The Appeal to Popularity

I’ve got nothing against Guy Fieri. But a lot of people do.

Anyway, in a post over at Breitbart, Lisa De Pasquale defends Fieri against all critics. This portion of her plea jumped out at me:

Maybe Fieri’s critics are right.  As such, my main defense for Fieri is… So what?  America likes him.  Is that what makes his critics so angry?  They’re like the nerds in high school who put down the popular jocks’ accomplishments.  Fieri’s biggest crime is his mainstream success.

Call it the appeal to popularity. “Fieri’s food can’t be terrible. Just look at how many people like it.” You hear this sort of thing all the time, of course, but no one actually believes it.

In fact, the only time you hear the appeal to popularity is when the person making the appeal agrees with popular opinion. Nobody ever says, “My opinion must be wrong because it’s out of step with the mainstream.”

And that’s because all of us recognize that popular taste isn’t always good taste. What’s liked isn’t necessarily what’s best. And so critics–whose job it is to distinguish bad from good from best–will frequently criticize the tastes of the majority. And sometimes get angry with the majority for having such bad taste.

So I submit that every damn time you see the appeal to popularity, it’s at least at some level disingenuous. Which means we should just stop using it.

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On the Use of Science and the Use of Philosophy

I came across this passage in Mortimer J. Adler’s wonderful little book, Aristotle for Everybody, and I rather liked it.

Is philosophy totally useless, then, as compared with science? Yes, it is, if we confine ourselves to the use of knowledge or understanding for the sake of producing things. Philosophy bakes no cakes and builds no bridges.

But there is a use of knowledge or understanding other than the use we put it to when we engage in the production of things. Knowledge and understanding can be used to direct our lives and manage our societies so that they are better rather than worse lives and better rather than worse societies.

That is a practical rather than a productive use of knowledge and understanding–a use for the sake of doing rather than a use for the sake of making.

In that dimension of human life, philosophy is highly useful–more useful than science.

This is why I get sad when I hear talk of focusing education so heavily on STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, math). No doubt important, STEM still lacks what’s so valuable about the humanities. Philosophy and literature don’t just teach us knowledge. They also make us better people.

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The Discovery Institute Affirms the Consequent

Is intelligent design science? Scientists think not, but the Discovery Institute’s Casey Luskin disagrees. In a post at the Evolution News and Views blog (reprinted in the Winter 2012 edition of the Discovery Institute’s “The Viewpoint” newsletter), Luskin argues that intelligent design is science

because it uses the scientific method to make its claims. The scientific method is commonly described as a four-step process involving observations, hypothesis, experiments, and conclusion.

I found Luskin’s a fascinating piece because–seemingly unaware of what he’s doing–he defends intelligent design’s status as science by showing that intelligent design is also a logical fallacy. Specifically, it’s a textbook case of affirming the consequent.

Luskin starts by noting the basic observations intelligent design is built upon.

ID begins with observations that intelligent agents produce complex and specified information (CSI). (An event is complex if it is unlikely, and specified if it matches some independent pattern.)

For the sake of clarity, instead of referring to “complex and specified information,” I’m just going to call them “complex creations.”

So, from Luskin’s first point, we can observe that intelligent designers create complex creations. Thus, if we have intelligent designers, we’ll see complex creations. Which sounds right to me.

To keep things simple, let’s give “intelligent designers” the label P. And lets give “complex creations” the label Q.

Thus the first premise of Luskin argument takes the form of “If P, then Q.” (If there are intelligent designers, then there will be complex creations.)

Fair enough. Next, Luskin shows how we can test whether life shows characteristics of a complex creation.

Experiment: Scientists then perform experimental tests upon natural objects to determine if they contain complex and specified information. One easily testable form of CSI is irreducible complexity, which can be tested and discovered by experimentally reverse-engineering biological structures through genetic knockout experiments to determine if they require all of their parts to function. Mutational sensitivity tests can also be used to identify high CSI in proteins and other biological structures.

Conclusion: When experimental work uncovers irreducible complexity, or high CSI in biology, researchers conclude that such structures were designed.

So life is a complex creation. This means life is Q. Again, fair enough. Life certainly is complex. And even the believer in evolution can safely think of life as a “creation” if he’s willing to say that evolution created life.

But here’s where Luskin gets into trouble. His next move is to use the existence of Q (complex creation) as proof of the existence of P (an intelligent designer). We know that intelligent designers create complex creations. Therefore, Luskin argues, if we find that life is a complex creation, we can know that life had an intelligent designer.

Put in our P and Q structure, Luskin’s argument looks like this:

  1. If P, then Q.
  2. Q.
  3. Therefore, P.

Which is, like I said above, the textbook form of the fallacy of affirming the consequent. Just because we know that P inevitably leads to Q does not mean we know that the presence of Q entails there must be a P. It’s entirely possible that things other than P lead to Q.

If it’s raining outside, my windows will be wet. But seeing that my windows are wet does not necessarily mean it’s rain. Instead, I could have left the sprinkler on, or a neighborhood kid could’ve sprayed the windows with the hose.

What’s particularly interesting is that Luskin (perhaps unconsciously) tries to get out of this by making an even weirder move. He has to do away with the non-rain explanations for why the windows are wet. So he writes that, “in our experience, intelligence is the only known cause of [complex creations].”

Luskin’s saying, as did William Paley in his famous watchmaker argument, that every time we’ve seen complex creations in the past, there’s been a designer. We see a complex watch, we know there’s a watchmaker. So if we see complex life, we can assume there must be a designer.

Except, of course, complex life might very well be–and probably is–evidence of complexity without a designer. Luskin’s assuming the truth of his hypothesis (complexity means designer) prior to evaluating the evidence for or against the hypothesis.

So, to summarize, here’s the argument Luskin thinks proves intelligent design’s status as science:

  1. I observe that complex creations have intelligent designers.
  2. From this I hypothesize that any complex creation I find has an intelligent designer.
  3. I go out in the world and find evidence that life is a complex creation.
  4. From this I conclude–though remaining open to refutation–that life has an intelligent designer.
  5. I remain open to refutation because, of course, I may be presented with evidence of complex creations that lack an intelligent designer. I just haven’t seen any such evidence yet.

To which the scientist replies, “But Luskin, you’re surrounded by evidence of complex creations lacking a designer. In fact, you, Casey Luskin, are yourself evidence of a complex creation without a designer.”

Luskin’s response? “But, Mr. Scientist, life can’t be evidence of an undesigned complex creation. Because complex creations require an intelligent designer.”

In other words, Luskin claims his initial observation is true because it’s true, and any evidence to the contrary isn’t really evidence to the contrary because his initial observation is true.

Which doesn’t sound much like science to me.

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A proto-”Politics Makes Us Worse”

Politics does awful, awful things to us–and anyone seeking virtue ought to avoid politics to the greatest extent possible. That’s the thesis my colleague Trevor Burrus and I developed in our short essay, “Politics Makes Us Worse.” And it’s a thesis found in this wonderful passage from Auberon Herbert’s 1908 essay, “Mr. Spencer and the Great Machine.”

We all know that the course which our politicians of both parties will take, even in the near future, the wisest man cannot foresee. We all know that it will probably be a zigzag course; that it will have “sharp curves,” that it may be in self-evident contradiction to its own past; that although there are many honorable and high-minded men in both parties, the interest of the party, as a party, ever tends to be the supreme influence, overriding the scruples of the truer-judging, the wiser and more careful. Why must it be so, as things are today? Because this conflict for power over each other is altogether different in its nature to all other—more or less useful and stimulating—conflicts in which we engage in daily life. As soon as we place unlimited power in the hands of those who govern, the conflict which decides who is to possess the absolute sovereignty over us involves our deepest interests, involves all our rights over ourselves, all our relations to each other, all that we most deeply cherish, all that we have, all that we are in ourselves. It is a conflict of such supreme fateful importance, as we shall presently see in more detail, that once engaged in it we must win, whatever the cost; and we can hardly suffer anything, however great or good in itself, to stand between us and victory. In that conflict affecting all the supreme issues of life, neither you nor I, if we are on different sides, can afford to be beaten.

There is little noble about politics. No matter how grand you think your favored politician is, chances are he’s engaged in exactly what Herbert describes.

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This month: THE HOLE for just $0.99.

Now through August 22, Permuted Press has a bunch of great titles on sale for just 99 cents. Including my novel, THE HOLE. So if you haven’t read it already (really?!?), now’s a great time to pick it up.

From the back cover:

The world as Elliot Bishop and Evajean Rhodes know it is gone. Destroyed. In just two weeks, a horrific plague raged across the planet—driving its victims insane before killing them.

The two survivors set out on an unimaginable journey, driven by a cryptic message from Evajean’s husband: If anything terrible happens, you must get to Salt Lake City. But the pair soon discover they are not alone, and that the plague has done more than kill. The countryside between Virginia and Utah now crawls with victims who have been driven mad—violent lunatics fueled with definite yet unknown purpose.

To survive, Elliot and Evajean must fight for their lives—against the crazies, against sinister forces who would stop their quest, against long-ago hidden menaces—and uncover the deeply guarded secret of those driven mad and the plague that spawned them. The secret of a destructive force unleashed on the world by one of America’s most powerful religious sects…

Get it for pretty much any ebook reader you can imagine–and in print–right here.

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Aristotle and the Corrosive Influence of Modern Politics

Some time back I wrote a piece at Libertarianism.org arguing that politics makes us worse. I didn’t (just) mean that politics makes us worse off, or that the country itself would be better managed if politics worked better. No, what I meant (in addition to those things) was that politics–the politics of partisanship, one-upmanship, and hating our fellow citizens because they’re on team red or team blue–makes us worse people. It corrupts us, degrades us, makes us vicious.

Now my colleague Trevor Burrus and I are expanding that thesis into a long essay titled “Politics Makes Us Worse.” As part of my research, I’ve returned to Aristotle. I was delighted to come across this passage in his Nicomachean Ethics where Aristotle speaks to the point I’m trying to make.

But the virtues we get by first exercising them, as also happens in the case of the arts as well. For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e.g. men become builders by building and lyreplayers by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

This is confirmed by what happens in states; for legislators make the citizens good by forming habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it miss their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one.

Again, it is from the same causes and by the same means that every virtue is both produced and destroyed, and similarly every art; for it is from playing the lyre that both good and bad lyre-players are produced. And the corresponding statement is true of builders and of all the rest; men will be good or bad builders as a result of building well or badly. For if this were not so, there would have been no need of a teacher, but all men would have been born good or bad at their craft. This, then, is the case with the virtues also; by doing the acts that we do in our transactions with other men we become just or unjust, and by doing the acts that we do in the presence of danger, and being habituated to feel fear or confidence, we become brave or cowardly. The same is true of appetites and feelings of anger; some men become temperate and good-tempered, others self-indulgent and irascible, by behaving in one way or the other in the appropriate circumstances. Thus, in one word, states of character arise out of like activities. This is why the activities we exhibit must be of a certain kind; it is because the states of character correspond to the differences between these. It makes no small difference, then, whether we form habits of one kind or of another from our very youth; it makes a very great difference, or rather all the difference.

As politics takes over more and more of our lives and so we have more and more reason to engage in politics, we’ll come to see the sort of vicious behavior politics encourages as normal. In Aristotelian terms, we will be habituated into vice and away from virtue. Politics will (and does), in other words, make us worse.

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How I don’t think about morality

Ethical philosophy–and introductory ethics courses–brim with quandaries. There’s a trolly car barreling down the track toward three people. They can’t get out of the way and will surely die if the car hits them. But wait! The track splits and on the other fork sits just one guy. And there’s a switch right in front of you that’ll cause the track to switch and the car to kill him instead of the three people it’ll kill if you don’t act. What do you do?

Theses quandaries exist, of course, to provoke moral thinking. They complicate assumptions of freshmen, they illuminate intuitions, and they serve to distinguish ethical theories at a fine level. What’s more, a moral theory that fails to answer one of these quandaries fails as a moral theory. Because it’s the hard questions that matter, right?

Not really. I’ve grown tired of quandary ethics and it’s why, in part, I find virtue ethics so compelling. The kind of ethical thinking quandaries represent, where factors and rules are weighed and examined to produce an algorithm for morality, seems as far divorced from the way we actually think about morality as the computer code underlying Adobe Photoshop is from the paintings the artist creates within it.

This divide has been particularly clear to me due to what amounts to a timing accident. Concurrent with my exploration of virtue ethics, I’m reading, for the first time, Derek Parfit’s monumental Reasons and Persons. And, while the former resonates, the latter often leaves me cold.

Pushing ethics towards quandaries and improbable scenarios moves it away from the problems all of us really encounter–the problems we need moral philosophy to address. I’ve never been in a trolly car situation and likely never will be.

Much modern moral thinking holds fast to the idea that we should imagine increasingly bizarre situations, apply our theories to those, and mark them as failures if they can’t come up with the right–or even an–answer. The method informs a great deal of Parfit’s book, particularly its early portions about self-defeating theories and whatnot.

Two things stand out this contemporary style of ethical thinking. First, its need for odd hypotheticals to expose a theory’s failures leaves open the possibility that many of these discarded theories would do quite well in every moral circumstance most of us will ever be in. Thus discarding a theory because it fails in weird setups with vanishingly small likelihoods is like discarding the West Coast offense because it’ll do you no good if the other team fields nine foot tall defensive backs who can run the 40 in half a second.

Second, the need to answer quandaries strikes me as something of a false dilemma. Isn’t it more likely that there exist moral situations with no good answer? That no matter what we do in the trolly car scenario, we’ll do wrong? That, even if we (somehow) pick the “better” answer, we’ll still have something to atone for?

This is why ethics as a set of rules to follow gets it at least partly wrong. Presumably following the rules precisely to a conclusion would mean getting the “right” answer. But it seems obvious that many moral situations have no right answer. The same applies to the consequentialist approach. Measuring utility will always point to a “right” answer–except in probably nonexistent situations where the utility gains (or losses) from the two options match exactly.

Thus hard-and-fast deontology and consequentialism don’t, I believe, get it right. They insist on “correct” answers where none exist and, more importantly, fail to match the way we actually think about ethics. Both have much to contribute, of course, but as theories meant to explain the whole of morality, I find both decidedly lacking.

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