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    Denying Reality
    Denying Reality
    Denying Reality
    Ebook97 pages1 hour

    Denying Reality

    By Pascal de Caprariis

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    About this ebook

    The rejection of knowledge based on scientific studies has some serious consequences because it means that people are willing to reject factual information that provides evidence for suppositions about how the world works. Regardless of how much evidence exists for some suppositions, some people are willing to reject everything related to them. Some will go out of their way to try to convince legislators and the general public that scientists are not doing objective, reliable work but are instead crying wolf about imagined problems.

    When you reject evidence out of hand, you are rejecting knowledge. Knowledge is what we know about the world around us, so rejecting facts and evidence is equivalent to rejecting reality.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse
    Release dateJul 11, 2018
    ISBN9781546250623
    Denying Reality
    Author

    Pascal de Caprariis

    Pascal de Caprariis has a B.S. in Geology and an M.S. in Geophysics, both from Boston College. His Ph.D. degree in Geology is from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. While in graduate school, he taught high school Physics and Earth Science in New York State before moving to Indiana where he taught Geology at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis until he retired.

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      Book preview

      Denying Reality - Pascal de Caprariis

      © 2018 Pascal de Caprariis. All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

      Published by AuthorHouse 07/09/2018

      ISBN: 978-1-5462-5063-0 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-5462-5062-3 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2018908068

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

      and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      For Nancy

      Forever will I love and she be fair!

      Keats

      CONTENTS

      Preface

      Introduction

      Facts and Evidence

      Making Assumptions

      Appropriate Use of Land

      Scientific Theories

      More on Facts and Evidence

      Different Takes on Facts

      How Should Sensible People Respond?

      Post-Truth America

      About the Author

      PREFACE

      Here you will find a collection of short, related attempts to respond to a distressing development in today’s society, namely the attitude that if you choose not to believe something, you are entitled to reject it, regardless of how little you may know about the subject. Unfortunately, that attitude does not seem outrageous to many people. In today’s society, many people seem to take for granted that the difference between knowledge and ignorance is not important. How you feel is important, not whether you are correct, or whether what you believe conforms to reality.

      As you make your way through this book, you will see that I reject that attitude. I was trained to believe statements that are logically sound and that are supported by evidence. Understanding how the world works is what is important to me. Facts, evidence, and logic provide information about reality, and I believe that everyone should be concerned about people who reject them. We should be wary of accepting the comments made by those who deny reality, because they have nothing useful to contribute to any conversation.

      A classics scholar who published an English translation of the Odyssey anticipated criticisms of her work because she took some liberties with the way she told the story. She felt that if you think that a story is important, then it matters how you tell it, so she tried to find ways to express the thoughts in the poem in ways that a modern reader will be comfortable with. I took that maxim to heart in writing this book, because I suspected that few people would be fascinated by discussions of facts or evidence, and I tried to keep in mind a comment made by the novelist William Golding about how easy it is for the reader to simply close a book and put it aside (He shuddered at the thought). So in this book I concentrated on thinking of examples of facts leading to evidence that support a claim. Surely, I felt, that with enough kinds of examples I can captivate readers who have a variety of interests, and show them that some of this supposedly dry stuff actually has meaning for them.

      So the sections that follow are not extended essays on different aspects of how to think about reality, but relatively short ones that explain why I think that the ways some people do it are inadequate. Instead of thinking this is what I choose to believe, people should be asking what is the evidence for this statement?

      That question is a powerful tool, one which should be used by more people.

      My point in this book is not to entice you to think about becoming a scientist; I just want to convince you that facts and evidence should provide the foundation of your understanding of reality. When you are comfortable with that way of thinking, your ability to get across the raging stream we call life will be easier because you will know where the rocks are as you make your way.

      INTRODUCTION

      First lines are doors to the world.

      Ursula Le Guin

      Several years ago a book was published on Relativism, a philosophical position which holds that absolutes do not exist; that things we feel to be true are true only within our moral or intellectual framework.

      The quote by Ursula Le Guin, fits the book you are holding perfectly, because everything you will find in it follows from the opening sentence. Everything in it pertains to the difference between people who believe in the reality of what we experience and those who for one reason or another, do their best to avoid thinking about it.

      The book on Relativism contained as an example a discussion of a belief held by some Native Americans that their ancestors did not really cross over the Bering Strait from Asia, as claimed by archeologists who have carbon-dates from fire pits at different locations on the West Coast of Canada. Instead, the Zuni contend that their ancestors arose from within the earth once the spirits had prepared it in an appropriate manner. So, there are two inconsistent accounts here. Is the Zuni account as valid as that of the archaeologists? Relativists say that within their own contexts, both can be true, so there is no inconsistency.

      But that requires that there be no independent reality.

      Do Relativists really believe that? Do they understand that claims about the real world require some sort of supporting evidence if other people are to be asked to believe the claims? Is it reasonable to ask disinterested individuals to believe something just because you believe it, regardless of how much that belief differs from common knowledge?

      The belief that the spirits were responsible for the ancestors of Native Americans does not differ significantly from the beliefs of other religions, but regardless of what their practitioners say, religious beliefs are ways to hold a culture together, not ways to describe reality. There are no independent sources which can provide unequivocal verification of the claims of different religions. How could there be?

      In our society, much of what we know about the world in which we live comes from the observations we make as we go through our lives, but that source of knowledge is not entirely absolute, because your experiences differ from mine, so we may well disagree on some things that we each have observed. But there will be a great deal of overlap. However, what is taught in school about the ways the world works is based on scientific studies that have been conducted since the period called the Enlightenment, in the 17th and 18th centuries.

      What we call the scientific method represents a way of examining what is happening around us and analyzing what we find in those efforts. As new ways of thinking develop, and concomitantly, new technologies for doing the studies, we refine what has been learned in the past, and sometimes, reject it because it is not consistent with what we learn today. We learn things in this manner, but always remember that those things represent provisional knowledge, because with the development of better technologies and new understandings, some of what we knew in the past may be

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