Tom, I think it's a mistake to approach AGW skepticism as a
philosophical matter -- or more precisely, as an epistemological
matter. That gives it too much credit. It is *political*, from root to
branch.
Part of the problem scientists (and science fans like those on this
list) have had in dealing with AGW skepticism is precisely that they
take it at face value and try to address it on epistemological
grounds, arguing on the basis of balance of evidence, probability,
heuristics, etc. But the U.S. conservative movement has almost
entirely subsumed epistemology under politics (and not just on this
subject). Epistemological judgments are made based on political
criteria. To argue back against this kind of thing on epistemological
terms is to make a category error.
Overcoming AGW skepticism as it exists in this country will mean
meeting it on its own ground: politics. What's required is one of two
things:
1. A political argument: convincing skeptics that accepting the
science on global warming serves, or is not incompatible with, the
socioeconomic interests of their tribe(s).
2. Brute power politics: simply accruing more political power than the
skeptics and forcing them to the margins where they have no power to
affect the course of events.
On Aug 1, 7:00 am, Tom Adams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I wonder if there are historical precidents for the gross misuse of
> skepticism concerning AGW?
>
> I know of a few examples from a broad philosophical prospective.
> Probably the greatest applied skeptic of all times was Al Ghazali. He
> is credited with stopping Islamic scientific progress around 1000 AD,
> playing a key role in starting a dark age that the Islamic world has
> not yet emerged from. Al Ghazali accepted mathematics as truth, but
> he took on Aristotle and Plato using their own logical tools. He
> attacked the very idea of cause and effect as being unprovable. He
> advocated mysticism and maintained that the concept of cause and
> effect was blasphemy since it limited the power of God.
>
> The Pragmatist philosophical school argued that skepticism was often
> misused in philosophy. They thought that the skeptical pose of
> Descartes and Hume was artificial and was not really that useful a
> tool in the theory of knowledge. They advocated more of a "take your
> best shot" approach to knowledge.
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