Cosby, Kavanaugh, and the Necessity of Evidence
“Cosby’s guilt does not equate to the guilt of Kavanaugh or of other men who have ever been accused of doing something wrong. Such as in the Cosby case, there should be corroborating evidence and patterns of behavior that can show proof the accused has a disposition for committing the alleged acts.” - Armstrong Williams
Yes, we need to go with evidence—it is stunning how much contrary evidence Ford’s advocates are basically ignoring, including clear contradictory statements by Ford made under oath and four people saying that the party she describes never happened, not to mention the games she played with Feinstein (Nifong) to gain advantage—but I think Williams is wrong to say that Bill Cosby ought not go to prison. Yes, he’s old and blind, like thousands of others, but there ought to be an earthly penalty for sedating and raping God knows how many women, too. Let him enjoy a fairly cold cell with a cheap mattress and mediocre food instead of what he can buy for himself for a while.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
I just happen to be reading Nancy Pearcey and Francis Schaeffer while all this is happening, and the confluences are interesting. Philosophy has consequences. What we’re seeing is in many ways the inevitable result of the death of reason, or as Schaeffer puts it in The God Who Is There, humanity’s descent below the “line of despair.”
Schaeffer argued that western philosophy up until Hegel accepted the idea that humans could discover a philosophy that accommodates all of reality. So one philosophy after another attempted to do that, only to be knocked down by the next. But up until Hegel, everybody accepted the logical foundational principle of noncontradiction (Schaeffer calls it antithesis), which basically says “if A is true, it’s opposite is false.”
But after Hegel, that idea died, then Keirkegaard ushered in existentialism and philosophy has been embracing various irrational “anti-philosophies” ever since. Schaeffer calls it the line of despair because philosophers gave up on finding a coherent philosophy that everything fits into. They gave up on logical consistency. Schaeffer opens the book with the observation that the definition of “truth” changed… The old one died and there is no shared view of a new definition.
So now we have this modern/post-modern “philosophy in a blender” culture, where all kinds of contradictions are accepted with a shrug. The legacy of existentialism (and other contributors).
To me, our culture is making less and less sense because there is no shared worldview. There is no “American worldview” at all and much of it has to do with deep cultural cynicism about the possibility of finding and knowing truth.
It plays out in may ways… the Kavanaugh drama being the latest.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
It’s even worse, I think. There are now many who believe means don’t require justification or that nothing like justification actually even exists.
(They don’t consistently live that way, though. It’s impossible.)
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
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