THE POINT MADE by a philosopher who I disagree with about much, George Moore, that there are hardly any of the points of the most exacting of philosophy which people can know as experientially and reliably as something like 2+2=4 is something I agree with wholeheartedly. That some of the most exacting philosophy takes enormous pains and extremely long chains of symbolic statements and conclusions to reach the point where it can admit that 1+1=2, and even then it is something you would have to choose to believe makes me wonder why a more reasonable conclusion to reach is that there is something deeply problematical with that particular philosophical specialty. The refusal to admit that we know some of the things we know because, in the end, you can't reach a formal "proof" of it is one of the mental dysfunctions caused by setting an impossible standard, a refusal to admit that what we can know is known within the contingent limits of our abilities and those don't produce a satisfyingly final conclusion beyond any ridiculous question, finally answering all things.
I will note that the conclusion that the exacting logical thing which pure math is does not produce a self-closing system certainly should call into question that the less exacting field of physics will ever have one for itself. Having once gotten a particularly arrogant materialist fundamentalist to admit that there is not so much as a single electron which science knows completely and exhaustively (which admission, I'm still proud to have forced him into admitting, it was like pulling hens' teeth) perhaps I should ask someone in the foundations of mathematics if there is a single number or other mathematical object which mathematics has a complete understanding of. Even the number 1 would seem to be intimately tied up with every new facet of mathematics that is published and so those reveal new aspects of the number. Which is a cheering idea, there will never be an end to what there is for professional mathematicians to discover. That is if you take any of it as either true or significant and if you don't, so much for science. And, therefore, someone might be willing to pay them while they do it. Many an academic gets paid to do far more dodgy stuff.
That said, even in what is seemingly an infinitude of possible facets to the number 1, there are certainly statements you can make about the number 1 which are knowably true and statements containing it which are certainly false. And if you deny that, again, so much for science. If those statements about the number 1 are not knowably true or false then there is just about literally nothing in philosophy or science which can be justifiably asserted to be known, including the validity of the mental apparatus of stuff used to deny that such self-evident and provable truths about numbers is knowably true or false, their debunkery exists as much within the contingent limits of minds as the things the debunkers want to debunk.
Even more basic than the idea that the basic addition facts are valid is that the mind containing and manipulating those facts is real, the reasoning of the mind, its evaluation of the truth value of its conclusions, that it does something which requires meaningful thought and produces meaningful and true results as understanding of things is there to do that, no matter what enormous chains of ideologically motivated and far from obvious argument seeks to convince you that minds in general, including yours, is not engaged in any meaningful activity which arrives at true conclusions those philosophy professors or those who prefix cog- or neuro- appended to their fields of speculation as science want to claim for publication to support their ideological preferences.
If their conclusion is true the very activities they were engaged in to produce that work is as discredited as any other conclusions that anyone else engages in in contradiction of them. Their own work is as stripped of significance or the likelihood that it enjoys the value of truth. Their idea has exactly the same status as the ideas denying their conclusions. And of course, their own claim's validity is as debunked as anything they don't like in that philosophical two-step. Their conclusions have exactly the same truth value as the "folk psychology" which they dismiss.
But many of the ideas that claim that Peoples consciousness, that minds really exist and that their activities and conclusions have at least a chance to arrive at a meaningful truth are not self-discrediting in the same way. Such ideas of minds and their activities include the possibility of arriving at truth or untruth so they permit the possibility that their conclusions are true. That's the difference between a self-set ideological trap and an attempt to find the truth. I have never suspected the eliminative materialists to have not started out firmly holding onto their desired conclusion by which their claims are forced but they really aren't very good at thinking things out to the endpoint. Like all ideologues, eventually they want to have an exemption from their own universal claims.
I hold that any idea that contains or forces its own contradiction or forces a conclusion of its invalidity is rightly held to be too stupid to publicly fund or support the promotion of and any institution or, especially in this case, school that does that is rightly questioned and held to have fallen into nonsense and, so, is unworthy of support.
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. . . that possibility of danger is no rational reason to make it far more dangerous by allowing the free expression and advocacy of ideologies and lies that ensure those dangers are more likely while their suppression will make them less likely
Not only in spite of but because I hold that all People are created equal and equally are endowed with rights, I reject the idea that all ideas are equally deserving of respect and to respectably hold a place in academia or science, no matter how nicely grammatical their writing and speech is, no matter how nicely they dress, how nicely they have gained credentials that allow them to put letters after their name or to insist that people call them "Dr.".
Certainly any idea that debases or denies the validity of the very categories of respectability and even truth (which is certainly among those things which should render an idea under consideration as respectable and gain it a place in academic life) cannot then be said to deserve what it denies any consequential status to, it being claimed as being a respectable idea that might be true. I think the consequences of materialist-atheist-scientism which include some of the most decadent claims and conclusions and consequences of those sort ever bull-shitted as intellectualism earns them a place on a roll of ideas that aren't deserving of respect or a place in anything respectable. I'm unaware of any formal logical fallacy that labels an argument that not only debases its claimed goal but also debases the very means by which its conclusions are reached but it would seem to me that there needs to be one invented to express just how much is wrong about eliminative materialism and its philosophico-ideological cousins. That it is held to be an academically respectable idea is an emblem of just how absurd modernism becomes. Given the importance of egalitarian democratic government, it is far more urgent that any idea which destroys the basis of it should have a special categorization as disreputable and unworthy of respect, those which have a history of getting People killed and oppressed should be forbidden and actively suppressed.
People have equal rights in that it is a right to have a decent, peaceful, secure life in so far as People and societies can provide that. Their ideas? Ideas don't have rights, I no more have to respect or hold as equal or as equally deserving of legal protection a political ideology that promotes evil treatment of entire groups of People, denying that they be allowed a peaceful, decent, secure life any more than than I do to the idea that 2+2= the recipe for original Coke or the ravings of some Biblical numerologist that a late night host picks up off the street to fill air time, only those would be innocuous whereas the ones you can expect the ACLU to mount a defense of get people killed.
The absurd idea that an idea that targets an entire race, religion, gender or gender identity for discrimination, violence or murder is more allowable than the advocacy of violence against a single individual is just that, absurd. That judges, "justices," legal hacks, misguided Civics teachers, and the rest of us have been sold the idea that even in the face of the 20th century materialist-atheist-scientistic dictatorial regimes and the mountains of those murdered by them that we MUST allow them another chance to do it again is the most decadent of current superstitions. Beside that the ludicrous notion that Noah put two of every animal in a big boat during a flood that drowned all the dinosaurs is harmlessly naive. One gets millions murdered, one produced a wacky theme park with finances that make people whine. Yet I know which one would never be considered as belonging in a university or defended on NPR or get respectful treatment among those held to be respectable outside of some particularly benighted areas of Protestant fundamentalism. And it isn't the one that got millions murdered.
The idea that egalitarian democracy, on the basis of some wacky idea of "justice" or "fairness" must tolerate the now billionaire - foreign dictator-gangster as well as our own indigenous gangster class- financed cabloid and webloid profiting promotion of ideas that deny equality and which are destructive of the absolutely essential prerequisites for democracy, giving them a chance to dupe and corrupt the electorate into giving them a chance to do what they proclaim they want to is one of the stupidest ideas to have gained currency in the modern period.
It is also an idea that those who proclaim it tend to violate whenever it suits them. That someone like James Madison or Thomas Jefferson or even John Adams may have promoted the idea that all ideas MUST be allowed is certainly contradicted by their lives. Madison and Jefferson would certainly never have supported the communication of the idea among those they held in slavery that they had the same rights of rebellion against tyranny that they claimed as a natural right when it was a group of aristocratic white guys gathered in Philadelphia to break the ties to the English government.
Though the infamous Alien and Sedition Act is held by polite college-credentialed People to be a far worse thing than the hypocrisies of Madison and Jefferson, Adams certainly didn't seem to think that when he was President dealing with what he had good reason to fear was an importation of the ideas that were leading to the Reign of Terror as "liberty, equality and fraternity" in France, with the support of not a few of his political opponents who were not in power but wanted to be. The idea that resurgent fascism, our indigenous form of that in the Supreme Court enabled white supremacy which still oppresses and kills so many and the male supremacy which the Roberts Court has, as well, again made the law of the land, giving predominantly male, Republican-fascist legislators power over the very bodies and lives of Women that slave-holders held over slaves, to deny the ancestors of slaves the right to cast a vote, that that and Nazism or Stalinism or Maoism or even lesser demented forms of anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian MUST be allowed a chance to take hold here and flourish as Trumpism has is absolutely morally irresponsible and insane. For the large majority of People who would suffer under those, there is absolutely no reason for them to agree that because Jemmy Madison said we must allow that the chance to happen. If Nazism, Stalinism, Maoism, our indigenous forms of fascism such as white supremacy were forbidden, suppressed and never advocated here would be all for the good.
If you ask who gets to draw the line, the answer is as plain as it is for every law that is made, rightfully, we the People do. There is no absolute safety in any human activity, there is certainly possible danger in establishing and maintaining a government but that possibility of danger is no rational reason to make it far more dangerous by allowing the free expression and advocacy of ideologies and lies that ensure those dangers wielding power are more likely while their suppression will make them less likely to. Especially those ideologies that announce their intention of endangering, oppressing, murdering such as a good little ACLU contributor will feel very self-satisfyingly virtuous about paying to give them a legal representation on the insane belief that that's the best way to prevent what they admit they intend to do happening.
Anyone who cannot distinguish between the desire for all People to have the right to a decent, peaceful life and Nazism, Stalinism, American apartheid, Trumpism etc. is too stupid to be granted any benefit of the doubt and certainly should be held to hold an idea that is dangerously deserving of suppression. The lives of scores of millions dead just within still living memory attest to that danger as the millions killed by white supremacy in the United States stand as testimony against our indigenous equivalent of that. Yet it is the pretense that we are all incompetent to make that decision, that judges and "justices" and jurors who are given the responsibility to make life and death decisions when it is merely the very lives of human beings are incompetent to judge the difference between Nazism and equal justice for all.
