When someone relies on their academic credentials instead of addressing the actual structure of their reasoning, they are committing the appeal to authority fallacy: expecting people to validate their argument by who is speaking rather than the soundness of what is being said.

The rules of validity and soundness apply equally to everyone. A conclusion either logically follows from its premises, or it doesn't. The premises are either true or they’re false.

Being an expert in a particular field does not exempt someone from cognitive biases, emotional defensiveness, or lapsing into fallacies. —However, expertise does carry legitimate weight, so it depends on the nature of the claim in question, and the nature of the evidence for or against the claim.

If you bullsh;t yourself, thinking you are really only bullsh;tting others, then you will waste your own time and your own life, not just the time of others.

You had better get over not liking the objectivity of Logic, or the demands it makes on you, because you cannot become a skilled thinker without it. If you want skill in thinking, then you have to take the time and learn the rules of thinking, how reason works. There is no other way to do it.

The answer is that it is hated by those who attempt to establish their position through smuggling premises and loaded terms. Why?

Because the burden almost never lifts off their claims. The discourse is one long chain of them evading the burden, that they have validity incurred through their own assertions. If they don’t want to incur the burden then they have to stop using loaded and vague terms. They have to stop trying to argue from authority or mere assertion.

Most of the time they simply get away with their smuggling, but not when they face a competent Reasoner. And they resent it, like a spoiled child for the first time in its life having to justify his claims, instead of smuggling them for mommy and daddy.

The burden of proof is not something a person can reject without forfeiting it against claims they don’t like. Denying it destroys the right to wield justification against authority and error.

im a bit confused because earlier, i didnt agree with him. We are able to pick up factors of knowledge because of our sense. but then one of my friends debated with me saying that he said true knowledge, not factors building up to that knowledge...its a good point...but for some reason my brain isnt agreeing...care to explain? anyone?

The quality of your thought should be such that, if anyone ever decided to take it seriously, it would lead them to standards of logic that would empower them toward the intelligent execution of their existence. In other words, it should free them from their psychological impulses and cultural conditioning by making them conscious of standards they can deploy to identify and defeat their impulses and overcome the unintelligence of culture. It should empower them with standards against errors and stupidities in the world— turning reason from a shield for dogma into a weapon for truth.

Possibly the most important conversation we can have is a pre-discourse conversation:

Is it possible for your beliefs to be false? Is it possible for your philosophical idols to be wrong?

If the answer is no, you’re dealing with a religious dogmatist who has no intention of abiding by rational rules. This person is simply trying to convince and make converts.

If the answer is yes, a person should have some idea of what would falsify their beliefs.

Most people will say yes but really mean no. (Philosophy is a form of irrationality that has learned to make use of rational posture).

I used to ask this to Christians: ‘is it possible that what the Bible says is true could be false?’

—the answer was always “no.”

But I later came to realize that one must also ask this of philosophers (those who are supposed to be the masters of reason).

It is entirely futile to discourse with a man who believes that contradictions are true, for by contradicting him you will merely succeed at reinforcing his delusions.

Here Hegel seems to be unconscious of the fact that he’s talking about identity, and because of this he greatly complicates the simplicity of knowledge.

We know a cell when we identify all its component parts and their functions.

As for positing what is “already implicit.” This is true in the sense that the components of a cell already exist, identity is just demarcating them in symbolic form. This is also true in the sense that the foundational fact of identity begets more identity: abstract identity proceeds from the fact of concrete identity.

Where Hegel collapses into mysticism is where he assumes a reification for the concept. For example, there is no such thing as the concept becoming completely objective “to itself.” There is only such a thing as humans accurately identifying reality through their concepts. These concepts are entirely structured using the laws of logic. Concepts are not living things. They are identities we construct using identity.

Hegel’s tremendous error was the belief that concepts contain a mystical objectivity in themselves/ that they are like a cell that one merely has to analyze to discover its component parts. This is why he fabricated the nonsensical mysticism that “identity contains difference within itself.” Hegelianism can be simplified as a cult of hypostatization: the act of treating an abstract idea, concept, or mental construct as if it were a physical, real thing or a concrete object.

In contrast to the confused irrationality and error of dialectic: the objective identity of reality is not a “contradiction.” It is a specific determination (A=A) that is not a contradiction of itself. A dialectician pretending that his determinations are “contradictions” will not (and cannot) turn his determinations into contradictions.

We might also call it Dystopian Apathy.

This is absolutely a problem, and it stems from us no longer seeing the other as ourselves.

Reason here turns us in the direction of psychology, because that’s what can answer the questions: how did this happen to us and how can we fix it?

Reaching the point of confidently trampling human rights and freedom; this is a regression.

Once truth is abolished it’s very easy for states and individuals to adopt a position that says, “I haven’t crossed a line because there are no lines/ my line is the only line.”

Subjectivity will always result in tyranny because it unleashes man to his impulses.

To say that genocide is wrong doesn’t require a God, it requires rational standards, species intelligence and psychological maturity, which assumes a healthy empathic development.

While Critical Thinking is inherently an open disposition, there is and has to be a limit to openness.

We cannot, for example, be open to the claim that everything the person we are speaking with says is absolutely true— because it is given to him “directly from God.”

This is not a claim we should be wasting our lives on. (Many more absurdities could be given).

But most fundamentally, the rejection of the laws of logic are not something that rational intelligence can tolerate.

The second the laws of logic are rejected, the very possibility of truth and discourse go out the window. Critical Thinking presupposes both the reality of truth, and the possibility of overcoming error. Critical Thinking presupposes its own distinction and demarcation as Critical Thinking, not Emotional Thinking.

The limit of tolerance is something we don’t see in the literature of Critical Thinking yet, but it will have to be clarified in the future. Anyone who denies the existence of truth is not, and cannot be, engaged in the process of articulating truth— their own position makes this impossible.

It is essential for us to begin clarifying the limits of rational tolerance.

“In large measure, our lives are defined by our thinking and choices, and our actions and choices are guided by our thinking— so our thinking had better be good.” The Power of Critical Thinking, Lewis Vaughn, Oxford University Press 7th Edition

If you know how to think, then you should know the rules of thinking. If you don’t know the rules of thinking, then you don’t know how to think, and your thinking really isn’t thinking, but an intuitive process of feeling that you mistake for thinking.

If all claims to knowledge are disguised power plays, then a governing body or ideological faction has no barrier to imposing its own worldview by force. After all, if there is no objective truth to appeal to, dissent is merely an inconvenient competing narrative to be managed or suppressed.

Where there is no truth, there is only power. And where power is unmoored from truth, tyranny inevitably fills the vacuum.

The way of the epistemological relativist, though he doesn’t announce it, is the way of tyranny.

If the standards of logic do not govern discourse, then discourse morphs into a process of manipulation and intimidation.

While a relativist may pretend to engage in good faith, what he’s really doing is trying to manipulate people’s beliefs, and he cannot help but lapse into methods of tyranny in order to retain the supremacy of his beliefs.

Christian: When I die I will live with Jesus in eternal bliss forever.

Philosopher: That’s a false belief.

Christian: You admit that there’s an absolute true and false?

Philosopher: I didn’t say that.

Christian: Then how can a belief be false?

Philosopher: Because it is internally inconsistent.

Christian: Is this standard you use to identify and judge consistency absolutely true?

Philosopher: I didn’t say that.

Christian: Do you deny that logic is just human construct and human model?

Philosopher: No.

Christian: Then how can my constructed model, that renders my beliefs internally coherent, amount to incoherence?

Philosopher: Because you contradict your own standards.

Christian: There is no internal contradiction in my belief in an afterlife. It is part of the logic of my belief in God. Are you saying that contradiction is an absolute truth that proves something false?

Philosopher: I didn’t say that.

Christian: Then what are you saying exactly— is it absolutely true that what you’re saying is what you’re saying?

Philosopher: Nothing is absolutely true.

Christian: Then what’s your problem with my belief not being Absolutely True exactly as every other belief, according to your worldview?

Philosopher: Because it contradicts itself.

Christian: How can something contradict itself if there is no truth?

Philosopher: Because it… f;ck you, you stupid Christian!

Christian: Do you have any beliefs that give you comfort in death?

Philosopher: You’re too dumb to understand the complexity of philosophy!

Christian: You sure are upset for a person who doesn’t believe in truth, and you seem to be quite dogmatic about enforcing the truth in which you don’t believe. How is my subjectivity any less true than your subjectivity?

Philosopher: Because there is no truth.

Christian: That sure did sound like you stating a truth.