20040305

logical consistency

CNN.com - Judge resigns over online racial remarks - Mar. 4, 2004: "'I am not a racist,' he wrote, according to the paper. 'I am a racialist. The difference being I don't discriminate against an individual, but I do recognize the fact that there are a lot of differences between races which I assume from a biological standpoint is caused by difference in DNA. "

Okay, go read this article. Now, I disagree with this guy, but i'm kind of impressed with his logical consistency. This is not something we see by and large today. If someone wants to believe things that contradict in today's world it isn't seen as a problem. This guy started out with a foundational premise that everything is determined by life. I.E. he is a materialist as are most people, at least on the surface. However, he at least took his premise to it's logical conclusion. IF people are merely genetically determined, then why couldn't there be certain racial tendencies based on biology? PLEASE don't misunderstand me. I wouldn't even start down this path. i don't believe that people are merely products of their genetics, and therefore totally disagree. All I'm pointing out is that this guy was consistent. And, for following the law of non-contradiction, and having dumb premises, he gets the ax. While I completely and totally disagree with his conclusions and his premises, I have to say, I do applaud him for consistency. The coherence theory of truth states that a statement is only true as far as it is coherent with the system it comes from. If this is true, then few of us can claim to actually believe truth, because few of us have logically consistent belief systems.
Conclusion: make the guy retire. He's wrong. WRONG, I say... wrong. However, take a challenge from this. How can we make our thought processes logically consistent? If we honestly tried to, I think we'd realize that a lot of what we believe is... well, to quote a cartoon... *musically* dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb. Keep it real.
for now,
_______________ andymack

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