be expected to operate in secret until they strike, if and when they do.

Though absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence, nor proof of the non-existence of a phenomenon, it can be evidence for it when it is put in the proper context. The following is a valid logical inference:

• All of the scheduled openings of this library are listed.

• I do not see a listing of it opening at this hour of the day.

• Therefore I conclude that the library will be closed until two hours from now.

A variation of this is the fallacy of Confusing the Unexplained with the Unexplainable, (or the God in the Gaps argument as used by creationists, for where they perceive gaps in our knowledge, ‘Goddidit, ‘Nuff said’…). The logical form is:

“I don’t have an explanation for X, therefore I have an explanation for X.”

…which is a logical contradiction.

For example…

• I see a strange light in the sky.

• I can’t think of a mundane explanation for it off the top of my head.

• Therefore it must be an alien spaceship.

Or this…

• There are gaps in the fossil record.

• I do not know of or understand a naturalistic explanation as to why there are such gaps.

• Therefore a supernatural agency must have created or interceded in the creation of life.

In short, this is the mistake in thinking that because one does not know a conventional explanation for something that there is indeed no such explanation and that therefore, a supernatural or paranormal cause for the phenomenon must be inferred.

This is understandable, and is reasoning from psychologically available information rather than an examination of more complex and difficult data that may not come as quickly to mind at the time.

It just so happens that supernatural or paranormal explanations are among the easiest to conceive of on the spur of the moment, thus they are more immediately available.

As with other forms of argument typically characterized as fallacious, and as noted above, some uses of this sort of reasoning can be valid, and as informal argumentation the fallacious use of the appeal to ignorance is not so much a violation of logical form as it is one of procedure, an attempt to thwart the goal of critical reasoning to arrive at a sound basis for explaining a claim.

(Last Update 2011/04/22: Corrections & Additions Made, Image Added)

Some Musings on the Universe

What meaning does the question ‘What lies outside the universe…What lies beyond it’ have? It depends on how you define the universe. I’ll offer my own perspective, though I might be wrong.

If you define it as being the sum total of everything that exists, or on a more limited sense, everything with which we can possibly interact with in any way, the Cosmos, then this question makes no sense. How can there be anything outside of everything? How can there be anything outside of all of existence? This is conceptually meaningless, and only makes sense if you consider the universe to be both finite and bounded, with a definite edge. But this is not the universe as astronomers conceive it, more as those of fundamentalist religions see it…

“It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth…”

And a circle has a definite edge, as does a metal firmament.

The only thing that can possibly exist outside of all of reality, everything that is, is the unreal, what we refer to commonly as fantasy which by definition does not exist.

Modern science accepts the idea that there is likely to exist what has been referred to by various writers of fiction as the ‘multiverse,’ which to me is a redundant term, implying the existence of more than all that exists. Again, this seems to be a problem to me of both conceptualization and definition, a problem with our use of language.

If you define that vast part of the universe known to us in a more limited fashion as the World, that is, all of knowable spacetime and that within it, this World having likely different physical laws and constants to varying degrees from every other such World, all of which are like bubbles drifting in a vast, perhaps infinite, sea of superspace, making up the total being of all reality, the true Universe — capitalization intended, to distinguish it from the portion we are aware of — not just that portion that we can presently know, then it expands our conception, necessarily limited it may be.

Some have proposed, in reiteration of the old argument from design, that the universe we live in has physical laws and constants perfectly suited for our kind of life, and therefore was specially created just for us. They claim that our World is the only one in all reality that is hospitable to life, and that no other has the laws needed to give rise to any sort of biology.

I think they have it backwards…

First, our bubble-universe is not particularly hospitable, since over 99.999999% of it is lethal, radiation-filled vacuum, and most of what little matter exists in the universe is still incredibly hostile to the kind of life we know on Earth — the only world we know of that is suited for us — poisonous gas giants, small airless worlds, brown dwarfs, and stars to name a few. It seems more likely to me that it is we who are adapted to the universe, not it made especially for us.

Second, computer simulations have been run that extrapolate from our current understanding of physics to test ideas of Worlds with various combinations of laws, and many of these have produced results which would seem to dispute the notion that our kind of life is either unique, or necessarily inevitable. In some of these simulations, even a World that lacks certain laws and even whole forces, for example, the Weak force, can give rise to a sort of biology very close to our own.

The point is that our universe is probably, given our current understanding, not unique in possessing life…

It seems to my eye that the so called ‘Anthropic principle’ is more properly called the Anthropocentric principle, as it tries to reestablish our long-held conceit that we are somehow central, in purpose if not in location, to the Universe.

(Last Update 2010/2/13, Text Added)

Arguing with Ghosts — by QualiaSoup

Taking Exception to Doubt…

Human beings, jumped-up monkeys that we are, especially those of us who have a strong commitment to any sort of belief system or doctrine, tend to take exception to anyone who expresses doubt toward those statements we make that deal with said belief system, sometimes to the point of vilifying those who disagree.

This is a shame, since there’s a lot of difference in the world, and precious few people who actually agree on most matters, much less on everything. To some it is sheer arrogance and unbridled cheek to question something that to the one being questioned, seems as obviously true, as necessary of proving, as the existence of trees, to paraphrase a psychic I know.

In some cases, this vilification of non-believers involves the use of such operative terms as ‘devils,’ even if the one so using it is a practicing Roman Catholic, and the ‘scoffers’ are a committee appointed by the Church to investigate the occurrence of an alleged miracle who do not rule in favor of the claim.

Sh*t happens…

Let’s face it, disbelief at one’s claims can be frustrating, and can lead to indignation, annoyance, smoldering anger, even festering hatred, at the temerity of doubters to what we know for a fact is absolutely true.

Personal experience, despite the numerous fallacies it is subject to, can be very persuasive, sometimes profoundly so. It upsets us when our claims, true or false, are not uncritically accepted when we make them, even and especially when friends are involved, because this implies a sort of betrayal of our trust.

As a skeptic of both the paranormal and religion, I do not have faith in the religious sense in the nonexistence of the paranormal, nor in the nonexistence of gods. My view is that I simply have yet to hear any good arguments, or be shown any compelling evidence for the reality of either. The burden of proof rests upon the claimant that these things are so.

I must stress that I do not know that neither exists, but at this time do not have enough information, nor reasons, to come to a positive conclusion yea or nay as to the reality of either.

My Troythuluness would like the paranormal to be true, but right now it just isn’t a part of my reality equation, likewise divine beings. I remain skeptical of their existence until the evidence gives me good reason to accept them as true. Real evidence, using acceptable standards of sufficiency, not just necessity, more than just a mountain of unsubstantiated anecdotes, for even a mountain of worthless evidence is still worthless.

Adding a million zeroes together is still zero…

Yes, it is indeed possible for every single instance of personal testimony to be the result of human error or dishonesty, and to paraphrase Daniel Loxton, the oft-repeated argument “where there’s smoke there’s fire” needs to be permanently laid to rest — not that I’m holding my breath on that ever happening.

Also in dire need of being taken out and executed for failure is the old saw “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” when indeed it can be when put in context with what evidence where should logically be found, and it certainly isn’t evidence of presence either. Granted, it’s not conclusive proof of absence, but in science nothing can ever be proven conclusively, only to varying degrees of credibility, at best just shy of a probability of either 0 or 1.

What does this lead up to?

In a few of my criticisms of individuals and ideas on this blog, I suspect that I have occasionally been guilty of a bit of impropriety, a wee bit of unfairness. This is not seen by me as a good thing. This is not only the blog of a skeptic, but a skeptical blog, and I’ll leave any unprofessionalism to the opposition, thank you most kindly!

I’ve come a long way since I began this blog on December 28, 2008, but I have a way to go before I can be considered a seasoned skeptic by anyone. I’m in the process of updating some of my older topical posts written before I’ve gotten to where my writing ability, such as it is, is now.

Where I have erred, I shall free my mind from the clutter of error. Where I have willfully insulted, I shall avoid doing so gratuitously, and if possible, to make amends. But if despite my own efforts, some believers in certain… non-scientific concepts still take issue, still find themselves grievously offended at what I post, then the perceived offense from this point on shall exist only in their own minds, not anywhere in the world ‘out there’ or in this tiny region among the yawning electrons of cyberspace.

Let those who demonize their critics continue to do so if they feel so impelled. It matters not, as their demons exist only in their own fantasies, not on this writer’s blog.

No Faith Allowed, No Illusions to Dispel…

Every once in a while I come across some little tidbit in the news about some imperfection, some shortcoming, real or alleged, of science or its professionals.

These can be interesting if substantiated, and illuminating as well, and like clockwork, these news reports also start a feeding frenzy by those intolerant to the scientific mainstream, who immediately expound upon on how wrong science is and that therefore (insert favorite brand of woo) wins by default.

Do these news reports shatter my illusions about the character of science or those that practice it? Do they bring on much cognitive dissonance concerning my delusions of the infallibility of the same? Do they sunder my scientistic faith? Does this discovery challenge my assumption that science has it all figured out?

No…

First, I do not put science nor those who do it up on a pedestal, nor worship at its altar. News of some irregularity in science only showcases how human scientists are, since science is a human enterprise, and that as long as this continues, you cannot remove the human elements from the equation. Science is just as fallible as the people who do it.

Second, science, my view of it anyway, makes no allowances for faith of the religious sort, only confidence that its methods are reliable enough to establish the credibility of its findings beyond a reasonable doubt. There are those ideologically opposed to it, however, who seek to make a virtue of being unreasonable.

Third, no reputable scientist claims that science knows, or can know, everything, or it would have ground to a halt long ago. Science’s corrective mechanisms are the way they are, because they usually work, though sometimes they hit a speedbump. Scientists aren’t always such great, honest guys, any more than any other segment of the population. But fraud, incompetence, or plagiarism are uncovered consistently enough so that the system generally works as it should when it needs to.

Science is the best means we have so far of acquiring scientific knowledge of the natural world, and no other human institution does that quite as well. That last sounds self-recursive, even tautological, but is consistent within itself, and for what it’s worth, true.

No other argument for its benefice is quite as powerful as the working technologies it allows us to build, and the economic dependence upon science and its products of any nation that wants to be competitive in the modern world market. That, and nothing else has quite its predictive and explanatory power.

If there were something, anything, that worked better than science at what it does, then I would switch my advocacy to that instead. For now, I’ll keep supporting science until something better comes along.

In the beginning, God created injustice — by QualiaSoup

Logical Fallacies — the Ad Hominem Argument

Let’s face it, nobody likes to be insulted, even moi, but some use this very thing as a form of argument in more or less subtle forms, a logical fallacy of irrelevance known by the Latin, because yours truly feels like being a pedant, the Argumentum ad Hominem, or the Argument to the Person.

This tactic of argumentation is the counterpoint to the Argument from Authority, a sort of polar opposite to it on the spectrum of genetic fallacies – arguments that focus on the source of a claim rather than valid logic or evidence – and like it attempts to call attention to real or imagined characteristics of the subject in order to sidestep the argument being made, in this case negative or unfavorable ones.

A special case of this is a subset called Poisoning the Well, also referred to as the Circumstantial ad Hominem, made even before the opponent makes his argument. This takes the form of associating the target with someone or something that is widely regarded as unpleasant or evil, such as implying or stating a connection with, for example, Nazis or a well-known serial killer. The name of this subset derives from medieval Europe, when rumors abounded during outbreaks of plague that Jews were causing Christians to die from the epidemic by poisoning the local well-water, since the real vectors of the plague were unknown at the time. This differs from the usual form in that it can be made against both a person and an idea or belief.

In that hideous little abortion of a movie, Expelled, there was much use of this fallacy in the association of evolution with the Holocaust specifically and the Nazis in general.

The most common and least subtle form of this argument in its general form, often used by the unimaginative is the use of plain and simple abusive form used to call attention to perceived (real or imaginary) personal shortcomings as a cheap way to dismiss an argument without ever addressing it.

“Your argument is wrong because you’re a known religious fundamentalist.”

…or…

“I don’t have to listen to you because you’re one of those Godless atheists.”

Often, also used is an alleged conflict of interest, or personal prejudice, the Bias ad Hominem, indicating that the one this is used on is untrustworthy as an impartial source, or as is often the case of an American politician accusing his opponent of being a socialist or a fascist even when these claims are not only irrelevant but false.

Another is when critics of the modern anti-vaccination movement are implicated as paid shills in the pocket of the ‘Big Pharma’ conspiracy, and whose statements therefore must be taken with deceptive intent in mind.

Another is when mainstream scientists are accused of being afraid for their funding, careers, political agendas, and reputations and so ignore or hide ‘the truth’ of the paranormal or global cooling. These last two, by the way, are also referred to as an argument from conspiracy, or an appeal to motive, another subset of this post’s fallacy of discourse, but involving alleged circumstances of self-interest.

But the Ad Hominem argument is not always a fallacy, and in the proper use may be a valid and effective form of argument when it is used to promote the goal of critical discussion rather than obstruct it.

For example, one reasonable use is in pointing out a likely conflict of interest regarding the statements of another when the subject’s questionable background, credibility and circumstances are also true, relevant, and kept in their proper context, such as a disgruntled ex-mob employee testifying in a criminal case when he has been given leniency or other favors for his testimony.

And this fallacy is more complex than one might think…

Less commonly known, and just as poisonous to an argument, is the positive ad hominem, which uses the same sort of reasoning, substituting alleged personal attributes or circumstances for relevant evidence in an argument, but this time uses positive traits, such as sincerity, kindness, or piety, though any virtuous trait will do, and thus shades into an argument from authority/appeal to virtue.

(Last Update 2011/04/26, Additions and Corrections)

Logical Fallacies — the Argument from Authority

This post deals with a common form of informal argument, particularly in its use as a fallacy known as the Argument from Authority, also referred to as the Appeal to Virtue.

This particular form of argument attempts to assert the truth of a claim by calling upon supposed — but sometimes misleading or irrelevant, sometimes even false — qualifications, virtues, and certifications of the one making the claim to ‘prove’ the claim true, irrespective of logic and real evidence. This argument in both valid and fallacious usage usually has the following format:

Person A has apparent or claimed qualifications Q. Person A says that X is true. Therefore X is true. Note that the valid form of this argument attaches the qualifier ‘probably’ to the alleged truth of claim X, since in valid informal reasoning the truth of a claim cannot follow necessarily or be known with certainty.

Or to put it another way…

Dr. Von Blümrich is a great rocket scientist. Dr. Von Blümrich claims that the vision described in the Biblical book of Ezekiel was that of a visitation by ancient astronauts in a rocket-powered spacecraft. Therefore, despite a complete lack of any physical evidence of a spacecraft landing in the Middle East at around that time, it must be true that Ezekiel’s vision was literally a physical event, and described an alien rocketship, not Ezekiel hallucinating out of his tree in a mystical experience.

People, I sh*t you not. Someone actually used that argument on me, and it wasn’t convincing then either…

Another example of this style of argument, used on me by someone who otherwise has the intellectual resources to know better than to commit such an obvious fallacy, is…

“Time travel is impossible, because Professor so-and-so, at such-and-such University, whom I highly respect because he’s very intelligent, said that it is…”

Ahem…

There is a wide variety of supposed but irrelevant virtues invoked in this form of specious argument — itself a subset of genetic fallacy – an argument that uses the origin of a claim to assert its truth — including such things as wealth, sincerity, intelligence, unconventionality, age (or youth), ancient wisdom (the Appeal to Antiquity), wide social acceptance (the Appeal to Popularity), celebrity (Appeal to Celebrity), novelty (Appeal to Novelty), beauty, strength or power, social status, subjective personal experience, quotations by someone famous taken out of context or even fabricated (Quote-Mining), purity, virginity, charity, sincerity, claims of impending acceptance (a combination of Argument from Authority & Unstated Major Premise), piety, self-assumed but unsubstantiated authority, claimed divine inspiration or origin, vague references to ‘experts,’ ‘scientists,’ ‘researchers,’ or other authorities that cannot be followed up on, and even such normally non-advantageous things as poverty and persecution. The list goes on, and some of these may even shade into other logical fallacies, but you get the idea…

In any case, this sort of argument attempts to deceive about the nature of the evidence it presents, a gambit to disguise itself as valid logic and actual evidence while not really presenting either.

This was an acceptable form of argument even in it’s fallacious form in medieval scholasticism, but we’ve moved on a bit since then, and in that usage no longer widely accepted by philosophers of science and logicians as sound reasoning.

While an Argument from Authority is always fallacious when the authority so name-dropped is considered in effect to be incontrovertibly correct, its not-so-evil mirror universe twin, an Argument by Authority, made by someone or in reference to someone whose experience, training, and other qualifications are both real and relevant to the issue being discussed, when they have a sound basis for their statements, can be a valid form of argument.

Finally, as mentioned above, this can shade into an ad Hominem along a continuum, with a fuzzy but real division between them in some arguments, in that often those people in the best position to examine the truth or falsehood of a statement just happen to be those individuals with experience, a vested interest and personal involvement in the subject at hand.

(Last Update 2011/03/13)

I call Poe on this one!

Edward Current makes a fool of himself in this little gem…Trying to use science to debunk…science? Enjoy.

…and the accompanying text for this bit of humerusness, verbatim, displays his brilliant erudition for all to see…

“The know-it-alls who dreamed up the Big Bang and evolution don’t know what they’re talking about. I prove this with a few simple science experiments. (ps, sorry about the picture quality. I thought ‘white balance’ had something to do with banning immigrants.)”

I rest my case…(*chortle*)

Baloney Detection 101 — Arguments vs. Explanations

Some people confuse arguments with explanations, when in fact these are two separate sorts of entities in both function and form. Mistaking the two is a common error among believers in certain…unscientific concepts and doctrines, who assert that any proposed conventional explanations for whatever paranormal or fringe-science belief they may have are arguments that conflict with said doctrine or belief system, whatever violates their personal intuitions or notions of sensibility, and therefore refuse to accept the validity of said explanations.

One thing I’ve noticed about a lot of fringe-scientific and paranormal believers is that they are happy to cherry-pick any scientific findings and reasoning that seem to them to support their belief, grossly misinterpreting them if necessary, and on the other hand, freely dispensing with those that don’t validate the same. This applies to even to portions of the same overall theory they otherwise accept that are unfavorable to their views.

This includes confusing explanations for the seemingly paranormal and belief in it – such things as the ideomotor effect, subjective validation, cold reading techniques, sleight of hand, hot reading techniques, hypersensory perception, the fantasy-prone personality and numerous other well-studied and well-established phenomena — with arguments against the paranormal, which are therefore prejudged by believers to be weak, confusing, boring, and overly technical, and these thus branded carry little weight with them.

This is intellectual sloth…

These are dismissed as ‘only untested theories,’ not the observationally supported and reality-tested tentative facts that they have been shown to be at this point in time, pending a better understanding of reality.

None of the above phenomena are arguments used to refute psychic ability, they are merely alternative mechanisms that more parsimoniously and plausibly describe the superficially paranormal abilities of psychics and belief in psychics without having to invoke anything paranormal, because we know these phenomena to demonstrably exist, unlike as yet unproven psychic powers, that is.

This is frequently done by believers in psychic phenomena who try to appropriate quantum mechanics, or rather, their interpretation of it, even going so far as to dismiss the reality of an important part of it, decoherence, because it is a ‘mere seeming’ of a phenomenon that contradicts their belief in a universe where All are One by way of quantum entanglement.

They do this without even considering our present understanding that it is entanglement itself that causes decoherence by the very way it operates when multiple quantum entities interact indiscriminately with each other, that you cannot have one without the other. I suspect that some are in dire need of checking their facts and reading the relevant current literature as they so accuse skeptics of not doing. Both entanglement and decoherence are empirically-tested phenomena, shown quite real beyond a rational doubt.

But not everyone’s doubt is rational…

Thus do some try to impose their personal cognitive limitations on reality, thereby reinforcing those same limitations: ‘If I don’t know, understand, imagine, or believe it, it must not be true. If it must not be true, I don’t have to know, understand, imagine or believe it.’ Then again, according to many with New Age affiliations, we create our own reality, because obviously, objective reality doesn’t exist, and this is objectively true they argue, however evidently and logically unsupported and self-contradictory that claim may be.

Thus do some believers keep believing, never challenging their own assumptions as they enjoin others, but I suppose that’s neither here nor there…

To wit — An argument is the provision of one or more premises, in the form of data, assumptions, facts, and other supporting reasons, in the form of a statement which attempts to establish a particular conclusion. These premises are strung together by a chain of reasoning, of logic, connecting them to the conclusion.

An explanation on the other hand, at least in science, is an entirely different beast. It is nothing more and nothing less than a detailed and testable answer to the question of how or why something works the way it does, or how or why it came to be. Yes, Virginia, science does ask why questions! It is a description of the workings of external and internal phenomena alike…something that can be shown true by way of evidence, independent of your likes, wishes, beliefs, culture, or ideology.

THAT is the difference between the two.

(Last Update 2010/2/5, Grammar Correction)