Translation to common garden muck English please. Cheers
Garbage in, garbage out.
H. L. Mencken:
"[...] logic, the refuge of fools. The pedant and the priest have always been the most expert of logicians -- and the most diligent disseminators of nonsense and worse."
The barest template for reasoning or "regulated / proper thinking" would be concerned with maintenance of identities and organization (coherence, consistency, avoidance of contradiction [though advanced species may occasionally exhibit
local or temporary tolerance of it]. Like a weapon held by either patriot or lunatic, it possesses no innate allegiance to serve any user's favorite dogma / prejudice (like supernaturalism or naturalism). But still the latter may play a role in the data inputted. In the case of "I want to believe in the paranormal" (as seems the case with Arthur Conan Doyle), his mental precondition approves premises or interpretations of events concerning Houdini and spiritual gatherings which the rival philosophical orientation of naturalism would automatically reject via its very doctrine (or at least be skeptical of).
Even an assessment that inputted information is "garbage", or that those sanctioning it are "fools", are verdicts which fall out of yet other human-invented apparatus: A canon of thought, a method, a discipline, a politics, a cultural practice, cynicism, handed-down or informally acquired "commonsense", some intellectual tower of justification, etc. Such evaluations (yay or nay or gray) aren't delivered from on-high, from an epistemic provenance higher in rank than the inter-subjective society of biological brains communing with each other, but are just more of that category of earthly fruit.
Nevertheless, in this case the authority[*] passing favorable opinion about Houdini's debunkings, and expressing sadness at another historic figure who knew him having strayed down an errant course in his late years -- that authority did win its way deservedly up through the power structure. While centuries before its adversary would have been roosting on or near the self-same perch.
"It's no straw boss." --
Hondo Rudicker
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[*] A number of related, cooperating items of which, say, a "naturalistic stance" would only be a resonating tag for the conceptual umbrella they rest under.