"Chinese Superstition as a Process of Thought" part 1

This was a great speech from Andrew Kushner.

Here is the abstract:

Should you be superstitious?
Is superstition a legitimate form of thinking? Are pre-scientific modes of thought relevant in a scientific age? What lies in the grey area between science and magic? Is there something which modern-day rational science might be systemically overlooking? What are superstitious and magical thinking, and how can they be distinguished from the contemporary scientific worldview?
We will analyze the Chinese traditional cosmology of "systematic correspondence" -- the systems of Yin-Yang, Five Elements and Bagua (the Eight Trigrams) -- and their development in the Han dynasty. We will investigate whether these systems of thought have anything to offer us in the present era, in light of recent developments in systems theory and cybernetics.

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Category:

Education

Tags:

• TDL
• Taipei Discussion and Learning
• Forum
• Superstition
• science
• magic

[taipeiforum]

Sorry, I really have to apologize, this is not my place to have this discussion. This was my speech, I did not study this subject. Does anyone else want to throw in their two cents, so to speak?

[vaytw]

I don't think I'm allowed to link directly to websites on youtube, but I highly recommend looking up (in addition to the "Acupuncture - Through the Looking Glass" article I already recommended) these very pertinent SBM articles: "Exorcism and Sorcery as Health Benefits?" and "Rhinos and Tigers and Bears - Oh My!", as well as "What's the Harm in Herbal Remedies?"

[microsample]

@vaytw and taipeiforum:

I wrote a detailed reply a little while back that got lost in the internets. Since then it appears that the discussion has continued. I'm glad that you are continuing to discuss the speech, but Youtube doesn't really allot me enough space to reply to some of these questions adequately. So I'll just say the following:

[ethankegley]

la la la la la, my ego... look at it balloon up like a blimp. You obviously dont know me.

[vaytw]

@taipeiforum The point of knowing about fallacies is to recognize the various forms of flawed reasoning, so we can avoid them. Isn't that a worthy thing to know?

[vaytw]

@taipeiforum Well in that case every word we are using to engage in this discussion qualifies as "made up", so I don't really see your point. There is this subject called logic which has seen a couple thousand years of development, and fallacies are part of that subject. It's fine if you don't want to answer the thread, but I wish you could see how your ego is throwing up a wall against learning something new here. Think about ~becoming~ right instead of ~proving~ yourself right.

[taipeiforum]

@vaytw Or you could do a speech on it:) Save us all a lot of trouble. I'm pretty sure someone had to coin the phrases, there by, they are made up...though it was not you who made them up. There are many things that are abstractions until they are brought into concrete form with our words as structure. Then, after we bring them into concrete form, we can give them funny names that only the person using that language game can understand. Bowing out again. I wont reply to this thread anymore.

[vaytw]

@taipeiforum That's fine, but none of the fallacies I've mentioned were "made up". What is it about them that bothers you? The use of short-hand? Sorry, but space and time are limited commodities! Suggest you check out a good resource like Brian Dunning's "A Magical Journey through the Land of Logical Fallacies" or Infidels dot org's "Logic & Fallacies - Constructing a Logical Argument".

[vaytw]

@taipeiforum Sorry I think you're missing my point. I'm talking about the argument from intelligent design that nature was designed specifically with us in mind, and therefore what is "natural" is also beneficent. This is the type of thinking behind Naturopathy (in alt med), and is a big driver of things like the raw food movement. But I'm surprised you take issue with my identifying logical fallacies. How can one profess interest in philosophy and not appreciate them?

[taipeiforum]

@vaytw I think I am going to let Andrew get in on this. I have never taken Chinese medicine, other than drinking Mah Huang tea and maybe some other herbs. I have not studied it to see what chemicals the different substances contain. I surely do not know all of these "fallacies" you keep bringing up. Man I should make some up myself. It sure bugs me when people lettuce grab for things they don't like and apply the "No new taxes" fallacy to the rest. Now, I bow out:)

[vaytw]

@taipeiforum But I really have seen no evidence that Chinese medicine distinguishes between animal parts and herbs as to which is "legitimate" and which is "superstition". Now, since there aren't well-established, uniform standards, what constitutes Chinese medicine is itself a tricky question - but what I see people do is cherry pick the bits they like and apply the "No true scotsman" fallacy for the rest. And the original topic of Andrew's talk was "Chinese superstition", was it not?