The Death Of Epistemology

Scientific Truth

A storm-wracked ship in a sea of superstition

Jenny McCarthy: Poster Girl For Self-Terrorization

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/11/jenny-mccarthy-americas-poster-girl-for.html 

We are living through "The Death of Epistemology."

The Scientific Method -- our best probabilistic tool for determining Truth -- has fallen prey to "The Faithful."

By "The Faithful," I mean those prowlers "on the outskirts of The Obvious" who seek "exceptions" to "general rules" in order to "prove" there are no "real truths" other than Sacred Scripture -- be it Jewish, Christian or Islamic.

In the view of "The Faithful," "God's Truth" not only trumps all other "truth" but belittles both. (In no more than 20 years, "faithful" belittlement of anthropogenic global warming will seem as absurd as the pulpit-preached assertion that slavery was The Will of God.)

The Faithful's obsessive insistence on Absolute (And Absolutely Rigid) Truth, is a passion intrinsically inimical to the probabilistic nature of scientific truth.

Rigid Truth reveals the perfectionism of American neo-Puritans ever zealous to overturn widely-applicable truths (truths that can be corroborated statistically) in order to posit "exceptions" -- no matter how slight and dubious -- as divinely-ordained New Truths.

These "religious opinions" constitute an "Epistemological Caliphate" in which doctrinal and dogmatic assertions tower over scientific truth.

Intellectually colonized by this "Epistemological Caliphate," Paul Ryan proudly declares: "I don't believe in the validity of some polls." And so, Ryan gets to pick and choose: he alone is the arbiter - not of Truth, but of what he wants to believe in his Republic of Me. There are no touchstones ruled by Reason, just articles of faith, mostly ruled by childhood upbringing.

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/msnbc/49222358/#49222358

Short Form:

How The Values Of "Strict Father" -- Or "Nurturant Parent" -- Control Our Political Views

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2018/06/how-values-of-strict-father-or.html

Long Form:

"Strict Father" And "Nurturant Parent": The Two World Views That Determine Our Political Values

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2018/06/strict-father-and-nurturant-parent-two.html

Ryan's "chosen" polls -- which is to say his non-rigorous truths -- carry the weight of believable "scripture," subjectively powerful, objectively "up for grabs." 

In Ryan's mind, acceptable polls are significant only insofar as they support his pre-existing articles of faith - only to the extent that they accord with pre-existing litmuses. 

According to the received idiocy, there is no need for terrestrial truths when Celestial Truth is on our side.

Most true believers believe in truths held from antiquity, and it is not their job to discover Truth but to confirm truth. 

And so it is that confirmation bias plays such a crucial role in everyone's life but particularly in the lives of conservatives who, by definition, are only interested in confirming forgone conclusions -- often conclusions set forth in sacred scripture

"Confirmation Bias And The Power Of Disconfirming Evidence"  

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2019/05/confirmation-bias-and-power-of.html  

A few days ago, a Floridian who keeps Sean Hannity updated on both presidential candidates' recent appearances in Florida, made a revealing slip after Hannity expressed disbelief that an Obama event attracted 15,000 people. Without missing a beat, his Florida informant chimed in: "I don't think the crowd was as big as it was."

Immediately, she "corrected" herself: "I don't think the crowd was as big as reported."

Once we have accounted for a reasonable amount of confirmation bias and partisan "spin," either "facts mean something," or we find ourselves adrift in the same "Sea of Superstition, Magic, Gossip and Wives' Tales" that engulfed the entire world (and the collective consciousness of humankind) prior to the advent of Scientific Method.

For several centuries the Scientific Method -- vigorously advocated by America's Founding Fathers, under aegis of The European Enlightenment -- has been our only tool for exiting the swamp of superstition in order to reside on newly-formed "Islands of Rationality."

In this regard, I encourage you to read my earlier post, "Is Perfectionism A Curse? Paul Ryan Tells The Truth." 
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/09/paul-ryan-tells-truth.html

Notably, science makes tremendous leaps by using "theories" and their technological applications. The "Theory of Relativity" (which is NOT a Law) undergirds much of the modern world.

Nevertheless, "The Faithful" pretend that "theory" is not enough; that only inerrant Truth will do.

Tragically, the history of "inerrant Truth" is the cornerstone of Pascal's insight that "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." 

On the other hand, scientists -- largely operating on theoretical foundations based on probability -- are able to accomplish feats like the following.

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/09/adjectives-fail-eye-poppingly.html

Needed: A New "Christian Science"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2017/05/needed-new-christian-science.html

"Since God Doesn't Heal Amputees, Humankind Will. The Future Of Christian Theology"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/07/since-god-doesnt-heal-amputees.html

Compendium Of Pax Posts On Theosis, The Limits Of Religion And A New "Christian Science"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2017/08/compendium-of-pax-posts-on-theosis.html

It takes time for societies to exhaust their accumulated “cultural capital."

However, the assault on Reason and Scientific Method is so far advanced that -- absent the revival of Rationality -- we risk the re-normalization of witch hunts, "crusades" and "inquisitions."

Aquinas would be appalled. 
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/01/st-thomas-aquinas-natural-law-and.html

Arguing against those who said that natural philosophy was contrary to the Christian faith, (Aquinas) writes in his treatise "Faith, Reason and Theology that "even though the natural light of the human mind is inadequate to make known what is revealed by faith, nevertheless what is divinely taught to us by faith cannot be contrary to what we are endowed with by nature. One or the other would have to be false, and since we have both of them from God, he would be the cause of our error, which is impossible." 
"Aladdin's Lamp: How Greek Science Came to Europe Through the Islamic World" 
by John Freely

"Thomas Aquinas And Islam"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/05/thomas-aquinas-and-islam.html

When epistemology is taken seriously, we find ourselves in a world of great breadth and depth.

Lamentably, the world in which we now live is such a shallow world that epistemology is ignored, or worse resides like a wraith in a forgotten shadowland between the opaque and the archaic.

Without giving real thought to the rich context of their lives, people are busy with "matters of consequence," surfing surfaces only. 

"What has come to an end is the distinction between the sensual and the supersensual, together with the notion, at least as old as Parmenides, that whatever is not given to the senses... is more real, more truthful, more meaningful than what appears; that it is not just beyond sense perception but above the world of the senses... In increasingly strident voices, the few defenders of metaphysics have warned us of the danger of nihilsim inherent in this development. The sensual... cannot survive the death of the supersensual."  Hannah Arendt

The issues in play are extraordinarily.

Yet the world, swept away by the crush of hyperactive modernity, is clueless to every proposition except the one that says: "I already know better."

The coming peril is the intellectual, educational, psychological and artistic overproduction, which, equally with economic overproduction, threatens the wellbeing of contemporary civilisation. People are inundated, blinded, deafened, and mentally paralysed by a flood of vulgar and tasteless externals, leaving them no time for leisure, thought, or creation from within themselves.    G. K. Chesterton   Toronto, 1930

Neil Postman, Author Of "Amusing Ourselves To Death," A Great 20th Century Book

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/03/neil-postman-author-of-amusing.html