Fun with Eco: Morons and Cretans

"What about morons?"

"Ah. Morons never do the wrong thing. They get their reasoning wrong. Like the fellow who says all dogs are pets and all dogs bark, and cats are pets, too, and therefore cats bark. Or that all Athenians are mortal, and all the citizens of Piraeus are mortal, so all the citizens of Piraeus are Athenians."

"Which they are."

"Yes, but only accidentally. Morons will occasionally say something thats right, but they say it for the wrong reason."

"You mean its okay to say something thats wrong as long as the reason is right."

"Of course. Why else go to the trouble of being a rational animal?"

"All great apes evolved from lower life forms, man evolved from lower life forms, therefore man is a great ape."

"Not bad. In such statements you suspect that something's wrong but it takes work to show what and why. Morons are tricky. You can spot the fool right away (not to mention the cretin), but the moron reasons almost the way you do; the gap is infinitesimal. A moron is a master of paralogism. For an editor, its bad news. It can take him an eternity to identify a moron. Plenty of moron's books are published, because they're convincing at first glance. An editor is not required to weed out the morons. If the Academy of Science doesnt do it, why should he?"

"Philosophers dont either. Saint Anselm's ontological argument is moronic, for example. God must exist because I can conceive Him as a being perfect in all ways, including existence. The saint confuses existence in thought with existence in reality."

"True, but Guanilon's refutation is moronic, too. I can think of an island in the sea even if the island doesn't exist. He confuses thinking of the possible with thinking of the necessary."

"A duel between morons."

"Exactly. And God loves every minute of it. He chose to be unthinkable only to prove that Anselm and Guanilon were morons. What a sublime purpose for creation, or rather, for that act by which God willed Himself to be: to unmask moronism."

"We're surrounded by morons."

"Everyone's a moron--save me and thee. Or, rather--O wouldn't want to offend--save thee."

"Somehow I feel that Gödel's theorem has something to do with all this."

"I wouldn't know, I'm a cretin...Epimenides the Cretan says all Cretans are liars, it must be true, because he's a Cretan himself and knows his countrymen well."

"Saint Paul, Epistle to Titus. On the other hand, those who call Epimenides a liar have to think all Cretan's arent, but Cretans dont trust Cretans, therefore no Cretan calls Epimenides a liar."

"Isnt that moronic thinking?"

"You decide. I told you, they are hard to identify. Morons can even win the Nobel Prize."

"Hold on. Of those who dont believe God created the world in seven days, some are not fundamentalists, but of those who do believe God created the world in seven days, some are. Therefore, of those who dont believe God created the world in seven days, some are fundamentalists. How's that?"

"My God--to use the mot juste--I wouldnt know. A moronism or not?"

"It is, definitely, even if it were true. Violates one of the laws of syllogisms: universal conclusions cannot be drawn from two particulars."

"And what if you were a moron?"

"I'd be in excellent, venerable company."

"You're right. And perhaps, in a logical system different from ours, our moronism is wisdom. The whole history of logic consists of attempts to define an acceptable notion of moronism. A task too immense. Every great thinker is someone else's moron."

--Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum p.63-65.