[WikiEN-l] Homeopathy and syllogism

[Haukur Þorgeirsson]

> I have not had occasion to use them, but If I look at the prices of
> homeopathic medicines I find them rather modest. Compare that with the
> prices of heavily patented medicines sold by major pharmaceutical
> companies. The improved efficacy of some of these is often only
> incremental over that of the drug whose patent has expired. Some of
> these producers are quite happy to withhold medicines from those who
> can't pay. It isn't the homeopaths who are failing to send AIDS drugs
> to Africa, or are using their patent powers to restrict domestic
> African production of these drugs.

Completely true and completely irrelevant.


> If indeed homeopathic medicine doesn't work as you allege, there is at
> least no recent claims of it doing direct harm. (Direct harm involves
> far more than any allegation of negligence for failing to send the
> victims to a "real" doctor.) The recent problems over Vioxx/Celebrex
> did not come from the homeopathic community.

True enough, I suppose, and also irrelevant.
I don't think there's direct harm done by
homeopathy beyond that which selling any
completely useless product under false
pretenses would entail. That the product's
advertised effects are medical makes the
practice all the more repellant.


> Your use of "beyond reasonable doubt" is too
> categorical. The popularity of homeopathy alone
> is not be enough to establish that the medicines
> work, but it is a clear expression of reasonable doubt.

Here I must disagree with you. To repeat an earlier
example I don't think the popularity of Holocaust
denial is a clear expression of reasonable doubt
that the Holocaust occurred. Nor do I think that
the popularity of Mormonism is a clear expression
of reasonable doubt that America was colonized by
a Hebrew tribe in 600 B.C.

To compare with something at hand I'd say that
there is more doubt that Kurita77 is Enviroknot
than there is about homeopathy being useless.
And I hope you agree that that case is beyond
any *reasonable* doubt.

And yet, unlike homeopathy, the hypothesis that
Kurita77 is a user with no connection to Enviroknot
does not break any *physical* laws. It's *conceivable*
that all the facts linking the two are coincidences.
It is, however, so unlikely that we can dismiss the
possibility for practical purposes.

There is ample information on homeopathy available
on the Internet. Please study it carefully for yourself
and see what conclusion you come to on the efficacy
of the discipline.


> Healing involves more than medicines that produce the desired chemical
> results. It can involve more than the syllogistic thinking that has
> become so commonplace in the Western World ever since Aristotle.

There is no useful alternative to syllogism.

Regards,
Haukur