A history of FLICC: the 5 techniques of science denial — John Cook

This is useful not only as a primer on recognizing and rebutting science denialism but also as a contribution to critical thinking in general.

I should be obvious by now that dismissing something as "conspiracy theory" without an adequate foundation is just another means of discrediting opponents and  achieving narrative control. But there are conspiracy theories out there that need debunking based on sound reasoning grounded in evidence.

Crazy Uncle
A history of FLICC: the 5 techniques of science denial
John Cook
hat tip to Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism

See also by John Cook

Using critical thinking to analyze misinformation

Brian Romanchuk — Comments On Turning Points And Recessions

As the Canadian experience shows, deciding which episodes qualify as "recessions" can be debated. The safest course of action is to make it clear what definition you are using, and apply it consistently across regions.

This is logic and critic thinking 101, and also fundamental to math application. While it is basic for thinking critically, it is key for doing science.

This is a big problem for economics since economics is not regarded as a pure science but an applied science. Macroeconomics is considered a policy science. Ambiguity then becomes a hazard.

Terms like "inflation" and "recession," which are defined arbitrarily in terms of data selection, are especially slippery since measurement differs by locale and definitions are often revised, making historical comparison tricky.

Bond Economics
Comments On Turning Points And Recessions
Brian Romanchuk

Caitlin Johnstone — Why The Entire Political-Media Class Just Tried To End Ilhan Omar’s Career

This is indicative of a much larger problem than AIPAC. It's the basis of attacks grounded in sophistry that uses invalid logic.

The aim is to attack an opposing party or cohort "X." The logic used runs thus.

X is against Y. Y has a property. Therefore X is against everyone/everything having that property.

This is clearly wrong if Y is not identical to everyone/everything having that property, e.g, being Jewish, which in this instance is not the case. Y is represents only some of those having that property, not all, since the relevant property is holding a policy and acting on it. In fact, those having this characteristic may not all be Jewish. Some are not.

Here the political leadership of a country, Israel, and its supporters within and outside of the country, must be distinguished from the dominant group in the country, that is, people identifying a Jews or having Jewish heritage, especially when this group is not characterized entirely by being associated with the country's political leadership and policy.

It is simply invalid logically to charge that someone that criticizes a particular political faction of Israel under the rubric, "Israel" is biased against Jewishness, i.e., is antisemitic. In logic, this is called "nonsense."

While some people that criticize "Israel" and its supporters may be antisemitic, all are clearly are not, since many Jews also criticize and oppose "Israel" in the sense of Israeli leadership and policy. This would include those outside Israel that support regardless of whether they are Jewish. Some are and some are not.

Moreover, there is no connection with having the property of being Jewish and supporting the Israeli leadership and its policy. Many Jews in Israel and also outside of Israel also don't.

This is false argument mounted by those either ignorant of basic logic, or used intentionally to smear the opposition. In other words, morons or complicit.

Intentional or not, it is an effort to silence opposition based on false cause. It is to be condemned.

The situation of a boycott is somewhat different, but related. It is also similar to imposing sanctions. Both boycotts and sanctions may be imposed on an entire country, affecting all in the country and those connected with it, regardless of whether they support the country's leadership or policy that is being targeted. This penalizes all for the actions of a few. Is that just?

This is a larger issue, too, and affects all areas in which is there is bias and discrimination. These kinds of tactics are in wide use to smear opponents in an attempt to destroy them.

Caitlin Johnstone — Rogue Journalist
Why The Entire Political-Media Class Just Tried To End Ilhan Omar’s Career
Caitlin Johnstone

also

Mint Press News
Ilhan Omar is Right: AIPAC Influences Congress To the Tune of $4 Million Annually

Whitney Webb

See also

Blaming the Venezuelan leadership and "socialism" for a crisis exacerbated by economic sanctions. Adding insult to injury, those that imposed the sanction then disingenuously offer "aid" without revoking the sanctions unless the government capitulates. And the media amplifies the subterfuge rather than exposing it.

Again the "logic" here is nonsense.

FAIR
U.S. media ignore—and applaud—economic war on Venezuela

Gregory Shupak

Also at FAIR

Western Media Fall in Lockstep for Cheap Trump/Rubio Venezuela Aid PR Stunt

Adam Johnson

Facts Don’t Interfere With Propaganda Blitz Against Venezuela’s Elected President

Joe Emersberger

also

Popular Resistance
RED CROSS OF COLOMBIA: US ACTION TO VENEZUELA IS NOT ‘HUMANITARIAN AID'

Staff, Brasil247.com

Duncan Green — Please help me answer some scary smart student questions on Power and Systems

Uncertainty and emergence in huge complex adaptive systems.

To what extent can reflexivity anticipate emergence anticipated and reduce uncertainty by applying creative and critical thinking?

Oxfam Blogs — From Poverty to Power
Please help me answer some scary smart student questions on Power and Systems
Duncan Green, strategic adviser for Oxfam GB

Jerry Andersen — A free, teacher-less university in France is schooling thousands of future-proof programmers

“We don’t teach anything,” says Nicolas Sadirac, head of École 42. “The students create what they need all the time.”...

Who cares about another coding school?

Schools around the world, from kindergarten up, are scrambling to figure out what skills kids need to thrive in the future. Disagreement abounds about which skills should be prioritized, and how they should be taught, but opinions coalesce around some mix of collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, communication, and initiative (or agency)....

When Sadirac describes École 42, it is easy to forget it is a school he is talking about.

“I would mainly say it’s not about learning.”

“We think we are an art school.”

“Knowledge is un-useful, dangerous, and removes your freedom.”

All of this must be put in the context of programming, and how information technology has changed. École 42 is not about learning because learning has traditionally been about mastering a body of content, or set of skills.

“We should not try to learn and memorize stuff,” Sadirac says. “It’s dangerous, it makes you less agile.”

Getting information to stick in your brain is complicated and hard. Getting it out, to make way for new way things, can be even harder. Sadirac’s previous job, as it happens, involved retraining adults. The biggest impediment to them learning new things was often unlearning what they already knew. Case in point: around 30% of the students in the swimming pool come with coding experience. After one month, those with experience perform no better than those without it.

Around 30% of the students come with coding experience. After one month, they perform no better than those without it.

He considers École 42 an art school because programming is more art than science, he says. Two myths that persist about coding is that you have to be good at math and that it is a solitary endeavor.…

Knowledge is “dangerous,” Sadirac says, because of the way technology has changed. Companies first applied digital technology to transform existing processes, which required high levels of organization and knowledge, but not a lot of creativity. Today, as companies reinvent themselves around everything digital, it is programming that reinvents processes. That requires people to work together and think broadly about how to solve real-world problems

Quartz
A free, teacher-less university in France is schooling thousands of future-proof programmers

Jenny Andersen

Eric Schliesser — On Teaching How to Ask Philosophical Questions (of Complicated Texts)

Only marginally related but important, I think, in developing a curious approach that is also rigorous in any area using the Socratic method.

Teachers, writers, and researchers know from experience that the ability to formulate good questions is the secret to success. Eric Schliesser suggests teaching that skill to philosophy students and he propose a way to do this. 

While philosophy is about creative problem-solving and critical thinking, I would say that creative problem-solving and critical thinking is fundamental to most other endeavors and so learning the skills of creative problem-solving and critical thinking has general application as well.

Incidentally, Eric Schliesser often blogs on political theory and philosophy of economics, and I've linked to some of his posts previously.

Digressions&Impressions
On Teaching How to Ask Philosophical Questions (of Complicated Texts)
Eric Schliesser | Professor of Political Science, University of Amsterdam’s (UvA) Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences

Timothy Taylor — I Don't Know So Well What I Think Until I See What I Say

I've known writers who have the essay almost fully formed in their mind, and it just pours out on to the page. It's happened for me a few times. But most writing for me, and I suspect for others, starts from a place of less clarity. There's an idea, to be sure, and some support for the idea. But as you try to put the ideas into concrete words, you become aware of a lack of precision in what you are saying, of a failure to capture what you really mean to say, of holes and inconsistencies in the argument, of places where the argument is not persuasive or connected or fluent. I sometimes find this hard to convey to students: Writing isn't (usually) about transcribing thoughts, but instead is intertwined with a process of developing insights that are more accurate and complete.…

This is the process of applying critical thinking to creative thinking, of which Ludwig Wittgenstein said, "The purpose of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a theory but an activity... Philosophy should clarify and sharply bound thoughts that would otherwise be cloudy and blurry, as it were. " (Tractatus 4.112)

Rigorous thinking need not be formalized, since that is not always possible. For example, this may occur when quality predominates over quantity, or quantity is not sufficiently measurable for the degree of precision needed. or the number of variable and parameters involved makes formalized models intractable.

It's also a reason for using math where measurement is possible and quantity is a factor. For example, a lot of apparently promising entrepreneurial ideas are deflated when one puts numbers on it.

But logic is always applicable is some form, and logic is one pillar of critical thinking. The other pillar is substantiation, e.g., through evidence or authority such as expert testimony or documentaion.

 Another aspect of critical thinking is tacit knowledge. This is a reason that experts in a field are more reliable on matters in that field that non-experts. Their tacit knowledge provides the necessary background upon which to draw.

Critical thinking combines the categorical and dialectical, the dialectical aspect considering possible errors and objections by playing the devil's advocate.

Ideas of any degree of complication or complexity should be discussed in a team that brings may inputs to bear in a dialectic process. RAND Corporation invented the Delphi method for this purpose, for instance. Academics do this by passing their papers around among colleagues before releasing them. Working papers are also used to solicit feedback.

The Internet both helps and hinders this process. Obviously, I think it helps more than hinders.

It helps by forcing clarity, brevity and precision in thinking and expression, as well as training in drawing on and distilling tacit knowledge as background.

It hinders owing to the limited scope of the media, e.g., blogs and social media posts, and the breadth of scale, which necessitate a certain degree of "dumbing down" to reach the broad non-expert audience. As a result the output may be somewhat superficial and even be misunderstood, which poses a reputational risk that some are not willing to accept. There is also the risk of appearing foolish if one exceeds the bounds of one's field of expertise and makes errors, revealing lack of discrimination.

Conversable Economist

"I Don't Know So Well What I Think Until I See What I Say"

Timothy Taylor | Managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, based at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota

Gerald Dworkin — On Critical Thinking

We need courses devoted to such matters because we are living in a time where the dangers to informed and rational thought are not so much bad or sloppy thought but a poisoning of the flow of reliable information. It is not the transition from premises to conclusion that is often at fault but the premises themselves....

A sound argument is one whose logical form is valid and whose premises are true. The conclusion of a sound argument then follows from the premises and is true both deductively and representationally.

Simple, but a lot of things are in play and it takes a sharp mind with careful training to detect the problems. This is particularly the case when ordinary language is employed, which is most of the time in persuasion. Scientific method has been designed to reduce this risk, but there are also plenty of ways that scientific reasoning can go wrong, too.

Rigor in thinking requires training to acquire and apply. It also requires the ability to handle nuance.

Without such training most people are unable to follow an argument and critique correctly. As a result, persuasion based on rhetorical is often substituted successfully for rational argumentation based on logic and data that are genuine.

There is a difference between "data" and data. Fake news based on dubious or even bogus sources is an example, but this is a rather egregious one. There are a lot more subtle ways to persuade using sophistry.

3 Quarks Daily
On Critical Thinking
Gerald Dworkin | Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of California, Davis

Oleg Komlik — The Sociology of Quantification: Seeing like Numbers

Short and important.

Economic Sociology and Political Economy
The Sociology of Quantification: Seeing like Numbers
Oleg Komlik | founder and editor-in-chief of the ES/PE, Chairman of the Junior Sociologists Network at the International Sociological Association, a PhD Candidate in Economic Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Ben-Gurion University, and a Lecturer in the School of Behavioral Sciences at the College of Management Academic Studies

See also

Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
Revisiting “Is the scientific paper a fraud?”

Andrew Gelman | Professor of Statistics and Political Science and Director of the Applied Statistics Center, Columbia University

Chris Dillow — Rationalism, rationality & reasonableness

Chris Dillow is writing bout the dialectical approach in contrast to the categorical approach and apparently doesn't realize it even though he is a Marxian economist. What is is saying is to adopt the principle of rational inquiry in one's own thinking by critiquing oneself and becoming one's own interlocutor and devil's advocate. This is fundamental to critical thinking, in contrast to dogmatic thinking, for example.

Stumbling and Mumbling
Rationalism, rationality & reasonableness
Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle

Ronald J. Daniels — Philosophy Matters

Philosophy matters. Just ask Bill Miller. Bill started his professional journey as a philosophy graduate student at Johns Hopkins. He became a Wall Street legend. Based on my conversations with students and parents over many years, this is not the typical narrative associated with a humanities major. But Bill tells this story well.

Known for his analytical acumen and iconoclastic approach to markets, Bill attributes much of his success to the habits of mind he developed studying the works of great philosophical minds, such as William James, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Bertrand Russell. And he believes passionately that future generations deserve—and require—a similar foundation.

Indeed, philosophy defines what it is to be human, to lead lives that are meaningful, and to create societies that are just and humane. Through it, we take up significant ideas and hone the tools of critical analysis and considered judgment. And the contemporary challenges we face—of the genomics revolution, the rise of artificial intelligence, the growth in income inequality, social and political fragmentation, and our capacity for devastating war, to name but a few—all invite philosophical perspective.

Thanks to Bill's recent $75 million gift to the Johns Hopkins University Department of Philosophy, we are starting on a journey to set a new standard for excellence in this most necessary discipline.

Johns Hopkins Magazine
Philosophy Matters
Ronald J. Daniels | President

Adam Jezard — Finland thinks it has designed the perfect school. This is what it looks like.

The walls are coming down in Finland’s schools – but not just the physical barriers between classrooms. Also going are divisions between subjects and age ranges, and students have more of a say over what will be learnt than children in many other countries.

According to CityLab, an architecture website, the country is undergoing an ambitious national redesign of its 4,800 schools. Some 57 new schools began construction in 2015 and 44 in 2016. Others are being refurbished using open-plan principles...

Education for life rather than a job.

Proponents of PBL [phenomenon-based teaching and learning] say it helps to equip students with the critical thinking skills they need to flourish today. Kirsti Lonka, a professor of educational psychology at Helsinki University, told the BBC: “When it comes to real life, our brain is not sliced into disciplines ... we are thinking in a very holistic way. And when you think about the problems in the world – global crises, migration, the economy, the post-truth era – we really haven’t given our children the tools to deal with this inter-cultural world.”...

World Economic Forum
Finland thinks it has designed the perfect school. This is what it looks like.

Adam Jezard | Senior Writer at Formative Content.

Julian Millie and Matt Tomlinson — Infrequently asked questions: The Monologic Imagination

The topic we are focusing on is monologism, the practice of presenting one’s voice as pure and singular, unquestionably true, and, in the case of groups, unified. Monologism is a common feature of religious and political projects

The categorical versus the dialectical approach.

OUPblog
Infrequently asked questions: The Monologic Imagination

Julian Millie and Matt Tomlinson

Annabel Heseltine — Should Reasoning be the Fourth R?

The three Rs of reading, writing and arithmetic have always been the core fundamentals of teaching, with an implicit understanding that, until these are mastered, it is almost impossible to learn anything else, even less to be prepared for the job market as an adult. 

It was Sir William Curtis, a member of parliament in 1795, who first coined the phrase the three Rs, although the Victorians referred to mental arithmetic as reckoning. But a fourth R has been hovering just below the radar for quite some time – reasoning. 

Reasoning, or philosophy, is catching on as an important skill to give to pupils who are being trained for an unpredictable world, where their minds will need to be more flexible and enquiring than ever before. Life careers are no longer guaranteed and, indeed, many pupils will be following careers not yet invented....

Rational inquiry is the foundation of liberal education. Logic is the basis of rational inquiry. The aim is development of critical thinking.

School House
Should Reasoning be the Fourth R?
Annabel Heseltine

Paul Ratner — Teaching Students Philosophy Will Improve Their Academic Performance, Shows Study

Move over STEM.

There are many attempts to improve student performance which result in a host of measures, ranging from misguided to inspired. Such efforts include not assigning students homework, recalibrating standardized tests to account for unfair background advantages, or subjecting students to the hard-to-fathom Common Core standards. But a recent endeavor in the UK found another solution which actually appeared to have worked - the students were taught philosophy!

A study published last year demonstrated that 9 to 10 year olds, who took part in a year-long series of philosophy-oriented lessons, showed significant improvement in scores over their peers in a control group. The study involved over 3000 children in 48 primary schools all around England. The kids who were taking philosophy classes improved their math and reading skills by about two months of additional progress compared to the students who didn't take the classes.…

The importance of liberal education being rediscovered?

big think
Teaching Students Philosophy Will Improve Their Academic Performance, Shows Study

Paul Ratner

Hannah Richardson — Philosophy sessions 'boost primary school results'

Liberal education being rethought?

Weekly philosophy sessions in class can boost primary school pupils' ability in maths and literacy, a study says.

More than 3,000 nine and 10-year-olds in 48 UK schools took part in hour-long sessions aimed at raising their ability to question, reason and form arguments.

A study for the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) found pupils' ability in reading and maths scores improved by an average of two months over a year.

For disadvantaged children, the study found writing skills were also boosted.
The trial of the Philosophy for Children programme (P4C) focused on children in Years 4 and 5 - aged nine and 10.

It was part of efforts by the charity, EEF, to evaluate ways in which schools are spending pupil premium money beneficially on children from poorer backgrounds.

The disadvantaged pupils in the trial, those on free school meals, saw their reading skills improve by four months, their maths by three months and their writing ability by two months.…

In a typical session, pupils and teachers sit together in a circle. The pupils are shown a video clip or newspaper article to stimulate their interest in a subject. This is followed by a short period of silent thinking time.

The class then splits into pairs or small groups to discuss questions on the subject before coming back together for a whole-class discussion.

Subjects covered included whether a healthy heart should be donated to a person who has not looked after themselves.

BBC
Philosophy sessions 'boost primary school results'
Hannah Richardson | BBC News education reporter

Erin Meyer — Are You a Holistic or a Specific Thinker?

A traditional tenet of Western philosophies and religions is that you can remove an item from its environment and analyze it separately. Cultural theorists call this specific thinking.

Chinese religions and philosophies, by contrast, have traditionally emphasized interdependencies and interconnectedness. The Ancient Chinese thought in a holistic way, believing that action always occurs in a field of forces. The terms yin and yang (literally “dark” and “light”), for example, describe how seemingly contrary forces are interdependent.

Here’s what one of my Chinese participants said after we’d discussed the fish and photo studies: “Chinese people think from macro to micro, whereas Western people think from micro to macro. For example, when writing an address, the Chinese write in sequence of province, city, district, block, gate number. Westerners do just the opposite. In the same way, Chinese put the surname first, whereas Westerners do it the other way around. And Chinese put the year before month and date.”

This affects the way business people view each other across the globe. As Bae Pak from the Korean motor company Kia told me: “When we work with Western colleagues, we are often taken aback by their tendency to make decisions without considering the impact on other business units, clients, and suppliers.”

Harvard Business Review — HBR Blog Network
Are You a Holistic or a Specific Thinker?
Erin Meyer
Here's a list of opposites that require integration in holistic thinking. Interestingly, it is bilingual and bicultural children of Eastern and Western parents that get this naturally, as was explained to me by a student of mine some years ago.

structural functional

static dynamic

analytic synthetic

essentialism existentialism

nature path

figure ground

individual whole

element system

isolated contextual

fixed flexible

angular curved

mechanism organism

expansion growth

ontic ontological

matter consciousness

ideological pragmatic

separate integrated

focal balanced

independent interdependent

kataphatic apophatic

scientific mystical

math music

rational non-rational

observation experience

perception sensibility

fact value

reason inspiration

logic intuition

head heart

external internal

masculine feminine

yang yin

opposition complementarity

exclusion inclusion

diversity unity

detail overview

drop ocean

particle wave

either-or both-and

quantitative qualitative

cognitive affective

two-value logic fuzzy logic

drops ocean

simplicity complexity

closed systems open systems

literal symbolic

science art

precision nuance

centrifugal centripetal

anchored centered

active passive

result-based process-oriented

work play

criticism creativity

make it happen let it be

control the process trust the process

rule-based spontaneous

correctness rectitude

actual potential

actualize visualize

freedom community

life is rational life is experimental

individual utility common good

self-interest love

strict father nurturing mother

Almighty Father Divine Mother

Where are GI Jane and GI Joe When We Need BOTH of Them?

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

And, has GI Adaptive Rate Reached Zero Yet?

Do enough schools - or parents - teach students that policy matters? And voting decisions too?

Merchants, take our industry and Middle Class capabilities-set. Please! And while you're at it, start ramping up the policy civil wars, so we can shoot enough of our own feet to stage a real boondoggle.

NSA Spying Crushes US Tech Companies in Emerging Markets (“An Industry Phenomenon,” Says Cisco’s Chambers)

NSA Revelations Kill IBM Hardware Sales in China

A study in early August estimated that the spying scandal would cost US tech companies $35 billion

In response, a tech-industry worker writes: "Meanwhile those same American companies use Chinese suppliers and manufacturers."

Why, you finally ask?

Why, to support "free" trade, of course! Yet why "Of course?" Do any citizens even stop and think - at all - about the buzz words they hear from advertisers any more? How many citizens even know that there are alternate outlooks? How many are even familiar with and comfortable with uncertainty, doubt, and the practice of critical thinking, and audacious problem solving ... when it comes to national policy?

Free Trade? That Just Means That The Large-Scale Merchants Are in Control of Tax Policy.

And why? Apparently, only for lack of our full group bothering to set rational, group outcomes for the whole nation, and then actually assessing it's full-group progress. The result is that some merchant inmates are running the asylum. Again, why? Only because everyone else just wandered off in a daze? Another Central Planner economy did something like that too, more than once, just a few decades back.

These headlines above reminiscent of parents putting Sugar Smacks on the table & turning on the tv or video-games ... so that the parents can watch NASCAR & drink beer uninterrupted by the kids they're supposedly RAISING! Or, schools hosting football games, so the Athletic Director can get paid ... .

Conclusion? Our various Wars, including the supposed War on Drugs, have themselves degenerated into a War BY Our Net Selves, ON Our Net Selves? And if any foot anywhere squeaks up, it gets shot? Put yourself in our nation's position. Is that any way to win a war against yourself?

Or, we're repeating an alternate type of Prohibition, this time prohibiting citizens from the routine practice of critical thinking? Gotta hope for some novel variants of SpeakEasies. ThinkEasies? Anyone? Again, put yourself in your nation's position. Would it really help to avoid thinking carefully?

It gets more bewildering every year. Only pattern I can see is that our numbers are increasing faster than our methods for coordinating & mobilizing Group Intelligence (GI) are evolving - so that our national group intelligence is decelerating, rather than accelerating. Can you imagine the look on, say, a basketball lobbyist's [coach's] face, when presented with the overwhelming need for radical change beyond his ability to comprehend?

Basketball lobbyist: "Look, kids, basketball is a simple game. There are two teams with 5 players each."

Kids: "Uh, coach? We just counted again. There are 150million players on each end of the court. What do we do now?"

Basketball lobbyist:  ........  

Kids: "Looks like his brain locked up. Or else he's dead. Same thing. Whaddya wanna do now? ... Hey, there's this game called Lord of the Flies." :(

Has GI rate of change decelerated back to zero yet? Has GI itself sunk past the point where THIS size population cannot recover enough GI to survive? Where are GI Jane and GI Joe exactly when we need BOTH of them to work together - more than ever? Do we really HAVE to start anew, and rebuild this country from scratch?

How the hell would we even know? Literally no one is even discussing that question rationally, let alone comparing methods for assessing either our situation or our methods for surviving it! 

It is in the merchant inmates of the world that we must place our hope for organizing on a larger scale? Fate have mercy! And gag me with a buffoon! If this is the best we can do, then let's hope the current merchant inmates die off quick, and that their recombinant kids express more GI than Jane & Joe Sixpack did. Either that, or else it's Sayonara USA. We need to get back to having the merchant inmates work for the US Middle Class. NOT the other way around.

Nigel Warburton — Talk With Me

...Conversation without critical judgment becomes mere chatter and airing of different opinions — as William Empson wrote in his poem ‘Let It Go’ (1949):

"The contradictions cover such a range.The talk would talk and go so far aslant.You don't want madhouse and the whole thing there."

However, it was John Stuart Mill who crystallised the importance of having your ideas challenged through engagement with others who disagree with you. In the second chapter of On Liberty (1859), he argued for the immense value of dissenting voices. It is the dissenters who force us to think, who challenge received opinion, who nudge us away from dead dogma to beliefs that have survived critical challenge, the best that we can hope for. Dissenters are of great value even when they are largely or even totally mistaken in their beliefs. As he put it: ‘Both teachers and learners go to sleep at their post, as soon as there is no enemy in the field.’

Whenever philosophical education lapses into learning facts about history and texts, regurgitating an instructor’s views, or learning from a textbook, it moves away from its Socratic roots in conversation. Then it becomes so much the worse for philosophy and for the students on the receiving end of what the radical educationalist Paolo Freire referred to pejoratively in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) as the ‘banking’ of knowledge. The point of philosophy is not to have a range of facts at your disposal, though that might be useful, nor to become a walking Wikipedia or ambulant data bank: rather, it is to develop the skills and sensitivity to be able to argue about some of the most significant questions we can ask ourselves, questions about reality and appearance, life and death, god and society. As Plato’s Socrates tells us, ‘These are not trivial questions we are discussing here, we are discussing how to live.’

Aeon
Talk with me
Nigel Warburton

Scott Kaufman — Texas textbook review panel: Put more ‘creation science based on Biblical principles’ in biology books

Religious conservatives on the Texas state textbook review panel have targeted for eliminationhigh school biology textbooks that don’t include robust refutations of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.

The panel, which includes several creationists, is urging the State Board of Education to reject any textbook that does not issue what it calls “disclaimers” on key concepts in evolutionary theory.

“I understand the National Academy of Science’s strong support of the theory of evolution,” said Texas A&M University nutritionist Karen Beathard. “At the same time, this is a theory. As an educator, parent and grandparent, I feel very firmly that creation science based on Biblical principles should be incorporated into every biology book that is up for adoption.”

The president of Texas Freedom Network, Kathy Miller, worries that the decisions of reviewers like Beathard will turn Texas into a “laughingstock”

This is really going to help Texans compete in a global economy entering the Information Age in which knowledge workers will dominate.

The Raw Story
Texas textbook review panel: Put more ‘creation science based on Biblical principles’ in biology books
Scott Kaufman