While strolling through the world wide web, I came across one of these meme thingamobobs where it listed all the zodiac signs and then their horoscope. For each zodiac, it stated: “The Stars and Planets Will not Affect Your Life in Any Way”. Now, the question you are probably asking is if Theodore is a believer. Some of you no doubt believe in horoscopes and some of you hate them and consider them a plague upon the rational enlightened mind of the homo homo sapien. Or perhaps it is something different, like that person I met who believed pink quartz had healing capabilities and was fixing their ailment; this thought had spread from their significant other. If you have to ask where I land on this topic, I highly suggest you review my marinade recipe rant: Marinade or Cancer Cure. However, I am not on the side of this meme because they failed linguistically. Blatantly put: they are wrong and their meme is a lie. You want to know how I can say that so confidently? Click [Read More] and I will take you through a philosophical journey.
Let’s discuss Aristotle’s logical diagram (AEIO if you remember your logic courses). Without getting into a six hour document on logic (a priori logic which doesn’t care about reality), I will explain how to read the diagram below (for the examples, A is french fries and B is potatoes). Basically, you have contradictions, if you have “some A (french fries) and they are B (potatoes)” there is no way it is logically true that you have “no french fries that are potatoes” (Corner I to Corner E). The diagram basically tells you which way you can slide from each logical statement.
Furthermore, if you have “all A (french fries) are B (potatoes)”, then the some statement is also logically true since some french fries are potatoes. All implies some, but some may not imply all (Knowing the I corner, you are not able to logically say it is true that A exists also); for example: “some french fries are potatoes” and “some french fries are sweet potatoes”, thus, “not all french fries are potatoes”, but it’s true that “some french fries are not potatoes”.
Now we could get into arguments about the syntax for french fries made out of sweet potatoes and how they are called sweet potato fries – which is true. We would have to setup the logical definition of a french fry (a fried vegetable) and then build our logical statements around that. In the event that I lost the argument that a french fry made out of sweet potatoes was actually a sweet potato fry, I would shift to using cuts of french fries as my B, which would look like this:
If my starting statement is: “Some french fries are curly cut” and is logically true then the following:
- I cannot logically say that all french fries are curly cut.
- I can possibly say that it is logically true that some french fries are not curly cut
- I can logically say that it is false that because no fries are curly cut.
So, now with the primer on logic in place, let’s take on the meme. The key that made me immediately decide to write this post is the statement that stars and planets will never affect your life. That never is the key, it is an absolute statement. If you are studying for the ACT or SAT, an absolute statement is almost always wrong. This holds for life too, we don’t live in a black and white world so the moment you see something like: they always or they never, realize that it is more than likely hyperbole and untrue.
Let’s reel it back in and focus on the meme. Why is it false? Simple, bought something but it was made across the ocean? Ever been to the sea? Ever enjoyed a vegetable? How about a fruit? What about plant life? Ever get a tan? You ever drink in some vitamin D from the Sun? Obviously, I have set up my argument to be correct, there is no way you haven’t been impacted by the Sun… the star closest to Earth. That’s right, don’t forget that the thing that keeps us alive is a star.
So when you parse the message: star, never, affect, life – you immediately know it is a false statement. Do I believe a star or planet will dictate how my day goes or my happiness? Unsure, but I sure as hell doubt that someone writing a horoscope has the capability to deduce how the constant ballet of the universe imposes itself on my demeanor. But if you believe in quantum mechanics and physical determinism (I’ll discuss those in a later post), then planet’s, stars, people, everything is interconnected and when a molecule moves here it moves something there and that’s why you stood up right then. So actually, if you are a hard skeptic but truly believe in science/quantum mechanics, then one would argue that all actions and thoughts are directly dictated by the planets, stars, and everything else in the universe as it is the interplay of particles that dictate every action.
But hey, freewill was a heavy portion of my studies in my philosophy. Personally, I like ethics more because it has more practical application. Freewill talks are moot because you can never know which format is correct (odds are it is philosophical libertarianism or hard determinism with a bases in quantum mechanics). Yet, there are some serious ethical issues that come with hard determinism… I’ll get into that later.