Month: July 2009

Retortion and Performative Inconsistency Once Again

This post continues my meditations on the probative reach of retortion.  See the category Retortion for more on this intriguing topic.

1. If a number of us are sitting silently in a room, I cannot say 'We are silent' without in some sense contradicting myself.  In what sense, exactly?  In the performative sense.  Were I to say 'We are silent,' my performance (Vollzug in E. Coreth's terminology) — in this case my utterance – would be 'inconsistent' with its content.  Now contents are propositions, while utterance events are not, the reason being that contents are truth-valued (either true or false assuming Bivalence) while utterance events, like all events, are not truth-valued.  It follows that performative inconsistency is not identical to, or a species of, logical inconsistency.  Logical consistency/inconsistency is a relation between or among propositions.  Two propositions are consistent iff they can both be true, and inconsistent iff they cannot.  A single proposition is self-consistent iff its logical form is such as to admit some true substitution-instances.  Clearly, there is nothing logically self-inconsistent about 'We are silent.'   The sentence is not logically self-contradictory.  But I would contradict myself were I to say, in the situation described, 'We are silent.'  Curiously, I cannot say in this situation what I know to be true.  If I were to say it, I would falsify it.  Therefore, the proposition that I know to be true is unassertible salva veritate in the situation in question. No doubt I have the ability to assert the sentence-type 'We are silent'; but I cannot assert it in a way that preserves truth.  But this does not show that the proposition is false, or that its negation — We are not silent — is true. 

Continue reading “Retortion and Performative Inconsistency Once Again”

Al-Ghazzali on Choosing a Wife

Here are the attributes al-Ghazzali recommends seeking in a prospective wife. (Alchemy of Happiness, p. 96 ff.)

1. Chastity
2. Good disposition
3. Beauty ("See a woman before marrying her.")
4. The sum paid by the husband should be moderate
5. She should not be barren
6. Of good stock
7. Not previously married
8. Not too nearly related to her husband.

The importance of #3 is contested, however, by Jimmy Soul inter alia.

The White House Beer Summit

Negra_modelo

So what's on tap?  If Officer Crowley shows up with a sixpack of Negra Modelo, will he be accused of racism by Professor Gates?  After all 'negra' might remind someone of 'nigger.'  Not long ago the use of the word 'niggardly' cost a man his job because it reminded some fools of 'nigger.'  I am not making this up.  I wish it were only a bad joke.  But it is not, and it shows the depths of liberal-left lunacy.  But if Crowley were to contribute a sixpack of Coors, then he would no doubt be a Nazi: the patriarch of the Coors clan rejoiced under the first name, 'Adolph.'  And that might remind some fool of Adolf Hiter.  In the Leftist Playbook, Hitler is evil incarnate, but Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot are not to be mentioned.

Actually, mixing Negra Modelo with Coors might be just the solution.  You'd have your dark and your light blended together, 'integrated' if you will.   And therefore dark.  Just like Obama: half black, half white, and therefore black.  You see, in 'racist America,' where no black person has a chance — unless he is an Affirmative Action hire at Harvard University, or President, or Secretary of State — when a person is both black and white, then he is black.  The first black president?  Black + White = Black?  Lefty logic for you.

The Reach of Retortion

Tony Flood e-mails:

Bill, when you distinguish retorsive arguments that work from those that don't, I'm not clear about what you mean by "working." You haven't said that some retorsive arguments are fallacies, but if they're not, then what is their defect?  A "performative contradiction," e.g., "I cannot write a sentence in English," may not be, as you noted, a contradiction between propositions, but to expose its untenability is certainly effective and therefore "works."  Do you exclude performative contradictions from the class of retorsive arguments? If you do and if you're right, my celebration of that "point of connection" was misplaced. (I've modified that paragraph to include the link to your post.)

I will try to answer Tony's question by giving an example of a retorsive argument that does not 'work.'  In Retortion and the Existence of Truth I gave an example that did seem to 'work.'

Continue reading “The Reach of Retortion”

Philosoblog Update

Philosoblog's Jim Ryan offers a couple of delightful socialized medicine parody posts.  One. The Other.  Bear in mind that they are parodies.  There is a lot of good material in Jim's archives, so please do poke around. I have only one bad thing to say about Jim: he is a damned materialist about the mind!

Of Black Holes and Political Correctness: If You Take Offense, Is That My Fault?

Suppose a white person uses the phrase 'black hole' in the presence of a black person either in its literal cosmological meaning or in some objectively inoffensive metaphorical sense, and the black person takes offense and complains that the phrase is 'racially insensitive.' Actual case here. Compare that with a case in which a white person uses 'nigger' in the presence of a black person.

I have just marked out two ends of a semantic spectrum. 'Black hole' used either literally or in some not-too-loose analogy to the literal meaning — as in 'black hole' used to refer to a windowless office — cannot be taken by any rational person as a racial slur. For 'black' in 'black hole' has nothing to do with race. But 'nigger' used by a white person is a racial slur.

Continue reading “Of Black Holes and Political Correctness: If You Take Offense, Is That My Fault?”

Ten Questions for Supporters of ‘ObamaCare’

The following piece by Dennis Prager is required reading.  It's so good I herewith reproduce the entire article.  The threat to liberty posed by the Obama administration is unprecedented.  Do your bit to oppose it and stand up for what is right, assuming you actually care about yourself and your country. 

Continue reading “Ten Questions for Supporters of ‘ObamaCare’”

A Right to Health Care?

Food, shelter, and clothing are more important than health care in that one can get along for substantial periods of time without health care services but one cannot survive for long without food, shelter, and clothing. Given this plain fact, why don’t the proponents of ‘free’ universal health care demand ‘free’ food, shelter, and clothing? In other words, if a citizen, just in virtue of being a citizen, has a right to health care, why doesn’t the same citizen have the right to what is more fundamental, namely, food, shelter, and clothing?

Why isn't health care a commodity in the way that automotive care is? If I want my car to run well, I must service it periodically. I can either do this myself or hire someone to do it for me. But surely I have no right to the free services of an auto mechanic. Of course, once I contract with a mechanic to do a specified job for a specified sum of money, then I have a right to his services and to his services being performed correctly. But that right is contingent upon our contract. You could call it a contractually acquired right. But I have no right to free automotive services just in virtue of the fact that I own a car. So why is it any different with my body? Do I have a right to a colonoscopy just in virtue of my possession of a gastrointestinal tract?

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‘Islamophobia’

This is another one of those silly PeeCee expressions liberals love to use to obfuscate issues and slander their opponents. A phobia is an irrational fear. There is nothing phobic about opposition to radical or militant Islam. To fear it is entirely rational. Militant Islam and Islam are presumably distinct. I could be wrong, but I doubt that Islam as such is the problem. But militant or radical Islam — sometimes called Islamism — most assuredly is a threat to the West and its values.  Still, someone (Robert Spencer?) who thinks that Islam as such is the problem cannot be accused of suffering from any phobia. So when I heard the liberal Karen Armstrong use 'Islamophobia' or a cognate during a C-Span presentation, my estimation of her dropped several notches lower.

Someone who uses such words as 'homophobe' or 'Islamophobe' may as well just put a sign on his back declaring: I'm a dumbass PeeCee liberal!

An ‘Epidemic’ of Drunk Driving?

If you are a conservative, don't talk like a liberal. A while back I heard an otherwise intelligent C-Span presenter speak more than once of "an epidemic of drunk driving." But an epidemic, by definition, is an outbreak of a contagious disease in excess of what might normally be expected. To describe drunk driving as an epidemic, therefore, is to imply that it is a disease, which is precisely what it is not. Drunk driving is a freely chosen  act. Use of 'epidemic' in connection with drunk driving aids and abets the cockeyed liberal view of the world according to which well-nigh every type of negative behavior is a disease.

Words mean things. Language matters. Don't talk like a liberal unless you are one.

Retortion and the Existence of Truth

Anthony Flood informs me that he has uploaded to his site an article I brought to his attention a couple of years ago: Retortion: The Method and Metaphysics of Gaston Isaye.  Whether or not you agree with Tony's politics, and I don't, you should agree with me that his site is an ever-expanding repository of valuable articles and other materials from often neglected thinkers.  The trouble with too many contemporary philosophers is that they are so bloody narrow: they read only the latest stuff, much of it destined to be ephemeral,  by a few people.  You've got young academic punks writing on free will who have never studied Schopenhauer's classic essay.  That's contemptible.  They suffer from a onesided philosophical diet as Wittgenstein said in another connection. Study everything! (But join nothing.) As I mentioned to Tony in an e-mail, retortion is a philosophical procedure that is fascinating but hard to evaluate.  It seems to work on some topics, but not on others.  It does seem to me to work when it comes to the topic of truth, as the following post explains:

………………………………

Retortion (also spelled 'retorsion') is the philosophical procedure whereby one seeks to establish a thesis by uncovering a performative inconsistency in anyone (any actual or possible rational agent) who attempts to deny it.   Proofs by retortion have the following form:

Proposition p is such that anyone who denies it falls into performative inconsistency; ergo, p is true.

If we agree that a proposition is ineluctable just in case it cannot be denied by anyone without performative inconsistency,  then the retorsive proof-strategy can be summed up in the conditional:

If  a proposition is ineluctable, then it is true.

Continue reading “Retortion and the Existence of Truth”