Psychological foundations of belief

I think the following rings true:

Preachers of Warmism have more serious psychological problems than most of their followers. "They display all the features of paranoid personality disorder", he says, including anger, intolerance of criticism, and what psychiatrists call a grandiose sense of their own importance. "Ultimately, their belief is a mental health problem.

I have changed the quote around a bit though. It was originally written about "denialism" and, as such, is both an excellent example of projection (seeing your own faults in others) and yet another example of Leftists "psychologizing" opposition to their beliefs. Adorno et al. started that ball rolling way back in 1950 and it has been rolling ever since.

Logically, it is of course just another example of an ad hominem fallacy -- attacking the arguer rather than the argument -- and, as such, has no scholarly worth whatever.

One of the "authorities" quoted in the pro-Warmism article linked above is George Lakoff. You can read more about the laughable Lakoff here

The tactic embodied in projection is a good one polemically. If you get in first and accuse others of your own faults, it does tend to blunt people's recognition of your faults. In the end, however, it is the argument, not the arguer that is of interest and it must stand or fall on the evidence, nothing else.

The article from which I took the quote conflates all sorts of denial of the conventional academic wisdom, which is very sloppy. Some sorts of academic wisdom appear well-founded (such as the link between smoking and various diseases) while others (such as the adverse effects of secondhand smoke) are contrary to some very strong evidence.

Lumping together many disparate sorts of skepticism would seem to me to be an excellent example of the oversimplified thinking that Adorno and his successors have claimed is characteristic of conservatives. More projection!

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).