1. transcript
  2. Quote on Ideology

Quote on Ideology

By apalazzo on August 6, 2006.

What a nice day. Sitting on the esplanade, reading Colin McGinn's The Making of a Philosopher (a personal memoir + thoughts on 20th century philosophy). And I come across this:

Nowadays psychology has pretty much the shape that Chomsky advocated, and it is hard to remember the time when behaviorism was the prevailing orthodoxy. I still think this provides a valuable lesson in questioning orthodoxies that go out of their way to deny obvious facts -- as behaviorism in effect denied that we have minds. The sure mark of an ideology, in science and philosophy as in politics, is the denying of obvious facts. A healthy dose of common sense is always a useful antidote to ideological bias.

This is what I had in mind the other day.

(speaking of "the esplanade" did any of you Bostonites see this today?)

Tags
science & society

More like this

Freud as Literature; Freud as Science
In a response to my defense of Freud, Jonah Lehrer states that, with Harold Bloom (ewww!), he sees Freud as "one of the great artists of the 20th century." In my view, how we read Freud today -- as literature, philosophy, or science -- is largely a matter of choice, as is the case for most early…
What to do with the climate denial zombies
My first reaction to the papier du jour among climate communications activists was "meh." It's not that Chris Mooney's latest ruminations on the gap between what the public thinks about scientific issues and what scientists have to say isn't worth reading. It's just that we've been down this road…
The New Scientist Debates Denialism
Luckily they don't make the mistake of actually debating denialists. The feature of last weeks issue, "Age of Denial" is a series of articles by skeptics and one laughable rebuttal, discussing the nature of denialism and tactics to use against it. They do quite a good job covering the basics,…
How political should scientists be?
Keith Burgess-Jackson questions in his TCS column whether we should listen to people like Noam Chomsky's opinions on politics -- a realm notably outside their stated occupational expertise. I must admit that I haven't read what Noam Chomsky's opinions are lately -- although it is my suspicion that…