About Colin

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One if by Land, Woo if by Sea

This is the teaser for my crowdfunding campaign at http://www.gofundme.com/ss29jrfk. I’d very much appreciate your support, whether that means a donation, advice, or sharing the link. Any or all of those would be appreciated! And great big thanks to TSZ and its gracious host for letting me share it here.

Do you believe in acupuncture, alien abductions, ancient aliens, chi, crop circles, entity possession, “forbidden archaeology” or “forbidden religion,” homeopathy, near-death experiences, occult Nazi super-weapons, planet x, poisoned vaccines, spiritual channeling, the new world order, or illegal immigrants from Zeta Reticuli? Do you go to bed worrying about the New World Order, the Vatican, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, NASA, the WHO, the CDC, the UN, space aliens and/or demons conspiring against you and all right-thinking people? And are you convinced that the world is ruled from the Bohemian Grove, a secret bunker under the Denver airport, Bilderberg meetings, the Council on Foreign Relations, Buckingham Palace, alien worlds or other dimensions?

Probably not. But thousands of people do believe those things, and other things stranger than you can imagine. This January, dozens of experts these fields will gather together on a cruise ship called the Ruby Princess. It’s called, honestly and cleverly enough, the Conspira-Sea Cruise. They’ll spend seven days explaining, discussing, and even demonstrating their beliefs. Some of them are fairly famous, like Andy Wakefield and Sherri Tenpenny, who will be sharing their theories on vaccines. Others are relatively obscure, like Laura Magdalene Eisenhower, great-granddaughter of the former president, who claims to have been recruited for a secret Mars colonization effort and that stargates began opening around the Earth in 2012. For a full week, conspiracy theorists, dreamers, and snake-oil salesmen of every stripe will be preaching and peddling their wares.
Cruise0
I want to be there.

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Can one infallibly detect self-evident truths?

There’s been an interesting conversation at UD over self-evident truths lately. I think I’ve run up against the Uncommon Descent policy on dissent (don’t dissent), and the whole thing has devolved into “we are right” and “they are liars and also dumb.” But the underlying conversation was interesting, and I’d like to get some outside opinions on it. Especially KN, or anyone else with actual training in philosophy. I’m going to number positions for the sake of convenience, so that people with an opinion can react to any that interest them without feeling the need to engage them all. I’d love to hear where I’m wrong.

So as to my position:

  1. I make mistakes. I know this as certainly as I know anything—certainly enough not to doubt it in practice. This shows that I do not have the ability to perfectly perceive error in my own thinking.
  2. I cannot therefore be logically, absolutely certain of anything—not even that A=A. Because the faculties I would use to be perfectly, logically certain of that are the same ones that are not perfect.
  3. I think the trickiest question here is whether I can be certain that “I think, therefore I am.” But even there, is the fact that I cannot imagine any counter-example because it’s perfectly true, or because I have an imperfect and limited mind? I can’t know without a perfect, limitless mind, so I have to say even here, it’s not logically absolutely certain. (But obviously practically certain, and I don’t doubt it in practice.)

Does that make sense?

 

Now as to StephenB and Barry Arrington’s position.

  1. I think one major motivator of the “you’re a liar!” style of debate they’ve adopted is community identification. I’ve been thinking of this as building a wall. The point of the conversation is largely, not entirely, to show that “we think like this:” and “they think like that:”, or more pointedly, “look how stupid and ugly they are.” It makes it very easy to avoid questioning beliefs, because we cling particularly to those notions that separate us from them. It identifies and strengthens the community of us by redefining it in opposition to the ugliness and stupidity of them. And once that wall is built, it’s extremely hard to dismantle. Why on earth would you stop and seriously consider something a stupid and dishonest person says? And what would it say about you if you agreed with them? The wall exists to separate.
    1. This is not to say their positions are dishonest—I think they’re very upfront with their beliefs, and mean what they say.
    2. I think this is demonstrated particularly by BA’s habit of bailing out of a conversation and posting a new thread that very explicitly says look at how stupid and ugly those people are!
    3. I think I’m doing the same thing right now. I think that wall-building is wrong, but I don’t know how not to do it—especially as observing that someone else is building a wall is as good as laying a brick in your own.
    4. I can try to fight back against that by observing that walls exist to keep people in as well as out; the point is largely to have a bulwark against having to reconsider one’s beliefs and identity. So it’s important to ask, “Am I wrong?” Which I’m doing here, and attempting with some success to do in my own head.

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