Monday, Sept 21

It seems to me that inductive and deductive logic seem pretty clear. However there is another form of logic called Emotional Logic. When we were talking about emotional logic I thought of Steven Colbet word "truthiness." This is how he describes it:

Truthiness is tearing apart our country, and I don't mean the argument over who came up with the word…
It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It's certainty. People love the President because he's certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up don't seem to exist. It's the fact that he's certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country. I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true?…
Truthiness is 'What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.' It's not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There's not only an emotional quality, but there's a selfish quality.

There also exists a type of hierarchy of "Ways of Knowing"
1. Personal Experience (empiricism)
2. Reasoning
3. Expert Opinion or Tradition
4. Statistics
5. Pragmatism
6. Science
7. Scholarship
8. Conscience and Revelation

Why don't people use evaluation?
I was thinking that one big reason why people avoid it is because of their fear of failure.

What did you learn from the reading?
Evaluation comes form government trying to cut out the pork.