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Jake Akins's avatar

Also there is such a thing as pre-logical thinking that Lucien Levy-Bruhl mentions in his studies of primitive people and how they thought in his book How Natives Think. They didn’t think in categories or worry about contradictions. The picture nowadays that you mention in this article could be called post-logical, which is the same at bottom, a kind of taking over of nature and impulses that Lewis described in Men Without Chests.

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Jake Akins's avatar

This is a great essay. Just a few days ago I encountered someone who told me that mathematics was socially constructed. This essay has helped me on how to understand their take and how to respond.

Here’s a quote that this essay reminded me of:

“Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”

- Theodore Dalrymple

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