2012-07-15
Explanation
This single-panel comic shows a professor at a lectern presenting a logical argument: "If P is false, I will be sad. I do not wish to be sad. Therefore, P is true." The caption below reads: "There. Now you can skip 99% of philosophical debates."
The joke is a concise skewering of wishful thinking dressed up in formal logical notation. The argument presented is a textbook logical fallacy -- specifically a form of the appeal to consequences (argumentum ad consequentiam), where someone concludes that something must be true because the alternative would be emotionally unpleasant. By using the variable "P" (standard notation in formal logic for a generic proposition), the comic generalizes this fallacy to stand in for virtually any position someone might hold. The caption's claim that this lets you "skip 99% of philosophical debates" is a cynical suggestion that most philosophical (and everyday) arguments ultimately boil down to people believing what they want to believe because the alternative makes them uncomfortable, rather than following evidence or valid reasoning. It is a sharp commentary on motivated reasoning, which psychologists have shown is indeed pervasive in human cognition.