Wishful thinking: The inference
of conclusions that conform to one's desires because they conform
to one's desires: "It is so, because I desire it to be so;
it is not so, because I desire it not to be so."
Inference Scheme of Wishful
Thinking: I desire it were true, therefore it is true.
This is the fundamental principle of
invalid reasoning, and it should be clear why this is so and why no
human being spends a day or an hour without some wishful thinking:
Because wishful thinking yields what human beings wish, and gives them
satisfaction and pleasure, even if this is merely fantasy, and because
human beings desire so much to get what they please that merely
imagining that things are as they
desire to believe
they are is a sufficiently strong motive to make them
believe
what they desire, and to act on that belief.
It is the real basis of each political ideology and each
religion.
Normally, it goes together with the active refusal to seriously consider
the reasoned arguments of (supposed) opponents. Here is the 19th
Century English mathematician Augustus De Morgan (a good friend of
Boole) on the subject and its implications:
"My opinion of mankind is founded upon the mournful fact that, so far as
I can see, they find within themselves the means of believing in a
thousand times as much as there is to believe in, judging by
experience."
(De
Morgan)
|
