Template:Critical theory, modernism and the death of objective truth: Difference between revisions

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 By the fact that he takes his argument no further, we expect Dawkins believes he has won it, [[quod erat demonstrandum]]. There are objective truths, everyone knows it, and this [[postmodernist]] blather to the contrary is all a ''posture''. Because — ''aeroplanes''.
-But Dawkins misreads ''consensus'' for ''truth'', and he mistakes ''observation'' for ''explanation''. The “truth” to which he appeals here is not “the veracity of modern aerodynamics” — the finer points of which were not worked out when Richard Pearse took his first flight, so that specificity of knowledge is not needed, and in any case even now few airline passengers ''have'' that kind of understanding — but the simple statement that “planes seem to go up and come down reliably enough that I am prepared to get in one”.
+But Dawkins misreads ''consensus'' for ''truth'', and he mistakes ''observation'' for ''explanation''.
-One can have any number of reasons for believing that, including, “St. Christopher watches over all travellers”, “scientists are clever and they figured it out”, “it’s magic!” or just, “the probability of planes falling randomly out of the sky has declined markedly since the Seventies, and there is now less than a one-in-a million chance I’ll die on a passenger flight, I care not why.”
+Nor is it clear to which “transcendent truth” he appeals. It does not seem to be “the veracity of modern aerodynamics” — the finer points of which were not worked out when {{Plainlink|https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pearse|Richard Pearse}} took his first flight and are in any case quite lost on birds — so that kind of truth is not needed to take a flight. It may be nothing more than the simple statement that “planes seem to go up and come down reliably enough that I am prepared to get in one”.
+We imagine fewer would have volunteered for a backsie on Pearse’s ''Improved Aerial Flying Machine'' in April 1903 than would be prepared to ride in an Airbus now — though maybe not a 737 MAX — and this has nothing to do with changes in the laws of aerodynamics.
+One can have any number of reasons for believing that, including, “St. Christopher watches over all travellers”, “scientists are clever and they figured it out”, “it’s magic!” or just, “a cursory glance at the statistics tells me the probability of planes falling randomly out of the sky has declined markedly since the nineteen-seventies, and there is now less than a one-in-a million chance I’ll die on a passenger flight. I care not why.”
 In any case the important belief here is that ,“this ''particular'' plane won’t fall out of the sky”, and — inductive fallacy again — until it turns out not to have, no one actually knows whether that is true. It may, fall out of the sky for reasons quite unrelated to aerodynamics. We are taking an awful lot of things, over and above aerodynamics, on trust. That the ground-crew remembered to put the petrol cap on. That there are no undiscovered stress fractures in the fuselage, no surface-to-air-missiles launched at the plane , the airline has not secretly changed the aircraft’s flight path without telling the pilot — and so on. Experience tells us none of these things are a certainty.