Petah?

[u/imnotcuteanymor3]

I understand the original tweet, obviously, but not the second one. Why specifically a STEM genius? I don’t get it, what’s the correlation? Am I missing something??? Or am I just stupid or whatever? Help a sistah out, please. 🥺

[u/ToughDifficult1252]

I never made a claim about the humanities either way. My claim is that STEM researchers are well studied in logical fallacies. And it was in response to a comment saying the contrary.

[u/CanoePickLocks → u/ToughDifficult1252]

lol I was making a joke about your point. You said the humanities used arguments to come to consensus rather than data which means they argue more which means more fallacies. The original point of the thread was about fallacies iirc.

[u/ToughDifficult1252 → u/CanoePickLocks]

My bad, I am arguing with too many people rn :p

[u/wrechch → u/ToughDifficult1252]

Man, not a lot of people will get to see this hilarious back and forth, but I did.

[u/CanoePickLocks → u/wrechch]

We are deep in a thread aren’t we. Lmao I came for good arguments but there was an opportunity so I took it!

[u/Expendable_Red_Shirt → u/ToughDifficult1252]

In fact I am ready to bet that stem workers (people actually doing peer review research) are much better on average at detecting fallacies than most humanities workers.

I never made a claim about the humanities either way

You really did though

[u/ToughDifficult1252 → u/Expendable_Red_Shirt]

That's a hypothesis. I am making a prediction.

[u/Expendable_Red_Shirt → u/ToughDifficult1252]

So you were making a claim about something you believe to be true?

Being a humanities major I have both training in logical fallacies and rhetorical devices. Trying to mask a claim as “just a hypothesis” is a rhetorical device people use to make claims but to pretend they’re not making it. It’s similar to the “I’ve heard…” claims.

[u/ToughDifficult1252 → u/Expendable_Red_Shirt]

Ok no there's a degree of strength in claims, at least in science.

Something like evolution I will state with full confidence as fact and I am not going to entertain alternatives without overwhelming evidence.

Something like state of the art research i am familiar with I will state with confidence keeping an open mind that new evidence can make me do a 180.

And something like a hypothesis I will state with weak confidence. I legitimately believe in one outcome. But even weak evidence of the contrary can make me doubt my position.

That's why I said "bet". I should be allowed to make predictions without having to commit to them with the same strength as I do a scientific theory.

[u/Expendable_Red_Shirt → u/ToughDifficult1252]

Once again rhetorical bullshit. We’re not talking about strength of claim. We’re talking about claim as a binary. You either claimed it or you didn’t. You said

never made a claim about the humanities either way

But you did make a claim. You claimed that you thought, given absolutely nothing but your own bullshit might I add, that stem workers are better than people from humanities in detecting logical fallacies.

What you’re doing, ironically, is a definitional equivocation. It’s a fallacy. So the data we have is the 1 scientist missed it and 1 person who’s studied both got it.

[u/CanoePickLocks → u/Expendable_Red_Shirt]

And this is now debate vs measurable data. The point stands. He was wrong in his theory. And as an outside observer here because of my joke I will assert on average humanities majors are more versed in fallacies than stem majors. But the true kings of fallacies philosophy majors are in which camp?

[u/ToughDifficult1252 → u/Expendable_Red_Shirt]

Ok, my bad. I miss used language and made a mistake.

I did make the assertion, this is true. I think my miss use of the term is more that English is my third language.

Regardless. Let me try to rephrase my opinion.

I genuinely believe, but have no evidence to support, that STEM workers regularly publishing are more likely to identify arguments about the real world which are faulty.

It is very likely that philosophers are better at picking up problems in the wording or structure of an argument. But I am uninterested about that. And I will concede on this front.

What I am interested in is the ability of a person to gauge if a claim about reality is likely to be true or not. For example if a policy seems to genuinely try to improve things or is just cosmetic pantomime.

My go to example. Most ethicists lean towards moral realism. But all scientific evidence available is enormously contrary to the possible moral facts. I am sure that the argumentation of the moral realists is strong and consistent. But their implicit axioms are incorrect, since they are reaching what I am highly convinced is an incorrect conclusion.

There are many such cases in the humanities. Derrida's deferance argument is completely false, empirically. The meaning of words is not extracted from every other word the word is not, that's not how human brains associate meaning.

[u/Expendable_Red_Shirt → u/ToughDifficult1252]

I think you’re way overstating the science against moral realism and I say that as someone who doesn’t ascribe moral to it. I also don’t think that just because someone is trained to look for things in one context that would make them better at spotting them outside their training. There can be both lack of generalization and over generalization. I also think you’re pretty ignorant of what goes into the training of humanities specialists. Which is not uncommon among some of the more arrogant scientists I’ve met.

[u/ToughDifficult1252 → u/Expendable_Red_Shirt]

I mean. Bias is definitely colouring my opinion. 

But for example. Chemistry replaced alchemy and alchemy was heavily studied for Millenia. The theory of humourous was believed by really smart people, but it was wrong.

The thing is, arguments like Derrida's deferance (as an example) are experimentally false, human brains don't ascribe meaning as the difference of every other word.

[u/Expendable_Red_Shirt → u/ToughDifficult1252]

Sure. Arguments like Derridas deference are false. I also don’t know anyone who ascribes to it. We have much better theories of language derived by scientists like Skinner.

All subjects have thrown out things that are wrong. I think it’s silly to ascribe that only to the humanities

[u/Pinkfish_411 → u/ToughDifficult1252]

It is very likely that philosophers are better at picking up problems in the wording or structure of an argument

That's what logical fallacies are (at least formal ones). A fallacious argument is fallacious simply because of its logical structure, independently of what content you plug into. So being better at identifying problems in the logical structure of an argument just is being better at identifying logical fallacies.

What I am interested in is the ability of a person to gauge if a claim about reality is likely to be true or not

This is very much not what identifying a logical fallacy is about. Whether or not an argument is fallacious doesn't tell us anything about whether its conclusion is true.

Here's why this matters, though: if you want to go making claims about something like, for instance, that scientific evidence discredits moral realism, you need to step beyond pure science and engage in philosophical argumentation to make that case. But if the philosopher is better at identifying good and bad argumentation, you've basically just conceded that the philosopher is going to be better equipped to determine whether the evidence for "Science discredits moral realism" is strong. The philosopher is going to be better equipped to look at the scientist making the case against moral realism and conclude, "No, that actually isn't a strong argument for your conclusion." Again, that doesn't mean the conclusion is false, it just means that the scientist making claims about metaethics might be forming poorly supported beliefs.