Wickersham's Conscience

The Republican presidential wannabes’ recent posturings have reminded WC that he has shamefully neglected the ongoing review of logical fallacies. WC has visited the Ad Hominem attack; the Big Lie and the Non Sequitur have been discussed. Certainly we have seen the Republican yokels use all three. Today we turn to a political and religious favorite, the Argument from Ignorance.

The best definition WC knows comes from Carl Sagan’s excellent book, The Demon Haunted World:

Appeal to ignorance: the claim that whatever has not been proved false must be true, and vice versa. (e.g., There is no compelling evidence that UFOs are not visiting the Earth; therefore, UFOs exist, and there is intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. Or: There may be seventy kazillion other worlds, but not one is known to have the moral advancement of the Earth, so we’re still central to the Universe.) This impatience with ambiguity can be criticized in the phrase: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

One of WC’s Christianist, anti-evolutionary acquaintances gave WC a lovely example of this fallacy: “I’ve never seen a monkey give birth to a human, so I know evolution is false.” Another example comes out of the Samantha Koenig disappearance in Anchorage: the police say there is no evidence the missing barrista is dead, so she must be alove.

Partly, this fallacy lies in the inability to see the world in anything but black and white, without shades of gray. Partly it is an intolerance of ambiguity in a world that is essentially ambiguous. It’s entrenched in Christianism: “He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.” Matthew 12:30.

Bivalence has its place – the boolean logic of computers is built on simple true/false values. But bivalence doesn’t work so well when applied to the vagueness of human affairs. Particularly when there are no absolute measures.  Eubulides of Miletus formulated the sorites paradox:

A heap of sand has 10,000 grains (Premise 1)
A heap of sand minus one grain is still a heap (Premise 2)

At what point is Premise 2 false? Can you continue to apply it until there’s only one grain of sand remaining? If not, when do you cross the line from “heap” to “not heap”?

But at fundamental levels, ambiguity is built in to the universe. Consider Schroedinger’s Cat. While the box remains closed, we cannot know if the cat is alive or dead. It’s ambiguity. We have to live with it.

Presidential wannabe Santorum’s position on man=made climate change sounds mostly in an appeal to ignorance:

Santorum said global warming is a plot by “radical environmentalists” to “consolidate power.” It is “an absolute travesty of scientific research that was motivated by those who, in my opinion, saw this as an opportunity to create a panic and a crisis for government to be able to step in and even more greatly control your life.”

WC will grant that there’s some unhealthy paranoia there, too. But the heart of it is that for Santorum, anthropogenic climate change hasn’t been proven true, and therefore must be false.

Remember, correlation is not causation, either. But in all but the most controlled circumstances, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

The Gasbag Poised to Exit

Alleged human being, junkie, racist and misogynist Limbaugh crossed the line from crude and offensive entertainer to outright bigotry. His disgusting attacks on Sandra Fluke should be repudiated by every conservative.

He’s made a half-hearted apology, but what’s notable in this new low point in the national conversation is that no one from the conservative side has publicly disavowed Limbaugh’s sick comments, let alone disavowed the Gasbag himself. Sponsors have left him. The mainstream media he loathes have called him out. But, apparently, no one on the conservative side finds his appalling conduct disgusting enough to mention it.

Santorum? Romney? Gingrich? The silence is nearly as appalling, as shocking, as Limbaugh’s attacks.

UPDATE: George Will weighs in:

“It would’ve been nice if they had shared that with the larger public, the Republican leaders,” Will said on ABC’s This Week. “Instead, Mr. Boehner comes out and says, Rush’s language was inappropriate. Using a salad fork for your entree, that’s inappropriate. Not this stuff. I mean, and Rick Santorum says well, what he says was absurd, but an entertainer is allowed to be absurd. No. It is the responsibility of conservatives to police the right in its excesses, just as the liberals unfailingly fail to police the excesses in their own side. And it was depressing, because what it indicates is that the Republican leaders are afraid of Rush Limbaugh. They want to bomb Iran, but they’re afraid of Rush Limbaugh.”

Ex-Senator Santorum told the world that President Kennedy’s speech explaining the difference between personal religious views and public actions made the ex-Senator nauseous:

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(It’s all right, Santorum. Your religious pandering makes WC nauseous.)

It’s also unclear to WC how you would be able to take the oath of office should you be elected president. As commenter Kate McLaughlin has pointed out, you’d swear to uphold the Constitution. The Constitution mandates the separation of church and state, a hard lesson learned by those Founding Fathers you claim to revere. You claim your religious values should be imposed on all Americans. The Constitution forbids it. President Kennedy was right; you are utterly wrong.

Various Republican presidential wannabes have accused President Obama of  ”class warfare” for suggesting that the wealthiest one percent of Americans should be paying more taxes. But that’s nonsense. This is what real class warfare looks like:

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Santorum is not arguing about the president’s policies (which are actually all about vocational training and apprenticeships). Santorum is lying about the character of the president. Santorum attempts to accuse the President of being contemptuous of the working class. Santorum calls Obama what no Republican has yet called Romney: a “snob.”

Not an argument. Not a policy difference. Class hatred. The pure quill. And this is what is driving the base of the GOP.

There is a word for this kind of candidate in a political campaign: demagogue.

And there’s a proverb that the avowedly pious ex-Senator should know:  ”For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” King James Bible, Hosea 8:7.

Richard Ekow channels a message to Santorum and The Quitter. It’s worth the read just for the last lines:

I know, I know. You grew up working class. If you’ve said it once you’ve said it a thousand times: You used to be a regular guy. So what? I used to be an angel.

So, according to Republican ex-Senator and Presidential Wannabe Rick Santorum,

“I refer to global warming as not climate science, but political science,” surging Republican presidential candidate and conspiracy theorist Rick Santorum said Monday in Steubenville, OH. “A lot of these environmental sciences are just that – political sciences. They have nothing to do with … real understanding of how we have to value both the environment and its impact on man and the world.”

More recently, Tin Foil Rick appeared on the PBS News Hour to repeat his belief that global wamring is “political science,” not “climate science.”

Before we all break out our tin foil hats and join Santorum (BS, Political Science, MBA, JD) in his conspiracy delusions, let’s have a brief look at what would be required for the ex-Senator to be right.

• A vast network on scientists, who can’t agree on anything else, all agree to engage in a conspiracy to delude the world in thousands of studies, all supporting the existence of global warming. Not one, not a single scientist ‘fesses up.
• The vast conspiracy, the scoop of the century for any mainstream media outlet, is not reported. Not even the supermarket journalists, who previously documented Satan;s escape from Hell through a North Slope oil well. This may mean they are a part of the vast conspiracy, too.
• Most of the United Nations, excepting only a few political hacks appointed by former Pres. Bush, fall for the vast conspiracy, or may be part of the conspiracy as well.
• High school physics experiments in which teenage students demonstrate increased CO2 concentrations elevate temperatures are somehow wrong, suggesting the vast conspiracy has the power to reach into high school classrooms and booger the data.
• The oceans are becoming increasingly acidic, not as a result of absorbing CO2 but from some other, as yet undocumented source. Perhaps the acidic bile spewing from the mouths of Republican presidential candidates?
• The arctic ice cap has not disappeared, suggesting the the vast conspiracy has the power to booger satellite images as well as high school lab experiments.
• Rush Limbaugh was correct about something.

WC wants to introduce the ex-Senator to a logical principle, Occam’s Razor. It says that “a principle that generally recommends that, from among competing hypotheses, selecting the one that makes the fewest new assumptions usually provides the correct one, and that the simplest explanation will be the most plausible until evidence is presented to prove it false.” The professedly Catholic ex-Senator should like this principle; it was invented by a Catholic, a Franciscan friar, William of Okham.

For climate change to be true, known, demonstrable physical laws – the so-called “greenhouse gases – have to be true. For Santorum to be right, for climate change to be wrong, not only do the physical laws have to somehow be wrong, but also there has to be a truly gigantic conspiracy to hide the fact that those physical laws are false. Occam’s Razor makes quick work of Santorum. The late Carl Sagan put it another way: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.” Ex-Senator Santorum, where’s your extraordinary proof?

It’s easy for politicians to pander. It’s patently obvious politicians can be ignorant; look no further than the last Republican vice presidential candidate.

But this is the future of the freaking planet you are talking about. Whether you are ignorant, pandering or flat out delusional, it’s way beyond stupid to be taking these kinds of chances with your children and your grandchildren’s future.

The ex-Sentator is far too dangerous to the planet to allow his idiot views to go unchallenged. WC declares intellectual warfare on Rick Santorum. Sure, it’s an unfair battle, but WC will do his best to keep up with some of the filthy stream of misogynism, sexism, homophobia, Christianisim, anti-intellectualism, debased pandering and general bigotry that spews from this alleged human being.