Milk & Yoghurt

[Guest guest]

Our "anonymous commentator" is Krishna Kirti Prabhu, a member of the ISKCON

India news conference, which is a receiver of this text. He's asked me to

post this, after further consideration of the topic at hand.

 

> Letter PAMHO:11559143 (54 lines)

> Internet: "KrishnaKirti Das" <krishnakirti >

> 10-May-06 14:24 (08:24 -0600)

> Basu Ghosh (das) ACBSP (Baroda - IN) [76525]

> Milk and Yogurt

> ---------------------------

> *Bad Logic*

>

> Yesterday, Akhila Prabhu, a godbrother in Germany, told me that a teenager

> became a shaved-up devotee and joined the Berlin temple after taking Dhira

> Govinda's course. Previously, this young man was enrolled in school, wore

> his hair long, and bummed around or stayed with his mother (a fixed-up

> devotee) and his two younger brothers. Now his younger brothers are

> imitating their older brother's devotional behavior.

>

> Tattvavit Das. "A Counter Example / Beware Kali's Agents." Email dated 10

> May 2006.

>

>

> Just because event A is followed by event B, it does not mean that event A

> caused event B. This is known as the Post Hoc fallacy. (*Post hoc, ergo

> propter hoc.*)

>

> For example, someone might see another leaving a pot of warm milk in an

> oven or other warm place over night, and when the next morning the milk

> becomes yogurt, he concludes that leaving warm milk in a warm place for

> long enough turns milk into yogurt.

>

> So, as with making yogurt, the claim that some boy joined the temple after

> taking the seminar is temporally related, not causally related. We know

> that the notion to join an ashram never occurs to the vast majority of

> people who go to a therapist, yet it frequently occurs to people who

> associate regularly with devotees. It is most likely is that the boy has

> had sufficient contact with devotees in the past, and that the course, if

> taken by devotees, provided further association.

>

> Of course, leaving the milk in a warm place is still a *necessary*

> condition for milk to become yogurt. So in the same way, it could be

> claimed that the seminar did something necessary to inspire the boy to

> join the ashram. Essentially, that is the claim in the counter-example,

> that (in this particular case) the psychotherapeutic techniques were

> necessary inspire the boy. But Dhira Govinda Prabhu is a devotee, and he

> frequently holds these sessions for devotees, and so a necessary and

> sufficient condition to inspire someone to join the temple is present--the

> association of devotees. Since sadhu sanga can also account for the boy's

> inspiration, it cannot be concluded that the psychotherapeutic techniques

> taught by Dhira Govinda provides spiritual inspiration.

>

> One thing that occurred to me, however, after encountering the

> counter-example trying to establish some causality between receiving

> psychotherapy (with the presumption that it is ethically applied by a

> devotee) and spiritual advancement is that devotees are particularly

> succeptible to the *post hoc propter hoc* fallacy. As devotees, we believe

> in the law of karma, and we also believe in spiritual causes for events

> which are, from mundane vision, only temporally related. As devotees, we

> tend to see more relationships between events as causal than would

> non-devotees. So when we are confronted with a situation in which there is

> an unwarranted inferrence of a causal relationship between two events that

> are only temporaly related, devotees are less apt to correctly identify

> the relationship for what it truly is.

> (Text PAMHO:11559143) -----