esk@wucs.UUCP (Paul V. Torek) (04/10/85)
[Dick Naugle Says "PREPARE FOOD FRESH SERVE CUSTOMERS FAST KEEP PLACE CLEAN"] It often helps to have a label for the things that annoy us. I remember the satisfaction I felt, when a friend of mine used a label for an experience that probably all we singles have gone through -- being on the receiving end of a -- get this -- "friendship speech". That simple label, "friendship speech", makes it so much easier to laugh at, to put in perspective, yes, to categorize. Labels can be abused, of course, but they can also promote understanding by allowing us to quickly recognize similarities of the things that fit them. Fallacies (in the vulgar sense) are particularly appropriate things to give labels to. If we can recognize an argument as a particular type of fallacy, we can see the flaw in it clearly and easily. Those who are likely to read this article will be quite familiar with one fallacy's label: "wishful thinking". It is a favorite label of a certain Professor Wagstaff. I suggest that there is a mirror image fallacy which also deserves a label. I hereby dub it "fearful thinking". "Fearful thinking" is a misnomer, but it allows for a certain rhetorical flair. Wishful thinking is believing something because one wishes that it were true, but fearful thinking is not believing something because one fears its truth. [Def.:] It is (as exemplified beautifully by Rich Rosen) AN OVERREACTION TO WISHFUL THINKING, a knee-jerk opposition to all claims accepted by wishful thinkers, as if the fact that something is believed on fallacious (wishful) grounds proved that it were false. A good example is Rich's position on free will. He sees that many of those who believe in it do so for wishful reasons, and concludes that it doesn't exist. When shown that free will can be explicated in terms quite different from those of the wishful thinkers -- that it can be grounded on something (rational evaluative capabilities controlling behavior) which requires (unlike "souls") no long leap of faith -- he refuses to allow it. Instead he accepts the Dogma of the wishful thinkers which ties free will to a "ghost in the machine", in order to prevent free will from being rescued. After all, if the wishful thinkers believe in free will, it MUST be illusory! Another example is Rich's rabid (eliminative) reductionism. He considers any concept, not yet integrated into the hardest of hard sciences, guilty until proven innocent. He's a fan of B.F. Skinner, who avoids mental terms like the plague -- they're "unscientific" (never mind that they're part of the best explanations we have in the field of psychology). Behaviorism as a research program may be dead or dying, but Occam worshippers will applaud its disposal of mental entities come what may. I could probably go on, but I've probably earned enough flames already. Pass the ammunition, and may the best idea win! --The developing iconoclast, Paul V. Torek, ihnp4!wucs!wucec2!pvt1047
rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Dr. Emmanuel Wu) (04/12/85)
Followup to this article by Paul Torek in net.philosophy. To summarize: Paul's notion of fearful thinking, the belief that those who question wishful thinking beliefs out of "fear" that they might be right, is erroneous. Given the evidence in favor of such beliefs, there is nothing to fear except for people trying to impose such beliefs as a societal morality. It appears that those who propose such a notion are doing so as a sort of placating self-defense -- the reason their beliefs are being questioned has nothing to do with there not being enough evidence to support it, but rather because its opponents are "fearful" that it might be right. As such, the notion of other people engaging in "fearful thinking" is just another example of real live wishful thinking. -- "Discipline is never an end in itself, only a means to an end." Rich Rosen pyuxd!rlr