Another Bernie-Related Attack?; And: Induction and Predesignation

Uh-oh

   One of the things I was going to say in that last post was that we all need to commit ourselves ahead of time to conclusions about what it means [ceteris paribus!!] if a mass shooter supports some cause or politician. This is a simple application of the predesignation rule for inductive inference. (As described e.g. in the great-but-unpublished Elements of Critical Thinking (McCarthy)). So, before you find out what cause the shooter supports, you should draw your conclusions about whether the event shows something or nothing about the cause, and what it shows, if anything.

   Here's what people do instead: they wait to see whether they agree with the cause or not, and then decide whether the shooter's support for the cause shows anything about the cause, and, if so, what it shows. So basically everybody sits around waiting to see what side the shooter is on. Then, finding out that he supports cause x, we all draw conclusions on the basis of whether we support x or not. (Worse, we say some BS and then change our tunes as convenient.) So, Progressives and Bernie supporters will undoubtedly now proclaim that this shows nothing about the causes the shooter supports (though, of course, it will show that we need more gun control). Others will conclude that it does, in fact, show something--depending on how far away from Bernie they are politically. Clinton supporters, for example, are likely to decide that it shows something about Bernie and/or Bernie supporters...but not about liberals/progressives in general. Conservatives will be inclined to judge that it shows something about all progressives.

   Don't do that. 

   That's bad.