Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • Ignoring Alternative Explanations

    Uploaded by

    Charles Mason
    28 views1 page
    1) Ideology is characterized as a psychic disease that functions under the assumption that salvation or a supreme good will come in the future, justifying harmful means in the present. 2) An ideology becomes closed and rigid, refusing any circumstances or critique that contradict its beliefs, thinking in black and white terms of an enemy. 3) Ideologies use propaganda and thought distortions to enforce their "truths", while critical thinking examines ideas through evidence and aims for mutual understanding.

    Original Description:

    Crys

    Original Title

    Ons

    Copyright

    © Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)

    Available Formats

    PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    Report this Document
    1) Ideology is characterized as a psychic disease that functions under the assumption that salvation or a supreme good will come in the future, justifying harmful means in the present. 2) An ideology becomes closed and rigid, refusing any circumstances or critique that contradict its beliefs, thinking in black and white terms of an enemy. 3) Ideologies use propaganda and thought distortions to enforce their "truths", while critical thinking examines ideas through evidence and aims for mutual understanding.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    Download as pdf or txt
    28 views1 page

    Ignoring Alternative Explanations

    Uploaded by

    Charles Mason
    1) Ideology is characterized as a psychic disease that functions under the assumption that salvation or a supreme good will come in the future, justifying harmful means in the present. 2) An ideology becomes closed and rigid, refusing any circumstances or critique that contradict its beliefs, thinking in black and white terms of an enemy. 3) Ideologies use propaganda and thought distortions to enforce their "truths", while critical thinking examines ideas through evidence and aims for mutual understanding.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 1

    58

    Ideology altogether is a psychic disease. You are not in doubt about, that ideology is a psychic disease if you look at its collective manifestations. It appears for example in the form of ideologies such as Communism, Liberalism, Conservatism, National Socialism and any other nationalism, or in the form of rigid religious systems of faith, which function with the implied assumption, that the supreme good lay out in the future, and that the end therefore justifies the means. The goal is an idea, a point out in a future, projected by the mind, where salvation is coming in some kind happiness, satisfaction, equality, liberation, etc. It is not unusual that the means to come to this is to make people into slaves, torture them and murder them here and now. That a thought-system has developed into an ideology shows in, that it is a closed system shared by a large group of people. Such a closed system has especially two distinctive characters: 1) It allows no imaginable circumstance to talk against the ideology. 2) It refuses all critique by analysing the motives in the critique in concepts which are collected from the ideology itself (an ideology always thinks black and white, and therefore always has an anti-ideology, an enemy image, which it attribute on to everyone, who dont agree). An ideology is therefore characterized by that it is not able to contain, or direct refuses, rationality and critical thinking. We all know how dissidents have been killed, jailed and tortured under totalitarian ideologies. Ideologies are using propaganda in order to get their truths forc ed through. In that connection they use thought distortions. Critical thinking, or philosophy, is in opposition to thought distortions. Critical thinking is about spotting thought distortions, and examining them by presenting reasons and evidence in support of conclusions. In philosophy you focus on, what cooperation and conversation require of you in order to that you at all can exist: that you speak true (dont lie), that you are prepared to reach mutual understanding and agreement (dont manipulate), dont make an exception of yourself (but treat others as equals). From this rises the eternal moral values (as for example that it is wrong to lie), and generally our ideas of right and justice: the so-called human rights, the idea about the individual persons autonomy and dignity: you shall treat the other not as a mean, but as a goal.

    Ignoring alternative explanations


    Ignored explanations of the phenomenon in question. In many situations it is tempting to believe that because an explanation is consistent with the known facts it

    58

    You might also like