Astrology is Difficult
Skeptics sometimes claim that we should discount astrology because the claim that astrology
produces reliable information has not been scientifically verified.
Imagine that a believer in astrology replies that
lack of scientific verification fails to undermine astrology because astrology is very difficult and scientists never take the time to properly master astrology before trying to verify it, so it's not surprising that they can't do it. (I'm not claiming that any astrologer actually offers this kind of argument, I'm just presenting it as a kind of argument that
might be offered in defense of any unverified claim, such as cold fusion
or chiropractic, for instance.) Your mission is to determine, as best you can,
whether or not the claim that astrology is difficult is a logically sufficient answer to the argument that astrology fails to produce reliable information because it has never been scientifically verified to do so.
1. In your own words, explain what random guessing is (with at least one
example), and explain what astrology proponants would have to achieve in order for
astrology to actually perform better than random guessing.
2. In your own words, explain why and how astrology is difficult, and how
this difficulty is supposed to support the claim that astrology works?
Maybe it's supposed to support astrology directly, or maybe it's supposed to
answer a counter-argument. If it's supposed to answer a counter-argument,
explain what the counter-argument is, and how this claim is supposed to answer
it.
3. Does this argument claim that astrology is better than guessing because
astrology is complicated and hard to do, or does it claim that astrology is
better than guessing because it's hard to tell what the predictions actually
are?
4. Does this argument claim that non-astrologers cannot tell whether or not
an astrologer has produced a correct prediction or personality profile? If it
does, and non-astrologers can't make sense of astrological results, why wouldn't
that effectively make astrology useless?
5. If a purported way of generating information fails to generate any
information that we can understand, can we really say that it generates
information at all?
6. Consider Chef Psuedo. He claims he can make a souffle by dancing. However,
no-one has ever seen him make a souffle this way. No-one else has ever succeeded
in making a souffle by dancing, no matter how closely they follow Chef Psuedo's
dance recipe. Chef Psuedo claims that this does not refute his claim because
the dance (which combines ballet, hip-hop and mazurka) is very difficult. How
credible is Chef Psuedo's argument?
One way to approach these questions is to assume that they are being asked by
someone who thinks that the argument given above is not a good argument.
Therefore, you can assume that an unsatisfactory answer to any one of these
questions could potentially refute the argument given above. Your task is to
judge whether or not the argument given above stands up under these questions.
If you think that satisfactory answers can be given to all the questions, say so
and explain those answers. If you think that these questions cannot be
adequately answered, say so and explain how this failure undermines the
argument.
Another way to approach this problem is to keep the questions in mind as you
logically analyze the argument given above.
Remember that your task is to decide whether or not this argument by
itself is strong enough to support its conclusion. Finding that this
argument is bad does not mean that other arguments for this conclusion are also
bad. If you find it bad, say it's bad and explain why it's bad. The one thing
you must not do is bring up other, unrelated arguments to support this
conclusion. You can do that later. Right now your task is to evaluate just this
argument.
Of course, once you've finished evaluating the argument, you can go on and
add any comments that occur to you. Did you change your mind about anything? Can
you come up with better arguments on each side of the issue? Can you figure out
what questions have to be settled before we can decide this issue? Based on the
arguments you've seen so far, what is your overall take on the issue at this
moment? What reasons do you have for coming to this conclusion? Anything else?
Copyright © 2005 by Martin C. Young
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