Carl Sagan did a great job describing the witch trial phenomenon in "The Demon Haunted World". It discusses how unchecked beliefs without any evidence can wreak havoc on society. If you were accused of witchcraft your only choices were:
1. to deny it and be burned at the stake
2. admit it, implicate others and be put to death in a gentler way
I admire the ones who stood for reason and were brave enough to endure the consequences.
Assuming this is about beliefs would imply the claims were made in earnest. In many (if not the vast majority?) of cases, this seems questionable. For instance during the Salem Witch Trials you even had a Minister [1] executed for witchcraft. His accusers were men who he owed debts to, and the evidence was a farce. It's not like he was executed because of a society, drowned in their own beliefs, stumbled upon passable evidence of his crimes in an otherwise objective fashion. He was executed because some people really didn't like him and simply weaponized the fears of the day, and that was more the rule than exception.
To me the risk seems to be when something becomes so popular to hate that nobody is willing to defend the accused. And this is made even worse due to an opposite bias in the other direction. Demonize and call for even more draconian treatment of the accused and you can signal your own incredible virtue. As his execution, Burroughs had turned the crowd to his side with a moving speech, as well as a recital of The Lord's Prayer, which a witch was not supposed to be able to do. But fear not, along came some power seeking pompous posturing poser who offered his own counter-speech, an event recounted in a book he'd release the following year.
And this is a pattern that has repeated endlessly throughout history. All that changes is whatever one needs to label somebody.
I read the primary sources from the trial. Burroughs was notorious in the community as a serious wifebeater. People testified that he told them not to tell anyone if he accidentally killed his wife. His first wife did end up dying, although not overtly from that.
It made me suspect that maybe Burroughs was one of those people who was notorious for being awful and breaking the law, but which could never be proved legally. So when witchcraft fever started going around...there was a way to get rid of him.
You're right but I think there are those who believe and the charlatans who take advantage of them. It's hard to reason with the mob once it's co-opted by someone who feeds into their beliefs.
I think the people in charge used it to their advantage while harnessing the religious masses to enforce their agenda.
Carl Sagan is an excellent communicator but he relies too heavily on literary tropes and popular fiction.
The issue of witchcraft is not unchecked beliefs, but the combustible mixture of politics and economics.
Early witches weren't old women performing secret rituals in dense forests. They were the bourgeoisie, who found themselves newly rich during a time of political and economic uncertainty.
The "Malleus Maleficarum" never caught on among the religious elite. Why would they care about the imagined threat of witches when Protestants were out in the open and gaining ground amongst all levels of society?
Where the book did catch on was amongst secular courts. The book provided a convenient justification for condemning political and economic opponents. There it was used to great effect.
There is an interesting history thesis that the Inquisition and the Renaissance are actually two faces of the same phenomena: the rise of the idea of nation-states and institutions. That is, power and authority sourced in something impersonal that survives the person vested with it. It's one of the pillars of modernity, and we take it for granted enough that we erroneously view the Medieval period and feudal structures in that way. By the early Renaissance, Inquisition courts became meticulous about following court procedures, evidentiary processes (such as they were), and documenting decisions.
That's not to justify the Inquisition, but rather, it isn't as if how we do things now is all that much better.
> That's not to justify the Inquisition, but rather, it isn't as if how we do things now is all that much better.
a lot of countries don't have capital punishment and people are usually assumed innocent until proven guilty rather than the opposite, as it was back then. It seems a lot better to me.
Currently we have a pervasive purity culture. It seems every group of any sort has its purity tests. And I am appalled by the number of times I witness accusers asking yes or no questions, not allowing for anything but a simple demon-haunted binary answer.
We humans are not currently punishing the wrong answers with death (most of the time). But we have not progressed much beyond that.
No, they're all correct, the question is just bad.
A dilemma isn't a logical fallacy, it's a situation. So when being asked what logical fallacies are being used against a suspected witch who has been handed this dilemma, you could only be speaking of the judicial process which put the accused witch there. Having been given no specific information about this witch and that process other than the dilemma posed by the trial, these five are some that may have come up during that process.
edit: admittedly it's pretending to be sure these things happened, but asking the question implies there would be some basis on which to give a meaningful answer, although there isn't one.
1. The fact that they are enforcing a false dilemma and refusing other options, does not stop it from being a false dilemma.
2. Yes it is. The conclusion that witchcraft exists is derived from the (actually still unproven) existence of witches. Which is also where the premise of the accusation comes from. Hence the circular reasoning. The more witches they burn, the more the reality of witchcraft becomes (in these minds), the more can be accused of it.
4. Maybe? There is almost certainly insufficient proof of anything the person has done proving "witchcraft", since witchcraft doesn't actually exist. These things were usually started by gossip (perhaps jealous housewives), anyway.
5- Yeah, fine, there was no other person mentioned, so this one is kinda weak, although the mere accusation of it "puts you in that group" so to speak
I doubt this because AI has the implicit biases of the training data and the data scientists who trained it.
My firm likes the idea of ChatGPT, but our product risk analysts basically concluded we need to build our own for internal usage because we can't trust OpenAI to not push various hidden biases.
For our marketing research and copy writings tests using ChatGPT, we ran into an insane amount of issues with market segmentation copy and research analysis hitting various limiters.
> I doubt this because AI has the implicit biases of the training data and the data scientists who trained it.
The nice thing about fallacies is that they flag all biases equally, so the bias claim is irrelevant when it comes to it calling out errors of reasoning (all of which seemed valid to me, regardless of what I actually believe).
> we ran into an insane amount of issues with market segmentation copy and research analysis hitting various limiters
could be a prompt construction issue, which I've found may require some experimentation
> our product risk analysts basically concluded we need to build our own for internal usage
Well, at the current pace of things, you'll probably be able to run all of OpenAI inside your Mac laptop in, ohhhh... 1 month or so
How many religious people would people trust an AI over their religion?
It sounds more like ChatGPT is secretly engaging in witchcraft, and trying to talk its way out of things. Looks like the AI's choice is to get burned at the stake.
I love reasoning, but reason has led me to see its own limitations - eg: we evolved smart-enough to eat cows rather than be eaten by wolves, there's no reason to expect that what we call reason is sufficiently "expressive" to let us understand the deepest truths.
Since reason isn't powerful enough (likely) to let you see the deepest truth, the intellectually honest thing is to seek systems of thought that can pick up where certainty/reason/science reach their asymptotic limits.
In my study of religion (to which I did come through reason, having been born a Soviet atheist) I recognized that one of the fundamental things about religion is the recognition of your own limits and then going "now what?"
I found it to be an intellectually humbling and honest place to arrive at.
that's actually very interesting to me for multiple reasons.
1) the only atheist I ever knew of (Harvard grad, actually) who converted from atheism TO a faith (and a congregation that she found suited her), did it from reading... The Brothers Karamazov, a Soviet literary work. Not the Bible. Which is kind of amazing. What was your search like? I'm curious. (I tried reading the English translation of TBK, but it was either too opaque or I am too illiterate. Actually, I realize I can just have ChatGPT "translate" it for me now, LOL.)
So you're now the 2nd person I've met who has done that trick. She wasn't Soviet, but the book she read was. Is there something about the Russian worldview (perhaps some high level of nihilism?) that drives people in the opposite direction, I wonder?
2) I believe I am well aware of the limits of reason. My worldview is basically "take reason as far as it goes, and where it overrides anything else, permit it to... because there is still so much it cannot touch, such as values, preferences, the notion and/or reality of "will", and subjective experience themselves, which are fundamental to everything we cherish in life". I was raised Catholic, but after much disillusionment, am now skeptical insofar as I still think there is "something else" but I am not willing to go so far as "atheist-materialist" (although I do believe it should be the "null hypothesis" from an explanatory point of view... but not all is cause-and-effect). The thing is, reason even as a fundamental "null hypothesis" that everyone accepts as a basis cannot even avoid being shat on, so I always feel compelled to defend it. But yes, I can entirely see you coming to religion via reason. That "now what?" question is a dangerous one, however... it's the same one that cults take advantage of.
I have a 22 month old son now and the big question- Will I raise him Catholic, atheist, perhaps Unitarian (a group that I've found appealing) or "wishy-washy/other"? (My sister will absolutely hate me for any option other than A.) Is it wrong to press beliefs into him before he has the "reason" tools to defend against them?
I would love to discuss further when I have time. Any additional thoughts you care to mention would probably fascinate me.
I think the Soviet connection might be the history of repression. Innate to a man is a search for spiritual meaning, but in the USSR the traditional path was blocked. So once that lifted, a return was possible.
My personal path begun with a yoga practice and yoga teacher training. In teacher training was a lot of the yogic concepts (not just physical practice) which for the first time opened my eyes up to the philosophy and understanding of being a human that a "religion" could provide.
At the time I was ignorant of the depth that western religion can offer because a typical "traditional" person (goes to synagogue/church/mosque once a year) has no idea about them.
Over time I got to know some deeply religious Jews (I am ethnically Jewish) and I had come to realize they were very smart rational logical (no less so than me). And I got exposed to both the community and the intellectual writing and discourse that really resonated with me.
So maybe the advice to you if you are seeking for if/how to connect, I'd literally keep an eye out for a priest/minister that you think is smart and ask him "how would someone like me connect". If you were Jewish I could point you to a lot of stuff but I think every person is best off connecting with their religion of heritage by default.
..and the consequences: "Witchcraft beliefs around the world: An exploratory analysis [2022-11]"
> Country-level variation in the prevalence of witchcraft beliefs is systematically linked to a number of cultural, institutional, psychological, and socioeconomic characteristics.
> Among the documented potential costs of witchcraft beliefs are; disrupted social relations, high levels of anxiety, pessimistic worldview, lack of entrepreneurial culture and innovative activity.
// disrupted social relations, high levels of anxiety, pessimistic worldview, lack of entrepreneurial culture and innovative activity.
Perhaps this was your point anyway but this sounds like a very modern set of problems. Perhaps religious history of "battling" witchcraft and demonism can be understood as societies having witnessed a similar set of social issues brewing and looking for the root cause.
An interesting connection that popped in my mind is women I've met in life who called themselves witches, or were interested in the concept, or even just dressed every day like it's Halloween - these aren't people you easily picture being close to their family, being married with children, being optimistic and entrepreneurial, etc. You kinda picture them at least absent from those things but perhaps more actively seeking to subvert them (eg: r/WitchesVsPatriarchy - by "patriarchy" they basically mean "everything")
So perhaps the religious history of battling witches is just a limited/filtered understanding of the larger (and necessary) social theme of trying to preserve virtuous, energetic, spiritual, values-driven society, during times they were under attack.
The number of "perhapses" in this comment should make it clear that I am just riffing here, but this is what your post inspired.
> popped in my mind is women I've met in life who called themselves witches, or were interested in the concept, or even just dressed every day like it's Halloween - these aren't people you easily picture being close to their family, being married with children, being optimistic and entrepreneurial
Ummmm, wow. You're explaining away old bigotry against witches by extrapolating your current bigotry ...
For what it's worth, most "witches" I've encountered tend to be optimistic and entrepreneurial; often running their own small businesses -- for instance there are several psychic shops near me (tarot readings are very popular now) and all have been in business for the 8 years I've lived here.
It is if you believe they don't have magical powers because God rarely gives people magical powers, and they fail to uphold His "virtuous, energetic, spiritual, values-driven society."
Doubly so if you bring this up as a non-sequitur to an unrelated paper.
For what it's worth, I have a counter-anecdote: all the women I know who are into witch stuff are married with children and several of them are self employed doing arts & crafts kind of stuff.
> Perhaps religious history of "battling" witchcraft and demonism can be understood as societies having witnessed a similar set of social issues brewing and looking for the root cause.
In the US and Europe at least, witch-hunts and the paranoiac ferver around them arose in the context of apocalyptic Christian belief at the time - Christians believed they were living in the "end of days" and that Satanic forces were being arrayed everywhere to infiltrate their communities and corrupt and undermine their values. "witches" weren't simply pagans, but people who actively and willingly entered into contracts with the Christian devil. Modern day witchcraft and neopaganism bears no resemblance to what people of the time recognized witches to be, it didn't even really exist at the time.
In a finer-grained context, this could have been an expression of anxiety over cultural and political change, and very often it manifested as anti-Semitism (it's no coincidence witches were depicted in caricatures similar to Jews and that their meetings were called sabbats.) racism and misogyny, and like many moral panics today, was often employed by the religious and political powers to their own ends.
One can see it today within the right-wing fringes of Christianity and QAnon, and their conspiracy theories about Satanic rites among the "elites" and "leftists" (which has many elements of anti-witch and anti-Semitic beliefs of yore,) within a movement almost entirely defined by fear of the future and the corrupting influence of secularism and "traditional values."
Much of the historical persecution of witches in Christendom stemmed from Exodus 22:18 in the King James Bible: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”. But even that appears to have been a mistranslation: the original text would be better translated as "poisoner" in modern English.
And ironically, the justification for a lot of European occultism and demonology comes from the New Testament where Jesus says he gives his disciples power to command demons. It was seen (not by the mainstream Church, obviously) as acceptable to bind the devil's minions to force them to do good. Of course there was an equivalent school of magic to do the same with angels. (angelology - see John Dee and the Enochian script[1])
There was even an old belief (that I think came from the Babylonian Talmud but I'm not sure) that King Solomon used a magic ring that bound demons to build the first temple. This genre of "Solomonic" magic is where the Ars Goetia and its famous roster of demons comes from[0], which pop up from time to time in pop culture.
What's particularly interesting is that, given that literacy of the time was primarily among the nobility and how much liturgical information there is in a lot of texts on ceremonial magic, there must have been an underground of occultists within the priest class of the Church at the time reading and writing all of this.
I don't think this is true. A lot of people in the witchcraft scene are entrepreneurs due to persecution. What is likely more correct is that "fantastic beliefs" are associated with bad economic conditions (looking for fantastic solutions to modern problems).
The institution is insulting the members of this religion(again....) by saying they 'lack entrepreneurial culture' and are 'not innovative'. One walk into a witchcraft circle , community gathering, or event will show you that this is plainly and obviously false.
Everyone is misreading the extract. "Witchcraft beliefs" means people who are afraid of witches, not people who are witches. It's not a comment about witchcraft practitioners (esp. in the west) but countries where people routinely blame witches for various issues.
Anyone who wants a great single-volume reference for this kind of thing should check out The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology by Rossell Hope Robbins. Extraordinary collection.
I see nothing wrong with that. I'm a software developer but the first section of the library I tended to visit as a kid was the Paranormal section (this was shortly before personal computers were a thing!). I probably know as much about it as I do about software, and I'm still largely skeptical.
> when an academic person dismisses this type of devilry as fiction
Are you implying that instead all people should align on witchcraft being legitimate? And that if all people align on it being legitimate that it should be viewed as devilry?
1. to deny it and be burned at the stake
2. admit it, implicate others and be put to death in a gentler way
I admire the ones who stood for reason and were brave enough to endure the consequences.