[Vision2020] Health Education: A Conspiracy? A bit off the subject now though

[Joe Campbell]

Ted,

Good post. One point: There is no universal meaning to the expression
"free will." There are radical incompatibilist understandings which
suggest that free will is some kind of supernatural power that is
inconsistent with the notion that human decisions are a result of
biology, social conditions, etc. But there are also naturalistic,
compatibilist accounts which don't see a conflict between hardcore
determinism and human freedom. Check out the work of Keith Lehrer,
Harry Frankfurt, John Martin Fischer, or Al Mele.

On Fri, Nov 26, 2010 at 2:25 PM, Ted Moffett <starbliss at gmail.com> wrote:
> Consider the students at New Saint Andrews college in Moscow, many of whom I
> am sure would score high on the SAT, and have IQs well above 100, yet also
> consider that their views are in many respects consistent with the Tea Party
> on important issues, one of which is anthropogenic climate warming, which I
> think is the most critical problem facing humanity.
>
> Tea Party darling Sarah Palin is well known for making scientifically
> laughable statements on global warming; and her pro-fossil fuel industry,
> opposition to government regulation of CO2 emissions stance I think is
> common among so called "Tea Party" followers: global warming is a hoax or a
> fraud.
>
> Speaking of teaching Philosophy as a means to increase the educational and
> critical thinking skills of the public, consider that Pastor Douglas Wilson
> of Christ Church, involved with the religious ideology behind New Saint
> Andrews, has a degree in Philosophy from the University of Idaho.  U of I
> Professor Emeritus Nick Gier, if I recall correctly, supervised Wilson's
> thesis...
>
> I suspect that if tested on their academic logical capabilities, Wilson, as
> well as many New Saint Andrews students, would do reasonably well.
>
> My point in simple: many people who should have developed critical thinking
> skills, who are intelligent, who are reasonably educated about the world on
> many levels, still assert an anti-science and anti-progressive agenda,
> refusing to accept as probable that humans evolved from simpler organisms,
> or that the evidence for anthropogenic climate change is substantial, both
> very hotly debated.in the public sphere, regardless of the scientific
> evidence that the debate is warranted.  Many also oppose gay or women's
> rights on specific points, gay marriage or abortion.
>
> Ed Iverson from New Saint Andrews College (librarian with some science
> education credentials) has written several op-eds in the Moscow/Pullman
> Daily News attacking the integrity of climate science, as does the well
> known blog right-mind.us, hosted by a well known member of Christ Church,
> who appears to be an intelligent person, while he in my opinion applies a
> rather extreme confirmation bias filter to climate science findings, devoted
> to undermining the science supporting human impacts on climate.
>
> Belief in "free will" can distort an objective analysis of the evidence
> regarding why human beings believe what they believe on many important
> issues in life.  Why are most people born in Iran Islamic, and most in the
> US Christian?  "Free will?"  No, they are conditioned by their culture into
> the dominant ideology, with biologically based needs for conformism at
> work.  They may appear to be making free choices about their religious
> beliefs to their own minds, but this is often illusion.
>
> We are emotional socialized animals who for the most part make decisions
> based on peer pressure and emotions, with powerful intellectual filters
> unconsciously suppressing evidence contrary to beliefs in which their is
> substantial emotional investment.  Life after death (soul?), for example.
> The intellect, regardless of how capable or well educated, is often utilized
> to argue confirmation bias filtered positions; and sometimes the more
> capable and educated the person, the more convincingly they can construct
> intelligent appearing logical arguments for positions that are in fact
> anti-science and in opposition to human rights.
>
> The person who objectively surveys all the evidence on a given issue and
> dispassionately applies logic to arrive at a conclusion is rare.
> -------------------------------------------
> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
>
> On Fri, Nov 26, 2010 at 12:28 PM, Kenneth Marcy <kmmos1 at frontier.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Friday 26 November 2010 07:31:18 Joe Campbell wrote:
>> > <[snip]> ... but likely in the near future the MA program will be cut
>> > and
>> > I'll have undergraduate "readers" instead. <[snip]>
>>
>> Even if the MA in Philosophy is shelved until better economic times
>> return, I
>> wonder whether there may be opportunity for applied philosophy efforts to
>> keep
>> the Philosophy Department reasonably intact. For example, undergraduate
>> and
>> graduate courses in business ethics for the business curricula, economic
>> philosophy for the economics programs, and political philosophy for the
>> political science and public administration programs. These traditional
>> areas
>> could (continue to) be augmented with environmental philosophy, and a
>> newer
>> look at educational philosophy.
>>
>> On the latter topic I wonder whether we ought not examine the plebeian
>> assumption that personal educational responsibility to society ends when
>> one
>> is able to drop out of high school, and that personal efforts beyond that
>> are
>> optional. Perhaps a better notion is that there exists some basic minimum
>> of
>> expected educational achievement and ongoing competence that should be
>> expected of all adult citizens throughout their lives. As the decades roll
>> by,
>> the contents of that minimum may change, and with those changes, citizens
>> are
>> then obligated to meet those new standards, preferably, perhaps, with at
>> least
>> some minimal assistance to do so. For discussion purposes, I take the
>> minimum
>> standard to be the current requirements for public high school graduation.
>>
>> > Also, I think it is a mistake to think that a lack of logic or critical
>> > thinking skills is at fault. My own view is that the fault lies with the
>> > increase in private education and isolationism
>>
>> While it may be the case that pedagogical pandering to bygone ages of
>> frontier
>> foraging and farming may attempt to evoke rugged individualism and
>> libertarian
>> license, observation of contemporary circumstances suggests explanations
>> that
>> require less conscious and coordinated effort to attain the status quo.
>> Simple
>> inertia against continuing personal educational work, lethargy and
>> laziness,
>> combined with  mindsets disinclined toward ideas and theory, and wanting
>> to
>> get on with the practical realities of life, keep the majority away from
>> not
>> only post-secondary education but from revisiting or reviewing what they
>> should have learned, and should still remember, from their high school
>> years.
>>
>> > but my guess is that most
>> > private schools teach as much or more logic and critical thinking as
>> > they
>> > do in public schools. Logic is analogous to computer hardware; even the
>> > best is only as good as the input. As they say, "garbage in, garbage
>> > out"
>> > but also quality in, quality out. What counts as garbage and what counts
>> > as quality? That's where things get tricky.
>>
>> Well, sure. Must we require a two-value, forced-choice, true-false logic,
>> or
>> may we consider other logics without their middles excluded? Some sets of
>> circumstances suggest that maybe or neither or don't know to be more
>> appropriate answers than true or false.
>>
>> And, heretical as it may be to the core of Western logic, I wonder whether
>> logic and its interactions through various linguistic pathways within the
>> brains resident in various cultures may not have variations that are
>> functions
>> of the cultures within which it resides. Different logics in different
>> cultures,
>> however slight may be the differences, may result in different conclusions
>> that,
>> unexamined, lurk near the cores of some of our more intractable
>> international
>> discussions.
>>
>> > What counts as evidence? What
>> > counts as sound reasoning? Some answers are easy: empirical findings,
>> > classical logic, and mathematics. But that alone won't get you far.
>> > Unfortunately, after that point we start doing philosophy, where
>> > reasonable disagreement is par for the course. If the answers were easy,
>> > we'd all agree. But we don't, so they're not.
>>
>> Not only are unresolved philosophical questions problematical, but so are
>> the
>> continually troubled communications, or lack thereof, between C.P. Snow's
>> two
>> cultures, the scientists and the aesthetes, the left and the right
>> brained.
>>
>> Newton demonstrated that effort is necessary to overcome inertia, and that
>> effort is what is required to get some of us out of the bag of chips, off
>> the
>> couch, and into more active, energetic, and educationally accomplishing
>> lives.
>>
>>
>> Ken
>>
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