Official Website for Amitabha Palmer
IntroductionI’ve been seeing what I take to be a lot of bad inferences by smart people concerning the Jussie Smollet hoax. There is a long-running narrative on parts of the right (particularly online) that we should be skeptical of the authenticity of many hate crimes. The Jussie Smollet hoax is pouring gasoline on this narrative […]
Read More Jussie Smollett, Bad Inferences, and NarrativeIntroduction Yo. Check it. You can’t have a functioning democracy without at least two things: a concern for truth and civil discourse. Although perhaps too obvious to state, democracy requires citizens have a concern for truth. Without it, policy will be ineffective at best. Y’see, in (many conceptions) of democracy, policy represents, to some degree, […]
Read More Identity, Truth, and Stoicism in the Face of Crumbling Norms of Civil DiscourseIntroduction It’s nearly impossible to understand contemporary ethics without understanding the word ‘normative’ as it’s used in philosophy. Since this post is mostly about a kind of argument in ethics, I’ll get the definition out of the way. Perhaps the easiest way to understand normative statements is to contrast them with descriptive statements. “She hit […]
Read More The Emperor of Fallacies: The Is/Ought ProblemIntroduction The comments section of the internet is the battleground of the future; thus, in my critical thinking course I like to give my students advice on how to be great internet warriors. In any combat sport, pattern recognition facilitates a quick and effective response. And so, with internet battles, being able to recognize and […]
Read More Internet Warrior’s Guide to Surviving a Level 7 Tu Quoque AttackEDIT: After I wrote this post, Google tweeted a statement clarifying why Natural News had been delisted. It had nothing to do with the content, rather they were using redirect techniques prohibited Google’s webmaster guidelines. Regardless of why Google delisted, my arguments still apply but should be interpreted as a policy going forward.The Situation Here’s the dealy-yo. The […]
Read More Democracy and Free Speech in the Age of Ignorance: Google Delists Natural News from Search ResultsArticle II of the Constitution allows the POTUS to bypass Congress and issue orders that are binding on federal administrative agencies. Lately, we’re hearing about–and should continue to hear about–the issue of “executive overreach”. The general claim is that the executive branch’s exercise of power through executive order is used excessively. Currently, liberals and liberal-leaning media are […]
Read More Thinking Critically about Politics: Executive Orders and Executive OverreachIntroductionIn philosophy it’s often said that there are ‘lumpers’ and ‘spliters’. Lumpers try to unify discrete kinds under one category while spliters argue for maintaining (and insisting on more) distinctions between kinds. When it comes to critical thinking, I tend toward the former. Especially at the end of a semester, I always find myself obsessing […]
Read More RRAR! A Four Step Method for Critical Thinking in the Digital AgeIntroduction Post-Trump and leading up to his election there’s been much hullaballoo about fake news. Various online publications have weighed in providing lists of fake news sources. Reading these articles leads me to believe there’s some conceptual cloudiness that needs clearing away. “Fake news” is being used to refer to several different phenomena. Let’s distinguish […]
Read More Fake News vs “Fake” News: Critically Thinking About Media in a Fact-Free WorldIntroductionBefore reading this, I suggest reading my post from yesterday since most of what I talk about here relates to it (and I end up retracting most of what I said).‘The arrogance of ignorance’ is one of my favorite phrases. I’m not sure of its origins but I heard it first from Dr. Steven Novella. […]
Read More Day 3: Psychological Jade and The Arrogance of IgnoranceResponse to David Coady’s “An Epistemic Defence of the Blogosphere” Preamble/vocab for non-philosophers: I wrote this for a class so, although I’ve tried to avoid it as much as possible, there are a few technical words which I’ll explain here:Epistemic reliability: A source is epistemically reliable if it produces/conveys more true beliefs than false beliefs. […]
Read More The Reliability of Blogs vs Conventional Media: A Response to David Coady
Wrestling with Philosophy 