{"id":100539,"date":"2017-06-20T10:45:27","date_gmt":"2017-06-20T17:45:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=100539"},"modified":"2017-06-20T10:45:27","modified_gmt":"2017-06-20T17:45:27","slug":"love-elizabeth-anscombe-finally-become-super-hero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2017\/06\/love-elizabeth-anscombe-finally-become-super-hero.html","title":{"rendered":"I love that Elizabeth Anscombe has finally become a super-hero"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"Some<\/p>\n

\u201cScientism\u201d is the position that Science can solve all problems, or that all problems are empirical. Philosophically, it is mostly associated with the strongest statements made by the logical positivism<\/a> movement, which mostly died out in the mid 20th century. Culturally, however, it is stronger than ever, and is closely tied to movements like the so-called \u201cNew Atheists\u201d. These newer, more naive forms of Scientism, also have a strong tendency to call philosophy \u201ca big waste of time\u201d, \u201cpointless arguing\u201d, \u201cnothing but semantics\u201d, etc. Rhetorically, they tend to say that non-empirical ideas have no way to guarantee they are true, so are pointless to talk about. This is a rather ridiculous point to make, since their entire movement is based around spreading a certain set of non-empirical, philosophical norms, which they apparently don\u2019t feel it necessary to open up to criticism. What they mostly seem to mean is, assuming everyone agrees with us<\/em> on the important philosophic questions, such as atheism, utilitarianism, capitalism, eliminative materialism, etc., then we don\u2019t need anything but science. Well, this is a maybe true in a strange way, insofar that if everyone agreed on every philosophical position, i.e. if philosophy was solved, then we probably wouldn\u2019t need philosophy. Philosophy, however, has not been solved. Furthermore, if it is going to be solved, it certainly won\u2019t be solved by a bunch of people who don\u2019t even read or engage in philosophy. The real goal is often just to draw a border around what we should or shouldn\u2019t question, because they don\u2019t want any of the fundamental aspects of society to change. And, well, people who don\u2019t want society to change often also find themselves not wanting people to even think<\/em> about changing society.<\/p>\n

This is, of course, a deeply conservative position, and reflects the politics of the people who make this sort of claim. In a lot of ways \u201cNew Atheism\u201d is just a political movement that is attempting to secularize conservatism (in particular, it seems, the foreign policy doctrine that the United States and Europe should be \u201cexporting\u201d their culture overseas, i.e. governing the Earth). People who want to change society in a fundamental way, not just improve the efficiency and technology within society, seldom use this kind of anti-intellectual rhetoric. For example, Mary Wollstonecraft, in the 1700s, was trying to convince people to allow women to be educated in the same manner as men. It doesn\u2019t take a genius to realize that science or technology alone aren\u2019t going to solve this kind of problem. People wanting to make comparable changes today also aren\u2019t going to be fooled into thinking that all we need is more advanced technology, or to understand atoms better or something. Somewhat amusingly (or actually probably not that amusingly), people like Richard Dawkins, when attacked for their conservative views, will sometimes try to defend themselves by saying that they actually are<\/em> feminists, or whatever. But, of course, when you get down to their views and actions, it\u2019s obvious that what they mean by \u201cfeminism\u201d is \u201cgender equality was already achieved a few decades ago, so everyone needs to stop complaining about it.\u201d Sam Harris, for instance, when asked why there were so few women in the \u201cNew Atheism\u201d movement, had this to say:<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something about that critical posture that is to some degree intrinsically male and more attractive to guys than to women. The atheist variable just has this- it doesn\u0092t obviously have this nurturing, coherence-building extra estrogen vibe that you would want by default if you wanted to attract as many women as men.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The \u201ccritical posture\u201d, of course, means \u201cpeople who agree with Sam Harris\u201d. Someone who doesn\u2019t find it necessary to read a book about a topic before writing a book on that topic can hardly be said to have a \u201ccritical posture\u201d.<\/p>\n

You can see Christopher Hitchens talk about feminism here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Neil deGrasse Tyson is mostly being made fun of for saying that philosophy of science hasn\u2019t contributed to science. A rather odd statement, since anything that contributes to science would just be<\/em> science. Philosophy of science asks different questions, like what science is and why and how it works. He probably shouldn\u2019t be lumped in with the others politically, and he isn\u2019t as anti-philosophy as a whole, as far as I can tell.<\/p>\n

Please send your hatemail to idontgiveashit@existentialcomics.com.<\/p>\n

\u201cPhilosophy Force Five\u201d is a parody of \u201cFox Force Five\u201d, the failed pilot TV show that Uma Thurman\u2019s character was in from Pulp Fiction, on which the deadly female assassins of Kill Bill are also somewhat based.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For more of this curious comic go here<\/a>:<\/p>\n

And most importantly:\u00a0Support the comic on Patreon!<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cScientism\u201d is the position that Science can solve all problems, or that all problems are empirical. Philosophically, it is mostly associated with the strongest statements made by the logical positivism movement, which mostly died out in the mid 20th century. Culturally, however, it is stronger than ever, and is closely tied to movements like the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3,911],"class_list":["post-100539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-humor","tag-scientism"],"yoast_head":"\nI love that Elizabeth Anscombe has finally become a super-hero<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\""Scientism" is the position that Science can solve all problems, or that all problems are empirical. 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