I urge everyone to ignore Truthers when they post factual statements about what happened on 9/11, such as how there was no plane wreckage at Shanksville or that there was thermite left in dust from the buildings. But that doesn't appear to be what
ergo is doing here. I think he has made a genuine contribution to this thread, or at least he is trying to.
I'm not sure that 9/11 Truth is best construed as a moral stance as distinct from a factual one
What I think I am trying to get at is that there for many there is a moral argument that has primacy.
ergo describes it as something about the War on Terror, but that too must be wrong. That is an empirical statement about the role of the 9/11 attacks in promoting military action in the Middle East. This too appears to be wrong and based on an infantile understanding of how diplomacy works. What I want is a more abstract goal that conspiracy theorists are trying to achieve. In
this paper, Hugo Hernái tries to argue that its an explanation for suffering that can compete with theological understandings. I don't think he's right, but I like the direction he's moving in.
I think Walter Lippmann provides some helpful context for thinking about this problem:
Quote:
The orthodox theory holds that a public opinion constitutes a moral judgment on a group of facts. The theory I am suggesting is that, in the present state of education, a public opinion is primarily a moralized and codified version of the facts. I am arguing that the pattern of stereotypes at the center of our codes largely determines what group of facts we shall see, and in what light we shall see them....
...The opponent has always to be explained, and the last explanation that we ever look for is that he sees a different set of facts.... For while men are willing to admit that there are two sides to a "question," they do not believe that there are two sides to what they regard as a "fact." And they never do believe it until after long critical education, they are fully conscious of how second-hand and subjective is their apprehension of their social data.
Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion, ch. 9
I am not familar with Lippmann, but I think this is excellent. It points to a growing problem in the public perception of facts and moral judgements that he suggests is now widespread.
In other threads, Ryan Mackey has talked about "confusion" leading to the inability to reach logical conclusions from the facts. He gives an example of his father's fixation with something that leads to his misuse of a computer. There would be public opinion analogs of this. Your quote from Lippmann seems to be about this.
Beliefs about conspiracy are much more widespread than just 9/11 Truth. Beliefs about the President's citizenship, about UFOs, or even in the expat community in which I live there are conspiracy beliefs about the society around us. In this context, I think what I want to do here is develop a deeper understanding of the psychological and social mechanisms of what Lippmann is getting at.
Scott, I don't think that believing that the towers were CDed is really a moral judgment. However, it's evident that people's opinions about the social world influence their opinions about the facts of 9/11. (It's one thing to look at footage of WTC 7 collapsing and think it looks like CD; it's another thing to dismiss the NIST report as a blatant cover-up.) And it's apparent that people who aren't very good at scientific inquiry sometimes resort to some pretty poor heuristics for deciding who and what to believe.
I don't think so either. But I do think that for many, there is a deeper underlying moral statement that insistence on the CD conspiracy has come to represent. Imagine that we are all back in the Antebellum South. Would it matter to you that one of the arguments for slavery was the economic prosperity it brought? I do know people for whom that remains a compelling argument. But I know that slavery is wrong no matter what it brings us. I would suffer the collapse of my way of life if its continuation entailed human slavery. But the moral correctness of slavery is not a factual argument and as such,
no factual argument could be constructed about it.
And this is where
ergo and his Truther buddies fall down. There is a factual argument that can be constructed about the relationship between the War on Terror and the 9/11 attacks. It has been constructed and there is no clear path. But that's not even relevant. That a logical connection exists means that it is not a moral argument. There is an argument that can be constructed about these connections, but the form needed for moral arguments can not produce a valid conclusion. The use of moral arguments to validate empirical arguments results in gibberish. As Lippmann alludes to, it goes on all the time, but it is gibberish.
To return to my initial point...there are individuals who can not distinguish between these two types of knowledge. I am quite interested in
Fly Poster's statements about the relationship between this confusion and confusion with other facts about the natural world.
Fatigue sets in...my wife wants the computer...how's all that?
. I understood what you were saying and what you quoted, I just don't think I wrote something that made sense. It was late at night. 