Remember the ol chain mail of the student ridiculing the professor on good and evil, using absence of one to describe the other? Heres a much longer variation of how the professor tore that apart. Very very long read, but I learned more about some logical fallacies. A philosophy professor challenged his students with a form of the Euthyphro dilema: Did God create everything that exists? A student replied, Yes, he did! (The bravely part is removed: civil disagreement is the very point of philosophy courses, no bravery is required for dissent! Civil dissent is rewarded! Agreement is the death of philosophy, disagreement is its lifes blood.) God created everything? the professor asked. Yes, the student replied. (The sir part is removed: no college student in the 21st century addresses a college professor as sir - which demonstrates that whoever it was that made up the original story never went to college. In addition, the use of sir is just a pretense of respect - it comes off as passive aggressive anger more than anything else.) The professor answered, Well then, heres a logical puzzle for you: If God created everything, then God created evil; Therefore, according to the principal that our works define who we are, God is evil. The student became silently enraged over his worldview being attacked. He began to project out his feelings of inadequecy as smugness coming from the professor. The student then said: Can I ask you a question professor? Of course, replied the professor. Thats the point of philosophical discourse. (The writer of the original story clearly has little experience with a real college classroom. The whole point of a philosophy or theology course is to foster discussion.) Student: Is there such thing as heat? Professor: Yes, the professor replies. Student: Is there such a thing as cold? Professor: Yes, theres cold too. Student: No, there isnt The professor doesnt grin or frown or react with any emotion other than curiosity. After all, hes heard bad arguments like this for more years than the student has been alive. (The desire to see the professors smug smile wiped off his face is just another projection of the feelings of inadequecy found in theists who arent able to argue their own points well...) The student continues. You can have lots of heat, even more heat, super-heat, mega-heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat but we dont have anything called cold. We can hit 458 degrees below zero, which is no heat, but we cant go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold, otherwise we would be able to go colder than 458. You see, sir, cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat we can measure in thermal units because heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, just the absence of it Professor: (Nodding his head in dismay, and working out how many times hes heard this bad logic by now. 100 times?). Do you remember the section in your workbook on semantic fallacies? Student: ( gives a confused look a dog might make) Professor: Let me give you a quick review. Both heat and cold are subjective terms... They are what the philosopher John Locke properly called secondary qualities. The secondary qualities refer to how we humans experience a very real phenomena: the movement of atomic particles. The terms heat and cold refer to an interaction between human nervous systems and various speeds of atomic particles in their environment. So what we really have is temperature.... the terms heat and cold are merely subjective terms we use to denote our relative experience of temperature. So your entire argument is specious. You have not proven that cold does not exist, or that cold somehow exists without any ontological status, what you have done is shown that cold is a subjective term. Take away the subjective concept, and the thing in itself, the temperature we are denoting as cold, still exists. Removing the term we use to reference the phenomena does not eradicate the phenomena. Student: (a bit stunned) Uh... Ok.... Well, is there such a thing as darkness, professor? Professor: You are still employing the same logical fallacy. Just with a different set of of secondary qualities. Student: So you say there is such a thing as darkness? Professor: What I am telling you is that you are repeating the very same error. Darkness exists as a secondary quality. Student: Youre wrong again. Darkness is not something, it is the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light but if you have no light constantly you have nothing and its called darkness, isnt it? Thats the meaning we use to define the word. In reality, Darkness isnt. If it were, you would be able to make darkness darker and give me a jar of it. Can you give me a jar of darkness, professor? Professor: Sure, right after you give me a jar of light. Seriously, light and dark are subjective terms we use to describe how we humans measure measure photons visually. The photons actually exist, the terms light and dark are just subjective evaluations, relative terms... having to do, again, with an interaction between our nervous systems and another phenomenon of nature - this time, photons. So again, doing away with a subjective term does not eradicate the actual phenomena itself - the photons. Nothing actually changes. If we humans tend to call x number of photons dark (while cats refer to it as bright enough for me"Eye-wink those number of photons we denote as dark exist, and they continue to exist even if we do away with the term dark. Do you get it now? Student: (gives a look not unlike a 3 year old trying to work out quantum physics) Professor: I see your still struggling with the fallacy hidden in your argument. But lets continue, perhaps youll see it. Student: Well, you are working on the premise of duality, the christian explains. Professor: Actually, Ive debunked that claim two times now. But carry on. Student: Well, you assume, for example, that there is a good God and a bad God. You are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure. Professor: Be careful. If you want to place your god beyond the grasps of reason, logic, and science and make him unmeasurable, then you are left with nothing but a mystery of your own devising. So if you use this special plead your god beyond reason to solve the problem, you cant call your god moral either. You cant call him anything. You cant say anything else about something that you yourself have defined as beyond reason other than that the term youve created is incoherent. So your solution is akin to treating dandruf by decapitation. Student: (Gulps. Continues on, oblivious to what was just said) Sir, science cannot even explain a thought. It uses electricity and magnetism but has never seen, much less fully understood them. Professor: You just said that science cannot explain a thought. Im not even sure what you mean by that. I think what you mean to say is this: there remains many mysteries in neuroscience. Would you agree? Student: Yes. Professor: And, along the same line of thought, we accept that there are things like thoughts, or electricity or magnetism even though we have never seen them? Student: Yes! Professor: Recall the section in your textbook concerning fallacies of false presumption. Turn to the entry on Category error. Youll recall that a category error occurs when an inappropriate measure is used in regards to an entity, such as asking someone what the color of a sound is... Asking someone to see magnetism directly (and not just its effects) commits such an error. However, there is yet another error in your argument: your assumption that empircism or even science is based on real time observation alone. This is false. Sight is not the sole means of knowing the world, nor is science merely the study of whatever we are currently looking at. We can use other senses to detect phenomena. And we can also examine their effects upon the world. Furthermore, you are importing yet another erroneous presumption into the discussion: you are conflating the fact that science is incomplete with the implication that a lack of an answer from naturalism automatically means that your theistic assertion is correct. So youll also want to review the section on arguing form ignorance. Do you have more to say? Student: (The student, continues, mainly unfazed, due to the protection his shield of ignorance affords him.) .... Um....... to view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is not the opposite of life, merely the absence of it Professor: You are really in love with this secondary quality fallacy, arent you? You are again confusing a secondary quality with the phenomena in of itself. Death and life are subjective terms we use to describe a more fundamental phenomena - biology. The phenomena in question, however, does exist. Biological forms in various states exist. Doing away with the subjective term does not eradicate the existence of death. Nonplussed, the young man continues: Is there such a thing as immorality? Professor: (Reaches for an asprin in his desk) Youre not going to again confuse a secondary quality for an atttribute, are you? Please... what can I do to help you see this problem? Student: (Continues on, fueled by ideology and oblivious to reality) You see, immorality is merely the absence of morality. Is there such thing as injustice? No. Injustice is the absence of justice. Is there such a thing as evil? The christian pauses. Isnt evil the absence of good? Professor: So, if someone murders your mother tonight, nothing happened? There was just an absence of morality in your house? Wait, I forgot... shes not dead... shes just experiencing an absence of life, right? Student: Uh..... Professor: Youre beginning to see that something is missing in your argument, arent you? Heres what youre missing. You are confusing a secondary quality... a subjective term that we can use to describe a phenomena, for the phenomena itself. Perhaps you heard me mention this before? (The class erupts in laughter, the professor motions for them to stop laughing.) Immorality is a descrptive term for a behavior. The terms are secondary, but the behaviors exist. So if you remove the secondary qualities, you do nothing to eradicate the real behavior that the terms only exist to describe in the first place. So by saying that immorality is a lack of morality, you are not removing immoral intentions and behaviors, or the problem of immoral intentions and behaviors from existence, you are just removing the secondary attribute, the subjective term. And notice how dishonest your argument is on yet another level... in that it speaks of morality and immorality devoid of behavior, but evil exists as a behavior, evil is an intent to do harm and an act commited with such an intent. By the way, are you really trying to imply that immorality or evil are merely subjective qualities? Student: Gulp! (Reeling from the psychological blows to his corrupt worldview....) Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, professor? The professor soothes his aching forehead, and prepares for the 1 millionth time that he will be subjected to the can you see the wind argument. Professor: What an interesting turn this conversation has taken. Can I advise you to read Brofenbrenners suggestion against arguing over subjects over which you are uninformed? Its in your textbook. Page 1. Student: Professor, since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavor, are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you now not a scientist, but a priest? Professor: Interesting indirect comment on the priesthood. But lets leave that aside... We do observe the process of evolution at work, for the process works at this very moment. As for the implication in your argument that one must be there to observe a process at it occurs, surely you realize that we can infer the process through examining the evidence that these processes leave behind? In a sense, we are there when we observe artifacts. Consider for example the science of astronomy. How do we know about super novas? Because we can observe diferrent supernovas in different stages of super nova, by observing their artifacts in the night sky. The same stands for any historical science. Your mistake here is that you think science is merely real-time-observation. This is a strawman of science. By your logic trees cant grow - after all, whos actually witnessed a tree growing? Science is both direct and indirect observation... it also allows for inference. If, for the sake of consistency you were asked to follow your own rule, youd have to concede that we have no evidence tree growth, or mountain formation - after all, Ive never actually seen a seed grow into a tree, Ive only seen it in stages. Student: But professor! You stated that science is the study of observed phenomena. Professor: No, this is a strawman of what science is... Science is more than just real time observation, we also observe artifacts and make inferences. But continue.... Student: (Responds to this as a goat might respond to a book on calculus) May I give you an example of what I mean? Professor: Certainly. Student: Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen air, oxygen, molecules, atoms, the professors brain? The class breaks out in laughter. The christian points towards professor, Is there anyone here who has ever heard the professors brain... felt the professors brain, touched or smelt the professors brain? No one appears to have done so, The christian shakes his head sadly. It appears no one here has had any sensory perception of the professors brain whatsoever. Well, according to the rules of empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol, science, I declare that the professor has no brain! (So much for the students pretense of respect, clearly his goal is to ridicule). Professor: You mean, according to your strawman view of science. I am glad that you are here in my class so that I can help you better understand what you criticize. Science is not merely looking at things. Science is empirical, but also rational. We can make inferences from evidence of things that we do see, back to phenonema that we might not be able to directly see. Such as a functioning brain. And one inference I can make from observing your behaviors here today is that youve wasted the money youve spent on your logic textbook so far this year. I strongly advise, for your own sake, that you crack open that book today, and start reading. From page 1.
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 01:33:59 +0000
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