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Charles Scamahorn at the Bend Science Pub Charles Scamahorn at the Bend Science Pub where Dr. Kathleen Dean Moore spoke

Dr. Kathleen Dean Moore, author of MORAL GROUND: Ethical action for a planet in peril,spoke last night to the Bend Science Pub, and I was enthralled with her clear insight into our ecological problems and her ability to articulate the solutions. These Probaway posts have confronted those problems many times and attempted to present workable solutions, but they have had little traction with the public for unknown reasons. From the WordPress MeetUp here in Bend it became obvious why some blogs fail to gain online traction for technical reasons, and from the authors of South Park it became apparent how to write a more interesting post by inserting the concept of “but” into the story where an “and” was formerly located. Those things will help make an idea more likely to go viral, but Dr. Moore’s lecture added a philosopher’s touch that is essential. It is the seemingly simple concept she calls, The Practical Syllogism, but it has been missed by me and by the scientific community.

We have been presenting facts which have been tested and found to be empirically valid, and we have naively believed the facts would prove the case and therefore people would act upon those facts. It has been a disappointingly misguided thought and an abused hope. Dr. Moore explained clearly why that has been so and what must be done to correct the situation and make reasonable facts change people’s perception of what they should be doing. It goes like this: 1. Create a empirical description of the facts. That is what scientists do but then they walk away. 2. Make a clear statement of the normative ethical behavior we value, based on the things we believe are right, and how things ought to be. 3. Weave these together into a statement of what we ought to do to correct the facts which violate our beliefs of how things ought to be.

To some degree the past posts on this blog have done those things, but it was not very conscious or consistent. My basic writing strategy was to introduce an idea with a problem for a paragraph, some secondary ideas in a couple of following paragraphs, and then attempt an analysis to pinpoint the key feature and then finally try to give a solution to the original problem, and cap the whole solution into a bon mot action as a conclusion.

That works okay but it isn’t very transforming in most cases because it leaves out what Dr. Moore identified as the flaw with presenting verified facts. People need an ethical motivation if they are to change any of their audience’s preexisting opinions. For example: The world is in peril and if you value your home and children and if you want them to be happy and healthy in the future you should do what is right to help them attain those essential things because that is the way their world ought to be. It becomes obvious that preventing world catastrophe by not destroying the things which make the world livable is what we ought to be doing. And we ought to avoid doing those things which are destroying the planet. That is a paraphrase of Dr. Moore’s approach to the ecology problem. The basic idea is:

To make an idea motivational it must agree with a stated value.