Why are dumb ideas so popular ?

[jason]

Sorry, but this one just isn't going to fly. In meme theory, there are many factors taken into consideration. Religious memes, it says, manage to reproduce because they play upon our drives for companionship, safety, understanding, etc. However, not all memes are propagated this way. Science memes certainly aren't. Rational thought, meme theory claims, can help you partially sort out what memes are true or beneficial, and which aren't.

Thankyou for making my point.

Speaking of the genetic fallacy, you just committed it yourself. The truth value of a claim - and even its logical backing - is irrelevant to whether or not the person who claims it could have claimed otherwise.

Not what I said. If he is going to claim the determinism is true and thus all states of a persons mind can be reliably predicted and so on, then his brain state suffers from the same problem.

I was not claiming he was wrong, just that if he is right then he can't know it.

Jason

[Robyn Banks]

My favorite:

"God is unknowable"

The reply naturally follows: How do you know that?

I'm not sure if Jason's 'SRI' is merely a statement that is a priori false. But, in any case, "God is unknowable" is not a priori false. There is nothing in the concept of God that necessitates that he be knowable. The statement "God is unknowable" may suffer from a lack of evidence, however - which would make the statement a mere assertion. But if what Jason is critiquing as a "self-refuting" statement is the same as an a priori, then the statement "God is unknowable" is not a good example of that.

Robyn Banks

[Seasanctuary]

I'm not sure if Jason's 'SRI' is merely a statement that is a priori false. But, in any case, "God is unknowable" is not a priori false. There is nothing in the concept of God that necessitates that he be knowable. The statement "God is unknowable" may suffer from a lack of evidence, however - which would make the statement a mere assertion. But if what Jason is critiquing as a "self-refuting" statement is the same as an a priori, then the statement "God is unknowable" is not a good example of that.

Oh, hey good point. For those who believe in objective reality "God is unknowable" is a possibly true proposition...yet impossible discover its truth, if true.

[Rev. HadouKen24]

Thankyou for making my point.

Say what?

It's not SRI. You made the false assumption that meme theory says that the reproductive success of a meme is independent of its truth value.

Not what I said. If he is going to claim the determinism is true and thus all states of a persons mind can be reliably predicted and so on, then his brain state suffers from the same problem.

I was not claiming he was wrong, just that if he is right then he can't know it.

Oh, okay. Now I see what you're saying.

But you're still wrong.

It doesn't make a difference whether determinism or free will is true as to whether we can know we're right. The idea of free will pertains mainly to actions and choices. Most of the time, belief is not a choice - or at least, mostly not a choice. And when it is a choice, we're usually not dealing with actual knowledge, but belief.

There's nothing in the definitions or, as far as I can tell, in the implications, of the ideas that would make it self-refuting.

[OracleofTroy]

Here is a good article about these types of statements: http://www.christian-thinktank.com/stult2.html

I really liked that article. But being overly preoccupied with TAG, I couldn't help but post. I've noticed that glenn dislikes presuppositional apologetics, but I haven't seen an explanation of why. The article takes a little swipe at it with the last example "Communication across ...worldviews... is impossible," and specifically mentions VanTil.

I thought it was out of place, since the reason VanTil "presupposes that he can cross this divide" is not because he believes their worldview is different, and thus rendering communication impossible, but because he believes that while a non-Christian's worldview professes to be different, in reality its foundations rest upon the Christian worldview. Ultimately then, all people know the Christian worldview is true, and that is why communication is possible.

Thus, it seems to me that taken in context, VanTil does not seem to offer a self-stultifying argument. (It may be wrong for different reasons, of course.) It makes me wonder about some of the other examples he gives in the article....

[Sheepdog]

i don't like the philosophy behind presuppositional apologetics because it is based on an unestablished assertion: the Christian worldview is true. since the whole point of presupp is to establish that the Christian worldview is true, presupp begs the question. William Lane Craig does a killer job explaning this in Five views on Apologetics.

that doesn't mean the methodology won't work. in fact, i use the methodology of presuppositionalism quite often.

[Seasanctuary]

i don't like the philosophy behind presuppositional apologetics because it is based on an unestablished assertion: the Christian worldview is true. since the whole point of presupp is to establish that the Christian worldview is true, presupp begs the question. William Lane Craig does a killer job explaning this in Five views on Apologetics.

Which is precisely why skeptics have such a problem with it when portrayed as an argument.

I have no problem referring to it as a type of "rhetoric" though.

[OracleofTroy]

i don't like the philosophy behind presuppositional apologetics because it is based on an unestablished assertion: the Christian worldview is true. since the whole point of presupp is to establish that the Christian worldview is true, presupp begs the question.

I don't want to hijack the thread into a discussion of TAG, but I did want to point out that when dealing with worldviews, you are always going to be dealing with circular reasoning. How can one evaluate evidence for or against one's worldview when it is their worldview that provides the foundation for evaluating evidence in the first place?

Personally, I don't think TAG (when used properly) is argued in a circular manner. Well,.. it seems inappropriate to go into it here, so I'll avoid that temptation.

William Lane Craig does a killer job explaining this in Five views on Apologetics.

Sounds interesting! Is there somewhere online where I can read his take on the problems with TAG?

[shunyadragon]

I'm not sure if Jason's 'SRI' is merely a statement that is a priori false. But, in any case, "God is unknowable" is not a priori false. There is nothing in the concept of God that necessitates that he be knowable. The statement "God is unknowable" may suffer from a lack of evidence, however - which would make the statement a mere assertion. But if what Jason is critiquing as a "self-refuting" statement is the same as an a priori, then the statement "God is unknowable" is not a good example of that.

Robyn Banks

Is a statement that 'God is knowable' any better? I believe the ultimate nature of God is unknowable and undefinable is simply honestly recognizing the limitations of human abilities.

There isn't any conclusive evidence demonstrating the ability to know God outside the images and attributes described in the scriptures of the World religions. There is no certainty that one world view of God in one religion is superior to another.

[shunyadragon]

I don't want to hijack the thread into a discussion of TAG, but I did want to point out that when dealing with worldviews, you are always going to be dealing with circular reasoning. How can one evaluate evidence for or against one's worldview when it is their worldview that provides the foundation for evaluating evidence in the first place?

Personally, I don't think TAG (when used properly) is argued in a circular manner. Well,.. it seems inappropriate to go into it here, so I'll avoid that temptation.


Sounds interesting! Is there somewhere online where I can read his take on the problems with TAG?

The problem is he sees no problems. Craig is mainly based on the assumption that Christianity is true.

[shunyadragon]

I really liked that article. But being overly preoccupied with TAG, I couldn't help but post. I've noticed that glenn dislikes presuppositional apologetics, but I haven't seen an explanation of why. The article takes a little swipe at it with the last example "Communication across ...worldviews... is impossible," and specifically mentions VanTil.

I thought it was out of place, since the reason VanTil "presupposes that he can cross this divide" is not because he believes their worldview is different, and thus rendering communication impossible, but because he believes that while a non-Christian's worldview professes to be different, in reality its foundations rest upon the Christian worldview. Ultimately then, all people know the Christian worldview is true, and that is why communication is possible.

I am very puzzled with the statement . . . while a non-Christian's worldview professes to be different, in reality its foundations rest upon the Christian worldview. Ultimately then, all people know the Christian worldview is true . . .. Some worldviews have links and relationships to the Christian worldview, but it would a real streaaatch to say, Judaism, Buddhaism, Taoism, Hinduism and many other religions and beliefs have their foundations rest upon the Christian worldview. If anything the foundation of Christian beliefs rest on the Judaic worldview.

This egocentric view would do more to cut off communication than make it possible or encourage it.

[shunyadragon]

I am only refering to a select category of DumbIdea^TM here and not the broad class of dumb ideas on the whole.

The class of dumb ideas that really puzzle me as to there popularity is the class of ideas that are known as Self Referentially Inchoerent or "self-refuting".

So what is an SRI ? And SRI is an idea that makes a knowledge claim about some set of objects, that the statement itself is in the set of these objects, and that this claim renders ideas in the set as problematic, thus rendering itself problematic. Hmm ... that is confusing. A couple of examples will make it clear enough.

The statement, "All English sentences are less than 6 words long", is an SRI claim, becasue the claim is in the set of English sentences and it is 9 words long.

The statement "There is no objective truth", is another common example of an SRI claim becasue itself is an objective truth claim.

These are fairly uncontroversial examples of things that are ultimately SRI, but it seems that many many claims and idea that are encountered everyday from people, and ideas that supposedly have currency that are really SRI as well.

My question is why are they so popular ?

Some examples of things that I have encountered that think are ultimately SRI if you reflect on them a bit. Some of these examples are not strictly SRI, but do have the same effect of undercutting themselves.

"You just a victim of the YHWH meme !", or some such claim that religious beliefs are just successfull meme's. Problem being, all ideas are meme's , and if the reproductive success of a meme is independent of its truth value, then the truth value of the meme meme is not connected to its reproductive success.

"Your only a christian because you were raised in the west !", apart from being a textbook genetic fallacy, the underlying idea is claiming that relgious conviction is a product of upbringing and not evidence, but how exactly does this let any religious idea even (usually the proponent of such a claim is an atheist of some stripe) escape this critique ?

And my favourite recent one, taken from my wifes notes on psychology, the claim that, "Determinism is true and that you are just a product of the events you have experienced so far", or something to that effect. The upshot being that psychology is possible only if you are the sum of your experience. But of course, if this is true, then all of his ideas are just the product of his experience as well, and he can't help but believe them either.

Anyway, I think you get the idea. Marxist and Feminist theories seem to suffer from similar problems, as does post-modern ideas and so on.

But why is such sloppy thinking so popular ? 5 minutes reflection teases most of these ideas out. Yet they seem to persist. Even among people that should be smart enough to tease such ideas out.

Each of the ideas suffers from thinking that it is immune to its own reasoning and so occupies some sort of privledged position. Might this explain there popularity ? Some sort of Gnosticism essentially, by which the proponents of these ideas have "secret knowledge" denied to the rest of humanity ?

What do you think ? No doubt we have all heard a number of very dubious SRI or SRI-like ideas, share the ones you have encounted. Why do you think they are so popular ?

Jason

It is true many people fail to express their beliefs and worldviews in an accurate and logical manner, but that does mean their beliefs and world views are false. I think it is a false generalization that Marxist and Feminist theories seem to suffer from similar problems, as does post-modern ideas and so on. . The problem you describe is much more universal.

False or illogical statements may be simply reworded and they may express the beliefs or worldviews in a more logical way.

For example:

(1) "Your only a christian because you were raised in the west !"

By far the majority of the people of the world believe in the religion of their parents and cultural pier group, therefore the dominant factor determining what people believe is their upbringing.

(2) There is no objective truth.

Objective truth is limited to validity of the interpretations of the 'facts' available.

[Mr. Mxyzptlk]

That's easy! They are so popular because they are sophomoric! And a really significant percentage of the populace is too! Although many of them SHOULD be able to do better. Probably has to do with much of the educational establishment (and many parents) militating against "critical thinking" skills.

M

[TheBeast]

My favorite:

"God is unknowable"

The reply naturally follows: How do you know that?

That's not a paradox, it's a valid and plausible agnostic stance. We don't know if God is unknowable, we believe it. Hence there is no need for us to know if God is unknowable.

However, there are arguments against your case (eg - Hume, Treatise of Human Nature Bk1 in which he argues that the mind is finite and as such cannot conceive of infinite ideas.)


As to the original post, many inferences of such things are reductio assertions or paradoxes intended to uncover a flaw in an argument or theory.

For example, 'This sentence is false' is an attack on semantic realism, as well as Error Theory. These ideas are not 'dumb' they merely play upon the obvious to expose what should be an obvious weakness.

[OracleofTroy]

I'm a little surprised to find this thread stickified.... I almost forgot about it! :)

I am very puzzled with the statement . . . while a non-Christian's worldview professes to be different, in reality its foundations rest upon the Christian worldview. Ultimately then, all people know the Christian worldview is true . . .. Some worldviews have links and relationships to the Christian worldview, but it would a real streaaatch to say, Judaism, Buddhaism, Taoism, Hinduism and many other religions and beliefs have their foundations rest upon the Christian worldview. If anything the foundation of Christian beliefs rest on the Judaic worldview.

This egocentric view would do more to cut off communication than make it possible or encourage it.

That wasn't the clearest sentence in the world, I will try to expand on it. NOTE: I am not trying to argue for or against the truth of Presuppositionalism in the next three paragraphs, rather I am just trying to show that Presuppositionalism is not self-refuting on it's own terms.

According to Presuppositionalism, all men share certain core beliefs; they act as if these things are true. Three common ones are that logic is universal and objective (we can't just make up logical rules to suit our purpose), that there are objective moral principals that man should follow (we don't win arguments by coercion, rather by appeals to logic), and that the universe is uniform (when we observe one type of event, similar types of events will have similar causal relationships: i.e. the ball always falls to the ground when let go, it doesn't do random things each time it is let go, also called the inductive principal).

Every worldview tries to provide a foundation where by these presuppositions make sense, but according to Presuppositionalism, only the Christian worldview can provide the framework wherein each of these individually and simultaneously make sense. Every other worldview ultimately escapes into skepticism concerning these things, or they reduce to absurdity. But since the non-Christian still act on the assumption that those presuppositions about logic, morality and induction are true despite their worldview, the presuppositionalist notes that their basis for believing those things must ultimately rest on the foundations of the Christian worldview.

Hence, while Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, etc in principle all have very different and incompatible worldviews and should, as you say, do more to cut off communication than make it possible or encourage it, ultimately these differing worldviews must hold to the Christian worldview to make sense of logic, morality, induction.

The bottom line then for Presuppositionalism is that everyone knows that Christianity is true, even when they deny it, therefore it is possible to communicate across worldviews. Hence, Presuppositionalists communicating across worldviews is not self-refuting.