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From: Michael Wojcik on 25 Jun 2010 11:15 Howard Brazee wrote: > On Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:04:23 -0400, Michael Wojcik > <mwojcik(a)newsguy.com> wrote: > >>> Isn't all racism "irrational"? >> No; that's partly what makes it so dangerous. Much of so-called >> "scientific racism", for example, is quite rational: it consists of a >> set of premises, and conclusions formulated by the application of >> logic to those premises. >> >> The premises are ill-founded, and the conclusions abhorrent, but that >> doesn't make it irrational, however dangerous and wrong. >> >> "Rational" is not a synonym for "good" or even for "well thought out". > > Racism is a subset of classism, Not as those terms are normally understood in political science. But that's not really relevant to my argument, or to yours. Obviously race and class prejudices are both attempts to generalize about the relative value of people based on (what are taken to be) group characteristics. It's not really useful to try to reduce one of those categories to the other. > which is a subset of "my way is right, > therefore other ways are wrong". There are other modes of racism. Internalized racisms often boil down, in a very approximate sense, to "you're better than me", rather than the other way around. > When we start off with a premise > that we accept as Truth, bending the facts to fit this premise is > common, even with people who try hard not to do this. Sure. This does not make racisms or other group prejudices inherently irrational, however. "Irrational" (used carefully) has a specific meaning, and is not the litmus test for bad thinking or poor intellectual work. There's no advantage to using "irrational" when we mean "wrong" or "bad". That elevates rationality to an undeserved place in our epistemology (not everything rational is right and good), and debases irrationality (which can sometimes be good, as it often is in art, for example; and which is an inevitable and ubiquitous presence in human life anyway). And particularly when trying to resist social injustice, sloppy thinking (like slapping "irrational" on every bad idea) does no one any favors, either. -- Michael Wojcik Micro Focus Rhetoric & Writing, Michigan State University
From: Michael Wojcik on 25 Jun 2010 11:04 SkippyPB wrote: > On Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:04:23 -0400, Michael Wojcik > <mwojcik(a)newsguy.com> wrote: > >> SkippyPB wrote: >>> Isn't all racism "irrational"? >> No; that's partly what makes it so dangerous. Much of so-called >> "scientific racism", for example, is quite rational: it consists of a >> set of premises, and conclusions formulated by the application of >> logic to those premises. >> >> The premises are ill-founded, and the conclusions abhorrent, but that >> doesn't make it irrational, however dangerous and wrong. >> >> "Rational" is not a synonym for "good" or even for "well thought out". > > BS. There is nothing rational about judging a person because they > happen to have a different pigment in their skin than you do. I begin to suspect that you don't know what "rational" means. > At the > core, all human beings have the same building blocks - they are all > flesh and blood and sentient. I don't believe I've disputed that. > Racism is a learned behavior Or that. > and is illogical and irrational. I'm not sure you know what "illogical" means, either. Here's a trivial example of logical racism: All people of heritage X are inferior. Person Y is of heritage X. Person Y is inferior. See? A straightforward syllogism. Classic logic. The major premise happens to be untrue (and the minor one is suspect), but neither of those things make the syllogism malformed. It's completely logical. If you want it in formal notation, here's a predicate calculus version: \A p (Hx(p) -> I(p)) Hx(y) -> I(y) Straight deduction by substitution. Completely logical. It'd be swell if all bad thinking were "illogical and irrational"; that'd give us an easy moral test. But in fact not all bad thinking is illogical or irrational, and there is no easy moral test.[1] And it'd be swell if we all had free magical sparkleponies, too. But that don't make it so. What's irrational is believing that the wrongness of an idea makes that idea irrational. [1] Richard Rorty's essay "Trotsky and the Wild Orchids", which appears in the collection _Wild Orchids and Trotsky_, is a nice exegesis on this latter principle. -- Michael Wojcik Micro Focus Rhetoric & Writing, Michigan State University
From: Pete Dashwood on 25 Jun 2010 11:45 docdwarf(a)panix.com wrote: > In article > <f859a3b4-c382-4579-a415-fd9fcb9535d5(a)z8g2000yqz.googlegroups.com>, > Alistair <alistair(a)ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote: >> On Jun 23, 3:35?pm, docdw...(a)panix.com () wrote: > > [snip] > >>> As opposed to the words of Gandalf the Grey: 'There are those who >>> live who deserve to die and those who die who deserve life. ?Can >>> you give it to them, Mr Frodo Baggins?' >> >> I didn't know that Gandalf the Grey was a renowned German >> philosopher. > > As much as Mr Frodo Baggins was a student at Cambridge, perhaps. I did attend Cambridge University (England) but it was only for a weekend with some friends who were students there. :-) And I always empathised more with Bilbo than Frodo... Pete. -- "I used to write COBOL...now I can do anything."
From: SkippyPB on 25 Jun 2010 11:59 On Thu, 24 Jun 2010 14:48:30 +0000 (UTC), docdwarf(a)panix.com () wrote: >In article <b7r6261l0be9cs8krh2qpra305ddn6arp0(a)4ax.com>, >SkippyPB <swiegand(a)Nospam.neo.rr.com> wrote: >>On Wed, 23 Jun 2010 18:22:48 +0000 (UTC), docdwarf(a)panix.com () wrote: >> >>>In article <mpi4265ie87cupsc2j5p15gi7v5448fucm(a)4ax.com>, >>>SkippyPB <swiegand(a)Nospam.neo.rr.com> wrote: > >[snip] > >>>>Isn't all racism "irrational"? >>> >>>Whether it is or it isn't, attempting rational discourse with a certified >>>paranoid schizophrenic might not be considered the most fruitful of >>>passtimes. >> >>Well I suppose it depends on which personality you are having a >>discourse with. > >I believe, Mr Wiegand, that you are making the common-yet-inaccurate >equivalence between 'multiple personality syndrome' and 'schizophrenia' >(lit. 'fractured personality'). > >DD Yes, indeed I did. Wikipedia defines it as: a mental disorder characterized by abnormalities in the perception or expression of reality. It most commonly manifests as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking with significant social or occupational dysfunction. Onset of symptoms typically occurs in young adulthood, with around 0.4-0.6% of the population affected. Diagnosis is based on the patient's self-reported experiences and observed behavior. No laboratory test for schizophrenia currently exists. Regards, -- //// (o o) -oOO--(_)--OOo- "You have to learn to crawl before you can grovel." -- Art Grinath ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Remove nospam to email me. Steve
From: Pete Dashwood on 25 Jun 2010 12:00
SkippyPB wrote: > On Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:44:32 +0000 (UTC), docdwarf(a)panix.com () wrote: > >> In article >> <c13d227e-2b1f-4079-add2-abc0b667bff4(a)z8g2000yqz.googlegroups.com>, >> Alistair <alistair(a)ld50macca.demon.co.uk> wrote: >>> On Jun 23, 3:47?am, "Pete Dashwood" >>> <dashw...(a)removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote: >>>> >>>>> And now I have found out that the coward behind the offensive >>>>> email is hiding behind a freely available anonymizer. >>>> >>>> Imagine for a moment what it must be like to be him/her... All >>>> that hatred just burning you up. I have to believe this is not a >>>> happy person. Perhaps we all get what we deserve... :-) >>>> >>> >>> I know what it is like to be like that person. A friend of mine is a >>> certified paranoid schizophrenic with a burning hatred for >>> foreigners with a skin colour suggestive of even the most lightest >>> of tans. >> >> [snip] >> >>> His views are hypocritical as he has black friends whom he classes >>> as whites because they don't behave like the stereotypical blacks >>> he sees in the worst of American TV. >> >> Mr Maclean, if he is a certified paranoid schizophrenic then his >> views >> might be seen less as subject to 'hyporcisy' and more as subject to >> 'irrationality'. You might want to websearch the punchline 'dead >> men do bleed' for an example. >> >> DD > > Isn't all racism "irrational"? No. Some of it is just instinctive. If you are at war with a certain tribe then it is not irrational to avoid them. At a very deep level, we all have a mistrust of what is "not us...". And we've probably had it since the very beginnings of life on the planet. Single celled animals developed a cell wall to differentiate between what is "us", and "not us". Without that, multicelled organisms would probably not have developed... So, in a way, without "Racism" none of us would be here. :-) It takes advanced skills like the ability to interact, trade, communicate, and, eventually, understand, before we can start feeling comfortable around cultures that are "not us". In the meantime, suspicion and mistrust are kind of to be expected. How we deal with and overcome them is one of the things that marks our growth as human beings. Pete. -- "I used to write COBOL...now I can do anything." |